Wildfire (70 page)

can
you do?

 

  
By then I was indignant. “I am a true dreamer, and I lead a king’s army through the Ferinus, the Kerastes, in winter. Do you do as much?”

 

  
I could have devised no better test of what sort of mistress she was to be. She drew herself up—the crown of her head came to my eyebrows—and I thought she might slap me for my insolence. She smiled instead, a smile wide as daybreak, and full of slightly crowded, slightly crooked, brilliant white teeth. She didn’t bother to hide the smile behind her hand, as I was not a man.

 

  
“Feirthonin, is it?”

 

  
“Firethorn.”

 

  
“That’s too awkward. How about Alopexin? You have the coloring for it.”

 

  
Alopexin was vixen, she-fox in Lambaneish. Aghazal must have seen dismay on my face. “Well, if you like it, ein?”

 

  
If I liked it. Had I a choice?

 
  

 

  
Aghazal dismissed me to the bath, and sent a girl named Tasatyala to see I washed thoroughly. The bathing room was small compared to the arthygater’s, but furnished elegantly, as Aghazal sometimes entertained her patrons there. The wall painting was unusual. Instead of a tidy garden, it showed a wild marsh where tall reeds, adorned with fan-shaped plumes, curved before an imaginary wind; there were painted birds everywhere, egrets in the pools and songbirds in the sky.

 

  
Tasatyala was disgusted that I’d allowed hair to grow under my arms and at my crotch, and she let me know it as soon as I’d stripped off my clothing. She clucked like a hen, though she was a mere chick herself, barely old enough to have hair to remove in those places. She was also shocked to see the swath cut through my womansbeard by Sire Rodela. No hair grew where the scar had healed.

 

  
I lay on my back on a cold marble bench while the tharais depilator shaved me. She was skillful, but the blade scraping my skin made me cringe. It amazed me that Arthygater Katharos and her women had lain so complacently under my blade, when I’d been clumsy and ignorant.

 

  
I wondered what the depilator looked like, and what she thought—her silence and her shawl could mask anything. I wondered if she would be amused or appalled to find out I was tharais.

 

  
They must not find out. At the thought I began to sweat, and I very much feared that my sweat smelled of onions.

 

  
The depilator drew a drop of blood. It was my fault for moving, but Tasatyala slapped her for it. Then the hot honey wax, perfumed with cloves, to remove the hair from my arms and legs. The servant had little burns from tending the pot; her fingernails were rimmed with dark stains, so I guessed she dyed and dressed Aghazal’s hair as well.

 

  
Tasatyala poured ewers of cold water over my head and burnished me with a sack full of sand, and only then was I clean enough for the bath. The pool was lined with turquoise tiles, and in it was moored a white boat, wide enough for two, with a prow carved and painted like a swan’s head. I heard water splashing and buckets clattering on the other side of the wall as a servant filled a tank. I lay down in the boat and Tasatyala pulled a stopper from the mouth of a leaping bronze carp, and warm water gushed down on me. The boat steadied in the pool and sank until the rim was just above water, cool water without, warm within.

 

  
There in the painted marshland I drifted, under a painted sky showing a flight of geese. The water was as warm as my skin, and I could have lingered all day. But Tasatyala was impatient.

 

  
Aghazal came in to look me over, drenched as I was, with my wet hair clinging like seaweed and goose bumps on my skin. “What a pity,” she said
when she saw the scar Sire Rodela had given me and the burns scattered on my back. “And you have the webeye too. Well, you won’t suit those who insist on perfection. You shall have to be artful, if you can. Art can supply a deficiency of beauty better than beauty a deficiency of art.”

 

  
I asked Aghazal why I was there. Was I her apprentice? Was I her bondwoman, handmaid, guest, pupil? She said I was to be her younger sister. She had a thousand graceful ways to evade a question; it was one of her arts, but by innuendo she let me know it was doubtful I’d make a whore-celebrant. She wasn’t rude enough to say so, but she thought I’d fail.

 
  

 

  
Be Glad! It was a rule of Aghazal’s household, written on a wall of her dining court. Aghazal taught it to me that afternoon after she rose from a nap.

