Wildfire (65 page)

 

  
I looked up at Phalin. “Where are my bones? I tell you, I lay a hex on you if you don’t give them back. I make you tremble the rest of your days and your days will be few.” I didn’t know how to curse, but at that moment I was sure I could accomplish it.

 

  
But whether I looked at her with my left eye or right, she seemed less fearful. My curse didn’t perturb her. We’d discovered her hoard; perhaps that was the worst thing she could imagine.

 

  
Perhaps she hadn’t stolen the bones after all. They were not shiny or pretty or valuable. I looked around the crowd, one woman after another becoming individual to me again, strangers, acquaintances, and friends. I shouted, “Where are my bones? Who stole my bones?”

 

  
For the merest moment, faster than a blink, I saw a sly expression on Dulcis’s face. Then it was gone, as if it had never been, and she looked just as she had before: indignant at Phalin, yet avid too, gleeful to have an event worthy of gossip for months to come. I stood up. “Dulcis?” She looked at me without alarm, and I wondered if I’d been mistaken about that look. Sly, malicious, smug. I’d seen it so briefly.

 

  
It was a cold night, and Dulcis had her shawl wrapped closely around her shoulders. I put my hands on either side of her neck and rubbed my
thumbs over her collarbone. I felt a cord roll under her shawl, something tied around her neck.

 

  
“What’s the matter, Feirthonin?” she said in the High. “What bones?”

 

  
I answered in Lambaneish. “One is blue all over, that’s the Dame. The other with a red tip, that one is Na. You see me, ein? You see me use them.”

 

  
I tightened my grip and felt her shudder. She said, “I know nothing about your bones. Bones draw shades like carrion draws flies. Why would you keep such things and bring meneidon among us?” She spoke half in the High, half in Lambaneish. In either language she was a liar.

 

  
“Then why do you steal them?” I cried. “They’re not yours. They don’t answer to you!” I pushed her shawl aside and saw a green cord around her neck. I tugged at the cord and pulled a patchwork cloth pouch from under her wrapper—my compass—and I didn’t care that she was trying to pummel me with the flat of her hands, or that Catena stared with dismay. I yanked the cord over her head and emptied the pouch. Three silver beadcoins fell out, and Galan’s scrip tied in a flat knot. I roared at Dulcis, “Where are my bones?”

 

  
She said, “I burned them.”

 

  
She had a look on her face I couldn’t put a name to. I realized I’d never understood her. She had talked and talked to me because I would listen, and all the while she’d cherished a secret enmity before she stole from me, and afterward a secret triumph. Rift Queen of the Dead, ruler of gutworms—what worm had she set to wriggling in Dulcis’s belly, to make her so envious and greedy?

 

  
The Queen of the Dead had made me promise to set free the Dame and Na, knowing they were already free. Knowing I could not have done it. So she took them and left me sorrowing again. They were lost to me, the Dame and Na, and I grieved for them and for the hope I’d carried in place of their bones.

 

  
I sat on the floor of the sleeping porch, clutching the pleated rectangle of linen on which was written that Galan had once been foolish and fond enough to give me a stone house on a mountainside. I was glad to have it back, but I would have traded it for the bones, I would have.

 

  
Phalin and Dulcis went elsewhere and I never noticed. Catena took her familiar place on my left, close enough to touch, as if we were sharing warmth in the mountains; she offered the solace of her presence without a word.

 

  
It didn’t take long for the women to claim their stolen beads and trinkets. They didn’t quarrel, except for a small spat about the silver beadcoins, which looked more or less alike. When they were done, there was nothing
left but broken glass and tiles and tangles of thread. Some women unrolled their blankets over the bedstraw and settled down to sleep, but most gathered in the courtyard, and their voices rose to us, sounds of laughter and song, for after all it was the last night of the Quickening.

 

  
I took the forks of the divining rod in my hands and tore it down the middle and cast the halves down. Agminhatin, who sat on the stairs watching, said, “Give me those.”

 

  
“Why?”

 

  
“One for each thief,” she said. “You ought to do it, but I see you won’t, crying over those precious bones of yours. So I’ll do it.”

