Zanja felt the confusion beginning to claim her again. She did not feel certain Medric’s assertion was correct. Medric dropped to his knees in the snow and grabbed one of her hands in his. “Emil, she’s awfullycold.”

“Karis, can you ask Clement if there’s a place indoors, by a fire, where we can go?”

Karis looked down at them. She seemed terribly far away. Someone was energetically beating a cloud of dirt and snow from her red coat. She turned away.

Medric said giddily, “Zanja, have you heard? This is the thirteenth day of the first year of Karis G’deon! And we have a truce!”

Emil’s voice rumbled in his chest, a warm vibration against Zanja’s ear. “So many people will not forgive us for this peace. Peace without justice, they’ll say, is not peace at all. And those Death‑and‑Life people, just because Willis is dead–”

Zanja mumbled into the scratchy warmth of his shoulder, “Enough worrying.”

Medric snorted with amusement. “Just try to make him stop!”

“Norina is glaring at me,” Emil said.

“No doubt she thinks Shaftal’s councilor should do official sorts of things, rather than sit like a weeping lump in the snow with his best friend in his arms. Look, here comes J’han. He’ll want to take a good look at Zanja. Oh, and I hope you’re ready–though I’m sure you’re not–for Leeba.”

Leeba careened into them. Zanja tried to put her arms around her, but it was impossible to hold her. Might as well try to embrace a windstorm. My life!she thought in astonishment. And it fell on her, with all its weight and wonder, and no matter how she tried to grasp it, it eluded her, and yet it was hers.

“Little Hurricane,” she cried, “I missed you!”

Chapter Thirty‑Nine

Herme’s company had taken it upon themselves to clear out the large room that was serving them as sleeping quarters. By the time Clement arrived, the room was not only clean, but furnished with chairs, tables, even a threadbare carpet and hastily polished lamps. Unsettled dust was still swirling in the lamplight, and a fire, nursed by two attentive soldiers, burned briskly on the hearth. The soldiers who had been clustered around Clement had been dispersed by a crisp storm of commands, and now she was alone, with–astonishingly–nothing to do.

Weak‑kneed, shivering with what she hoped was merely cold, she collapsed into a chair.

By a feat of soldier’s magic, Herme instantly appeared before her. “General, what are your orders?”

She wanted to tell him to stop calling her “general.” But she dared not disturb the illusion–it was an illusion, wasn’t it?–that seemed to be held together by words alone. So she said to Herme, “Captain, please inform your company of my gratitude for their quick action.”

“Yes, General.”

“We’ll be wanting a lot of hot tea.”

“That’s on its way, general.”

“Tell Commander Ellid I want to speak with her.”

“Yes, General.”

“That is all.”

He saluted and disappeared. Almost immediately, a soldier snapped open the door to admit Ellid, in a wash of cold air.

“Your soldiers are making quite a show of themselves,” Clement told her.

Managing to look gratified, Ellid reported that more than half the wall had fallen, and that it continued to fall. The front gate now lay flat on its face. Watfielders were walking across it to deliver basket after basket of hot bread, fresh butter, and sweet jam.

Unable to bring herself to be concerned about the wall or the gate, Clement said weakly, “Hot bread?”

Ellid grabbed a soldier. “Get some of that bread in here for the general.”

“What’s delaying our guests?” Clement asked.

Ellid gave a wry grin. “Better guests than conquerors, eh? The G’deon’s people wanted her to show herself to the Watfielders. You can hear them cheering out there. The local Paladin commander just strolled brazenly in, and the two Paladin generals are briefing him before he goes off with my people to discuss details of the truce here. I’ve told them to produce a proposal by noon and it’s coming direct to me and you. I assume you’ll want to use it as a model for the other garrisons. Do you want me in here, General, or out there?”

“Out there. Visible. Very visible.”

“Yes, General. What else?”

“Has someone gone to fetch Gilly?”

“Yes, but you know it takes time to get that man out of bed. And I’ve told the company clerk to get some sleep because he’ll be up writing orders all night. And you had better talk to the Paladin generals about security for our messengers to the other garrisons.”

“Right,” Clement said, in a daze of exhaustion.

Ellid looked gravely down at her. “You sure managed to look like you knew what you were doing out there.”

“You know bloody well it was a blind charge.”

“That’s a secret between you and me, General. The soldiers think you’re some kind of magician who pulled a truce out of the teeth of disaster. And that’s exactly what they need to be thinking.”

“Oh, hell,” Clement said. “You mean I have to continue this pretense?”

Ellid’s grin was more than half a grimace. The door opened, and this time the cold air smelled like a bakery. A crowd of people, some soldiers and some not, carried in the storyteller, with the little girl riding behind on her father’s shoulders, crying imperiously at them to be careful and vehemently waving a painted lizard in the air.

A soldier deposited a glorious basket of marvelous bread in Clement’s lap. Ellid said, “My lost cook gave me a distracted greeting, and promises that soup, meat, pies, and other fine foods are soon to follow the bread. If you want to make an old woman happy, you’ll think of a way to make him a soldier again!”

She left to look after the garrison.

Clement breathed in the scent of the bread. She picked up a round loaf and the warmth was almost painful on her numbed fingers. She tore off a piece, and the crust shattered, and the interior let out a cloud of exquisite steam. At last, she took a bite and let out a small moan. The cold fled from her flesh, but the pain revived: face, shoulder, hip, muscle. She had been smashed, bruised, broken, depleted, and worn out by these momentous days and nights, and it seemed only right that this should be the case.

She forced herself to stand up and walk over to the one person in the room whose condition was worse than hers. The storyteller had been deposited on the hearth with a much‑worn coat over her shoulders and the red‑cheeked little girl tucked under her arm. The child noticed Clement’s approach and said with hostility, “It’s another one of those soldiers.”

The storyteller slowly looked up at Clement. Her dark skin had turned gray with cold, her lips blue. Her muscles were still spasming with shivers. Apparently, the cold of the unheated gaol had nearly killed her before the execution squad even arrived. Clement squatted down beside her, knees cracking, muscles quivering. She proffered the basket. “Warm bread?”

The storyteller said, “Do you truly think I will break bread with you?”

Clement instinctively jerked back, lost her tenuous balance, and nearly dropped the basket in the effort to catch herself. Even the man who was unstrapping the woman’s boots looked shocked. “Zanja–!”

“Why are you so mad?” the little girl asked nervously.

Clement set the bread basket securely on the floor. “Zanja na’Tarwein?”

As the woman glared, the man said politely, “Yes, General, she has been restored.”

So this was the one Clement had feared: who had survived a skull fracture, a broken back, torture, and imprisonment; who had emerged from a valley populated by corpses determined to exterminate the killers of her people; who had suborned both the Sainnite Medric and the Paladin Emil; who had not merely found the Lost G’deon but had won her love; and who had finally sundered her very soul… all for the sake of–revenge?