The Rising Scythe

by S G Dunster

  A frisson of joy, of surprise, of wonder. His golden eyes gleamed, and she wanted . . .

  Something. What?

  “Aye,” Thessaly breathed, and his smile went softer, deeper.

  He sat back, gazing at her.

  The moment passed, golden and warm, and Thessaly savored it.

  Maybe this would be fine.

  Maybe this, being bound to such a man, would be more than fine. What did she fear? A fuzzy warmth stole over her—comfort. Like a blanket.

  “About my mother,” Thessaly said, turning back to the subject. “Whatever you know of her art, please tell me. I’ve no teacher anymore. I’m lost.” A swell of emotion threatened.

  Loredan reached over and touched her cheek. “Never lost,” he said softly. “And if you are, I’ll be lost with you.”

  Feeling hummed in Thessaly’s breast.

  “She was a wytch,” he said abruptly, drawing back again, “like you. She practiced potions and saw in wells. She could tell when a storm was coming and could right the winds when they blew sails askance. To hear the tales, she could do most anything. She could cure a boil or a cancer, make lungs expel any illness. She could hear the very thoughts of a heart to know what troubled a person and give wise counsel. She was everything lovely and wise, and your father counted her a great treasure when he took her to him for wife.”

  “He doesn’t seem to count me as such,” Thessaly replied wryly, but her mind was racing. Seeing. Winds. Healing. Diseases, blood, thoughts.

  Bound magicks, and loose. Her mother had also chosen both?

  She had to know, now. She had to know badly enough that she would ask. She would brave the gauntlet of her father’s emotions.

  And yet, it was a hard thing to broach. It took her until two days later, as they circled and moved back west—headed where, Thessaly knew not. The horn of Africa? Back to the Spice Islands? Finally, she approached Antonio to beard him in his captain’s cabin.

  He’d left supper early, heading to his quarters, and Thessaly followed him quietly, waiting until he’d shut his door, then knocked.

  He opened the door, and immediately his face was wary. Worried. But he stepped aside and let her in. It was the first time they’d talked since Milan. It was as if he’d been afraid of her questions. As if he expected them.

  “Papa,” Thessaly said when they’d settled in the two richly-upholstered chairs that faced each other across the small mahogany table where he liked to read.

  “Aye, daughter,” he sighed.

  Thessaly hesitated a moment. “You know what I ask.”

  He nodded. Barely a nod.

  “Tell me of mother. Please. I know it pains you, but I must know.”

  His eyes skipped around the room and focused on his hands, clasped on the table in front of him.

  “She was lovely,” he said hoarsely.

  “Indeed. And her talents? Her art?”

  A long, boiling moment. “She was like you,” He said finally.

  “Like me, how?”

  “Just like you,” Antonio replied, the words bursting forth in a stream. Thessaly felt his relief, and the pain, as they came. A boil, lancing.

  “She had learning, a mind as wondrous to explore as the Indian ocean. And she ended badly over wytchery.” His gaze finally focused on hers. “I lost her to it, Thessaly. She went too deep and lost her mind. She became another woman—turned inward, pinched, frightened. Cold, quiet, secretive. And then . . .” he choked, “I found her body over the cliffs, coming back from a trade in London. Cold, but not two days dead, she was.” He paused and brushed a hand across his face. “Friends of hers, they tried to help her. Teach her. Give her what she needed. And in the end, it wasn’t enough.” He leaned forward. “Like you, Thessaly, she chose both.”

  “Both.”

  “You know what I say. She chose magicks bound and loose. And her mother, your grandmother, was delighted when her precious Thessalia stayed whole after being chosen by the two forces of the universe. Not many choose them, and none that anyone knew of could contain them. But your mother was strong, was clever enough to contain them . . . for a while.”

  “For a while,” Thessaly repeated. “Why did you not tell me of this before?”

  Her father’s look was probing. Deep. Sad. “Knowledge has never slowed you, Thessaly. It fires you up. You would have been curious. Asked questions. I hoped to keep you from wytching entirely.”

