Wildfire (56 page)

 

  
The cleft and shrine seemed secret and forgotten, as if I were the first person to visit for years, but there were garlands of browning daffydowndillies on the floor of the cave. I’d lost my way to the tharais gate and found my way to this holy place, and surely my errant steps had not erred after all. I made a garland of bluebind to lay at Katabaton’s feet, and prayed she would bless Meninx.

 

  
I reached the floor of the cleft by sliding down a slope of scree. Crux Sun lit my path and I jumped from one boulder to another like a goat. From the stony ground, milk thistles stood up tall, already blooming, each tufted purple flower wearing a collar of prickly leaves. It was too early in the year for the potent seeds, but all parts of the plant were beneficial; I harvested several whole thistles, roots and all, and blooms to boil up as a spring tonic.

 

  
I went on down to the riverbank, where the Sun sparked on the small yellow flowers of a swallowwort almost engulfed by grapevines. I wouldn’t have thought to pluck it if not for the swallows in my dream. I dug the plant up by the roots with a stick, staining my hands with its bright saffron-colored sap, for the stems were easily crushed and broken.

 

  
The Dame had taught me a song for the swallowwort, so I could remember its nature and usefulness and thank Crux, who gave it to us. I hummed the tune, but the words eluded me. Yet I recalled very well the Dame steeping the herb in white wine with a sprinkling of aniseeds, and giving it to a woman in the village whose skin had yellowed from jaundice—I could get aniseeds easily, they were used here to sweeten the air and the breath. And the Dame had dabbed the yellow-orange sap on her arms to rid herself of freckles.

 

  
I had the Sun’s blessed light all the way up the stairs to the door into the mountain. Each day was longer than the day before, and I took heart from it. When Midsummer was here, I would go.

 

  
That night I served Meninx the boiled flowers and stalks of the thistle, and her appetite being small, she ate but a little, and Lychnais and I shared the rest. I also gave Meninx a weak infusion of swallowwort leaves and thistle root, and it seemed to do her some good. She was too weak to endure a drastic purgative. If she mended at all, she would mend slowly.

 
  

 

  
Today was the New Moon, the third since I’d come to Lambanein. Arthygater Katharos was offering a banquet this evening, a special one, for the New Moon coincided with the blooming of a certain famous apple tree. Now Lychnais was preparing the arthygater’s hair for the festivities, mixing a paste of henna and indigo. The smell was rank and fertile, like a bog or a woman during her tides.

 

  
I served the arthygater’s niece, a favorite among her companions. This niece stretched out on her back upon a cold marble bench and closed her eyes. I began to shave her with my slender blade. The hair of her head was red-gold, and of her body so pale as to be almost white. Her quim was like that of a girl, the parts hidden within a smooth cleft. She turned over so I could remove the hair between her buttocks, and I saw her fist ball up on the linen coverlet. I had done this service for other women, young and old, but this time I felt a small, exquisite, painful tremor at the sound of the blade scraping her flawless skin.

 

  
I touched the woman’s shoulder. She sat up and chatted with the bathmistress, who was neither bondwoman nor noble but something in between. Mermera called the niece Keros; she wondered if Keros might want her nails cut in the style of the raven’s beak, ein? So she would be ready when the Crow came courting? The girl blushed, which was taken for assent.

 

  
Arthygater Katharos said, “A crow is ill omened, such a tharais carrion-eater. People should not call him that.”

 

  
I covered Keros’s limbs with the wax mixture, which had to be painfully hot or it wouldn’t spread. While the wax cooled and hardened, I cut the nails on the thumb and two fingers of her left hand in the raven’s beak, with two sharp points close together; the rest I trimmed in the usual half-moon style. So she announced herself ready for amorous combat—and if she didn’t wish to reveal it, she could wear golden fingercaps, like thimbles, inset with bejeweled nails.

 

  
Keros said, “Suppose he is hairy, ein?”

 

  
One of the arthygater’s guests laughed and said, “Send a maidservant to him one night and she’ll tell you whatever you want to know. She’ll tally the hairs on his chest and measure the length of his manhood too, ein?” This guest was the one who had sold the arthygater wool and lambs, Phleibin by name.

 

  
I peeled wax from Keros’s arm and felt her shudder slightly.

