Firethorn (45 page)

Galan said, “Watch him. Watch him. He can't quite make up his mind. I didn't realize at first he was talking to me, for his voice didn't change.

There was foam on the dog's blunt muzzle, on his jowls. He had a huge head, a deep and wide chest. The folds of fur around his neck and the hair standing on his hackles made him seem even more massive. He surely weighed as much as Galan. I'd heard the war dogs ate as well as any man of the Blood. They were costly to keep, which is why the pack numbered less than four hands. Which was more than enough.

The manhound looked me in the eye and my own hair stood on end. I looked away quickly. His eyes caught the torchlight and shone pale and gold; a dog should not have such pale eyes.

Galan said, “I saw this ordeal once, at my father's keep. The man broke and ran. Don't run. If you run, he'll know what you are. He'll know you for prey.”

That shamed me. I was more cowardly than that man, for I lacked the strength to run. My legs would not do my bidding. Even a beast would have more courage. It's said the stag has a special bone next to his heart to keep him from dying of fear when he's pursued. My own heart was not so fortified.

And there were dogs behind us now, between the gate and us.

“The manhounds are like soldiers,” Galan said. “They'll kill a fleeing enemy sooner than one who stands to fight. Don't mistake me—they're brave enough to take on a bear at bay—but it's the chase that heats their blood. They're not much use in a melee, for they can't tell friend from foe, but they serve right well in a rout. And our own foot soldiers know that if they break in the face of the enemy, they'll have the dogs loosed upon them.”

Would Galan tutor me now? I was not a horse or a dog or a child, to be soothed by a steady voice, no matter what was said. And yet I was steadied regardless, as if his voice made some small refuge. As if he spoke of matters that didn't pertain to us, not now, not urgently.

The leader commenced to bark again, a deep bronze clangor, peal after peal. Now I thought I heard confusion under his threat. Dogmaster had let us in, Dogmaster stood quietly by. The manhound didn't know what his god required of him.

The other dogs were strident. With every bark their warm breath smoked in the cold. They jostled flank to flank. I looked past them and saw Fleetfoot and Ev standing alone, huddled together for warmth; the dogs had left them, every one roused against us. Fleetfoot's mouth was open, a dark circle.

Galan said, “We mustn't try his patience. Can you stand alone?”

I didn't quite understand, but I shook my head: no to whatever he meant.

“You must,” he said. “You must stand now, else you'll forfeit what you came for, whether you leave here whole or not.”

I shook my head again. No.

“If he decides to attack, crouch down and cover your throat and the back of your neck. Keep your head down. I'll be your shield. I doubt very much my uncle will let the dogs kill me.”

I looked sideways at him. His voice was calm, but I marked the sweat glinting on his forehead and cheeks. He smiled at me.

“I'll take a step back now,” he said. And when I didn't let go of his arm, he said, “Come now. Sooner begun, sooner done. You're a brave one, my beauty. I know you have the heart for it.” He used to say such things to Semental, I had heard him.

My eyes stung. “Go then,” I said, but I couldn't loosen my grip. He nodded and took his arm away.

When Galan stepped back the chief manhound took another step forward. Now he spoke to me alone and his barking sounded hoarse, full of rumble and whine, and I knew he tired of this. One more stride and he would reach me. The other dogs surged around him, yelping, but none dared go in front. It was past enduring that Galan had left me to face them and I thought—knowing it was unjust—that I could have borne it better if he'd never come inside the gate at all.

Death was a mere pace from me, but the dead were far away; I took no solace from the finger bones in my pouch. If I called on the Dame or Na, how could they help? Once my own journey began, I'd be alone. There's no overtaking one who left beforehand.

I had no prayers left. I felt how small I was, and how vast the gods. Vast and indifferent. Even Dread had abandoned me. It had filled me like a roaring wind and like a wind had passed through, and I was hollowed out.

I had crossed my arms over my breast. I lowered them slowly. I took care not to meet the manhound's eye, knowing that he, like the Crux himself, would take offense at such presumption.

There was to be no such mercy as dying of fear. I had stopped shaking. A gust of wind wrapped my skirts about my legs and brought to me, over the animal reek of the dogs and my own body, the wintry scent of the north: stones, heather, moss. I tasted dust.

Let it be quick.

