Wildfire (71 page)

 

  
I lined up the little dancers: Be Glad, Be Generous, Be Bitten, Be Drunk. Then I scraped the clay into the lidded jar, and lowered the jar into the cool cistern. When I’d copied the rules of the house, I’d let the clay dry in the frame, supposing I was meant to keep the tablet, and Tasatyala had chided me. The clay was to be reused again and again, and the inscriptions preserved only in memory.

 
  

 

  
A flower-seller came calling with his donkey, and Aghazal and we Sisters went outside to meet him. Aghazal rarely visited the markets in the lower town, as the best peddlers came to her, offering her first choice of their best wares. She didn’t think it beneath her dignity to chaffer.
As soon try to cheat an Ebanakan,
the saying went.

 

  
She waved her hand at the peddler’s lilies, as if shooing flies. “I don’t see what I want here. Have you roses, dawn roses, the yellow ones with the rosy blush? And I’ll need thirty jasmine garlands and twelve wreaths.”

 

  
She fingered the petals of a crimson peony, one of many heaped in a basket, heavy blossoms without stems. “These were picked yesterday, ein? Don’t expect me to buy old flowers. But I’ll take this many tomorrow, if you pick them and bring them straightaway. I want them to be in bud, all in buds just about to split, so you see the petals showing.” She turned to me. “What do I say with these flowers? Do you know?”

 

  
Tasatyala spoke up, eager to show her knowledge. “The roses mean
if you love me,
the jasmine is
I entwine,
and the peony is
bashful in the bud, shameless in flower.
”

 

  
Aghazal said, “If you are generous, I entwine—any whore-celebrant might make that promise, ein?”

 

  
Adalana said, “The peonies—they are taken from one of Kylocides’s Fragments, from the First Age of the World.”

 

  
“That is so,” said Aghazal, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Sing it for us, ein?”

 

  
Adalana sang,

 

  

 

  
In the tight bud—soft folds.

 

  
The one who tempts the peony to open,

 

  
Departs before the petals fall.

 

  

 

  
I said, “So your rich man Krinian, has he found another friend? Is this his last feast?” I thought I was clever to guess so much.

 

  
“He’s not the one I reproach,” Aghazal replied.

 
  

 

  
In the afternoon I stole a few moments for myself, and likewise stole a handful of clay from the jar in the cistern. I crouched by the south wall of the back courtyard. Here was a little corner of Ebanaka, where Grandmother Lagas kept her indigo dyepot; in Ebanaka dying was a sacred art, not a despised tharais task. No one would bother me there, for they feared the meneidon of the dyepot, who tolerated only Lagas’s presence. I apologized to the meneidon and asked permission. I had always gotten along with indigo, and thought I could risk it.

 

  
I worked quickly, shaping a crude figure of Desire no bigger than my palm, with wide hips, a fat belly, and round breasts. With my thumbnail I gave her a cleft between her legs—or a fig or cowrie, oyster or peach, all names the Lambaneish used for a quim. I lacked the skill to make the statue seem alive, but she would serve as a messenger for my prayers. Carnal Desire had looked fondly on Galan and me. Did she mean to test my fidelity now, or did she—as I suspected—care not a fig, cowrie, or peach for fidelity? I’d thought it an accomplishment to spurn any man but Galan, when perhaps it was merely cowardice. Just the day before, Aghazal had teased me for being a prude, saying, “You think you have a treasure in your strongbox, ein? And every time you unlock your legs you spend some of it. Not so. You unlock to gain treasure, not spend it.” Or perhaps she meant to gain pleasure; there was a slippery word in Lambaneish that seemed to mean both.

 

  
I begged Desire to illuminate my way with her lamp.

 

  
I’d been at Aghazal’s house only a hand of days. I couldn’t play or sing the Odes and Epics or quote the Fragments; I couldn’t sit properly, I didn’t know how to address people according to their rank, or when to look and when to look away, or how to eat with a trident, or too many other things to mention. Aghazal’s mother Yafeqer said I’d disgrace the house. Nevertheless Aghazal wanted me to share a dining platform with guests. She said she could find servingwomen anywhere; she needed her Sisters to entertain. Second would dance, and Third would play the cithara and sing.

 

  
And what could I do, who knew nothing? I said I wouldn’t do more than converse, I couldn’t. That’s when Aghazal called me a prude. But she also pointed to the fourth rule written on the wall of the dining court, the one that said: She May Refuse.

