by Jude Fisher
Katla looked back at Erno. ‘Stop gawping at her and give me the dress!’ When he hesitated, for a moment unsure of what she meant, she snatched his bag from him and hauled the brocade robe out of it. She took the dagger from the girl’s hand and cast it down. With a sleeve she wiped the worst of the blood away from the girl’s face and hands. ‘I knew it would come in useful,’ she grinned at the woman. ‘Red on red – it won’t even show.’
She put a hand beneath the woman’s elbow and eased her to her feet. There were smears of blood on her legs and in her pubic hair. Erno looked away, acutely embarrassed but at once Katla rounded on him. ‘For Sur’s sake, Erno, help me. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a woman naked before.’
He hadn’t. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Reprimanding himself for seeing the girl as a female before he saw her as someone in need of his help, he took an arm of the dress from Katla, gathered the thing up from the hem and helped her pull it over the woman’s head. Together, they adjusted the neck, laced the back. She was a different shape to Katla, he could not help but note, a different sort of woman altogether. There was no muscle on her, though her skin was smooth and her limbs neatly formed, and she was narrower in the waist and shoulders, though wider in the hip, so that the dress hung loose upon her upper body even with the laces tight.
‘Thank you,’ the woman said at last in the Old Tongue. ‘By Falla, I thank you.’
Katla and Erno exchanged glances. An Istrian woman, then, as they might have judged by her colouring, if nothing else: for whoever had seen one of the southern women run naked and bloody across the Moonfell Plain?
‘What happened to you?’ Erno asked slowly in the Old Tongue.
The woman looked distressed. She started to cry. Erno felt more helpless now than he ever had in his life. He put a hand out to her, but she flinched away. To cover his confusion he bent to retrieve the dagger from the ground. Though it was mired by blood, there was something familiar about it . . .
‘Isn’t this one of yours?’ he asked Katla softly in Eyran.
She stared at him, then at the blade. A moment later she took it from him, hefted it in her hand, then, heedless of the mess, wiped it across the thigh of her breeches. She held it up to the moonlight, and gasped. It was one of hers. Not only that, but it was the dagger she had given to the young Istrian man but two days ago at her stand. She looked at the woman again, her mind working. Surely the mild-mannered Saro had no part in this? She felt a chill run through her. ‘Who are you?’ Katla said urgently, reverting to the Old Tongue. ‘Tell us how you have come to this.’
The woman rubbed her tears away roughly, then pushed back her hair. Her chin came up. This is hard for her, Katla thought, recognising the pride there. She tucked the dagger into her belt and took the woman’s hand encouragingly.
‘My name is Selen Issian,’ the woman said. ‘A man murdered my slave, then forced himself upon me. I think—’ She fought down another rising sob, then gathered herself again. ‘I think I killed him.’
Compelled by a nameless dread, Katla tightened her grip on the hand. ‘Tell me who he was—’
Selen Issian frowned. ‘The Vingo son,’ she said. ‘We were to be betrothed tonight, though I did not want it. He would not wait.’
Katla felt dizzy. Saro Vingo – a rapist, and dead? Nausea rose up inside her, followed by an equally disorientating wave of pity, but whether it was for the woman – due to be betrothed, like herself, this very night to a man for whom she had no love – or for herself, she could not tell.
‘I have to get away,’ Selen Issian went on. ‘My father . . .’ She turned to Katla, her black eyes huge. ‘Help me. If they find me they will surely burn me for his death.’
Another woman escaping her family and the fires. This was all too strange. Katla took a deep breath. She looked at Erno. He gave a single nod: how could they possibly turn her away?
‘As luck would have it, we are also leaving this place: you are welcome to come with us.’
Selen Issian smiled wanly. ‘I have nothing to offer you but my thanks.’
‘No time even for that,’ Katla grinned. ‘Come on.’
They were just nearing the western edge of Sur’s Castle and had begun their downhill descent towards the shining sea, when there was a shout. Katla stared around. Behind them, in the Istrian quarter, torches danced in the darkness. The shouting grew louder.
