Oracle: The House War: Book Six (46 page)

She turned, now, to face the tree of fire. She had not touched its branches; she had not placed palm against its trunk. If the flames did not burn the undergrowth, they were hot enough to suggest fire, and not the artifice of its appearance. She had seen fire used by the magi on one or two occasions; it had never taken this form.

She regretted cutting Jester’s story short. She wanted to know—even if he lied—what he might claim the origin of this tree to be. She turned again, to say as much, and stopped as a flicker of fire, more gold than red, caught her attention.

It was a leaf.

It was a falling leaf.

Without thought, she reached out with a cupped palm—her left hand, although she could use both. The breeze which caught this floating bit of heat was slow and hazy; the leaf descended.

She knew she should let it fall. She knew it was of fire. She knew what fire did to flesh it touched. And she understood, watching the trail of red-and-gold light, that this was the moment of decision. No thought of politics, no thought of power struggles, no calculated, pragmatic examination of circumstances was to be allowed her. She could catch the leaf or she could let it fall.

The leaf from the
Ellariannatte
had fallen. She had retrieved it from the ground. But this leaf? No.

“Birgide—what are you doing?” Jester’s voice was sharper, louder, than it had been. She didn’t begrudge the question; it was the very one she asked herself. But if her hand shook, if her arm trembled, she did not withdraw.

“I am,” she answered, unmoving, “being tested.”

She thought he would rush forward and grab the hand she held aloft, pulling it out of the path of danger. Perhaps, had she been one of his den, he might have. She wasn’t. She was not now, nor would she ever be, his responsibility or his kin.

The leaf of fire reached her open hand.

And it burned.

 • • • 

Jester cursed and closed the distance between them, recognizing the way her entire body tensed, and recognizing, as well, the smell of burnt flesh.

Birgide—being the person whose flesh it was—didn’t appear to react at all. She didn’t lower her arm. She didn’t attempt to divest herself of the fire.

And the fire began to spread. Jester yanked his jacket off and lifted it to throw it over the hand that held the leaf. He was rendered speechless when she closed her fingers in a fist around it.

“Leave it be,” she said, through clenched teeth—the only certain sign that the burning was not his imagination.

“Birgide—”

“I mean it. This is nothing.” She grimaced as the fire spread from her closed fist; her eyes teared.

“Birgide.” Jester stepped back, his coat folded over his arm, his face pale.

“Did you think,” she asked, in evenly spaced, controlled syllables, “it would be as simple as a single word?”

“Yes, actually.”

Her laughter sounded like a hiss of pain. “Sometimes,” she said, through teeth that remained clenched, “you are astonishingly naive.” But was he really any worse than she was? She had learned to endure pain. It was a matter of both pride and survival. In the latter years, mostly pride. She had learned, in the earlier years, to evince pain, to play it up, to give people the fear they wanted—it put them off their guard. It gave her chances to strike or escape. In almost all cases, escape had been her choice.

But not all. She had never run from Duvari. He was not a warm man; not a friendly one. He was not kind, and his form of mercy involved quick death. He was harsh, exacting, suspicious, judgmental, and deadly. Always deadly.

And he served the Kings.

Birgide did not remember when that single, clarifying point had become the reason for her existence. When she had first encountered Duvari, she would have scoffed at the motivation. She did. She recognized everything dangerous about him in the first two seconds of their meeting, and she knew men like Duvari did not serve; they ruled.

When had she started to believe otherwise? Not when she entered his service. Not when she trained. Not when she learned to imbibe small quantities of the poison to which she had been subjected in later years. Not when she had first killed a man—in self-defense. If Birgide was sent out to kill, it was not meant to be so obvious a death.

When?

She could not recall. Her hand ached. She thought the flesh in the center of her palm must be damaged enough by now that the pain would pass. Fire had spread from her clenched fist down her arm in a trail that was more vine than branch. But this fire did not burn. She had taken a risk. Had made a gamble.

The pain did not recede; it wouldn’t. Not immediately, and not for days. She would have to tend the burned and blistered flesh; she could not afford the infection that often set in after a burn. She did not open her hand. Did not attempt to retreat.

