Wildfire (86 page)

 

  
“This is not amusing. You’re too clever not to reckon when you are offensive. Why such malice? Is it for this, your captivity?” He took my left hand and pushed up my bracelet of golden coils to show the pale welts on my wrist left by the manacle. He dropped the hand and it lay where it fell, a discarded thing. I stared down at it.

 

  
I was a little glad I’d caused him to waste his time wondering about me. I was also dismayed. To blame Moonflower—to admit I was a mooncalf who thought I could make him jealous—to say I never meant to hurt, or didn’t think he could be hurt by the likes of me—all that was true. Yet it was also true that when I dowsed deep I found a wellspring of malice in me, and fury rising like a freshet. “You cast me away,” I said. “I helped you and your men to cross the Ferinus and for reward you gave me to the arthygater to be a bondwoman. Or did you sell me? How much did you get for me?”

 

  
“I gave you to the arkhon. I emptied my summer palace to give him treasures, but they were received with scant thanks, I can tell you—too crudely made, too provincial. I had to give him something more. I told his factotum you were a seer and a true dreamer, and I expected him to send you to a temple to serve as an oracle. But everything is corrupt in this kingdom, even the seers. He must have thought you would feed the arkhon false prophecies on my behalf.”

 

  
“Should I be flattered you thought me a worthy gift? I wasn’t yours to give.”

 

  
The king made a swift gesture of dismissal at this foolish statement. “I heard the arkhon had scorned my gift; you can be sure I heard. His factotum was only too delighted to tell me that he’d passed you on to one of the arkhon’s daughters. I thought—I hoped—you’d be safe in a woman’s service, safer than in mine. Maybe even content.”

 

  
It had pleased him to think of me content, so he would not have to think of me again.

 

  
He stood, and his restless feet took him to a window, where he gazed into the courtyard through the latticework shutter. “Was it your notion to enact the role of Akantha in armor, to set a barb in me? Or was there a message in it from someone else, something I failed to decipher?”

 

  
I said, “Aghazal chose the Ode for Second Sister’s first enactment, to dis
play Tasatyala’s gift for dance. And so Adalana could soar as the skyluck, and Aghazal herself could break hearts with her singing. As for me, my part was mute, so no one had to hear my inferior voice. All I had to do was strut about.”

 

  
“You’re sure no one suggested that particular Ode to Aghazal? Maybe Arthygater Klados hired her to reproach me, because I couldn’t keep my wife from risking her life in battle. By the gods, Klados should know her sister better; her mind was impossible to change once she’d fixed on a course.”

 

  
“I’m certain it was Aghazal’s idea, no reproach in it.”

 

  
“Did you ask her?”

 

  
“No.”

 

  
“Ask her.”

 

  
“I will—but I think—”

 

  
“Ask her.”

 

  
“I’m such a fool—I should have thought of her, of Queenwife Kalos, when we practiced. If I had, you can be sure I would have told Aghazal to choose a less dangerous Ode to perform, one that would not risk the disfavor of the arthygaters. Or cause you to grieve—though we had no way to know you would be a guest at the banquet.” I went to him and put a hand on his sleeve, and he moved away from my touch. “It was only when I lay there, pretending to die, that I remembered the dream of your wife, and regretted I’d been so blind. I never meant to pain you with such a resemblance…remembrance, I swear it.”

 

  
“Oh, what does it matter!” he said, raising his voice. He sat upon the bed and his black brows were drawn together and upright white lines appeared between them.

 

  
Either I was spiteful or foolish; no reason he should find one more pleasing than the other. I knelt on the floor and bowed my head, and carefully did not look at him. When a man who prizes composure is bereft of it, he doesn’t want a witness.

 

  
“You saw it in a dream,” he said, “But I
saw
it. It was not a sight I could forget.”

 

  
I imagined King Corvus seeing the rider emerging from the reeds—a rider lurching in the saddle on a screaming horse, trailing a plume of fire and smoke. And then the moment he recognized her armor—what he’d seen when he pulled off her helmet, the empty socket, the eye clinging to her cheek like a bauble on a string. He had endured that sight, and somehow found the resolve to cut her belly open to save his unborn child, only to find his son already dead.

