Wildfire (61 page)

 

  
She said,

 

  

 

  
“Oh, you were full of respect and care.

 

  
The floor was swept and scrubbed.

 

  
The nails were burned, the hair was burned.

 

  
But one day a strand of your hair fell unseen.

 

  
You didn’t sweep it up, you didn’t burn it.

 

  
The hair went down the drain,

 

  
down to Poton, the meneidon.

 

  
Yes with your long hair he was enchanted,

 

  
and he enchanted you in turn.

 

  
He wrapped the hair around the liver,

 

  
he wrapped it once, twice, thrice.

 

  
The liver is the throne of fortitude in a woman,

 

  
the throne of boldness in a man.

 

  
He strangled the liver and made the flesh fear to die.

 

  
He lured your shade with promises

 

  
to dwell with him in this place forever.

 

  
But the dowser Temnais stole the hair from him.

 

  
Temnais unwrapped the thread from your liver,

 

  
unwrapped it once, twice, thrice.

 

  
Poton followed to steal it back.

 

  
Temnais defeated him and threw him down.

 

  
It is Temnais who set free your courage,

 

  
the fortitude to take the river road,

 

  
and not be bound to this place forever.”

 

  

 

  
The dowser stood up slowly and her bones creaked, for she had become an old woman again. She cast the hair into the embers in the beehive hearth, and I could smell it, that one thin hair filling the room with an acrid reek as it burned.

 

  
Afterward we feasted, crowded together in our sleeping room, and the dancers and Lychnais celebrated with songs and jests as at a festival. The dowser Temnais was quiet after all her boasting. She ate stewed hen, greens dressed with stolen olive oil, and wild strawberries and honey. I propped Meninx against me and she drank some barley water, four swallows. She was present with us, smiling and even laughing once or twice, but oh, she was frail. The dowser looked my way over her bowl.

 

  
“This one saw a woman going past me,” she said.

 

  
“This one sees you too. It sees you rattle the ladder.”

 

  
She smiled, not at all perturbed that I’d seen her trick.

 

  
I said, “You dowse for what is missing, ein? This one has something stolen, and wants it back.”

 

  
“This one is tired,” Temnais said. “Maybe later. Though with such eyes as yours, perhaps you could find this stolen thing yourself, ein?”

 

  
“How?”

 

  
“To find something stolen, use a forked stick of alder or willow, but willow is not as good.”

 

  
“You do this better. Will you help?”

 

  
“Where was this thing stolen?”

 

  
“In the manufactory, ein? This one is once a weaver. Someone steals something precious from me, from it, while it sleeps in the dormitory.”

 

  
She hunched her shoulders. “Then it’s lost, woman. This is no tharais matter. This one can’t help you dowse for it. And don’t you try either, ein?”

 
  

 

  
The dowser never claimed she could make Meninx well. The cure she offered was of another sort, and indeed I think she hastened Meninx’s death by easing her fear of it. And there was vanity in Meninx I hadn’t suspected. The long strand of her hair, so thin, so weak, had been strong enough to snare a meneidon. She seemed to feel some pride at this. Perhaps she had never been desired before.

 

  
For two nights and days after the dowser’s visit, Lychnais and I stayed by Meninx’s side when we were not needed in the bathing room. We could see
her time was near. Her suffering seemed a creature in itself, like a monstrous gutworm that fed on her last hoarded strength. Even when she slept I could see the deep scratches scored by pain down her cheeks and across her brow. I gave her tisanes brewed from marsh nettle and sweet violet to soothe the gnawing in her belly, and to soothe my own need to be useful.

 

  
Meninx spoke again of her past, returning to the story of the day her father took her to market with the speedeedee in the cage. She said, “They tied the left hand behind the back when this one got here, so it could learn to do without, ein? This one hated it.” She paused. It was difficult for her to find wind to talk. Her breathing was slow and unsteady in its rhythm. “Hated the hand.”

 

  
I said, “What work is done with one hand, ein?”

 

  
“Scrubbing floors.”

