Wildfire (13 page)

 

  
In just such a way he’d looked at me before sending me to face his manhounds, dogs bred for war. I’m sure he thought they’d kill me. Sire Rodela had lied, but I’d been the one to stand the ordeal, and for a long time now I’d been forced to carry my rage at this injustice, for what else could be done with it? And it had grown cold and heavy and hard in my belly like a stone child that will never come to birthing. But that heavy rage was dissolving now in the acid of the black drink, and spreading through me like an intoxicant. “Flap flip flop,” I said. “I know what you want. You want my taunt, my tongue to swim slippery slick, lickety spit.”

 

  
“You talk nonsense,” the Crux said.

 

  
“You too. You four.” Him and the priestess and his two priests, his lapdogs.

 

  
The Crux said, “When my nephew could have anyone, why does he choose her? Ill spoken, bad tempered, and thin as a mule on the far side of winter—why would he want her if she hadn’t done something to capture him? And why keep her? I’ve told him before, never bring on campaign a woman you’re not willing to leave behind.”

 

  
“He did grieve me,” I said.

 

  
The priestess of Carnal said, “Sire Galan doesn’t strike me as a man who’d fancy a meek mouse.”

 

  
The Crux said, “Maybe. But this shrew?”

 

  
“Ask Sigh Galan, ask and ask again,” I said, “you never liked his awkward. What, did you never have a leman who could thaw you, make your sap to rile? Couldn’t she do it? I daresay she tried.” I nodded at the priestess of Carnal. How easily one word led to another! Though I saw the mask of judgment slip on the right side of the Crux’s face, I kept speaking, and before I knew it, I was boasting. “I wanted no glamoury flum tricks of a Profligate of Canny to diddle my sire; I have blaze enough to keep him charmed, and since the lighting I burn even heavier.”

 

  
I stretched the Crux’s patience until it broke, and where was his self-command now? He slapped my left cheek and the tender flesh stung as if a pattern of fire burned across my face. Nausea rose in me again and I clapped my hand over my mouth and swallowed hard. The grit was under my eyelids too.

 

  
Divine Xyster said, “See how she sickens when she lies?”

 

  
I laughed behind my hand. This black drink of theirs was useless; it made me sick, but no sicker for falsity. I lied outright when I said I had used no tricks on Sire Galan, for I’d bound him to me by a secret rite, burying a womandrake in a muddy riverbank. But the Crux must not hear of it, and Galan must not hear of it, no matter how trippingly words came to me. No matter that the binding had proved so weak that Galan had left me on the wrong side of the Inward Sea.

 

  
I rubbed my tongue on the tail of my headcloth. “You give me poise and then accuse me of illing!”

 

  
“A liar will sicken.”

 

  
I pointed at the cup. “What’s in that? I want more.” Was the thick residue made of ground seeds? I thought it might be clay, mixed in so the poison wouldn’t kill. Whatever it was, it made my stomach shrink and my head swell until it was hollow and light and full of billowing smoke.

 

  
Divine Xyster feigned not to heed me, but the Crux said, “Why?”

 

  
“You’ve found a clue, a a cure. Give me more, I’ve a clamor that wants to get out. The blighting stopped up my mouth, why do you suppose? If Allfire loves me so much, why did it make me mute?”

 

  
Divine Xyster looked at the Crux, who said, “She’s drunk. You’ve made her drunk!”

 

  
Divine Hamus said, “I never heard that anyone craved the black drink.”

 

  
“Maybe so, but why blither about it?” I grinned, exulting in my rage. “No mother, no brother, no fother to make a bother, that’s what they say of
a low woman. But, Sire…my Sire, your nief, he will be wrath that the ink is gone. And if I tell him Bite did it, he will be wrath with
you.
”

 

  
“You won’t tell him,” said the Crux. “It wouldn’t be wise.”

 

  
“Or what? Will you have your prates give me more of the blank drink? You should’ve given some to Sire Bordello, if it’s so true, instead of unleashing a pack of manhunts on me. But you always knew the bondager laid about me—lied—didn’t you?” Sire Rodela circled my head with a loud whine, and I tried to snatch him out of the air. I shouted at him, “Sire
Rodela,
Sire
Rodela,
do you hear me? You whoreson lowson! I heard tell your mother was a sprawling woman, so many dipped in her welter that she ran dry. You don’t like that, do you? I’m glad if I offense you, because you served me the same. And now you can do nothing but hizz. If you could do else, you’d have done it.”

