Wildfire (31 page)

 

  
“Where’s Sire Galan?” I asked Rowney.

 

  
He shrugged and picked at fraying threads around a hole in the knee of his hose. “Who knows? The camp is buzzing like a hornet’s nest after boys have knocked it down. People came asking for you while you were away—asking about the sickness. But I thought you’d best get some sleep, if you could.”

 

  
I said, “I needs must go to May, Mai. I dreamt her…travel…travail had started.”

 
  

 

  
The army was not so careless of its defenses as it had been before the raid. The carts of the baggage were lined up around our encampment, to make another barrier behind the wall of sharpened stakes. Some of the carts were occupied, but most were empty. Mai had tied a strip of magenta cloth, the
brightest thing to be seen, to a pole above her oxcart. My dream had not lied. She had started her travail and raised Desire’s banner of childbirth to warn men to stay away.

 

  
Sunup sat on a stool beside the cart, sewing. I asked if all was well with her mother, and she nodded yes, but her lips turned down as if she meant no. The piebald dog was sunning himself, minding his own business, until Tobe began to tease him by hauling on his tail.

 

  
I heard Mai call from inside the cart, “Is that you?”

 

  
She sat up when I came in. The grain sacks had been replaced with sacks stuffed with dried bracken and heather, and they crackled under us and smelled like autumn. She’d baked the delicate raisin cakes that are given to visitors at a birthing. Rose oil in the lamp gave off a soothing scent. From the arched ribs of the canopy hung clay tablets stamped with prayers, and strings of snail shells to encourage the child to slip out. Mai had given many a woman charms to ease her travail, and now she did all she could to help herself.

 

  
I ate a raisin cake and told Mai I’d dreamed of Mouse being born. I didn’t tell her about the tiny squirming mouse and how I’d lost it, for fear she’d be as disturbed at the omen as I was.

 

  
“Good,” she said. “I was beginning to think Mouse would never make up his mind. The pains come and go.”

 

  
“You have thrice, throes already? I’m sorry I didn’t come soonest. I’ve been hither and tither, because the the…shriver, the fever-and-shake is in camp, and—”

 

  
“Oh, I know. Pinch has it.”

 

  
“How is he?”

 

  
“Limp as a drowned cat, but he’ll mend. How is the king, have you heard?”

 

  
I stared at her.

 

  
“Coz, if you’d gather your wits instead of wool you might learn something. Don’t you know the king has the shiver-and-shake? Seems everybody knows but you,” Mai said unkindly. “He’s like to die, they say.”

 

  
I opened and closed my mouth. I’d never known a time without King Thyrse. He’d ruled longer than I’d been alive.

 

  
Mai said, “He’s not made of stone. He’s flesh, same as you and me.”

 

  
“If he dies, what will happen to us, to the harm?”

 

  
“What do you think?”

 

  
“We’ll lose?”

 

  
“You’re the one who prophesies, not me. All I know is, lose or win, we’ll be buggered. He should have given us a real heir instead of pretending he’d live forever. If he dies, his bastards will come crawling out from under every
rock, and each First will vie to be Foremost, and the queenmother will likely claim to rule us too, as she claims to rule Incus.”

 

  
“I’ll pray for him,” I said.

 

  
“Pray for me too, will you? Ask Desire to make my travail swift and easy.” She said this wryly, as if in jest, but I saw the fear she was trying to hide.

 

  
“Shall I fetch the bidwife?”

 

  
“Oh no. It’s much too soon for that. I need a nap,” she said. She heaved over on her side and the cart rocked.

 

  
I climbed out to the driver’s seat and looked down at Sunup. “What are you sewing? Is that a placket, a blunket for the, for…for the one in your mother’s belly?”

 

  
Sunup was so worried she didn’t even smile at my mistakes. She showed me the small blanket she was embroidering with a design of silver-gray mice between crisscrossing stalks of wheat. The heavy heads of grain were picked out in gold-wrapped thread. “It’s for Lynx Mischief,” she said. “It’s a sacrifice, so Mischief will look after Mouse.”

 

  
I stood on the driver’s bench and looked at our camp, and saw a crowd before the king’s pavilion, quieter than a crowd ought to be. The Sun was in the west and the air about her was brassy and bright. A south wind came rushing up the valley. I heard it on its way, hissing and clapping canvas and leather against poles, and when it arrived it pulled loose the end of my headcloth. Chittering sparrows, which had been pecking for spilled grain next to the cart, took to flight and were hurled away.

