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glass figurine in the charred rags of a sleeveless white robe, then he saw
only Serroi with tears in her eyes, weariness in her small elfin face. He
smiled and caught her hands, held them between his a moment, then reached up,
drew his hand down the side of her face, traced the clean-cut elegant curves
of her mouth. There s half a world we haven t seen.
Yes, she said. She swayed; her eyelids fluttered; she fainted across his
renewed body.
For a moment he was afraid, but the pulse in her throat beat strongly. He
eased her off his chest and sat up. His clothes were burnt off him, he d
expected that, but he was startled to feel hair when he brushed his hand over
his head. Very thorough, love. He lifted her onto his lap and held her
close, stroking his hand over the singed curls, then the gentle curve of her
back. Through the windowslits he could hear muffled curses and screams and
knew he d have to get her down to help the others, but for a little while he
was going to hold her and forget everything else.
In a few moments, though, his legs began cramping and the stone that had
burned him was giving him chills in his bare buttocks while air through the
window blew off ice. He shifted position, looked down to see her eyes open.
Cold as the slopes of Shayl, he said.
She smiled. They never last, do they, our moments, I mean.
14
Julia tilted the stoneware cha pot over the clay mug and poured out the last
trickle of lukewarm liquid. She set the pot back, sipped at the cha. Getting
low on ammo, she said. Remind me to snag one of the cycles and call in for
some.
Um. Rane scowled at the fragment of sandwich she was holding, threw it in a
long lazy arc away from the wall and sat staring at the rag tied round her
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calf though Julia didn t think she saw it.
They were sitting in the sun, a winter sun that did not give much heat,
protected from the sweep of the wind by the jut of the nearest ramp. No one
went to the eating tent these days; time and energy were both in short supply.
They slept in the lower floors of the gate towers, on call for reinforcement
whenever they were needed. They were all weary and worn down to simple
endurance, men and women alike, falling into their blankets on straw gone
musty with the damp, sleeping as if clubbed, rising with only the top layer of
tiredness gone, the residue of each day s weariness added to the last and the
next until it seemed they d never be free of it. Julia thought back to the
days when she was grubbing out an existence and trying to write, when she was
exhausted and depressed, tired of trying to cope with the complexities of her
life and the complexities of her nature and the impossibility of recon-ciling
the two, yet when food and warmth and shelter and privacy were there to take
as she needed, when her hori-zons stretched beyond the visible edges of the
world; she thought back to those times and found them curiously hard to
Visualize as if they were something she d written in a novel she d never
managed to finish. She marveled at the difference between the Julia who d
lived then and the Julia sitting with a rifle beside her waiting to be called
back into battle. Her edges had narrower limits these days, they chopped off
five minutes ahead and stretched out on either side as far as the people she
could see and name. She knew them all now, the meien and her own exiles, the
mijlockers and the Stenda, knew names and faces, knew how steady or flighty
they were in the face of danger, knew them intimately and not at all,
especially the folk of this world; the novelist wanted to know their
histories, to know the forces that had shaped them into the people they were.
What had their lives been like? Who were their friends, their lovers, their
acquaintances, their enemies? What were their hopes and fears, their ordinary
eccentricities, their communal natures? What stories could they tell about
themselves and others? What were the old, old stories all families accumulate
and hand down through the genera-tions? She knew nothing of that and she
wanted to; she hungered to discover those things about them. But there was no
time, you fought, you rested, you ate, you slept. Everything outside this time
and this place was as remote for them as her past life was for her, for this
reason and others they seldom spoke of anything but here and now.
There was a thump and a brittle crash above. Working the catapults again,
Julia thought, then dropped the cup and sprang away from the wall as she felt
a leap of heat, a drop of something that ate like acid into her thigh. She
heard a scream that would echo in nightmare later, then a burning thing leaped
out from the top of the wall. Rane thrust herself up and limped as fast as she
could away from the wall. Julia took a few steps after her, then turned to
stare at what lay huddled on the ground; it was charred out of its humanity,
but the rifle clutched in a burning hand had enough of its shape left for
Julia to recognize the carved stock. Liz. Her stomach churned and she looked
away, desperately glad that Liz was beyond all help. A second later she
brought her own rifle up and put a bullet in the skull of the burning thing.
Rane came back and stood beside her. All you could do, she said.
Julia looked right and left along the wall, saw half a dozen fires. Oh god,
how many more?
Rane cupped her hands about her mouth and shouted at the chaos on the wall
above them. Vuurvis, she shrieked. Don t let it touch you. If you don t
know what it is, ask. Vuurvis. Don t try to put it out. If there s oil on you,
don t touch it, you ll just spread it. She walked along the wall, repeating
those words and warnings until she was too hoarse to continue. Others among
the older meien took up the calls and began getting the burned fighters down
the ramp to wait for the medics and trucks to carry them to the hospital tent.
Julia looked down at her thigh. The vuurvis drop was smaller than a pinhead,
but the pain was growing. It was bearable, so she shrugged aside her worry and
limped up the ramp behind limping Rane, began helping her to get the burn
victims down to the ground. The first time she saw the heavy flame crawling
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over the flesh of a living woman, she started to try smothering it, but Rane
snatched her hand away. No good, she said. All we can do is let it burn
itself out. Or let the healwomen cut away the saturated flesh. Nothing helps,
nothing will put out vuurvis, you ll just get it on you.
She carried the moaning meie down the ramp and laid her on the ground beside
the rows of the others, called the medic, a girl named Dinafar, to put her out
until the truck came. An eerie hush was settling over the wall, muting the
screams of the burned, the grinding of motors coming toward her, stopping,
coming on, stopping as the trucks east and west picked up the burned. The
medics had arrived swiftly at each of the burn sites but the girls knew enough
about vuurvis to know there was nothing they could do but help bring the
injured down to wait for the trucks, gently putting the worst sufferers out by
pressure on the carotids. Over all this was that straining silence that Julia
thought was in her head until she looked along the wall.
The west tower was no longer burning, it throbbed with the clear green light
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