Wildfire (77 page)

 
  

 

  
Sire Vafra had recognized me after all. He sent me a letter written in godsigns on Lambaneish silk, rolled inside a golden ring. The musicians who carried the message played outside the door all evening. The letter said he had nine more such rings, one for each of my toes, and he would delight to put them on me and lie down and accept my tread, if I would permit him to call. I asked Aghazal what he meant by that, and she said, “He must like the Abasements.”

 

  
“I think the Abasements are for tharos men to do at tharais women, as in the paintings. Anyway, he’s of Incus. They don’t do Abasements there, ein?”

 

  
“Nevertheless,” she said, after she corrected my speech.

 

  
I feared Sire Vafra was making an elegant threat. If I didn’t acquiesce, he might tell someone, maybe Aghazal, that I’d been tharais—that I was still tharais, for it’s a taint that won’t wash, they say in Lambanein. She might be Ebanakan, but she couldn’t abide tharais; I’d seen her beat the bath servant for stinking, because she swore the dung beetle had eaten onions despite that she forbade her to indulge.

 

  
I sent a message back to Sire Vafra, a bouquet of the kind of geranium that means
I await your visit.
He visited the next afternoon while Aghazal was still asleep, and I received him in the dining court under the shade of a portico. Second and Third sang and played for us, and Aunt Cook sent a niece bearing a plate of stuffed mice.

 

  
Sire Vafra was too polite to get precipitously to the point, as he’d done when I was tharais. He sat cross-legged on the platform and took my right foot onto his lap to peel off my shoe-stocking. He put gold rings on my toes, one by one, and scratched my tender arch as if he were a Lambaneish-schooled man. I pressed my sole against his groin and felt his answer.

 

  
“Your musicians were very—”

 

  
“Did you enjoy them?”

 

  
“Loud, I was going to say.” I waggled my toes, admiring the rings, and he breathed harder. I took my foot away.

 

  
Sire Vafra began to stammer, asking if I would consent to his visits, and be his alone—if I would agree not to go out—he hated to think of me…

 

  
I said, “Tell the king to come himself next time, eh?” Suddenly sure, quite sure, he was on his sovereign’s business. And pleased by it.

 

  
“He can’t visit here.”

 

  
“Of course he can, and it’s time he did. All Allaxios thinks him a eunuch.”

 

  
Sire Vafra encircled my ankle with his hand. “Dreamer, I’ve had such dreams of you. These rings are mine, from me—do you think you could—”

 

  
I pulled off my shoe-stocking and offered my left foot. “The rings are yours? I thought they were mine.”

 

  
I took his rings and sent him away unsatisfied, and he returned the next day and the next, asking how I could refuse him when I’d let Sire Quislibet prick me twice, and the man boasted incessantly of how he’d gotten under the dreamer’s skirts for free. As far as I could tell, Sire Vafra’s infatuation wasn’t feigned. Nevertheless, I liked to think the king sent him to report on my doings, or to serve as a witting or unwitting go-between.

 

  
Sire Vafra gave me a new wrapper of sky blue silk shot with indigo, and I taunted him by saying it matched the king’s eyes, and he should thank his master for such a thoughtful gift, for I would gladly wear his colors. Sire Vafra protested it was his gift and his alone, and I professed not to believe him. I told him I dreamed often of the king, which was another message I hoped he would carry. These small torments seemed to be the kind of Abasements Sire Vafra sought, though they weren’t on the list.

 
  

 

  
Aghazal praised me for acquiring such a persistent and generous admirer, but in the next breath she reprimanded me for neglecting the Taxonomies and the poets; no doubt Second had complained. I said they put me to sleep, because I was always so tired. She said, “Do you think I’m not weary? A younger Sister shouldn’t be idle when her older Sister is working so hard to fill fifty open mouths.” She did indeed have many mouths to feed, though perhaps not so many as fifty.

 

  
I said, “Why should I master the Taxonomies? It’s easy to get pricked, ein? These men don’t care what lists I know.”

 

  
It was the first time I’d seen Aghazal angry with me. She said our art was harder than I thought—every fool made that mistake, because any fool can couple, ein?

