Authors: Jude Fisher
‘Yes.’
‘A sweetheart’s, then?’
‘She is not my sweetheart.’
‘Ah, but you wish she was.’
Mortified, Erno nodded once.
‘Fezack can help with that. She take hair and weave a magical amulet: you wear it next your heart: girl will love you.’
Erno laughed. ‘If only it were that simple.’
‘It can be. Give me the hair.’ She held out the spotted cloth, streaked now with white guano.
‘I have no money.’
‘You had the luck of the gull: for that we give you free charm.’
What could he say without being rude? Erno reached into his shirt then placed Katla’s cut tresses carefully into the kerchief. The woman folded the corners in and placed it in her ample bosom. ‘I give it to mother secretly,’ she said. ‘You come back tomorrow.’
The curtain over the wagon’s door flicked open and Marin came out, clutching a dark glass bottle with an ornate silver stopper to her chest.
‘Rub it in at dawn and dusk,’ the old woman warbled. ‘Dawn and dusk, mind you.’
‘Thank you,’ Marin said nervously. She bobbed a curtsey and skipped down the steps. She ran towards Erno, scanning his face anxiously to see whether he had understood the import of the old woman’s instruction, but he was staring at the turbaned woman and his face was as red as sunset. ‘Thank you again,’ she called to the old woman.
The man with the pierced face whistled at her and made what might have been a lewd gesture. Marin grabbed Erno’s arm and together they walked quickly from the nomad campsite through the fading light.
‘Father!’
The figure who greeted him stood in the half-dark at the back of the pavilion, swathed in shimmering grey. Even when she stepped into the torchlight, all that was visible of her were her hands, clenched tightly at her sides, and her mouth – pale, unpainted, and currently set in a hard, thin line. Standing thus, tall and slender and absolutely motionless, she looked, Lord Tycho Issian thought, like a pillar of granite facing the relentless waves of the Northern Sea. The sabatka she wore – the traditional dress of the respectable Istrian woman – had once belonged to her mother. Demure in the extreme, it covered from sight every part of her from her slippered feet to her veiled head; even so, he knew that beneath its cool drapery she would have the same alluringly sleek curves as the lovely Alizon had possessed when he had first encountered her: sweet eighteen, on the slave blocks at Gibeon. It had been her mouth that had done it for him: revealed by a single gash in the severe black sabatka that was the slavemaster’s standard issue for all his merchandise, her lips had been sharply defined but as plump and plush and red as labia, and having seen those lips he had had to see the rest of her. It was not the accepted thing to ask to inspect the merchandise of a certificated trader thus; but Tycho was a very persuasive man: half an hour and two dozen cantari later and he had made a very thorough, and very satisfactory, inspection indeed. That had, of course, been before he was known by the world in general, before he had come by his title and his lands; and by the time he had become Lord Tycho Issian, his beloved Alizon had been so highly trained in the social etiquettes of their adoptive country of Istria that not even the Duchess of Cera could have sniffed out her lowly origins.
‘Selen: my dear.’
‘I imagine if you have disturbed me at the hour before prayers, it must be for a good reason.’
So distant, so chill, he thought admiringly. Her mother had been a fine teacher. But if she was anything like Alizon, there would be a heart of fire beating beneath the cool flesh, a furnace of lava between those smooth thighs . . . He felt his member stir and collected his thoughts hurriedly.
‘The Vingos came again to see me today.’ She made no response, so he went on: ‘Their offer is becoming extremely tempting.’
‘For you, maybe.’
‘For me, yes. They are very keen to join their estates to ours, and their political fortunes, too. The settlement sum they offer is . . . not inconsiderable.’
‘It would clear your Treasury debts, then?’
That startled him. He had not thought she studied the ledgers with such a sharp eye. ‘Oh yes, it would settle my obligations.’
‘Which would leave you clear to run for the last remaining seat on the Council, would it not, Father?’
His eyes narrowed. It was just as well women had no public voice if they spent their time thus, spying and calculating and picking over men’s characters and ambitions like vultures over carrion.
‘It is time for you to take a husband, Selen, and I think Tanto Vingo will make you a good match.’
‘And I have no say in the matter?’ Her voice was icy.
Tycho smiled. ‘None at all.’
‘And what if I will not speak my vows?’
