Wildfire (32 page)

 

  
“Are you just now discovering that she’s unnatural? Then you’re more besotted than I thought. It wasn’t lightning that made her so, as people say. The lightning sought her out
because
of what she is; she called it to her. But you’re mistaken if you take her for a mere canny, a dabbler in curses and charms, as I was once mistaken. She’s a seer, she speaks with the dead. I questioned her with the black drink so she couldn’t lie, and I’m satisfied she doesn’t bear malice against you or our clan, though she is Wildfire’s creature. We have need of her foresight now, and of counsel the dead can give us. This is a perilous time, and therefore a time of opportunity for those bold enough to take chances—and for those Chance favors, such as yourself. There are matters of more import than whether your sheath is barren. Though if you wish it, I’ll have the Initiates lift the hex on her. Is that what you want?”

 

  
I didn’t want to hear Sire Galan’s answer; I was sure he’d say something I couldn’t forgive. I felt the hex kick within me, and I said, “You paid the Imitates to make me bane, barren. Why should you expect to harvest anything but slights, slies, lies from me now? And do you truly think it’s up to the Imitates, the…Intimates of Carnage to decide whether or not I will have a child? Let them try to hoax me. A hoax the guards do not permit will redound upon those who aim it. Carmine…Desire has shown me savor in Sire Galan’s bed, and she won’t turn away from me at their demand.” I turned to Galan, but he wouldn’t look at me. “And what of Wildfare and Bastard Chance—the ones who overlook…look out for us? The atavites—the the…avatars consort well together; they are two of like nurtures. Don’t you think they might wish to see what offsprig would come of our smiting?”

 

  
“She speaks more plainly than she did,” the Crux said. “Too plainly. She flatters herself. Cross a warhorse and a she-donkey, and all you get is a misbegotten mule.”

 

  
Sire Galan glanced at me and away. “We don’t know her parentage, or where she came from. She was a foundling.”

 

  
“If you think she’s well bred, you’ve been deceived,” said the Crux.

 

  
“I never claimed to be of the Breed, did I? But I had a father fond of me. I may be a fondling, but I’m no flyblow. He was a horse tricker by trade, a trainer, a trader I mean.”

 

  
“You told me you didn’t remember your father,” Galan said, as if sourly pleased to catch me in another lie.

 

  
“I don’t remember him. But I dreamed him twice—I dreamed he was a muckman as good as any. May I go now? Are you done of me? Or are you going to give me the bleak drunk again?”

 

  
“You may sit,” the Crux said. “Sit down. I don’t intend you any harm.” He pointed to a footstool, but I would not sit.

 

  
“What
do
you intend, Sire?” asked Galan.

 

  
“I know,” I said. Mai had told me just enough gossip, and I guessed the rest. “He portends to be kinded when the kind dies.”

 

  
There was a stifled grunt from Galan, then stillness.

 

  
The Crux said, “The king will die?” He hunched forward in his chair, eager for revelations.

 

  
I said, “He is mortal. A fright told me that.”

 

  
“When will he die?”

 

  
“What did your divides say? They hedged and hawed, I suppose, made such a mudgin of the orphans, the the…omens so that no matter what happenchance comes to pass, they can say it was foretold.”

 

  
I saw by the Crux’s face I’d come near the truth. I said, “You are the Transgressor, I mean the Intercessor—why not ask the dead yourself? Call on your Countenance of the Dead for help.”

 

  
The Crux frowned at me, and the white scar beside his left eye kinked. But the right side of his face looked dismayed rather than fierce.

 

  
I said, “Oh, I see. You tried and the fades wouldn’t answer.”

 

  
“Are you afraid to try yourself?” he said.

 

  
“Of course I am.” Though I was tempted. There was great force restrained in the Crux, and I could free it with a word. The whole world could turn upon a word, a lie. I was swollen with potency, and the hex that twisted in my belly. The Crux had given me a gift—the power to mislead him. A man who desires greatly is easy to fool. But I suspected he would let me mislead him only where he was already determined to go.

 

  
“Why do you put yourself in her hands?” Galan asked.

 

  
I held my hands out, empty, and turned them upside down. “My hands are vacant. May I go now? The shaker-and-shive is stalking the compass, and there are many in need of my hope. This thing you want—I don’t know how. I’m not what you think of me.”

