Wildfire (66 page)

 

  
On the other side of the hindgate, the tharais napkins had been pulled into the crowd among knots of masquers. One woman stood bent over on the opposite side of the alley, bracing herself against the wall with her skinny bare arms, while a man in a horse skull mounted her from behind. He bucked and pretended to whinny, and men laughed as they waited their turn with her. I prayed she was not my friend Nephelais, but was that not the same as praying down the misfortune on some other woman? My
elation soured to a queasy ferment in my belly, and I clenched my teeth as Sire Rodela began to buzz.

 

  
I couldn’t linger to see if the guards heeded my warning. I ran back and arrived in time to push down the ladder just as the crown of a man’s head was rising over the edge of the roof. It was a long fall, and I heard him cursing after he hit the ground. Someone said they should wait for the other ladders, and another man—probably the arthygater’s son—said, “You’ll never see those sluggards of yours again, let alone another ladder.”

 

  
“Then let’s enter by the foregate.” That was the nephew speaking. “If we take off our cloaks the guards will let us in; they won’t know we’ve come as misfortunes. We can take the hindquarters guards from behind, and get the key to the manufactory.”

 

  
Arkhyios Kyanos said, “We mustn’t do that. They’ll know we did it.”

 

  
Arkyhios Kydos laughed. “Oh, I see, I see. You thought your mother wouldn’t find out. The women will tell her, you dolt!”

 

  
“I have a mask.”

 

  
“If you’re so afraid of your mother, you should go on back to your rooms and play with your dung beetle nursemaid instead, let her twiddle your diddle.”

 

  
I cupped my hands around my mouth and shrieked, “Are you a man, Arkhyios Kyanos? Are you a man, ein? Because you let yourself be insulted like a boy.” I hoped to taunt him into a fight with the nephew, but he turned his wrath on me instead, threatening to use me like a rag and toss me off the roof. I hissed at him, and scrambled over the roof ridge and down the inward side to peer into the manufactory courtyard. Many textrices were still gathered by the fountain, singing and clapping and making so much noise they couldn’t hear my shouts.

 

  
I could see women on the sleeping porch, on the opposite side of the courtyard, so I ran around the roof again until I was over them. I lay downslope with my head hanging over the edge of the roof and shouted at the sleepers. A woman screamed that there were men on the roof, and she roused others and there was such a hubbub I couldn’t make myself understood.

 

  
Someone called out to me from under the eaves. “Who is it? What do you want?”

 

  
“What do you think he wants, ein?” The mocking voice came from Agminhatin.

 

  
“It’s not a man, it’s me.”

 

  
“A pity,” Agminhatin said. She came to the railing a few columns away and craned to look up at me. I waved and she came closer.

 

  
I said, “Are you hoping misfortunes will get in here tonight? Perhaps you expect a suitor, ein?”

 

  
“Every year they hammer at the gate and make a commotion. But they’re only pretending to be fierce, ein? Once they are stuffed with wine and eggs and aniseed cakes, they go away content.”

 

  
“Not this year. The arthygater’s son and her nephew are outside in the alley with a ladder. You can wait for them if you want, but wake up Catena for me, ein? Because they come soon, by roof or by door, and I want to get her out of here.”

 

  
“Wake her up? You think she’s asleep in all this uproar?”

 

  
“I wager she is,” I said.

 

  
“Done—I’ll put two pewter beadcoins on it,” she said. Soon she came toward me with Catena by the hand. “I owe you for the wager,” Agminhatin said, and dashed off down the stairs.

 

  
I said in the High, “Catena, can you see me? There are malfortunes trying to get in here—you understand?”

 

  
Catena wrapped a cloth around herself deftly, as if she’d worn Lambaneish clothing all her life. I asked her to see if the door to the outside was open. Before she was halfway down the stairs, she met Agminhatin coming up, who had tried the door and found it still locked. On the other side was such a din she was sure the porter hadn’t heard her pounding and shouting.

 

  
I said to them, “Maybe—maybe I climb down into the kitchen courtyard and tell the guards to let us out, and we hide in the dining court.”

 

  
“How can you climb down, ein?” Agminhatin said.

