Water Logic Read Online Free PDF Page B

floorboards.
    Zanja was as indifferent to buildings as she was to furniture. She asked about Clement’s progress at learning to read, for Emil wanted Clement to study Paladin ethics and make herself into an example, a soldier who became a Paladin. He could not believe that books had no effect on Sainnites, whether or not they could read.
    “Ethics,” said Clement. “That’s about choices, isn’t it?”
    “It was about one choice, according to the Paladins. An ethical person refuses to be a conduit for evil.”
    They had climbed three more steps before Clement realized Zanja was being sarcastic. “Sometimes the evil lies far in the future! How can we possibly know the future effects of what we do now?”
    “Oh, that’s the hard part,” said Zanja, with an edge of anger in her voice. “But sometimes evil is obvious.”
    When the Sainnites massacred Zanja’s tribe, that had indeed been an evil act, and Clement was glad she could say she had argued against it, for all the good her arguments had done. That attack had also been unimaginably stupid, for it had unleashed Zanja—a crosser of boundaries, a hinge of history. The Sainnites, bloody fools, had set that woman loose upon themselves.
    They reached the end of the last hall. Karis opened a door, saying what a wonder it was that one room in the building had nothing wrong with it, except for its remoteness. “Can you be comfortable so far above ground, though?” she asked Seth.
    “I’m not that sensitive,” said Seth. “I can’t endure boats, though—or being dangled from ropes.”
    “Can you cross bridges? I can’t—not wooden bridges, anyway. Stone bridges I can manage, if I move quickly.” Karis added briskly, “We eat by the clock here—Garland is a military man.” Without disturbing Gabian, who had fallen asleep in the crook of her arm, she reached back to clasp Clement’s shoulder and push her into the room after Seth.
    The door closed, the floor creaked, and then there was silence.
    The room was warm and well lit, with a brisk fire in the fireplace and a lamp burning atop a bureau. The rug was extraordinary, woven in a complex pattern of stylized flower bulbs, each one bravely opening its buds. And beside the window, which had a shutter bravely open to the weather, a dish of living flowers bloomed. Hope , said the room to Clement.
    “Those people act as a family to you,” Seth said.
    “They do?”
    “Prying, interfering, protecting—that’s what families do.”
    Seth was wandering the small room in apparent delight, and now paused at the flowers. “What are these?” she asked herself. “Such an extraordinary blue color! And that fragrance!”
    “It’s a Sainnese flower which we call spring-in-winter . That plant is descended from my mother’s bulbs. Zanja declares that a blooming flower is my name-glyph. But I think she must be wrong, for all Sainnites love flowers. I am hardly unique.”
    Seth was coming towards her, but she stopped now and glanced back at the blooming flowers, and down at the blooming carpet. “I’ve never heard of that glyph sign. But the G’deon’s wife is a famous glyph reader, isn’t she?”
    “She invents her own glyphs, I think, and then they mean whatever she wants them to mean.”
    Seth laughed. She had drawn close now and was hardly more than a step away. “Clem—can you come out from under all that brass and leather?”
    Of course Seth remained undiscouraged. She was an earth blood—reliable as dirt, persistent as a weasel, and stubborn—like Norina said of Karis—as an old tree stump.
    Clement undid her buckles and buttons. She took hold of Seth’s strong hands and helped them find the way inside her linen undershirt.
    They entirely missed supper.

Chapter 2

    Travesty squatted at the end of its snow-glazed square in the lightless winter night. Six ravens slept in an off-center gable, with their beaks tucked under their wings, satisfied like their mistress by the day’s work and dreaming