Last night, they had called for blankets first. Cairun wrapped himself in a cloak and stalked out of the room, shouting for Mazus his Chancellor. He returned at the head of a parade of servants carrying blankets, wood for the fireplace, a pitcher of wine, and bread and cheese and dried fruits heaped on a platter. He directed the piling of blankets on the floor and wood by the hearth and food on the table, his arm waving from one end of the room to the other, his long legs wide. Kieve grinned, watching him from the depths of her furs, and when he was done he chased the servants out. Mazus didn’t want to go. He tried to neaten the bed, feed the fire, pour the wine, until Cairun and Kieve drove him from the room with thrown boots. He scampered out, bleating “But my lord! But my lord!” a phrase that Kieve repeated mockingly until Cairun stopped her mouth with his own.
She used blankets and chairs to build the sort of shelter she would have made in the mountains save that this one faced not down-wind but toward the fireplace, and was tall enough that they could sit within it cross-legged, knee touching knee, and share the wine and cheese and bread. A thin line puckered his right side. They compared histories as written on their bodies in scars and bruises, which needed to be touched and tasted. And drank more wine, and slept, and woke again.
Deep into the night, deep into the wine, Cairun said, “I could send you to the outlands, you know. If you wanted to go. I could pay the guild for you.”
She rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hands. “If you go to Koerstadt. If you are Gadyn’s dog in Koerstadt.”
He didn’t reply. She said, “Are you Gadyn’s dog, still?”
“No,” he said slowly. “No, not anymore.”
“Then you cannot afford me, can you?”
He laughed. “Shall I be Gadyn’s dog for you then, Rider? Would you accept Gadyn’s money, even second hand, if it sends you out of Cherek?”
“No. I would never be free of this cursed province then.”
“Ah?” He too rolled over so that their faces were inches apart. His eyes were darker in the firelight, almost black. “Is that the only reason? You don’t object to working for a man who is not honorable?”
“I am already oathed to a man who is not honorable,” she retorted. “And what of you? Why did you support Gadyn, if you know him to be a villain?”
“He gave me money and promised me more. It is not something I have had in quantity. I like it.” He nodded toward the wine. “I like what it brings me.”
“Has he stopped giving you money? Have you told him that you no longer support him?”
Cairun frowned. “Does he need to know?”
“How greedy do you plan to be, Lord Cairun?”
“That answer, too, is easy,” he said, and for a while they stopped talking at all.
“The Lord of Myned wants to send explorers into the outlands,” she said eventually. He lay with his head on her stomach. She tangled her fingers in his dark brown curls. “She spoke of sending me. I think that she and my Guildmaster have quarreled over it.”
“You will not leave the guild?”
She tugged a lock of his hair. “Who would bury me? And who marry me? Who give me a place by the fire when I’m too old to ride? Who give me work, and protect me, and pattern my days? No, I cannot leave the guild. This is my calling.”
“And you are loyal to it.”
She didn’t respond.
Now, in the cold before dawn, he reached to put a hand around her ankle.
“You could stay here,” he said. She shook her head. “It would be safer,” he continued.
“Safer than what?” She moved her leg away and pulled up her breeches. “Already all Dalmorat will know how we spent the night, and be as full of speculation as a bladder. And perhaps your uncle has died and I can leave for Koerstadt within the hour. What could be safer than that?”
When he didn’t respond she paused, her hands on the strings of her tunic, and looked down at him. He stared into the fire, his profile pale in the nimbus of his dark hair. After a moment she finished dressing. He rolled out of the cloak and stood, sleek and beautiful in the firelight, and without meaning to she reached to trail her fingertips along his chest. He caught them and put them against his lips.
“In Koerstadt,” he said. His breath warmed her fingers.
She pulled her hand away. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, so she gathered up her cloak and shrugged into it as she left. The crooked hallway was filled with wind and the floor had iced over.
