Wildfire (14 page)

 

  
Rowney looked up. “Soldiers’ songs are for soldiers. But how about this one?” I knew the rollicking tune, but Rowney and I had different words for it. We traded verses. Rowney sang in the Low about a widow and a wayward hen, and I sang in the High about a fox and a ferret. Galan joined me, and then Sire Edecon as well, whose voice proved sweeter than his playing. We couldn’t finish for laughing. It eased me that my speech was unhindered, if only for the length of a silly song.

 

  
Rowney asked me, “Why do you suppose the words come freely when you sing?”

 

  
I shrugged. A phrase from an old song came to me and I sang,
I wish I had garlands of words…

 

  
And he sang,
With which to wreathe my heart’s desire,
and he smiled at his boots.

 

  
Sire Edecon said, “I know a good song, but I daresay it will make your sheath blush, she’s such a prig. Do you know this one?”

 

  

 

  
A tender bride of twelve

 

  
Will heed her husband well.

 

  
A bride of thirteen years

 

  
Will bring her husband cheer.

 

  
If she has turned fourteen,

 

  
A bride’s no longer green.

 

  

 

  
Rowney picked out the tune on the dulcet, and Galan joined in too, and they sang as loudly as they could.

 

  

 

  
At fifteen and a day,

 

  
A groom she won’t obey.

 

  
A sixteen-year-old bride

 

  
Is bound to sulk and chide.

 

  
A bride of seventeen,

 

  
Will make her husband mean.

 

  
If she’s eighteen years old,

 

  
Her groom she will cuckold.

 

  
At nineteen years of age,

 

  
She’ll make her husband rage.

 

  
Wed a bride of twenty,

 

  
If her dowry’s plenty.

 

  
Should maiden prove not maid,

 

  
Her house she has betrayed.

 

  
To her father send her,

 

  
Let him reprimand her.

 

  
Find yourself another

 

  
With a stricter mother.

 

  
If she’s no more than twelve,

 

  
No doubt she’ll please you well.

 

  

 

  
Galan said to Sire Edecon, “Well, you’ll know the truth of that old tune soon enough, won’t you?” The men laughed. I didn’t know what they were joking about.

 
  

 

  
Sire Galan wanted me to go to the feast that evening. Everyone was going, the whole army, he said, and we should all be well fed. “Yes, on fish,” said Sire Edecon. “I tire of fish. Cod may go disguised as roasted goose, but it stinks all the same.”

 

  
I said I hadn’t the strength, which was true. But it was also true that I didn’t wish to go. Sire Galan leaned on my chair. “Is that my hose you’re darning? You should let Rowney do it. I swear he has the neater hand.”

 

  
“It’s donething, something I
can
do,” I said.

 

  
He frowned and looked out of the window. It was the most sober look I’d seen cross his face all day. The breeze made his forelock flop over his brow. He tucked straying hair behind his ear. I knew it wouldn’t stay.

 

  
I smiled up at him. “I could also snip your hat, I mean your hair.”

 

  
“I won’t let you near it,” he said, with a grin that was quickly gone. “You should come. I don’t like to leave you here alone.”

 

  
“Why?”

 

  
“You’re ailing.”

 

  
“No, I’m just weaked, peaked. I want a rest.”

 

  
“I’ll leave Spiller with you.”

 

  
I shook my head. Spiller would make me miserable for it.

 

  
Rowney said, “I’ll stay.”

 

  
Sire Galan gave him a considering look, as if wondering whether to be jealous.

 

  
I said, “No, I don’t need anyhow, anyhim.” I touched the back of Galan’s hand and he turned his palm toward me and laced his fingers between mine.

 

  
“Your hand is as cold as the Crone’s,” he said, and I knew I’d gotten my way.

 
  

 

  
They left toward sundown and I was alone. I thought I’d had enough of solitude in the Kingswood, enough for a lifetime. But I craved it now. By night I lay awake among the sleepers—six of us in that room, which was smaller than Sire Galan’s tent—and heard them stirring in their separate dreams. Their presences seemed to billow and press upon me, and I envied their forgetfulness. By day I was taxed by the constant struggle to speak and be understood, and troubled by my failures. To be alone was to have the gift of silence.

