Wildfire (62 page)

Merle with a dowry worthy of a princess, and still he couldn’t be trusted; in that I agreed with the queenmother. The king despised his brother, the Starling. He must hate his mother more, if he meant to make this bargain.

 

  
Arthygater Katharos had said “we.” We need Merle.

 

  
Daily in the bathing room I had watched the arthygater doing business with women; I had dismissed it, too easily, as women’s business. A woman couldn’t own land, but she could own the use of it, and I’d heard the arthygater offer one friend the lease of good barley fields, and another the right to graze her sheep on certain mountain pastures, and I couldn’t tell if she had Consort Ostrakan’s approval for such transactions, or went behind his back. She traded favors: a word to a magistrate about a case, a position for a nephew among the arkhon’s scribes, an appointment with the arkhon’s all-powerful factotum. And the whore Aeidin, who moved freely among men and had the opportunity to speak to them in private, had been about the same work on the arthygater’s behalf: gathering gold, gathering loyalty, a currency as valuable as coin. This was how to weave a war in Lambanein.

 
  

 

  
I went to the tharais taskmistress of the dining court to ask if I might serve that night. I’d spent everything I had on Meninx, and couldn’t offer the taskmistress a gift, but I said I’d give her half of what I earned, expecting it to suffice. She pulled me aside, out of the bustling corridors under the dining hall and into her own curtained alcove. We uncovered our faces to speak. The taskmistress was plump, for a tharais, with soft, sagging jowls, and I didn’t expect the fierceness I found in her expression. Fierce greed. She leaned close. “Do you think this one a newborn kitten, ein? That it has yet to open the eyes to see what’s plain to see?”

 

  
I tried not to intercept her glare. I ducked my head and said in a small voice, “This one doesn’t mean to offend, taskmistress. It begs pardon.”

 

  
“This one is offended that a dung beetle like you thinks it a lackwit.”

 

  
“It doesn’t, it swears.”

 

  
Her mother finger and grandmother thumb were cut in the beak style, and she drew blood as she pinched my forearm. “It knows you’re a thrush—very well, it doesn’t care. But you can’t expect this one to keep quiet for a couple of pewter beadcoins at the end of the night. So tell your master or mistress—the one so anxious to know what Arkhyios Corvus is saying—that this one needs gold. If it doesn’t get gold, it will tell Gnathin. And don’t think about disappearing without paying up. The arthygater wouldn’t be happy to hear her depilator is an eavesdropper, ein? Do you know what she does to little thrushes? She gives them to her tormentor, and he cuts out the tongues so they can’t sing, and pulls off the wings so they can’t fly.”

 

  
“This one has no gold. How will it get gold?”

 

  
“It cares not how. Get some, get three beadcoins weighing at least twenty grains each. Get it by tomorrow night, or by the day after tomorrow you’ll be in the gentle hands of the arthygater’s tormentor.”

 

  
I promised, of course. And I went away smearing the blood from my arm. Na had five or ten sayings about the perils of curiosity and I wished I’d heeded them.

 

  
Why was I still in Lambanein, still a tharais captive? I should go now, tomorrow, tonight even—why wait? The arthygater’s thrushes were flying south in ships; could I make my way north by sea, without waiting for the thaw in the Ferinus? I joined the other napkins polishing silver basins, and I worked until I stopped shaking, until I could think.

 

  
I sought out the taskmistress again in her alcove, and said, “If it please you, put this one to serve where Arkhyios Corvus sits tonight, and it will get you gold. Otherwise it cannot get a message to the mistress.”

 

  
This puzzled her. If I spied on Corvus and the arthygater, then who was to be the recipient of this message? Perhaps I served the arthygater’s husband, why not? What better way for Consort Ostrakan to spy on his wife than to put a thrush in her bathing room, where so many intimacies were shared? I swear I saw those thoughts on her face as clearly as if they’d been inked godsigns on her slack cheeks. I hadn’t thought of trying to cast suspicion on Arthygater Katharos’s husband. That was luck, Chance giving me a wink.

 

  
It seemed the taskmistress’s estimation of me rose. Certainly her price did. “Best make it five beadcoins,” she said.

 

  
Now she wanted to be my ally, my confidante. Now she wanted to help me—help me get her gold, even if it meant betraying her mistress. She saw to it that when the guests arrived, I was the one sent to bathe King Corvus’s feet.

