“Gilly, I need you to come with me.”

Gilly gave her that familiar sideways glance, and asked dryly, “Are you proposing to sling me over the wall in a basket, like Gabian?”

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, reminded that they were practically prisoners in their own garrison, and that her nimble‑minded friend was in fact a cripple. “I’ll have to come back for you somehow.”

“I’ll certainly be glad to see you,” said Gilly. But they both knew perfectly well that the risk to Clement would be too great, and that once Clement was gone, Cadmar would make certain Gilly didn’t follow her. “In the meantime,” Gilly said steadily, “you can make it easier on yourself by getting the G’deon to give you some kind of assurance. It wouldn’t hurt to win yourself some of her gratitude. Bring her the storyteller. That’s a woman who can climb a wall, I’d wager.”

Clement had scarcely been thinking, she realized, or she would have thought of this on her own.

“And do it tonight,” Gilly added. “For Cadmar has ordered her executed tomorrow.”

“Bloody hell! Gilly, I can’t get the storyteller out of gaol–the soldiers won’t let me. And if I try I’ll just get myself arrested. And if I even were willing to attack my own people to win her freedom, what would I attack them with?”

Gilly raised a hand to rub his face. His calm was finally shaken. “Oh, Clem, she must not die! Just because Cadmar can’t smash his fist into the one he’s actually angry at, and he’s using the storyteller as some kind of proxy–”

“That stupid man will assuage his injured pride even if it destroys his entire people in the process.”

“Now you’re sounding mutinous,” said Gilly seriously.

She got up abruptly, and handed Gilly the protesting baby. “I’m going to open the window. Keep him out of the draft, will you?”

The window had not been opened since autumn, but with some banging and effort she managed to wrestle up the sash. The ice and snow that coated the shutters cracked loudly as she swung them open. The stars were coming out. The sky, that gorgeous deep blue that she loved, breathed down at her its bitter breath. She said out the window in a low voice, “Is there a raven here? I want to send a message to the G’deon.”

She heard nothing. The garrison itself lay in unearthly stillness. The night bell suddenly began to ring, and she muttered, “Gods, this is a demoralized silence.”

“No knives,” said Gilly sardonically. “Therefore, no supper.”

“Is that it? Hell!” She leaned out the window and twisted her body, so she looked up at the eaves of her own roof. “Raven!” she called, more loudly, feeling foolish, though Gilly maintained a serious silence.

She heard a scrabbling, and then, almost invisible against the sky, a head peered down at her. She heard a voice, like the creaking of old hinges. “Hold out your arm.”

“Gilly, it talked!”

“Of course it talks,” said Gilly. “You’re still capable of surprise?”

She stuck her arm out the window. There was a dry, heavy flapping, and the raven landed–ungainly, claws digging through heavy wool cloth into skin. She brought him in, a heavy, drooping, ice‑decorated bird.

“Put him by the fire,” said Gilly reasonably. “Close the window. Give him something to eat.”

Doing all this took a while. Clement shook the crushed remains of the rolls out of her coat pockets. Standing on the chair near the fire, the raven ate these crumbs, and drank water from her washbowl. All this was not so strange, until the bird said, “Thank you.”

He flapped his wings, spraying Clement with ice water and slush. He fluffed his feathers in the warmth of the fire and looked like he would now go to sleep.

She said, “My message to the G’deon is urgent. Can you carry her a note?”

The raven said, “Emil is addressing you. Please speak your mind.”

Clement looked at Gilly rather desperately. But he seemed to think that holding the baby was participation enough.

“What one raven knows, we all know,” explained the bird. “Emil has a raven beside him, saying your words to him.”

And what else was that raven saying to him, Clement wondered rather wildly? Would it describe her dark, disordered room, her battered face, her hunched companion and the restless, grunting baby that he awkwardly dandled on his knee?

The raven added, unnervingly, “Emil is sitting with Karis while she sleeps. The room is dark, like this one. Karis is asleep on the floor, near the fire. She has hardly slept since Long Night, and he does not wish to wake her up. He asks that you speak with him instead of her. How can he win your confidence?”

“Who is Emil?”

The raven said, “Emil was commander of South Hill company for twenty years, and is now a General of Paladins, and a councilor of Shaftal.”

“He was the commander in South Hill?” Clement stared at the raven and demanded, irrationally, “What happened in South Hill?When that woman in our gaol, who used to be a warrior of the Ashawala’i–”

“ Katrim,” corrected the raven.

“Katrim,”she said irritably. “She became a Paladin in South Hill, didn’t she? Under Emil’s command! And something happened there.”

“The storyteller’s name then was Zanja na’Tarwein. She came to South Hill Company wanting to kill Sainnites. But she turned her back on this war, and opened the way for others to follow her– Emil, and Medric, and Karis. Zanja became a hinge of history, an opener of doors.”

“Well, she had better get some more doors opened quickly, for she is going to be executed tomorrow, at dawn.”

The raven said nothing at all.

Clement stumbled on, scarcely able to believe what she was doing, even as she did it. “I’d like to save her, but I can’t. Perhaps there’s something you or the G’deon could do.”

The raven said, “Emil asks for your patience. This is a painful problem.”

Clement had been pacing the cold room, but now she sat down abruptly, in a chair near Gilly. “I make a traitor out of myself to a raven,” she muttered, “And I get only silence in response. Who do I complain to?”

The raven finally spoke. “It is better that the storyteller be killed.”

“What? How could it be better?”

“It is difficult to explain. Zanja na’Tarwein is no longer alive, and the storyteller’s death will be a gift to her.”

“Her separated spirit can be made whole by killing her?” said Gilly.

“Yes.”

“This makes sense to you?” Clement asked.

Gilly shrugged crookedly. “I believe it’s fire logic.”

“It is fire logic,” the raven said.

As the raven fluffed his feathers in the heat, Gabian watched the black bird with fixed fascination. Clement finally said, “I want to come over the wall tonight, and join the G’deon’s service.”

It was impossible to understand nuances in the raven’s inhuman voice. But the promptness of his reply suggested a lack of surprise. “Lieutenant‑General Clement, you will serve Shaftal best by remaining where you are.”

“Now I’m in disgrace, there’s nothing I can do except bring my son to safety before your people attack.”

“There will be no attack. We are here to make peace.”

“But the G’deon said her offer of peace was Cadmar’s only chance.”

“She said she would make peace without him,” the raven said.

Something in the raven’s words gave Clement pause. Gilly said, “That iswhat she said.” He also paused.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Clement breathed. “Gilly, where isCadmar?”

Gilly said sharply, “You’ve got to keep away from the general! If something happens to him, you’ll be blamed! Clem, listen to me!”

“Look after the baby,” she said, and ran out the door.

Chapter Thirty‑Seven

Garland found the kitchen’s oven to be quite cantankerous, but he and his fellow cooks eventually managed to get it to produce a halfway decent tray of meat turnovers. He brought one to the Paladin who sat writing a letter by candlelight as he kept watch outside the parlor door. He took another into the parlor to give Emil. Emil, seated in an upholstered chair, flanked by a flock of extremely weary ravens, made a silencing gesture.