 

  
I climbed the tower stairs as slowly as an old woman. The steps were pinkish stone, smooth as the inside of a shell, but as I climbed I came to rougher steps that had not been polished by so many feet. I sat down and gasped until the pain eased in my side. The rain had moved on, and a square window showed a sky of deep blue with a mare’s tail of cloud flaring gold. I got to my feet and started up again, stubbornly wanting to get to the top, to see what could be seen.

 

  
Another turn and the stairway ended. A wooden ladder was propped up inside the narrow shaft. Cold air came dropping down. I climbed the ladder and came out on a small platform rimmed by a stone parapet. The gilded spire of the windcatcher rose above me, carved to look like a pair of wings cupped together. The wind was not from the direction of Crux, so it soughed around the wings, but didn’t sing.

 

  
I leaned on the balustrade and looked out over Lanx. The city was a story told stone by stone. Penna had said that when she was a child, the palaces of the clans faced the streets openly, with great windows and portals, and long arcades that sheltered markets and welcomed idlers. Because of the feud the arcades had been filled in, and walls raised upon them higher than any rooftop. In this way the Blood had walled out their enemies, but also their own mudfolk, the carpenters of Crux, fishermen of Torrent, weavers of Wend, and all the others. Now streets ended abruptly at walls or disap
peared under rubble. Many fine bridges had been torn down to prevent passage from one hill to another, while the clans built their towers higher. As each vied to overtop the next, they’d exhausted quarries one by one. Here a stratum of golden stone had been laid, then pale stone, then rosy.

 

  
The towers shone as the rest of the city subsided into shadow, and I saw it all plain, how Lanx had battened on the feud, grown taller by way of brawls and ambuscades, duels and murders, as its people busied themselves making and destroying. Already they were dismantling the tower of Torrent. They’d use the stones to build something new, something beautiful. For Lanx was beautiful, despite its scars. I was no part of the city and I wouldn’t stay. But I understood for the first time how one might be content to live and die here, one among the many.

 

  
I sat down and opened the divining compass on the floor beside me. There was Hazard’s godsign, the skein of geese, and there was the sign of Crux across the compass: I’d stared long enough at the tattoo on Sire Galan’s cheek to commit it to memory. Crux’s direction was north-of-west. I turned the compass around, trying to line it up according to the Sun. Which gods were on either side of Crux? I couldn’t remember. But there was Ardor—I had the godsign stamped in tin on the amulet Galan had given me outside Ardor’s temple. And I remembered that the Queen of the Dead was next to Chance, and the Warrior next to Peril—they had always seemed to go together well—so Rift was beside Hazard. But on which side of Hazard?

 

  
I recollected the names of eight of the twelve gods and mislaid the rest. I pulled the drawstring tight to close the pouch around the finger bones, and the Sun hid her face and I was cold in the sudden night.

 
  

 

  
Sire Edecon returned from the feast with a new bride.

 

  
Forty maidens of Torrent had been spared when their clan was destroyed. Eight and twenty of the maids—all those under twelve years of age, including even babes-in-arms—were betrothed that night and given to be raised in the households of their affianced. Two and ten maids, those twelve years and older, were given outright in marriage. In gratitude for service in the battle of Lanx, the queenmother had offered a bride to any man of Crux who wanted one. Most of the Blood of our company were already married; it was accounted a man’s duty to secure an heir before he went to war. But Sire Edecon had older brothers in need of wives themselves. He’d counted on war to make his fortune, and never imagined he’d marry one.

 

  
The dowries were generous, for Queenmother Caelum poured away the wealth of clan Torrent without stinting. So she celebrated and com
pleted her victory, and made sure that there would be no heirs to carry the names of the dead houses of Torrent in Lanx.

 
  

 

  
Sire Edecon’s bride was called Dame Vairon, and she was fourteen years old. Penna slipped off the new dame’s cloak and led her to a chair by the hearth. Dame Vairon’s eyelids were swollen and red, and I couldn’t see the color of her eyes because she wouldn’t look up. She’d lost her father and mother, her brothers and all, and now she was married to a man who’d helped kill them. She had lain under Sire Edecon before witnesses at the feast, and done her part, which was to bleed in proof that she delivered her honor intact into her husband’s keeping.

