Clement had expected nothing else from him. As long as she had known Cadmar, what he could not understand or imagine he had always declared impossible. She went to her quarters to change into a fresh uniform, to reassure the nearly hysterical girl‑nurse, and to pick up her sleeping son. “I’ll watch him for a while. Why don’t you take a nap? You look tired.”

The girl’s bleak stare followed Clement out the door.

In Gilly’s room, the fire had been built up and a lamp had been lit, and now he sat in a sturdy chair near the fireplace, waiting for her. “Well, I have to find some kind of proof that even Cadmar will accept,” said Clement wearily as she sat down beside her old friend. “He treated me like an addle‑pate, of course.”

“Of course,” said Gilly. “And if not for those ravens, I’d agree with the general. This is another puzzlement, Clem: you wonder why the storyteller did not try to flee; I wonder why the ravens want us to realize they are watching us.”

“Or why Medric wanted us to know the contents of his book.” “Or why a woman whose power can shift the very foundations of the land has done nothing at all for twenty years.”

“Well, as far as Cadmar is concerned, that inaction proves that she doesn’t exist.”

Gilly said quietly, “Cadmar can only imagine her as a general, like him. And you and I also have fallen into that error, up until now. But if we now imagine that this woman’s inaction has been intentional, then, suddenly, we must reconsider everything. When the old general sent a battalion to eliminate an entire people from the face of the earth, did he never once think that his actions might well be causing the very fate he intervened to prevent? Surely this Ashawala’i woman, this storyteller, has pursued our destruction for nearly six years becauseof what we did to her people.”

“Yes,” Clement said. She had considered this possibility so often that it had finally lost its ability to dismay her.

For a long time, the two of them sat side‑by‑side by the crackling flames as though they had nothing of importance to do. Clement, who for nearly a month had worried about the son she had abandoned to the care of a callow girl, allowed herself a little while to think of him. He did not seem much bigger; but would he be livelier now? Would he recognize her at all, or would he mistake the one who fed him for his mother?

Gilly had asked earlier what would happen to them. And now Clement wondered what would happen to her son, should the Lost G’deon exercise her destructive power as Willis claimed she would.

She said musingly, “My mother saved me and her flowers… but after all, she was merely running away from soldiers much like her, and she knew that a ship was waiting, and the tide was turning. All she had to do was reach the boat before the people chasing her did.”

Gilly said, “Welt, your problem is much more complicated. If you can confirm the storyteller’s identity, will that prove the Lost G’deon’s existence?”

Clement said sadly, “The storyteller will soon explain everything. She will not be able to help herself.”

“Don’t torture her,” Gilly said.

She looked at him–her monstrous friend, whose sympathy for this monstrous woman would only be more acute, now that he had an inkling of what her life had been like. She said, “One woman’s life gives us the lives of six thousand soldiers.”

“Exactly,” grated Gilly. “Her life, not her death. And after all she has survived, you won’t be able to frighten her with mere pain, not unless you torture her beyond recovery.”

“I must prove something, somehow!”

“Fine. Torture the storyteller, get your proof, win Cadmar’s approval… and what have you really gained? You’ve hardened the G’deon’s determination, and you’ve thrown away an extremely valuable hostage. I’m starting to think you areaddle‑pated.”

“No, I’m cornered.”

“At this moment, it is only your thinking that is cornered.”

“Bloody hell, Gilly! Get me out of the corner, then!”

“Is it possible you will not–cannot–respond defensively to this threat? This seer, Medric, seems to think it’s possible.” Gilly stood up stiffly, and went to the lamp table to leaf through the crudely constructed little book that lay there.

Watching him, Clement felt a darkness descend on her. What if Medric’s book had been a weapon? And that weapon had reached its target: not her, not Cadmar, but the Shaftali man who advised them both? What if Medric had won Gilly’s heart?

Gilly found a page he had marked, and began to read out loud. Clement could hardly pay attention. But the words were rhythmic, the sentences clear. Dismayed as she was, Clement began to listen.

“‘What has always distinguished the Shaftali people is their hospitality. The great historians have written of it repeatedly: of the effort the Shaftali people go through, to treat every stranger as a member of the family. They say, perhaps rightly, that this tradition has an element of self interest, for to feed and shelter the homeless wanderer prevents crime and theft. But in fact this custom goes much deeper than self‑interest.

“ ‘The Land of Shaftal is unforgiving, a place of harsh winters and brief summers, where sometimes only luck might decide the difference between death and survival. In such a brutal land, it seems the people should also become brutal. That once was the case, long ago, in the time of the first G’deon, Mackapee. But as Mackapee sat in his isolated cave by a peat fire, watching over his sheep, he imagined Shaftal as a community based on mercy. Kindness and generosity, he wrote, can never be earned and will never be deserved. Hospitality is not an act of justice, but of mercy–a mercy beneficial to everyone, by making it possible to depend on and trust each other.

‘“But now, Shaftal has again become a merciless place. I do believe the Sainnites more than deserve the destruction that even now bears down upon them. But the Shaftali people will one day regret that they allowed their land to be transformed by rage.’”

He interrupted himself. “Why are you looking so desperate?”

“Those farmers,” she said.

“Which farmers?”

“All of them! Seth, the woman with the vegetable seeds, the man who knew the Sainnites are refugees.”

“That is in the book.”

“That we don’t have families?”

“In the book.”

“Hell! I knew there was something ominous about those people’s behavior! They all had read the book!”

Clement had left Gilly in the dark, she realized, but in a moment he had achieved his own understanding and was saying, “They offered you hospitality, I gather. And you find it reasonable to conclude that the hospitality was actually threatening. Does it not occur to you that if Medric is with the Lost G’deon, and published this book with her consent, perhaps with her participation–”

“You wantto believe this man is sincere. And you want to believe that what he wrote, the G’deon agrees with.”

He looked at her a long time before he looked away and said regretfully, “I do want to.”

“But in fact they have much to gain by making us believe they don’t intend to destroy us. If we lower our defenses–”

“No, a G’deon is not a general! She does not think this way.”

“Whatever she is, that doesn’t change what I am. When my people landed here on the shores of Shaftal, perhaps we couldhave thrown ourselves on the mercy of the Shaftali people. But we made ourselves criminals instead! How will we escape that culpability, Gilly?”

Gilly shut the book and lay it down. For some time, he stood beside the bright flame of the lamp, with his ugly head bowed over the table. At last, he said quietly, “You were just a child, Clem. It was your elders, including your mother, who made the choices that made you a criminal. And now you have a son. What will you choose for him?”

The crackling of the fire seemed awfully loud. The scraping of Gilly’s cane on the floor made Clement flinch. She looked down at her sleeping son and felt the depth of what she had done to herself when she allowed him to be put in her arms. How could she bequeath to this baby the violence and ostracism that shaped her life? How could she not bequeath it to him?