Wildfire (12 page)

 

  
Mai got up and stood next to Boot. Boot was a big man but she was bigger, and for a moment I thought she might lay hands on him. But she had more sense. She asked me, “Should I send my men to search for Sire Galan?”

 

  
“No, don’t,” I said. “Only tell him if I, if I…dispart…despair…dispeer. So he knows who to shame.”

 

  
“Hurry up,” Boot said, yanking my arm to pull me out of the chair.

 

  
Penna looked at me with her black brows pinched together.

 
  

 

  
Boot led me up the stairs to the Crux’s room. It was no bigger or better furnished than Galan’s, but it was higher in the tower, as befitted his rank. The Crux sat at a table with two of his priests beside him, Divine Hamus, Auspex of the Sun, and Divine Xyster, Auspex of the Moon.

 

  
The Crux was hatless, and his white linen shirt was half unlaced and hanging loose over a pair of leggings. His feet were bare. It was unlike him to rise so late. He was well muscled, and the dainty chair in which he sat creaked when he shifted.

 

  
“Stand by the window,” Divine Hamus said, and he got up to look at me. It was a north window and the light was bright, though not direct. It made my eyes water. Bright light was painful since I’d been thunderstruck.

 

  
“This mark is false,” Divine Hamus said to the Crux. “It was painted on.”

 

  
The Crux said, “So it’s a sham? She wasn’t struck by lightning?”

 

  
The priest answered, “I’ve heard the tale from too many. It was witnessed by two cataphracts of Delve and a priestess of Copper.”

 

  
“Wash off the ink,” the Crux said, “and see what’s under it.”

 

  
Divine Hamus’s nostrils flared delicately in disgust, and he pursed his lips.

 

  
I covered my cheek and said to the Crux, “My Sire, Sire…Galance, your…niece, your—what is the word?—your nephew—he told me to live it on. He will be ired if you do that.”

 

  
The Crux bade Boot scrub the ink from my face and neck. By the time Boot was done my left cheek was burning, rubbed raw. Both priests came close to look at me, and both agreed: the mark—supposing there had been a mark—was gone.

 

  
Divine Hamus’s servant handed him a cage that held two sparrows. The priest groped inside the cage and the sparrows fluttered away from his hand, beating their wings against the wooden bars. He caught one and drew it out, pinching its neck between his fingers until it went limp. He laid the bird on a white cloth on the table and slit its belly with a tiny jeweled knife, and peeled away its skin whole, including the head, wings, feet, feathers and all, as if he were taking off a cloak. What was left was a tiny morsel of flesh, which he divided into parts and examined. The Auspices of Crux were skilled in divining by the Sun, Moon, stars, weather, and birds—by anything that moved across the Heavens. To them the sky was a mirror, clear and bright, reflecting events below on earth. When they sought to know of household truths and troubles, they looked within the bodies of dead birds. The gods write omens large and small.

 

  
Divine Hamus whispered to the other priest, and the Crux watched them without moving. There was no comfort in his stillness; his wrath remained under his strict command. He might release it whenever he chose, to hunt or harry me.

 

  
When Divine Hamus straightened up, the Crux spoke. “I want to know why she followed us. Is this Ardor’s doing, to put a foe in our midst?”

 

  
“I’m not,” I said, “not a…fie.”

 

  
Without looking my way, the Crux made a gesture that silenced me. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow.

 

  
Divine Hamus said, “There are no signs of corruption in the heart or bellows, nothing that speaks to Ardor’s malice. But there’s a wen near the eye, which signifies a disorder of Crux. Blindness, maybe, or its opposite.”

 

  
“Its opposite? Seeing too much—spying? Be plain!”

 

  
Divine Hamus, who was short and stout, drew himself up as tall as he could go, saying, “I speak as plainly as the signs permit. To do more would be to misread, and perhaps to mislead.”

 

  
“Maybe you should kill the other bird then, and tell me something useful.”

 

  
Divine Hamus seemed much offended.

 

  
I heard a laugh, a woman’s laugh. I turned, but she was hidden behind the lattice screen and gauze curtains of the Crux’s bed. “Don’t pester the poor priest,” the woman said, and a white foot emerged from behind the bedcur
tain, followed by a slender ankle and a round calf, and then by the rest of her. She wore a velvet overdress dyed a vivid magenta, and her bare neck and shoulders were smooth and youthful. But her face showed considerable years, and years of merriment, in the hen scratches around her eyes. She wore her hair uncovered, like a maid or a wanton; it was plain she was no maiden.

