Wildfire (64 page)

 

  
The painting of Katabaton was marred by dark stains and pale salts left by water leaching through the rocks of the cave. She had smudges where once she’d had eyes; nevertheless I felt her watching all I did. By lighting the fire before her altar I had summoned Hearthkeeper, and by making the ointment and tincture I had invoked Desire, and it was as if they too looked through Katabaton’s eyes. I bowed my head and asked all three to bless my endeavors.

 

  
When I looked up again at Katabaton’s face, the pallid brush strokes and dark stains and shadows had been rearranged into the semblance of a skull. Roots hanging from the roof of the cave had become hanks of hair. I shuddered and my nape prickled. I was reminded that Katabaton ruled the shades of Lambanein, as the Queen of the Dead ruled the fallen of Corymb and Incus. Or they were one and the same, called by different names.

 

  
Her gaze no longer seemed benign. I prostrated myself and pressed my cheek against the stone. I’d used the bones of the Dame and Na despite that it was forbidden to all but Auspices of Rift to keep remnants of the departed. The Queen of the Dead had not hindered me. Sometimes I thought she had
helped. But now I saw how much I’d presumed on her indulgence, casting the bones day after day, forcing the Dame and Na to journey a long way to answer foolish questions, or no questions—just so I could feel their presence, and arrange the colors, the signs, and the avatars in pleasing patterns.

 

  
I begged the Queen of the Dead’s forgiveness for my offenses, knowing there were many, and prayed she would guide my dowsing stick to point to the bones of the Dame and Na. They should not be forced to answer to a stranger and a thief. And I’d never misuse their shades again, summoning them as if they were servants; they were dear to me, I never meant to treat them badly.

 

  
If I must, if she asked it of me, I would burn those finger bones and set them free.

 

  
I raised my head. In the wavering firelight, her stare never wavered.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 25
  

  
The Quickening
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
C
lad in my tharos garments, I hurried to the palace through the alleys, afraid of meeting masquers. Tonight two demiurges, the Fortune and Misfortune of the City, appeared in effigy under the full Moon, and in two processions roamed Allaxios from the palace district down into the town. The Fortune of the City came to the foregate of every palace, where he was welcomed joyously and given gifts to persuade him to tarry for a year; the Misfortune came to the hindgate and demanded tribute for the favor of staying away. The masquers who escorted them were paid off in food and drink, though their bellies were already bloated from the feasts beforehand.

 

  
Lychnais had said the masquers were up to no good, and besides, all sorts of shades and meneidon were restless during the Quickening, and apt to wander about and take possession of unwary people. She wished she could stay in the bathing room with me, instead of accompanying the arthygater to the Inner Palace. But when she described the splendor of the masquers, their costumes and processions, I thought she was trying to make me envious.

 
  

 

  
Two guards in boiled leather cuirasses played at horses-and-houses with the porter at the arthygater’s hindgate. Nephelais had warned me about the greed of the night porter, and I gave him two pewter beadcoins. The other men demanded something too, leering and gesturing to show me what they wanted. The porter was jealous of his prerogatives, and said it was his place, not theirs, to collect a toll, and so I got by.

 

  
The lad at the manufactory door was bored, teasing a cat with a ball of thread. I bought him off with a garland of bluebind and a kiss. He was such a stripling I didn’t mind.

 

  
The textrices celebrated the Quickening in the courtyard. In honor of the child god Peranon, long banners of violet silk had been draped from the second-story railings. Lamps hung in the pear tree, small birds pinched out of clay. The women were feasting and dancing, telling tales and chasing
children. But a few sat quietly apart, melancholy perhaps, the festival putting them in mind of days before they were bondwomen.

 

  
How could I have thought to find one thief among so many? The divining rod was a mere stick. I would have broken it and left its pieces on the ground had I not made a vow to the Queen of the Dead that night. Dowsing for the bones was no longer a selfish notion, but a duty laid upon me.

