“Willis, since you hold fire talent in such contempt, perhaps you might be happier in a company that does not have a presciant as its commander.”
Willis sat back, his face flushed. “I’m just sick and tired of missing our opportunities. Now that you have new counsel you pay no heed to the old.”
Emil could seem astonishingly harmless, but he did not look harmless at that moment. “You question my judgment, the councilor’s judgment, and gravely insult a fellow Paladin who has repeatedly risked her life this season, and this is all you have to say?”
There was another silence, then Willis, his face bright red, said, “I beg your pardon–sir. I meant no insult. I was overzealous.”
Emil said nothing. His hand still lay heavy upon Zanja’s shoulder.
Willis looked directly at Zanja and said, “I hope you will pardon me as well.” There was no mistaking the hatred with which he said these words.
Zanja wanted desperately to challenge him to a duel and win a more sincere apology on her own terms. But this was not the Asha Valley, and Willis was no katrim. She said, as stiffly as he had, “Of course I will pardon you.”
Everyone began to talk then, as though nothing had happened. But no one else suggested ambushing the Sainnites. The discussion focused on the logistics of retreat, for their fifty fighters had swelled to a hundred, and they had precious equipment to protect.
JerrelPs infusion did little for Zanja’s headache. When Emil’s circle dispersed to spread the word that they were breaking camp, Zanja got to her feet and nearly fell over.
Emil caught her and said, “What is it? Are you ill?”
She said, “Willis thinks you are ripe for replacement and is just biding his time, waiting for you to prove yourself incompetent. But my precipitous rise in your esteem has made him think that I am a pretender to a position that he considers rightfully his.”
“Yes, yes,” Emil said patiently, and felt her forehead.
“You trust me because I’m so much like you. Even a fool like Willis can see it.”
“No, I trust you because I know you’re trustworthy. What is the matter with you?”
“Last summer, a Sainnite war horse kicked me in the head. I was like this for months afterward.”
“Sit down. I’ll have someone get your gear. I want you to stay with me tonight.”
By full dark, South Hill Company had dispersed, with a third of the Paladins under the command of each lieutenant, hauling gear and supplies to new encampments on the various overlooks. Zanja traveled in the smallest group, which consisted of Emil, the distinguished guests, and a few fleet‑footed couriers. They traveled m a wide circle, north through woods so thick that the dignitaries had to lead their horses, west through farmlands, then south upon the dark road, back to the end of the lowlands, just to the southwest of Fen Overlook.
Mabin had insisted on accompanying Emil, though Emil was concerned that the Sainnite seer might detect her presence and send the soldiers out hunting her. The two of them sat awake while the rest of their small company slept, though Zanja was only pretending. Without witnesses surrounding them, the two commanders acted less formally, and it seemed apparent that they had a long acquaintance, though they did not act like friends. After a while they walked away, and Zanja was able to doze upon the hard ground. When she woke up later it was still dark, and her head seemed ready to finally split open and spill its contents.
No doubt Emil was keeping watch upon the stone overlook, waiting to know for certain whether Zanja’s prescience had been accurate. She could go to him and tell him the whole truth: that she had lied to him, that she had twice failed to kill the Sainnite seer, that she feared she was being tempted into treachery by a man who understood her better than she understood herself.
She got up and made her way through a haze of darkness and pain, until she could actually see him, a thin, still silhouette against the stars, the Man on the Hill. Her affection for him washed over her and brought her to a standstill. Wasn’t he already making his precarious way between the fragile and competing loyalties that held South Hill Company together? Already, he had to know the minds of his people, the minds of the enemy, and his own mind. Surely it would do him no good if she imposed her burdens upon him, in the selfish hope that somehow they would become easier for her to bear.
“Zanja,” said a low voice. “Are you having trouble sleeping? Sit with me a while.”
It was Mabin. Like Emil, she sat alone m the darkness, waiting for the dawn. Zanja went over to her reluctantly. “Councilor.”
“It’s not a good night for sleeping. I’ve been watching the torch bugs swarm. Sit down, sit down.”
Zanja squatted nearby, wishing that she’d had the sense to stay in her blankets until sunrise. Even with Mabin just a dark shadow, still she felt too closely watched, as though Mabin were a fox, and she a mouse.
“I hear that fire bloods are often tormented by nightmares,” Mabin said.
“Yes, madam, so I hear.” Was Mabin lonely, or troubled, to be inviting a total stranger into intimacy like this? She added, lest she seem too rude, “But I am just tormented by my headache.” A swarm of torch bugs swirled in a nearby bush, like sparks in a wind, except that the air was warm and still.
“Emil seems to think highly of your abilities.”
“I think highly of his.”
“So do I,” Mabin said after a moment, as though she’d had to think about it. “Yet I confess, I am concerned. Like that man tonight–Willis was his name?–I wonder that he is willing to let an opportunity go by like this, just on your say‑so. How can we even be certain of the existence of this Sainnite seer?”
“How can we not be certain of it?” Zanja said reasonably.
“Because it seems so unlikely! And it’s always possible that the Sainnites are just better strategists, or luckier than we. And perhaps the whole point is to make South Hill Company cautious, so that at the very moment when you mustact, you will hesitate. And we must not lose control of South Hill.”
For a dizzying moment, Zanja realized how likely it was that Medric was using her for this very purpose Mabin had described– that he had discovered in a vision her closeness to Emil, and so had realized that he could subvert the entire company by subverting her. This was the nightmare that caused Zanja such dismay, but she could not endure to consider it directly for longer than a moment. She said, though she was sick of explaining herself, “I can never depend upon my prescience to serve me when I need it to. But when it does serve me, it has never been completely wrong. And Emil’s and my talents seem to complement each other, for when he forms the questions I can form the answers, and he has the knowledge to interpret those answers, and I in turn can sense whether or not his interpretation is the right one. So we are more certain together than we would be separately: certain of each other and certain of what we know.“
“ ‘A steeliness disguised in ritual humility,’ Norina wrote of you.”
Irritated by this reminder of the Truthken’s heavy hand, Zanja said, “My people believed that courtesy comes from strength, not from weakness, and that it was no shame to be constantly reminding each other that without this fabric of ritual courtesy our tribe would have fallen apart.”
After a moment, Mabin said, “Norina also wrote that you are wasted in South Hill. I want to bring you with me, to help me plan strategy for all of Shaftal.”
“Thank you, madam, but Norina is wrong. I belong where I am.”
Mabin’s head lifted as though now she was surprised. If she had ever been turned down before, which seemed unlikely, certainly it had never been so promptly and directly.
“Well then,” she said, with ill‑disguised irritation, “It is your choice, of course. Let me ask you directly what concerns me. What makes you think the Sainnites have a seer?”