Fire Logic

The sun had fully risen when the soldiers finally appeared. They had not fled the woods in panic at the prospect of an ambush, and instead they seemed to have spent the time since dawn scouring the woods.

Mabin, peering at them through a spyglass, muttered as they marched away, perhaps repeating to herself the advice in Warfareto never make a direct attack on a large company in broad daylight. She turned on Zanja a glance that was almost a glare. “Well, your prescience seems reliable enough. So perhaps this business of a Sai

Emil rescued Zanja, taking her to the fire where camp porridge cooked in several porringers tucked into the hot ashes. Emil used his own porringer to mix up a horrid, bitter concoction that he made Zanja drink.

“I dared not give this to you last night,” he said, “for if it’s your old injury doing this to you, I feared you would sleep so deeply you would never wake up. I’ve seen it happen.”

They were sitting by themselves, so Zanja said in a low voice, “Did you hear my conversation with Mabin?”

“Most of it. Apparently, she’s got some kind of hornet in her hat.”

“Is it so bizarre to practice divination?”

“Not at all. Mabin probably played at it herself when she was a girl.”

Zanja was begi

“I think that you’re delirious,” Emil said gently.

“She wants me out of South Hill. I don’t know why.” The pain abruptly drained out of her and she stared at Emil, stu

“Finally!” he said.

“This is a very strong potion.” Her words came out like polished jewels. “Sometimes your knee hurts a great deal, doesn’t it?”

Emil pretended he hadn’t heard, or else Zanja was so confused she hadn’t actually said anything out loud, but only in her head. Emil said. “I have to tell you, I see nothing sinister in Mabin wanting to snatch you away from me. I wish I had a hundred more like you, myself.”

“A frightening prospect,” Zanja said seriously, but Emil laughed out loud.

They traveled through the forested heart of South Hill. As she walked, Zanja imagined the ambush they could have pla

If the Paladins could find and kill those children then that, surely, would destroy the fighting spirit of the Sai

“Dear gods,” Zanja whispered.

“Careful.” Emil, who had not been out of arm’s reach all morning, caught her, for she had nearly fallen.

“Do the Paladins make war on children?”

“Of course not.”

“The thoughts I’m having.”

“Here.” He moved her aside so that others in their party could pass. “The potion I gave you to drink sets the thoughts askew, like a fever.”

The black‑garbed dignitaries, with their audacious earrings and upright attitudes pushed past them, one by one. How simple life must be for them, Zanja thought. To never have to distinguish right from wrong, and simply follow the law.

She and Emil walked behind them, side by side. Theirs was a far more complicated path.

Chapter Seventeen

Mabin and her entourage left with A

It soon became apparent that Mabin had mobilized all of Shaftal to the defense of South Hill, and the steady tribute of food, supplies, and hardened veterans from all across the country rapidly transformed their rebel band into an army that Emil was hard put to organize or command. These were not soldiers, but guerrilla fighters, and Emil, though he could convince anyone to do anything, was no general. Nor, he complained rather wearily to Zanja, had he ever aspired to be one.

Zanja traveled ceaselessly among the five units of thirty that Emil, who needed no longer be so fearful of the Sai

Though South Hill Company could not prevent the Sai

With every casualty Emil seemed another year older. Willis’s unit alone aged him by ten years, and Willis’s gloating reports of thirty or more Sai

Willis heard this message with amazing equanimity. “No more casualties,” he said. “Well, I suppose he thinks I have his prescience, eh? Oh, but you do have it, don’t you?” He turned to his cronies, for, unlike Emil, he took his strength from numbers, not solitude. “It seems a worthy experiment, doesn’t it, to see if prescience can protect us from casualties?”

“Oh, yes,” they murmured, and Zanja did not need prescience to know that this conversation had been long pla

“You want me to go out on a hide‑and‑seek raid?” she asked.

“We’re going out on one today.”

Zanja looked around that circle of hostile, gri