‘Run!’ cried Erno. He grabbed Selen Issian by the arm and dragged her along with him. Katla heaved her pack up onto her back and ran behind them, turning every third step to assess the pursuit.
They dodged between a group of tents, fled through some sort of pebbled enclosure scattered with flowers and stinking of death. More tents, and a small group of drunken folk weaving their way back from the nomad quarter, who stared at them as if they were some sort of impromptu entertainment, and then they were out on the strand. Here, the ashy ground was rough and sharp. It cut into Selen’s bare feet so that soon there was fresh blood spattered up her legs. She bit back her whimpers of pain, but it was impossible to keep up with the long-legged northman and it was not long before she stumbled on the long hem of the dress and fell headfirst. Erno ran back, took one look at her ruined feet and stopped dead.
Katla turned and looked for their pursuers. A line of firelight marked their position. They had come the long way round the Istrian pavilions, but now they were heading fast in their direction. She turned back to Erno, made a swift assessment. ‘Pick her up and get down below the crest of the rise,’ she said. ‘Head for the faerings. I’ll draw them off this way.’
‘Why should they follow you? If they’re looking for Selen, they’ll hardly be seeking someone in Eyran clothing—’
Katla lost her patience. ‘Look, just take her and run: it’s her only chance. I can’t carry her as fast as you can, and if we split, they may at least become confused. I’ll meet you at the boats. Just launch one out and get away: I can always swim after you.’
He stared at her, wordless; but there was no time for further discussion: the first of the torches came at a run around the last of the tents. Instead, he grabbed Katla’s chin and kissed her once, hard, on the mouth. Then he hauled Selen Issian over his shoulder and dropped down over the rise and out of immediate sight.
Katla waited until the pursuing group gained a clear view of her, then took to her heels, running uphill away from the sea. She heard shouts behind her, as shrill and avid as a pack of huntsmen sighting quarry and knew her ruse had worked. Up amongst the Istrian tents she ran again, doubling back on herself. The pack soon became a burden now that she was running flat-out. She thought quickly, then cached it behind a pavilion with a long line of flags on a pole out in front of it, so that she could locate it easily again, and ran on. The shouting got close enough that soon she could make out individual voices, but not the words. It took her a moment or more to realise this was because they called to one another in Istrian, and she grinned. Perfect. Even if they caught up with her, they’d have to let her go.
A few minutes later she had managed to lose them again amid the welter of tents and pavilions, and shortly after that found herself back in the pebbled enclosure. Here she stopped, the air sawing painfully in her lungs. Not so fit after all, she chided herself ruefully. Still, this should have given Erno sufficient time to reach the boats. She bent over, feeling the blood run into her turbaned head, and tried to catch her breath. A strong smell of incense rose up to meet her. It came from a garland of crushed orange flowers that lay on the ground beneath her feet. Curious, even in the midst of the drama, Katla picked one up and examined it. Flecks of its dark pollen tumbled out onto her hands. It was like no flower she had ever seen: some exotic southern species that would never survive in the windy north. She discarded it with a certain disgust, wiping her hands off on her tunic. She looked up at Sur’s Castle rising before her. If she were to run back up around the Rock and come down to the sea from its landward side, that should throw them off the scent. B
ut then she remembered her pack. Damn. She ran quickly through its contents in her head and knew with a sinking heart she couldn’t afford simply to abandon it. Slipping out of the garden the way they had originally entered it, she cut between pavilions and looked around. Unrelieved darkness. No sign of the pursuit; nor of the flags. She ran a way downhill again, dodging between the tents. When she came to the last of the pavilions she stopped and peered carefully around its seaward side. Nothing but the volcanic strand and the moonlit sea rolling into the shore on line after line of silver surf. She felt her breathing steady itself. Looking back west, she saw the topmost of the pennants she had noted previously hanging from its flagpole maybe thirty lengths to her left and a little further up the slope. Excellent. She slipped into the open space between two pavilions without a second thought.
A voice terrifyingly close behind her shouted in the Old Tongue: ‘Halt!’
Another declared: ‘Move and we will kill you where you stand, Eyran scum.’