 

  
I’d dared to utter a dead man’s name. Divine Hamus made the avert sign to keep his shade away, but the shade was nearby, and had been all along, rejoicing that I was sickened by the black drink, that I spoke so carelessly the Crux was bound to kill me. That’s what Rodela said, buzzing in my ear. The Crux looked dismayed. He said, “What are you talking about? Who are you talking to?”

 

  
“Don’t you ear him? I’d swot him, but I can’t see him. Even dead, he is a nonsense. Noisense, nuisance,” I said. “Can’t you hear him whinge? That’s Sly Rodomont, my sire’s cozen and a man after my own despite. He should have been born all mud, instead of just besmutched by it, for he’d have made a fine stanking tanner. He stitched my pelfry inside his helmet—I found it there, a little bit of skin with my woman’s fear.”

 

  
The fly landed on the back of my head. I waved him off and he whirred away and back, so loud, too loud. I felt the nausea rising again. I was clammy and shaking from chills. I shouted at Divine Xyster, “Fend him away! What kind of shyster are you, can’t hear a shame when he’s buzying about the room? You know he means to swarm us, he never lived but to do hurt! And he must be wrath with you—I heard you put a gorge on his slying tongue, and he choked on it.” No doubt I should not have said that, though it was a thing everyone knew, how Sire Rodela had raved as he lay dying, with his skull split from a blow he’d taken in the tourney, and how the Crux had ordered his carnifex to gag him so he wouldn’t disturb the whole encampment. Some said he choked on the gag, and that’s what killed him.

 

  
Divine Xyster leaned stiffly toward me, bent at the waist, holding his flask of poison. The priestess of Carnal rested one pale foot atop the other under the heavy folds of her dress. She seemed bemused. Whereas Boot, the varlet, had nearly unhinged his jaw with gawking. I could have counted his
missing teeth. They all seemed to move so slowly. I’d been a laggard for days, and now I was too quick, words had outpaced sense.

 

  
The Crux watched me. He had drawn a deep breath, and I waited for him to let it out, but the silence stretched on and on. His scarred eyebrow was raised, the eye under it half closed. He rubbed his lower lip and waited. Had I condemned myself already? Had I mentioned my own part in Sire Rodela’s slow death? Had I spoken of the poison that caused him to rave, that I gave him with my own hand?

 

  
“I never was your enmity, don’t you see?” I said to him, pleading. “I wouldn’t be so much as a shallow, a shadow between you and Sire Gallant, because you are dear to him and because you are his knuckle, his father’s brother, and because you’re the grindlestone he’s honest against. The harder you grim him, the keener he gets. You unhorsed him, you spurned him on, and didn’t he prove bitter for it?”

 

  
I had a smear in my eyes and I saw the Crux with a shadow glow about him. I turned and spat out the window again, trying to rid myself of that taste, and turned back to him. “You think I’m your animous because Ardaz, Ardux—because Willful afflictened me. Or mayhaps you think the god chose me
because
I am your animous. Is that so? But you are misbroken. The god Arson was never your enemy, no more than I. No, you were what came to hand. Because the clan Arson shewed themselves guilefilled and without honest, honor. So their god turned a wry eye on them and allowed you the vigour in the moral tourney. Did you think it was all your doing? Not so, you were as sharp blames from the Smite’s forge, to diminish, admonish them. I know you hated to leave so many alive to glib about, but you may have at them yet, if the Smite isn’t sated.”

 

  
There was a pang in my gut. I clasped my arms over my belly and bent over and heaved and groaned. The taste of the black drink flooded my mouth though there was nothing left to bring up. “You’ve killed me,” I told the Crux, told them all. “What will Sire Glance say?”

 
  

 

  
Back in Sire Galan’s room, I lay on the bed unmoving and waited for him to come home. And when he did I lied and said I’d washed off the mark myself, did he think I could wear it forever? Perhaps there would have been a quarrel if I’d not been so sick. He was afraid for me. He thought I might die, and the color of fear leaked from his skin.