 

  
I pointed to one of the long violet cloths hanging from the second-story railing in honor of Peranon’s Quickening. “Tie one end of this around a stone or tile or something. That way you toss it up to me. If we tie three or four hangings together maybe I get down. Oh, but hurry, hurry!” I said, for as I spoke I saw with my right eye small and far, as if I flew like a swallow above the roof: I saw men battering at the hindgate with the blunt end of a tree trunk, and the door straining at its hinges. Soon the misfortunes would be inside, boiling around the door of the manufactory, and we’d lose our chance to get out that way.

 

  
Agminhatin flung the weighted end of a hanging up to me, and I scrambled to catch it. But already we were too late. There were two men, three, walking toward me in white cloaks across the roof, and these I saw with my good left eye, so there was no need to wonder if they were real. Another pair of misfortunes followed them over the roof ridge, carrying the pole ladder, treading with care down the inner slope. They came from the side of the manufactory that abutted the pleasure garden.

 

  
I saw with my right eye a way to make our escape—a single chance—but I couldn’t see all the way down that path, for it ended in a dark tunnel, the tunnels under the palace. I called down to Catena, “Misfortunes are already
on the roof. Gather your friends and take them to the winter dormitory. And wait there.” I urged her to make haste, and after she left I realized she had not once spoken.

 

  
I threw the silk hanging over the bough of the pear tree to pull it down within reach. I hooked a foot over the branch to haul myself up, and descended, scraping the tender skin of my inner thighs on the bark.

 

  
Agminhatin stood under the tree with some women I knew from the weaving room, and also the bondwomen from Incus, Nitida, Migra, Dame Abeo—even Dulcis.

 

  
I said, “They come in the kitchen court too, so we can’t get out that way. Look—they’re trying to climb down!”

 

  
We rushed across the courtyard. One man was halfway down the ladder and another above him. We put our shoulders to the pole and heaved, and it went skidding across the pavement. The topmost man scrambled up and hung over the edge of the roof, and the ladder toppled and brought the other man down with it. He lay flat on his back in the courtyard, the breath knocked out of him. His robe was unbleached muslin, and the clothing underneath was worn; probably an impoverished limpet, trying to impress the arkhyios with his daring. I thought maybe he’d never breathe again, but he gasped at last and I turned away.

 

  
Men on the roof shouted at us. The sky was lighter behind them, the stars fading as the Sun’s brightness seeped up from the horizon. A misfortune dangled like a spider from a rope attached to a ram’s head drainpipe. Nitida and Migra staggered about with the heavy pole, trying to knock him down.

 

  
A woman wailed, praying for Katabaton to protect us from the misfortunes, and the year of bad luck they brought us.

 

  
Agminhatin said, “Nine months of bad luck, to be sure.” She stood with her hands on her hips, baring her teeth.

 

  
I said, “We are overrun soon. We should go down to the winter dormitory.”

 

  
“That’s no place to hide,” Agminhatin said.

 

  
There was no place to hide. Once the men got in we’d be on the wrong side of every locked door.

 

  
“We can get away through the tunnels,” I said.

 

  
“And how do you propose to get into the tunnels? Climb through the shitholes?”

 

  
More or less. There was no time to explain or argue. I took the stairs down to the underground dormitory. I looked over my shoulder to see who was carrying the lantern that lit my way, and there was Nitida, with some other bondwomen behind her.

 

  
Was the Quickening how the Lambaneish celebrated the UpsideDown
Days, such as we had in Corymb? In those five licentious days many things are permitted that are forbidden the rest of the year—but in our village one could stay home without fear someone uninvited would break down a barred door. I’d met Galan during the UpsideDown Days, and truth be told I was looking to get pricked. Perhaps some of the weavers welcomed the misfortunes, who were merely men, after all, under their masks and robes. But the ones who followed me were afraid—of being taken by force, or a year of bad luck, I wasn’t sure which.

 

  
The dormitory door had a lock on the outside, not inside where it would have been useful. Sometimes we’d all been locked into the dormitory at night to punish one transgression or another. I slid the oaken crossbar out of its brackets.

 

  
“It will make a good club,” someone said.

 

  
“A good lever,” I said.