 

  
She had Boot bring her a chair and a cushion so she could sit beside the Crux, and I was amazed at the intimacy this suggested. To my knowledge, the Crux had been abstemious around women, and held Galan to scorn for being too fond of one. He scowled at her, and she smiled back unperturbed. She might smile and smile, but I doubted she meant me well.

 

  
She said, “Why don’t you ask her if she does Ardor’s bidding? Maybe you’d get a plainer answer.”

 

  
“A plain lie,” said the Crux. “Drudges and women never speak a true word when a false serves them better.”

 

  
“You lack courtesy,” the woman said.

 

  
“If courtesy is untruth, then I admit the lack.”

 

  
“It’s courteous to remember whom you are addressing.”

 

  
“I do remember, Divine Lepida,” said the Crux. “Indeed I do. I remember you promised to restore my nephew to his good sense. And what did he do? He compounded his folly by bestowing a fine holding on her.”

 

  
I kept my head bowed, even as I stared at the priestess from under my eyelashes. Magenta was Carnal’s color. She must be an Initiate of Carnal, a member of the cult dedicated to the mysteries of Desire. The Crux had paid the Initiates to cure Sire Galan of his fondness for me. I counted her an enemy, though she would probably scorn to call me one, I was so far beneath her. But the Initiates had failed, hadn’t they? I kept my triumph at this thought from showing on my face.

 

  
“If he gave her a holding, why is she here?” the priestess asked.

 

  
“Precisely.” Now the Crux looked straight at me, and I kept my gaze on the ground. The tremor in my legs made the floor seem unsteady. “Why
did
you come? If you don’t say, my boy here will have to give you a beating. And I’m sure it will be a good beating, for if his fist isn’t heavy enough, he’ll feel mine.”

 

  
Boot stepped up beside his master, and I stared at the threadbare hose sagging about his ankles, unwilling to look him in the eye. This was not what Galan had imagined would happen when he’d made sure his uncle heard about the lightning.

 

  
“You have my leave to speak,” the Crux said. “Why are you still silent?”

 

  
“I I I—it was not—it was…because—”

 

  
The priestess said, “This is the creature who was supposed to have cast a glamour on Sire Galan? She’s a simpleton!”

 

  
“She speaks well enough when she wishes.”

 

  
Divine Xyster said, “Sire, there is something that will loosen her tongue and leave her without a bruise to which Galan might object.”

 

  
“What? Do you propose to get her drunk?”

 

  
“In a manner of speaking. We can give her the black drink.”

 

  
“But it will poison her,” Divine Hamus said.

 

  
“Not if I give just a little. Just enough. The more lies she tells, the sicker she’ll get. It will school her to tell the truth.” Divine Xyster, as the carnifex of the company, treated the men’s wounds and sickness; his lore differed from mine, for I was a healer of women. He knew his poisons, as every healer must, for they are also our most potent remedies. But there was no healing in the black drink, so far as I knew. It was used in trials by ordeal, for it was supposed to spare a truthteller and kill a liar. In my village they’d given it to a mudwoman who had accused Sire Pava’s horsemaster of forcing her. For a day and night she had sickened, writhing and swearing that she spoke the truth, and I was not the only one who believed her. After she died the horsemaster was free to do as he pleased again.

 

  
The Crux said, “Try it. But mind you don’t kill her.”

 

  
By then I was shaking so hard in every limb I couldn’t conceal it. “No, Sire, plead, I beg! I mean to speech, but but it comes out wrought. The got got my tongue. It’s it’s—” And I wrung my hands to show him how my words were all twisted. Hadn’t he heard what the lightning had done to me? Boot pushed me into a chair by the window.

 

  
Divine Xyster left the room, and returned with a clay cup and flask. The drink was dark and gritty and foul. The priest forced it down, pinching my nostrils closed so that I had to swallow in order to breathe. I gagged and spat some of it out, but he poured more down my throat. Before long I was leaning over the windowsill, retching up the drink, but it had already done its work. I was as dizzy as if I’d spun and spun in circles. Something sharp jabbed me in the belly, in the flanks. Sire Rodela buzzed loudly, relishing my pains. I wiped my mouth and asked for water, and Boot gave me some. He looked sheepish when I glared at him.

 

  
The Crux stared at me. “Why are you here? Why did you follow us?”

