Firethorn (7 page)

“Galan.”

“And your mother's house?”

“Capella.”

“Gods! Are you Sire Pava's kinsman, then?”

“Our mothers are sisters.” He looked at me under his lids.

“Give me the rest, then—your father's house?”

“Falco.” This time he laughed at me, because my jaw hung open. He took a lock of hair that had fallen over my face and tucked it behind my ear.

“The First's son?”

“No, his nephew. Aren't you pleased? They'll make much of you in the village.”

“Why should they? You'll be gone soon enough. Besides, what's done on the UpsideDown Days must not be mentioned.” Now this Sire Galan dam Capella by Falco of Crux put me too much in mind of Sire Pava. The Blood think we should be honored by their touch, as they were honored when the gods mated with their ancestors. They don't imagine we might disagree.

The torch guttered out. I could see the bright road across the sky and the twelve godsigns in the stars. In the sky each sign writes a god's name. But arranged one after another, in dots of ink on sized linen, with marks above, right, or below to indicate the avatars, the signs can be made to mean almost anything. So the Dame had taught me, when she'd taught me to read.

I didn't need to wonder what she'd say if she saw me lying with a man in a field. Perhaps she did see me.

“Look, there's Crux,” I said, pointing. I was glad of the dark, for blood had risen to my face.

“I'm surprised you know the stars,” he murmured.

I bit back a short reply.

He said, “I saw you at the gate the other day. When your red hair got loose it was hard to miss. And I thought to myself: that one's mine, come Carnal Night.” He put his hand between my thighs and I felt a pulse start under his touch. “I see you're red here too.” His voice was not as sleepy.

There was balm in this. I was glad to be sought after. Better that than to think I was all he could catch. I pulled my dress over my head and persuaded his shirt to come off, and then his hose. I wanted the heat of his skin on my whole body.

The second time, I touched him wherever I pleased, wherever he pleased, and I marveled that we each had ceded to the other the right to wander freely in so much new territory. I found him embellished with scars: a long, thin line under his jawbone; a weal on his shin; a crescent-shaped ridge on his back; nicks and scratches everywhere. They were pale against his skin in the dark, and they gave my fingers something rough over which to linger. I said, this one? and he said a horse had kicked him. And this? He didn't remember, or had other games in mind.

We lay in the field all night. In the morning I was sore and covered with goose bumps. Under the Sun my tongue was tied. He said he'd find me again, but I didn't believe him. We parted on the hill where one footpath leads to the manor's front gate and the other to the crofts in the village. He flashed a grin at me and said farewell.

UpsideDown Days are fickle days. I'd found a man who pleased me well for a night beside a hedge. It was Carnal Night, and no wonder Desire's lamp had burned for us. I hoped to remember the hollow of his throat and the taste of his sweat, the feel of muscles shifting under his skin, his fingers digging into my haunches, for such are gifts of the festival.

For the rest, I meant to put Sire Galan out of my mind easily, and most of all the way he looked before the torch burned out, when I was first under him. He'd raised himself above me with his weight on his palms, and reared back his head and closed his eyes and plowed me deeper into the furrow. I could have been anyone, or no one, the earth itself, like the clods that crumbled under my hands.

But I was a fool to think Ardor was done with me. Surely a spark of Ardor Wildfire had kindled Desire's lamp, and showed me the unexpected path at my feet.

That evening Sire Galan found his way to Az's door and asked for me. I was surprised to see him, and glad in a way that worried me. He lifted me up for a kiss. It was the UpsideDown Days, so Az shrugged and shut the door, leaving us out in the yard.

“Come back to the manor, where there's a bed,” Sire Galan said.

“I can't. I'll be seen.”

“What does it matter? We'll have a whole bed to ourselves. Sire Alcoba and I have been sharing one of the cabinets, but I offered to let him ride my black courser for the hunt tomorrow if he'd go elsewhere for two nights. He would do anything to ride Semental—and besides, he'll have no trouble finding a soft maid or two to pillow him.”

I hadn't planned to go back to the manor that way. I was going to wait for the feast at the end of the UpsideDown Days, so I could see Sire Pava and Dame Lyra bend their proud necks to serve us mudfolk sitting at table. But this had a good savor to it: cabinet beds were for guests, not drudges. I'd never slept in one in my life. I ducked into the hut for my shawl. Az made a face and waved me out.

