“And leave Meartown to face its attackers without me? Of course I will not flee.”

Norina sighed. “So I was not so clever as I thought. Now, Karis–”

“Don’t waste your breath. I can already recite your arguments in my sleep. These people have been loyal to me.“

“They admire and rely upon your skill, but would they die for you?”

“Why should they?” Karis asked.

“Exactly!”

Karis glared at Norina, exasperated. “Well then, Meartown will have to rely on the Paladins, as we always have, to keep the Sainnites away.”

“Do you know what lies between Meartown and the Sainnites?”

Karis said, “A couple of rivers, a small mountain range…”

“And fifty farmers who think they can fight.”

“And two fire bloods,” Karis said, for Norina had told her earlier that Zanja’s new commander was also a fire blood.

“And what’s that worth? Zanja may be a fire blood, but she never won a single blade match against me.” She added, grudgingly, “I suppose that Paladin commander might prove more difficult to defeat, despite his game leg.”

“You’re awfully surly,” Karis said.

“I’m pregnant.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s your fault! J’han and I have been lovers for years, but the one night you sleep under my roof…”

Karis began to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. Norina glared at her. “I want neither a child nor a husband, and I intended to get an abortion.”

“Yet here you sit with your belly swelling. It’s too late for an abortion now.”

“J’han wants the child.”

Norina’s blunt, strong fingers tapped the tabletop. It was rare for her to betray any sign of upset, and Karis looked into her face more closely than usual. This was her friend, reliable as steel but much less pliable. It must have been a stunning moment when Norina decided to bear the child for her lover’s sake; Karis regretted that she had missed it.

“How can I make amends? Shall I give you a painless birth?”

“I don’t know a better midwife than you. But J’han wants to be with me. I’ll go to my sister’s house when the time comes, so she can foster the child. Her youngest will be just about due for weaning, and I have already written asking her to raise my child as her own.”

Norina would not ask for money–she never did. But surely she would need some, for her family were plain fishing folk whose ability to live comfortably was unreliable at best.

“More ale?” asked the tavernkeeper. Norina grumpily waved her away.

“Did he like her?” Karis asked.

“Did who like who?”

“Did Emil like Zanja?”

“Zanja has mystery, integrity, and wasted talent. Any fire blood would like her.”

Karis wondered, not for the first time, if it would be possible to know what Truthkens know and not be cynical.

“Now stop worrying about her,” Norina said. “She’s her commander’s concern, now.”

“I don’t know why,” Karis said, “but I can’t stop worrying about her. I have no control over it.”

Norina studied Karis’s face for a long time, in that way that Truthkens have, that leaves one feeling like skin and flesh have been dispassionately peeled back from the bone. “Sometimes I get a hint,” Norina said finally, “of why Harald G’deon all but drove Mabin insane.”

Chapter Eight

For two days, Zanja and Emil walked through unnamed lands, following a river of mud that Emil claimed was a wagontrack. Then, they turned east and traversed an uneven, rocky land until they started to pass a few desperately poor farmholds, and finally reached something resembling a cobbled road, though it was in poor repair. The road improved as they traveled, until they reached a flooded, fast‑flowing river and a sturdy bridge with a bridgekeeper’s cottage on the far side. Zanja paused to get her bearings. To her north lay rising land, possibly even mountains, obscured by the lowering sky. “That’s Darton,” Emil confirmed. So Zanja placed herself on the sprawling landscape of western Shaftal, with Darton to the north, and the region of Mear to the north of that. South Hill lay on the other side of the bridge they were about to cross. To its north lay Rees, which the Sainnites had devastated last summer. North of Rees lay Damar, where almost a year ago Zanja’s horses and gear had been stolen by rogue Paladins. It seemed like a long time ago.

This southward‑flowing river marked the limit of Sainnite control. Zanja said, “So the duty of South Hill Company is to prevent the Sainnites from crossing the bridge?”

“Essentially,” Emil said. As they started across the bridge, cold rain again began to fall.

*

They sheltered that night in a farmstead where Emil was welcomed like a beloved uncle, and was handed a bundle of letters and documents that had been accumulating for him all winter. The next day, his face was creased along its squint lines like pleated cloth, but he did not reveal to Zanja the bad news that surely had awaited him in that bundle of letters. The rain that had become sleet during the night became a downpour again by dawn, and they slogged on through mud the consistency of undercooked porridge.

They walked past many tightly shuttered farmholds, and it was afternoon before they turned up a narrow, flooded wagontrack, passing the leafless orchards and sodden fields of a large and well kept farm. Five houses and two barns clustered in the center of a pin‑wheel of walled fields: a prosperous and ancient farmhold, with its doors and windows latched shut against the miserable weather. But suddenly a door slammed open and the dogs stood up in their shelters to bark, though even they were wise enough to stay out of the ram. A young woman came running barefoot through the muck and the downpour, only to restrain herself at the last moment as though she remembered how austere and learned was this gray‑haired commander she seemed on the verge of embracing. Ankle‑deep in the mud, she took his wet hand in hers. “I’m happy to see you, Emil.”

“I gather it has been a dull winter.”

“The winters are always dull!” she cried. Then, her gaze turned to Zanja’s face, and there was a moment that seemed to last much too long before she turned back to Emil, hostile and questioning. As the rain poured down and the dogs fell silent, Emil made introductions, describing Zanja as a newcomer to South Hill Company, and Annis as a genius with explosives. Annis gave Zanja not even a nod of greeting. “Come out of the rain,” she said to Emil, and Zanja followed.

Inside the commonhouse, a roar of greeting lapsed quickly into silence, as though the people thought their old friend Emil had acquired a demonic shadow. The children rushed forward to help him with his boots and cape, but Zanja unstrapped her own boots and hung her own cape on the hook. Emil already had been drawn into the room by eager elders who wanted to hear the news. Zanja made her own way to the hearth, uninvited, where a dotty old man ensconced in a rocking chair smiled at her seraphically. Three hanging cradles, two of them occupied, swung from the rafters, and a nursing mother with an infant at her breast watched Zanja with surreptitious anxiety. Zanja squatted on the hearthstones, though someone nearby offered her a chair, and after a while her wet shirt started to steam.

The room was as crowded as any Ashawala’i clan house. A family so big suggested prosperity in spite of hard times: a large and fertile farm, carefully managed and not destroyed yet by taxes. The room was filled with industry. On the big work table many projects progressed: socks being knitted, tools being repaired, writing and other necessary skills being taught, bread being kneaded and shirts being seamed. Only the youngest and oldest were not working, and they were being watched and cared for instead.

At last, Emil, having done his guest’s duty of exchanging news, said to Zanja across the room, “Are you getting warm? Perhaps some tea … ?” At least the elders were gracious enough to exclaim at their own rudeness once it was pointed out to them, and Emil escorted Zanja around the room, introducing her not as Zanja na’Tarwein but as Zanja Paladin. He knew everyone’s name. Zanja constructed frail conversations out of the flimsy materials at hand: she admired babies and handiwork and what she had been able to see of the farm itself, and assured one stranger after another that she was delighted and honored to have wound up in South Hill. Emil said to her afterwards, “That was an impressive exhibition of good manners. You must be exhausted now.”