 

  
“They’ll think I’m a simpleton,” I said.

 

  
“A man doesn’t look to a woman for wit, ein? He wants you to acknowledge that he is witty. If you smile and gaze at him like this, you won’t go far wrong.” Aghazal pretended to make ewe’s eyes at me, and I couldn’t help laughing. “Cover your mouth,” she said.

 

  
I remembered perfectly well how she’d behaved the night of the white petals banquet. She hadn’t simpered like a mooncalf. She’d let her wit shine forth, to make her beauty more brilliant.

 
  

 

  
The tharais servant depilated us. She cut our nails; I had only one, the mother finger of my left hand, long enough to sharpen. Tharos maidservants, Horamin and Palin, bathed us, oiled our skin, dyed our lips, and painted ground malachite on our eyelids. The tharais servingwoman dressed our hair. She wrapped Aghazal’s hair around two wicker horns, and
held it in place with pins topped with pearls and shells. Over that Aghazal wore a wreath of moonflowers.

 

  
Yafeqer attended us in the bathing room and made free with her opinions. Why was my hair so short? Lambaneish women took great pride in the length of their hair; the arthygater’s hair, when wet, hung down to her knees. I explained that mine used to be past my waist when I pulled a strand taut, but it had been shaved off when I came to Allaxios.

 

  
“You should have bought false hair in her color,” Yafeqer said to Aghazal.

 

  
“Stop fussing, Mother. I’m sure we can think of something.”

 

  
The tharais servant tried to wrap my hair around a small wicker cone, she tried this way and that, unspeaking, while I wondered if she was the only tharais servant in the household. How lonely she must be. Yafeqer said, “No, no, no. That won’t do!”

 

  
The servant tugged hard on a lock of my hair, and I had the urge to strike her, for she too seemed to think I wasn’t worthy of so much trouble.

 

  
Aghazal pulled the cone from my head abruptly, and I lifted my hands to my smarting scalp. She said, “Don’t bother with the wickerwork. Just twine the hair into a wreath of jasmine, marigolds, and pearls. And if stray locks tumble down in the course of the evening, I’m sure it will look charming. No proper garden is complete without an allusion to wilderness, ein?”

 
  

 

  
The farther down one dwelled on the eastern slope of Mount Allaxios, the earlier the Sun set behind the peak. In Aghazal’s dining court, surrounded by buildings three stories high, twilight came while the sky was still bright overhead. Servants lit lamps on bronze lamp trees.

 

  
I sat in one of the three proper poses allowed to women, with my weight on my left hip and my knees bent. I leaned toward King Corvus without touching him. The scar on my left wrist was covered with wide golden bangles. Instead of making ewe’s eyes at the king, I avoided looking at him at all.

 

  
Aghazal hadn’t warned me that Arkhyios Corvus would be a guest that night, or that I would be seated next to him, sharing the platform with First Sister and her patron Krinean.

 

  
“This is Alopexin,” Aghazal said. “She is but lately arrived in the city. She comes from the borderlands near the Lake of Sapheiros, and a dear friend sent her to me as a pupil.”

 

  
“Alopexin?” said Krinean. “She seems too shy to be an alopexin.”

 

  
“One doesn’t catch a vixen without a chase, ein? Otherwise there’d be no sport to it,” Aghazal said.

 

  
The king said nothing: so we were to pretend we’d never met. I was short of breath and trying not to quake, and ashamed of my own fright. There was no peril here compared to the Ferinus, yet I felt in jeopardy.

 

  
The tharos servants—Aghazal’s kin, dressed in saffron cloths with magenta and blue bands—came forward to present the scented course of civet musk, oil of juniper, and incense. But I was already overwhelmed by fragrances. There was no wind that night, but there were balmy airs, stirred perhaps by the wings of insects, bats, and swallows, that carried the scents of the guests’ garlands and perfumes.

 

  
Among the guests was Arthygater Keros, chaperoned by Aeidin, her instructor in the arts of the marriage bed. Their platform was next to ours, close enough for conversation. The other guests were noblemen and whores—the women accompanying their patrons, or rented by Aghazal for the occasion. They all seemed to be discussing the fragrances served, praising them with words such as bright, dark, elegant, and impudent. I couldn’t imagine how they found so many words to say about the unsayable.