 

  
“So as not to be lacking.”

 

  
“My nephew saw to it that you’d lack nothing if you stayed behind.”

 

  
“I’d have been a lack-all, a…lack-what.”

 

  
“Lacking what?”

 

  
“To go side by side with him.” I leaned forward and tapped the shadow that lay on the table next to his arm. “Like that. As nearnigh as that is to you. I’m not to be less or or…driven, given away.” The Crux shook his head, his impatience growing. He couldn’t see I pointed to his shadow, he
truly didn’t see it, though the sunlight was bright and his shadow therefore dark. It was the unnoticed thing. If I could have gone unnoticed like that, I would not have been here before him.

 

  
The Crux looked accusingly at Divine Xyster. “Your black drink has not improved her. She still talks nonsense, but more of it.”

 

  
But the priestess had understood. “You think to be Sire Galan’s shadow? The more fool you. A sheath is not a shadow, she can be
left.
There’s nothing between your legs that Sire Galan can’t find by any wayside.”

 

  
The Crux said, “She’s trifling with us.”

 

  
“Maybe,” the priestess said. “But I do believe she answered you. She’s not the first bitch to dog Galan.”

 

  
“What does Ardor have to do with this?” the Crux asked me. “Did they send you?”

 

  
“Did who what, Sire?”

 

  
“Did the Ardor send you after Galan?”

 

  
The black drink was a hard lump that kept rising from my belly into my throat, and I swallowed it down again and again. Saliva filled my mouth and I spat out the window. All these foolish questions. I was losing patience. I was losing my fear too, though I was trying to hold on to it lest I forget to be careful. I said, “Sire, pardon your begging, but I know nothing whateven of the the Fist of Altar. The time I saw him close was when he tried to halt us from entering the…from visibling the god in its…in the thing wherein it keeps. Sire…Gall, he was in a fiery about it, that the First would dare try to prevail him from traipsing in the the god’s keep, house…its ample.”

 

  
Divine Hamus asked, “What did you tell the priests of Ardor when Galan took you to the temple? What did they want?”

 

  
“They pained over what the lightning bode left here.” I pointed to my cheek. “It left a a…mock, what faded.”

 

  
Divine Xyster said, “Is that all? They painted your cheek?”

 

  
“And then they copied the firebrand down, in a blank. I don’t know what for. Then they asked me corruptions.”

 

  
The Crux looked to Divine Hamus with his eyebrows raised.

 

  
Divine Hamus said, “Corruptions?”

 

  
“Yes, cryptions.”

 

  
“Questions,” said the priestess of Carnal. “Such as?”

 

  
“Oh, flailish ones! Wriggles, writtles. But what I said, they writ down.”

 

  
“What did they ask about us? About the feud with Ardor?” Divine Hamus said.

 

  
“They care naught of it.” Sire Rodela was droning loudly, and I shook my head, trying to shake him out of one ear or the other.

 

  
The Crux said, “Then what did they ask?”

 

  
“They asked how…who would wear this…” I put my hands around my head to show him the crown.

 

  
He shook his head, baffled.

 

  
“See, I saw a flare all crazing up around the head of the old past, the priest, and I said I saw a crow of fire and they said who? And they thought I meant one thing, the black blackbird prance, ponce—what’s his name? The son-of-a-hoor, of the queanmother, the queenmurder. But I didn’t, it was just crone, crow, crown of fire, just so, because I couldn’t find the heard.” I could still taste the sour ferment of the drink. It had blackened my mouth and loosed this spate of words, and I marveled at how quickly they flowed, almost without effort.

 

  
The Crux and his priests leaned toward me, and Divine Hamus said, “The queenmother is the crone, and Corvus the crow. What else besides the crown of fire?”

 

  
“Nothing. It was all hornswaggle, tonguewobble. I’m tighted of this.” Now I stared brazenly at the Crux, leaning toward him as he leaned toward me. Meddlesome old man. I didn’t deserve this, I’d never done harm to Galan, his precious nephew, never. The sunlight fell full on the Crux’s face. His beard was grizzled and his eyes were a clear golden brown. He had an old scar on his brow, a white line that crossed his temple, divided and puckered his eyebrow, and narrowed his left eye. The scar made the left side of his face look fierce and unforgiving, but the right side was stern, watchful. The right side reserved judgment, waited for me to condemn myself out of my own mouth, after the black drink made my tongue flap.