 

  
The Crux and I kept the secret; it was ours to keep. There were others who shared it, but they didn’t own it as we did. I couldn’t tell Galan how I’d squirmed and thrashed on the floor while the Crux and his Auspices knelt beside me, how I’d labored and strained as if in the travail of childbirth, but brought forth nothing but nonsense words and curses. The Crux
had told Divine Xyster he’d given me too much, and the carnifex had answered that I’d get over it. But he’d looked grim, his face furrowed with shadows.

 

  
I suffered the night long, and could have sworn I never slept, yet in the morning I remembered having dreamed.

 

  
It was a cold day, and I was out with my digging stick, tasting dirt. The soil in the garden behind the house was black, it tasted sweet and smelled rich; in years past it had been well fed, kept in good heart, as we say. On the terrace below, where I meant to put lavender and incensier and marjoram, the earth was chalky, and tasted of ashes I had sown there. In the orchard I took a handful of dirt and squeezed and it made a clump in my palm. I tasted it and found it leafy. I knew what I would plant there, under the old trees. But I had a craving for the taste of clay, and wasn’t satisfied.

 

  
I went downhill, taking the steep stony path from terrace to terrace, and down through the old hazel coppice and hawthorn thickets until I reached the river. Trees leaned over the dark water, trailing bare branches, and I walked along until I found an old fallen willow. Where it had been uprooted it had torn away part of the bank, and I lay on my belly on the turf and reached down for the reddish clay I saw exposed there. And I ate and ate, I crammed clay into my mouth until my belly was soothed by it.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 5
  

  
Daughters of Torrent
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
I
miss my horse,” Sire Galan said. “Do you think my uncle would mind if I rode a bull?”

 

  
Sire Edecon said, “I daresay he would, if he knew.” He looked at Sire Galan with a smile to see if he’d take the dare.

 

  
Galan was clad only in his hose and Sire Edecon in his long shirt, and they’d been idling at home all the long cold rainy day. They’d dined on greasy redfish, and the smell lingered, making my belly roil. I was still queasy from the black drink I’d been given the day before.

 

  
Sire Edecon picked up his dulcet and began to pluck at it. “The Crux is too harsh. Many of us would be willing to plead on your behalf that he rescind this punishment.”

 

  
“My back itches, Spiller,” Galan said, and Spiller took off the bandage and poulticed the wound with foul-smelling liniment, and obligingly scratched up and down his spine. Galan said to his armiger, “You’re very kind, I’m sure—but the Crux has said I’ll go to war afoot, and so I will, to war and back again, until he sees fit to say otherwise.”

 

  
Sire Edecon played several strings at once, a sour chord. The dulcet’s soundbox was inlaid with a mother-of-pearl crab in a swirl of gold dust, and it had silver pegs to tighten the strings. Its sound was silvery too, despite his clumsiness. “Then I’ll play a lament for your lost horses,” he said in jest.

 

  
Galan reached out and put his hand down hard on the dulcet’s strings. “Don’t,” he said, not jesting at all.

 

  
Sire Edecon propped the dulcet against a chair, saying, “Forgive me, Sire. I meant no discourtesy.” Sire Rodela would never have done that. Where he overstepped, he kept on trampling.

 

  
“Forgiven,” Sire Galan said. After a silence, he said in a lighter voice, “Let Rowney play. He can do more with a song than torture it.”

 

  
Rowney took the dulcet and tuned it. I was surprised he knew how to play, and more surprised by his sweet song, for I’d never before heard him sing anything that wasn’t lewd. I knew the ballad, about a girl who pines
for the Moon. The tune was melancholy, and when Rowney sang,
The Moon hid his light in a cloak of night,
I added my voice to his. He looked up and smiled. I mirrored him note for note, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, until the song was done, and it was only then I realized that every word had come to me without fail, in its proper place. I’d opened my mouth and out they’d come, just as they used to. Was I healed so suddenly?

 

  
Sire Galan said to me, “You shouldn’t be so shy of singing. Why have you waited so long?”

 

  
I said, “It was a moon I knew. Besides, most of…Tawney’s are too—they’re howl-mouthed—ahh!” I bit back the next words. They were wrong again, still wrong.

 

  
“Howl-mouthed. You hear that, Rowney? Your songs offend, they’re indelicate.” Sire Edecon was teasing, but I feared Rowney was insulted. He had his head down and his palm over the dulcet’s strings.

 

  
“I didn’t mean—I meant…”