 

  
Aghazal’s dining court was small, with arcades on three sides; the fourth side was the wall of a neighboring house, cleverly painted to look like a colonnade on a high terrace, with a view over the rooftops of Allaxios and the plains of Lambanein. The cloudless sky was lapis blue, and the rules were painted on it in red. The writing of Lambanein reminded me of the tracks of a wayward chicken. Aghazal said each sign meant a sound, just as in Incus, but to my mind these chicken footprints were hard to tell apart. She said our godsigns were harder, nothing but scattered dots with the three avatar marks. “But they are written of the sky,” I said, “so we don’t forget them.”

 

  
She said, “Written
on
the sky. But our sky is different,” and I wondered at this, because the stars were the same everywhere. She didn’t want to talk about it; she had something to teach me. She gave me a stylus and a wooden tablet covered with damp clay so I could practice. “The first rule is ‘Be Glad!’ Ein? ‘Be Glad.’ Copy it just as you see it.”

 

  
While I wrote she yawned without covering her mouth, and draped herself over the scrolled backrest of a dining platform, looking weary rather than languorous. “Let me see—no, that one’s wrong. Look.” She thumbed out the signs in the clay and scratched new ones. “The foot goes thataway. They are like little dancers in procession, ein? That’s it. Now the second rule of my house is ‘No Dice But Mine.’ See? The single lines divide one statement from the next. The third rule is ‘No Fighting.’ The fourth is ‘She May Refuse.’ The last one is ‘Be Generous.’ I keep it simple for the dullards and drunks, ein? Copy all those down, until you can write it out without looking.”

 

  
The five rules were for guests of the household. For its residents, there were other rules, not so few, not so simple, and never written down.

 
  

 

  
I took the name Alopexin, but in the house I was addressed as Fourth, meaning Fourth Sister; Sister was a title Aghazal’s sisters by blood didn’t share. Aghazal was First Sister, of course. Tasatyala was Second; she was Aghazal’s
niece, and became a Sister when, as a young child, she showed unusual grace and studiousness. She was now thirteen years old. Adalana was Third. She was only six, and had been sent all the way from Ebanaka to study with Aghazal because of her gift for music. Already she could play all the Odes and two of the Epics on reed pipe, lyre, and drums, and sing them in her high unwavering voice without leaving out a single phrase. Tasatyala had been pampered before Adalana came, and had gotten spoiled. Now she sulked. With all her diligence she couldn’t master the Odes as quickly as Adalana, who seemed to learn as a bird learns the songs of its kind, by plucking them from the air. So it was that I had three elder Sisters, and two of them were younger than I was, and all of them were more accomplished.

 

  
My own music lessons did not go well. The musicmaster, Skolian, told me I was much too old to learn anything, and my voice was rough as a cat’s tongue. The only instrument he allowed me to touch was the simplest one, a crescent strung with thin silver leaves that made a wind sound when I shook it. He rapped my knuckles with a brass rod when I made a mistake. I doubted he dared do the same to King Corvus when he gave him lessons in poetry and protocol and deportment—for surely he was the same kynamolgos go-between who had suggested to the king that I be trained by Aghazal.

 

  
Skolian said it was hopeless, hopeless, to expect a strange-ignorant one such as myself to parrot correctly, let alone understand, the Odes and Epics. He’d rather teach a parrot—he had taught parrots successfully—indeed, he’d trained one to recite the Fragments and finish any quotation—but he despaired of me. He said to Aghazal, “No money in the world would convince me; it’s only as a favor to you, my dear, that I even attempt it.”

 
  

 

  
The kitchen was small, considering the number of people in the house, and it was smoky and crowded. I stood at the door looking in from the private back courtyard, where they grew herbs and vegetables and fruit for the household. Aghazal had sent for me, but she was busy quarreling in Ebanakan with the cook, her aunt Angadataqebay.

 

  
When Aghazal noticed me, she said, “I want you to write down what we need for the banquet tomorrow.”

 

  
I hauled up the jar full of damp clay from the cistern, and prepared a writing tablet. I sat on a bench outside the kitchen door. With the heel of my hand, I smoothed the clay over the board in the wooden frame. I liked the earthy smell of it.

 

  
Aghazal came out of the kitchen and sat on the bench beside me. She gathered up her thick black hair and held it on top of her head, and called on Adalana to fan her. We were not wearing our shawls, and our bare fore
arms touched. Her arm was soft, her wrist plump. She had slender pointed fingers, and her nails were trimmed simply in crescent style, which surprised me. Under the yellow powder, my skin looked pallid next to hers. Aghazal took up the tablet and said, “I’ll write first. You copy it, so you’ll learn, ein? The banquet will be served in courses of the five kinds of sustenance. Do you know the five kinds? No, don’t say, Third. Let her tell us.”

