There certainly were some huge gaps in this story she’d told, but Emil at least seemed able to fill them in. He glanced at Norina, who said, “Clearly the truth.”
“What have you told him in return?” Emil asked.
“He asked only to meet you, Emil, and I told him nothing.”
“Truth,” Norina said.
Willis exploded. “What does it matter! She spoke to a Sainnite! She did it in secret!”
There was still something Zanja might do. She said, “Medric is a better man than you, Willis.”
Norina said, “Zanja, be quiet.”
“He said he would prove his trustworthiness to me, and he has proven it. Meanwhile, you have proven that nothing matters to you but your own ambition.”
Norina said, “Silence her!”
But Zanja cried, “There is just one traitor here, Madam Truthken!”
With all her strength, she flung herself at Emil’s weak knee, and he toppled like a rotten tree at exactly the moment of the pistol blast.
Zanja lay across him, gasping, terrified that she might have flung him into the line of fire rather than away from it. Then, Emil raised a hand and gently laid it on the back of her head. “Quite a display of prescience. What in Shaftal’s name do you think you’re doing?”
She said, for his ears only, “That man just guaranteed that he would never command South Hill Company.”
His chest heaved: was he laughing? She could not tell, he was otherwise so solemn. “Careful!” Linde had rushed over and seemed ready to disentangle them by flinging Zanja wildly out of the way. “Calm down, Linde, I’m not hurt. But she already was injured and it’s only worse now.”
Linde lifted Zanja and set her on the bench, then helped his commander to his feet. Linde’s face was white with shock, but not so white as Willis’s, who half stood and half hung within the grips of the other lieutenant and Norina’s man‑at‑arms. “I did not aim at Emil,” he said desperately to Norina, who had not moved from where she sat, and if anything seemed uninterested in the chaos before her. “I would never shoot my commander! It was her, the traitor–I lost my temper, is all!”
Emil walked over to him and hit him, a contemptuous blow that scarcely left a mark on Willis’s face, but silenced him effectively enough. Across the yard, that contemptuous blow registered in the faces of a dozen or more people, who although they had not heard what was said, surely could read the language of the scene, like any other staged drama.
“And you think that a man who cannot command himself can command a whole company?” He added, “Madam Truthken, is there a traitor here?”
Zanja felt so strange, so empty, so tired, that she wondered how she could still be present in this strange place. Norina said, “Zanja has merely exercised a fire blood’s usual foolhardiness. As for Willis, it is most ambiguous. Willis meant to shoot Zanja, but he meant it as a blow to you. So in the eyes of the law, perhaps it might be argued that you were his true target. In any case, I would refuse to hear him as Zanja’s accuser, for he only loves the justice that serves his interests, and only sees the Law as a tool to achieve his desires. He is untrustworthy, but technically he is not a traitor.“
“Let Willis go,” Emil said. Willis was released. “Get out of my sight,” Emil added. “And get out of my company. If you want to complain to Councilor Mabin, you are free to do so. The rest of you, please step away. I wish to talk to the Truthken alone.”
Reluctantly, they left. Emil sat heavily on the bench beside Zanja. “This is a fine mess!”
Across the green, Willis had already reached his people, and no doubt he quickly began to explain his version of what they had seen. But they stood back, apparently uncertain whether they wanted to be known to be his supporters any longer.
Norina said quietly, “Shall I leave?”
“If you don’t mind, Truthken, I think it best that I avoid the appearance of conspiring with Zanja and so it would be most useful to me if you remain.” Emil folded his hand and rested his forehead upon them in an attitude of utter weariness. “Zanja–You and I are at cross‑purposes, of course. I am much more interested in saving your life than I am in saving my position. At the same time, you are trying to save my position and seem little interested in saving your life.”
Zanja said, “My brother, you have died for me a hundred times. I could not endure it anymore.”
Ransel looked at her blankly.
“Don’t be a fool,” Zanja implored him. “Every time you try to help me, you die. Do not burden me with the terrible memory, I beg you! If you do not die, you cannot blame me for failing to avenge you.”
Ransel took both her hands in his. “My sister,” he said gently, “the past is done and cannot be changed. Come forth out of the Underworld.”
Emil was holding her hands. He said quietly, “Madam Truthken, this must be the anniversary of the massacre of the Ashawala’i.”
Norina’s eyes narrowed, as though she had been handed a package that might or might not be a gift.
“I think she’s half out of her mind,” he added, “and she certainly cannot recover here. I ask you to take her under your protection, and bring her to a healer.”
Norina stood up. “I will, of course. But first, I think I’d better guarantee that the rogue lieutenant of yours can’t get his forces organized, or we may find it difficult to get safely out of South Hill. I’ll leave my man here, to give you the appearance of propriety. I don’t think any of your people have noticed that he’s deaf.“ She picked up the bag from beside Zanja and gave her a handful of the dried fruit. ”What became of your blades? You don’t know? All right, I’ll find them for you. Is there anything else you own that’s too precious to leave behind? All right, eat that. Come, raven.“
The raven flew to her shoulder, and, gesturing to her man to remain, Norina walked over to the knot of people that had formed around Willis. The knot loosened as Willis’s people stood back to let him face the Truthken on his own. No doubt she would use her substantial powers and authority to make his present and future life as unpleasant as he deserved.
Emil commented, “A formidable woman, even for a Truthken.” He took some folded papers from his doublet’s inside pocket. “My first letter from a seer. He devoted most of it to successfully convincing me to spare your life at any cost. As for the rest, he says he had a dream that the land would recognize him as her son, and so he’s going forth into Shaftal on his own. He wrote that he has left me all his books–had them shipped downriver to a storehouse in Haprin for me to pick up. I feel like I’ve been bequeathed a child by a total stranger.”
Zanja said, “I wish you could have met him. You would have liked him.”
“I admit I find his letter both intelligent and convincing. It’s a very strange sensation to be saying such things about a man who has helped to kill so many of my friends.”
“But he was trapped. When the walls of the House of Lilterwess fell, the Samnites themselves were buried in the rubble. And we all are buried there with them, crushed and suffocating under the stones.”
“Hmm. Now you aretalking treason. Good thing there’s no one but me to hear.” Emil unfolded his letter from Medric again, and Zanja saw how creased and smudged the paper was. This letter had forced Emil to subject it to uneasy and intense scrutiny, and perhaps its contents still were being delivered to him as he glanced at it once again, still seeming uncertain how to read it. “He wrote some glyphs here at the bottom, do you see? It seems like a message to you. At least, here is your Owl, your Raven, your Door.”
In fact, Medric had written at the bottom of the page each of the glyphs from Zanja’s frantic card reading the day after Fire Night. But now, no madwoman lay at the center of the circle, holding together or being torn apart by contrary forces. Instead, there was a glyph Zanja did not know how to read. She touched it with her fingertip, and Emil said, “That’s Fellowship, the union of friends to serve a grand design. What do you think he means by it?”