 

  
Catena opened the door and exclaimed, “You’re wounded!” I’d forgotten all about the splash of red powder on my legs from the egg Hebes had thrown, and I hastily reassured her and let down the skirts I’d hitched up. Catena was with her friends, a hand of girls who worked as spinners, and they’d gathered up a few of the younger children as well. The light from Nitida’s lantern and Catena’s oil lamp illuminated a few stout pillars. We huddled together, no more than a dozen of us.

 

  
I asked three women to guard the door, and carried the crossbar lever to the privy bench against the far wall. The dormitory hadn’t been used since the weather turned warm, so the smell was not too bad. But women complained of the stink and wondered aloud what I was doing.

 

  
The bench top was a long plank with a row of holes. I hammered loose the pegs that secured it, and put my lever into a hole at one end and strained to budge the plank, to uncover the niche that opened to the tunnel on the other side of the wall. Bondwomen gathered around to watch; they didn’t move to help or hinder. They seemed to have given themselves over to Fate, as if there was nothing further to be done and no effort they could make on their own behalf. This made me furious, and I pressed with all my might on the lever and raised the end of the plank, and Nitida wrapped her hands in her shawl and pulled, and Catena added her lesser strength to ours, and we rocked and slid the plank forward on one end, uncovering the waste jars in the niche.

 

  
I heard a Lambaneish woman mutter that we were letting dung beetles into the manufactory, and I turned on her and all the others who had done nothing, and said, “Stay here if you want, and await the misfortunes. But I go. I know a way through the tunnels to the arthygater’s quarters, and they don’t attack there—they don’t dare.”

 

  
The weaver said, “But it is
tharais
!”

 

  
“I’m a dowser,” I said. “I go where the rod tells me, even into the hidden ways, then I purify myself. You do the same.”

 

  
“Your rod is broken,” she said.

 

  
“This one does as well,” I said, and pointed the oak crossbar at the hole.

 

  
“The arthygater will punish us,” Menin said. Little Neinan in her arms wanted to get down, and he kicked his arms and legs when she held on tightly.

 

  
The hole we’d opened was a dark triangle. Nitida held up her lantern and I saw the large waste jars shoulder to shoulder down below. I shoved one over and it crashed from the niche to the floor of the tunnel a step below, and rolled and stopped with a thump. To my amazement it didn’t break.

 

  
I asked Catena if she would climb down first, and she looked at me with fear and faith and nodded.

 

  
I hugged her. “There is no girl in all of Lambanein and all of Incus as brave as you. In you go. Here, take your lamp. Now I’ll lower the children, and you make sure they don’t stray, ein?”

 

  
Some of the children were claimed by their mothers, who would not let them go, but I didn’t quarrel. No time, no time. No time to attend to the weaver muttering that I must be a dung beetle since I knew dung beetle ways. Someone said in a loud, spiteful voice, “You see? Zostra did make her a filthy tharais, and she’s fooled you all, but not me.” That was Dulcis.

 

  
I turned my back on her and climbed down through the hole and into the tunnel behind the dormitory. I carried the crossbar, and Catena and Migra ran beside me, and Nitida herded the spinners and the smaller children. Dame Abeo balked, refusing to follow, but Menin came with her son in her arms.

 

  
“Hurry!” I called to them, and hurry we did. The flame of Catena’s oil lamp was a frail fluttering thing, always about to go out, but I didn’t need light to see the faraway visions trapped in my right eye. I could see it all, tunnel and streets and palace, above and below at once. We were under the eastern wall; we turned the corner and soon we had passed the stairs that led up to the kitchen gate, and my right eye saw that above us men were fighting in courtyard and alley. Someone knocked over the Misfortune’s horse and a pair of men picked up his effigy and carried it aloft on their shoulders; his large face was awry, and his eye slits full of malice.

 

  
We heard men shouting over the din from the street above. They’d followed us into the tunnel, and I’d been so sure they wouldn’t dare, lest they be polluted. But it was all upside down now. We ran past the room where the tharais napkins slept, but their door was locked, and all the napkins were in the alley to appease the Misfortune and his herd, to take upon
themselves a year’s worth of bad luck so the rest of the arthygater’s household would be spared.