 
  

 

  
His boots were of soft leather fastened with ribbons looped around ruby studs. His kidskin leggings were dyed red in honor of Rift, a color almost as bright as the red wool of the Ebanakan guards. I pushed them up above his shins so they would not get wet. He had sharp ankles and narrow feet with high arches. He’d lost the smallest toe on his right foot to frostbite. There was not a man who’d survived the crossing of the mountains without some scar to remind him of it.

 

  
I had my scar too, and this time I didn’t try to hide it. The shawl covered my face, but I bared my arm so King Corvus could see the white weal around my wrist. I poured water from a golden ewer over his feet and into the basin, and scattered rose petals in the water for the scent. He did not see the scar. Nor me.

 

  
King Corvus was seated in the colonnade between the vast, moonlit pleasure garden and the illuminated jewel of the dining court. He shared a platform with Arthygater Katharos, Consort Ostrakan, and Ostrakan’s mother, and I wondered if they had tired at last of parading young women before him. It was a tennight after the New Moon dinner and all the apple blossoms had fallen.

 

  
I was no sort of thrush, but even if I had been, I would have learned nothing. Musicians played overhead in the open tower astride the entrance, and it was impossible to eavesdrop.

 

  
During the long meal tharos servants offered the diners glorious edifices prepared by the cooks, such as a peacock stuffed with songbirds, brooding over painted eggs on a nest of sugar straw. Once the cooks’ artistry had been sufficiently admired, the servants dismantled the dishes and cut the food into morsels suitable to be picked up between finger and thumb or speared with a golden trident.

 

  
Again and again I offered the basin so the guests could cleanse their tharos hands between courses, taking care that the cloth draped over my left arm didn’t hide my wrist. But I was unworthy of notice. I bargained with myself: next time I came forward, I would tip water into the king’s lap. I told myself I’d wait for the arthygater and the other female guests to leave. But then the whores arrived, and two of the most beautiful joined King Corvus and Consort Ostrakan for an interminable game of guessing fragrances. Afterward there were sweetmeats, and more drinking. I took the basin to King Corvus without waiting for a summons, and sloshed a little water onto his knee. He seemed to take no notice, not even to make the gesture of reprimand with two fingers. I moved away again.

 

  
The arthygater’s husband fondled the whore next to him. King Corvus unfolded his crossed legs and stood, and with a few low words took his leave. He gestured as he passed me by and I followed, and he led me to a tharais room and closed the door behind us. The walls had paintings of the twelve Abasements, performed by tharos upon tharais; Nephelais had told me men usually gave a napkin a larger gift for submitting to such acts. The king sat down in the only chair and looked at me with his head tilted, one eye quizzical and the other unwelcoming.

 

  
I knelt and showed him the scar on my wrist.

 

  
“The dreamer, is it? Let me see you,” he said in Lambaneish.

 

  
I was stifling under the shawl, awash with heat, my brow and neck wet, but I wished I could have kept my face hidden. It was better when I could see him and he couldn’t see me. I leaned forward until my forehead touched the ground, and when I spoke, the sound was muffled. “This one served you well once. I, it would do so again, Corvus Rex Ixa—” I stopped when I saw
the fingers of his right hand twitch. The king didn’t use the Lambaneish language of gesture, but his impatience was plain nevertheless.

 

  
“You complained of being in my service, I recall.”

 

  
I straightened up and spread my fingers over my thighs so my hands would not become fists, and said in the High, “If you don’t want my service, why did you send Garrilus for me?”

 

  
“Send who? Garrio?”

 

  
“To fetch me from the dyers.”

 

  
He raised one eyebrow.

 

  
“I want to go home, back across the mountains. When the passes open this summer, when you cross the mountains with your army—I will be your dreamer if you like, or mend your clothing, only please let me accompany you.”

 

  
“What makes you think I’m returning to Incus with an army? Did you dream it? Sire Vafra said you have been dreaming.”

 

  
I touched my forehead to the ground again and stretched out my arms in supplication. “I hear things in the bathing room. I’ll gladly tell all I know for ten gold pieces.”

 

  
He laughed out loud. I wondered if I’d ever heard him laugh before, then remembered how just that evening he’d laughed at some witticism while they were dining; but I’d never heard him like this, so unfettered. “Now I know for certain you aren’t a thrush,” he said. “If you were, surely you’d be better at your trade. For one thing, you are misinformed. I will not return this summer, but the next. For another, spying doesn’t pay as well as you suppose. For ten gold pieces I could hire twenty thrushes, and hear something more than gossip from a cattery.”

