Firethorn (38 page)

She'd breathed more of the smoke. Thank the gods she'd lived through it. And, by the gods, she was stubborn. I could admire her for it. She lifted one hand and began to pluck at the neck of her shift as if it bothered her. I was glad to see she could move. She had lain so still since she arrived.

“Bid Tousle to come,” she said.

“Who is Tousle?”

“My handmaid. Fetch her!” Her voice was shrill, the rust taken off the edge.

“You have no handmaid.”

“Don't lie. She was just here.”

“Ah, that was Sunup,” I said. “But she's not yours. Shall I send for her? Will you drink then?”

Her head rolled back and forth on the pillow, no and no again. She said, “You lie. You lie.”

I leaned over and put my palm against her cheek to keep her head still. “I'll fetch Sire Galan, then you'll see. You're safe now.”

She stared, her eyes too black and too suspicious.

Beyond the curtain the tent was crowded. Sire Galan was sitting on two sacks with his shirt off and Divine Xyster was tending to him and grumbling, for the wound had bled a little in the night and required a new bandage. The carnifex did not like to change the bandage often; the wound cured better undisturbed. He fussed that Sire Galan was too careless and would never heal.

When he was done with Galan he asked, “What of your new concubine? I heard she has the wasting sickness.”

Galan stood, using a tent pole to pull himself up. “I'd be obliged if you would look upon her and tell me what can be done for her. I fear she may die. She's a meager thing, thin as a bone, and she hasn't spoken since she came here—stares without seeing and doesn't move. It's as if she sleeps with her eyes open. Will you come?” He gestured to the curtain.

I spoke, keeping my eyes lowered. “Permit me, Sire Galan, but I think she's better today.”

“Is she?” Galan said, looking at me in disbelief.

“May the gods be praised,” said Divine Xyster. “It's a good omen.”

I followed Galan and the priest into Consort Vulpeja's chamber. They stood on either side of her cot, gazing down. She looked from Sire Galan to Divine Xyster and back again, and tears welled up and she began to sob: great sobs from such a slight body. She cried with all the abandon of an infant, except she covered her face with her hands.

“Why does she weep?” Divine Xyster asked.

Galan shrugged and frowned in distaste. “I beg your indulgence, but I 'm sure I don't know; I thought this was what she wanted.”

I thought it plain enough it was hope that overcame her. Could he be blind to it? Against grief and fear and spite she was better defended; hope had breached the walls.

“No matter. The only thing harder to divine than the mind of a god is the mind of a woman.” The priest shook his head. “The Ardor should have demanded less than half the price he asked, for she's more than half dead. An ill wish could carry her off.”

Galan said, “Yet it's remarkable how much she's mended in a day. Yesterday I'd have wagered that she'd never wake up—not that I'd wager on such a thing, of course,” he added in haste.

I said, “She won't eat or drink, Sire. Have you a cure for that?”

Divine Xyster did not allow that I had spoken.

When Consort Vulpeja's sobs had shrunk to the size of hiccups, I gave her a cloth to wipe her face. She said to the men, “Please turn away, I beg you—don't look at me. I've never been fair but now I'm sure I'd affright children.”

Galan did look away, chewing on his lip. Divine Xyster stooped and patted her shoulder. “What's this I hear? You must eat. It's your duty. You must put on flesh and regain your comeliness, for you owe it to Sire Galan as his concubine.”

“Am I? Am I his concubine?” she asked, and the joy on her face was more to be pitied than all her sobbing.

She looked to Galan for an answer but it was Divine Xyster who said, “Indeed. Don't you remember?”

“I recall nothing since my father died.”

“Then they've sent you here against your will,” Galan said. The gods know, many parents have traded their daughters into concubinage without consent, and married them off without consent too, but Galan was too proud for it. That was for older and uglier men.

“Of course I' m willing. Of course,” she said, and tears rained down even as she smiled.

After a pause Galan said awkwardly, “Will you promise to eat? You must be strong, for there's much traveling ahead.” Though his voice was gentle, his face was stern, as if she'd displeased him.

She said, “Yes, Sire,” very meekly, all her stubbornness hidden for the moment.

Divine Xyster and Galan left. I heard the priest say, outside the tent, “We'll steal the laugh from between the Ardor's teeth, Galan. We'll polish her till she shines, and then see who made the better bargain.”

When they were gone she asked for her mirror. I searched through her chest but didn't find one. She didn't believe, at first, that it wasn't there—it was of bronze with gold relief of the Smith at his forge, was I blind?—and then she seemed to think I'd stolen it, judging by her glare. So I did what any drudge would do, lacking a mirror: I filled a black kettle with water and set it on a footstool, and when the water was still I turned her on her side so she could look down and see herself. She was too feeble to lift the weight of her own head, so I supported her and brought the lamp close to her face.

It was cruel of me to obey her. She let out a small moan and I felt her recoil. She closed her eyes and turned her face into my shoulder. I laid her down again and she didn't open her eyes for a long while.

When she did she began to find fault. The goat's milk was sour and the beef broth salty, the wine was vinegar and the porridge too thick. It all made her gag. She gained strength the more she wore me down. It took till after midday to find something to suit, something she'd demanded at an expense of coin and trouble because her grandmother had once commended it: a fresh egg stirred into broth made from the hen that laid it. At last she slept.

I left Sunup with her and went to lie down outside her curtained chamber. I courted sleep. I could hear Rowney at work refurbishing the brigandine, a vest of stiff green canvas lined with iron scales that Sire Galan, when he trained, wore on occasion instead of the heavier mail shirt and cuirass. Rowney rubbed rust from the iron with pumice and tapped at the rivets that held the scales in place, and sang “Will Ye or Nill Ye” under his breath. It seemed he only knew the chorus, which he sang over and over.