 

  
Easier to jump into a cold pond than to enter one toe at a time, Na used to say. I strode into the crowded courtyard. Word went round that Feirthonin the peddler had returned, and Catena came breathless from dancing to greet me. Other friends came forward as well, the High speakers Dulcis and Abeo, and Agminhatin and Menin from the weaving room. I took a seat on one of the straw mats spread out under the pear tree, and arranged my wares before me: dollops of ointment wrapped in lily pads and tied with the stringy stems of bluebind, and the water lily tincture in a ram’s horn made of glass. Glass was so commonplace in Lambanein that one could sometimes find a whole vessel in the rubbish. Beside these I laid down the dowsing rod.

 

  
Three women swore the sweetrush root had given them the promised dreams, and wanted more; I sold them lily ointment instead. I found buyers also for the water lily tincture, those who wanted to be quit of unrequited lust, Desire’s favorite pestilence.

 

  
Soon enough someone asked why I carried a dowsing rod.

 

  
I stood and picked up the alder switch. “I know you are all honest women. But now and then something gets missing, ein?—an amulet or beadcoin or something you don’t wish to lose. Sometimes these little things wander into someone else’s belongings. This rod wags at what is lost.”

 

  
One woman felt obliged to make a lewd remark about another’s lost virginity, and many laughed.

 

  
“If you want me to look for her maidenhead, I will,” I said, holding the forked ends of the rod and swinging the tip back and forth. “But wouldn’t you rather I find the one who steals it? Wouldn’t he be more useful, ein?” I swaggered about, pretending to look for a hidden man, prodding women’s skirts with the rod, and all the while I was watching the faces of those who did not laugh. A woman I didn’t recognize was impolitely showing her teeth as she sidled backward, putting other women between us, and her smile looked like a dog’s grin of fear. I followed her through the crowd and the tip of the rod jiggled.

 

  
Agminhatin said to her, “Where are you going so fast, Phalin?”

 

  
“Nowhere,” she said, laughing as if Agminhatin had been jesting.

 

  
Agminhatin looked at me with her eyebrows raised. Gods, she was quick to suspect and quick to act. While I puzzled over the pliant peeled
branch and how it twisted, smooth and sinewy, against my sweating palms, she rested her arm like an ox yoke across Phalin’s shoulders.

 

  
I looked at Phalin with my left eye, and her grin looked convincing on her lips, but her eyes were fearful. Among so many women in the manufactory were many I’d never met—but if she’d gotten close enough to steal from me, surely she should be familiar. Her face, if not her name.

 

  
I closed my left eye. In the haze of my webeye, tinged yellow by the swallowwort sap, I saw a bird’s nest that held colored pebbles. Were there bones in the nest too? I couldn’t tell.

 

  
I lowered the dowsing rod so the tip pointed harmlessly at the ground. “Ah well, since no one misses anything—except maidenheads—and you don’t find those again, my dears—though I know a canny once who makes a new one for a price—since, as I say, no one appears to have lost anything, then perhaps no one minds a magpie in your midst, ein?”

 

  
“She’s trembling,” Agminhatin said.

 

  
Abeo said, “I used to have a special bead, amber, about so long.” She held up her finger and thumb, and the space between was the length of a finger bone.

 

  
“Someone took my eye paste,” a spinner said. A weaver spoke up, and another, and now no one laughed. Each had missed some small treasure: a tin amulet of Katabaton, a necklace of glass eyebeads to ward off malice, pewter beadcoins clipped from a net cap during the night. Catena had lost a thumb-size doll of straw wrapped in thread. A woman stepped forward and spat on Phalin’s foot. Phalin wouldn’t look at her or anyone else. She gazed sideways, her breathing shallow and fast.

 

  
I had not done this. The dowsing rod had done it, pointed at a thief and made her tremble. I could have spat on her myself, for I was in a fury to think she might have stolen the bones and prisoned them with worthless trinkets. I pointed the rod at Phalin again. “Every magpie has a nest somewhere, ein? I wonder where it is.”

 

  
Agminhatin said to Phalin, “It will go better for you if you tell us quickly. Otherwise we’ll beat it out of you.”

 

  
Phalin said, “I haven’t stolen anything. I swear it!”

 

  
I turned in a circle, and the dowsing rod turned with me, and I slowed when the dowsing rod pointed to the stairs to the second-story arcade. I squinted at Phalin with my webeye, and saw her face spangled by lamplight and dappled by leaf shadows, and the shadows were tinged with the color of fear.