 

  
Arthygater Katharos said, “His ears are of an excellent shape, did you notice? Long lobes, set close to the head.” Lychnais had rinsed the henna from the arthygater’s hair, and now she was plaiting it through a wicker cap with horns like a ram. She used silk strands of the same burgundy color to make the hair look more abundant, and ribbons and pearls for adornment.

 

  
Keros said, “I wonder if he knows the twenty-five Postures?”

 

  
Arthygater Katharos said dryly, “I’m sure my sister taught him all that was necessary. Kalos never was shy.”

 

  
I tried to quell the sound of my breath, to move shrouded in silence. I peeled wax from Keros’s thigh. She was made like a filly, with delicate legs and narrow hocks. Behind the knee I touched a ticklish spot and Keros drew back.

 

  
They spoke of King Corvus and Kalos, his dead wife. So she was Katharos’s sister—I should have seen that long ago, though Katharos seemed old enough to be the mother of the woman in my dream.

 
  

 

  
I went down the tunnel to the napkin’s dormitory to see Nephelais, as I did whenever I could. She had introduced me to some of the other napkins, and I’d spent pleasant afternoons there, when my work was done, listening to the gossip and joining in from time to time. I seemed to be able to make myself understood now even when I got the words wrong. Nephelais said she could hardly believe I came all the way from Incus, for I knew how to sing when I spoke, instead of mumbling like most strange-ignorant people.

 

  
Today I visited her with a purpose, to ask if I might be able to serve as a napkin that evening. Oh indeed, she said, the taskmistress was short of hands and making everyone miserable.

 

  
Then I lowered my voice to a whisper, and confided the idea I’d had about wearing tharos clothes to get into the manufactory. I had seven pewter beadcoins and two of coiled copper. Was that enough to buy a wrapper and shawl?

 

  
“Don’t you know what happens if they catch you in tharos clothing?”

 

  
I shrugged. “Give this one a beating?”

 

  
“If you’re lucky. More likely the mistress would have you maimed, ein? She would be very angry. It’s a nuisance, the purges and the rites of purification when a tharais has caused pollution. Expensive too.”

 

  
“How do you mean, maimed?”

 

  
“Cut you. That’s what she did to Polukhaitais.” She leaned closer. “The arthygater’s tormentors cut off her nose, ein? So she can’t pretend to be tharos.”

 

  
It was hard to look at Polukhaitais, for she had two long dark holes in her
face where a nose ought to be. I’d supposed she was born that way. She was shy of her disfigurement, and sometimes wore her shawl over her face even in the dormitory, and always ducked her head when she spoke. I said, “But they won’t catch this one. It goes out the tharais gate, comes back in the tharos gate, ein?”

 

  
“They’ll catch you by the stink of onions,” Nephelais said.

 

  
“But if this one wants to try—what do you think? Does it, can it buy cloths with this?” I jingled the beadcoins strung on the cords of my cap.

 

  
“Those pewters aren’t enough to buy a rag. Maybe you can make money at the banquet, ein? If a man is generous. Or there are soiled garments sometimes. When people eat or drink too much and spew on themselves, the arthygater has clean clothing brought to them, and this one takes the dirty ones to the tharais launderers to be washed. No one would notice if a pair of cloths went missing for a day or so.”

 

  
“Have you any now?”

 

  
“The last banquet was all old aunties, ein? But tonight Arthygater Katharos entertains many noblemen, they say. It will be a long evening, and as some of them are strange-ignorant ones, they probably can’t hold their drink—begging pardon, no offense, ein?”

 

  
“The clothes of men do not help.”

 

  
“Well, you’re tall, and the hair is short. In a tunic you’d look a handsome fellow. How are your legs? Do you have fine round calves?” She pinched my cheek.

 

  
I batted away her hand and laughed, hiding my teeth behind my hand. “The legs are bony. And besides, a man in the manufactory is a fox among hens, ein?” I didn’t know where I’d learned the word for fox in Lambaneish, but
alopexan
came to my tongue as if I’d always known it.

 

  
“No, a rooster,” she said. “They’ll be plucking at the tunic to see what you’ve got.”

 

  
“Then this one disappoints,” I said. The baby Melimelais was lying on her mother’s lap, waving her arms and legs. I rubbed her stomach and she grinned. She had no teeth yet to show or hide.