Tendrils of flame continued to emerge from between her clenched fingers, as if they were liquid and couldn’t be contained by so faulty a vessel. They followed her arm, and then spread across her shoulders, her collarbone, the underside of her chin. She felt warmth that threatened to become heat; she thought blisters—obvious ones—would be left anywhere the fire touched her skin.

And still she endured.

It would not be the first time.

Jester’s lips were white, when Birgide turned to look at him. His skin was the same color. She was honestly surprised that he stood before her, bearing witness, his own hands curved into fists. “You don’t,” she told him softly, “have the sense you were born with.”

“It was beaten out of me,” he replied, his casual shrug made difficult and awkward because he couldn’t relax into it.

“So was mine, apparently.” She closed her eyes, inhaling rapidly. Forced them open again. “It’s a brand,” she told him.

“A what?”

“The fire is branding me. It’s leaving a mark.”

“
Why?
”

“What do brands normally mean?” she asked him. Frustration took the edge off pain. Or pain made frustration sharper. She wasn’t certain which, and didn’t care. “Ownership. Slavery.”

“Both of which are illegal in the Empire.”

“So is murder. Murder still happens.” She was afraid when the weave of flame tendrils rose to cover her face. A scar was nothing new in her life. But she needed her sight. She needed her vision.

Jester reached out and caught the hand that did not hold the leaf of fire. She could have shrugged him off. She didn’t. Instead, she gripped the hand he’d offered; given his sharp intake of breath, she thought he might regret it; she wasn’t certain that she hadn’t cracked bone.

But it helped. It helped.

Jester turned toward the tree itself. “Cut it out!” he shouted, as if that would make any difference at all. “Jay would never demand this. She’d accept the offer of service or she’d reject it—but she would
never
allow this!”

In spite of herself, Birgide was impressed. “You really
are
an idiot.”

“My middle name. One of the few that’s useful in polite company.”

She tightened her hand as he moved toward the tree. “It may have escaped your notice, but your Jay is
not here
. She doesn’t get to decide the terms by which I am accepted or rejected.”

“She would, if she were here.”

“And she is
not here
, Jester.” Birgide gulped down air.

“No. She’s not. But
we are
.” He yanked his hand free, or tried; Birgide’s grip was far too solid. She wasn’t certain she could voluntarily extricate her hand without work; it was almost numb. Where Jester walked, she followed, stumbling.

He reached the tree and came to a stop inches from its flaming trunk. His skin was orange and gold, his hair the color of fire; his eyes, reflecting flames, were the same. “Is it worth it?” he asked, voice low.

“What?” she responded, confused.

“I never swore an oath to Jay. She never asked for one.”

“But you served her anyway?”

“I was found in a brothel. Most of us were.”

Birgide fell silent. The pain in her hand was throbbing and dull now. But the fire was a mask in front of her face. She closed her eyes. If the forest decided to reject her, the eyelids wouldn’t save her vision.

“We had two choices: die in a fire, or escape with her. Not really much of a choice.” He was staring at the fire now, as if he could see the flames of the past. “We had nowhere to go. No one who wanted us. No one who wouldn’t sell us back, or worse. She was our age. Another orphan. But she had friends. Friends with swords. She crawled through the brothel looking for one person. That was Duster. You probably don’t know about her; she died the day we arrived at the manse.

“If she hadn’t died, we would have.

“She found Duster.” Jester sucked in air, and reached out toward the trunk. His hand froze an inch from its surface. “And she found the rest of us as well. She took us all. She wouldn’t leave us. And some of us were too damaged to follow quickly.

“I never understood it. I didn’t argue and I didn’t demand explanations—not then, not later. Not ever, really. I didn’t want to ask questions. She was a miracle. I wanted to believe in her. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not at first.”

The heat across Birgide’s face became warmth. Simple warmth. Fire as salvation, and not destruction.

“But years have a way of dulling the edge of suspicion and fear. Was I cynical?” He reached out again, and again his palm stopped an inch from the tree’s flame. “Yes. Bitter. Angry. Weak. Enraged by helplessness—I mean, by mine. I didn’t particularly mourn the people who did die in that fire.” He was white. Whiter than Birgide had ever been. Even the reflected firelight didn’t change his base color.