It took a moment to realise the significance of that last utterance. She whirled around. Three Allfair officials stood there, two of them training sturdy crossbows upon her. She recognised one of them. Her heart started to beat very fast. She gathered herself for action: if she were to dive and roll, then run back towards the tents, she might lose them again. If she could get to the Rock, she could shimmy up the crackline before they got anywhere near her. It was surely the last place they’d expect to look, and by now the line was firmly in her head: she could climb it blindfold—
She hurled herself down and heard the first bolt whistle over her back. She rolled and came to her feet running. Head down, she hurtled sideways towards the westward tents, and straight into an obstruction. She hit it so hard, she fell down, winded. When she looked up she found it was another guard, and he had the point of his sword at her throat.
‘Can you see her?’
Virelai, a head taller than most of those present, stared out across the crowd. This time he knew what he was looking for: that damned green shawl. Splashes of green kept drawing his eye – a headcloth there, a tunic here; a robe of deepest forest-green; a blocky-looking woman in an emerald dress, a man’s mossy cloak, a pale young woman in a virulent green and gold dress.
His eye strayed beyond her to a dark man seated on a dais, surrounded by a great tumble of coloured rugs and crocks, trinkets and flasks. A scribe sat beside him, quill poised over his parchment, staring and staring as if his eyes were no longer his own. Virelai knew well what that look meant, and he had learned to keep the Rosa Eldi well hidden from the public gaze as a result. He took a step to one side and peered around the group who had been blocking his view, and there she was, seemingly in deep conversation with the dark-haired man.
‘Ah, what are you about now?’ Virelai breathed, taking in this scene with some curiosity.
‘What? What did you say?’ Lord Tycho Issian grasped the map-seller’s shoulder with fingers of iron. ‘Did you say something?’
Virelai swivelled his head. He regarded the hand on his shoulder, then turned his pale, unblinking stare to the southern lord’s desperate face. As Tycho’s eyes narrowed in a prelude to fury, the map-seller quickly returned his gaze to the Rosa Eldi and began to plough a furrow through the crowd towards her. Nearer the dais, the throng grew more dense. Cleanshaven, dark-skinned men in rich clothing, attended by their respective retinues, had gathered on one side of the man on the dais, bearded men with their women on the other. Virelai cast a curious eye over them. They were all chattering away like jackdaws, he noticed, though they could not drag their eyes away from the scene that played itself out before them.
Behind him, there was a gasp. His lips quirked. So the southern lord had seen her at last. This should prove interesting.
Lord Tycho Issian shouldered past the map-seller with a curse. He barged through a group of Eyrans, who turned and regarded him with open hostility. One of them, young and red-headed, shouted something and tried to step in front of him, but nothing could stop Tycho now. He pushed roughly past Lord Prionan without a thought for the delicate political manoeuvrings he had been making towards the man for the past two years, and drove a shoulder between old Greving and Hesto Dystra likewise. Of the Swan of Jetra – rumoured to be the most beautiful woman Falla ever created – he took no more notice than the momentary irritation of finding her foot beneath his sole. Without a word of apology he forged on, until there were none left between him and his goal but the woman in the green dress.
The dark man had risen now and, taking the Rosa Eldi’s hands in his own, lifted her lightly up onto the dais beside him. Not once did his eyes leave her face.
Tycho felt the blood pumping about his body like surging flows of lava. Its incandescence flooded his limbs, his torso, his face, his groin. There she was – his prize – just three feet away, the Rose of the World, the heart of his life, the woman he would this very night wed—
Sound diminished all around as if he stood in a bubble of air. And then:
‘Wed her? My lord, you cannot!’ The voice was outraged, shrill with consternation. Tycho spun around to answer the speaker with his fist, then realised with a dawning horror that he was not the one addressed.
Confusion fell upon him, followed by an awareness that he had just missed something crucial in the exchange between the Rosa Eldi and the dark-haired man.
A tall, bearded man parted the crowd and came striding towards the dais. ‘Sire, I say again: you cannot take this woman to wife.’
A second northerner followed, grizzled as an old bear, his beard a bush of grey. ‘Ravn, what can you be thinking of? This is madness.’