The manhound came that last stride, not in a rush but with deliberation, and nosed my hand. His tail came upright and wagged once. He stepped back and gave a short bark to warn me not to be too familiar. And so, in that manner, he did pass judgment: he adjudged me neither prey nor enemy nor master, whatever else I might be. Whatever else was of little concern to him. Other dogs crowded close to get my scent, and by the order of their coming, I knew their rank in the pack. They too must pass judgment, for each approached warily and left appeased. Last of all, Fleetfoot and Ev came up, and one touched my arm and the other clasped my shoulder. Fleetfoot's breath came short, as if he'd just run a long race. Ev's eyes and nose had been leaking. His hand was cold.

I heard Galan behind me. “I think we might go now,” he said, and his voice was thick. “Slowly. Don't turn around.” I felt his hand on my back and I leaned against him. I was trembling again.

We backed two steps, three, four, and the lead manhound sat on his haunches and yawned, showing every tooth. But his eye was watchful.

Dogmaster whistled, the gate opened behind us, and we were out.

The Crux was standing just outside the pen with a torchbearer beside him. The ruddy light picked out the pale scar that ran across his brow and next to his left eye, close enough to pucker the eyelid. The lines beside his mouth were graved deep. He spared me a glance, a look that considered and perhaps reconsidered, and made me rue he ever had cause to notice me.

He fixed his eyes on Galan next, and did not let go. “Well, Galan,” he said.

“Well, Sire Adhara dam Pictor by Falco of Crux,” said Galan. “Or may I call you uncle again?”

“That will be up to your father, when I tell him what he sired. A dirtlover.”

Galan's smile never changed. “You don't need my father's leave to disown me, First of Crux.”

“Don't you think you've tempted me enough for one night? You've always been willful and spoilt, though not for lack of chastisement—but this was, of all your follies, the most foolhardy—to make this ordeal your own, and thereby make it false.”

“Why, Uncle, it was to keep it true that I entered the pen—lest you be overly tempted to pluck out a certain troublesome thorn. And can you dispute she faced the dogs alone and they let her live?”

“I would you hadn't said that, boy,” the Crux said balefully. “For the fondness I once bore you, I'll let you outlive the insult. But you'd best stay out of my sight until you recollect that I don't need some green sprig to teach me not to cheat.
I
taught
you.
Next time you try me, you might well be lopped off.”

Galan knelt and put his forehead to the ground, but it was too late. The Crux turned his back and stalked away. I knelt beside Galan and put my hand on his back, on the stiff brigandine, and felt him shake. He was a long time with his face to the ground. Some stayed to stare, then wandered off to their gossip or their pallets.

When Galan straightened up his cheeks were wet. “My tongue is cursed,” he said.

hat night I trembled and Galan soothed me, and when I turned, restless on the cot, he turned with me and would not let go. The heat of his skin drove some of the chill from me. I was beholden to him; he' d given me a gift beyond recompense, beyond acknowledgment. I had nothing to give in return, not even my purest gratitude. For Sire Rodela had tainted even that, when he cut me with his blade and his lies, and marred me so I hardly recognized myself.

I wanted what was stolen from me. After Galan slept I thought of nothing else. Pains kept me awake, a burning at my cleft where I' d been skinned, the scraping of every breath. I don' t know when I first thought of poison. It was in my mind as if it had always been there, how I'd kept the rest of the dwale; how the Dame had said the black berries tasted sweet and wholesome.

In the morning my voice was gone. My throat was barred with a dark bruise.

The Crux sent his three Auspices over at first light. They wore their regalia of green robes and peaked hats, and by that we guessed their purpose. There had been too many wounded in our tent, too much sickness; there had been hatred let loose and blood spilled—worse, a woman's blood, and worse yet, a mudwoman's. The priests came to cleanse us of this defilement and to make sure that ill will and ill fortune did not escape our tent to endanger others.

We were all awake, having risen before dawn as usual. Galan was in his underarmor, breakfasting on dry bread and mincemeat while his jacks fastened up his laces. He'd not been forewarned of the Auspices'visit and he was offended, or so I thought when I saw the lines gather between his brows. He took it as a rebuke from the Crux, and well he might, after the way they'd parted; yet there was no denying the Crux was within his powers to protect the clan—and his errant nephew—from further harm.

So he welcomed the priests courteously, each by their full name, and set us all to do their bidding. They had scant courtesy for him. Divine Hamus had us bustling until the tent was arranged to his liking, telling us there was no time to dither. Noggin ran to fetch Flykiller and the horseboy Uly, for they said all of Galan's men save his foot soldiers should be present; his women too. The curtains about Consort Vulpeja's chamber were tied back. She lay with the blanket pulled up to her chin, her head turned on the pillow, her eyes following the priests.