 

  
I saw Sire Galan before he saw me. I waved and caught his eye, and jumped down from the cart. He greeted Sunup courteously by name. She’d done him a good turn once, helping to nurse his concubine, and he was not too proud to acknowledge her. To me he said, “The Crux wants to see you.”

 

  
“For why?” I put the spokes of a cartwheel at my back, and felt the elm-wood hub against my spine. It helped me stand upright, for the strength had gone from my legs. I’d learned to dread any summons from the Crux, no matter the messenger who delivered it.

 

  
“He has questions,” Sire Galan said. He stood with his back to the Sun, two paces from me, and I could hardly see his face.

 

  
“Maize needs me. Her trembles have come.”

 

  
“She can spare you. Else why are you dawdling out here?”

 

  
“I can’t go! He’ll put me to the order, the ordeal.”

 

  
“Are you afraid he’ll make you face the dogs again? He won’t, I assure you.”

 

  
“How do you know?” I cried. “Twice he’s questioned me, once by…
gods, I mean by dogs, and once by prison. A third time he’s likely to get his way and finish me for good.”

 

  
“Twice?” Galan closed the distance between us and Sunup got out of his way. Her stool fell over. “What do you mean, prison?”

 

  
“Not prison—poison. Poison. They gave me the blink, the black drink, and nearly did me in, and what they got of it I don’t know. You must ask them.”

 

  
“Who did this? Who gave you the drink?”

 

  
“Your uncle and his prats. And a Carnex of Carnal Design.”

 

  
Sunup scrambled into the oxcart and I heard her moving behind the canopy. She could hear us and no doubt Mai listened as well. I was shamed by it.

 

  
“When?” Galan asked.

 

  
“In the city—in Lacks—when I sickened, do you remember? When you were about your uncle’s busyness, buying him courses, coursers, horses.”

 

  
“Ah, I see. And you didn’t think to tell me this?”

 

  
“I didn’t mean—I only wanted—I feared to come betwixt you and the Cracks.”

 

  
“Too late for that,” he said. “I told you before not to keep things from me I ought to know. What did you think I’d do, hmm? Kill my uncle over
you
? It shows a poor opinion of my judgment. And what was the Crux so anxious to know?”

 

  
“Why I followed you.”

 

  
“Yes, and why did you?” He walked a few paces and stood with his back to me, looking toward the bright hills in the west.

 

  
He would leave me, I thought. We might go on living side by side and sleeping hip to hip, he might make use of me as he pleased, but I would be reminded always of what I’d lost. Which was just what the Crux wanted, that his nephew would keep his sheath in her proper place, if he insisted on keeping her.

 

  
Then I thought of the battle ahead, and how there never was much chance Galan and I could go on together, though I’d lived as if there was. I’d lived as if the battle would never come. We should not be quarreling with so little time left to us. I straightened up and took my hand from a wheel spoke. There was a splinter in my palm. I climbed on the front of the cart and looked in at Mai.

 

  
She said, “Don’t fret about me. I don’t need you now. Go, and tell the Crux what he wants to hear—understand?”

 

  
I jumped down from the cart and Sire Galan was gone.

 
  

 

  
The Crux sat in a carven high-backed chair in his pavilion. His face wore a frown that engraved more deeply the notches above the bridge of his nose
and the grooves beside his mouth. One hand gripped the arm of his chair and the other propped up his chin. Galan was speaking to him in a low voice, and he stopped when I came in.

 

  
I knelt before the Crux and met his gaze. He detested insolence, yet I offered it by looking him in the eye. Pleading and weeping wouldn’t avail with him, and though I might come to do both in the end, I refused to begin that way.

 

  
The Crux had brought all his tent furnishings with him from Corymb: figured carpets and folding furniture and bronze lamps on chains. The tapestry of the Sun, Moon, and Heavens hung behind him. I could hardly believe that beyond the waxed canvas walls lay the kingdom of Incus, for it seemed we were still in the Marchfield, had never left, and I might have to go outside and face the manhounds again. I looked down and clasped my hands together in my lap, the cold hand and the warm one. Both were sweating.