She wanted to ask him what had changed that, if anything had. She didn’t. She knew, if she waited, she would have her answer. Her hand was no longer the very definition of pain; it had numbed into a constant throbbing, as if her heart had momentarily moved into her palm.

“But she kept us. She kept Duster, the worst—and the best—of us. She kept Lander, who wouldn’t speak a word for months on end. She already had Lefty—a right-handed kid who’d had fingers lopped off. She had Finch—Finch, who escaped the brothel, and who led Jay back to it. And Carver.” Jester swallowed. Birgide thought he would kick the tree, and froze.

Jester apparently thought he would kick the tree as well; the fire flared, reddening the gleam of polished leather. He wasn’t—quite—a fool, but even intelligent men had moments of temperamental weakness. Carver’s absence loomed so large in the den, it might as well have been a death.

Jester exhaled. “She kept us going. When the money ran out—and it did—she kept us all moving. No one starved. There were enough of us that we wouldn’t freeze to death in our sleep—not given the room we lived in. We learned a thing or two about her. About her hunches. We trusted those—even when we couldn’t bring ourselves to trust
her
.

“I would never have died for her. Not then. Not even when Duster did. Duster was the worst of us—but in spite of it, facing death is what she did. It’s not what I did, unless I had no choice. And when given a choice, I’d bolt first.

“But I came to understand that Jay would have died for any of us. Then. Now. She thinks we’re one happy family.” His lips were a twist, a grimace laid over a smile, as if he couldn’t quite decide which was more appropriate. “And maybe we are. We’re happier than my old family ever was, before Dad disappeared. But we depend on her. It’s like—gods, this is embarrassing—she’s our mother or something.”

“She is,” Birgide felt compelled to say, “your lord.”

He was staring at the fire, and failed to answer. “Maybe. She’s
a
lord. As patrician in title as the lot of them.” His smile was wan, but genuine. “And as lords go, she’s better than Duvari.”

“No comment.”

He laughed. She liked the sound of his laughter far better than the intensity of his anger—because Jester was angry. Looking at him, she realized for perhaps the first time, that Jester was always angry. “There’s a difference,” he said. He took a deep, sharp breath, and before Birgide could react, reached out grabbed the trunk of the tree. “There
has
to be a difference. This is
not
what Jay would want, and this is
her damn tree
.”

And just like that, the pain was gone.

 • • • 

The pain left; the fire did not. The mask it had built over the whole of her face remained in place; she could see the world through the tint of the fire’s glow, just as she saw Jester. She released his hand—and as she had suspected, this was work. He didn’t apparently notice, but he turned toward her, his hand pressed against the trunk. Absent was the smell of burned flesh; the fire had not harmed him at all.

“Thank you.”

His brows rose. After a moment, he shrugged. “If I tell you it was nothing, will I be accused of undervaluing your life?”

“I don’t know. Try it and see.” She opened her clenched fist in front of Jester’s watchful eyes. The palm was scarred—or appeared that way on cursory inspection. Birgide’s inspection was not cursory; nor, she thought, was Jester’s.

In the center of her palm was a white patch that seemed solid; it wavered at the edges as if it were cloth. No, not cloth; it had the borders a leaf might have. A small leaf. As she moved her hand in the light shed by the burning tree, red glinted off this new scar.

Jester said, “It’s metallic.” It wasn’t a question.

She probed the mark gently with her fingers. The touch itself caused no pain. She felt her fingertips; the sensation was distinct. It was normal. What was not normal was the scar itself. “. . . Yes. Yes, I think it is.”

“It’s the shape of the leaves.”

“It is the shape of
a
leaf, yes. Not the leaves on this tree.” She shook her head. “Not the silver, the gold or the diamond. I think it’s meant to be
Ellariannatte
in miniature.”

The difference in Jester’s posture made clear how tense he’d been. She would not have otherwise noticed it. Duvari had never been particularly complimentary about her powers of observation—not when she was actually focused upon duties that had nothing to do with the Kings. Looking up from the mark, she said, “I will accept your offer.”