Wildfire (15 page)

 

  
Sire Edecon peered out between the curtains of the bed. “Penna? Where is she? Where are they?”

 

  
We’d all slept too well, it seemed. Penna and Dame Vairon had left the room and none of us had seen or heard them go. Sire Galan nudged his jacks ungently with his foot. He didn’t wait for Spiller to get up, but began to dress himself. He pulled his shirt over his head and said, “Edecon, you talk to the guards at the gate and find out if they saw them. Rowney will search the privies, and Spiller the baths.”

 

  
“So you think they ran away?” Sire Edecon looked about for his hose.

 

  
“Don’t you?”

 

  
I said to Galan, “What should, what would I do?”

 

  
“Wait here. I daresay they’ll stroll home soon and make mock of us for searching. I daresay it’s nothing, nothing.”

 

  
Spiller held his nose and muttered, “Stupid fish. Why can’t they stay where they belong?”

 
  

 

  
Penna came back when the morning shadows were still long. She was panting from the climb. She paused with her hand on the door and said, “Where is everyone?”

 

  
“Where is
she
?”

 

  
Penna came into the room, shaking her head. “She slipped away in the night. I followed, but I lost sight of her.” She shrugged and turned away from me, and shook out the quilt that covered the cot and began to fold it.

 

  
She’d looked at me too long, and then she wouldn’t look at me at all. And her black eyebrows were too straight and still. She’d schooled her face to hide something. “Henna…Penna, where did she go?”

 

  
“I don’t know.”

 

  
Of course she knew, or she’d be out searching. I said, “Where she begones?”

 

  
Penna stopped fussing with the bedclothes, and sat on the cot and bowed her head. There was defiance in her stiffness, but I saw that she was shaking.

 

  
I went to her and put my hand under her chin and made her look at me. “Where?”

 

  
Penna spat to one side and spittle dripped onto my hand. “Why should I tell you, you muddy slit?”

 

  
I held her hard by the chin. “Where? What have you done with the name, the…dammed, dame?”

 

  
“What have
I
done? What have
I
done? How can you ask after what your precious thieving master and his men have done?” She struck my hand away. “I did my duty, which was to remind Dame Vairon of hers.”

 

  
“Oh, Penant,” I said. She and I had worked together a hand of days, hauling water and slops and firewood, sitting by the window sewing. We’d made bread and eaten it together, and I’d believed what it was easiest for me to believe, that we were friends. All the while she’d felt alone among her enemies.

 

  
Yet we were friends, that too was true. Perhaps she had found it hard to cleave to hatred every day. She’d expected more of her mistress.

 

  
Penna was weeping. She wiped her face on the hem of her kirtle and left black streaks on her cheeks from the outlines inked around her eyes. “How could she give her enemy heirs, how could she
think
to do it? To breed his sons?”

 

  
“That poor guilt,” I said. “Poor thing.”

 

  
Penna bent over her lap, and the cries she made sounded like something being torn. I understood what she’d said and what she’d left out, and there was a pattern in it that I saw quite clearly. Two braids, each with three strands: mourning, wedding, drowning; a daughter, a bride, a shade. As a living wife, Dame Vairon had no power. As a shade, she could take vengeance.

 

  
In haste I put on my headcloth and started for the door. Penna got up to follow me, and I told her, “Got, get, go, get astray while you can still run!” But when I ran down the winding stairs, she was close behind.

 

  
The courtyard reeked of shit and rotting fish, and I covered my nose with the tail of my headcloth. The drains had backed up and spilled slime over the gleaming pavement. Drudges ran here and there to no purpose, while men of the Blood bellowed at them.

 

  
In the commotion I found it hard to pluck out words. Sire Galan came toward me with his long strides, saying, “Iseeyoufounder,” while Sire Edecon shouted over his shoulder, “Watsrongpenna? Watsrong?”

 

  
I said to Galan, “Come close and speak in my hear.”

 

  
“You found Penna,” he said. “Where’s the dame?”

 

  
I said, “I think she’s spilt herself, the pride. She’s gone and gone under.”

 

  
Galan put his hand on my arm. “She’s what?”

 

  
“She’s gone and drought herself, drained!”

 

  
“Did Penna tell you something? What did she say?”

 

  
“No, I saw it.”