 

  
I picked up one of the halves of my divining rod, and laid the switch across my lap. My fingers itched. With the eyesight of a swallow, my right eye saw clear and faraway an image of Dulcis with her wrapper down around her waist; I saw myself striping her bare back with neat rows of red weals, while Agminhatin did the same to Phalin. I felt a shock of heat at the thought of seeing Dulcis half naked and shamed. This same lust to hurt was what Sire Pava’s steward must have felt when he whipped my bare legs with the thorny green briar of a rose. It had moved Sire Rodela to take his trophy from me, and now his shade stirred in his sleep, and emitted a faint hum. I dropped the alder switch as if it scorched my fingers.

 

  
Catena had shifted away so our hips were barely touching. She wouldn’t catch my eye. “Are you going to curse Dulcis the way you cursed Zostra? Curse her dead?”

 

  
I glared at Agminhatin, who had spread that tale, and answered Catena. “Dulcis is commanded to burn those bones by the Queen of the Dead. How do I curse her for something a god makes her do? Let her be punished for a thief, but I am denied revenge.”

 

  
“Then punish her for a thief,” Agminhatin said. “Give them both a whipping, they deserve it.”

 

  
“It doesn’t stop them from stealing.”

 

  
“What would you do then?”

 

  
“Bell them at night.” I put my hand around my neck. “Like a goat, so they don’t creep about to steal while everyone is sleeping. Shun them.”

 

  
Agminhatin picked up the split divining rod. “You are far too cruel,” she said, and she went downstairs to find Phalin and Dulcis.

 
  

 

  
I knocked so the stripling porter would let me out of the manufactory; I knocked and knocked, but he didn’t answer. I put my left eye to the peephole and saw no one. I sat on the cold tiles of the corridor, listening to the merriment in the courtyard. Waited.

 

  
It was late. Suppose dawn arrived before the porter, and some
taskmistress caught me in tharos garb in the manufactory, and took me to Gnathin?

 

  
Back in the crowded courtyard, I looked up at the pear tree, wondering if the limb that hung over the roof would bear my weight. I tied my shawl around my waist and tucked up my skirts, and climbed up the trunk and out along the bough. But it was too high above the roof, I feared to jump. I shinned along until my weight bent the branch, and I was able to dangle down and touch the green tiles with my toes. When I let go the branch sprang up out of reach. My legs were shaking.

 

  
I scrambled up to the roof ridge. The slope wasn’t too steep, but still I walked carefully along, keeping one hand on the ridge tiles, until I came to one of the warriors that stood guard on the four corners of the roof. He was made of glazed clay, and nearly my height; he had a fierce scowl, but his iron sword was rusted and pitted. I straddled the ridge beside him. From this corner I overlooked on one side the alley that ran along the southern edge of the palace, and on the other the kitchen courtyard with its sheds and fountains and herb garden. Behind me was the courtyard of the manufactory.

 

  
Now that I was up here, I couldn’t see how to get down. I was dizzy, clinging to the skirts of the clay guardian as the roof swayed under me, and I felt as though I were bestride a great beast, which had carried me to a strange new place full of strange inhabitants. For here came the Misfortune of the City, riding down the alley on a large wooden horse on wheels, pulled by koprophagais. Torchlight billowed on the Misfortune’s huge mask, which was painted dull white. I’d have expected him to scowl like a roof guardian, but he seemed sly; his eyes and mouth were slits cut in the wood. He was surrounded by a horde of lesser misfortunes, some of them wearing masks made of yellowing horse skulls, and stomping along on stilts so they were head and shoulders above the rest of the throng. The masquers roared songs and played iron drums that clanged and boomed like war. In answer the women in the manufactory courtyard began a cicada shrilling that made me shiver.

 

  
The Misfortune of the City hammered with his long staff on the hindgate of the palace. On his tall horse he could almost look over the one-story wall of the kitchen court. His voice was a strange warbling roar; a man carrying a white banner interpreted. The Misfortune said he’d break down the gate or climb over the walls, and enter the palace with his herd to bring a year’s worth of bad luck.

 

  
The night porter on the other side of the wall called out that the walls were high and the locks were stout, and no misfortune could get past him. The banter went back and forth, each knowing what to say. But the masquers were impatient. Misfortunes galloped up and down the alleys, push
ing through the crowd, knocking men over and whinnying like angry stallions. Men drummed on the wall with clubs and called out, “The Misfortune of the City is starving, feed him! The Misfortune is thirsty, give him to drink!”

