Wildfire (79 page)

 

  
Moonflower gives permission to fly. I hadn’t known that before. I could swoop and soar, but I couldn’t get away from the thin red cord around my wrist. The Sun was a bronze gong, her light so loud and shivering my sharp left eye was blinded by it. I landed on a tree limb, hunkered down in the leaf shadow, and my webeye saw a panther under a thicket. He was dappled black on black with rosettes having five petals. His eyes were veiled, but his head turned as he sniffed the air. From time to time his servant let him lick butter from his hand. The riders drove the king-stag down the narrow deer track toward the waiting panther. He jumped downhill from crag to boulder, running now without reckoning where, his breath hawing in his throat. Kyparisos’s horse slid down a scree slope on his haunches and staggered back to his feet.

 

  
The keeper took the veil from the panther’s eyes and showed him the prey. The panther surged from hiding, so fast, and in three leaping strides took the stag down. The beast was trained to obey his keeper, to earn his food rather than take it by right, and he let the men rob him of his due.

 

  
They hung the king-stag from a tree, from the same bough I perched upon. They took the tongue and testicles first, and set them aside as an offering to Prey Hunter. They slit the belly to spill the guts, and I felt a gust of warmth. Dogs lapped at the blood and beggars fought over the offal. The hunters cut down their prey when the blood had drained, and divided the body on its hide. The panther was rewarded with the liver and bellows. Arkhyios Kyparisos claimed one forequarter and Prince Merle the other. The First of Ardor took five ribs, and the First of Lynx five more. A pack of
Wolves received the right hindquarters, and the left went to Sire Galan. Queenmother Caelum took the heart and head and crown of thirteen tines for herself, but she left the crow—that was me—the eyes.

 
  

 

  
Up on the roof of Agazhal’s house was a porch with a shallow slope, where Aunt Cook Angadataqebay and Grandmother Lagas sometimes spread plants to dry, or retired from the hubbub below to shell beans. Now I sat there alone. It was dawn, and the light was green-gold. I turned my arms this way and that, and uncovered my legs. I found bruises on my arms, my throat, and scratches on my belly and thighs. My wicker horns were missing. There were limp orchids in the snarls of my hair. My quim throbbed and ached.

 

  
Aghazal had told me the king was alive and I’d come up here to savor it. I was the last to hear the story of how Arkhyios Corvus, creeping through the undergrowth in pursuit of a bear, was mistaken for a deer by a huntsman who unleashed a panther on him. The panther tried to rip out the king’s throat and rake his belly with his claws, but the king was wearing a steel gorget around his neck and a cuirass under his hunting leathers. And to everyone’s amazement, said Aghazal, the king too had claws, steel claws worn on each fist. He jabbed the panther under the chin and pierced the jugular vein. Arkhyios Kyparisos speared the panther’s keeper at once for being so careless.

 

  
Arkhyios Corvus was unharmed, and insisted on continuing the Hunt. Of black game he took a bear, two wolves, and the panther that had attacked him; of red game two stags, nine roe deer, an ibex, three foxes, and a lynx. The bear and two of the roe deer were killed during the chase; the rest he vanquished in the pen, in the final slaughter. Arkhon Kyphos rode out first, they said, and killed until he was tired. Then his sons and grandsons had their turn, and then his sons-in-law, including Arkhyios Corvus, and lastly the other guests. I was glad I didn’t see it, or remember seeing it.

 

  
But there was a foul taste in my mouth and I hadn’t enough spit to spit it out. I rinsed my mouth with doublewine, and poured a libation on the green roof tiles for Moonflower. I’d begged her for a sight of Sire Galan, and she had granted it. Now I’d have to fulfill all the vows I’d made, to give Crux Moon a silver moon when I returned to Incus, and to take moonflower whenever it was offered. But gods, she was a harsh teacher; she asked a high fee. I lay down with my back to the Sun and covered my eyes with my arm and trembled.

 

  
I’d seen Sire Galan from above, foreshortened, while he waited under the branch for his share of the king-stag. He wore old hunting leathers stamped with a green fletch pattern, and a velvet hat with a golden gyrfalcon broach.
The gyrfalcon held in its talons the quill of a peacock feather showing a brilliant eye, the blind eye of Chance. Galan’s hair needed cutting. I remembered exactly how it felt to put my hands in his hair: the smooth curves of his skull, and springing curls between my fingers.

