The Rose of the World

by Jude Fisher

  Guaya clicked her tongue. ‘No, numskull, not that.’ She paused. ‘Though it was very pleasant.’ She reached up and clamped her hands on either side of his face. ‘What am I thinking?’

  Saro stared at her. ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned, concentrating. It was true: he didn’t. Suddenly it was as if a great shadow had lifted from him.‘I don’t know!’ he cried joyously. He hugged her, and she was a mystery to him, a wonderful, unknowable mystery. ‘Guaya, what have you done?’

  She rolled out from under him, sat up and smoothed back her hair. ‘Taken back my gift.’

  That confused him. ‘Your gift?’

  ‘You thought it was my grandfather who gave you the power to know others’ minds, along with the stone. But it was not Hiron Sea-Haar who did it. It was me. I don’t know why exactly – whether I meant it as a gift or a punishment.’ In the golden light of the candles her expression was earnest, determined. ‘You were so naive, you see. You knew so little. You looked at your brother and all you saw was a swaggering bully; you looked at your people and you merely saw ordinary folk. You never saw beyond the surface of things.’

  Saro considered this. ‘Whereas my brother was a monster in the making, and my people were arrogant and cruel?’

  Guaya nodded.

  ‘I killed him, you know, my brother Tanto.’ His eyes narrowed with misery. ‘I . . . I . . . choked him till he gave up his ghost.’

  Guaya laid a hand on his arm. ‘Even though we nomads do not believe in the taking of even the most evil life, I would say that that deed was truly a boon from you to all of Elda, though I know it has exacted a high price from you. But you will have no more bad dreams now, I promise.’ She paused. ‘Shall I tell you why else I gave you my gift?’

  Rather than waiting for his assent, she reached down and picked up one of the puppets from the floor where it had fallen, knocked off the bed in their haste. Its strings lay tangled and knotted around its painted limbs so that it was hobbled and hamstrung.

  ‘I saw how it was when you looked at me. All you saw was a precocious little girl, so clever with her puppets and her old songs, so outspoken with her adult opinions, and I wanted you to know—’ She bit her lip. ‘I wanted you to know me; and yourself. You are a good man: better than the rest, more sensitive, more intelligent. I thought you would take the gift as I meant it to be taken and use it for the good of others. I am sorry: it was a stupid and manipulative thing to do. I should never have done it. They do not call me the Puppeteer for nothing.’

  Saro gazed at her, appalled. He had just shared his body with this girl – this woman – but with every passing second she was becoming more strange to him. He did not know how to feel: angry, relieved, betrayed, or all three at once.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Have you any idea what it’s been like for me?’

  Reluctantly, Guaya shook her head.

  ‘Everything. I saw everything. A single accidental touch in a crowd and I would know a man’s every thought – his guilts, his secrets, his hatreds, his loves; the last woman he slept with, the last meal he ate. I have felt men’s souls run through my fingers like sand. I have known the things about them they would not tell their dearest friend, their brother or their wife. I have been privy to dreams and nightmares and not known whether I would emerge from them as myself. I have felt men’s spirits slip away, and every time it was as if I died with them.’ He began to shake. ‘When I . . . when I tightened my grip around my own brother’s throat, I felt his terror and his loathing like . . . black bile in my veins, eating away at everything that was good in me. And still I choked and choked him and wished as he wished that I could die in his place . . .’ Now he stopped, overcome.

  Guaya sat there mute, her hands pressed to her mouth. Tears stood in her eyes.

  ‘So for all that you say I am a good man,’ Saro went on at last, ‘I know that I am not. The gift you gave me showed me the worst of all that I share with others. I am no better than they: for I have killed and lied and hurt as have they all. You cannot care for me: no one can. I am not worthy of it. I should never have embraced you: never have allowed you to embrace me. It was wrong. My heart lies elsewhere—’

  ‘Stop, stop . . .’ Guaya’s tears began to fall now: so much, Saro thought inconsequentially, for the myth that the Wandering Folk wept only for joy. ‘That was a purer gift than my first and I will not have you spurn it. Love freely given should not be turned away or regretted. But my first gift was a terrible mistake and I have taken it back. No one should have to learn so much of human nature, I understand that now. There is a good reason why our innermost thoughts lie hidden, for no matter how well-intentioned we may be, there is always something bad – some darkness or selfishness or desire – that mars each thought and deed. The only way through life is to be able to ignore those taints, or how could we ever love or trust or hope?

  ‘I did not think. I meant to give you insight, not send you mad.’ She began to sob. ‘I wanted you to look at me and see me as a woman: but instead all I have done is to curse you and blight you for ever.’

