by Jude Fisher
Saro whipped around, and found himself staring at the nomad girl, struggling to carry two immense stick-puppets whose limbs kept tangling with her own.
‘Tan-la, Falo,’ she said softly, looking past Saro.
The boy jumped up, apparently none the worse for his fall, and went skipping back the way he had come.
Saro felt the relief flood through him. He grinned at Guaya. ‘I found you: how amazing!’
But Guaya stared back at him, unsmiling.
‘I was looking for you,’ he said, feeling awkward now.
‘So. You have found me. What do you want?’
She didn’t look now very much like the joyous child he had been so delighted by, Saro thought. She looked as if she had neither eaten nor slept since her grandfather had died, and as he reflected on this, he realised it was probably so. He had been looking forward to giving her the money, to seeing her pleasure and gratitude at the gift; maybe to sitting with her for a while as she told him of the significance of the changing colours of the moodstones, and particularly what that peculiar shade of green in the pendant had meant last night.
But her grandfather’s death now loomed between them, making all of that impossible. Now she was a Footloose girl, one of the despised, the unregarded folk of Elda, and he was the son of an Istrian nobleman. (The son of which one, he realised now, hardly even mattered.) They were worlds apart and even the money would never change that fact, though it might help her family in more practical ways. He tugged at the strings that attached the pouch to his belt.
‘I am sorry for your loss—’ he started in formal style, but she interrupted him vehemently.
‘Sorry? Your people have no knowledge of what that word means, in any language, be it Istrian or the Old Tongue. The Empire has burned and slaughtered its way through every bit of land between here and the southern mountains. It burned my mother for her magic, and killed my father when he tried to save her. And now it has taken my harmless old grandfather too, it is so greedy for our blood. The Empire will not be content until it has killed us all.’
Saro was shocked into silence. What she said was out of kilter with the randomness of the events he had witnessed – the brawl, the chase, the stumbling man and Tanto’s careless sword-stroke – yet it held an ineluctable truth. His people were arrogant and ruthless: they forced their will on others. They forced their laws and their religion on them, took their freedom and gave them to the Goddess for the slightest offence. He hung his head.
‘Here,’ he said thickly. He thrust the pouch at her and when she made no move to take it, he dropped it at her feet. ‘It will never make up for what my brother did and it will not give you back your grandfather. But it’s something. It’s the best I can do. I’m sor—’ He bit the word off. Tears had begun to form at the back of his eyes. He rubbed at them fiercely with his hand, but still they persisted.
The nomad girl watched him curiously. She had never seen a grown man weep before, except in joy – at a child’s birth or his first view of the ocean – and that was certainly not the emotion that held the southerner in its thrall. She watched as he turned from her, embarrassed, and walked away. And when he had gone thirty feet or more, she saw him look back, and so she tucked the recalcitrant puppets under one arm and picked up the pouch, because she hated to see him hurt as much as she did, and it was the only thing she could do to make him feel better.
In the Rockfall tent, Katla Aransen was surreptitiously collecting her most useful belongings. Under an unwontedly magnificent red gown, she had already put on a thin pair of soft yellow pigskin leggings and a close-fitting tunic of white flaxcloth. Already she felt as if she were being roasted. Footwear was somewhat more of a problem, though: she was fairly sure her father would remark on her battered old leather boots if she were to keep them on, for even if she walked more decorously than usual and avoided the dancing, she doubted she could keep them hidden. In the end, she opted for a pair of elkskin slippers, flat enough to run in, which laced about the ankle. She would persuade Erno to take her boots along with the pack she was putting together, and stow them in one of the faerings. She had wrapped her shortsword and dagger in a shawl: now she added her flints, a lump of hard cheese and a small loaf, and a flask of wine she had filched from among Tor’s belongings. Water would have been preferable, but her father was sitting with Halli on the water-butt outside the tent, making sure she did not slip away. How Halli could relinquish all his plans at their father’s whim, she still could not understand. She felt almost more aggrieved at his spinelessness than she did at their father’s betrayal.
