Wildfire (25 page)

 

  
Mai said she’d been talking to a certain rumormonger who traveled with one of the companies from Lanx; he claimed that by his reckoning Prince Corvus’s foreign wife Kalos was long overdue to give birth. It should have been a month ago, he said—but she thought he was being paid to say so.

 

  
“Why?”

 

  
“So people will think the child was stillborn, maybe. Or that Princess Kalos is going to give birth to a giant serpent.”

 

  
“Will she?” I said.

 

  
“Not likely,” Mai said with a grin. “Queenmother Caelum must be frightened now that the birth is so close. If Kalos brings forth an unblemished boy, the queenmother will lose many of the troops who have pledged to her.”

 

  
“I did hear that this Precious Lokas…Kalose—that she had green shiny shells all over. Skells, scales, I mean. Like a slitherer, you know, one that slithers.”

 

  
“I’ve heard the songs too. But I doubt very much she’s a lamia who can change into a serpent. I don’t know what the queenmother has against her, but it’s not that. Maybe this princess stiffened up Prince Corvus’s backbone as well as his prick, eh? That might be enough to make a foe of the queenmother.”

 

  
Sunup spoke then, saying she’d heard Prince Corvus was a handsome fellow, and Mai said even a humpbacked, one-eyed king was reckoned handsome by the flatterers around him. And whom had she been talking to? Sunup said it was Sire Deruda, and Mai said stay away from him or get a walloping—a man who liked girls so young wouldn’t want her when she was grown. Sunup turned sullen and quiet. Her breasts were starting to swell, and I too feared what might become of her if she lost her shyness.

 

  
Mai had color in her cheeks, but it was from red paste such as whores
like to use. I said, “You’ll send for me as well as the bidlife when your time comes, won’t you?”

 

  
She said I’d be sure to know, for I’d hear her screaming clear from one end of the army to the other. I winced, and Mai patted my hand as if I were the one soon to face the travail. As I was leaving I turned and caught a bleak expression on her face, one she hadn’t cared to show me.

 
  

 

  
I wanted darkness for Fleetfoot’s rite, for I wanted him in awe of me. He knew me too well. He’d seen me the day I came out of the Kingswood, in rags and with my hair matted and snarled. I was a beggar then, slow to speak and wary after a year alone, and of her charity Az and her boys had shared what little they had. He esteemed me no more—or less—after I was lightning struck, but rather teased me when I misspoke. There was mischief in him, though little malice.

 

  
I arranged it all with Mai and Ev. Mai sent her man Pinch for me late, saying she was feeling poorly and wanted my help. I said I’d take Fleetfoot as a runner, and Pinch could see me safely there and back. Galan grudgingly let me go. But Pinch went one direction with his lantern, and Fleetfoot and I another. Piddle came too, of course. We walked between tents, some brimming with light and others dark, to the meadow where the horses of our company were pastured. The tethered horses raised their heads when we came by, but didn’t challenge our passage. I told Fleetfoot I meant to cure him that night, and left my doubts out of it. He followed willingly enough, whether or not he believed me. The clouds were heavy, hiding the half Moon. Fleetfoot stumbled over fallen branches and tussocks of grass that I avoided without thinking; sometimes I forgot that others saw poorly in the dark.

 

  
Ev met us with some of his friends, two dogboys, a horseboy, and one of Sire Pava’s foot soldiers, a lad named Dag. I hadn’t expected so many watchers. In the pit of my belly I felt an uneasy excitement, as if a snake stirred its coils inside me. I would fail and they’d know me for a mountebank, a charlatan. Yet I was eager that it be done and over, that what was pent up in me should find release.

 

  
In the pasture there was a small hollow suited to my purpose, which held the sunken ruins of a croft and an ancient guardian tree, a rowan. We sat in a circle with Fleetfoot in the middle. I gave the boys a song to hum, the same melody a bird had given me when I ate the firethorn berries in the Kingswood. The tune was a gift of Ardor and it steadied me. It had no words, and as we hummed I drummed on my thighs to set the pace. The boys took up the rhythm, thudding palms against flesh. I turned my back on them and hunched over and rubbed flour on my face so I would shine in the
dark. I smeared charcoal on my eyelids and lips to give the blank white face features. I uncovered my hair and brushed it out with a wool carder so that it crackled and rose in a haze of curls around my head. I didn’t want Fleetfoot to see
me
when he looked at me. The summoner had taught me that.