 

  
Sire Edecon said, “Saw it with your own eyes? Then where is she?”

 

  
“Not saw, not with my, with my…” I pointed to my eyes. “With my mind’s sign, sigh. I think she’s in the ill, the…will. You must hurry!”

 

  
“Ill will?” said Galan. “Whose ill will?”

 

  
Penna held her head up. Her eyes, set deep in ink-smudged sockets, stared fixedly at no one. I didn’t understand why she stayed.

 

  
“No,
will,
” I said. “The…round down where water comes up. The the…” The words were dammed up, as if my very urgency were a barrier. I could think of no better way to set them free than to sing them, and so I shaped them to a tune and sang:
Look to the Waters to find Torrent’s daughter. Where Wellspring sleeps, I think you’ll find her.

 

  
Sire Edecon said, “Do you know what she’s on about?”

 

  
Sire Galan told his armiger to find some men and search the cisterns, the drains, even the fountains and laundries—anywhere within the keep a woman might drown herself. We went to the well, and Penna followed us, and by that I knew he’d sent Sire Edecon off in vain.

 

  
There was but one well that I knew of, in a small inner courtyard. It was not much used, for there was water from the fountains for drinking, and rainwater in the cisterns for washing. No one drew water from the river and canals, for it was brackish, and filthy besides.

 

  
The heavy stone slab that covered the well had been pushed ajar, leaving a crescent-shaped opening. Sire Galan shoved the slab on its pivot, and it grated across the top of the wall. His voice dropped into the well and sounded muffled and hollow. “I don’t see anything.”

 

  
I leaned on the wall. Galan and I were shoulder to shoulder and our two shapes were silhouetted against a wobbling circle of blue brightness a long way down. The shining water rebuffed our gaze, but where we cast a shadow I saw under the surface. A glimmering pale shape moved like a languid fish; perhaps Dame Vairon’s bare leg, stirring in the currents of an underground river. A plink! And ripples spread from a tear I dropped into the well.

 

  
“Do you see?” I asked.

 

  
He shook his head.

 

  
“She’s there. Lay me down in the buckle, bussock…the basket,” I said, pointing at the overturned bucket and the windlass, “and I’ll fet her.”

 

  
He said, “You’re still weak. You couldn’t do it.”

 

  
Penna said, “I’ll fetch her.”

 

  
I hissed at Galan, “No, not unless you want her to brine too! She’ll cull herself, don’t you see? I can do it, let me. I’ll tie a a…hope around her and you shall wing us up.”

 

  
“No.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped hard. “If Dame Vairon is down there, it will do no good to have two drowned. I want you to find me a boy who can swim. Find help and don’t dally.”

 

  
It was hard for me to understand. He gave me a shake and repeated himself, and I ran, and as I left the courtyard I looked back over my shoulder and saw Galan had caught Penna by the wrist and was shouting at her. She had her head down, but she didn’t try to pull away.

 

  
A kitchenboy named Kerf sat on the bucket and Sire Galan lowered him into the well, and by then there was a crowd to see it. Kerf eased himself into the cold water and looped the bucket rope around all four of Dame Vairon’s limbs. He shinnied up the rope and Sire Galan and another man turned the crank. The drowned bride swung and thumped against the wall of the well, and slowly she rose. They untied her and laid her down on the pavement in a puddle of water. Her lips were purple and her skin was marbled with blue. I pulled her cobalt blue gown over her limbs, but the cloth was as thin as a second skin and hid nothing. Her hair was unbound and I combed it away from her face.

 

  
Penna could not do these services for her mistress, for Sire Galan had tied her with her hands behind her back to the wooden post that held up the stone well cover. The spectators muttered, and their quiet was more ominous than their clamor had been.

 

  
Sire Edecon came running, crying out the news that they’d found two of the new brides drowned in the cistern. He stopped short and then took one step and another until he stood looking down at his wife. “Why did they do it? Why? And why is Penna tied?”

 

  
Galan said to him, “Do you think your wife pushed the stone cover off the well by herself?”

 

  
I said, “I could do it. Anybody could. It lacks but a clever—a a leaven.”

 

  
Sire Galan turned on me with a frown. “Then who pushed it back?”