She finished tying up the bundle, plumped it down in the middle of her sleeping pallet and scattered a jumble of clothes over it for camouflage.
The red gown had been a betrothal gift from Finn Larson, brought back by her father, who had gone with the shipmaker to the stalls to purchase it. Red, to go with her hair, Fent had laughed, before seeing his sister’s stricken face. She hadn’t wanted to wear it: to do so seemed a defeat, an insult; but in the end she had taken it meekly, thinking to put him off the scent, make him believe she was acquiescent to his plans. It was, as he had pointed out, a handsome garment, hand-stitched and embroidered by the King’s mother’s own seamstress. It was finished with silver lace, and the stiff, embroidered panels of the low bodice hugged her so tightly that it pushed her breasts up so firmly that even she almost had a cleavage. With the tunic underneath she could hardly breathe: as it was, she’d had to open the neck of the shirt with her belt-knife so that it wouldn’t show.
With her shorn hair now dyed an ugly, piebald black under Erno’s silk scarf (for she had given little care to the process, and her palms and nails were still stained by the stuff even after intense scrubbing) she was hardly a catch to be shown off on a rich man’s arm, she thought savagely. Serve him right: he’d have little enough time to display her.
‘Katla!’
It was Jenna’s voice, shrill with excitement. Oh gods, Katla thought. That’s all I need.
‘Katla, are you ready?’ Jenna’s head came round the tent flap. She was wearing a lurid green dress, cut so low Katla could almost see her nipples through the froth of silver lace. Quite how it managed to stay up, she couldn’t imagine. What a sight they’d make together: Feast and Famine personified. She laughed.
‘Oh, Katla, I’m so glad you’re not upset!’ Jenna came scurrying in, beaming all over her big round face. Her hair was completely hidden by some ornamental turban affair. Perhaps the nomad woman’s charm had gone horribly wrong.
‘Why ever should I be upset?’ Katla turned an uncharacteristically beatific face to her friend. ‘My father’s sold me to your father and I’m to be your wicked stepmother. What could be finer?’
Something in Katla’s tone gave Jenna pause; but since she could not possibly spare more than a moment’s thought on anyone but herself, she started to babble.
‘What do you think?’ She twirled lumpenly about the tent till Katla had to rescue the candles before they set her alight. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ She crossed her arms beneath her bosom so that it rose alarmingly. ‘Surely this should catch King Ravn’s eye?’
‘If it doesn’t, he’ll be blind as a mole.’
‘Oh, Katla, I know he’s going to choose me. I can feel it, in here.’ She pounded her well-cushioned ribcage. ‘Everyone’s saying I’d be a safe choice for the King, what with no one trusting the southerners and Erol Bardson’s scheming. He likes a generously-proportioned woman, too, I’ve heard: so that’s one in the eye for the Swan of Jetra.’
It’ll be two in the eye for the poor woman if she gets too close while you’re dancing, Katla thought darkly. ‘Oh?’ she said, instead, in polite enquiry.
‘Thin as a spear-shaft, my brother says, and with about as much appeal, all wrapped about in those shapeless robes.’
Katla had seen but two of the mysterious Istrian women at the Fair, hurrying between pavilions, accompanied by a train of similarly-dressed, tiny slavegirls. They
looked so bizarre, so literally outlandish, that she had been fascinated by them. Now, if she had robes like that she’d easily have been able to hide her clothes away, boots and all. And most likely the faering, too.
‘The sum we’re offering is five thousand cantari.’
‘Apiece?’
‘For the job.’
Mam stood with her hands on her hips, her feet planted foursquare on the ground. No preened and scented Empire lord was going to overface her. ‘For my troop, twenty-five thousand.’ Five was already a decent sum, if not quite a king’s ransom, she thought, with some irony.
The man laughed. He was tall for an Istrian, with a hooked nose and a receding hairline. His skin was like polished walnut, and on his right shoulder he wore the badge of the Supreme Istrian Council. Behind him stood four other lords, looking uncomfortable in the presence of this foreign woman, with her sun-bleached hair all in knots and rags and threads of shells and feathers, her battered war-gear and efficient-looking weaponry. The business they were engaged in was both clandestine and perfidious; to reveal such plans to a foreigner was risky at best; but to involve a woman so – and such a woman – was quite outrageous, tantamount to sacrilege. Nevertheless, the lord persisted.
