Wildfire (55 page)

 

  
The arthygater’s skin was smooth and unwrinkled, though she was old enough to have sons who were grown men. No sign of scales.

 

  
With a blade made of a shard of black obsidian, Lychnais shaved the hair high on the nape of the arthygater’s neck. It was a mark of beauty in Lambanein to have what they called an egret’s neck; the arthygater didn’t possess one, so she exaggerated it by other means. Then Lychnais shaved her mis
tress’s armpits and groin, and removed the hair on her limbs with the mixture of hot wax and honey, until she was smooth as a girlchild. Highborn women in Lambanein had the hair of their bodies removed every fifth day, and also before festivals, banquets, fasts, and assignations. They showed a positive disgust toward this hair, considering it filthy, ugly (one word for both in Lambaneish), while they devoted much of the day to adorning the hair of their heads, though it was also tharais.

 

  
While Lychnais worked on her, the arthygater spoke to one of her honored guests about the purchase of some bales of wool from a certain kind of sheep, and might there be lambs too, at a fair price, in time for the next New Moon banquet? Then she gave lengthy instructions to her factotum, Gnathin—mostly having to do with cloth, to judge from the words I recognized. Gnathin must tell such-and-so not to make any more of some sort of gauzes, for likely they wouldn’t sell in Incus this year, and Gnathin must find out if the new bondwomen from Loxos could embroider, and so forth. The factotum counted beads on a cord, one for each command, each bead different.

 

  
After her tharais hair was removed, the arthygater was washed and rinsed by her tharos bath servants. Only then was she clean enough to lie in the tepid water of the bathing pool. The arthygater finished her soak, was dried and oiled and massaged and painted, and then it was Lychnais’s turn to attend her again by oiling and tidying her hair, which was burgundy, almost the color of a plum leaf. This was no simple matter, as the hair was affixed to an elaborate wickerwork shape, and inevitably it was disarranged during sleep. And of course the guests and limpets also had to be depilated, washed, and have their hair dressed in an order dictated by protocol.

 

  
When they left, I thought surely the work was done. But other noblewomen followed, and lastly the arthygater’s two indolent daughters-in-law and several of their friends. They had slept late into the afternoon and we had all been obliged to wait for them.

 

  
Afterward Mermera watched Lychnais and me to make sure we swept up every single hair and nail paring and burned them in the beehive hearth, so that no particle would remain that could be used in a curse.

 
  

 

  
That evening I asked Lychnais about the arthygater’s tattoo. She said the tattoos were given to adepts of the Serpent Cult, which was dedicated to the worship of Katabaton.

 

  
“Are men in the cult?” I asked.

 

  
“Of course not!”

 

  
“What do they do? Can the arthygater turn into a serpent?”

 

  
“This one knows nothing about it, nor does it wish to know, ein? These
things are tharos matters, and besides, Katabaton punishes profaners who spy on the cult’s mysteries. She takes the form of a huge pale-bellied serpent and swallows them up, swallows them whole.” Lychnais shuddered. “This one can’t abide snakes, may Katabaton forgive it.”

 

  
Lychnais wouldn’t go near the one that lived in a cage in the bathing room, a slender grass snake with a back bright as green enamel. I’d have thought a creature that slithered on its belly on the ground would be tharais. Not so.

 
  

 

  
I practiced shaving myself first, until I no longer nicked my arms and legs with the perilously sharp obsidian blade. Lychnais allowed me to practice on her. Sometimes Meninx would rouse herself to tell me how she had performed such duties. They taught me to understand the language of gesture, the left hand speaking to the tharais servants, the right hand to the tharos. We were all afraid of the arthygater’s wrath should I prove clumsy or slow to do her bidding.

 

  
It was three days before I served as a depilator in the bathing room, on the old limpet who attended the arthygater’s querulous mother-in-law. My hand shook and Mermera the bathmistress watched me like an owl. She waited till after the bath to strike me with her flail for allowing the wax to cool so that it didn’t spread properly. It would have been unseemly to disturb the harmony of the bathing room by reminding anyone of the invisible tharais servants.