 

  
When I turned back toward the circle, someone gasped. I made my voice thin and harsh, through a tight throat, and I invoked the gods to whom the bones had pointed, setting the offerings between Fleetfoot and me: hemp, a flask of doublewine I’d stolen from Sire Galan, pinecones, maple twigs, and bear’s-foot leaves. I poured wine into a cup that contained a paste of ground drake root and grains of darnel-grass—a small amount, for both are exceedingly potent. I asked Desire and Frenzy to bless it, and took a mouthful that burned like fire down my throat and up my nose, for it was twice as strong as ordinary wine. I passed the cup to Fleetfoot and with a gesture told him to drink it all down. He gulped and gasped. With a coal from my fireflask, I lit the offerings. The pinecones and frayed hemp stalks caught quickly, and the smoke was sweet and pungent. I spat the doublewine onto the fire, and it made flames leap up all at once, blue and orange. The firelight caught Fleetfoot’s face from underneath and left his eye sockets shadowed. His lips were parted and he stared at me. I thumped on my leg to make the boys sing faster.

 

  
I didn’t feel the presence of the gods, and I feared they’d spurned me. I took the finger bones from my pouch and kissed them, the Dame and Na, and I put Na’s bone in Fleetfoot’s three-fingered right hand and closed his fist around it. I kept the Dame in my lap. I called their names aloud, and I sang to Na, “As your sister’s son is blood of your blood, help him now,” and the words came out in perfect order. When I sang their names, I felt a chill descending the ladder of my spine. Piddle made a strange noise, between a whine and a whimper, and her hackles rose. I looked beyond our circle and saw we’d drawn other witnesses. Horses watched, standing still and alert, their eyes shining in the firelight.

 

  
There was awe in Fleetfoot’s face. I took his left hand, his half hand, between mine again. I felt his missing fingers distinctly, throbbing against my palms. His hand was cold, flesh and shade, and I thought of his shade as some dark form of wax that would soften in heat, and I gave him some of my warmth. My breath rose in a white plume, but I’d long since ceased to feel the cold of that night.

 

  
With a loud cry I called on Mischief, and Piddle yelped in startlement. I felt Fleetfoot try to jerk away, and I held him fast so I could pull a glove over his stump: Mischief’s glove, which I’d stitched of mouse skins. For where the mouse is, there is Mischief, and where Mischief is, the mouse follows.

 

  
Ev had brought me twenty mice, and it had taken every one, for their hides were so thin and delicate they tore easily. The fur was softer in nap than the finest velvet, gray brown on the backs, pale gray on the underbellies. I’d pieced their skins together to fit Fleetfoot’s new hand, as best I could remember it, to teach his shade to fit what was, rather than what was gone. A new whole.

 

  
He cringed when he saw the glove of pied fur, and the tails that dangled from it, but I wouldn’t let him go. “Hold still!” I hissed, for it was hard to put on the glove one-handed. Ev came forward and held Fleetfoot’s arm steady, and I forced on the glove, which fit tightly, and squeezed the shade into it, down into the flesh where it belonged. “Wear this at night,” I told Fleetfoot, “or when it hurts.”

 

  
There should be a proper end to a rite, but I hadn’t thought so far ahead. The boys stopped singing, first one, then several, until Dag was the only one left. He stopped with an embarrassed laugh, and Piddle got up and shook herself with great shuddering vigor, which caused more laughter, and we were done—though I didn’t know what had been done, not for certain. But I thought I’d felt Fleetfoot’s shade or shadow change under my fingers, the way the clay took shape in Artifex’s hands. I was trembling, strung so taut I must vibrate, and I was cold again too, as if I’d given too much of my warmth. I put away the bones and rubbed my face on my skirt, smearing the charcoal and flour together. I heard a slap, someone hitting the rump of a horse, and looked up to see Galan standing on the other side of the circle, and a stallion sidling out of his way. Galan was wearing his surcoat unlaced. His linen shirt was bright beneath it, spilling out from the sleeves and over his sagging hose. He’d come without his boots.

