The horse also was wandering, indifferent to the stars that Zanja wanted him to follow, trying only to find the route of the shallowest snow and fewest trees. Zanja had not the strength to force him to do differently, and she wondered if they were lost, and how they might hope to be found on such a night. Then she ceased to be interested in such questions.
Some time later, she fell into a snowdrift, and lay there in a vast confusion of mind. The horse’s big hooves stamped down not a handspan from her head, and for a moment she thought she lay once again in the Asha Valley, under the hooves of a Sainnite warhorse. There were yellow flames and an angry voice shouting, and then the horse blundered away. A lantern glared into her eyes, and beside it glared the scarred, narrow‑lipped, hard‑eyed face of a warrior, who seemed to be deciding the best way to make an end of her.
Lord Death flapped into the light. “She is under Karis’s protection!”
“Karis is a fool!” The warrior tossed the raven roughly aside. She took Zanja by the arm, and jerked her out of the drift. Zanja landed in a tangle, but struggled to her knees. The warrior was going to strike her, and if Zanja ducked the blow the woman would draw the wicked dagger that, for now at least, remained sheathed. Zanja drew herself up to accept the fist instead. The blow never landed, and so she had leisure to remember what it was like to strike someone who neither flinched nor fought back. She had only ever hit someone like that once, and never forgot the shame of it. So now this warrior restrained herself, perhaps also remembering other blows struck in rage that she later had cause to regret.
The warrior said, after a moment, “You’re a smart woman, whoever you are.”
Zanja would have gotten to her feet then, if she could have, and faced this worthy opponent eye to eye and blade to blade. Even were she at the peak of strength and skill she likely would be defeated, but it would be an education worth its price in spilled blood and injured pride. Scarcely had she thought this when the warrior’s scarred face creased with a grim amusement, and she unceremoniously hauled Zanja up and dragged her to the lightweight sledge that stood nearby, and dumped her into it like a load of potatoes. “How is Karis?”
The man she spoke to knelt at Karis’s feet with a lantern nearby, feeling her bare toes with ungloved hands. He seemed unsurprised by the warrior’s abruptness and violence. “She’s fine, Norina. A touch of frostbite, nothing serious. Why did you never tell me your friend is a smoke addict? It explains so much…” He glanced over at Zanja, and his eyes widened. “Shaftal’s Name!”
He left Karis to the brisk attentions of the warrior, and beat the snow out of Zanja’s clothing, then wrapped her in a bearskin robe. “What happened to you? You’re naught but bone in skin.”
“Captivity,” Zanja said.
“Drink some of this, if you can.” He uncorked a small jug and gave it to her to drink. “I am J’han, of the Order of Healers.”
Zanja let him feel her hands and breast, but stopped him when he reached for the heavy socks that Karis had given her. “Don’t touch my feet.”
“What?”
She could hardly blame him for being so bewildered, but the warrior’s hand appeared suddenly on the healer’s shoulder, and the woman said, “J’han, I guess I need to talk privately to–”
“This is Zanja,” he murmured automatically, as though introducing friends at a festival.
“Just a few words with her.”
The healer climbed out of the sledge and walked out of earshot, shaking his head all the while. “What did Karis do to you?” Norina said.
Zanja said, “When Karis found me, I was paralyzed. My back was broken. My flesh was rotting. Half my toes had been hacked off.”
Norina snatched off one of Zanja’s socks and looked at what Zanja did not want the healer to see: the incongruous, soft pink toes that lay against the others like replacement boards in a weathered barn. She muttered, “Karis, I will eviscerate you.”
“You’ll have to kill me first.”
“And how difficult would thatbe? Listen: You were wise to keep J’han from realizing what power is at work here. And you’d be unwise to irritate me further. The way to guarantee that I don’t simply toss you back into that snowdrift would be for you to promise to do whatever I tell you to do.“
“I give you my word that I will do as you say,” Zanja said.
“Good. Start by continuing to keep your mouth shut.” She put dry socks on Zanja’s feet, and called the healer back to the sledge. He came leading the hang‑headed plow horse, which barely seemed able to drag his feet through the snow, and tied the lead to the back of the sledge.
“We’ll go now,” Norina said.
The man seemed to know better than to demand an explanation from her. He simply got into the sledge, and drew up a lap robe over his legs.
They reached a small stone cottage tucked among the hills, which had a chimney wall dividing its two rooms, kitchen at one side and bedroom at the other. In the bedroom, Norina stripped Karis naked beside the fire, tossing her wet clothing onto the floor, carelessly revealing a magnificence of muscle and form that might make a sculptor weep. With Karis folded into the too‑small bed, then it was Zanja’s turn to be stripped and dumped into a scalding bath, where she could not avoid seeing what the Sainnites had done to her. Beneath the grime, which at least could be washed away, her loose skin bagged over wasted muscle. Her joints seemed too big, like swollen knobs on slender branches. Her breasts had fallen flat upon her rib cage; her face, which never had been soft, felt like a skull under her fingertips. Her teeth even were loose, though by some stroke of good fortune none had fallen out. This alien form was made only stranger by the restoration to which it had been subjected. All down her back and buttocks, sensitive pink skin patched the brown.
Norina had left her alone, and came back in to find Zanja worn out with washing, too tired to resist or even to object when the hostile stranger washed her back and took on the project of her hair. Neither of them spoke, and Norina offered no gestures of pity, no matter what the sight of Zanja’s devastated body made her think. Brusque and efficient, she hauled Zanja out of the tub and sat her upon the hearth wrapped in a blanket, and called in the healer to help carry away the tub. She returned again in a while, with a bowl of broth. The smell of food brought Zanja out of her daze.
Norina sat down upon a battered, three‑legged stool that might have been older than the sagging stone walls within which they sheltered. Zanja said after a while, “I envy you your vigor.”
The preoccupied, battle‑scarred face turned as if surprised to find her a living being and not just a problem to be solved. She said, “You’ll recover faster than seems possible, and you’ll feel the effects of Karis’s immoderate generosity for years to come. What is your name again?”
“I am Zanja na’Tarwem. I was Speaker for the Ashawala’i, but now my people are all dead.”
After a long silence Norina said, “We have heard of the massacre of the Ashawala’i. You’re the only survivor that we know of.”
“Perhaps there were others, but I expect they would have killed themselves. Pardon me–if I am to answer your questions, I want to know who is asking them and why.”
Norina said, “The speaker for the Ashawala’i by tradition has the G’deon’s ear. Where did you serve as a diplomat, with the House of Lilterwess fallen?”
“I looked out for my people’s interests in the northern border towns. Why is it your business?”
Norina looked up from her hands. The sardonic expression that the scar gave her face seemed much more pronounced. “You certainly are as incessantly polite and courteously insistent as any diplomat. But if you had a weapon your hand would be on it, am I right?”