Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks Page B

so dark. The sharp-edged lights of the night sky crowded down upon the frozen earth, but their fires were cold. When it came time to leave the road and go east among the trees, a steady shower of dislodged snow flung itself at them, like sparks falling from the stars’ bitter fires. Zanja began to shiver again, and all her many disciplines could not keep her attention from wandering down unlikely and devious paths, which more often than not brought her up short at a shattered ravine where something had happened that she could not and did not wish to remember.
    The horse also was wandering, indifferent to the stars that Zanja wanted him to follow, trying only to find the route of the shallowest snow and fewest trees. Zanja had not the strength to force him to do differently, and she wondered if they were lost, and how they might hope to be found on such a night. Then she ceased to be interested in such questions.
    Some time later, she fell into a snowdrift, and lay there in a vast confusion of mind. The horse’s big hooves stamped down not a handspan from her head, and for a moment she thought she lay once again in the Asha Valley, under the hooves of a Sainnite warhorse. There were yellow flames and an angry voice shouting, and then the horse blundered away. A lantern glared into her eyes, and beside it glared the scarred, narrow-lipped, hard-eyed face of a warrior, who seemed to be deciding the best way to make an end of her.
    Lord Death flapped into the light. “She is under Karis’s protection!”
    “Karis is a fool!” The warrior tossed the raven roughly aside. She took Zanja by the arm, and jerked her out of the drift. Zanja landed in a tangle, but struggled to her knees. The warrior was going to strike her, and if Zanja ducked the blow the woman would draw the wicked dagger that, for now at least, remained sheathed. Zanja drew herself up to accept the fist instead. The blow never landed, and so she had leisure to remember what it was like to strike someone who neither flinched nor fought back. She had only ever hit someone like that once, and never forgot the shame of it. So now this warrior restrained herself, perhaps also remembering other blows struck in rage that she later had cause to regret.
    The warrior said, after a moment, “You’re a smart woman, whoever you are.”
    Zanja would have gotten to her feet then, if she could have, and faced this worthy opponent eye to eye and blade to blade. Even were she at the peak of strength and skill she likely would be defeated, but it would be an education worth its price in spilled blood and injured pride. Scarcely had she thought this when the warrior’s scarred face creased with a grim amusement, and she unceremoniously hauled Zanja up and dragged her to the lightweight sledge that stood nearby, and dumped her into it like a load of potatoes. “How is Karis?”
    The man she spoke to knelt at Karis’s feet with a lantern nearby, feeling her bare toes with ungloved hands. He seemed unsurprised by the warrior’s abruptness and violence. “She’s fine, Norina. A touch of frostbite, nothing serious. Why did you never tell me your friend is a smoke addict? It explains so much…” He glanced over at Zanja, and his eyes widened. “Shaftal’s Name!”
    He left Karis to the brisk attentions of the warrior, and beat the snow out of Zanja’s clothing, then wrapped her in a bearskin robe. “What happened to you? You’re naught but bone in skin.”
    “Captivity,” Zanja said.
    “Drink some of this, if you can.” He uncorked a small jug and gave it to her to drink. “I am J’han, of the Order of Healers.”
    Zanja let him feel her hands and breast, but stopped him when he reached for the heavy socks that Karis had given her. “Don’t touch my feet.”
    “What?”
    She could hardly blame him for being so bewildered, but the warrior’s hand appeared suddenly on the healer’s shoulder, and the woman said, “J’han, I guess I need to talk privately to