Chapter Nine

All that remained of the spring’s plague was a flea in a bottle, which Zanja chanced upon one day, in the bottom of a clothes chest, underneath a pile of winter clothing that she was layering with strewing herbs to keep away the moths. Hard red wax sealed the cork, but the flea hopped vigorously in its prison. Karis never mentioned the flea, and Zanja never asked about it.

Winter snow had barricaded the household, but now the scattered neighbors regularly came calling, and the road that could be glimpsed from the apple orchard had become a busy thoroughfare. Karis worked long days at the forge with two local youths who served as her casual apprentices. Emil and Norina wandered Shaftal, J’han remained deep in the south with the Juras. Medric read books and wrote letters all night, and slept during the day. Leeba spent entire mornings or afternoons with her friends. It was quiet.

Early in the summer, Zanja, Karis and Leeba traveled to a fair in the nearby town. A company of players performed one drama after another, shouting their lines over the hubbub of hucksters, jugglers, musicians, and peddlers. Leeba spent her pennies on exotic candies that she immediately gobbled up, and ran wild with a giddy mob of her friends. In the tavern, people who rarely traveled to town lined up to stand drinks for Karis and ask for advice, having brought with them the evidence of their difficulties: withered leaves, unsprouted seeds, underweight babies, the mummified remains of aborted livestock, fistfuls of soil, vials of water, examples of weeds that they could not eradicate. As Karis listened, considered, talked, and politely took an occasional small sip from her constantly refilled cup, Zanja ingratiated herself into a group of traveling merchants who had left their stalls to the care of their underlings and had come in to escape the heat.

“Now that’s a rare sight,” one of them commented. “An earth witch consulting at the fair like old times.”

“She’s a local secret,” Zanja said, though it was not exactly true any more. It had taken a couple of years for Karis to become known in the region as an earth witch, but now the word continued to spread. Some of the people here today had journeyed a good distance to seek her advice. Yet, though Karis was certainly the only earth witch in Shaftal, and though rumors of the lost G’deon had subsided but not been forgotten, it apparently had not yet occurred to any Shaftali to put the two together. The Sainnites might have instantly recognized Karis as a threat, but to the Shaftali she simply was one of them.

“Aren’t you drinking?” asked a merchant.

“I’m cursed by a dislike for ale, and there’s no cider to be had at this time of year.”

“Ah, it’s a curse indeed! In this hot weather!”

Zanja said, “I’m curious about what happened in Watfield. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

“We’ve just come from there.”

“That’s a long journey!”

“But this fair is on the way to the big ones in the north…”

The complications of a traveling merchant’s schedule were already well known to Zanja, but she pretended to listen.

“So what happened in Watfield?” she was finally able to ask.

“Well, you know that it was a sneak attack, in dead of night. And the attackers used some kind of device that flew through the air and exploded with fire. And they say the fire couldn’t be put out…”

As Zanja listened, she remembered the first time those devilish devices had been used on a Sainnite garrison: the hissing of the lucifer, the rockets’ garish and explosive flight. Her hand had lit the fuses. Though she smiled wryly at the memory, setting a garrison afire was not something she felt inclined to do again.

Later, she went out into the dusty yard, which was occupied by several donkeys, some chickens, and a few sickly sheep awaiting Karis’s examination. A raven flew down from the rooftop and reported on Leeba’s activities. Zanja’s daughter had skinned a knee, been yelled at by a merchant, and was now watching a puppet show.

Zanja said, “Give Emil a message for me.”

“Emil is free to speak to you,” the raven said. “He asks if you have learned anything about the attack on Watfield.”

“It certainly was a rocket attack, and it sounds to me like the rockets carried Annis’s Fire. Annis didn’t like Willis, but I suppose he might have flattered her into giving him the recipe. If it was Willis and his people who attacked Watfield, what is he trying to accomplish?”

“He’s captured the imagination of the people. He’s made it even easier to get recruits to his cause.” The raven paused. “I believe that Willis and his company are responsible for several other incidents this summer. They are moving quickly from place to place, not following a predictable pattern. They haven’t attempted something like what they did in Watfield, but everything they do seems too provocative to be laid at the door of local Paladins.”

“That stupid man is going to take over Shaftal! And in the name of a G’deon he wouldn’t like if he ever met her!”

“Actually,” said the raven in Emil’s moderate way, “his dream–G’deon suits his needs much better than the real one would.”

“His dream is more impressive, certainly,” said Zanja, thinking of Karis in the tavern, peering at the roots of a stunted plant that had been carried three days there for her inspection.

“Superficially, yes. But when people just want their immediate hurts to be soothed, they don’t look too closely at the cure that’s being offered.” The raven added, “Now the Sainnites have retaliated by snatching a cartload of young children.”

“Gods of the sky! The Sainnites are exacting their revenge on children?”

Zanja had been squatting in the dust to talk with the raven, but now she rose up sharply to survey the fair, which filled several flat fields on the edge of town. She was looking among the stalls and tents and strolling people for a glimpse of a dirty, bloody‑kneed, sugar‑smeared little girl, who by now was probably loudly talking back to the puppets, much to the puppeteer’s dismay. Zanja did not see Leeba, of course, but she spotted the black bird that was keeping watch on her from the top of a distant tree. Zanja said to Emil, “The Sainnites are doing everything possible to destroy themselves. They might as well be collaborating in their own demise.”

Zanja’s raven lifted off abruptly as a laughing group approached the tavern. She felt an impulse to shout at them for their intrusive merriment. And now the tavern door opened, and Karis came out with the shepherd to take a look at his sheep. She had to hunch down to fit through the doorway, and then, as she stepped out, the hot sunlight seemed to set her cropped hair afire. The laughing people stopped dead at the sight of the giant, lips parted with surprise. Then, apparently misinterpreting the hard line of Karis’s mouth and the glitter of her eyes, they rather anxiously crowded together. But Zanja went to her, and said, “Karis, you’re worn out.”

The shepherd turned to Karis, guilt‑stricken. “I thought you looked a bit thin. You’ve been ill?”

“I’ll look at your sheep,” said Karis to him. “And then I’m going home.”

She squatted down among the silly animals, who were too weak to react with their usual blind panic. The laughing people observed Karis in puzzlement, then bewilderment, and finally disappointment. A woman of her remarkable size, they seemed to think, should have given them more of a show.

Midsummer, and the sixth anniversary of the massacre of Zanja’s people approached like a storm whose rumbling thunder and flickering lightning might be heard for hours before the rain finally fell. Once, Karis came in looking for something to eat and found Zanja lying with her aching head pressed to the cool stones of an unlit hearth. Karis picked her up and fiercely said, “Call for me when this happens!”