Fire Logic

Chapter Two

One fine day in early autumn, nine years after the fall of the House of Lilterwess, two Sai

“A thankless day’s work it will be,” grumbled one, tightening the buckles on her cuirass of boiled leather.

“Is this a soldier’s work?” Her companion was younger and bulkier than she, and carried a number of weapons: swords, daggers, even a small battle‑ax, as though he intended to spend the day in grueling, hand‑to‑hand fighting. “Breaking heads to force reluctant peasants to hand over a few coins …”

“We’ll take supplies instead of money. Gladly.” She checked her three pistols to see that they were properly loaded.

“What, are we filthy tradesmen?”

“We are soldiers,” she said, “who need to eat. And the peasants–”

“–don’t know their frigging place–”

“–literally!” she concluded. “If they would just lie down and do what they’re supposed to do …”

Their conversation deteriorated. The stablehand, who had become all too familiar with the Sai

“How long does it take to saddle two horses?” said the man, banging his booted foot against the floor as though he were a horse himself.

“That stablehand is always slow. A simpleton.”

“All barbarians are. And they live like animals.” The soldier’s lip curled as the stable hand brought out the horses. “Look at her. She’s been rolling in horse dung. She may even eat it, for all we know.”

The woman companionably made a retching sound, and set to work checking over her mount with insulting care, testing every strap and buckle. The stablehand stood back, gaze humbly lowered. Though the soldier had found nothing wrong with the horse’s gear, she cuffed her casually on the way out the door.

As the two soldiers rode off to harass the people they called peasants, the stablehand raised her dark eyes to gaze after them. She said softly in her own language, “You two will die today.” It was no idle threat. She sensed the death awaiting them, hidden in the woods not too far out of town.

Zanja na’Tarwein’s prescience had been particularly heightened this year, for to live safely among the Sai

She had returned to the dreary work of mucking out the stalls, but paused at the thought of home. Suddenly, between one breath and the next, she decided it was time to leave the Sai

She had covertly learned their language, and she had learned much else that left her worried and distressed. The Sai

Zanja na’Tarwein leaned her pitchfork on the wall, fetched her money pouch from its hiding place, dropped it down the front of her filthy shirt, and left the stable. At this time of day, the garrison was lively with the orderly and energetic activity that she had reluctantly come to admire. A company of soldiers was delicately weeding a flower bed–the Sai

That spring, when she had first presented herself at the garrison gate, a good portion of the day had passed before she was able to communicate that she had learned there might be work in the garrison for border people like herself–barbarians, according to the Sai

By contrast to the garrison, the streets of the city were practically deserted. As the work of harvest drew to a close, the city would fill with farmers. But now, Zanja walked down an empty street hung with tradesmen’s shingles, marked with glyphs that Zanja had never learned to interpret. One had an Ashawala’i rug on display that Zanja remembered selling to a northern trader the year before. She proceeded cautiously, for even though someone as ragged as she seemed an unlikely target for thieves, smoke addicts were known to steal anything from anyone, often in broad daylight. She had been forced to go unarmed all summer, and though this was not the first time she had wished earnestly for a weapon, she hoped that it would be the last.

She turned down a side street and stepped into the narrow doorway of a public bath, startling the proprietor from her doze over the account books. Surely the woman had seen plenty of dirty people come through her door, but still she wrinkled her nose. “I hope you have something clean to wear.”

Zanja said, “Yes, I stored my belongings with you in the spring. You’ll remember me when the dirt is washed off.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Shaftal’s Name, you certainly are changed. I’d better get the water heating. A lot of water.”

Alone in a private room, Zanja sat naked on the bench and painstakingly undid the tight plaits of her hair. When the woman and her assistant arrived bearing between them a vat of hot water, Zanja knelt over the drain and allowed herself to be doused with water, briskly scrubbed with brushes and foaming soap, and doused again. Her skin was raw before the last of the dirt had been scrubbed away. The two bath attendants chattered about people she had never met and would never meet as they washed her hair, treated it with various mysterious unguents, and combed it for her. In an ecstasy of cleanliness, Zanja gladly paid what they charged, and when she left was dressed in her accustomed goat’s wool and deerskin clothing, with a dagger at the small of her back and her stablehand’s rags left behind on the ash heap. She doubted that the Sai

The city was built on a hilltop. As she left the last of its crowded buildings behind, the land opened up below her: fields and forest bright in the vivid light of autumn. Some fields lay barren, their bounty already picked and plowed under. Some were striped with hay rows. Others were alive with industry, as wheat fell before the scythe and potato forks turned up the soil. Zanja, though her back and shoulders ached from the summer’s dreary labor, felt a moment’s guilt at her laziness in such a busy time. She decided to avoid the farmlands and sleep in the woods, lest she find herself recruited, willy‑nilly, into the frenzy of harvest. The weather would hold, she thought, examining the sky. She settled her burdens on her shoulders and started briskly northward, toward the mountains that at the moment lay far below the horizon.