The hall of the manor was dim and smoky and smaller than I remembered it. There were men everywhere, some sleeping, some pricking women in the corners, and others dicing and drinking and gnawing bones. The place stank like a fox den. The Dame would not have allowed it, not even during the UpsideDown Days. She would not have used torches, either, for they cast sparks and blackened the tapestries. She never stinted on candles when the occasion called for it, thrifty as she was.

Sire Pava was sitting before the fire with Dame Lyra, the Crux, and two of the other cataphracts. They had a low screen about them to set them apart from the revels. Dame Lyra sat stiff and quiet with a wooden smile, and she kept her best gown tucked about her as if a flood of dirty water swirled around her slippers. Sire Pava was flushed, exalted by the honor or too much wine. He called out, “Look what Galan has dragged in. You worry me, Cousin, if that's the best you can find on a night when every woman in the village will flip her kirtle over her head.”

Sire Galan answered back, “I have all the luck tonight. She fits me to the hilt.” He put his hand on the small of my back and pushed me forward into the hall, through the crowd of men sitting on the floor. He wore an easy smile, but I noticed his other hand was on the dagger at his belt.

I'd have killed them both at that moment if I'd had the means—or less sense.

Sire Pava said, “She's a dry well, Cousin. I know because I've plumbed her. Don't waste your time. You ought to be doing your duty instead, begetting half-breeds to improve the drudges'blood.”

Sire Galan took two steps toward him, saying his manners should be mended.

I grabbed his arm and found my tongue. “Everyone knows Sire Pava needs help siring bastards.”

Such was the license of the Days that this earned me a laugh rather than a beating. I saw the Crux lean forward and touch Sire Pava's knee to turn his attention. Dame Lyra glared and I lifted my head high and went past her. There was nothing for it but to be as brazen as I was thought to be.

Though the feather bed was soft, I did not do much sleeping. When Sire Galan tired I goaded him on. Our bodies were greased with sweat, and the curtains held the smell of our musk close. When I cried out, sometimes I thought of Sire Pava and hoped I was keeping him awake. Rage can lend its own heat to desire, and that night I mastered Sire Galan more than he mastered me. I left before daybreak, stepping around the pallets on the hall floor.

That was the morning of the last UpsideDown Day, the day of the feast. I came back with the villagers in the evening. Plank tables were crowded into the hall, spread with white linens. They'd scrubbed and sanded the floor, and put out tallow lamps and candles. The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood—even the Crux himself—brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag, crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted well. We were forbidden to kill the deer that fattened on our coleworts and stole our grain, and the venison tasted all the better for the salt of revenge.

I'd looked forward to the feast, but I'd never imagined Sire Galan, or how he'd steal my thoughts and make Dame Lyra's fetching and Sire Pava's carrying less important. Their humility was hollow anyway. When Sire Pava came around the table and bent his knee, offering a platter of pigeons baked in clay, he didn't keep his head down as was proper; his eyes promised that tomorrow we'd serve him again.

I watched Sire Galan. He had a walk like a stalking cat, and could carry a brimming cup so smoothly not a drop of wine would spill. Once he stood close behind my bench and pressed my back with his hip. I thought the feast would never end. Though I gorged until my belly was tight, I'd not had my fill of Sire Galan, and we had but one more night.

The next day was Equinox. The priest would start the count of tennights and months. At the feast tomorrow, we would take our proper places, and the villagers would kneel and swear fealty again. Balance would be restored. But when the world has been shaken and cast at odds, only the gods know what is balance and what is chaos.

That night I lay in the cabinet bed looking at the ceiling, tracing the carved and painted vine on the panel above in hearthlight that came through the curtains. The walls were too close, the air too still.

I could feel Sire Galan watching me, and my face stiffened. The Days were over, and he'd be going soon. I would not show I cared. I turned over in my mind what questions to ask, so I might hear his voice: if I asked whether he'd been to war before, and he had not, then I'd be more afraid; and if I asked how long the campaign would last, he might think I hoped to see him on his return, but I was not vain enough for that. There was mischief in every question.

