Water Logic by Laurie J. Marks

before the funerals, they all went together to a tavern, ostensibly to figure out how making themselves into councilors was to be accomplished. Unfortunately, the tavern keeper was extremely generous with the beer, and more and more people kept arriving, all discussing the same topic in an outraged roar that overwhelmed all else: the attack on Travesty, the attack on Karis. Purposeful, sensible conversation became hopeless.
    Seth began to have a headache. When the tavern keeper tapped Seth’s shoulder and told her some people wanted to speak to her in private, she stood up, saying, “I was about to leave, anyway.”
    “I know these,” the tavern keeper assured her. “The cobbler’s shop is right across the street there, and the butcher has supplied my meat for twenty years.” He forged a path through the tavern, and she stuck close enough to nip his heels, for the people kept trying to close the way before she had made use of it.
    The tavern keeper took her to a room down the hall, and she heaved a sigh of relief as the door was closed and the racket was shut out. “I’m Mariseth of Basdown,” she said to the four gathered there, and also to the tavern keeper, who seemed to have decided to remain. “I don’t know what you want of me—but you should speak to the Watfield councilor, shouldn’t you?”
    “Oh, we did talk to him,” said a woman whose big arms and red face made Seth think she might be the butcher.
    A man, the cobbler maybe, because he squinted at her as though she were a shoe, said, “You live at Travesty, the councilor told us.”
    Another, who for no good reason seemed a greengrocer, said, “Is it true that Karis has not slept since the attack?”
    It seemed like the kind of question people ask, not because they are curious, but because they want to help. Seth sat down and allowed the tavern keeper to pour her a cup of tea. “No one is sleeping well in that house,” she said.
    “But we’ve heard that she won’t allow the doors to be locked.”
    “Is it true there’s less than ten Paladins guarding her?
    “And that she sits awake in a hard chair all night?”
    “And no one can persuade her to lie down?”
    “Is she frightened? Is she heartbroken?”
    The people peered concernedly at Seth.
    She said, “The doors are not locked, and there aren’t very many Paladins. As for the rest of your questions, I don’t know the answers. I did see her at breakfast this morning. She doesn’t talk—and she looks very tired. But—”
    She had intended to explain that she didn’t know whether or not Karis was always tired or quiet in the morning. But she could not finish, for the butcher cried, “It is not right!”
    “We must do something!” said another.
    With the frightening resolve of solid citizens, they rose up and strode out, leaving Seth alone and quite startled. Should she follow them? Should she rejoin the other councilors in that angry din? Or should she go to the garrison and demand to see their hard-working, heroic, desperately lonely general? How did anyone know what to do in such a dreadful tangle of complications? The same way a mess of yarn is untangled, she thought. Choose a strand, and never let go of it.
    Clement. But surely that strand led to the hopeless center of the tangle—the sort of place where a person inevitably felt required to reach for the scissors.
    Seth put her head in her hands. She could not help but feel driven to fix things, for she was an earth blood. But that did not mean everything could be fixed.
    The lamp flame had dimmed, and Seth’s tea had become cold before she could convince herself to stand up. Not until she opened the door to the hall did she notice the silence. At the end of the hall, she discovered that lamp flames flickered in an empty public room. The chairs were shoved back from the tables, ale cups rested in spilled puddles, and someone’s late supper of bean stew and black bread had been abandoned with the spoon resting in the bowl