 

  
“Why did she do it?” I asked. “Why risk your child by riding to war? I don’t understand.”

 

  
“Nor did I understand,” he said. “She was supposed to remain on the other side of the river with her honor guard. She refused to stay in Malleus, saying it would be unbearable to wait and not to know, and I permitted her, because…the oracles foretold I’d have a son—so I thought she’d be safe, even if I fell.” He stopped speaking; perhaps he stopped breathing. I looked at him furtively and found him motionless, his head bowed, with shadows in the hollows of his face. His hands were clasped in his lap.

 

  
He took a harsh breath and said, “But the oracles misread the signs. When I—when Divine Aboleo said I must save my son, I didn’t want to, but I knew it had to be done—for the kingdom. So I—so we—cut her open, and what we found…” He lifted his head suddenly and stared as if blind. “She wasn’t carrying a child. Something else had grown in her, not within her womb but beside it—a thing, a monstrous twisted thing, a sac of meat and skin. When we cut it open it was full of fat, and it had mats of hair and even a few teeth growing on the inside. Kalos must have known, you see? She must have known all along that my mother had cursed her. And she never told me. An unborn child swims in the womb, she would have felt it kick. This thing was dead, but still it battened on her. I think Kalos chose to die rather than allow the curse to be born.” The king let slip a moan. I longed to go to him, but he would flee if I did.

 

  
Adalana sang a nightingale song from the Ode of Ouranos, and Aunt Cook scolded someone in the kitchen, but I hardly heard them. I listened to the king fight for breath, his hoarse gasps and shuddering exhalations. I knew he must feel as if he were bound about the throat and chest and belly with a strangling rope. He needed to sob, to rend himself open. He should weep. He must weep. But he mastered his breathing, one breath at a time.

 

  
He’d been compelled to speak this horror, to share it with someone, but I feared he’d burdened me with it without unburdening himself. He’d given me an intolerable gift of sorrow. It was not a dull, settled ache, but a weight that bore down on the muscles in my neck and shoulders so that they cramped, and left me struggling for breath against a sharp pain in my side. If this was what he carried every day—had carried over the Ferinus—how had he borne up under it, so long and so far?

 

  
I should have touched him, offered comfort that might have allowed him to fight his way to some release, if only for a time. I had been afraid to try. I doubted the chance would come again.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 33
  

  
The Serpent Cult
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
A
ghazal came to visit me in my new room about sunrise, and woke me up. She had just returned from a banquet with Second, and as usual she was famished and not quite ready to go to sleep. She said, “I missed you, Fourth. Tasatyala is doing splendidly, but still—she’s so young, ein? She widens her eyes and gapes, like this, so credulous when a man is boastful. I fear she’ll never be a wit, not like you.” She poured amber doublewine into a glass for me. “So how was your arkhyios, ein?”

 

  
I sat up cross-legged on the bed and covered my shoulders with a morning dew shawl, which did nothing to conceal my nakedness. “Oh, Aghazal,” I said. “He is sad.”

 

  
“Sad?”

 

  
“He grieves for his wife, Arthygater Kalos, and I didn’t know what to do; I ought to do something, ein? Instead I sat like a—a stump, a lump—useless.”

 

  
Aghazal took a sip from her glass, and put it down with a tink upon the table-tray and leaned toward me, one arm over the backrest. “So—does this grief make him impotent?”

 

  
“Of course not.”

 

  
“He can do more than glower and sigh, ein? I’m glad. Such a waste otherwise.” She leaned closer and brushed aside my hair and took my earlobe between her teeth to give me a nip. When she pulled away, I glanced at her and saw she was only teasing.

 

  
I took her wandering hand and held it. “Sister, I fear we caused him sorrow. When we performed at Arthygater Klados’s banquet, and I danced as Akantha in armor—we didn’t know his wife died that way, in armor, on the battlefield where he lost his kingdom. He found her there and took off her helmet—just as in the Ode, ein? So I wondered why you chose it. Did someone suggest it to you?”