He said my name twice, as if he liked it on his tongue, and turned my head toward him with his hand. “Come with me,” he whispered.

I turned my face away, and tears came against my will, sliding down my cheek and into my ear. I'd heard what kind of woman followed a man to war: a sheath. A cataphract might share her with his armiger or lend her to a guest, and if he was not too particular, he might let his drudges have her now and then. If she didn't begin as a whore, she usually ended as one, wearing a striped skirt and opening her legs for any man with coin until she was clapped out.

He went on whispering. “You can ride the chestnut mare. She's steady. I'll get another mule for the baggage.”

“I won't be shared,” I said.

“Never. You shall be my own.” He said this so fiercely I believed him.

“What of the Crux? He won't welcome me.”

“Many a sword brings his sheath along; he won't blink an eye. Come with me, I'm intent on it. I'll care for you well, and you'll bring me luck.”

I said nothing, only looked at him.

He laughed low in his throat and raised himself over me. “I can offer you better reasons, since you're not convinced,” he said.

While we coupled, my thoughts went wandering. Sire Galan would tire of me someday and leave me standing by the roadside with a few coins and a new dress, and Sire Pava laughing to see it. And suppose he did? I'd lived a long year alone in the Kingswood. I needed no man's help.

But that was all bravado. Already—how had it come about so quickly?—desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. Nothing to hold me here. None to regret my leaving, save Az.

I wrapped my legs around him and gripped his shoulders and pushed back.

he First of Crux was not pleased, not at all, when Sire Galan took me to him and asked leave for me to travel with the troop. He said, “You know I don't hold with sheaths—useless baggage. A sheath is no better than a harlot, but more trouble.” Sire Galan stood his ground, but I saw him flinch. He stood in front as if to shield me.

The Crux went on to call me a whore four or five different ways, and a sow and a vixen besides. I endured it. I was so set on leaving, it seemed impossible that I'd ever thought of staying.

But when the Crux said I was a bitch in heat and all the dogs in camp would fight over me, I stepped forward, eyes downcast. “Sire Adhara dam Pictor by Falco, First of Crux,” I said, in the correct and formal speech I'd heard the Dame use when she was most irked with me, “I won't hold you back. I can ride, I can sleep on stones and keep a fire going in the rain. I know herbs for many uses.” I showed him my palms, callused from the hoe, sickle, and pestle. “Does a whore have hands like these? I know how to work. And I promise you no one will quarrel over me—I keep to myself.”

The Crux laughed, a short bark. He said, looking at Sire Galan, “You can tell your little braggart she'd never hold us back. Isn't that so? A bit of mud may cling to a boot for a time, but it's easily scraped off. Take her, if you're so ruled by your prick that you must have her, but keep her out of my way or I'll feed her to the manhounds. And tell her never to address me again, unless I give her leave.”

I'd forgotten my place. If I'd been a man, I might not have survived my presumption. I should have let Sire Galan answer, for there was nothing I could say that the Crux was obliged to hear. My face burned. I dropped to my knees and touched my forehead to the ground.

The Crux turned on his heel and left us. Sire Galan pulled me up and kept hold of my hand. He'd seemed so assured before; now I saw how green he was, when he stood against a man. He saw me in a new light too, when I mislaid my country accent and my deference. I had dared to contradict the Crux. It frightened us both.

I'm not sure why the Crux changed his mind and let me come, unless it was to teach me my own inconsequence. Or because a god whispered in his ear.

While the troop was readying to go, I made my own preparations. I stitched myself a wide leather girdle, lined with hidden pockets for necessities: childbane, for it might not grow where I was going; simples to soothe pains, bring down a fever, poultice a wound; seasonings for the cook pot; chunks of rock salt. One pocket held a handful of berries from the firethorn tree, wrapped in oiled vellum; the berries were too dangerous to use for healing, but I kept them. They reminded me of the Kingswood and a god's gift.

From the belt I hung an iron knife with a bone handle and a copper fire flask lined with clay and firewort to keep a coal from the hearth alive. The flask was stamped with the sign of Ardor Hearthkeeper; I'd never willfully go without her blessing again. I also took my sheepskin cloak with faded ward signs and Na's threadbare old dress. A bit of cloth was too precious to waste.