 

  
When Rowney had told me in my first moonflower dream that Galan lived, I had wondered, but I had not
known.
Now I knew. He was alive. Alive.

 
  

 

  
I received no gifts that morning from admirers, so I didn’t learn who had marked me. That was insulting. But it was worse that King Corvus gave me nothing. I waited all day before an invitation came to dine with him in his quarters, which was more recompense than I expected. I chose to wear a magenta wrapper, in honor of Desire, and my morning dew shawl, tinted lavender like the inside of a mussel shell. My net cap was threaded in beads of turquoise and gold, and I wore a garland of moonflowers.

 

  
Uncle Zubana and Marasa pulled me in the blue cart up to the foregate of the Court of Tranquil Waters. “Tomorrow?” Uncle Zubana asked in Ebanakan with a knowing look.

 

  
“Maybe maybe,” I said in his language, and turned up my palms to show him I didn’t know.

 
  

 

  
I recalled very well how I’d first entered the king’s residence, tottering on stilts and wearing a heavy horse mask. This time I was more graceful. Garrio hurried me along the colonnade, and I was struck again by the shabbiness of the courtyard, the trampled weeds and the pool full of dead leaves and green scum. I took Garrio’s arm to make him slow down. My breath came quick as if I’d climbed the terraces myself instead of riding in a cart.

 

  
“I can hardly tell it’s you,” Garrio said.

 

  
He took me to the king’s bedchamber, and I was dismayed to find Divine Aboleo sitting beside King Corvus on the platform. I sat across from them. I refrained from celebrant tricks, and kept my head down, looking at how perfectly the pleats of my wrapper fanned out across my lap.

 

  
King Corvus said, “You had a warning. Who told you?”

 

  
“A cat killed a crow and brought it to my bed yesterday morning.”

 

  
“But you knew where and when,” Divine Aboleo said.

 

  
“It doesn’t take a priest to read a sign as plain as that.”

 

  
“You have my thanks.” The king touched the hollow at the base of his throat, where his gorget had protected him from the panther’s teeth. There was such grace in the gesture that it gave me a chill.

 

  
I said, “Arkhyios Kyparisos planned it.”

 

  
“But he speared the panther, and then the panther’s keeper,” the king said.

 

  
I said, “I heard you dispatched the panther all by yourself, with bearclaws.”

 

  
“You mustn’t believe everything you hear,” the king said. “Aboleo had the bearclaws; he never hunts with anything else. I had a smallsword, but the panther was on me before I had time to draw it.”

 

  
The priest said, “The beast was already dead when Kyparisos put a spear into him.”

 

  
I said, “He had to kill the keeper, you see? So the man couldn’t be questioned.”

 

  
Divine Aboleo said, “Why do you think it was Kyparisos?”

 

  
“I saw him in a dream. I saw the arkhyios and his men chase the king, drive him down a trail to where a partner, a panther lay in wait. You ran, Corvus Rex Incus, and you wore the antlers of Prey Hunter himself. The panther brought you down and killed you, and the men divided you. Like a stag. Praise the gods that my dream was only half true.”

 

  
The Auspex wanted to know all I had seen, and I told it as clearly as I could. King Corvus didn’t flinch when I described how they’d cut off his tongue and sacs and head before they flayed him. When it came to Sire Galan, I lied, saying that a man of Corymb, someone I didn’t recognize, had been apportioned the left hindquarter of the king-stag.

 

  
“What happened after the dream?” Divine Aboleo said.

 

  
“Then? Why nothing, nothing further.”

 

  
“You learned nothing from the men who visited your pavilion?”

 

  
“I don’t know. What men?”

 

  
Divine Aboleo gave an ugly little laugh. “I heard you were drunk, and refused no one. Didn’t you keep a tally of how many you bagged during the hunt?”

 

  
Oh it was worse, far worse, than I had imagined. I had wondered who, and failed to wonder how many. My belly clenched and I tasted bile. Surely Aghazal would not have let me do such a thing—unless she had deserted me for a tryst with her beloved, the cause of her latest Lightning Passion. I felt betrayed by both of them, Moonflower and Aghazal.

 

  
Suppose the priest was lying. Such tales as this were often told of whores; they were not always true.

