Ash: A Secret History (112 page)

“I’d have bet money on it. It’s where the Stone Golem will have told her to be.” Ash corrected herself: “Where the Wild Machines will have said, through the
machina rei militaris,
that they want her.”

“Madonna—”

“Ash!” Another figure shoved in beside Ash, through the press of people. Patches of firelight picked the woman out, the brown and green of her male dress: hose and cloak nearly invisible against mud, bare trees, stacked kindling-wood, and wet crumpled briar.

“I want a word with you,” Floria del Guiz demanded.

II

“Yeah, soon as I’m done here—” Ash wiped her mouth with her sleeve, chewing the crust of dark bread that Rickard shoved into her hand, sipping spring-water from a cup he thrust at her; eating on the move, as ever. She nodded abstractly to Florian, noting also, now, Rickard, Henri Brant, and two of the armourers, all waiting to speak to her; and turned back to Angelotti.

“No,” Florian interrupted the group. “A word with you
now.
In my tent. Surgeon’s orders!”

“Y’okay…” The chill spring-water made Ash’s teeth ache. She swallowed down the bread, told Henri Brant and the other men briefly, “Clear it all with Angeli and Geraint Morgan!”, and nodded Rickard towards the warmth of the fires. She turned to speak to Floria del Guiz, to find the woman already striding away through the slopping leaf-mulch and mud and darkness.

“Flaming hell, woman! I’ve got stuff to set up before morning!”

The tall, skinny figure halted, looking over her shoulder. Night hid most of her. Firelight made an orange straggle of her hair, still no longer than a man’s, that curled at the level of her chin. She had obviously raked it back with muddy fingers at some point: brown streaks clotted the blond hairs, and her freckled cheekbones were smeared dark.

“Okay, I know you don’t bother me for no reason. What is it
this
time? More on the sick list?” Moving too fast, Ash skidded, and put her boot down in a pothole hidden in shadow. Her hose were wet enough that she scarcely felt the cold through the soaked leather.

“No. I told you: I want a word.”

Florian held up the flap of the surgeon’s tent, where it had with difficulty been pitched among the shallow roots of the beech trees. Canvas yawed and sagged alarmingly, shadow and reflected firelight shifting with the movement. Ash ducked, entering the dim, musty-smelling interior; and let her eyes adjust to the light of one of the last candles, set aside for the dispensary. The pallets on the earthen floor appeared empty.

“I’m out of St John’s Wort and witch hazel,” Florian said briskly, “and damn near out of gut for surgery. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. I shan’t need you, deacon.”

She continued to hold the tent-flap up. One of her lay priests abandoned his mortar and pestle, and nodded to her as he scrambled out of the tent into the darkness. Nothing in his demeanour suggested he was in any way uncomfortable this close to a woman dressed as a man.

“There you are, Florian. Told you so.” Ash seated herself at one of the benches, leaning her elbows on the herb-preparation table. She looked up at the female surgeon in the half-light. “You sewed them up after Carthage – you went to Carthage
with
them, under fire. You’ve stuck with us all the way back. Far as the company’s concerned, it’s ‘we don’t care if she’s a dyke, she’s
our
dyke’.”

The woman slung her lean, long-legged body down on a wooden folding chair. Her expression was not clear in the candlelight. Her voice stung with bitterness. “Oh, no
shit?
Am I supposed to be pleased? How magnanimous of them!”

“Florian—”

“Maybe I should start saying the same about them: ‘so, they’re a bunch of muggers and rapists, but hey, they’re
my
—’ Hell! I’m not a … not a … company
mascot!
” Her hand hit the table, flat, making a loud crack in the cold tent. The yellow flame shifted with the movement of the air.

“Not quite fair,” Ash said mildly.

Florian’s clear green eyes reflected the light. Her voice calmed. “I must be catching your mood. What I meant to say was, if I took a woman into my tent, then we’d find out how much I’m ‘theirs’.”

“
My
mood?”

“We’re going to be fighting today or tomorrow.” Florian did not inflect it as a question. “This isn’t the right time to say this, but then, there may not be a right time later. We might both be dead. I’ve watched you, all the way here. You don’t talk, Ash. You haven’t talked since we left Carthage.”