 

  
Not this summer, but the next. Too long, too long. Sire Galan would be back in Corymb by then and I’d have to traverse two kingdoms to find him. And when I did, he’d have his wife at his side, and likely another sheath for those nights when he tired of his wife.

 

  
I kept my face to the ground so the king wouldn’t see how this news dismayed me. “Sire, I don’t need ten golden coins, only I beg you, please give me five to save my life. The taskmistress here in the dining court says she’ll have me killed for a thrush if I don’t give her five golden beadcoins. For myself, I don’t ask for coins, only a little favor that will cost you nothing. Since you don’t mean to return to Inkle yourself this summer, perhaps you could persuade Arthygater Katharos to give me to Keros as a maidservant, so I could accompany her by land or sea to Lanx when she goes to wed your bother Merle—I mean the Startling, the Starling, begging your pardon. In Incus I can find my warrior, or follow him home to Corymb if he has already sailed.” I was out of breath. I dried my palms on the shawl.

 

  
He made a dismissive gesture, but I noticed some slight stiffening of his posture when I spoke of Keros and Merle. The arthygater had told Keros the king favored the match, but maybe he fancied her for himself after all. Or he planned to send his brother a deflowered bride; a petty sort of revenge, if true. I said, “Arthygater Keros, she—”

 

  
“Yes?”

 

  
“She doesn’t wish to marry a traitor. I saw her in the bathing room. She did this.” I showed him in profile how her nostrils had flared and she’d looked off into the distance.

 

  
“And how did Katharos persuade her?”

 

  
“She said it was Keros’s duty to make sure the Starling would be loyal to you, now that he’d quarreled with your mother. She said if Merle, if the Starling, could hold Lynx, Lanx, this would be a great help to you. To them.” I looked at my lap and discovered my right hand encircling my left wrist, grasping it hard. “Sire, I could get a message to her, perhaps.”

 

  
“To whom?”

 

  
“To Arthygater Keros.”

 

  
The smallest finger of his right hand stirred. I had guessed wrong. He wasn’t interested in Keros, but in something else I’d said. I wished I knew what it was. I said, “The bathing room is where the arthygater makes begins, bargains—for wool, for captives, for loyalty. Have I not heard her raising hundreds of thousands in gold for your army? And gathering wealth for Keros’s dowry to bribe the Starling? I know the arthygater is your ally, but I daresay it would be worth something to you to know if she does what she promises.”

 

  
King Corvus stood and took a golden beadcoin from the purse hanging from his belt. “Here, give this to the wretched taskmistress and tell her she’s lucky to get it. Tell her you have powerful friends, and if she asks for more—or if you disappear—the arthygater will learn she’s been taking bribes from thrushes. And this is for you.” He put three silver beadcoins on my palm. “You can tell her you earned it the usual way.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. I don’t think he knew he was pointing at a painting of an Abasement in which a tharos man stood astraddle a prone tharais woman, who was naked except for the shawl over her head, and pissed on her belly. The man’s prick was the size of a stallion’s unsheathed.

 

  
I covered my face with the shawl so he wouldn’t see the red creeping up my neck. Spit soured in my mouth. He said nothing of the favor I’d asked, to serve Keros when she crossed the Ferinus.

 

  
The king was at the door, his back to me, before I understood. He hadn’t known: the betrothal of Keros and Merle was Katharos’s scheme and none of his. This made sense, as it had not made sense that King Corvus would
ever trust his brother again. I said, “Don’t you want to hear how much Arthygater Katharos has raised for the duty, the dowry? How much gold and jewelry, how many bales of silk she is sending with Keros? The Starling will be able to buy many soldiers with all that wealth.”

 

  
I saw with my right eye as if I flew higher than a hawk, high enough to see the arthygater’s ships stitching up and down the Inward Sea from Lambanein to Incus, and still more ships on the Outward Sea, sailing to kingdoms beyond my ken. I saw mule trains carrying bales of wool south to Allaxios through the mountain passes, and bearing bales of gauze dyed in clan colors north. Katharos was too wise to place all her goods on one ship that might be capsized by a contrary wind. She would help King Corvus raise an army, and behind his back send a dowry worthy of a king to his brother Merle.