 

  
Some of my ministrations were painful, no doubt: plucking long hairs around the nipple, and scraping the razor against the most tender of all flesh. But the noblewomen wouldn’t complain. To mention to the bathmistress that I was less skilled than the one who had served before would be to imply that one tharais was not just the same as another.

 

  
And now I learned, as I had not in the dyehouse, what it truly meant to be tharais—to be so despised that my face must go unseen, and my voice unheard. I was a mudwoman, and had long borne the contempt of my betters, but never had I suffered a disregard so thorough that I vanished under it. Surely the abhorrence of the tharos was a sort of curse; it caused a malaise, a dreariness that weighed upon me even when my duties were done and I bared my face and spoke to Meninx and Lychnais. And I could see they felt it too.

 

  
The tharos were not troubled by the abhorrence they felt, far from it. They were tranquil so long as we tharais were merely pairs of hands that performed necessary but vile services.

 

  
I wanted to turn the blade ever so slightly, to cut something other than hairs, to make someone flinch. But I wasn’t such a fool as that.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 22
  

  
White Petals
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
M
eninx’s sores showed signs of healing, but there was no denying she was getting worse. She had begun to retch up a greenish and bitter spew, and her skin turned the color of old ivory.

 

  
Arthygater Katharos had no use for bondservants with wasting illnesses. If Meninx were to remind the arthygater of her presence behind the painted door by troubling the air with foul smells or cries of pain, she would be sent away to the temple of Peranon. There she would have been one of many, hundreds even, lying in their own filth on straw. It was no place to linger. Those who didn’t mend fast, died fast.

 

  
For many months before I came, Lychnais had cared for Meninx so she wouldn’t be banished to a temple sickroom. She’d covered her stink with fragrances of candlebark and spices, and performed the depilator’s tasks in addition to her own. Lychnais had an impatient manner and ungentle hands, and little ways of showing Meninx that tending her was a bother. Yet she’d taken up the burden of her own will; I admired her for it, though I couldn’t warm to her.

 

  
I was glad to take some of this burden from Lychnais—I found it impossible to begrudge Meninx anything, for she was a most uncomplaining and humble person, so grateful for any small service that it wrung my heart.

 

  
A wise healer knows better than to torment a dying patient with useless remedies, but I wasn’t convinced a cure was hopeless. And if I couldn’t cure Meninx of her baffling Lambaneish illness, I hoped at least to ease her suffering.

 

  
When Lychnais was away on an errand, I drew the compass on the tiled floor of our room with charcoal. I scratched the godsign for Wend Weaver onto both sides of a flat fava bean to represent the Dame, and inscribed the sign of Growan Crone on another bean for Na, and cast the beans instead of their bones.

 

  
Then I rubbed out the charcoal markings and covered the smudges with
straw, and sat there crying, because the Dame and Na were no longer with me, and the signs meant nothing.

 

  
Meninx touched my back, saying, “What’s the matter?” I hadn’t realized she was awake.

 

  
I turned to her and took her hand. “Homesick, that’s all,” I said.

 

  
That night I lay restless, worrying about Meninx and praying for her to all the gods, even Lambaneish ones. I knew of herbs that could be used against her various afflictions, but as frail as she was, the wrong remedy could kill her.

 

  
I was a greenwoman before I learned how to use the compass for healing, but in those days, before the lightning, my memory could be trusted. And even then I’d been ignorant, I’d taken perilous chances.

 

  
I remembered going into the fields after casting the bones for those struck down by the shiver-and-shake, and how the Dame and Na had pointed to what the avatars provided. I had such a sense of surety then, with those sure guides. They saw the pattern entire that I glimpsed by way of signs: the person—never merely a sufferer, but a whole self on whom suffering was inscribed; the gods who worked their wills upon the crisis; the malady and remedy fitting without a chink between them.

 

  
Even when the remedies didn’t suffice—even when the gods took Tobe despite all I could do—at least I knew I had not erred, had not caused harm to those I aimed to help.

 

  
This surety had been stolen from me. I mourned the Dame and Na still, but there was such fury commingled with my sorrow that I could get no ease from weeping. I wondered if the thief who’d stolen their bones had dared show them openly after I left the manufactory.