  Saro reached out quickly and took her hands between his own and it was immensely comforting to be able to make this simple gesture without fear of being deluged by another’s being.

  ‘Hush now,’ he said softly. ‘It is mended now. I forgive you.’ He paused, thinking; for in truth all was not yet mended by any means. ‘And the stone: can you remove the curse from that too?’

  Guaya took her hands away from him, then shook her head. ‘Only the giver may take back their gift.’

  Saro stared at her, his heart falling. ‘Then I must seek out the Goddess.’ But first, he realised, he would have to find the stone itself. The thought made him shudder.

  A charged silence fell in the wagon then, to be broken only by one of the candles guttering down into a hiss of molten wax. A moment later, the doorflap rustled and a plaintive cry issued from the wagon’s steps.

  Saro laughed. ‘I believe we have a visitor.’

  At the sound of his voice, a small brindled head appeared in the canvas opening, followed by a lithe and brindled body. The kitten stopped suddenly, gave a yowl, then ran smartly across the wagon, leapt up onto the bed between the two naked humans, and then, as if some natural order had thus been restored to the world, set to grooming itself with purring complacency.

  But seconds later, the kitten was followed by a second rather less serene or welcome visitor . . .

  Driven by a mixture of curiosity and pique, Katla Aransen had quartered the encampment like a dragonfly hunting for prey. There was something she needed to ask Saro Vingo, and it was most infuriating that he was not at hand to answer her at once. In the middle of a group of wagons she came upon Dogo, Doc and Persoa sitting and drinking with a number of nomad men. Not in the mood to join them, she hung back and listened to their banter. Doc was teasing the little man mercilessly.

  ‘You had it off with her in the back of one of the wagons?’

  Dogo puffed out his chest. ‘Yes, she chose me. Walked right up to me, she did, tapped me on the chest and crooked her finger at me to follow her.’

  ‘That’s just a polite greeting among the Lost People,’ Persoa grinned. For a moment, Dogo’s face filled with consternation and doubt. ‘I didn’t force her,’ he said quickly. ‘She had my breeches off before I could ask for a price.’

  Doc regarded his comrade solemnly. ‘And seconds after that it was all too late, I suppose?’

  ‘Far too late.’ Slowly Dogo caught up with the implication. ‘Damn you, I wasn’t that quick. She seemed to like it well enough anyway. She wanted to know my name.’

  ‘So she could boast of being pricked by the famous Dogbreath of Dalina?’

  ‘She was most interested in my name, as it happens. Or I think she was. She said something I could not understand and then did this—’ He looked to the hillman and repeated the girl’s elaborate mime.

  Persoa chuckled loudly. ‘She said that the breath of the dog is hot because it com
es straight from the heart.’

  Dogo beamed.

  ‘They think it a lucky thing: they believe that dogbreath cures babies of the croup.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Doc with a sardonic grin. ‘It knocks ’em dead.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t take any money from me,’ Dogo finished with a bewildered shrug. ‘I tried to give her some, honest.’

  That made Doc guffaw. ‘Gave her plenty, eh, Dogs?’

  Persoa smiled. ‘If they like you, they’ll accept no payment. They say the act of love is a shared pleasure and a gift from one person to another, and money spoils the giving.’

  Dogo raised an eyebrow. Then he grinned from ear to ear. ‘My birthday, Winterfest and Lady’s Day have all come together, then!’

  Katla frowned and moved away feeling uneasy. She wasn’t sure why the little man’s delight in this sudden prospect of bounty should unsettle her so, but it did. As she moved through the camp, one of the men stepped out of the shadows. He bobbed his head at her and flashed her a sharp, wicked glance, all white teeth and gleaming eyes. The rings and bones hanging from his ears rattled gaily as he moved, as did the pendants hanging against his darkly tanned bare chest.

  ‘Rajeesh, minna bellina.’

  Katla inclined her head, not sure what he meant.

  ‘Ig heti Ballaro. Ev thi?’

  That much she thought she understood. ‘Katla. Katla Aransen.’

  The nomad said her name several times over with different emphases on the syllables. In his rich foreign voice it sounded impossibly exotic and strange. Then he laughed and caught her by the elbow.

  ‘Genga at mir, minna bellina Katla. Ig vili konnuthu-thi sare i luni.’

  ‘What?’ She had no idea what the words meant, but his gesture was unmistakable, as was the way he was now caressing her left breast.‘Get off!’ She extricated herself with a furious flourish and stood away from him bristling like an angry cat.