 

  
“But will you try?” asked the Crux.

 

  
Every answer led to Galan despising me. I could assent and offer the Crux nonsensical words like those I’d given the Auspices in the temple of Ardor—let him make of them what he willed.

 

  
I could refuse; but that would prove me a knowing cheat who hid behind a mask of flour and charcoal to play tricks on gullible boys, and was too craven to play such tricks on her betters.

 

  
But when I invoked Mischief, Mischief came. That wasn’t a trick.

 

  
Galan knew that. Maybe he didn’t think I was a charlatan. I saw that fear in him again, of what I was and what lightning had made of me. He liked me better when he thought me weak. I thought of how he’d cared for me after I was struck, when I was shambling and addled, and I grieved to lose his tenderness.

 

  
That was unjust—to think he wanted me weak or meek. If he’d wanted such a sheath, he could have had one. He’d taken me instead, and I did believe—though I’d been boasting when I said it—that I’d spoken some truth: our natures consorted well together, for there was Wildfire in me and Chance in Galan. He didn’t seek softness, he wanted the flint that struck sparks.

 

  
Yet I saw nothing welcoming in his face. His mouth was grim; he waited to hear what I would say, and his hands were on the arms of his chair, palms against the wood, hiding the signs of Chance and Fate. He was a gambler, and I must gamble too. Because there was a third choice before me, riskier than fakery or refusal: to try to do as the Crux asked, and be an honest seer.

 

  
The Crux shifted in his chair. I kept him waiting while my thoughts veered this way and that. But those frantic thoughts were just a distraction; in the darkness of my mind, unbeknownst to me, I had already decided.

 

  
I told Galan rather than the Crux. “I think I must try.”

 

  
The Crux said, “Good.”

 

  
I said to him, “The shades I know—I doubt you’d want their device. Can you invoke your Conceal? Your Council?”

 

  
Galan said, “She laughed at Ardor’s priests when they wanted her for an oracle. Now she pretends to be one.”

 

  
“You may go, if you wish,” the Crux said.

 

  
“I think I’d rather stay,” Galan said, crossing his arms.

 

  
The Crux rose and went to the tapestry of the Sun, Moon, and Heavens that hung before one wall of his pavilion. He pushed the tapestry aside and revealed a wooden chest, embellished with the godsign of Crux in gilt on the lid. He unlocked the iron clasp with an ornate key. The masks were wrapped in embroidered cloths: seven gold masks, one for each of the houses of the clan. I’d thought there would be more. The Crux handled them with careful reverence, hanging them from hooks on an iron bar suspended from the pavilion’s rafters. The golden faces hung high, as if they belonged to tall men, and they seemed to stare, though their eyes were empty.

 

  
I’d seen the old priest at the manor take the impression of the Dame’s face after she died, pressing clay over her to make a crude likeness. In my ignorance I’d supposed that was her death mask, but it was merely a mold
for the golden mask through which her shade might speak in the Council of the Dead. But a woman’s counsel wasn’t wanted here.

 

  
These were warriors. Two were old men, with every wrinkle rendered; the rest were in their prime, likely cut down in battle. The masks were true to life, and yet, because the impressions were taken in death, they were also strange and slack. Each mask had a clan tattoo incised into the right cheek, and on the left cheek, in bright enamel, the crest of his house. The beards and hair were sculpted of fine coils of gold wire.

 

  
I thought the Crux would summon the shades by some rite. Instead he sat and looked at me expectantly. Was this another ordeal, did he mean to prove I was green and foolish? That was true. I said, “I don’t know—what am I proposed to do?”

 

  
“I told you she couldn’t,” Galan said.

 

  
Twilight had arrived, leaching colors away, and the air was hazed with smoke from a smoldering brazier. I stood and stamped my feet, and quietly I hummed the round of notes that belonged to Sire Rodela’s shade. I had visited the realm of the dead before, and it almost killed me. This time I meant to send Sire Rodela, my tormentor, my go-between.

 

  
I couldn’t compel him to come, as the Summoner had done. I could only ask. I pleaded with him. I sang that I would do him honor—burn candlebark for him every Peaceday—praise his bravery—recount the tale of his duel with the armiger—if he would help me now. We’d hated each other. He’d attacked me and I’d killed him; he’d haunted me and I’d banished him. This had woven obligations between us. The deepest notes of his song seemed to call forth a deeper echo, and the highest notes made my head buzz. I stamped and felt the ground shudder.