 

  
The boys scattered, even Fleetfoot and Ev. I didn’t blame them.

 

  
I reached for my headcloth, ashamed that he saw me with my head bare before others. Ashamed and afraid.

 

  
“No,” he said, his voice thick, and in two strides he was on me, leaning down with his hand on the side of my neck and his thumb pushing up my chin. He’d walked right over the small fire, scattering embers and raising sparks.

 

  
I stood up, though his hand pressed me down. He rubbed my face hard with the sleeve of his surcoat, saying, “What is this? What is this?” And all I could think was that he’d sully the fine brocade. A laugh was rising in me and I must not let it out. I must not. I didn’t know how I could be so afraid and so mirthful at the same time—unless it was Mischief in me. I’d called Mischief and maybe he hadn’t left. He was one to linger where he wasn’t wanted.

 

  
“You lied,” Galan said. “And it makes me wonder how many other
times you’ve lied and I didn’t find out. You said you weren’t a canny and I believed you. That makes me the fool the Crux said I was.”

 

  
I opened my mouth to naysay him, but the words wouldn’t come. He shook me hard.

 

  
I said, “The priest couldn’t give Feltfoot sooth, and neither would Rift Barrier, so I did. He was suffering so much, I couldn’t bear to see it.”

 

  
“So you
are
a canny,” Galan said.

 

  
I shrugged and said something close to the truth. “I am what Ardor made me.”

 

  
“I saw you. I heard you.” He rubbed my cheek with his thumb and showed me the gray smudge. “Would you make a passel of boys follow at your heels now, as Rowney does? I’ve seen him, don’t shake your head, you know it’s true.” He was almost growling now, his voice had dropped so low, and I held my breath because the sound of him set something humming in my belly. “It makes me wonder…,” he said, stepping forward so I stepped back and back again. There was a horse behind me, so I stopped. Galan had one hand on my neck and the other on the horse’s withers, so I couldn’t move, and the horse turned its head and snorted. “It makes me wonder what you did to
me.
”

 

  
I’d never tell him about the binding, never. He wouldn’t forgive me for it. He wouldn’t believe that by the time I’d buried that womandrake by the river, it was too late, we were already bound.

 

  
He pressed me and the horse shifted and stepped away, and there was air at my back and nothing holding me up but his hands on me, on my buttocks and under my armpit, hoisting me up face-to-face with him, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, and we both staggered. He went down to his knees. I lay back against the ground, but I kept my legs around him. He slid his hands up my thighs, pushing away my dress. I watched him and started to smile. Mischief was in me for certain that night. I dared Galan and he knew it. He leaned over me, bracing himself with one hand against the ground. Some of my hair was caught under his hand, so I couldn’t turn my head. His other hand was between my legs, hard fingernails and calluses and knuckles. He shoved three fingers into me while he watched my face, and I saw he wanted to startle me, maybe even hurt me, but I pushed myself against his fingers, taking him farther in.

 

  
And Galan took his hand away and yanked at the laces of his hose, and he lowered himself on me and pierced me and scraped me against the ground. I dug my heels into him. I saw the pattern clear as day, how on the last cast the Dame’s finger bone had landed in Mischief and pointed to Desire, and Na’s had landed in Chance and pointed to the Warrior, and I
wondered if this was the necessary end of the rite, the way to the Warrior’s unforgiving heart. I hadn’t wanted Galan there, but he’d been summoned nonetheless. I felt every pebble and clod and blade of grass under my back, and every wrinkle and fold of linen and brocade against my front, and Galan’s weight and hard muscle pressing everything into my skin, and it was all I wanted, to be rubbed tender inside and out, to be given over to the world’s touch.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 10
  

  
Raiders
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
C
all the gods at your peril, for they do not suffer to be dismissed. Now I saw mice wherever we camped. No doubt they’d always been there, but never so many. I saw them from the corners of my eyes, little flickers of darting gray motion, and by the time I turned my head they’d scampered off. Holes in the grain sacks, holes chewed in Galan’s linen underarmor, its tow stuffing stolen for nests. Holes chewed in his strongbox and Fleetfoot’s blanket. The mice brought fleas and we all itched and scratched.

 

  
Fleetfoot slept with his mouse glove on. He said it helped.