First they sought to know the cause of the trouble in Galan's tent, what shades or gods had been offended. They'd brought four birds in cages: two white doves, two black crows. Inside the tent, on the space we cleared for him, Divine Hamus unrolled a length of white cloth. He was the smallest priest, the roundest, the mildest in seeming, but he was the Sun's Auspex and led the way in all sacrifices. He took a dove and a crow from the cages and wrung their necks without spilling blood, and the priests watched gravely as the birds staggered and jerked and flapped until their deaths caught up with them.

He skinned the birds and laid the empty, feathered husks to one side, wings and heads and feet still attached. The rest was divided into parts, even down to the bones, each part belonging to a god and having three signs to be read, one for each avatar. These little clots of flesh were laid out on the white cloth and the priests bent over them, poking and pointing, and as they consulted, their tall hats nodded and bumped together.

A hush had settled on all of us, all the watchers. Galan sat upon a stool and looked on with a pinched face; Spiller's jaw hung slack and Noggin sniffled and Rowney crouched in a corner as far from the priests as he could get; Flykiller sat motionless, but if he'd been a horse, I'm sure we'd have seen his tail switch and his hide twitch, for his unease showed in his staring eyes.

I felt that prickling on my neck that comes when the gods have been invoked. Just then I feared the Auspices more than the gods, for I thought they'd come to lay blame and I'd get more than my due.

Before yesterday I was Galan's sheath and nothing uncommon. Today I was Galan's folly. Unlike his other folly, the wager, he'd get no glory of it. The Crux had called his nephew a dirtlover because of me. He had said it and others would repeat it, and the next time it was thrown in Galan's face, he'd not be able to let it pass, and there'd be more bloodshed.

If the priests pointed to me, if the signs pointed to me, I wouldn't be able to make an answer, for the swelling in my throat had stoppered up my voice. I couldn't even whisper.

When the priests had done conferring, Divine Hamus beckoned Galan over and showed him a thin gray worm he'd found in the entrails of the crow. The Auspices had no difficulty interpreting this sign. As the crow was the male body of the household, the tripes pertained to Rift, and gut worms belonged in the domain of the Queen of the Dead, this could only mean that the malice of a male shade was at work, and who could this shade be but Sire Bizco? Since last night the whole troop knew how Sire Rodela had courted affliction by defiling a corpse, stealing a scrap of scalp and leaving the rest to rot instead of burn; he'd not been satisfied by taking a life, he must rob the man of his peace as well. It wasn't the least of his offenses, though the requital for it had been left to the gods and the dead and not undertaken by the Crux.

It could easily be seen—said Divine Hamus—that the shade had not only made Sire Rodela's wound fester, he'd made his mind fester too. Clearly the shade had moved him to skin me and make a false accusation against me; in his right mind he'd never have done it. Now Sire Rodela was shunned. Sire Alcoba, his new master, had refused him shelter last night. He bade him sleep across the threshold, outside the tent, that he might be stepped on more conveniently as Sire Alcoba went in and out. Sire Bizco was avenged: the armiger's downfall was neatly accomplished.

There should be no trace of the dead man left in the tent to haunt us. His scalp had been burned days ago and Sire Rodela's belongings tossed outside into a mud puddle last night, and with them any stray hairs; and his living malice by rights should have followed Sire Rodela, his tormentor, and not clung to us.

But the worm said otherwise.

To drive Sire Bizco's shade from the tent and to cleanse us of the blood and enmity with which he'd befouled us, Divine Hamus and Divine Tam—bac each took a wing of the crow and swept everywhere, from floor to ceiling, over chests and pallets and sacks, over Consort Vulpeja's cot and blanket, over the rest of us too, from head to toe. I shivered when the feathers brushed my face. They sang all the while, an eerie song with words in some secret tongue. Divine Xyster droned low while Divine Hamus keened, and Divine Tambac's voice, a quavering thin thread, stitched between them.

When they had finished sweeping, there was a pile of dust and scraps and crumbs and mouse droppings and a few bones—for Noggin didn't sweep as often as he ought—on the earthen floor. They burned this on the brazier along with the wings of the crow, and candlebark and bitter herbs that made a sweet and pungent smoke, and when all was ash, the priests ended their song and seemed satisfied.

Now they turned to the dove, and the omen they'd found in her corpse, which stood for the female body of the household. Her heart was enlarged and too pale a red, which could clearly be seen when it was laid next to the crow's. When they cut it open, the chambers were seen to be malformed. Trouble with Ardor in all its avatars, Smith and Hearthkeeper and Wildfire, they said, and didn't look far for cause, for there was Consort Vulpeja, Ardor's child, on her sickbed watching.