 

  
I took her left hand in mine and looked at her palm, at the fine web of lines. It was not fair, not just, for her poor hand to be so despised. Even scrubbing floors one hand needs the other. One hand scrubs while the other props up the body that leans over the floor. Or both hands push the rag together, scouring back and forth. Both hands wring the rag between them. What madness, to divide right hand from left, call one tharos and the other tharais, favor one and despise the other when both are necessary. Because the wrong hand had been more apt, Meninx had worn out her days in the bathing room and her nights in this small box.

 

  
“How long ago? How many years are you here?” I asked.

 

  
She didn’t answer. Lychnais sat with her knees drawn up and her head resting on her arms. I saw her wet cheek and her ear with hair tucked behind it. She said, “What use to count, ein?”

 

  
“No use,” I said. “No use, it’s true.” The Dame’s old priest used to call the year a wheel with twelve spokes for months, and as it turned it carried us through our lives. But with my right eye I saw that the wheel of Meninx’s year was a millstone, grinding her days into smaller and smaller moments. Turning more slowly now as her breathing slowed. Stopped.

 

  
In Lambanein they say the dead travel through the navel of the earth to the realm where the gods dwell, of which our living realm is an imperfect reflection, this world the netherworld to that one. For Meninx’s sake, I prayed it was true. And though her shade would carry heavy regrets on the long journey, I was glad she would not go burdened by her fragile, pain-racked body.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 24
  

  
Thrush
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
L
ychnais was even more afraid of the arthygater’s pet snake than of the meneidon of the drain, Poton. The arthygater herself fed the snake milk every day, but it was our duty to give the creature a more substantial meal every two tennights or so. The snake disdained carrion, and would accept only living prey. She had last eaten before I came to the bathing room, and now it was time to feed her again, according to Lychnais.

 

  
I said, “Snakes eat frogs, don’t they? This one catches one and sees.”

 

  
I’d heard frogs trilling at night in the courtyard, but was afraid to hunt them there. For all I knew Gnathin kept count even of the humble frogs, like the songbirds in cages or the carp in the pool. So I went down to catch a frog by the river, taking the stairs in the cliff to my secret place—for so I thought of it, though it was not my secret alone: another wreath had been laid on the floor of Katabaton’s shrine.

 

  
I crouched by the cage, which was covered with fine gold mesh, and opened the small door to put the frog inside. The snake ignored it. “Is the serpent ill?” I asked Lychnais. “Her eyes are milky and her skin is dull.”

 

  
But Lychnais wouldn’t look.

 
  

 

  
It was a hand of days before the festival of the Quickening, which commemorated the godchild Peranon’s first kick inside Katabaton’s womb, and tonight Arthygater Katharos was offering the first of four banquets in celebration. The arthygater’s mother-in-law came to the bathing room at dawn, grumbling to her companion as usual. She had nothing to wear, she said. Arthygater Katharos did not care if she went to the banquet in rags, and neither did her son, and it was disgraceful. Yet they made demands, ein? They expected her to give her best cloth for Keros’s dowry, and Keros was no kin of hers, not by blood.

 

  
I was a trifle clumsy, distracted. I hadn’t realized the walls between the bathing room and the arcade could be removed. Servants had taken them away at dawn, and now only two rows of columns separated us from the
courtyard. The painted birds and butterflies in the room, which I’d thought implausibly bright, were not as vivid as the real ones held captive by a fine, nearly invisible net over the courtyard. A doe and two dappled fauns of a miniature kind nibbled on the incensier hedges of their enclosure.

 

  
Already a few lilies were in flower. The Dame had coddled white lilies in a sunny sheltered corner of the inner courtyard, and they’d never bloomed for her before Midsummer’s eve—still more than a month away, as I reckoned it. But here their great trumpets were already open, and the heavy scent was borne into the room on the first rays of sunlight. The warmth of that light on my skin was balm, a salve on a hidden wound. The Maid had lost her maidenhead and become a wanton, and soon Midsummer would arrive and the passes would open through the Ferinus.

