Fire Logic

“How many of these households do you have to visit?”

“Only ten or so right now. By autumn’s end, though, I’ll have visited them all. It’s a foolish man who forgets that every loyalty is personal.”

Zanja vaguely remembered having read something like that in Warfare. Though Emil frequently quoted the guidebook, and always with apparent seriousness, she already knew that while he did what he had to, it was not always without cynicism. Now, his performance was not for her, but for A

“My parents want to know if you’ll bide the night,” she said.

Emil shook his head. “I want to be at Willis’s house tonight, but I’m thinking I might leave Zanja here with you. If you would fetch Daye and Linde and a keg of gunpowder, we’ll meet at Midway Barn in three day’s time.”

“She can lie in my bed,” A

“I beg your pardon, but I’m a stranger in this land and there’s much I don’t understand.” Zanja expected she’d be saying these words, or words like them, rather frequently this season.

Emil seemed amused, and said to A

A

Emil shook his head. “It’s not just a matter of sleeping,” he explained to Zanja.

Zanja said, “My good ma

A

Zanja’s first sight of South Hill Company was in a giant rebuilt barn on an abandoned farmstead with buildings fallen in on themselves and the fields long since returned to forest. She and A

Midway Barn was brightly illuminated by lanterns hanging from the rafters. The fifty people gathered there were uniformly pale‑ski

“Sir, I am Zanja, newly come to this company.”

He looked her up and down. “You are no Paladin.”

“Among my people I was a katrim, which is like a Paladin.”

“What you are among your people matters not,” the man declared.

“That is true,” Zanja said, “since my people are all dead.” She waited, cautious, wondering if the entire company would greet her with such hostility. But the others had fallen quiet, seeming content to listen while this belligerent man conducted the challenge and satisfied their curiosity.

The man turned and cried bitterly, “Emil, we are all kin in this company!”

Zanja heard Emil’s quiet voice reply with supernatural mildness, “I am flattered to be counted among your kin, Willis. No doubt Zanja looks forward to the day that you accord her the same courtesy.”

Zanja brought herself to say with a sincerity she hoped no one would realize was false, “Yes, sir, very much.” But the belligerent man turned his back on her, ignoring the hand she offered. He squatted down among his cronies, who clustered around him like wolves greeting their leader. So Zanja learned, all in one moment, who her enemies were to be.

By the time the stew was ready, Daye had taken Zanja on a circuit of the barn, and told her the names and families of everyone present. She left her with A

“Willis, Perry, and Daye. The three of them started the company in the year of the fall, and we didn’t get Emil until a year later. Until he showed up, Willis thought he would be the company commander forever. He and Emil get along now, but they didn’t always.”

Zanja glanced at A

A

“Of course you’re not,” Zanja replied, thinking that it was possible Willis’s hostility might do her more good than harm, in the end.

A

The increasing sobriety of the lieutenants’ conference muted the surrounding conversations after a while, and when Emil finally stood up from his camp stool, the company, already watchful, immediately fell silent to hear his words.

“It’s spring again,” Emil said. “And amazing though it seems even to me, this is my fifteenth year commanding South Hill Company. When I first arrived, I said to you that I was astounded and humbled to find myself in command, and fifteen years later, that at least has not changed. We’ve learned some hard lessons together in the meantime, and this year, I’m afraid, we have some even harder lessons to learn.

“Last summer,” he continued, “While we succeeded in assassinating the commander of Wilton garrison, our neighbors in Rees were decimated by an assault the like of which no company in Shaftal has ever seen. By summer’s end, forty Paladins had been killed, their families’ farmholds razed, and at least a thousand people left with neither food nor shelter to see them through the winter. By summer’s end, in fact, Damar Company and South Hill Company were fighting the battles in Rees, for no one in Rees could continue to fight.

“Now, I have learned that the commander of Rees garrison has been reassigned to South Hill, and moved to Wilton garrison at the first thaw, along with most of the soldiers from her command in Rees. The number of Sai

He paused. The jovial people crowded into the barn sat silent, stu

“I have had a few days to think about this,” Emil said, “but I am sure that all of you have been thinking, all summer and winter, about what happened in Rees and about what you would do if it were your family against whom the Sai