  “And now,” Thessaly said.

  “And now,” her father agreed.

  “So none, in the end, have been able to contain both bound and loose magicks.”

  Slowly, Antonio nodded. “Not that anyone has recorded. Not that is known.”

  “What shall I do?”

  He sighed, ran his fingers through his beard. “We shall do what we can. I know of someone who has access to books—books that may help you. There are not teachers for those chosen by both, Thessaly. You will have to be your own teacher. And your own watcher. None of us can keep you safe now. Do you understand this?” His voice rose. He fisted his hands, struck one on the table, rattling it. “I can’t keep ye safe, child. You’ve wandered of a current I can’t rudder. You’re beyond me.” His mouth shook a little, a tear rolled down his face.

  Thessaly stared at it, watched its track down the strong bones of cheek and jaw, watched it end in the furious dark bush of beard on his chin.

  “I sensed, long ago, that you might go that way. I tried hard to save you, and mayhap that’s where I failed. If I’d encouraged you to one sort of magick or the other—“

  “No,” Thessaly said. “It was I that chose.”

  “Aye.” Antonio studied her, eyes narrowed slightly. He sighed again, leaned back against the chair. “Thank God for Loredan. One half of what I wished for you may come to be. And thank God,” he shuddered, “for Umbra, who at least had the charity and presence of mind to teach you a way of containment. I suggest you keep that containment in place, Thessaly, always.”

  Thessaly suddenly felt heavy. Pinched inside.

  Always?

  She must always keep these fetters, slimy and cold, around the brilliance she contained?

  Really? She must never again enter Nur, must never again stretch out in the winds to feel a storm?

  Umbra had seemed to think Thessaly could manage eventually, that maybe she could grow, could contain them without fetters. But her father seemed to think that fetters meant the problem was solved, that she must stay bound in this unnatural corset she’d been given.

  No, she thought to herself. He’s afraid.

  Of course he is. He has no way of guiding me.

  Her father was continuing. She focused again on his words, a warm glow starting in her center, a certainty that banished some of the fear she’d been feeling these last weeks.

  “In the meantime, though,” he was saying, “you’ll need a place—quiet, out of the way of wars. Wars I may have quickened a bit with my acts of temper.”

  “I made the blood spill,” Thessaly said quietly. “I blew the fire.”

  “No.” Her father’s voice was sharp, startling her. “The caddishness of men, and feuds long nurtured do not rest on you, daughter. It was bound to happen. Only, I would be dead. And Loredan.” He tilted his head slightly. “You keep us safe now. Your fire is our weapon. It is not the way I wanted it, but I accept it. Only I ask you to fetter it most of the time.”

  Most of the time. What did that mean? Antonio did not understand what it was inside her. She couldn’t just fetter it most of the time, then loose it when called upon like a cannon. These forces were not going to let her go.

  He didn’t understand.

  Thessaly chewed over this, thought it through as they sat a while longer, quietly now. No words.

  Antonio brought out a decanter of pale wine, offered her some, and she sipped it, feeling the ripples of the things that had been spoken.

  “Papa Henri,” she said finally. “That’s where Mama died, and he loved her well. It’s
his library you speak of, isn’t it?

  “It is,” Antonio confirmed. “It’s to the Kernow marches we’ll be going, daughter. You’ll learn what you can to keep yourself whole. And at the same time,” he gave her a glare, “you shall learn some niceties long neglected.”

  Thessaly opened her mouth to argue, and he thrust his forefinger in her face. “A woman married to a Loredan will be expected to act in certain ways you’ve not shown,” he growled. “No more words about it.”

  It was oddly comforting, her father’s growl, the usual tension and argument. She was tempted to shout back at him just to prolong the feeling. Instead she nodded, stood, and left his quarters, pausing for a long moment on the stairs before she turned down the slim corridor that housed her own room.

  Loredan. This was her life now, apparently. A spice-merchant husband, likely a house in Venice. Perhaps with a garden. Definitely a library full of books. And gold-skinned, gold-eyed babes, clothed in sweet-smelling linen.

