Fire Logic

Zanja occasionally led the Sai

The second full moon that Zanja had seen in South Hill was starting to wane as she and her donkey climbed wearily into the highlands where Daye’s company had retreated for a few days of rest. A startled, haggard picket challenged her, for even in a place so remote from the garrison they dared not relax their guard. Zanja gave the poor man some bread and dried fruit, and made her way into the camp, where her appearance was greeted with an exhausted chorus of huzzahs. Daye intervened to keep the donkey from being stampeded, and handed over the fresh supply of food to the cook, who in turn sent a phalanx of helpers to fetch buckets of water and start chopping vegetables for stew.

“Tonight will be our first night’s sleep in three days,” Daye explained. “And we’ve hardly eaten since yesterday.”

“I could not find you,” Zanja said apologetically. “By the time I was done dodging Sai

“Well, I don’t blame you. It’s just frustrating, not being able to send my people over to the nearest farm for food when we get hungry. The lack of beds and baths, well, that’s not so pleasant either. You’re looking pretty tired yourself.” She examined Zanja critically. “How long since you haven’t spent a day on your feet?”

Zanja shook her head; it was too much trouble to count.

“Too long, then. You rest with us tomorrow.”

“People will go hungry.”

“Let them shoot a deer or snare some rabbits, like we’ve been doing.”

Daye told Zanja the way to a nearby hot spring, in a rocky meadow where the turf would satisfy the donkey. The spring was easy enough to find, for it was marked by flapping flags of drying laundry. Though the pool’s edges were trampled and some suds lingered, Zanja had the steaming, stinking place to herself. She tossed her dirtiest clothes in to soak, then lay herself down in the scalding, sulfurous water and decided she would never get up again.

People came to collect their laundry, and Zanja managed to exchange a few groggy words of conversation with them. They left; Zanja dozed, and was awakened by more laundry being tossed in to join hers. Then A

When they had finished, A

“I had so much gunpowder in my clothes I was a walking explosion,” A

“I know what you mean,” Zanja said.

“Listen,” A

When Zanja lay with her fellow katrim, it had been both intimate and perilous, for the katrimwere simultaneously fellows and rivals, who with no immediate enemy to fight, could only pick fights with each other. To lay down their weapons for a while and offer each other intimacy and comfort instead was never casual, though it was always assumed to be short‑lived. But A

“That was fun,” A

The wearying, hectic game of dodge, retreat, and regroup dulled Zanja’s pain, but honed her intuition. She stockpiled food at Midway Barn so starving company members could get supplies there even when it was impossible for Zanja to catch up with them. One night, she spotted the signal fires that warned Willis’s company of an enemy attack, and she was able to guess where Willis would make his new encampment, and left food for them to find when they arrived. No doubt Willis would call it luck, or common sense. A few days later, she arrived at Midway Barn with a fresh supply of food, and was astonished to find Emil there, alone, sipping a cup of tea and reading a dispatch.

He was haggard, but gri

“I’ve only done it twice.”

“It’s a pity you can’t tell us where the Sai

“It’s a pity you can’t do it either,” she said.

“Yes. But apparently I can predict where you will be. Come with me to Bowen’s Farmhold, will you? Three survivors from Rees Company are guesting there, and sent a message asking to be admitted to South Hill Company. We’ll be there in time for supper, and the Bowens always set a good table.”

It was a fine day: bright and warm, and shot through with swooping birds that dove like flame from out of the sun and swooped over the treetops, ecstatic with passion. The two of them took a high trail that Zanja had not followed before, with a slender rivulet chuckling along beside them. For half the morning, Emil thought his own thoughts, and Zanja, long accustomed to solitude, felt no need to interrupt with an attempt at conversation. They reached a high, remote meadow, where occasional fat bees shot past like pistol balls. There, they sat in the sun to rest, and the donkey promptly set to grazing. Emil took a packet wrapped in paper out of his doublet pocket and handed it to her. “This is for you. You’d have gotten it much sooner, but it took my friend in Wilton over a month to find.”

Zanja did not know what to do with a gift. “Untie the string,” he urged. “You’ll laugh when you see what it is.”

She opened the packet, and then she did laugh, for Emil had given her a pack of fortune‑telling cards. “Emil, you are a desperate man.”

“Yes,” he said, suddenly serious.

“Glyphs!” she exclaimed, looking more closely at the cards.

“These cards were traditionally used to teach glyphs to schoolchildren. I’m afraid it’s a rather artless deck. I’ve seen some that were almost too beautiful to touch–but I suppose you wouldn’t want to be carrying artwork while ru

Zanja shuffled through the cards, looking at the woodcut illustrations, printed in brown, and the glyphs stamped on each corner in red. Most of the glyphs she had not seen before, but even those she was familiar with seemed much less ambiguous when paired with an illustration. She found a raven, who dove earthward with a message satchel round his neck. She found an owl, who flew across a chasm with a person dangling helplessly from one claw. She found a woman standing in an open doorway, and lay that card flat upon her knee.

Emil took up the card and examined it critically. “The Woman of the Doorway really should look less grim and more ambivalent.”

“Is she going out, or coming in? Or is she simply unable to make up her mind?”

“They say she stands poised between the danger without and the danger within.”