 

  
Bawdy jests are customary after a wedding, but there were no such jests that night. Dame Vairon brought silence into the room with her. Sire Galan and Sire Edecon began to talk about something, anything, but the silence remained, making their speech seem loud and false. They were soused with drink, but Spiller was much the worse for it. He fumbled at the clasps of Sire Galan’s enameled hauberk, cursing under his breath. Penna hovered close behind the bride’s elbow, like any good handmaid, ready to anticipate her mistress’s requests. It seemed to me that Penna knew Dame Vairon, but the dame showed no signs of familiarity.

 

  
Sire Galan said, “Take the bed tonight, Edecon, and I’ll take the cot.”

 

  
“No, no,” said Sire Edecon.

 

  
“Oh, yes,” said Sire Galan. “After all, it is your wedding night.”

 

  
“So it is,” said Sire Edecon, none too gladly.

 
  

 

  
Dame Vairon wore bridal finery of nine gossamer gowns, one over the other. The outermost was pale willow green for Crux, and the innermost of deepest cobalt blue for Torrent, and the rest dyed shades in between. Just today, when Maid Vairon became a dame, she’d added two new gowns. When she had children she would add more. Penna had told me some dames wore as many as seventeen. Mudwomen were forbidden by law to wear more than two.

 

  
Penna took the gowns off one by one, save for the last. The new bride climbed into the bed and drew the curtain, and in time Sire Edecon followed. In the middle of the night, as I lay awake, I heard her mewling and hiccupping like a child afraid to wail out loud. Sire Edecon climbed down from the walled bed and went to lie with Penna on her nest of sacks and blankets. I heard her say, “Not now!” I heard him murmur, coaxing her. I heard her give in. When he was done he went back to lie beside his wife again.

 

  
Much later I got up to knead a cramp out of my leg and to sit in the bal
cony. I could hear the mournful moan of a windcatcher. Bats swooped and darted over the gardens.

 

  
In the night, when my muscles ached and I skittered from thought to thought, Sire Rodela liked to pester me. I put my head down on the sill and prayed that he would go away. Didn’t he suffer too, from tormenting me? To stay so close to the living must remind him constantly of what he’d lost. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and felt tears cooling in the breeze on my face.

 

  
“Why do you sit here at night?” Galan asked from behind me, in a low voice. “Why do you leave me?”

 

  
Gods, he’d startled me, coming so cat footed. He hadn’t bothered to put his shirt on. I reached for his hand.

 

  
He took his hand away. “No, tell me why—I want to know.”

 

  
“I have…clamps, crawls in my legs and it hurts and I can’t lie stiff and I can’t please, sleeve—” I took both his hands this time and wouldn’t let go.

 

  
He sat on the bench. “You can’t sleep. Night after night you can’t sleep.”

 

  
I whispered, “I can’t. I don’t know—it’s the lighting, it must be. I’m so wachid all the time, so wankle…so tried! I don’t mean to tremble you.”

 

  
“I thought you were mending. But you’re not, are you?”

 

  
“I am minding. I will.”

 

  
“Come here,” he said, pulling me toward him. I sat sideways on his lap and leaned on him and put my face against his neck.

 

  
“This cannot be commendable,” I said.

 

  
He laughed. “Not commendable?”

 

  
“Cumberable?”

 

  
“It’s very comfortable,” he said. It was not; nevertheless, I counted myself fortunate among women.

 
  

 

  
I dreamed that down by the river I cut red osiers to make withy fences for raised beds behind the house. I climbed the hill again with a great bundle on my back. The Sun was bright and warm, though the winds were cold. I drove in stakes and plaited the withies around them. I squatted back on my haunches and brushed hair away from my face with my forearm. There was no one about, and I could wear my hair down if it pleased me. A hawk overhead tipped his wings and drifted toward the gray trees of the wood to the west.

 
  

 

  
When I awoke, the names of the seeds I meant to plant in the raised beds were on the tip of my tongue; I could nearly taste them, though I couldn’t utter them. I said to Galan in astonishment, “I slipped!”