“I think Karis will listen to me. Certainly, Zanja would want us to prevent her from putting herself in Mabin’s power.”
“That’s one argument that might dissuade Karis,” Norina said wryly. “Let’s think up a few more on the way back, shall we? We’re going to be needing them.”
*
When they returned to Otter Lake, they were greeted with an astonishing sight: black smoke billowing from a crude chimney made of gathered stones, boatloads of ore and coal drawn up to the shore, a line of Otter children taking turns at pumping a monstrous bellows, and Karis in the middle of it, swinging a huge stone hammer to shatter the ore and keeping an eye on Emil’s cookpot, which had now become a smelting pot.
“She always was incorrigible,” Norina said.
J’han came across the beach to greet them, a harried and frustrated man. “Are all elementals so willful?”
“Some of us are worse than others.” Norina stopped at the edge of the beach and would proceed no further, but her gaze yearned to the hammer‑swinging, half‑naked giant standing spread‑legged on the stones. It was a magnificent sight. Then, Karis turned and looked at her, and Norina turned quickly away. “I’m not welcome here. I’ll stay at the top of the trail with the horses.”
“No, you stay right here until I’ve talked to her.” Emil walked across the stony beach to the amazing cobbled‑together forge and the rock‑shattering woman. From the midst of the smutty, laughing children, Medric grinned at Emil, his face black with soot, his eyes afire with joy. Emil wanted nothing more than to embrace him, soot and all, but he went to Karis instead, and said, “By our land, you’re a beautiful sight.”
There probably was nothing he could have said that was more likely to stop her in her tracks. She all but dropped the gigantic stone hammer.
“Such beauty lifts the heart,” Emil declared, and knelt. “Dear Karis–”
“Emil–”
“Dear Karis,” Emil persisted, “your lifelong friend and I have found Zanja, but rescuing her will not be easy. However, we have some ideas that you might like, when you care to hear them. But for now let me ask you on Norina’s behalf what else she can do to make amends–”
Karis stepped over, took him by the shirt, and lifted him bodily until he stood once again on his feet. She was not particularly gentle. “Kneel to me again and I’ll make it so you’ll have no choice but to stand.” And then she stopped, breathing heavily from her exertions, and added after a moment, “I suppose you want me to realize that if I don’t want to be treated like a sovereign I’ll have to avoid acting like one.”
“I’m so glad I succeeded in getting your attention,” Emil said. “You were looking rather dangerously single‑minded.”
Karis gazed at him, suddenly just a tired, wasted woman whose great strength seemed about to fail her, fueled as it was by a rage that surely could not sustain her much longer. “I want to hold my love in my arms,” she said. “She doesn’t even know–”
Emil said, “This is Zanja na’Tarwein we’re talking about, not some fool.”
“But when she gives up hope–”
“I have seen her under the most desperate of circumstances, and she does not surrender.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“She would want you to listen to your friends,” Emil said.
There was a silence. Karis said bitterly, “I’m listening to you. Just don’t ask me to insult Norina with a false forgiveness. If you want to tell her something, tell her I have no respect for someone who can’t cherish what I was willing to die for.”
“I’ll tell her,” Emil said. “But she can’t make peace with her husband when she feels like she has to sleep with the horses to avoid irritating you with her presence.”
“She doesn’t have to sleep with the horses,” Karis said. “Just tell her not to talk to me. I’m going to kill someone, and I’d rather it wasn’t her.”
Emil stepped back involuntarily.
“Medric already has talked me out of tearing Mabin’s precious village to pieces, which I could do.”
“I do not doubt it,” Emil said. “I’m glad you heeded him; I don’t think I could endure it if the House of Lilterwess were to fall a second time. Can I ask what you’re working on?”
“A hammer,” Karis said. “A hammer for working steel.”
He waited, but she explained no further. She did add after a moment, “Let me finish with this, and then I’ll stop and rest, which will make J’han happy, and we can talk about what to do.”
She turned back to her rocks, and the sound of them shattering under her hammer followed Emil back to the edge of the beach.
*
“What is she making?” Norina asked. She had sat upon the ground and was reorganizing her clothing, having perhaps submitted to an examination of some kind.
“She’s making a hammer. What she’ll make with it I can’t imagine, but she’ll tell me. What I want to know is where she got coal. That’s not the sort of thing that can be picked up off the ground.”
J’han shook his head. “The water witch and she are like hand and glove. Who knows how they’re doing it.”
Norina, seated among the stones, said, “By tradition, the people of the borders are protected by the G’deon. If the water witch recognizes her, no doubt he thinks he owes her a certain fealty.”
“That bodes well,” Emil said.
“Doesn’t it, though.” Norina stood up. “Well, am I an exile?”
“No, but you should not talk to her.”
“I guess that’s an improvement. Why did you kneel to her?”
“I thought she needed to be taught a lesson. She is very teachable.”
Norina smiled, though not with a lot of vigor. “I know this all too well. But some lessons, I fear, she will never learn.”
“Norina–” Emil hesitated to say this in front of J’han, but it would have been too awkward to ask him to step away. “Karis says to tell you that she has no respect for someone who can’t cherish what she was willing to die for.”
Norina accepted this fresh censure with surprising equanimity. “I thought as much,” she said. “J’han, is there any hope she’ll recover her physical sensations, or is that damage permanent?”
J’han said irritably, “My impulse is to say that it’s permanent, but what do I know? She’s still having convulsions at sunset every day–one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Maybe this is as well as she will ever get.”
Norina looked at Karis as her heavy hammer once again smashed into the ore. “She deserves better,” she said.
There was a silence. Emil took the reins of the horses, to unload their gear and take them up to graze. Norina said to J’han, “How do I keep my milk from drying up?”
J’han looked at her in some astonishment.
Of course there was a way, but lacking a spare child to give suck to, this seemed like a husband’s problem. Emil left them to work it out.
*
That night, he seduced his beloved Sainnite seer and did not care when their groans became cries that anyone trying to sleep upon the beach could hear. If Karis was awake, she’d know that at least two of her companions knew how to cherish what they had.
Chapter Twenty‑six
When Zanja opened her eyes, she lay in a shallow, strangely shaped wooden room, which was lit by a gently swinging lamp that hung from a hook. “She’s awake,” said the man who sat near her upon the steeply sloping floor. He held a pistol.
Mabin came in. The ceiling was so low she had to walk crouched over. The entire room seemed to move. The lamp swung as if in a breeze. Zanja had never in her life been in a boat, and had not guessed that they might have enclosed rooms like this, not a place for people–it was not shaped right–but apparently for storage. Now, except for the pallet upon which Zanja lay, it was empty as a coffin.