‘I will have you whipped till you do.’ The image of her on her knees, stripped to the waist with the lash curling its red tongue across her sweet skin was almost too delicious to contemplate.
‘You would not dare—’
‘Oh, do not dare me, daughter. It would profit you nothing.’
‘Oh, but profit is all you care about.’
Tycho raised an eyebrow. ‘Not the only thing, daughter; but, I grant you, one of the dearest to my heart.’
‘Heart? You? When Falla made you she placed a spent coal between your ribs.’
He laughed. ‘Ah, daughter, daughter. What a happy man young Tanto will be with such a viper to nestle to his bosom at night.’ He sighed. ‘Be sure, my dear, to paint your mouth nicely, won’t you, when they come for the formal betrothal tomorrow?’
In the silence that followed he could sense the way her face tightened under the gauze; could feel the way her eyes went to slits and a muscle twitched in her cheek.
‘So you would sell me like a whore, would you?’ she asked at last. ‘Why not have done and pimp me to the northern king?’
His hand struck her cheek so fast it shocked them both.
‘Heresy!’
Her head came up defiantly. ‘At least the Eyrans treat their women with a degree of decency, instead of hiding them away, wrapped like confectionery, taking them out only to service their lusts.’
‘By Falla, you will be silent!’ he roared.
‘Or you will hit me again? But it would be rather a shame to spoil the merchandise, would it not, in the event of the Vingos requesting a closer inspection? They might not pay up the full amount for damaged goods.’
‘You will present yourself at the appointed hour tomorrow, Selen, mouth shut and painted prettily; or I will give you to the Daughters, so help me Falla.’
And with that, he turned on his heel and left.
Selen stared at his departing back and felt hot misery well up inside her. How could he treat her like a commodity, to be bought by the highest bidder? Did he have no human feeling left for her at all? When she had been a little girl – before the Veiling – she remembered him watching her play with the deerhound puppies in the courtyard. Then his face had not been so stern. What had changed in him, that he would cast her aside thus? It was no empty threat, of that she was sure, giving her to the Daughters of Falla, for her father was a man of violent passions. It was not just the pursuit of wealth and power that made him burn: it was also his love of the Goddess. He worshipped Falla with a fanatical love, an extremism rarely seen even in the most devout of Istrian men, an adoration that bordered on fetishism. Everywhere in the villa there were figures of the Goddess – in ivory, in sardonyx, in wood, in silver – her naked image, as narrow-waisted and flat-chested as a boy, guarded the front door, twined about by her companion cat; stood warriorlike in corridors, was ensconced in niches with votive candles; hovered balefully from the ceilings of the bedchambers; kept watch grimly over the tiled bath; one hand tucked behind her, the other covering her mouth. Her eyes, and those of the feline that accompanied her, were on you always. And always, always the brazier stoked with offerings, stinking with incense and death. It was, Selen thought, an unhealthy faith, that demanded such ostentatious observances. So, in this bargain, as in all others he ever made, it seemed her father would be the winner; for he would gain wealth and power by selling her to the Vingos, or capital for his soul by selling her to the Daughters.
And whichever way she looked at it, she could only be the loser.
Fighting down her panic, she began to consider her options. She made careful investigations through the women’s network and learned that the Vingos were not known as overly zealous nor cruel people. But when she had brought up the subject of Tanto Vingo, her maids had gone unwontedly quiet, then had hurriedly made up for their hesitation with chatter about his looks and his athleticism, as if that would impress her. And as if she would not have noticed their pause. Fools! So: parcelled off to be the sex-slave and heir-maker for an empty-headed lordling; or delivered into the hands of the dread Daughters of Falla, to devote her life to the cause of the Goddess.
She sighed, her mind shying unhelpfully away from both prospects. She forced it back mercilessly. The former, she could not imagine enduring. Just the thought of a man’s hands upon her flesh made her nauseous. Almost, she was tempted by the latter. At least she’d have her books and time for contemplation; she could garden and live quietly with other women; unless, of course, her faith was ever called into question. And there lay the nub of the problem. Selen had never felt the flame of Falla take fire in her heart and was beginning to find the daily observances a meaningless chore. Could she continue the charade under the watchful eyes of the Daughters? It was said they made tests for their novitiates which none but the truly faithful could succeed in. It was also said that those who failed faced painful sacrifice . . .