 

  
I was amazed and affrighted by how swiftly Sire Rodela came. He didn’t arrive from elsewhere, but burgeoned within me. I stomped, and felt thick with maleness, with wide shoulders and strong arms and heavy hands, and a pendulous weight between my legs that made me swagger. Now that he was here, he didn’t want to go. He wouldn’t be
sent.
We must go together.

 

  
The recently dead were gathering in the tent, though I hadn’t summoned them. They animated what was there already, standing and sitting and crouching, made of tent poles and stools, casks and chests, folds of tapestry. They wavered in and out of sight in the corners of my eyes: the laundress, asking what had become of her son; the old woman Tansy and the young whore; and others carried off by the shiver-and-shake whom I’d never met in life. Penna was a shirt tossed over the back of a chair.

 

  
Sire Rodela raised my arms and shouted, “I want light!” in a voice so harsh it scraped my throat. The Crux got up and lit oil lamps, shaped like birds with outspread wings, suspended from a bronze tree. Rodela laughed
to see the Crux obey him. Lamplight drove the shadows and shades into darker corners. The Crux sat down again. I lifted the bronze tree and carried it behind the masks. It was heavy, but I had Rodela’s strength. The lamps dribbled perfumed oil, and when the burning droplets touched my skin I felt a searing pleasure.

 

  
I went back to my place and looked at the masks with the fire behind them. They were alive now. Their eyes and tongues flickered. I truly didn’t know if it was I who thought of bringing them light or Rodela. From moment to moment I was unsure what I should do, yet did what had to be done.

 

  
I was singing Ardor’s song now, without words, just nonsensical sounds that ran swift as a river. I began to dance, for Rodela insisted on it. I looked down at my feet and saw a pattern in the carpet, one the weavers hadn’t put there: a spiral field such as those in my village, with three strips winding one inside the other, planted, plowed, and fallow. I danced along the spiraling path in smaller and smaller turns, feeling the touch of Galan’s stare on my legs, hips, shoulders, breasts, the small of my back, my brow and throat. I knew he saw a woman, but I moved like a man, like Sire Rodela, stamping hard.

 

  
When I reached the very center of that spiral, I found it was a snare, Fate’s labyrinth. Why should a man want to be king, to walk that terrible winding path until the end of his days? A king is never free of Fate; his every act uncoils consequence. Better to be of no consequence.

 

  
Wildfire sparked in the air, making the hair stand up on my neck and arms, making me sweat, making me lightheaded. Now I spun in the center of the spiral, pushing out my song with every burst of breath, faster and faster. The masks flicked past me. My good left eye saw the faces of the Council sharp-edged and golden, stern and motionless, and my dim right eye saw metal softening to jaundiced flesh, saw wagging tongues. Good eye, bad eye, left eye, right eye, until I was dizzy, and speckled darkness covered my sight and I staggered and fell.

 

  
When I opened my eyes, the world spun around me but I was still, and seven tall men were with me at the center of the whirlwind, staring down. I could tell they were not pleased to be summoned by the living, and if Rodela, their kin and a shade himself, had not been in possession of me, likely they’d have struck me down for presumption.

 

  
They were billowing and formless under their golden faces, as if they’d forgotten the shapes of their bodies. They might have forgotten their faces too if there were no masks to remind them. They should be very wise by now, for they’d been dead a long time. I could only bear to see them from the corner of my left eye. When I tried to look at them straight on, their
faces shimmered and smeared; they didn’t hold. My failing right eye didn’t see them at all. It saw glimpses of elsewhere and elsewhen.

 
  

 

  
With my right eye I saw the king die. His carnifex was bleeding him. The king had already slipped into that stupor that was living death. His face was pallid, and his blood so dark it looked black. It dripped into a silver vessel shaped like a hare. Dripped, and stopped. The Auspices crowding around him murmured. The stink of a sick man’s sweat was in the air, under the fragrance of burning candlebark.

 

  
It was a true dream. Whether it had happened or would happen, or was even now unfolding, I didn’t know.