 

  
“Bring her,” I said to Agminhatin. Phalin didn’t struggle, she went where Agminhatin drove her, and we climbed the stone stairs, followed by the throng of women chattering like birds at dawn. Dulcis pushed to the
front of the crowd, saying, “She sleeps over there,” and I turned the dowsing rod where she pointed. The rod felt quiescent in my hands. Phalin’s quick eyes slid back and forth, but she seemed less afraid; I saw it by the color of her shadows and the way her hands loosened. I moved the dowsing rod slowly, left and right, watching for a flare of fear, easier to see in the darkness of the sleeping porch. Dulcis leaned over the railing to pluck a bird lamp from the branches of the pear tree, and she held the lamp high so the light fell on Phalin’s face. “Put it out!” I said. She obeyed me.

 

  
Phalin was more afraid when the dowsing rod turned left, so I went where she wished I wouldn’t go. Agminhatin pushed and pulled her to keep her at my side. I heard myself muttering in the Low, the one language no one else spoke here. The words crowded together in my throat and came out pell-mell. I let myself pray. “Ardor help me, for you put the cloud in my eye and bade me see through it. Crux bless my sight, bless the far-seeing swallow and the swallowwort, let me see far and small, let me see all. Wend, bless me, Wend the finder. Lose the needle, the Weaver will find it; lose the lamb, Ram will find it. Wend Plenty is the patron of merchants and thieves, lock and key, and how can Wend bless them both? Bless me, Wend, the Dame was dear to you—help me find her. Bless me, Dame, bless me, Na. Forgive my offense. Are you lost and wandering because of me? I should never have accepted the gift and Az should never have given it. I was too vain, I showed what should have been concealed, and now the Queen of the Dead is vexed with me.” And it didn’t seem strange to pray to the Dame and Na as if they were divinities, like lesser godlings of Lambanein, ranking below the gods and above me. Even Na, a mudwoman when she lived, was a sort of little god to me now.

 

  
Phalin was afraid when I pointed up. So up and up, unwinding a pale tracery from the tip of the alder rod. There, under the eaves between two columns, were three or four abandoned swallows’ nests made of clay and straw. I poked them with my dowsing rod and turned to look at Phalin. I could hardly see her face for the shadow oozing from it. She opened her mouth and a flare of fear came out.

 

  
Agminhatin climbed up on the stone railing. With one hand she held on to a slender column wrapped with a stone vine, and with the other she made a fist and smashed the nests. Out tumbled broken eggshells, glass, tiles, polished pebbles, beadcoins, needles, twists of thread, a tortoiseshell comb, and even a golden fingercap with a nail studded with rubies. These things were scattered on the floor of the sleeping porch and the courtyard below, and women ran after them and crawled about searching for small treasures. Phalin stood there with her lips parted and I wondered why she didn’t run. But of course there was nowhere to go.

 

  
I was on my knees, scooping objects in a heap, and Catena helped me. I straightened up and shouted, “Bring what you find up here, and we sort together so each gets what is hers.”

 

  
Agminhatin jumped down from the railing, and gripped Phalin’s garment with her left hand and began to shake. She opened her right hand under Phalin’s nose and showed her a muddy beadcoin of coiled copper with a feather sticking to it. “You! You
thief
!” she screeched, as if it were the worst word she could find.

 

  
“I never stole.” Phalin pointed at me. “She did it. That’s why she could find it so easily, ein?” Having but half her wits about her, she’d forgotten that some of those things had been stolen after I left the manufactory, as someone was quick to say. Her cries that she was innocent, that she’d been wronged, only enraged everyone.

 

  
Agminhatin slapped her and put a muddy print on her cheek. Other women shoved Phalin, and Dulcis kicked her in the shins. I wiped the beadcoins and other small objects clean on Phalin’s skirts to show my contempt for her, and laid them in rows on the tiled floor of the sleeping porch, looking for bones. It was pitiful—though I felt no pity—to gaze at the treasures arranged before me. Phalin truly was a magpie; she seemed to prize a shard of green glass with bubbles trapped inside, or a chip of glazed tile, above dull pewter beadcoins. Though she’d stolen those too.