 
  

 

  
The mother-in-law scurried off when the bathmistress announced that the arthygater was on her way. She arrived early, with two guests. One was her niece Keros. The other, Arthygater Klados, was Keros’s mother—and the arthygater’s sister, or half sister perhaps.

 

  
The arthygater leaned over her snake’s cage and I was afraid she’d blame us for the creature’s illness. But she cooed, saying, “Look, a good omen! Ankaton is ready to shed its skin.” She draped the snake over her arm, but forgot to latch the door. The frog hopped out. I stood still, afraid I’d be blamed. Were frogs tharais or tharos? Was it my responsibility to catch it? I looked at Lychnais and she waggled one finger, so I watched the keeper of the garments and two handmaids chase the frog around the room until they caught it. I bit my lower lip to stifle my laughter.

 

  
The arthygater had occupied many mornings already with preparations for the Quickening banquets. Now, as Lychnais wove her hair into a wicker tower, she deliberated with Gnathin over a few last details, such as the flowers in the guest wreaths, and whether such-and-such a whore had lost her looks and should be disinvited.

 

  
It took so long to prepare the coiffures of the three arthygaters that they had their noon repast in the bathing room. We stood against the wall and I stared at Keros as she delicately pierced her food with a small silver trident and brought it to her mouth. She concealed her chewing behind her left hand; a noblewoman didn’t show her teeth at all, it was immodest.

 

  
Arthygater Katharos said to her, “Your mother and I were thinking it was time you had your instruction in the twenty-five Postures, and Aeidin has graciously agreed to undertake it.”

 

  
“Aeidin?”

 

  
“The very best,” Klados said.

 

  
“So I am to be married?” Keros laid down her trident with great care on her tray. “But I didn’t please the arkhyios.”

 

  
“But you did,” Arthygater Katharos said. “You pleased him greatly. He wants you for his brother Merle, ein? We will send him your likeness.”

 

  
Keros became stiff and still. I saw her in profile, golden beads heavy on the black cords hanging next to her cheek. Only her mouth moved, saying, “The traitor?”

 

  
Her mother and aunt regarded each other past Keros’s bent head. Klados said, “Arkhyios Merle, yes. The Starling. There’s something to be said for knowing a man’s price.”

 

  
“Corvus needs him,” Arthygater Katharos said, “and what’s more, he needs Corvus. The queenmother tried to have Merle imprisoned on the very night of their victory feast, saying she could never trust a traitor—and it saved her paying him too, ein? He fled east to Lanx, and my thrushes tell me his army is growing. Caelum is taking revenge on those who advised Arkhyios Corvus to exile her—and even those who failed to object—and many Blood are fleeing Malleus. If Merle holds Lanx—we need him, ein?”

 

  
“We?” said Keros, looking at her mother.

 

  
Klados ignored her disrespectful stare, and turned to her sister, saying, “Which painter should we commission, Nektan or Ichnosan? What do you say to a likeness in glass, ein? Cobalt blue around her saffron robe would set her off like a jewel, would it not?”

 

  
“Nektan. I fear glass wouldn’t ship well.” Katharos turned and touched Keros on the knee. “And if Merle doesn’t keep Lanx, he’ll never see the likeness, ein? If I had an unmarried daughter, I would be proud for her to have this duty, if she were clever enough. You, my dearest niece, are clever enough. Who else can we trust, ein? Who else could be so intimate, to sway Merle if he can be swayed, to warn us if he cannot? A son proves his worth by the three attainments: wealth, wisdom, and the fame of his valor. A daughter shows her worth by the three excellences: to bear herself above reproach, to bear children fruitfully, and to bear suffering with fortitude. It is infamous for a married woman to seek fame; yet we’ll know what you have done in secret and honor you for it.”

 

  
Keros turned her head and I saw her full face. She looked leagues past me, through the painted garden at my back. She must have heard of the three attainments and three excellences a thousand times, to judge by the expression—almost imperceptible, except around her nostrils—of scorn.

 

  
The arthygaters talked thereafter of trivial matters. I ceased to listen, wondering instead how King Corvus could reconcile with the brother who had stolen his chance of victory, and nearly stolen his life. They could bribe