 

  
“I thought you said she refused to come,” the Crux said to Galan.

 

  
“She did.”

 

  
“I was befraid,” I said.

 

  
Sire Galan said, “Now that she’s here, what do you wish to do, Sire? Give her the black drink? Or do you do such things only in secret?”

 

  
The Crux canted his head and looked at Galan. “This is no time to argue about your sheath. There are matters of more importance.”

 

  
“You picked the quarrel. You cannot pick the time to amend it.” Galan stood as far from me as he did from his uncle. It was no more than a few paces away, but all the same a distant territory, from which he looked upon us both with a hard expression.

 

  
The Crux said, “It’s my duty to care for the clan—and you.”

 

  
“Yes, you care for me. Any more careful and I’d be dead. You took away my horses—perhaps now you’ll require me to go to war without a sword. You don’t mean me to come home, I think, for fear I might inconvenience your son and heir.” When Galan spoke, for a moment I believed him. His distrust made of the Crux’s actions such a simple pattern; and the Crux’s son—Galan’s cousin, to whom I’d never given a thought—was a thread that stitched all through.

 

  
The Crux struck the arm of his chair and roared, “Don’t snivel to me about going without a horse! You deserved that, and if you want to save your precious life, you have my leave to start walking home tonight. I’ll be glad to be rid of you! I have no fear for my son and I don’t coddle him—as I refuse to coddle you—and if you weren’t so vain you’d know that.”

 

  
When the Crux spoke he pulled the thread; there was the old design again, not as tidy, not as comprehensible. But truer, I thought, for I did
believe the Crux loved Galan well and was willing to kill him if need be, and saw no contradiction. And I did believe Galan too loyal and too fond of his uncle to scheme against his heir. But I could see both patterns at once now, like a throw of the bones that can be read two ways. So I was no longer sure.

 

  
There was a long silence, in which I heard Galan breathing harshly. He’d said too much. Even if he believed it, he’d said too much and given the Crux advantage, for advantage lay in being wronged.

 

  
Galan looked about and found a chair with taloned feet and a tall back inlaid with ivory plumage, and he placed it carefully where he’d been standing and sat down. “I mean to stay,” he said. “I mean to fight, and when the battle is done, if I live, I’ll take up riding again, and you shan’t stop me—will you, Uncle?—for I will have borne as much as honor requires and more. And now honor requires that I ask what you did to my sheath. For as you once pointed out to Sire Rodela, she’s under my protection. Who attacks her, attacks me.”

 

  
“No harm was done,” the Crux said. “See for yourself.”

 

  
“Oh, I think there was harm,” Galan said. “I think there was. For I heard a rumor—I gave it no credence until today, for it was a lying, thieving varlet who told me—that you paid the Initiates of Carnal to make her barren.”

 

  
“It does you no harm to save you from siring mud bastards.”

 

  
Galan wouldn’t look at me, but he crossed glances with the Crux and didn’t look away. They put me in mind of two swordsmen who lock blades near the hilt and strive against each other so that neither can move.

 

  
The Initiates had made me barren. They’d cursed me with barrenness and I hadn’t known. That was why my tides were almost two tennights late. I thought of that priestess watching me while I writhed with the pains of the black drink, and how smug she’d seemed, and it no longer mattered that I’d taken childbane in secret, and planned to seek out the miscarrier if my tides didn’t come soon.

 

  
Galan had told me once he wanted a bastard from me, and I’d been surprised—flattered even. But I hadn’t understood; it was no desire of mine. Now I understood, I did. I could see a child, a person I’d never before dared to imagine. I wasn’t as brave as Mai, to carry an unborn child on campaign and face the travail of birthing. But if I was—if I wanted one of Galan’s bastards, a child who sprang from us two, with his eyes and my hair, or his hair and my eyes, it was not for the Crux or the Initiates to deny me.

 

  
And now I felt sharp pangs in my belly, as if the hex, which had grown quietly in the womb while I went about unknowing, quickened where a child should have quickened, and kicked and clawed. I leaned forward over
my knees, rocking, with my arms crossed over my belly. Trying to hold in the wail that wanted out.

 

  
Galan’s voice was far away. He said, “And the worst of it is that you were right. She is a canny, and unnatural. But it was ill done to go behind my back.”