 

  
The king turned away. Should I be glad the king was furious with me, that he could be shocked? He commanded his expressions too well to show it crudely; his face was still, but there were two fine vertical lines between his eyebrows. I found bitter sport in leaning toward him over the table-tray, as
if eager to persuade, thereby forcing him to lean away. I said, “Moonflower showed me your enemy. She demanded a price—I’m sure you don’t think the price too high, since you think me cheap. Yet I paid dearly for it. I hope it’s of some use to you.”

 

  
“I have so many enemies,” he said.

 

  
I could have spat at him for saying that, and for the way he said it, but my mouth was dry and my throat hurt as if I’d swallowed a pin. I was gratified when Divine Aboleo addressed him with impatience, as a teacher speaks to a sulky pupil. “Yes, and it behooves you to know who your enemies are. Don’t you see this vision is of Incus, and the armies that will rend your kingdom apart? The Wolves took their own portion, which means they have turned on your mother already, or soon will. That’s no great surprise, I grant you, and neither is Merle. But I didn’t foresee this man Kyparisos.” He turned to me, saying, “What do you know of him?”

 

  
The Auspex knew his trade; he had read the signs and discovered the true meaning of my dream, when I had not. Now I must speak of Arkhyios Kyparisos, and speak of him at such length that they’d forget questions I didn’t want them to ask. I recalled the arkhyios’s position on the tree of the arkhon, and wisps of gossip, things I’d heard once and thought forgotten. “His age is—let me see—he’s at least six hands old, I believe. He’s the third son of the arkhon’s third wife—which means Arthygater Katharos is his full sister. I myself have never seen this Kyparisos, except in the dream, but I’ve heard he has a voice like a bullfrog, and puffed-up pride to match. He is a Second Exegete in the Ministry of the Outside, in charge of the protocols for Ebanakans. It’s rumored he went so far as to learn their language—that shows ambition, doesn’t it? He might have cultivated friendships with some of the arkhon’s Ebanakan guard, hmm? In my dream, a guardsman rode behind him.”

 

  
The priest said to the king, “I wonder if Kyparisos attempted your life with his father’s approval.”

 

  
I said, “To win his father’s approval, perhaps? People have reason to think the arkhon finds King Corvus troublesome.”

 

  
Divine Aboleo shook his head. “I suspect Kyparisos of greater ambitions. He may have decided it’s better to rule in a foreign land than to wait for his father’s chosen son to ascend to the throne and garrote him.”

 

  
“It’s a quaint custom, killing one’s brothers,” said King Corvus. “I should have done the same when I became king.”

 

  
I asked, “If the king-stag was Incus, then why didn’t Consort Ostrakan and Arthygater Katharos come forward to claim a portion?”

 

  
“No doubt they’ll partake of Merle’s,” said the priest.

 

  
I said, “The sons have no money of their own, no lands, no men. If Kyparisos is ambitious, he’ll need gold and soldiers—who better to turn to than his sister Katharos?”

 

  
“Ostrakan cannot support us all,” said the king. “He offered me half a million in gold to raise an army, and perhaps as much as fifty thousand to Merle for a dowry.”

 

  
“It costs nothing to promise,” I said. “And what did you promise in return?”

 

  
He would not answer that question.

 

  
“I only wonder,” I said. “The arthygater uses many shuttles in her loom, each with thread of a different color. It could be that Kyparisos wanted to pluck one of these threads from his sister’s weave, knowing that so long as King Corvus is alive, he has a rival for gold enough to buy an army.”

 

  
“It should be easy for you to make the acquaintance of Kyparisos,” Divine Aboleo said. “Try to find out.”

 

  
It was not as easy as he thought. I had never attended a banquet in the Court of the Sons. Their entertainments were not to Aghazal’s taste, and she was too respectable—too staid—to be popular with the arkhon’s sons. But I too was acquiring something of a reputation, and it must be admitted it was not respectable at all.

 

  
I may have flinched. Divine Aboleo said, “Well? Have you some objection?”

 

  
“If I might suggest—should we give him more cause for curiosity? About the king’s patronage. If he should think the king confides in me—”

 

  
King Corvus said to me, “I haven’t forgotten the man from Corymb who received the left hindquarter of the stag. I find it strange that you didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t one of the Firsts from the army of Corymb?”

 

  
“Not one I knew.”

 

  
“How old was he? What was his clan?”