‘Six.’
‘Twenty, or we leave.’
‘Eight, or I’ll have you incarcerated.’
‘Fifteen, my Lord of Forent, or I’ll skewer you where you stand.’ Mam’s smile was evil, her mouth full of gaps and smashed teeth.
The smile never left his face. He placed his hands palm-down on the table that separated them, leaned forward. ‘You won’t get far enough to unsheathe your sword.’
‘You think so, eh? I’d be willing to wager high on it, and I’ll take your four fancymen, too.’
One of the other lords stepped forward now, his face grim, and gripped his leader by the shoulder. ‘The woman’s a barbarian, Rui,’ he said, not caring if she heard. ‘You’re mad to trust our strategy with her.’
‘Be calm, Lord Varyx. She comes highly recommended.’
Another of the lords stepped forward and whispered something in Lord Varyx’s ear.
Mam grinned. ‘He means we were the ones responsible for firing the Duke of Gila’s palace.’ Mam leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘No one escaped: we were very thorough.’
Lord Varyx looked appalled, but Rui Finco, Lord of Forent, was unmoved. ‘Remember, it’s exactly because this lot are led by a barbarian woman that we need them. What Eyran would suspect a woman like this of presenting her compliments to her King?’
‘But not looking like that, surely?’ Lord Varyx’s haughty regard swept across Mam, taking in her horny hands and big knees, her calves as hard and knotted as tree roots, the leathery skin and broken nose.
‘Well, we’ll dress her rather better, and her companions, too.’
‘If we come to terms, you can dress me how you like,’ Mam interrupted impatiently in fluent, if horribly accented, Istrian. She grinned at their obvious discomfiture as if she could see them working hard to recall all their rashly unshielded words. ‘Though I’m not sure even Galian lace is going to make Knobber a pretty woman.’
The leader of the lords gave her a thin smile. ‘You’d be surprised. Ten thousand, and that’s the final offer.’
‘Fourteen.’
Rui Finco gnashed his teeth. ‘Twelve.’
‘Give me thirteen and we’ll shake on it.’
‘Twelve and be damned; I’ll not touch you.’
‘Six up front.’
He glared at her.
Mam winked back. Then she hawked, opened her fist, gobbed copiously into it, and grabbed the lord’s hand, engulfing it entirely. He tried to pull away, but she was far too strong for him. The look on his face was almost worth the rest.
‘Done.’
She released him. The lord opened his cramped fingers and inspected his palm with a look of the utmost disgust. He waved a slaveboy over. ‘Clean that.’ The boy scurried off, returning a few second later with a dampened rag with which he proceeded to scrub the spittle and mucus away. It was bad enough that he had to hire a barbarian woman for the job, but to have her foul fluids on him . . .
‘Indeed. Now remember: if things go awry and he ends up dead, the six is all you’ll get.’
Mam made a face. Then she grinned. ‘Still, six thousand’s more than my lads have seen in a while; with six more to come they’ll wrap him in silk and deliver him to you with a bow on.’ Idiot man, she thought. Were they really so desperate they’d overpay so? She’d only been testing him: they’d have taken eight, and happily, for the fun of it.
‘The violet is a fine choice, Tanto: I swear you’ll look like the young Alesto.’
Tanto frowned and put the robe back down on the display in a crumpled heap, which made the stallholder tut and fuss. Even from the little attention he had paid in his classes he knew that scriptures told that Alesto had been Falla’s lover, the man she had chosen to couple with from among all mortal men for his beauty rather than his brains. His father had clearly forgotten that Alesto, as a result, had come to a rather unfortunate and crispy end . . .
‘We must get back, Father,’ he said impatiently. A doubt about Saro and the prize money had been nagging at the back of his mind this last hour.
