Karis, bolstered by feather pillows and wrapped in blankets, slept on the floor. Before J’han was half finished with her, she had fallen profoundly asleep: oblivious as he stripped her to the skin, unconscious when several people lay hands on her to help turn and arrange her nerveless form. Garland had taken Karis’s clothing into the kitchen, but then lost custody of it to the people who could sew. The worn state of her relatively new clothing offered an appalling measure of how hard Karis had been working.
Garland put the plate at Emil’s elbow, and then quietly added wood to the fire. Karis’s big hand was outspread on the floor, as though even in her sleep she was trying to hold the pieces of a broken thing together.
Emil said in a low voice, “Raven, tell me what is happening now.”
A raven spoke. “The Lucky Man has placed the baby in the basket. Now he speaks: ‘I see you are a subtle people.’ His tone is ironic.”
The fire, rising in the fireplace, crackled softly.
“Tell the Lucky Man he can remind Clement that reluctance to take power is a virtue here. Is he following her to see what’s become of the general?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him it’s not contagious.”
The raven said, “He seems nonplused. He has left the room now.”
“You birds have an astonishing vocabulary,” Emil muttered. He stood up stiffly. “Garland, the storyteller is to die at dawn. How can they kill her with all their weapons broken?”
Garland felt a twist of sickness. “A heavy ax on the back of the neck.”
Emil flinched. Then he took a breath and said in an even voice, “Without a sharp edge, the executioner’s going to need a good aim.”
“They don’t miss,” Garland said. “It’s a point of pride. But that won’t make you feel any better.”
“Nothing will. Not only did I have to kill her, but I have to keep killing her. My ethical training has rarely seemed so inadequate. All I can do is endure, but to endure such an awful thing seems impossible.”
Emil looked at Karis then, with a wrenching interlarding of compassion and pride. “MustI awaken her?”
“Don’t you dare!”
“She has to be told.”
“You keep away from her! Sit down and eat your supper! Leave that poor woman alone!” If Garland’s rolling pin had not been in the kitchen, he would have made himself ridiculous by brandishing it.
Emil sat down and picked up the plate from the table. He took a bite of the turnover, and shook his head in amazement. “I don’t know how you do it.” Then he looked up, and smiled faintly at Garland’s face, which must have had a strange expression. “No, I don’t know how I do it either,” he said. “Are you going to be up all night?”
“Yes, Emil. I expect we all will. People are out there sewing Karis a new undershirt, knitting new gloves, mending her boots, stitching up her popped seams, and patching the holes in her breeches. Other people keep dropping by to discuss recipes and where to locate ingredients. And we’re cooking, of course.”
“Of course. Do they mind taking orders from a Sainnite?”
“No more than you do, apparently.”
Emil’s grin had only the slightest twist of sorrow. “It’s not obedience,” he said. “It’s self‑interest. Do you think I could have another one of these ?”
Clement pounded pell‑mell down the stairs. A couple of soldiers who kept an anxious watch inside the front door leapt up, startled, from a distracted game of cards. With the pain in her face jolted back into agony, Clement had to reach for a door post for support. “Is the general in his quarters?”
“Yes, Lieutenant‑General. Commander Ellid was with him for a while, and then we brought him some porridge.”
“You better sit down,” said the other, and guided her to his chair. She sat blinking at him, puzzled, trying to think of how or when the soldiers of Watfield had started being so thoughtful and proprietary.
“It’s broken, eh?” said the soldier, gesturing at her face.
“I sure do wish I had ducked.”
The soldiers grinned. And then, as the grins faded, the anxiety settled back into their faces. The entire garrison was waiting helplessly for the ax to fall; Clement doubted anyone would get much sleep tonight.
She said, “I have to talk to the general. But I don’t dare go near him if he hasn’t cooled off. Would one of you go ask him if he’ll see me?”
The kind soldier went off down the hall, and the other one collected the cards and started shuffling them. “How are people doing?” she asked him.
“Well, I’d feel better if I had a decent blade.”
Down the hall, the kind soldier uttered a sharp shout.
Clement had choreographed her share of battles, then stood back and watched them unfold with the same sense of unreality. The soldier dropped the cards. They ran to Cadmar’s room. They found him sprawled upon the floor, with his face in a pool of thick, bloody vomit.
The kind soldier grabbed Clement by the arm. “It might be the plague. Don’t go in there!”
She let him pull her back from the doorway. Her panic wasn’t feigned as she turned to him and cried, “Go get the medics!”
“I will, Lieutenant‑General. But please, don’t go in there!” He spoke wildly, and his fearful eyes said her own terrified thought: Don’t leave me with no one to stand behind!
She took a breath. “I’ll wait here until you come back. I won’t go any closer to him.”
Gilly arrived before the medics did, carrying Gabian in the basket, with the bottle of milk and other necessaries tucked around the baby. By then, Clement’s heart had stopped its pounding, and she said to Gilly very calmly, “Get my son out of here.”
They were alone in the hallway. The soldier had gone into Cadmar’s room, muttering fatalistically, “First in, first dead.” The door was closed now.
“Emil says it’s not contagious,” Gilly said.
Clement had to remember who Emil was. She cried, “And you believe him? He promised no attack! Now we’re isolated from the city, with our gates and walls preventing us from infecting Shaftal, and we could all simply die in here.”
“You called the G’deon a generous woman not long ago. You said she was of a woman of her word. And her words were very specific. Clem–”
“I don’t want–”
“But think of what it means!”
They glared at each other by the dim light of a distant lamp. Then, in a fierce whisper, Gilly said, “Clem! Think what you can do for your people!”
He had put the baby’s basket on the floor. Now, he picked it up. “I’ll keep the baby in my room. Send a soldier to help me, will you?”
She nodded stiffly. Gilly’s words lay in her mind like an unopened package. He walked awkwardly away, leaning on his cane, hauling the baby. A few minutes later, the medics arrived–three of them– and a half dozen soldiers.
Their faces told her they’d rather risk contact with the sick man than be in her position. She whole‑heartedly agreed with them.
Clement sat at her work table with her hands cupped very cautiously over her face. She had moved the raven to a chair in a shadowed corner, because this was sure to be the kind of night that people would come barging in unannounced. What lay upon her now was the weight of silence. Clement assumed that extra watches had been placed on the wall, but there were no alarms. Gilly had sent a message assuring her that Gabian seemed quite well. Her son’s absence left her room echoing with emptiness. All across the garrison, frightened captains were feigning unconcern as the terrified soldiers under their command bolstered their courage with boasting or distracted themselves with card games. Ellid would have been out making her rounds, reassuring people somehow, but the soldier bearing the devastating news of Cadmar’s illness would have found her by now.
There would be no attack tonight. To defeat five hundred soldiers, even disarmed ones, would take some effort. The local Paladin company could not muster more than seventy experienced fighters, and even that would take a few days at this time of year. Of course, there was nothing to stop the Watfielders from simply rising up and throwing themselves on the Sainnites in a grand fistfight–nothing but the wall, and a gate that would not open. But, more likely they would just watch and wait while Cadmar’s illness spread through the garrison, and the few soldiers who didn’t die of illness died of starvation. It would be over long before spring, with not a blow struck.