Two days after Equinox I said farewell. This time I'd be farther away than the Kingswood. Az was the hardest to leave, so I left her last, and took care that I found her alone in her dim hut. I knew, like Na, she'd never live to see me again.

Az fetched a leather sack from a hiding place beside the clay house goddess, who kept watch on us through a tiny hole in the wall, safe from the prying eyes of the priest.

“I'm giving you these because you have no blood family,” she said, spilling small painted bones from the sack onto the table. She held one against her index finger, so I could see it matched the last joint, and dropped it into my palm. The tip of the bone was painted red. “This is from the right hand of my sister, from Na. I'm giving her to you.” She chose another bone, dyed a deep blue all over. “This is the Dame. Na wanted you to have her. They cared for you, and they'll counsel you well.” She took up the other finger bones, one by one, and kissed them and put them back in the sack. Some were nothing but brown shards.

It chilled me to think of Na cutting off the top joint of the Dame's bloodless finger and tucking her hand back under the shroud. She'd dared the wrath of the priest and troubled the Dame's shade. She'd kept secrets, even from me. I wondered how many other secrets were hidden in the mud walls of the village huts, as these small bones had been hidden. A few months of grinding barley, and I'd been arrogant enough to think I knew the folk who lived here—and Az herself. I was daunted to find she had shades at her beck and call.

We squatted near the doorway where a patch of sunlight came into the hut. With a stick, Az drew a circle two handspans wide on the hard dirt floor and divided it into twelve equal parts by crossing it with lines for the twelve directions. Starting at the east and going around the circle, she named the god who governed each wedge-shaped domain. Then she scratched two concentric circles inside the greater one, so that the wedges were cut into three parts, one for every avatar of the governing god. She named these too, pointing with her stick as if she expected me to remember.

I do remember, as clearly as if the compass were before me now, carved in stone. I'd heard tell of the gods and their avatars all my life, though some had always seemed remote and indifferent to me, and others near at hand—too close, at times. Everyone knows the prayers of drudges don't wing their way to the gods as swiftly or as surely as those of the Blood, but they are still our gods and we belong to them.

The mudfolk used to live in ignorance, worshiping the numina of trees and boulders and waters instead of the gods, but even in those long-ago days, they knew of Eorõe Artifex, though they called her by another name. It's a tale everyone knows, how she formed our ancestors of clay—mud and Blood alike, we spring from those first people—and gave us her breath, the breath of life, and then she died. She is the only dead avatar. The god Eorõe lives on, still manifest to us as the Cornking and Frenzy, but the death of even one avatar warns us that the gods too may be mortal.

Az rubbed charcoal on her eyelids, the better to see, and she cast the bones for me. I was reminded of how I was cut off from the tree of generations, with nothing to bind me to my forebears but a fragment of a dream, for I had only two bones in the stead of a handful of ancestors. She had to throw the bones three times for every reading, to point to six signs all told.

The first reading is always for character. A drudge lives from one calamity to the next, and even a king can't guard himself against every hazard; so we are tried like a coin, and learn whether we are made of base or true metal. Az didn't ask the bones what was to come, but rather how I should meet my fortune. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids, smearing the charcoal, and swayed from side to side. Her voice altered. The Dame pointed to wandering, aimlessness, flood—or, it may be, discovery, resolve, wellspring, for every sign had two meanings. Na said beware of prisons, obstacles, shackles; their transformations were shelter, vessels, roots. Each warning was woven with its reverse, like a cloth with two faces. I could make little sense of it. Az said it was counsel to bear in mind on my journey, when I had to choose one path or another.

For the second reading the compass marked time: the inner circle the past, the outer the future, the present in between. Az tightened her lips as she threw, displeased with the pattern the bones were making. Three bones landed in the present: Crux Moon, Hazard Chance, and Ardor Wild fire. Only one finger pointed to my past, to Rift Dread. Two bones fell in the future: Ardor Smith and Rift Queen of the Dead.

I made light of it, saying I could see for myself that the present was ruled by a most mischievous assortment of avatars, and as for the rest, are we not all born in fear and living at hazard, and doesn't the Queen of the Dead lie in wait for everyone?