 
  

 

  
The taskmistress of the napkins was a woman of eminence among tharais, and she wanted me to know it. She feigned reluctance to let me serve until I gave her four pewter beadcoins. I asked if I might attend Arkhyios Corvus, and she said I couldn’t have my pick of guests, who did I think I was? I had to humble myself until she was mollified.

 

  
Nephelais and I climbed the stairs to the dining court, a one-story building between the kitchens and the arthygater’s living quarters. It was a balmy spring evening, a fine night to dine outside and honor the blooming
of the apple tree that was the guardian of the dining court and its greatest ornament. The tree’s crooked trunk bore the scars of many years, and the bark was splotched with lichens. The blossoms were a scented white cloud above the roof, and the boughs were hung with lanterns of colored glass and cages of songbirds.

 

  
Nephalais and I unrolled patterned carpets over scented herbs in the courtyard arcades. Behind us came tharos servants, carrying large wooden platforms that served as both chairs and tables. They looked to me like wide beds with scrolled backrests, and when the servants arranged silk cushions on them, I wondered if the guests planned to sleep there too.

 

  
Nephelais lifted a brass latch in the shape of an onion, and opened a door so cunningly hidden in a wall painting of dancing girls that I hadn’t noticed it. We peeked inside. I took the room for a privy, which was indeed one of its purposes. It had a bench with holes for guests to relieve themselves, and straw on the floor like a stable. But Nephelais told me guests took napkins here to use as receptacles. She said there were several such rooms, all decorated with lewd paintings framed to look like windows. In this room the painter had depicted those Postures—seven of the twenty-five—in which a woman turns her back to a man, for tharos men never prick tharais women face-to-face. The women were naked except for shawls over their heads, and the men more or less clothed.

 

  
Nephelais giggled at my prudish shock, and hurried me away. No time to look at the paintings, or gape at the tower over the entry, where musicians were tuning their instruments behind marble lattices. No time to wander in the enormous pleasure garden that divided the male and female halves of the palace—had I been permitted there.

 

  
The guests were already arriving. In a tiled pavilion just outside the dining court, I knelt with other tharais women to wash their feet. We gave the guests soft shoe-stockings to wear when treading on the precious carpets.

 

  
Divine Aboleo sat down before me, and from long habit I kept my head down and my gaze averted from his face, even though I wore the shawl. I drew off his heavy boots, and saw the tips of several of his toes were shriveled, and as black as if they’d been dipped in ink. The blackening from frostbite. It took a long time, months, for the dead parts to slough off.

 

  
I hoped he wouldn’t notice the scars around my wrist, or the way my hands shook as I poured water from the ewer over his feet. He raised his right foot so I could dry it with a cloth. I put on the shoe-stockings and tightened the laces around his ankles. He stood, scraping the chair across the tiles, and went away. Another guest sat down, no one I recognized.

 

  
And I found I was exhilarated. Through the shawl, I could watch and not be watched, touch and yet remain untouched.

 
  

 

  
I served four guests seated on a dining platform, and my duties were simple. Between each course I offered guests a silver basin of water sprinkled with apple blossoms to rinse their hands, and cloths of bleached tow to dry themselves. Should they find it necessary to spit, I brought them a deep brass vessel, and feathers if they wanted to purge. A tharos woman served their food and drink.

 

  
One of the guests I served was Phleibin, whom I’d seen in the arthygater’s bathing room. There she had seemed an intimate—and a trading partner—of Arthygater Katharos; here in the dining court, her importance could be better judged. She was more than halfway down one of the long colonnades, far from the platform the arthygater shared with her husband, Consort Ostrakan, and two honored guests: her niece Keros and King Corvus.

 

  
I watched the king. We all did. Even at such a distance from the arthygater’s dining platform, the language of comportment could be interpreted. He sat cross-legged on the platform, inclining toward Keros, who faced him. He seemed attentive. He wore a crown, a guest wreath of red flowers.

 

  
Phleibin and her husband and another couple gossiped about him as anyone gossips—for the pleasure of a tale, the pleasure of finding things out, and the pleasure of speaking badly about others behind their backs. The shrill voices of the women were easier to understand than the low rumble of the men. I understood this much: Keros was not the first noblewoman paraded before Arkhyios Corvus—here they called him arkhyios, oe prince, for there could be only one arkhon—to lure him into marriage. There had been five such feasts already, and he had failed to show an interest in the marriageable women beyond offering them the obligatory praise poems.