 

  
Sire Edecon knelt on the pavement. “I don’t understand. The marriages were honorable, a beginning, not an end.” He touched his dead wife’s hand, and the tenderness in his gesture pained and surprised me. A dove landed beside the body and pecked at an invisible seed.

 

  
One of the clansmen from Lanx leaned over him and said, “Come, this is no way to act. You’ve been wed a day, not a lifetime. Better for you that she didn’t live to make your days miserable and your nights tedious.”

 

  
Sire Edecon stood and said, “What should be done with Penna? Am I supposed to kill her?”

 

  
Galan shrugged. “It’s for you to say.”

 

  
Sire Edecon advanced on Penna and she crouched and sidled back to put the post between them. He dragged her by her headcloth until her bound arms were stretched out behind her. The cloth came untied and he took instead a handful of her black, abundant hair. He drew his knife, and held it as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

 

  
She looked up at him, and the long curving column of her throat was within his reach. She swallowed.

 

  
Some mudfolk chanted, “Kill her! Kill her!” She glared at the crowd, and some stepped back as if she’d pushed them. For a moment our eyes met,
and I shivered and was glad when her hating gaze passed to others. She cried out,

 

  

 

  
“The daughters of Torrent are become shades.

 

  
Torrent will devour your ships,

 

  
and fish will feed on your merchants.

 

  
Your wells will offer poison

 

  
to quench your thirst.

 

  
Your children will drown in the womb!”

 

  

 

  
Sire Edecon bade her be silent, and struck her across the mouth with the fist that held the hilt of his dagger. She crouched there, her hair unbound, the ink from her eyelids smeared all over her face, and when she shouted, the voice that came from her did not sound like her own, it was loud and hoarse, not a shriek but a roar. She compelled us to hear her out, for she had given herself over to the gods and was ready to die.

 

  

 

  
“I saw my man killed before my eyes.

 

  
I saw my sister Heddle dragged down the stairs.

 

  
I gave myself to a dog to save myself from wolves.

 

  
The shades of the brides will linger

 

  
in this well, this cistern.

 

  
They will make of your keep a desert.

 

  
They have avenged their fathers.

 

  
They have avenged their mothers.

 

  
They have avenged their sisters.

 

  
They have avenged their brothers.

 

  
I should have drowned with them,

 

  
but I lived to utter this curse,

 

  
and to claim my share of vengeance.”

 

  

 

  
Sire Edecon’s knife trembled in his hand. He stepped back, and the man who’d spoken to him earlier came swiftly forward and slashed Penna’s throat with a short sword. I saw she was a fountain with life streaming from her. I covered my eyes and heard the watchers cheer. They cheered louder still when the man cut out Penna’s tongue.

 
  

 

  
A hunt was on in the keep of Crux. Someone had scuttled the ships at dock in the night, slipping underwater with an augur and drilling holes in the planking. Someone had stopped up the drains so that stinking wastes had backed up into privies and courtyards and the laundry. Someone had served blowfish of the wrong sort for breakfast, and a dame and three of her children were sick to death.

 

  
Penna had not been the only drudge of Torrent in the keep. There were
others, spoils of battle like herself, taken for bedservants or horseboys, a new handmaid perhaps, or a fish cook, a varlet. No one had thought there was harm in it. Now the masters of Crux hunted down their untrustworthy servants, and their mudmen helped, and perforce their guests, the Blood and mudfolk of our company. Our drudges risked being taken for men of Torrent themselves, being strangers, unless they showed themselves fervent in pursuit.

 

  
An outcry went up when they found another of Torrent’s daughters, one of the betrothed, caught against the grate of a drain that emptied into the canal. She had drowned in filth. She’d been but eleven years old, and slender enough to crawl down the bathhouse drainpipe. Everyone thronged to see her.

 

  
Another outcry, “A fight! A fight!” and people went running to the stables where a horseboy held off three attackers with a pitchfork.

 

  
Mobs of men dashed about, in each other’s way or each other’s footsteps, until the Crux and the heads of houses in the keep took the hunt in hand. They sent beaters to work their way inward from the walls and down from the top of the tower; others combed through the dirty warrens underground, where most of the drudges of the keep lived. The beaters drove toward the Blood waiting in the great courtyard between the tower and the gate. Some women joined in, for anger ran high. The rest of us, along with old folks and children, were herded into the walled orchard to keep us out of the way.