Laurie Marks - Elemental Logic 02 by Earth Logic

Author:Earth Logic
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf

Chapter Twenty-One

“Clement is no longer in Watfield,” said Gilly to Alrin, as she politely quizzed him at the door about why he had refused to be shown to the parlor. “The general needs me at his side, and so regrettably I have no time for tea. The woman is here? In the kitchen?”

He stumped down the hall, refusing to even let her take his snow-dusted coat. Alrin bobbed ineffectually in his wake, saying, “I’m truly sorry for putting you through such trouble. But her answer to your note asking her to tell stories in the garrison was so ... complicated! I urged her to give you a plain reply, but—well, she’s got some peculiar ways.”

She added, surprisingly, “Clement is traveling? The snow can be heavy, even so early in winter.”

“She is a soldier,” growled Gilly.

He opened the kitchen door to find the storyteller standing in the exact center of the room, utterly still.

Her clothing shimmered in the flickering light: silk, a deep red vest over a rich purple blouse, and trousers

black and glossy as her hair.

“Don’t you look fine!” Alrin sounded more nervous than complimentary. “Those deep colors, they suit you!”

The storyteller turned her head as though to seek the object of Alrin’s admiration somewhere behind her, and Gilly noticed for the first time that, though her hair was chin length, a single slim braid hung down the center of her back, black as a burn, with a coal-red tassel dangling from its tip. It was no more strange than the rest of her: peculiar but not frivolous. Alrin certainly had known how to dress her.

Gilly said to her, “It’s foolish and dangerous to dicker with Sainnites over price. All we’re paying for is a few tales.”

The woman turned, and slowly said, “What does it mean, to be the General’s Lucky Man?”

Alrin made an anxious sound. “Oh, sir, you see! She’s not right—she’ll say something to offend.”

Gilly said to the border woman, “I’ll explain that to you, if you tell me why no one knows your name. A trade, tale for tale.” She nodded her assent. “Well, then. The Sainnites say there’s a certain allotment of suffering that the gods set aside for each one of us. Some few are given all their life’s curses at once, when they are still in the womb. They are born monsters, but they are lucky, for all their allotted ill fortune has been used up already. Powerful people have monsters beside them, as barriers against the ill will of the gods. So, I am Cadmar’s Lucky Man.”

As though she did not quite trust her finery, the storyteller sat cautiously on a kitchen stool. She said, “A curse has taken away my name, and made me a gatherer of stories. The witches of my people took my weapons, and cut my hair, and burned all my belongings, and destroyed my name, and with my name they destroyed my memories. I know this is what happened, but I don’t remember it. Now, I am just a storyteller, and have been for many years.

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