"Get your belongings together," he said to Shaper as he descended the ladder. "You need to get your families as deep into the marshes as you can."
"What is happening, Teacher?" Shaper sneered the title.
Definitely one of Aria's family. "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows. That's why you'd better get yourselves out of here." He marched through the crowd before any of them could ask him anything.
Eric walked away without a plan. He just let the force of his confusion choose a path for him. It took him in a wandering line until his boots splashed in open water.
"Garismit's Eyes." He pulled himself up short, one step shy of stumbling over the piles of reeds Nail in the Beam and his sons had left off cutting so they could help fight. The stalks glistened in the sun. If they weren't spread out properly soon, they'd pick up some of the fast-growing mold that lurked around the Lif marshes. It carried a stench that all the light of both of the suns above wouldn't be able to bake out.
Idly, he prodded the green-grey heap with the toe of his boot, flicking reeds onto the bare ground and kicking them out into an even layer. It was useless and pointless. The clan wouldn't carry undried reeds with them, they'd cut new when they got to…wherever the Notouch knew to hide. But it was better than thinking.
It was better than realizing that Heart probably knew how Lady Fire fared, and that he hadn't even thought to ask.
"My Lord Teacher?" said a man's low voice.
Eric turned. A broad-shouldered Notouch knelt on the soft ground behind him, dirt-stained hands raised in front of his eyes. He was going bald, Eric noted. He could see his leather-tough scalp through his scraggly black hair. Behind him, knelt Branch in the River.
Oddly discomforted, Eric mustered old manners. He raised both hands with the palms turned toward the man. "I stand in the place of the Nameless Powers and the Servant Garismit and so do I greet you who were named when the Powers walked the world." His inner eye saw Aria sitting in the Vitae cell, her dark eyes narrowed and watchful as he spouted what she already knew to be nonsense. "I was named by them Teacher Hand kenu Lord Hand on the Seablade dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh.
"How did they name you, Notouch?"
The man raised his eyes and Eric saw the face of Nail in the Beam.
"This despised one is named Nail in the Beam dena First Hand to the Work," he said, not raising his voice above its gravelly whisper.
"And you, Notouch?" Eric asked Branch, but she just turned her head away.
"Branch in the River has been sentenced to silence because her words betrayed the clan's safety," said Nail. "If she speaks again, the Seniors will cut her tongue out."
Eric suppressed the urge to wince. She's lucky to be alive, he thought, and then he wondered if that was true.
"My Lord Teacher, this despised one begs your indulgence," said Nail in the Beam.
He looked deflated. Not an hour ago, Eric had seen the man taking blows that should have felled an ox. Now, though, he looked as if his own daughter could have toppled him with a stern word.
"In what way does Nail in the Beam need my indulgence?" he asked.
Nail's hands lowered as if he simply lacked the strength to hold them up anymore. "This despised one…he needs your intercession with the Nameless Powers, with the Servant. He…" Nail in the Beam wet his lips. "He has tried, my lord, the Servant's Eyes have seen that he has tried to hold true to the Words. But his wife…his wives…" Nail didn't even try to finish his sentence.
"I'm no true Teacher, Nail in the Beam," Eric said gently. "The Nameless and the Servant will not hear me."
"You are all this despised one has," he said, bowing his head. "He pleads, my Lord Teacher."
Eric said nothing. He simply stood in front of the kneeling man with his stained, scarred hands and frightened eyes. He felt the thick air of the Realm press against his pores. He felt the weight of the clouds overhead and of the distant Walls. He remembered his distorted reflection in the visors of the Vitae who came to collect him like a specimen of vanity cattle. He remembered the eagerness in Kessa and Tasa Ad's faces as they spun him tales of freedom beyond the World's Wall. He remembered all the long years of belief, belief as strong and as sure as the belief that kept this man kneeling in the mud waiting for his decision.
He remembered Aria aboard the U-Kenai, laughing at all his great and grand heresies and asking if he thought the Nameless cared who else he served.
Your first wife has done nothing wrong, he said silently. Your second…Eric looked toward Branch in the River. Defiance still smoldered in her eyes. She had made her bid for what she knew as power and had lost, but she was in no way defeated. Eric found himself doubting very much that she would stay with the clan for long.
He lifted his hands over her husband's head and raised his voice to the sky.
"I stand in the place of the Nameless Powers and I see with the eyes of their Servant Garismit. If any think shamefully of Nail in the Beam dena First Hand to the Work, the shame is theirs, not his. The Servant sees and the Nameless know him to be faithful and stern in his keeping of the Words."
Eric took Nail's right hand in his and reached out with his power gift. Nail grunted as the gift added a new scar to Nail's hand marks, a small straight line indicating that forgiveness had been sought and received. Most people carried eight or ten of them. Nail, Eric noted, did not have any others but his.
"Go now, Nail in the Beam. I think Iron Shaper will need help organizing your exodus."
Nail stood up heavily and bowed deeply, retreating backward as the Words dictated. Branch in the River picked herself up off the ground and followed him without looking back. Eric watched them until they both vanished through the stands of Crookers and bamboo.
"Thank you for that"
Eric's head jerked around. Aria stood in the shadow of a stunted evergreen.
Eric ran his hand through his hair. It was tangled and damp and he thought longingly of the cleaner in the U-Kenai. "What else was I going to do?"
Aria shrugged and moved into the light. "You could have told him the Words were all about as meaningful as a cloud of splinter-chasers and that the Teachers were totally powerless to intercede for anybody."
"I thought you told me to look for the truth under the Words."
"I did." She smiled softly. "But I wasn't sure you were listening."
Eric felt himself smile in response. "It is next to impossible not to listen to you, Aria." He nodded in the direction of the huts. The noise of voices and bustle drifted to them on the wind. "What's happening over there?"
"Everybody is getting ready to pull out at sunshowing. Reed in the Wind is going to head for Narroways to find our work-walkers and tell them what's happened. Mother is going to stay here with Storm Water for two weeks in case anybody comes back before then." She bit her lip for a minute, concern plain on her face. Eric could picture the scene that must have happened when that idea was proposed. "Jay and I will head straight for his dome to see what's there," she went on with forced calm, "and you and Teacher Heart…" Aria broke off and looked at him sharply. "Eric, what happened between you two?"
Eric knotted his fingers in his hair. I don't have to tell her. She has no right to ask. What could it possibly matter? I'm back. I'm doing everything I can. What business is it of hers?
"What you heard was true," he heard himself say. "I did once have an affair with Lady Fire in the Dark. She was a friend of my sister and married to a half-dead cousin of ours. She was so beautiful…I loved her, I really did. She…we…she became pregnant and I was the father of the child. You know the law. No child of an adulterous union carries a name from the Nameless. It has to die. I was a Teacher. I had to…I had to…" He couldn't finish. She looked at him with mute sympathy and he remembered she had borne seven children but only had four that lived. He wondered briefly if some Teacher had declared one or more to be tainted, but he didn't ask. "She cursed me. Threw me out of the house for obeying the Law and the Words. I was in shock. I went home. I thought, some rest, some contemplation, and I'd be all right.