 

  
“Well—bread, I suppose. And fish and fowl and meat?” Surely there were many more kinds of food than five. What of cheese? Or barley?

 

  
Adalana hid a smile behind her hand.

 

  
“How long have you lived in Lambanein?” Aghazal said. “By now you ought to know something. The first sustenance is the scented. We’re going to begin with civet musk, then oil of juniper to rub on the upper lip, and lastly incense. I’ll ask Pikros what ingredients to use. He has the best fragrances, the freshest; buy only from him.”

 

  
Angadataqebay stood in the doorway and said, “You ought to know that oil of juniper and incense, no matter what sort, will never blend with civet.”

 

  
Aghazal said to her aunt, “Too much harmony is dull, don’t you think?”

 

  
Angadataqebay said, “Why ask me? If you’re not going to listen.” She disappeared inside the kitchen and clattered crockery.

 

  
Aghazal had written three signs, three dancers side by side. I asked, “Do those signs say all that?”

 

  
“It says scented. Here, copy it. And remember the rest, ein? The musk and so forth.”

 

  
I noted them in godsigns anyway: civet musk, oil of juniper, Pikros, incense?

 

  
She took the tablet back and wrote another word. “Now, as for the second course, we have the licked. The licked arouses the tongue the way the scented awakens the nose, ein? So first there will be fish-pepper paste to sting the lips and tongue. Next, to cool them, snow from the Kerastes sprinkled with honey crystals and gold flakes—one must have something expensive, people expect it. Lastly opos powder to inspire lust.”

 

  
I copied her word, and wrote fish-pepper, snow? opos?

 

  
“The third sustenance should truly be the first, for it’s the first known to all of us, ein? That which is sucked. We’ll have pickled snails, and of course Aunt Cook must make her famous almond puddings in sacks, mother’s milk. Wait till you see grown men suckling like calves at an udder, you’ll be amused, ein? And then pomegranates—the last until the next harvest. For the main presentation, the bitten, we’ll have ten dishes, each with small accompaniments.”

 

  
Angadataqebay came to the door again, with a cleaver in one hand and a plucked quail in the other. “You know I can’t get everything with what you
gave me. Krinean gave you a heap of coins to sponsor this feast, and you’ll disgrace him, make him look a cheeseparer.”

 

  
Aghazal said, “No one will notice if the eels come from the River Ouraios instead of Lake Sapheiros, believe me, not once they’re bathed in sauce and buried under sheaves of pastry.”

 

  
“Krinean will be able to tell. He can taste a rat dropping in a peck of pepper.”

 

  
Krinean was sponsoring the feast at the house of Aghazal in order to show himself a man of perfect taste, and the sort of man who would lavish riches on his friends—riches of the best kind, the ephemeral. So that those who attended the banquet would reminisce afterward about the food, the scents, the entertainments, and those who hadn’t been invited would be envious.

 

  
“Stop fretting,” Aghazal said to Aunt Cook. “Buy eels from Sapheiros for Krinean and give the other guests river eels—except Aeidin’s table, make sure they have the Sapheiros eels. Fifty in gold ought to be enough. You’re too flamboyant—if I let you have your way, it would all be too too much, we would seem to overreach. And besides, last time you bought and didn’t pay, and I found out afterward when smelly fishmongers and rabbit poachers came to my door to collect.”

 

  
“It was just one fishmonger,” said Angadataqebay. “And you must admit I astonished everyone with the stuffed porpoise. It’s so hard to astonish these days, ein?”

 

  
But Aghazal was no longer willing to waste time quarreling with Aunt Cook. She had to see to everything herself, she complained, and she hurried off to bother someone else about the preparations.

 

  
She had written these words on the tablet in Lambaneish: scented, licked, sucked, bitten. She’d written the word for the fifth kind of sustenance too, but rushed away before telling me what it was. By now I thought I could guess. I wrote in godsigns beside her word: drunk.

 

  
Fifty in gold for the food. To think I’d been vain enough to suppose the king had parted with a great sum when he gave fifteen golden beadcoins to Aghazal on my behalf. I was worth less than an evening’s banquet—that much I could cipher.