The baby in her arms seemed suddenly much heavier. She looked at him, and realized he was asleep.

Chapter Twenty‑Seven

In the dim, chilly cellar, Karis painted the blocks of type with viscous ink that Garland had cooked the day before. She took the sheet of paper from Garland, carefully checked the side that was already printed to make certain she oriented it properly, and laid it delicately on top of the plate. She screwed down the press, waited a moment, then swiftly unscrewed it and lifted off the printed sheet, to hand to Garland.

Both of them were covered with ink, their clothing stained, their fingers black, their faces smudged. Holding the sheet carefully by the edges, Garland felt so tired he could not summon up a comment, though it seemed to him an appropriate moment for ponderous statements. Karis dug her knuckles into the small of her back. “Is it right side up?”

Garland glanced at both sides of the big sheet, on which were printed eight pages of Medric’s booklet. “It’s right.”

“We’re done, then.”

He carried the page up the narrow stone stairs to the kitchen, which was strung with rope on which the drying sheets hung like tablecloths on a busy tavern’s laundry line. The entire household had gathered, and, as Garland came through the door, they clapped and uttered huzzahs.

Leeba, who ran giddily up and down the strung lines of paper, contributed a few shrieks. Though she had not been allowed in the cellar, she had managed to become an ink‑child more smeared than Karis, more stained than Garland. She chanted as she ran: “The last page! Of the last book! Of the last year!”

J’han captured her. “But not the last bath!”

She squealed like a piglet. J’han, who had proved to be the one of them patient and persistent enough to master typesetting, gripped her a bit more determinedly than usual. “We have gotto get her to go to sleep,” he said ominously.

Norina took the child from him. Leeba abruptly went limp and obedient, for which Garland, although he could now tolerate being in the same room as Norina, did not blame her. Medric took the last sheet of paper from Garland’s hands, and ceremoniously hung it from a line.

Karis had been wearing a shirt that belonged in the rag bag. Ducking paper, she stripped it off, tossed it to the floor, and, in her undershirt, lay face down on Garland’s table. “I need a healer,” she moaned.

J’han went to her promptly, and examined her back. With unconcealed appreciation he said, “You are a fine specimen! Look here,” he said to Garland. “You don’t often see a musculus trapeziusso developed. Even her musculus triceps brachiiis obvious. What an anatomy lesson she would be!”

Garland looked where J’han pointed, apparently surprising the healer by actually showing some interest. J’han happily explained the details of Karis’s construction, pulling aside her shirt to point out the connections of muscle to bone, to explain what each one did, and to speculate on why and how the muscles of her back had developed as they had.

“Blessed day,” said Emil in a muted voice.

Garland looked around to find that Emil, with Medric folded comfortably to his chest, was gazing at Karis’s amazing back with an astonished expression, as though it had only just occurred to him to be impressed by her. A deep man like him might neglect to notice the surfaces of things, Garland supposed.

Karis groaned pathetically.

“I’m done lecturing,” J’han assured her. His probing fingers paused. “Spasm. I guess that hurts.” He leaned all his weight into the heels of his hands and shoved the breath out of Karis’s chest.

Emil sighed. “The methods by which we divert ourselves are rather peculiar.”

“Eccentric, even,” said Medric.

“Desperate,” said Norina, who had gotten the abnormally passive child into the washtub.

Both men blinked at this. Emil said, “Desperate. And bookbinding is next. If you thought printing was dull…”

“I won’t do it,” Karis said, her voice strangled by the pressure on her back. “All that fussing. I need to move more.”

“Deliveries after that,” said Medric. “Lots of moving.”

“Oh!” said Karis.

“There,” said J’han in satisfaction, apparently addressing Karis’s anatomy. “That was very obedient of you.”

Karis took several deep breaths, but seemed disinclined to move otherwise. J’han began methodically to work on one muscle at a time, and Karis grew so limp that Garland wondered if she might simply slither off the table like a very slimy fish.

Eyes closed, she mumbled, “Emil, are you still there?”

“Still here, and still diverted. But now it’s by envy. Why has J’han never done that to me? Obviously, I’m not as beautiful to look at–”

“Where are we going?” Karis asked. “Have we decided?”

“Oh, while you were down in the cellar we did take a look at Norina’s maps, and we figure that we only actually need to visit some ten people–the right ten, of course, who know a lot of other people–but I’ve got a good idea of who the right ten people are. So we can walk right across the middle of Shaftal, west to east, with a certain amount of meandering north and south. The weather will be terrible, I suppose, but you’ll help us dodge the storms. Do you want to see the map?”

“I put them away,” said Norina, busy with the wash cloth. Leeba peered, rather trapped looking, from behind a mask of soap bubbles.

Garland fetched the map case, and took out a roll of several maps on heavy, sturdy paper, the most remarkable maps he had ever seen, for they appeared to be marked with every single road and path, village, hill, waterway, and stand of trees in the entire country or Shaftal. He held up the maps one by one before Karis’s eyes until she reached with an ink‑black finger to point at an undistinguished area. “What’s here? I can’t read it.”

Emil took the map from Garland to bring it closer to the lamp. “I think you were pointing at a sheep‑shearing station. It’s pretty far from anywhere, and surely it’s not even occupied at this time of year.”

J’han had switched his attentions to Karis’s shoulder blades. She had shut her eyes again. She said, in a heavy, exhausted voice, “No, Emil. Mabin is there.”

Mabin, Garland thought. Councilor Mabin, general of Paladins. The one with the spike in her heart.

“Do you want to visit her?” Emil’s tone was neutral, but Garland noticed a sudden liveliness in his face.

“Want?” Karis said. “No, of course not.”

“Ought,” Emil corrected himself patiently.

“Ought,” said Medric firmly.

The Truthken briskly rubbed her shivering daughter with a towel. “Karis will protect you, Garland, so don’t go into a panic.”

Garland realized then that panic was exactly what he felt.

“The earth will open its mouth and chew up that woman alive if she even threatens my people,” said Karis. “And she’ll begme to let her heart stop beating.”

Her tone was so hard, and so matter‑of‑fact, that Garland said in a small voice, “Literally?”

Emil said, “Earth logic, you, know, is awfully literal. And Karis, well, she’s always been a bit–” He paused, apparently to hunt down and capture the most exact term. “–Definite,” he said. “When she does something, she does it. And you know she’s done it. And you never forget it.”

“And it can really hurt,” said Medric.

Karis raised her head. She looked at Medric, and then at Emil. “You two can hardly wait,” she said.

The parlor had become a makeshift bindery, lit by the household’s entire collection of lamps. Norina stood in the corner, methodically folding and slashing sheets of paper. Emil sorted and ordered the pages and then, like Garland, plied a heavy needle and thread to sew the pages together. Finally, J’han and Leeba glued on the paper covers, and yesterday’s ink‑child had been transformed into a glue‑child. After an entire morning of sewing, Garland still could not quite believe that books are held together at their centers by needle and thread. Such a homely thing! His fingers hurt, and he was glad to abandon the sewing occasionally to check his stewpot.