 

  
She tilted her head and smiled. “You did, in a manner of speaking. I saw you practicing a song of Pachys in the courtyard, and you were dancing in
such an amusing and manly fashion, ein? It made me think we could accomplish Akantha’s Ode someday, and I thought no more about it until the arthygater invited us to present a spectacle. And it was so perfect for Tasatyala.” I let go of her hand, and she picked up a tiny salted smelt and ate it. “Besides, there was someone in particular I wished to hear me sing Akantha’s song, ein? I’m sorry your arkhyios suffered a painful memory, but it did you no harm. Wasn’t that the very same night he offered to be your benefactor? Why did he do so, if you caused him so much sorrow?”

 

  
She had her secrets—the name of her mysterious beloved, which she so delighted in concealing from the busybodies in the household. I had secrets too, some of which were not mine to bestow. “I’ve heard it said I bear some small resemblance to his wife. Perhaps—”

 

  
“Melancholy Yearning for the Lost Original,” Aghazal said. “That’s a pity.”

 

  
“This resemblance—he tries to make me look more like her. He wishes to sponsor me for the Serpent Cult because his wife bore the serpent tattoo.”

 

  
I expected Aghazal to be amazed, and to congratulate me for having a patron willing to spend five thousand golden beadcoins to elevate me to the cult. I didn’t expect her to clasp my arms and say, “Oh no no no. You tell him—with gratitude for the honor he showed you—with humility, with regret, with tears even—tell him you must decline this year. Tell him you’re too weak from your illness to be a postulant. Make some excuse, but say no, ein?”

 

  
“But why? He asked particularly, and I already said yes, that night in the garden, and he’s paid the tithe. I can’t refuse now.”

 

  
Aghazal put her hand on my cheek. “You will try in vain to please him by resembling his wife. The Devotion of a Replacement is a thankless form of love, and you aren’t well suited for it.”

 

  
I shrugged.

 

  
“I know, I know,” she said. “But the cult—it isn’t worth the risk, ein? Didn’t he warn you?”

 

  
“He said the tattoo would hurt.”

 

  
“No doubt. But the initiation might kill you, Sister. There are many rumors about the Serpent Cult, and most of them untrue. But that’s one I know to be true, for I know women who descended into the mountain and did not return.”

 

  
“How is it dangerous, this initiation?”

 

  
“Who knows, ein? It’s one of their secrets. Oh, no doubt it’s a great honor to be a member of the cult—and a rare honor for a celebrant. Aeidin has prospered greatly since she became an adept. They are very exalted,
very wealthy women, ein? And they look out for each other in business. As for what else they do together, and what they do with serpents—that is Katabaton’s business. Do you even worship Katabaton?”

 

  
“She has been kind to me,” I said, thinking of the shrine in the cave.

 

  
“She isn’t always kind. Listen, the festival is not many days away. We’ll tell him you’re ill again, ein?—he’ll believe it.”

 

  
It pained me that I had to ignore her heartfelt warning with no explanation. She was angry and I couldn’t blame her. “I see Grandmother didn’t cure you of your stubbornness after all,” she said.

 
  

 

  
The Festival of Katabaton’s Navel was one of the great celebrations of the year, and women all over Lambanein went on pilgrimage to the sacred Mount Omphalos, which rose from the plains across the river west of Allaxios. It had a high conical peak that kept its mantle of snow long after summer heat had engulfed the city.

 

  
In Aghazal’s household we were busy preparing for the pilgrimage. The women of the house made a fuss when they learned I was to be a postulant of the Serpent Cult. I would add to the luster of the household name, and everyone was determined to polish me accordingly, even Aghazal, who feared for me.

 

  
But one morning I found Aghazal weeping in her room. Our musicmaster, Skolian, had been found dead outside the hindgate of Arthygater Klados’s palace; his body had been mutilated, the prick where the tongue should be, the tongue where the prick should be.

 

  
“But why?” I asked her. “Because our enactment reminded someone of how Arkhyios Corvus’s wife died in armor?” It was a contemptuous Lambaneish punishment for an inferior, the severing of parts. Surely the king’s men would not have stooped to such a deed. But Queenwife Kalos’s sisters, the arthygaters Katharos and Klados—one of them might have set tormentors to work on the musicmaster. I feared they might start on Aghazal and her Sisters next.

 

  
“Not that,” Aghazal said.