Karis said through the raven, in a voice as hoarse and frayed as her own would be at this hour, “I also am surprised. The raven is not supposed to be in South Hill.”
“I understand that. But I think he is watching over you. He intervened to help prevent the Sainnites from crossing into Darton.”
The raven–Karis–was silent. Whether her silence meant confusion or displeasure was impossible to know.
Zanja said cautiously, “Surely you did not think it would be too difficult for me to realize you live in Meartown.”
“Well, you aren’t supposed to know.”
“Like everyone in South Hill Company, I have good reason to protect the forges and furnace that provide our weapons. My reason is just more personal than most.” Zanja added, “And thank you for my dagger. It is such a fine blade that I sometimes think it could fight on its own. I often wonder why you have not made more of them.”
“Every time you bloody the blade, I know it, and I feel my responsibility. Therefore, I make carpenter’s tools, mainly. They are rarely used for killing.”
Zanja said, “Dear gods–and Norina allowed you to forge me a blade?”
“I never told her. I have the same problem with her blade, but she rarely has to use it. Listen, we haven’t got much time to talk.”
Zanja said hastily, “There’s a danger here that you should know about. The Sainnites have a seer, who is now in South Hill, using his vision to direct the actions of the soldiers. Do you know what happened in Rees?”
“Yes, I have heard about it.”
“That was the work of this seer. And now the same disaster is happening in South Hill. Emil and I together are clever, but I believe the seer has just proven to us that he is more clever still.”
The raven stared, then said in a low voice, “Now I am unnerved.”
“No more than I.” And Zanja, was, indeed, deeply afraid, with the kind of fear no soldier dares admit to, upon realizing that defeat was all but predestined.
Karis said abruptly, “I must go.”
“But won’t you tell me what you can do to help us?” Zanja cried. But the raven spread its wings and was gone, and she sat alone in the bird‑loud wood, as the rising sun dropped down through the darkness a thousand streamers of gold.
Chapter Thirteen
In the disordered camp of South Hill Company, Emil took the first few steps of the day, his face white with pain. Five years ago, when a pistol ball had shattered his knee, for a while he had both hoped and feared that his career as a Paladin commander at last would be over. But Jerrell had put his knee back together again, and, disappointed, he had continued on.
In South Hill’s river valley, the farmers stood in their fields, puzzled by the pall of smoke that sunrise had revealed. What had burned? Why had the fire bells not been rung? Someone spoke of hearing faraway screams during the night, and thinking it was a dream. Slowly, they began to fear that something terrible had happened.
In the Sainnite encampment by the east‑west road, a young man sat up in his blankets, fumbled for his spectacles, and cried in the language of his mother, “Oh, what have I seen?” A camp cook turned from his busy stirring to glance over at him curiously. But, even with his spectacles on, the young man saw only his vision–and it was like nothing he had ever seen before.
The raven flew east and north across the Midlands for three days, until he came to Norina’s cottage in the woods. There she had returned for a rest from her wanderings up and down the length of the region, where she ceaselessly rewove and repaired the fabric of the law, which the Sainnites tore apart again, before and behind her.
The raven tapped on the window to wake her up, and she went into the kitchen to let him in. She bore the weight of the child lightly enough, but she did not awaken as easily or gracefully as she used to. She fumbled at the window latch and then sat heavily by the cold hearth, rubbing her face. “You’ve been gone over twelve days.”
Embodied in the raven, Karis said, “This raven went to South Hill again. And I’ve spoken to Zanja.”
Looking through the raven’s eyes was strange, for he had two fields of vision and could see Norina in only one of them. As she leapt to her feet and cried out, “What!” then strode in agitation across the length of the kitchen, she moved from one eye to the other. “I ought to wring your neck!”
“You’re right; you ought to. Why don’t you do it, then?” Karis flew the raven over so Norina could reach his black neck easily.
Norina’s hands unclenched. She lifted them up as though to directly entreat the goddess Shaftal for assistance, though she could hardly be described as devout.
“Zanja told me that it was a Sainnite seer that caused such havoc in Rees last year. And this year he’s in South Hill.”
Norina walked back to the hearth and sat down. Her face had lost its color and the scar across her cheek stood out like a brand. “Tell me everything that she said. Every word.”
Karis told her. Norina stirred the coals and then sat without moving until the few flames that she had coaxed out of the ashes died down from neglect. She covered her face with her hands. When she looked up, she had slipped from dismay back again to anger. If her infant could survive a tumultuous nine months in Norina’s womb, Karis thought irrelevantly, the rest of the child’s life surely would seem easy and restful by comparison.
Norina said, “What you don’t see, and she can’t see, is how she endangers you with her concern. If it is in fact true that the only seer in all of Shaftal is a Sainnite–and that the only person in Shaftal besides myself who is devoted to you has made herself his enemy–it will not be long before the seer begins to dream of you. If it has not happened already.”
Karis, muddled by air logic, rather plaintively said, “I am not sure I understand you.”
“He will know of you through thinking of her. Perhaps he will know more of you than she does–and certainly, she knows too much already.“
“For all these months, Zanja has kept her counsel–”
“She will not tellthe seer. She will not have to. It will come to him, that’s all.” Norina leapt to her feet and started pacing again. “We have to get her out of South Hill.”
Karis said flatly, “She will not go. Not without an explanation.”
“She will do whatever you ask her to do, Karis. Her obligation to you–”
“Her obligation to me is counterbalanced now by her obligation to her company, to her commander. They are in desperate straits. She will refuse to abandon them without a reason–a compelling reason.”
Norina stopped in the middle of the room. “No,” she said. “I will not tell her more, when with every breath I wish that she knew less.”
“Well then, it seems there’s nothing we can do but hope.”
“Hope!” Norina spat it out, like a curse.
Karis, more present in that kitchen than she was in her own body, which, unattended, fought its daily battle to overcome the paralysis of smoke, could feel the closeness of sunrise. This conversation would soon end.
“You have to leave Meartown,” Norina said.
“You know I will not.”
“It won’t take long for this seer to realize that when you’re under smoke you’ll walk up to him as trustingly as a newborn lamb. Your first obligation is to survive unharmed. Not just for the people of Meartown, but for the people of Shaftal.”
Karis said nothing, which Norina would recognize as rebellion. Norina said, finally, “I’m going to write to Mabin. Perhaps she can do something.”
Karis tried to remind Norina that Mabin hated her and probably wouldn’t care if she were killed by the Sainnites, but the words came out garbled, and she realized that she had come back to her own skin, speaking inarticulate sounds with a mouth still paralyzed by smoke. A speckling of sunlight lay upon the eastward‑facing windows, and she heard faintly the sound of Dominy stirring up the coals of the kitchen fire.