Norina said, “If Mabin thinks Karis will even be in the same region with her–”

“Mabin must think you can change her mind.”

Norina snorted. “Well, the councilor is under a misapprehension.”

Medric, to protect his unstable insight, did not drink tea and avoided both fat and sweets, so he had nothing to eat but a piece of dry toast that he had torn into bits. He now sat very quietly with his palms together and his fingertips against his mouth. He returned Zanja’s glance, and his spectacles magnified the intentness of his gaze. Even without the seer’s expectant look, all these significant letters would have seemed like portents to Zanja. At last, something was going to happen!

Then, they heard the sound of Karis stamping the snow off her boots outside the door. Leeba leaped up, shrieking with joy, making every mug and cup on the table rattle ominously. A flurry of snow followed Karis into the house. The door seemed disinclined to shut, but could not resist her. Karis let Emil help her out of her coat, and bent over so Leeba could brush the snow out of her tangled thicket of hair. The room had shrunk substantially; the furniture looked like toys; even lanky Emil seemed reduced to the size of a half‑grown child. If Karis had stood upright, her head would have dented the plaster. But it was not the mere impact of her size that made the house seem to stretch itself, gasping.

Perhaps Karis was immovable, thought Zanja, but she also was unstoppable.

Karis’s kiss tasted of snow. “Zanja, the ravens would have told you where I had gone, but you didn’t venture out the door. What was I to do? Send a poor bird down the chimney?”

Emil had pulled out a chair for Karis. The chair groaned under her weight, and groaned again as Leeba crawled into her lap. Zanja pushed over her own untasted toast and untouched cup of tea, both of which Karis dispatched before Emil could bring her the teapot and bread plate.

“There’s an illness in town,” Karis said. “And there’s going to be a lot more of it. And not just here.” She tapped a forge‑blackened fingertip on the tabletop. “Here,” she said. “Here. And here.”

J’han examined the table’s surface as though he could see the map of Shaftal that to Karis was as real and immediate as the landscape outside the door.

“And here,” Karis added worriedly, tapping a finger in the west.

Leeba peered at the tabletop, then up at Karis. “What’s wrong with the table?”

“Illness doesn’t spread like that,” J’han objected. “Not in winter, anyway. Sick people can’t travel far in the snow–so illness doesn’t travel far, either.” He frowned at the scratched, stained surface of the table.

“It was already there,” Karis said. “It was waiting.”

“Then it could be waiting in other places, too.”

“Yes.”

J’han stood up. “I’ll start packing.”

Karis nodded. She said belatedly to her daughter, “Leeba, there’s nothing wrong with the table.”

“You said the table is sick!”

“No, it’s Shaftal that’s sick.”

Leeba looked dubiously at the tabletop.

Emil, busy smearing jam on toast almost as fast as Karis could eat it, gave Zanja a thoughtful, level look. He was worrying about Shaftal– he always was. How will this illness affect the balance of power in Shaftal?He was probably wondering. Will it show us a wayto peace?

Zanja plucked a card from her deck, but the glyph her fingers chose to lay down on the table did not seem like an answer to Emil’s unspoken question. It was the Wall, usually interpreted as an insurmountable obstacle: an obdurate symbol that in a glyph pattern often meant utter negation. She could not think of what, if anything, the glyph might mean at this moment.

From the other side of the table, Medric said, “That glyph looks upside down to me.”

“Maybe you’re upside down,” Zanja said.

“Maybe you are,” Medric replied solemnly.

Zanja considered that comment. If it was intended as a criticism, it certainly was gentle enough. She said to Karis, “I’m coming with you and J’han.”

Before Karis could reply, Medric said, “Pack carefully, Zanja. I’ll go copy a few pages of Koles for you to bring with you. It’ll keep you preoccupied for months.”

“For months?” Karis asked sharply.

Medric waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, and I’ve thought of another book you had better bring along.” He headed back upstairs to his library. A notorious waster of time, he could be quite efficient when he had to be.

Norina said, “Karis, you have to look at this letter and tell me what to do with it.” She pushed it across the table.

As Zanja left the kitchen to start packing, Karis was already reading Mabin’s letter. A moment later, Zanja heard her utter a sharp shout of laughter.

Chapter Two

In the hot kitchen of the Smiling Pig Inn, Garland had finished feeding everyone and was starting the stock for tomorrow’s soup when the serving girl bustled in and informed him that a dozen people had just arrived. They had taken all the places closest to the fire, which had left the regular customers feeling put out. Garland had to make a lot of fried potatoes, and the girl nagged him to hurry up. “Give them some soup,” he told her. “You know they’ll complain even louder if I serve them scorched raw potatoes.”

“No one’s fussier about their food than you are,” the girl said, and Garland took that as a compliment. She filled bowls with bean soup and would have forgotten to sprinkle them with bacon crumbs and caramelized onions if Garland hadn’t stopped her. She complied, rolling her eyes with exasperation.

“They’re already asking about tomorrow’s breakfast,” the girl reported when she returned with the empty bowls. “They have to leave at first light, they say. And they want to carry dinner with them when they go.”

“First light? Who’s in that big a hurry at this time of year?”

“They’re skating the ice road all the way to the coast, and the old timers are telling them the ice will break up any day now.”

Garland’s heart sank. When the ice broke up, it would be spring. And what would become of him then?

“The potatoes are done,” he said. “Take those plates out of the warming oven, will you?” He served, swiftly, slices of crispy roast pork, mounds of crackling fried potatoes, and scoops of steaming pudding, all in the time it took the girl to ladle out the boiling applesauce. Five months Garland had been cooking in this kitchen, from first snow to last, and no one had yet complained that their food was cold. In fact, no one had complained at all, and many had asked for more.

“Help me with this!” the girl said impatiently. Garland glanced around to make certain there was nothing on the stove or in the oven that demanded his immediate attention, picked up a tray, and followed her out into the public room.

The room was crowded, and everyone huddled as close to the fireplace as they could get. It might have been nearly spring, but that didn’t prevent the wind from blowing hard and bitter enough to find a way in through stone and mortar. People had taken off their coats and gloves, but tucked their hands in their armpits and loudly demanded that another log be added to the fire.

“Here’s supper,” the girl called cheerily. “Sizzling hot! Take the cold right out of your bones!”

“Is that the cook?” someone asked. “That was a fine soup.”

The newcomers crowded the trestle table. “Yow!” cried one young woman as she burned her tongue on a piece of potato. It seemed an unlikely group to be taking such a long, fast journey together, Garland thought as he distributed the hot plates. Members of a farm family usually bore a regional resemblance to each other even if they were only related by marriage, but these people did not look much alike. And in any case, it would be unusual for so many members of a single family to travel together like this. Garland had learned a little about farming during his years of wandering: a farmstead that missed spring planting time because its farmers were on a trip was surely heading for disaster.