 

  
I must get back in there to find out.

 

  
But the textrices would scorn me for a tharais, and drive me out. Zostra would have told them, so everyone would know the price of defying her.

 

  
I could brazen it out, say the arthygater had sold me instead. Why shouldn’t I be tharos? It was easy to tell Blood from mud by the tattoos on the Blood’s cheeks, but there was no such indelible mark to distinguish tharos from tharais. I could pretend to be a peddler and bribe my way in. I could be a real peddler; if I had something to sell I could make money for the journey home. All I needed was tharos clothing.

 
  

 

  
I fell asleep, and I was on the mountain looking down on the Athlewood, where a strong wind set the bright new leaves to shimmering. Cloud shadows prowled the valley. On sunny days like this, the mountainside was like the flank of a great warm beast with a rough coat of turf and thickets, giving off a green and mineral fragrance of meadow and stone.

 

  
I raked soil in the herb garden and sowed seeds of milk thistle. When I went back to my house, I saw swallows building a nest of mud and grass under the eaves, and I greeted them and made them welcome. Oh, I was glad of their company!

 

  
Galan had sent me here to wait for him, that he might visit when he wished. I could not live on waiting, waiting and not knowing when he’d appear. Stale bread between feasts was a slow way to starve. I had to find nourishment in making and doing and looking.

 
  

 

  
Crux Sun had blessed me with this dream, sending signs of swallows and thistles, shining brightly to show me where to look. I thanked her for it, though the dream had given me pain too, touching upon the absence of Sire Galan, who had inherited some of her brightness. I wished I could dream of him.

 

  
I climbed the stairs to the kitchen court and covered my face with the shawl. The porter was snoring in his niche, but his dog challenged me. It was fortunate Nephelais had introduced us. I left by the tharais hindgate, fearing that at any moment I might be caught and punished for wandering at will, for I still found it hard to believe the arthygater gave her tharais bondservants such license, while keeping her textrices locked up.

 

  
Blossoms from the pear tree had drifted into the alley. I walked along the two-story wall of the manufactory, which abutted the kitchens, and turned the corner; no doors into the alley, no windows. Once I found tharos clothing, I would have to get into the manufactory through the guarded door in the kitchen court or not at all.

 

  
I meant to go down to the river through the tharais district, supposing it would be easy to find by heading downhill and south. But I was thwarted. The palace district was full of narrow twisting alleys and stairways, which offered misleading views of rooftops and trees and sky and led to blank walls.

 

  
I descended cobbled stairs and found yet another wall, but this one had in it a small wooden door without a latch. Rather than climb the weary way back up again, treading in my own footsteps, I pushed the door open. Another stairway, enclosed this time, and dark and daunting as the palace tunnels. I felt my way down with my hands on the walls. I told myself I’d go ten steps, then another ten, and another, counting in Lambaneish at first, then in the High when I ran out of names for numbers. At the fortieth step the walls changed from alternating courses of brick and stone to solid rock scored with chisel marks. This bedrock too was layered, with slanting seams of different textures, but gods had laid these courses, not men. At the two hundred and eighty-first step, there was another door. I pushed it open and the hinges whined.

 

  
I stood on a ledge halfway down a sheer cliff, looking out upon a cleft
riven into the body of Mount Allaxios. Swallows darted across the narrow chasm. A long way below, the floor of the cleft was choked with boulders and thickets. To my right, to the west, the Sun sprinkled flakes of gold on the river, and lit the striated stones of the crags, and made every new leaf glow like green embers. I had to shade my eyes.

 

  
The stairway continued at my feet, hacked into the living stone of the cliff. I pressed close to the mountain flank as I descended, until I reached the bottom stair, a wide ledge more than a man-height above the floor of the cleft. And there I found a cave nearly hidden by hanging bluebind vines, a waterfall of sky blue flowers. On the rough hollow inside the cave’s throat, someone had depicted the wife-mother Katabaton in simple strokes of white paint, now almost worn away. Roots had forced their way through the rock above her head.