 

  
She said that after long practice a painter may have sublime moments—maybe even a whole day—when every stroke of the brush is flawless; a musician may discover a song in the act of playing it for the first time, and its every note will be inevitable and exact. So too a whore-celebrant may achieve, for herself and her patron, moments of perfection. It was for such moments that the arts—all arts—were sacred.

 

  
But mastery must be learned, even by the gifted. There comes a period of great difficulty when too much learning seems to get in the way. One understands what one can’t yet do. That was why I liked moonflower and patrons without discernment, she said. So I didn’t have to notice my shortcomings. So they wouldn’t.

 

  
I offered her five more golden toe rings—I’d already given her three. She wasn’t mollified. I understood how I’d insulted her, so I groveled, flinging
myself on her bed on my belly and stroking her shin. I begged her pardon so elaborately that I teased a laugh out of her.

 

  
I said I would study hard, and be guided by her wisdom, and try to emulate her, and she said, “Let me make arrangements for you to enjoy a few knowledgeable-pleasurable men. If you find that you prefer brutes and youths after all, well, that is your taste. At least you’ll know the difference.”

 

  
The first was her patron Krinean, who claimed to find me delectable, and gave me a necklace of bites and another of gold with citrines and blue sapphires; a second man she chose for his endurance, to teach me patience; a third for his elegance, to teach me delicacy. They were all most kind, but without moonflower I couldn’t forget myself, or cease worrying that they’d think me a poor artisan compared to other whore-celebrants they’d enjoyed.

 

  
Six men in less than a tennight, after a lifetime in which I’d had only two, and one of them against my will. I was embarked. And the moonflower dream was just a dream, and King Corvus wasn’t going to visit. He probably counted the fifteen golden beadcoins and the seventeen of silver a small price to be rid of my importunities, my presumption that he owed me something. By now I knew what my fee was worth, and the only surprise was that Aghazal had agreed to take me for such a small amount. But she was a shrewd judge of odds; already she’d gotten more from me than the king had paid.

 

  
I visited Aghazal in her bedchamber when she woke up in the afternoon, to show her my new gift. The last man had sent a poem comparing me to morning dew, along with a shawl of the gauze called morning dew, so thin and fine it could be drawn through the narrow compass of a finger ring. I asked Aghazal if this meant he found me cold and wet, which made her roll about on the bed laughing.

 

  
Often we talked and laughed this way, in the morning when she came home too tired to sleep, or in the afternoon when she liked to linger in bed awhile before she had to bustle. Now she sighed and got up, and I stayed there surrounded by her bedclothes. The day was still and hot. Her windows were shuttered. I could hear bees droning and smell the incensier shrub planted in a pot outside her window. I hitched my wrapper above my knees and spread my arms to cool off. Hair stuck to the back of my neck. Aghazal was in her bath, where I should go. I fell asleep instead.

 

  
Adalana woke me, tugging my wrapper to cover my legs. “Get up! He’s here!” she said.

 

  
I sat up, groggy, and combed my hair with my fingers. “Sire Vafra?”

 

  
“Your benefactor,” Adalana said in a loud whisper. She knew it was important, but she was too young to know why.

 

  
“Run and tell him I’ll attend shortly, ein? And see what Aunt Cook can give him.”

 

  
But King Corvus had followed her into the room. He stood looking at the furnishings: the paintings on the wall, the carvings on the legs and backrests of Aghazal’s bed, all beautifully made, all on the usual subject. There were no chairs; he sat on the bed and it took strength of will for me not to jump out of it. I knelt instead and touched my forehead to the mattress, and then sat as gracefully as I could manage in the pose they called the Chaste, with my feet hidden. I regretted that I was wearing a shabby, rumpled wrapper, when his surcoat of indigo linen was so stiff and crisp.

 

  
“So,” he said.

 

  
I loved to see him cast about for something to say.

 

  
“This is where you sleep?”

 

  
As he spoke in the High, I did too. “It’s Aghazal’s room. The other Sisters and I, we stay in the room of Aghazal’s mother. I just lay down for a rest.” Only a whore would sleep in the afternoon—I thought I saw him thinking that.

 

  
“You’ll need your own room if I’m to visit you.”

 

  
“Are you to visit me?”

 

  
“My spies tell me there are rumors I’m a eunuch.”