 

  
The Misfortune of the City was not a god I worshipped. I feared him nonetheless, and the misfortunes at his heels who began to chant, “Mares, bring us mares!” In Lambanein they had a saying: one misfortune sires others. I’d heard it without understanding.

 

  
Tharos maidservants came out of the kitchen sheds bearing the Misfortune’s tribute. The porter opened the gate for them and guards pushed back the crowd. The servers unrolled a long rug in the alley and set out platters of cakes, jars of wine, glass drinking horns, and folded cloths, the dyes brilliant in the torchlight. A pair of women carried out a long tray on which was balanced a mound of gleaming eggs. Masquers crowded about the offerings, snatching at the cloths, spattering wine.

 

  
The tharos women ran back through the gate, and I heard some shrieking with giddy laughter. And now a line of tharais napkins came out, each carrying a basin and ewer so the masquers could cleanse themselves. I might have been among them, had the arthygater held a feast of her own tonight. The guards locked them outside, and jeered when the women pounded on the gate and begged to be let back in. A man in a horse skull mask was the first to take a napkin by the arm and drag her into the crowd. I couldn’t see her face under the shawl, but I saw her try to twist away.

 

  
A man shouted, “We asked for mares, you gave us donkeys. Mares, we want mares! Send us the fillies in the manufactory and we’ll go away.” Hard loud laughter, and other men began to chant with him, “We want mares!” Someone picked up an egg from a tray and threw it, and to my surprise it broke against the wall with a splash of scarlet powder. Now they were hurling eggs over the wall and at each other, splotching their white robes with orange, crimson, and plum.

 

  
I crawled to the guardian at the southeast corner, scratching my hands and knees on the sharp edges of the curved tiles. I must get down somehow, run through the alleys to that door in the wall and down the stairs to take refuge in Katabaton’s shrine until this night was over. But there were masquers in the eastern alley too, a small group of men without torches. They talked in whispers, except for a drunken misfortune who raised his voice to call his fellows mollycoddled lolly-pots and pricklickers. They weren’t insulted, for he was speaking in the High. One of the king’s men.

 

  
Two servants approached at a trot, carrying a long pole. They hoisted it up and leaned it against the manufactory roof, and I saw it was a ladder with notches for footholds. The men stood in the middle of the alley look
ing up. I recognized some of them from banquets: there was the arthygater’s unmarried son, Arkhyios Kyanos, and her nephew, princes of the kingdom behaving like common marauders. And one man was a jack from the king’s army, Hebes; so the drunken man was probably his master, Sire Cunctor.

 

  
The nephew—Kydos was his name—started up the ladder, and other men clustered around the base, ready to follow, and soon they’d be on the roof and what would I do then? Someone told Sire Cunctor in Lambaneish that he was too drunk to climb. I bumped down the tiled slope on my buttocks and gave the pole a shove with my foot. It clattered to the street and took the nephew with it. I’d have been glad to break his legs, but he was unharmed.

 

  
The men in the alley bellowed at me to come down and fight. They raised the ladder again and I shouted, “I kick it down faster than you climb!”

 

  
Someone said, “It’s a woman!”

 

  
I did kick it down again, and I laughed, because they couldn’t touch me, not even if one man climbed on another’s shoulders, and another man on his. Even if they reached the top of the wall they’d find it hard to get around the deep eaves. I crouched on the edge and the masquers taunted me. One fellow went around the corner and came back with as many eggs as he could carry. The men hurled them at me, and everyone missed but Hebes. He hit me on the hip with an egg full of vermilion powder, which stained my tharos wrapper and bared legs.

 

  
“Hebes,” I called down, “get your drunken horse home while he can still trot, ein?” I spoke in Lambaneish so he wouldn’t know me, and he gawped so wide a fly could have landed on his tongue. Ah, this reckless elation, this prickling on my neck—I recognized the touch of Hazard Chance. No wonder she was abroad, on a night when the Fortune of the City and its Misfortune rode the streets on wooden horses.

 

  
I quite forgot Hazard Chance was as apt to lead people astray as to lead them home, for she made me sure-footed on the tiles and took away my fear. I ran back along the roof and called down to the guards in the kitchen courtyard. I made my voice sharp to cut through the noise, telling them of the misfortunes trying to climb into the manufactory from the next alley.