Az shook her head and said the bones were not so quick to give up their secrets. Avatars have many qualities, and the only way to tell which ones mattered here was to listen hard, for the bones spoke to one another.

Seeing she was vexed with me, I asked her more humbly: what did she see, what did she hear?

Az hesitated. “I see you've chosen a man who loves Chance. You'll find he takes his luck too much for granted. He'll wager, and the dice will tumble and the world will spin, and even when he wins, he'll be overset. I see you travel toward the past as well as the future: war ahead and war behind, and strife along the way.”

“Nothing more?”

She said that I need make no provisions for old age.

Did she think I expected a long life? Such a reckless mood had overtaken me when I decided to go with Sire Galan that I believed I could greet whatever came my way, whether it be living or dying, with equal readiness; beneath that was a secret conviction—a folly of the young—that death was not for me.

The third and last reading was for the gods. Az said that of course I shouldn't shirk my duties to any god on its holy days, but the bones would tell me which gods I should honor with fealty, prayers, and sacrifices, and turn to daily for guidance and help.

On the first cast both bones landed in Ardor, one in the Smith, the other in Hearthkeeper. On the second cast in Ardor Smith and Ardor Wildfire. The third, both in Ardor Wildfire.

Az sat back on her heels, looking grim, saying nothing. She rubbed out the circle in the dirt and handed me the two finger bones with a little bag she'd made to keep them in, a circle of leather embroidered with the compass and tied with a drawstring. I kissed the bones and put them in the bag: red for Na, blue for the Dame. I didn't think I'd be able to hear them speak the way Az could, and surely it was selfish to keep them with me, tethering their shades to the world they'd left behind. Yet I felt that Na and the Dame would not begrudge me, and it was a comfort, that slight weight tied to my belt, the touch of the dead.

It turned out that Az wasn't sorry I was going; the future she'd seen in the flight of a crow had come apace, and Fleetfoot was leaving. She wanted me to look after him.

“Sire Pava wants him as a runner, and he means to go. Says I have enough sons to take care of me,” she said.

There's a saying in the village: have three sons, one for dying young, one for a soldier, and one for your old age. Az was richer than most, with fi ve healthy boys. But Fleetfoot was shy of twelve years old. She still nagged him to keep out of the rain and wear his hat in the Sun. I promised to take care of him, as much as he'd let me, and I rocked Az as she cried. She was not much bigger than a girl. I clenched my teeth against the tenderness welling up in me, this treacherous affection for Az, with her crooked back and brittle limbs, who cared enough to tie her sister's spirit to me. Treacherous, for I'd not be staying.

When I shut the gate behind me, I felt more relief than sorrow to leave that stifling hut. The world is wide, they say. No mortal has found the end of it.

Az and I were not the only ones reading omens. The Crux had his three Auspices out before dawn to make a sacrifice and consult their god. When these priests had arrived, we hadn't marked them because they'd been armored like the other warriors of the Blood. But for this occasion they wore green robes, peaked caps, and solemn faces. They whispered together, looking up and pointing, scratching signs in the dirt. A sliver of Moon sat near the horizon, and a wind from north-of-east pushed a freight of clouds over half the sky. Long before the Sun cleared Bald Pate, its light tinted the clouds lavender and rose and gold.

Sire Galan and I huddled under his fur-lined cloak, for the air had a bite to it, and he told me that these priests were the clan's best diviners, so renowned that the king himself called on them from time to time. One Auspex, Divine Hamus, had devoted years to studying the Sun, the female aspect of Crux. He was a rarity, for most female avatars are served by priestesses; Sire Galan whispered that this priest had been called to the Sun's service when he was a boy, and in his fervency he'd sacrificed his sacs for her, and would never grow to be a proper man. He knew the significance of her path in every hour and season, of the colors of her face from dawn to dusk, even of the shadows she cast. Divine Xyster was skilled in reading the ambiguous omens given by Crux Moon as he changed his disguise from sickle to orb. The third priest, Divine Tambac, could decipher the future in the realm of the Heavens, and anything that filled it: the shapes and colors of the clouds, the stars left covered and uncovered, lightning and storms, the flight of birds.