She let herself out of his rooms and followed the maze of stone hallways to the broad, deserted portico high above the Great Hall. The freezing rain had turned into dense snow and splinters of ice, driven before a hard wind. A finger of cold reached for her belly. She paused to adjust her cloak, wrapping it close. Bredda and the boy were doubtless tucked into some warm and hidden place, and within a few hours she would have the money to ensure his freedom. She made the turn into the first of the series of winding stone stairways that would lead her down to the Hall. Gradually the wind died although she could still hear it shouting above her. Humming, she came out into a corridor where a few lamps glowed along the walls. A shadow unfolded itself from a corner and she stopped, wary, until the shadow spread its arms and beckoned.
“Rider?”
Leyek. She grunted and came closer. “What are you doing here? Did Lady Esylk banish you from her rooms?”
“Hush,” he said. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness. “You will help me, snow sister?”
She shook his hand away. “Be quiet, you fool. Speak Cheran.”
He did. “You are his leman—”
“No. Whose?”
“Lord Cairun. Please, Rider, I must speak to him.”
“Then speak to him. He has ears.”
“Pah. He will not listen to me. I—I lost something to him, in gaming. Something my father gave me. I must get it back before Cadoc dies, before Lady Esylk leaves this cursed place.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You said you were a fine gambler, Leyek. You said you would easily get it back.”
He made a sound of disgust. “I am. I did. I almost did. But he cheats, your lover, your Cairun. He cheats and I owe him... I owe him more. And I will pay it, Rider, I have honor, but the thing my father gave me, he will not return it to me.” He grabbed both of her arms. “You will speak to him?”
She made a quick movement that started with a shrug and ended with her two long paces away from Leyek, and him gasping.
“You can speak to him yourself,” she said.
He hissed after her but she walked away. A petulant baby, she thought, angry at the world because he didn’t have the sense to be angry at himself. Her own anger fell away as she walked past the darkness of Adwyr’s rooms and came down the stairs into the Great Hall. She thought about Cairun and her breasts tingled.
Shadowy forms lay along the walls where people slept, indistinct in the orange glow of the three huge fireplaces. She threaded her way between the sleeping bodies and followed the smell of new bread into the kitchen.
“What do you want?” Balor demanded by rote.
She raised her chin toward the rooms overhead. He shook his head before gesturing at piles of hot breads, sweating from the ovens. “They’re a hungry lot! Does meat grow from stones, that I should find it in this storm?” He glowered at her. “I hear you found meat to your liking, last night.”
She grinned. “Feed me, cook. I have an appetite.”
“Fah! Here, take it and go away, I’m busy. Your eye is healed?”
She caught the hot meat pasty and bounced it from hand to hand, blowing on it. “Almost,” she said, and realized that she had not put on her patch that morning, and did not miss it. She nodded her thanks as she retreated from the kitchen.
She stood in the corridor, waiting for the pasty to cool. Her thighs ached a little. She wondered when the land-barons would crowd to Cairun’s standard, thinking that Kieve Ferret-master supported him. The thought amused her. Cadoc cou
ld not last much longer, perhaps he would not even last through the storm. She thought of clearing skies and of the road south, the Deathnote scrolled tight and thrust into her belt. For a moment the vision was so clear that she almost felt the press of the scroll against her hip.
She could avoid the storm by making her way along the servant’s passageways that ran through the castle walls, but the entrance here was busy with servants come to fetch breakfast for their masters. Another doorway opened on the far side of the Great Hall. It should be less traveled this early in the day. Cold touched her through the folds of her cloak. She took the pasty with her into the Great Hall. The dais was empty. She mounted it and crouched near its edge, facing the embers in the central fireplace, to eat her breakfast.
A hand thrust out from a pile of rags and grasped her booted ankle. She took the wrist in her fingers and pressed hard against the nerve.
“Damn,” Fercos yelled. She let him go.
“Imbecile.” Kieve bit into her pasty.