 

  
“I have heard that. Also the rumor of a secret vow. That one I believed.”

 

  
“I shall disprove both rumors.” He wasn’t looking at me as he said so. His hands were still. In Lambanein people gestured when they spoke. It was disconcerting that he did not.

 

  
“Even the true one?”

 

  
He looked at me with a bland expression.

 

  
I called out, “Second, will you see what has become of the refreshments for our guest?” That fetched Tasatyala out of hiding outside the door. I didn’t worry about her overhearing our conversation. No one in the house was fluent in the High, though Aghazal knew a few words of it.

 

  
“I look frightful.” I smoothed my hair, trying to make it lie flat. A man ought not to see a whore in disarray until after he beds her; he likes to think he is the cause of it.

 

  
“Would you care to go to the dining court? There might be a breeze.”

 

  
He declined.

 

  
Tasatyala returned with a table-tray, which she put on the bed between us. Aunt Cook had sent us a licked course of mint and lemon. Something more elaborate was no doubt on its way. Food must be served to guests, no matter how inconvenient their arrival. Tasatyala called Zarfatta to take away the plates when we were done, and went on watching. Aghazal had abandoned the guest to her younger Sisters.

 

  
“Would you care to hear a song?” I asked the king. “My Sisters can play for us.”

 

  
“I had in mind the song of a thrush,” he said.

 

  
I sent Tasatyala for wine. “And then leave us alone!” I added in Ebanakan. I’d learned a few words in that language, mostly suitable for quarreling.

 

  
At last we had wine on the table-tray and were alone in the room. It seemed the king had gotten at least one of my messages. He was here at my bidding, but I wasn’t sure what to do with him.

 

  
I’d boasted of my usefulness as a thrush, but the last time I’d told the king something useful, I was dreaming and he never heard it; now I told it all again. “Have you heard about Arthygater Keros and her singer? She took one as a lover; it is a scandal. That’s why her mother is offering her to the Starling. Though he hasn’t answered yet. Perhaps she’ll run away with the musician.”

 

  
“Do you know the name of this singer?”

 

  
“Arkhyios Kydos didn’t say. But I can find out. There was some talk of cutting the poor fellow’s throat or cutting off his sacs. But it seems they’re leaving him alone for now, letting him amuse Keros. As the damage is done.”

 

  
“What damage? Lambaneish have no honor to be damaged. The men duel over poems while the women accommodate anyone they fancy.”

 

  
I flushed and looked away from him. One would think he’d sent me to Aghazal’s to test my virtue. “You dishonor your wife, saying such things about Lambaneish women.” Even if they are true.

 

  
“Don’t speak of her,” he said.

 

  
I sipped from my goblet of green glass, and tried to breathe. I put the glass down and hid my mouth behind a hand, saying, “Please forgive me.”

 

  
He made a small gesture: Say no more about it. And after a pause, he said, “Is that all?”

 

  
“All of what?”

 

  
“You’ve been here two tennights, and that’s all you have to tell me? That Princess Keros lost her maidenhead—supposing she still had it—to some sort of rumormonger, some singer?”

 

  
“I heard this from her brother, from a prince of the kingdom, a grandson of the arkhon,” I said, and was dismayed that my voice shook.

 

  
He said nothing, and in the silence I had time to hear how foolish I sounded. I released the breath I’d been holding. I couldn’t lose what I never had, therefore I couldn’t lose his good opinion. Once I’d thought I had it, but I must have been mistaken. I said, “I had a dream, a true dream, I think.”

 

  
“Indeed?”

 

  
“I dreamed your—I dreamed the Starling received a likeness of me, the very same one the limner painted. And he thought I was Princess Careless, Keros, and desired to marry me. I crossed the Kerastes, the Ferinus, with a
great dower treasure, and an escort of Ebanakan guardsmen clad in red, and when we arrived in Lanx, the Starling welcomed me with a kiss of peace.”

 

  
The king stared at me, and I knew she hadn’t lied. Moonflower hadn’t lied.

 

  
“And then?” he said. He drank from his goblet and put it down on the table-tray, and I refilled it with wine from the glass ewer, pouring without splashing, as I’d been taught; it pleased me to make him wait.

 

  
“I woke up. Is that what the portrait was for? Why didn’t you tell me?”