Ravn. King Ravn Asharson. Stallion of the North. Heathen lord of the Eyran isles, here to choose his wife. Tycho felt the madness roil over him.
For her part, the Rosa Eldi let drop her shawl, revealing her silver-blonde hair, as straight as a waterfall; the perfect white skin and sea-green eyes. A hush overtook the room, washing out across the crowd like the ripples made by a thrown stone in water, or the destructive spiral of a typhoon. In the silent eye of the storm, the Rosa Eldi took the northern king’s hand. She parted his fingers, placed the index finger of his right hand inside her pink mouth, then withdrew it and blew softly upon it. Then she leaned towards him.
‘Say it again,’ she urged in that low, uninflected voice. ‘For them.’
Ravn Asharson drew himself up. He roared something in the guttural language of Eyra. Then: ‘I have chosen my Queen!’ he cried out in the Old Tongue.
And the Rosa Eldi smiled.
Virelai stared. He had never seen her change expression before. He had not thought she knew how.
Aran Aranson watched all this play out with some bewilderment, but his mind was not entirely on the royal choice. He appeared to have lost his daughter. And some while back he’d realised that Erno Hamson was nowhere to be seen, either, which two facts taken together gave him genuine concern. He’d known young Erno was sweet on Katla, as Gramma Rolfsen would say, for the last couple of years at the least, but he’d paid it no mind, for Katla would never choose for herself a man as good-natured and taciturn as poor, shy Erno: he knew his noisy, wayward daughter too well. Or he thought he did. Most likely Erno was playing the maiden-aunt, he told himself, calming her nerves, walking her about outside. He had been trying to put a polite face on his growing anxiety for the past twenty minutes or more since he had first noticed her gone, and determined also, that Finn Larson should not know it. For his part, the master shipmaker had been bent on Aran witnessing Jenna’s triumph with the King and kept clutching at his arm, which meant that Aran had not been able to slip quietly away. ‘See what a fine family you are marrying your girl into,’ Finn kept saying. ‘And soon with a royal connection, too.’ He winked. ‘Who else can Ravn choose but my beautiful daughter? Istrians may offer tawdry temptations to gild their offers, but Ravn’s a proper man: he’ll choose a red-blooded northern girl. I am eternally grateful to you, Aran, my friend, for putting your
good son to one side to make this match possible.’
And now here they were with Jenna weeping over her embarrassment, and no doubt over the King picking some unknown beggar-girl like the complete fool that he was; and Katla – on whom his trade with Finn, and hence all his dreams and plans were founded – had vanished with Erno Hamson. Aran Aranson was not by nature an anxious man, but his skin was crawling now. There was something not right here, not right at all. His superstitious mother, who claimed to be able to see the future, and had on occasion been unnervingly prescient, would have said he was feeling the skeins of the web-makers brushing his skin, as the strands of his fate were woven. His fingers found the nugget of gold in his pouch, caressing its cold brilliance. The tingling sensation it transmitted travelled through his palm up his arm and into his chest, where it suffused him in a wash of warm comfort. It was his talisman: all would be well.
Relaxed now, his head light with relief, he gazed around, his eyes coming to rest at last on a tall man, towering pale as a lily over the crowd to the right of him. It was, he realised with a certain surprise, the map-seller, the man who had entrusted him with the quest that so enthralled him, and with the ingot in his pocket. As if recognising its erstwhile master, the rock buzzed in his hand, so unexpectedly that his fingers came off it as if burned. As they did so, a connection struck him. He focused for the first time on the woman with the King. Something about her. Something . . . magnetic . . . He watched her pale hand move rhythmically on the King’s arm and remembered that same hand, that same gesture, upon the black-furred cat on the steps of the map-seller’s wagon. Puzzled now, he stared back and forth between the two. Was this some sort of trick, some mummer’s play? He looked about more widely; saw how a big woman in a hideous green dress moved towards the dais with great strides that kicked out the front of the fabric as a woman more used to such fashions never would; he saw a small man bobbing in her wake; more oddly, he watched a small group of Istrian matrons in their voluminous sabatkas detach themselves from the anonymous group by the musicians’ stage and begin pushing through the crowd in a most unladylike manner.