“You could have ruined me,” he said, nursing his hand. He sat up beside her, pulling at his rags. She recognized his cloak and a pile of blankets.
“You have been evicted from your quarters?”
“My wife...” He shrugged. Fercos identified all of his casual women as his wife, for reasons Kieve did not know and did not care to learn. “The Lord?”
She shook her head. Fercos muttered a curse.
“A wretched, wretched death,” he said. Kieve didn’t respond. “And you eager for the end of it.”
She swallowed her bile. “It would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? Should we not all be eager for mercy?”
He snorted and sang,
Kieve Rider, chaplet stealer,
shadi friend, forfeits runner.
She laughed. “I didn’t steal your chaplet, Fercos. And it is returned, isn’t it?”
“Take me with you,” he said.
She blinked and rocked back a little. “With me?”
“To Koerstadt, when you ride Cadoc’s death down the river.”
A servant knelt before the fire. He raked back the embers, piled up fresh kindling and logs, and breathed it to flame. In its increased light she looked at the minstrel, who looked back at her.
“Why?”
He shrugged, rippling the layers of his dirty clothes. “Why not? You heard Drysi’s minstrel, tinky-tinky woo-woo, lovey-dovey foo-foo pick pick pick. Perhaps they can teach me to do that too, in Koerstadt. And Isbael—Isbael has brought her own, three musicians who sing together, in harmony, and play upon harps and drums and flutes. You haven’t heard them? Stinking down river music, Koerstadt music, not a piece of muscle in it.”
Kieve thought about that, and about Isbael’s taste in periapts. Smooth, austere, deceptively simple. She nodded.
“But what of Gadyn? Or my lord Cairun?” Saying Cairun’s name made her belly tighten.
Fercos snorted. “Gadyn. Fop.” He lowered his voice. “They met yesterday, you know, by accident, Isbael and Gadyn. She called him a puppet, dancing to a tune sung by Cadoc and Rive and Adwyr. She said that puppets can be made and broken at will, especially the brainless ones.” He snorted again. “He called her a bitch and told his new land-baron Matyns to hit her, and Matyns wouldn’t, and Gadyn barked at him like a little dog. Am I to stay in the castle, to write praise songs about that?
Gadyn, princeling, squeaking warrior,
Quaffs his wine and stamps his feet
Stamps his feet and kicks his heels
Kicks his heels and licks his—”
“Hush,” Kieve said, laughing. “He is Cadoc’s chosen, and Cadoc is not yet dead.”
Fercos turned and spat elaborately into the embers. “How can I make a praise song about Gadyn, without laughing or lying or both? And I think Cairun doesn’t care for my songs either.” He leered at her. “Although I hear that he is musical, that you and he played the flute last night.”
She ignored this, taking another bite of the pasty.
He frowned into the fire. Behind them, servants drew out the boards and brought in platters and stone jugs and trenchers and cups. The sleepers began to stretch and waken. A tall man in livery went along the walls, reaching over those still sleeping, lighting the torches.
“If you hate Koerstadt music, why learn it?” Kieve said.
Fercos spat again into the flames, which hissed. “I’ll find a land-baron, some drunken sot in a castle high in the ice, and spend the rest of my life praising his sheep and freezing to death,” he said. He grabbed his drums and beat on them. “It will be the only place left for such as me,” he shouted over his drum. “And there’s the pity of it.” The hall filled with the pounding.
I sing of Cadoc, province master,
mountains master in Dalmorat,
potent lord, ice flyer, swinging
through the iceboats, runners winking
at the shadow of his passing.
Cadoc sits between the fires
in his hall and drinks his wine,
bright wine sharp as gold he dribbles
on the hearthstone, doing honor
to the Father and the Mother.
“Quiet, you bastard,” someone shouted. Fercos sang louder.