‘I wish I had been born a man.’
In her fury, without thought, she had said it aloud. Her hands flew to her mouth. Such an utterance was the greatest heresy of all: she could be burned for even thinking such a thing.
‘Falla, Goddess, Giver of Life: made in your image, I worship you for your generous gift,’ she muttered automatically.
As if on cue, there came the sound of handbells being rung outside the tent, as the Crier carried the call to prayer around the Istrian quarter of the fairground. A few moments later, where there had been the low murmur of chatter and commerce, there was nothing but a deathly quiet.
Selen stared in loathing at the carved sardonyx figure standing on its plinth in the corner of her own tent: its blind eyes, its pitiless smile; its flaunting posture; its inhuman companion creature.
With a wordless cry, she turned her back on the idol, sank to the floor and put her head in her hands.
Four
Vanity
T
he next morning Katla woke to the smell of foreign ground and pungent waxed cloth. She opened her eyes. Sunlight was bleaching through the tent: even at this early hour she could feel its heat and the promise of the hot and cloudless day to come. Her father and brothers had so often spoken of the wide blue Moonfell sky and the heat that made it hard to walk about without breaking into a sweat when they had recounted tales of their previous visits to the Allfair as the family sat steaming around the steading’s winter fire with the wind howling and the rain thrashing down on the turf roof, and Katla had thought they exaggerated. Now, though, it was clear they had applied their usual understatement and lack of poetry to the descriptions.
She rolled over in her sealskin, found her boots and with a single quick motion rolled off her pallet and came to her feet. Tucking her boots under her arm, she crept from the booth, stepping over her silent brothers. Halli slept as always on his back, his dense black beard making an obscurity of the lower half of his face; Fent, in contrast, lay curled into the corner of the booth with his skins drawn up around him, like the fox she often thought he resembled. In the next compartment, Tor Leeson lay sprawled across two-thirds of the available space, snoring, while Erno, having lost the better portion of his sleeping pallet to Tor, was tumbled uncomfortably against the tent wall, his head propped up on a sack of grain. Katla grinned: in sleep, as in life . . .
Just as she thought this, Erno’s eyelids flickered open and he looked straight at her. Katla held her breath. His mouth began to move as if he might form a phrase, and when she saw this she shook her head, then bent to him and placed a single finger on his mouth. A second later she was gone.
Erno stared at the opened tent flap. He brought his hand out from under his fur wrappings and pressed it hard against his lips, as if by this action alone he might save the sensation of her cool, light finger on his skin forever in his memory.
Her father had told her to stay always in his sight. But since his eyes were currently fast closed, Katla reckoned this negated any such bargain. Besides, she thought, preparing against accusation, he could hardly deny her permission to visit the latrines.
The ablutions tents had been erected down on the strand, where a team of Empire slaves had the previous day dug a series of deep channels leading from the tents down to the shore, thus allowing waste to soak into the black sand, or be washed away by the sea’s tide. A waste of good piss, Katla thought as she made use of the facilities: in the skerries they kept their urine in deep barrels: for fixing dyes, for fertilising the ground; for preserving whale meat, for quenching metalwork. When she ran out of the good oil they rendered from the sea-creatures they caught, Katla had taken to plunging her red-hot spearheads and daggers into the barrel outside the smithy. It didn’t work quite as well as the oil, and the smell was appalling; but it was a thousand times more effective than water in the process, as she’d learned to her cost; for some reason there was a lot less steam and the metal hardened faster. Iron was not so readily come by in the islands that you could afford to waste it with impunity.
Outside again on the strand with the sun on her face, Katla strolled past the rest of the tents. Gulls cried overhead; out over the shining water a cormorant folded its wings, dived and vanished from sight. She waited for it to reappear, but even though she stood there for a moment or more, nothing broke the surface. More than likely it had swum away beneath the water and come up where she had not been looking. She smiled. Diving birds she loved to see: masters as they were of two elements at once. Scuffing the black sand, she walked further along the strand, past the other tents. At the last one, she stopped and listened. There seemed to be an inordinate amount of splashing going on inside it. Katla frowned. She waited, but the cascade went on and on, punctuated every so often with a groan, then a clatter. Unable to control her inquisitiveness, Katla poked her head through the doorflap. Inside, a woman in a pale Eyran tunic was crouched down with her head in a bucket.