It' s not the dreams we crave of Sleep, but the nothingness. That I knew from a winter in the Kingswood; every drudge knows it, when to live is to suffer.
Will ye or nill ye
, Rowney sang,
I will have my way.
What is it we forget when we wake?

I had supposed that I'd found Consort Vulpeja in the borderlands between our living world and the realm of the Queen of the Dead. But maybe those were sleepers I had seen. Maybe I'd found my way to some bleak shore in Sleep's ocean, where our shades go wandering during that brief death every night when we are asleep past dreaming.
So lay you down a-smiling, for tears are not beguiling.
If so, it's a pitiless place; there's no welcome there. No woman greets her child or man his wife, though their bodies may lie sleeping side by side, clasped tight.
And I will be long gone
, sang Rowney,
before the break of day.

And yet sleep is a better healer than any carnifex or greenwoman. If Consort Vulpeja could sleep a true sleep—and no more of that strange state, that absence—I' d see her mend soon …
For tears are not beguiling.
Gods, she'd been undone; it had shocked me to see her give way like that before Galan. It had done her no good—I had seen his look. She was not cunning after all.
And I will be long gone before the break of day.
How well would she mend when she found out he didn't desire her? She must nurse on false hope until she' s strong enough to wean.

Will ye or nill ye
, Rowney sang, as he scoured rust from the scales. I'd have told him to hold his tongue except I couldn't bestir myself to wag my own. I couldn't even twitch. My heart tapped willy-nilly, and sleep did draw me under, and the song darted among my dreams.

Of all the dreams there was only one I could remember after I awoke. But that one left me richer by one word:
fedan.
I knew it was in my native tongue, the language I'd forgotten. Fedan—father.

I was standing between my father's knees and he was pulling on my wool cap and knotting under my chin the yarn ties of the ear flaps. His rough hands snagged my hair. I was filled with a pure joy, the joy that belongs to children, because I was to ride over-mountain with my father to sell the colt. Not that I wanted to sell the colt, because I was fond of him. But my father said he needed my help to drive a hard bargain, and I was too young to imagine he was teasing me.

I asked him questions: Fedan, will the colt be gelded by his new master? Will he grow up to be as fast as Ganos? Fedan, can I have a fry cake when we get to market? Fedan, will the colt fetch a good price?

His name didn't come to me in the dream. To me he was always Fedan.

I can't remember a room, a window, a chair, only my father's presence, the solid strength of his legs in leather britches, his hands. The smell of horses; the smell of the tangy sourpottage that was always on the hearth. My cap of a blue felt so dark it was almost black, embroidered with red and yellow checks. My red vest, my market finery. I was so small my shoulders came just to above his knees, but I was old enough to ride with him to market on my sorrel pony, a bright sorrel to match my hair. My pony never cantered except uphill, and then only for a few paces, no matter how I kicked.

Twice now I had dreamed a true dream of my father. I needed no revelator to tell me what it meant. By my father's rough hands and patient touch, I knew him, though I couldn't recall his face clearly. He was a farmer, a horse breeder.

As a foundling I'd been free to fancy any parentage, and there were times I thought that if the Dame was fond of me, it must be because something in my blood called to hers; perhaps I was better born than I seemed, a bastard of the Blood—this hope so secret that after I reached a reasoning age, I hid it even from myself. But the kernel of the fancy was still there, and now I rooted it out. I was no bastard. I had a father and a mother too, though I 'd never dreamed of her—who else would have embroidered my cap and vest so finely? I had them and lost them.

I was dear to my father. In my dream I was dear to him.

“Sire Galan must be told
now.
He'll blame us if Sire Rodela turns up a corpse one morning.” That was Rowney, whispering.

“He's not dying,” Spiller whispered back.

They woke me from my last dream. I wish I could have lingered there. I kept my eyes closed and my body still.

“He is,” Rowney insisted. “See, it's turning black.”

“Men get over the blackening.”

“Most don't. And it isn't just the blackening. It's that dead man. Have you forgot Sire Rodela has a piece of you-know-who's scalp? You can be sure his shade is nearby and angry—and making the wound angry.” Spiller was silent. Rowney went on whispering, after a pause. “And what do you suppose Sire Rodela did with the body? What of that? I doubt he burned it. He's made trouble for all of us.”

The shades of the Blood are known to grow more and more malicious when held here against their will and against custom. Sire Bizco's body was probably rotting underwater, and until the waves ground his bones to sand he'd stay for vengeance. And if we left his body behind, left the Marchfield and crossed the sea, and Sire Rodela still carried his prize of skin and hair—why then, the shade could follow.

“Sire Rodela dam Whoreson by Pigsticker,” said Spiller, and I heard Noggin cackle. “Tell me when he did
not
cause trouble for us.”

“So let him die, I suppose!” Rowney said.

“I'm doing what can be done for him—the priests could do no more, “ Spiller said sullenly.

“Not so. The priests could ward against the dead man and that you cannot do.”

“Anyway, I'm not telling Sire Galan,” Spiller said. “If he' s too blind to see what is under his own nose—or smell it, for that matter … He' d just beat us, or worse, for not telling him sooner. He' s in a foul temper these days, and I for one am not fool enough to stick my head in a hornets' nest and call it a hat. And suppose Sire Rodela heals—and I say he will—he'll think up something even nastier to punish us for telling tales on him.”

“An angry shade will afflict you worse than Sire Galan or Sire Rodela or a swarm of hornets.”

“I'll take my chances with the dead. The living worry me more.”

“That' s because you're a dolt,” Rowney said with some heat.