“When was there time?” Ash realised she still held the wooden cup in her numb, cold fingers. There was no water left in it. “There any wine tucked away in here?”

“No. If there was, I’d be keeping it for the sick.”

Pupils dilating with night vision, Ash could make out Floria’s expression. Her bony, intelligent face had lines from bad diet and hard marching, but none of the marks of a surfeit of wine or beer.
I haven’t seen her drunk in weeks,
Ash thought.

“You haven’t been talking,” the other woman said deliberately, “since those things in the desert scared the living shit out of you.”

Cold tension knotted in her gut; released a pulse of fear that left her dizzy.

Florian added, “You were all right at the time. I watched you. Shock set in afterwards, when we were crossing the Med. And you’re
still
avoiding thinking about it now!”

“I hate defeats. We came so near to taking out the Stone Golem. All we’ve done is make sure they know they need to protect it.” Ash watched her own knuckles squeezing her wooden cup, trying to stop it rattling against the planks of the table. “I keep thinking that I should have done more. I
could
have.”

“Can’t keep re-fighting old battles.”

Ash shrugged. “I know there was a breach into House Leofric somewhere below ground-level – I’d seen his damn white rats escaped into the sewers! If I could have found the breach, maybe we could have got down to the sixth floor, maybe we could have taken out the Stone Golem, maybe now there’d be no way the Wild Machines could ever say anything to anyone again!”

“
White
rats? You didn’t tell me about this.” Florian leaned across the table. The candlelight threw her features into sharp relief: her expression intense, as if she pried into chinks in masonry. “Leofric – the lord who owns you? And owns the Faris, one supposes. The one whose house we were trying to knock down?
Rats?
”

Ash put her other hand around the cup, looking down into the shadow inside it. It felt marginally warmer in the tent than in the forest, but she yearned for the scorching heat back at the bonfire.

“Lord-
Amir
Leofric doesn’t just breed slaves like me. He breeds rats. They’re not natural rat-colour. Those ones I saw had to mean the earthquake cracked House Leofric open underground. But, it might not have been the same quadrant of the House that has the Stone Golem in, it
might
not have been a wide enough breach to get men through…” She left it unfinished.

“‘Coulda, woulda, shoulda.’” Floria’s expression altered. “You told me about Godfrey in the middle of that fire-fight. Just, ‘he’s dead’. I haven’t had any more out of you since.”

Ash saw the darkness in the empty cup blur. It was quite genuinely several seconds before she realised tears were in her eyes.

“Godfrey died when the Citadel palace came down, in the earthquake.” Her voice gravel, sardonic, she added, “A rock fell on him. Even a priest’s luck has to run out, I suppose. Florian, we’re a mercenary company, people
die.
”

“I knew Godfrey for five years,” the woman mused. Ash heard her voice out of the candlelit darkness of the pre-dawn; did not look up to see her face.

“He changed, when he knew I was no man.” Florian coughed. “I wish he hadn’t; I could remember him with more charity now. But I only knew him a few years, Ash. You knew him for a decade, he was all the family you’ll ever have.”

Ash leaned back on her bench and met the woman’s gaze.

“
Okay.
The private word you wanted to have with me is: you don’t think I’ve grieved for Godfrey. Fine. I’ll do it when I have
time.
”

“You had
time
to go out with the scouts, instead of letting them report in like normal! That’s make-work, Ash!”

Anger, or perhaps fear of the immediate future, kicked in Ash’s belly, and came out as spite. “If you want to do something useful, grieve for your useless shit of a brother, instead – because no one else is going to!”

Florian’s mouth unexpectedly quirked. “Fernando may not be dead. You may not be a widow. You may still have a husband. With all his faults.”

There was no discernible pain in Floria’s expression.
I can’t read her,
Ash thought. There’s, what, five, ten years between us? It could be fifty!

Ash got her feet under her, pushing herself up from the table. The earth was slick under the soles of her boots. The tent smelled of mould and rot.

“Fernando did try to stand up for me in front of the King-Caliph… For all the good it did him. I didn’t see him after the roof fell in. Sorry, Florian. I thought this was something serious. I
haven’t
got time for this.”