  But maybe also, with such a husband, rhetoric. Writing. Letters. Maths.

  Her mood lifted.

  This was an opportunity beyond anything she’d ever expected for herself, wasn’t it? If she could manage to master these forces inside, she’d have all she’d ever wanted.

  Certainly more than she’d expected, she thought as she watched the silhouette of Loredan’s lean, tall figure far down below, leaning into the wind against the main deck rail.

  As they exited Jebel’s strait, moving from the great sea into the great ocean, they stayed south, as far from Portugal’s ports as possible, passing close by the mound that rested on the northern tip of Africa’s last shores. There was an old keep there, winking its light to guide ships.

  They turned north and eventually east, on a route Thessaly had only traveled a handful of times in her life. The water turned grey and choppy as they moved around France, headed to the low, green shores of Britain. The fleet’s guns were always manned and well-oiled; the men on deck who handled crossbows took to the fore and aftcastles in shifts. Cerdic was constantly at the prow, his longbow carefully cradled in the prow’s point, a full quiver of fletched arrows at the ready.

  Thessaly kept herself fettered. Her feelings were stuck inside her, too deep to really feel, as they moved to a quieter, queerer place than one she’d thought she’d make her permanent home. London was a big city, but not near so big or grand as some she’d visited. Any courts there were grand indeed, but ruled oddly by a peasantish sort of savagery. There was less of refinement and understanding, more choking religious rhetoric and piety. What was her father truly thinking? In England’s court she was far more likely to be burned a wytch than anywhere else.

  But then, she’d have her godfather Henri. And she’d be far from the courts, nested in the borderland holdings; the marches. She doubted she’d see court for even one day.

  The thought made her oddly depressed.

  Did she care so much for finery, for notoriety? She chided herself for such thoughts. Wasn’t her goal always to simply be permitted to learn and do as she pleased?

  She had to admit to herself that the prospect of being as powerful a woman as Umbra had had its shine. Having lost it completely, and resigning herself to a quiet life more like Margarida’s . . .

  All right, there was some pride there.

  But she’d get over it.

  She looked out with curiosity as they moved across the channel between the continent and the islands. She watched the English shores swell into view, the tall buildings clustered high over the great bridge like an ugly necklace in the distance. The spire of St. Paul’s rose like a great needle spearing the sky, the church’s great arched length huddled about with two-and-three story thatched buildings.

  Smelling of sewers, animals, and rotted food, London.

  But her father would be bringing spices to its shores. Her father left his aroma in every city.

  What could Thessaly do, in this new place?

  The fleets scattered through the wide river’s waters watched each other warily. Some ships carried the white field with the red cross of Britain. Out in the channel others showed the blue with three gold fleur-de-lis heralding the fleets of King Francis. Out there, they danced around each other on the water with the stiffness and courtesy of King Joao’s court. Not many Portuguese fleets traveled the channel, but men of Flanders and the Northmen, and a cog or two, lazing around from the court of Charles, red with black eagles, all peppered the water, seeking out cloth and wines and spices.

  “It’s a stew peppered well with sulfur,” Thessaly’s father remarked over supper one night as they’d made their last push for the shores of England. “It’ll be lit up to heaven soon. I’m well pleased you’ll be out of it, daughter, well south and away from the powder keg.”

  “In the marches, surrounded by Breton savages,” Loredan put in, his golden eyes slightly narrowed. Loredan was put out that Thessaly was being sent ashore. For how long, he’d asked.

  Thessaly did not know, and she suspected her father did not either. Nobody knew. They were all seeking the counsel of Henri, Thessaly’s godfather at this point. Waiting on his word, on his ideas. They needed him and his brilliance.

  Having entered into the uncontested waters of young King Henry VIII’s court, Thessaly worried that their hopes were set too high on Henri’s advice, but it was, all in all, a good place to put the burden of trust. Henri de Holystoan, a marcher lord seated in Taunton, was one of Antonio’s greatest and oldest friends. He’d been there when Antonio met Thessalia, her mother, and he’d helped them to elope. He’d been named Thessaly’s godfather, and she liked him well. Loved him, in fact. He’d never been anything but a good and supportive friend, and he was jolly and full of information. Everybody liked Lord Holystoan. Thessaly couldn’t help but like him.