Mighty is his thirst, his hunger,
mighty is his fame. He fills
his hall with barons and his bed
with maidens lovely as the mornings
in the waters of the Morat
bright as sunlight, sharp as gold,
praising mighty Cadoc’s prowess
in the fastness of Dalmorat
o’er the roaring foam of Morat
in the winter of his power
Cadoc, great lord of Dalmorat,
Priaiseful father of my song.
“Fercos,” she said as she rose. “You’re a lousy poet.”
He ignored her, beating out the rhythm of his praise-song. The hall was awake now, filled with grumbling and voices and the smell of food. She made her way to the far side and found the servants’ doorway. She ducked through it and into the hallways. These thin passages netted the castle, sometimes lit by narrow windows but more often by torches that laid long black tongues against the walls. She followed the hallway to the very back of the castle where the corridors widened into gracefully proportioned rooms with high arched ceilings, the castle’s original chambers. Kieve wondered if the woman had finished packing, or if she had given birth. The servants looked askance at her and moved against the walls. One young woman, seeing her, put her hand in front of her mouth and blushed and giggled. It was such a contrast to her usual reception that Kieve smiled back.
The rooms bent along the curve of the overhang, deserted here and there in places crumbling into the same gentle dishevelment as Old City. Kieve lifted a torch from the wall, lit it from another, and held it before her. Away from the noise of people she could hear the wind again, bellowing and, where rock walls compressed it, filled with a high-pitched wail. Easy to understand why the Inguruki thought the wind alive.The corridor turned and opened into the cold yard behind Lord’s Stables, where in warmer weather the laundrymen beat out their trade in huge stone tubs. Now there was no help for it but to brave the storm for the last few yards. She quenched the torch, pulled the hood of her cloak around her face, and went into the wind and snow. Smaller paces, because of the storm, and angled to fight the wind: fifteen, twenty, thirty-two. It was sheltered here, but when she came around the corner of her wing the wind grabbed at her, driving sleet sideways toward her face. She flinched and found the wall and fought her way along it until her hand touched the railing. Her feet skidded on the icy stairs. When she gained the corridor she leaned against the wall, catching her breath, the wind still fierce at her back. All the torches were out. She wanted a mug of vedsuppe, perhaps an entire kettle of it, and a loaf of hot bread, and a joint of meat. And, she thought, a place to eat it all that was not owned by storm. When she stood away from the wall the side of her hood stuck to the stones, where her
moist breath had frozen fur to rock. She breathed on it again and snatched the hood free.
Her door was barred. She pushed against it, unbelieving, then banged on it with her dagger’s hit.
“Gaura! Damn it, open the door! Gaura!”
“Mistress?” Gaura called through the door. “How do I know it’s you?”
Kieve put her mouth to the wood and cursed and Gaura unbolted the door. Light spilled into the corridor. Kieve stepped through and the servant slammed the door closed and bolted it. The skin under her eyes looked purple and her hands trembled.
“What is it?” Kieve demanded. “What’s wrong, where is Daenet, is Pyrs—”
Gaura shook her head. Her chin trembled. Kieve pressed her into the chair before the woodstove. Her huge stomach filled her lap. For all the cold outside, the room felt hot and stale. Gaura quivered.
Kieve stepped around the boxes in front of the map cabinet. She brought out the bottle of apato, poured a measure into a cup, and pushed it into Gaura’s hands. The servant sipped at it, grimaced, and set the cup down again. It rattled a little against the tabletop.
“Tell me,” Kieve said.
“D—Daenet left, mistress. Then later a man, a man came,” she said. “For you. I was cleaning up, just past midday and, and he just came in without asking. He was all, his face all muffled against the wind, but he didn’t, he left the, his face, I couldn’t see.” The baby started to kick, bouncing the front of her gown. She put her hands over her middle. The man strode through the rooms with Gaura lumbering behind him, trying to shoo him out and insisting that she didn’t know Kieve’s whereabouts. Eventually he left. More indignant than frightened, Gaura went about her duties. At nightfall the man came back.
Mapping Winter Page 25