‘Ah, yes, preparations to make for tonight. And we must congratulate young Saro on his win.’ It was a shame they’d missed the actual race, Favio mused. It had seemed so unlikely to him that Saro would ever triumph in anything that he’d allowed himself to be distracted by some exotic dancers Tanto seemed keen on watching, and as a result they’d arrived at the course only in time to see Night’s Harbinger making his victory progress. ‘It was a fine performance, by all accounts. I always said the boy had it in him.’ He knew this to be an untruth even as he said it, but he was feeling generous, in the circumstances. ‘And lucky for us, too, though I doubt we’ll be making much of it to my lord of Cantara: we don’t want him thinking he’s got the wrong son-in-law, eh, Tanto?’
But his elder son was in a world of his own. Tanto’s mind had strayed yet again to the beauty mark Selen Issian had worn; the beauty mark, and those lips . . .
‘How long before we can have the wedding, Father?’ he asked suddenly.
Favio Vingo smiled. He remembered how eager he had been to take Illustria to wife. Ah, Illustria . . . the thought stretched away into the distant past, became uncomfortable, and was pushed away. ‘Well, my boy. It’ll need some planning, that’s for certain: a lot of nobles and their retinues to be taken into account; a suitable date; auspicious omens; the right sacrifices, all that sort of thing. I suspect we’ll not be able to secure a date that suits all before Harvest.’
‘Harvest?’ Tanto almost howled, it was such a shock. He’d been expecting to bed the woman tonight, tomorrow at latest. Harvest was still four moons or more away, and though passing up on a lavish ceremony in which he would be the centre of all attention was hard to do, to find out whether Selen Issian would perform the perversion that beauty mark actually denoted was worth the renunciation.
Favio saw his son’s dismay with some amusement and took pity on him. ‘But of course, that’s just the Goddess’s ceremony, Tanto. No need to wait so long to bed your bride: we’ll find a priest this very night to consecrate the match, if her father’s willing. We’ll soon have you fornicating away like a pair of mountain cats! It’s praise to the Goddess herself for a girl to make the Joining with her belly full of her husband’s seed.’
Tanto felt a fire in his groin. He might still have her tonight! Even though he’d groped his way through a hundred prostitutes, he had never experienced the sort of anticipation he felt now for the act, which before had been impersonal, perfunctory. No, this would be different. This would be ownership. He felt himself a larger man already.
They left the stalls behind them and made their way back to the Istrian quarter. Even as they did so, the criers were beginning their evening observances, a mournful wail that ro
se into the twilight air. Favio, a pious man, dropped immediately to his knees and started to chant. Tanto rolled his eyes. Yet another delay! Even so, he followed suit as dutifully as he could, and hurried through the prayers so quickly that he finished his incantations a good half minute before his father. As soon as Favio pronounced the final ‘safe in your fires forever’, Tanto had leapt up, grabbed him by the elbows and hauled him upright. ‘Come along, now, Father: the evening’s drawing in and I’d not want you to catch a chill,’ he announced with false solicitude.
Back at the Vingo pavilion the sconces were burning brightly, and they could smell the sweet safflower incense from twenty feet away. ‘They are wasting that stuff,’ Favio muttered crossly. ‘Do they have no idea how expensive it is?’
It was the only occasion on which Tanto had ever heard his father complain about the cost of anything. Obviously the calling in of the Vingo debt had made a significant hole in their family finances, that he would complain so. For the first time he realised just how important this alliance must be to his father, that he’d stake so much on the settlement. He smiled. It would be worth it, he knew. The joining of the estates would make them a formidable force in the power-play of the provinces, and he and Selen would found a dynasty to be remembered down the centuries . . .
Inside, a pile of money glittered on the table, the candlelight sparking off its curves of shining silver. Propped up against it was a note in Saro’s workmanlike hand. Tanto took in the scene at a glance. The pile of coins clearly amounted to rather less than the sum Saro had won.
Favio picked up the note and read aloud:
‘Dear Tanto,
Here is the half I promised you. Since I know you treasure your honour more highly than silver, with the other half I will fulfil your obligations. I will no doubt see you at the Gathering later.
Good wishes from your brother,