  And he knew of her mother’s struggle.

  She hoped he had something for her. Some advice, some solution. An idea, at least. Perhaps there would be some new information to glean in that great old library of his, full of queer books and scrolls and papers.

  Her mother had died in Taunton. Her grave rested outside the churchyard there—not in consecrated ground, which Thessaly knew was a great sorrow for her father.

  Her godfather had to have more to say on the matter of her mother’s practice of the arts. He himself did not shy away from the subject; like Loredan, he’d always been fascinated by it. He asked Thessaly question after question about her studies with her aunts when he visited her in Goa, or on occasion on her father’s spice trades if they happened to be on boat together. And, of course, the few times she and Antonio had visited his great house in Taunton.

  As they moved finally into a space large enough in the crowded docks of London, Thessaly thought suddenly about how she had not spent all that much time on land in her life. Her father would plant her for several months here and several months there. Then he’d rip her up and take her elsewhere.

  The prospect of being put to land again cowed her for some reason. As they pulled into the Thames and moved to mooring on the more built-up east docks below the great bridge, alongside other great carracks and cogs, all busy with men unloading cargo, chattering, haggling over prices, she felt as if the land closed around her. Pressed in on her.

  “Will we be attending Henry’s court this trip?” Loredan asked. His tone was polite, but his eyes gleamed. He’d never been to this city himself.

  “No,” Antonio said curtly. “I shall not. Though you are free to meet up with a sponsor and present yourself.” He turned to Thessaly. “We shall be venturing into the city and sitting at dinner with a customer of mine. Dress soberly, if you please.”

  “Shall I wear a black veil?” Thessaly asked dryly. Her father didn’t smile. “We shall be buying some goods in town as well,” he said. “You’ll need a proper outfit for your time in Taunton.”

  “Lovely,” Thessaly muttered.

  Guzal dressed Thessaly in a fine cotton shift with a wool over dress and an o
uter dress of embroidered felt. Thessaly liked the looser lines of it. She pulled on soft hide gloves and added pattens to the bottoms of her slippers to keep them out of the muck of the open drains that ran down the city’s streets.

  They disembarked—Guzal, Thessaly, Loredan, Antonio, and the three chief officers of the flagship—and the smell immediately thickened to choking.

  “Lands,” Guzal gasped, bringing a perfumed handkerchief to her nose.

  “The smell of puritanism,” Loredan said, breathing in deeply. “How virtuous I suddenly feel.”

  Antonio frowned, but Thessaly couldn’t help but laugh. Loredan’s eyes gleamed at her.

  He liked making her laugh. This was another good sign, wasn’t it? Loredan accompanied

  them for a while along the streets, marveling at the sights. “Not so fine as can be found in Venice or Florence,” he said of the woolen cloths and clothing, “but charming. Well-made, certainly.”

  As they approached a two-story building with lanterns hung at the door and a bracketed sign—the Wooly Cheat—Loredan bowed to Thessaly and Antonio in turn, and then nodded at Guzal as well. “I’ll let you conduct your business in private,” he said. “I believe I can amuse myself well on my own for a few hours.”

  Thessaly gave him a parting smile.

  The smells inside the public house were much more pleasant. Thessaly and Guzal gladly shed their pattens near the door and stepped onto a straw-strewn floor.

  Gravy, Thessaly thought, breathing in the savory smells. Meat and broths with pepper. Maybe even saffron.

  They were seated and brought bowls to wash their hands in. A girl in a white cap and voluminous apron set before them a course of beef-and-bean pottage flavored with something sweet and meady. “Ale,” her father said, seeing the look on Thessaly’s face. “The stew has ale. Here, wine is drunk only by lords and ladies, except as medicine.”

  “Ah,” Thessaly said.

  “The spirits of smaller folk are made of wheat and barley.”

  “Ah.”