She moved towards the tent-flap. Night air billowed the mildew-crusted canvas walls, shifted the light from the candle. Florian’s hand came up, and gripped her sleeve.

Ash looked at the long, muddy fingers knotting into the velvet of her demi-gown.

“I’ve watched you narrow down your vision.” Florian didn’t relax her grip on the cloth. “Yes, being that focused has got us across Christendom to here.
It won’t keep you alive now.
I’ve known you for five years, and I’ve watched how you look at
everything
before a fight. You’re…”

Florian’s fingers loosened, and she looked up, features in shadow, hair brilliant in the candle-shine; searching for words.

“For two months, you’ve been … closed in on yourself. Carthage scared you. The Wild Machines have scared you into not thinking! You have to start again. You’re going to miss things; opportunities, mistakes. You’re going to get people killed! You’re going to get
yourself
killed.”

After a second, Ash closed her hand over Florian’s, squeezing the chill fingers briefly. She sat down on the bench beside the surgeon, facing her. Momentarily, she dug at her brows with her fingers, grinding the flesh as if to release pressure.

“Yeah…” Some emotion crystallised; pushing to the forefront of her mind. “Yeah. This is like Auxonne; the night before the battle. Knowing you can’t avoid decisions any more. I need to get my shit together.” A memory tugged at her. “I was in this tent then, too, wasn’t I? Talking to you. I … always meant to apologise, and thank you for coming back to the company.”

She looked up to see Florian watching her with a closed, pale face. She explained, “It was the shock of finding I was pregnant. I misinterpreted what you said.”

Florian’s thick, gold brows dipped. “You ought to let me examine you.”

Ash spoke concisely. “It’s been a couple of months since I miscarried; everything’s back as it should be. You can ask the washerwomen about the clouts.”
⁷

“But—”

Ash interrupted. “But now I’ve mentioned it – I should apologise for what I said then. I
don’t
think you were being jealous that I could have a baby. And … well, I know now that you weren’t – well – making a pass at me. Sorry for thinking that you would.”

“But I would,” Floria said.

Relief at finally having made her apology overwhelmed her, so that she almost missed Florian’s reply. She stopped, still beside her in the half-dark, on the cold wooden bench, and stared at the other woman.

“Oh, I would,” Florian repeated, “but what’s the use? You don’t watch women. You never look at women. I’ve seen you, Ash – you’ve got
hot
women in this company, and
you don’t ever look at them.
The most you’ll do is put your arm around them when you’re showing them a sword-cut – and it means nothing, does it?”

Ash’s chest hurt; Floria’s vehemence left her breathless.

Floria said, “Say what you like about being ‘one of the boys’ – I watch you flirt with half the male commanders you’ve got here. You can call it
charisma
if you like. Maybe none of you realise what it is. But you
respond
to guys. Especially to my slut of a brother! And
not
to women. Now what would be the use of me making a pass at you?”

Ash stared, her mouth slightly open, no words coming into her mind. The chill of the night made her eyes and her nose run; she absently wiped a sopping velvet sleeve across her face, still with her gaze fixed on the older woman. She strained for words, finding only a complete absence of anything to say.

“Don’t worry.” A brittle note entered Florian’s voice. “I wasn’t then, and I won’t now. Not because I don’t want you. Because it’s not in you to want me.”

The harshness of her tone increased. Caught between revulsion, and an overwhelming desire to console the woman –
Florian, this is Florian; Jesu, she’s one of the few people I call friend
– Ash began to reach out a hand, and then let it drop.

“Why say this now?”

“We may both be killed before the end of tomorrow.”

Ash’s silver brows came down. “That’s been true before. Often.”

“Maybe I just wanted to wake you up.” The fair-haired woman leaned back on the bench, as if it were a movement of relaxation, and only coincidentally one that moved her further away from Ash. She might have been thoughtful, might have been smiling slightly, or frowning; the dim light made it impossible to know.

“Have I upset you?” Florian asked, after a moment’s utter quiet.

“I … don’t think so. I knew that you and Margaret Schmidt— but it never occurred to me that you’d look at
me
like that— I’m … flattered, I guess.”