 

  
Aghazal’s sister Dasasana served us the licked course, and I did as Aghazal had taught me: I held my left hand in front of my face, and with my right brought the mussel shell to my parted lips and let my tongue dart out to lick the fish-pepper paste. It burned my mouth, as it was meant to. The guests marveled at the snow from the Kerastes, and praised its coolness. I had eaten too much snow of necessity to think it pleasurable; it made my teeth ache, and gave me a chill, so I had to pull my shawl up over my shoulders. Still I refused to look at the king, but I saw him in my mind’s eye, his hand shaking, trying to bring a wooden cup of water to his lips without spilling it, from snow that Garrio had melted with the last of the firewood.

 

  
Did he look my way when he ate the snow? He should have. He should have. But I think he looked at Aghazal. Without saying a word about the king crossing the mountains, she had paid him a compliment and reminded her other guests of his great feat.

 

  
As the first course was cleared away, Aghazal said, “Will you attend the arkhon’s Hunt? People talk of nothing else, ein?”

 

  
Rented tharais servants came forward with water so the guests could rinse their hands. Peonies in bud floated in all the silver basins. Aghazal’s message was displayed where everyone could see it, yet she spoke to just one person in the room. I very much wanted to know if it was the king.

 

  
King Corvus said, “The arkhon was kind enough to invite me. I didn’t know there was game worth hunting on the summit of Allaxios.”

 

  
I peered at the king, who was watching Aghazal, who had turned to ask Krinian something, who was, I discovered, looking at me. I smiled at him and quickly covered my mouth and looked down as if embarrassed. Krinian had brown eyes a little too close together, and a long elegant nose with arched nostrils. His pride seemed touched by King Corvus’s remark. “You’ve never seen such splendid sport, I daresay, not even in the Kerastes.
There will be bears and wolves, boars, lynx, aurochs, stags, chamois, ibex, and ermine.”

 

  
“No fox?” Aghazal said.

 

  
This made me blush. Krinian laughed and said, “Fox, to be sure.” He nudged my leg with his knee and I didn’t move away.

 

  
“It’s a marvel so many beasts dwell in the forest of the Inner Palace,” King Corvus said.

 

  
“Arkhon Kyphos has game brought in, of course,” Krinian said. “He has his huntsmen scour the Kerastes for the best specimens.”

 

  
“I see.”

 

  
The only one I dared glance at was Aghazal. We had been served the next course, and behind a shielding hand she sucked a pickled snail from its shell. When she caught me looking, the corners of her eyes crinkled with a smile, and I felt a pulse of heat, sweat pearling on the nape of my neck.

 

  
“You enjoy the hunt,” Krinian said, making a statement of a question in the way of Lambaneish men.

 

  
“I’m not accustomed to hunting captive game.”

 

  
I looked up and saw the king in profile. Had he just insulted his host, Arkhon Kyphos? That was not how we did things in Corymb either, I wanted to say, but could not speak. There the wilderness is outside walls, not within them. King Thyrse had claimed the Kingswood for his own, but he’d flattered himself, for it was many separate kingdoms ruled by royal beasts, and to take a bear or boar or wolf one had to seek him in his keep and lands. How was it hunting to kill a captive beast? Call it butchery, and call a tharais butcher to do it.

 

  
Aghazal said, “Ah, here is the mother’s milk. I know you’re fond of it, Krinian, ein?”

 

  
“I wish you’d have your cook teach mine how to make it.”

 

  
“Never,” said Aghazal, “for you’d have no reason to visit me then.”

 

  
“Oh, but I would,” said Krinian, scooting forward slightly. His knee was bony and pressed too hard. I moved my leg so we were no longer touching.

 

  
Aghazal, by raising her eyebrows, invited me to share her delight at how Krinian looked sucking the so-called mother’s milk through the nipple of a cloth sack. She suckled also, and when she was done she dabbed white cream from the corner of her mouth with her little finger, all behind the modest and inadequate cover of her left hand. Perhaps it was one of her arts to be silly from time to time. The mother’s milk was delicious, ground almonds mixed with clotted cream and flecked with sweet spices.

 

  
And suddenly the mood was merrier, and people talked faster and louder, and every sally of wit won more laughter than it deserved. King Corvus did not unbend. He wouldn’t touch his sack, or suffer jests about