I felt then as though a great black wing had swept over me and gone. I was so glad to be overlooked. I had wronged the Auspices, thinking they would dare offend the gods by pretending to read what wasn't written. Yet their interpretation was faulty, for they didn't see that I had also been marked by Ardor. Since the Smith had saved me in the Kingswood, there had been many days—such as yesterday, in the dog pen—when I felt abandoned by the god, by all the gods, and other days when I'd mistaken my own fancies for Ardor's bidding; now I couldn't have said whether I'd served the god well or no, but I felt unknown purposes still at work in me. Here was another sign, in that pale engorged heart, of Ardor's swollen will.

The more I thought on this sign, the more I feared it showed an ill will. My relief gave way to misgivings.

The priests went to stand about Consort Vulpeja's bed. In silence she beckoned to Sunup, and the girl helped her to sit and took a place on the cot behind her so she could lean against her, back to back. Her hair being unbound for sleeping, Consort Vulpeja covered it with the blanket, and with this gesture wrapped herself in modesty, in dignity. She kept her eyes downcast.

Divine Xyster said, “Consort, it's a marvel to see you so much better. “The last time the carnifex had seen her was the morning after the dwale smoke, less than a tennight ago, before she had forced herself to eat and so smoothed the hollows of her cheeks and changed the pallor of her skin from whey to cream.

Galan was standing behind the priests with his arms crossed. He muttered, “Indeed, she grows better and her temper grows worse.”

“Ill temper?” asked Divine Hamus.

Galan shrugged. “She curses at my sheath like a foot soldier.”

When Consort Vulpeja spoke at last, her voice was small and bewildered. “Your pardon, Sire, but what am I to do if the drudge needs correction? She's disobedient and clumsy besides.” She appealed to the priests. “Surely such faults must be plucked up at once by the root, or they will spread.

“You misuse her,” Galan said.

“I fear you're too lax with her, Sire. It's made her impudent. ‘Smite a drudge and he will favor you, favor a drudge and he will spite you.'As you see, I can't smite her, for I'm too weak. If I speak to her roundly, it's less than she's owed.” Her words were hard, but her voice was soft.

Galan took a step closer. “She healed you. You owe her your life, not your curses.” I wished he hadn't said it, for Divine Xyster peered at me where I stood behind Spiller. I didn't want him curious.

Her cheeks flushed red. She forgot to be gentle; she raised her eyes and her voice and cried, “Do I, Sire? I'll not be indebted to her. I'd as soon she took my life back—I no longer want it.”

I thought how she must have had more guile before, when she was a maid and played coy day and night. Now she was so overstrung she couldn't sound one note long before it began to sour. She played upon my faults and sounded her own: ire and obstinacy.

Or it may be that her temper had indeed been sweet and demure and guileless before Galan had won his wager. Not that she was blameless, even so. Even the most demure maid knows what treasure she must guard. She 'd brought dishonor on herself and her house and clan, dishonor and all that followed after—poison, her father's shameful death, and feud. So many blows. The sign of her house was the anvil, and it was certain the Smith was still at work on her; she altered daily under his hammer. Some metals strengthen in the forging, others prove brittle and are cast aside. I feared she was near breaking.

Galan didn't know that she meant what she said, that she'd set her mind on dying. Since the eve before yesterday, she'd taken no food from my hand or Sunup's.

Divine Xyster rubbed the bridge of his long nose. Divine Hamus said to her, “You don't wish to live?”

She covered her face with the blanket.

The priests, all three of them, turned to Galan. He shrugged.

“Have you quarreled?” Divine Hamus asked him.

“No. To me she's as meek as a mouse to a cat, but I've heard how she shrews behind my back. On my part, I've never said a cruel word or raised a hand against her.”

“Consort Vulpeja drew her knees up and bent over them. From under the blanket came her voice, choking. “Cruel. You are cruel. Why did you ever send for me if you didn't want me? You'd have been kinder to leave me to die in my father's tent.

“Galan said, “I found I couldn't let you die. Not because of me.

“Her back shook, but no sound escaped save for a few dragging breaths. Even through the blanket I could see how thinly her flesh covered her bones, and how slight she was, narrow in the shoulders, narrow as a boy at the hips. Sunup laid a hand on her back. I wondered which was worse for her, Galan's indifference or his pity.

Galan said, “I swear to you now, I'll take no other concubine of the Blood while you live. You shall be the only one. You'll have a respected place in my household. Soon you'll go home, and I'll send word to my wife to give you your own apartments in the keep, your own drudges. She'll treat you with all due courtesy, I assure you.” He said to the priests, “I can do no more. Isn't it enough?”