  The man shrugged and tilted his head. He made an expression which suggested both sorrow and disappointment, then touched the skin above his heart and pointed away into the wagons.

  Katla set her jaw and stalked off into the gathering darkness in the opposite direction, feeling both faintly humiliated and at the same time oddly amused. From what little she had been able to make out in the fading light, the nomad had been young and handsome and the wine she had drunk was making her skin buzz so that the touch of him stayed with her, full of heat and promise. Abruptly she recalled another night such as this, one which had also involved too much wine and firelight a long way from home.

  She groaned. More sensible by far to find her own sleeping-pack and lie down away from all this unwonted conviviality. Giving up the idea of trying to find the Istrian, she turned to set a path back to where her horse was tethered, and almost tripped over a small dark shape, which skipped out from under her feet and began to trot ahead of her, purring hugely.

  It was Saro’s kitten.

  ‘Out for a walk, are we?’ Katla said, amused. ‘Well, let us walk together for a little way, then, eh?’ Obviously the creature had remembered her scent on the meat.‘Fickle little beast, aren’t you?’ she added after a while, as the cat gave no sign of abandoning her. ‘Why aren’t you with your master?’

  As if in response, the kitten ran up to one of the wagons and started rubbing its head against the wooden steps leading up to it. Then it looked back at her expectantly.

  ‘What? You want to go in there?’ Seeing the silhouetted shapes candlelit from within, Katla grinned. ‘I do not think these good folk need your company, little cat.’

  But the kitten was undeterred. On it went, clambering up the tall steps with remarkable gracelessness, and when it reached the door-flap at the top, it stuck its head inside, followed by the rest of it, until there was just a tip of black fur left waving around on the outside.

  Katla ran up the steps after it and grabbed the disappearing tail. Instead of giving its ground like a well-behaved animal, the kitten dug its claws in to the floor of the wagon, yowled with fury and dragged itself out of her grasp. Katla watched it disappear inside with annoyance. Then, she went after it.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light of the wagon’s dusky interior, but when they did, she wished she had not followed the cat, had never seen the blasted thing, nor the entire nomad encampment. Inches away from her, Saro Vingo sat stark naked on the bed with the candlelight burnishing his sweat-sheened skin – all his skin: and beside him, her dark eyes brimming with laughter, her dark-tipped breasts rising and falling with merriment, was the nomad girl he had called Guaya. Between them both sat the kitten, looking most proud of its rude discovery.

  Katla’s mouth fell open.

  This just set the girl to laughing aloud. Katla glared at Guaya, just as she had at the nomad girl’s cousin scant minutes before, then transferred her furious attention to Saro. The Istrian gazed back at her, startled, then grabbed at the bedclothes, which promptly slithered off onto the floor, leaving him even more exposed than he had been before. A new gust of delight shook the nomad girl, and all at once Saro found that for all his mortification he was laughing too, for the situation was just too ridiculous for words.

  Katla looked from one to another in rising fury, sensing they deliberately mocked her. Then she flung herself out of the wagon, jumped to the ground and took off at a run. Having no wish for further awkward encounters, she dashed head down through the encampment, skirting the fire and the musicians without any response to their cheerful invitations to join them, until she found herself back where the horses were tethered and all was quiet. There, she grabbed her pack, a purloined cloak and a flask of wine someone had carelessly left lying around and set off grimly into the scrubland. Finding a soft dune in the lee of some thorn bushes, she cast herself down with a hefty sigh.

  Overhead, the Navigator’s Star shone down impassively, the brightest point in a sky spangled with a thousand specks of light, the only constant thing, it seemed, in all the world.

  ‘You’re huffing and puffing like an old dog, Katla Aransen,’ came a voice out of nowhere. ‘Has someone stolen your bone?’

  Katla sat bolt upright in shock and stared in the direction of the voice. A moment later moonlight shone on a silver-blonde head cresting the rise.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘Same as you, it seems,’ Mam growled.

  Katla drew her knees up to her chin as the mercenary leader came crashing down the dune in her huge boots, deluging her in an avalanche of sand. She came to a halt beside the Rockfaller, her sharpened teeth gleaming in the dusk.

  ‘So,’ she cajoled, ‘why aren’t you down there having it away with one of those pretty Footloose boys?’

  Taken aback by the uncanny accuracy of Mam’s aim, Katla went on the offensive. ‘Why aren’t you?’

  Mam shrugged. ‘One southerner at a time’ll do me.’

  It was the most romantic thing Katla had ever heard her say. ‘Aren’t you worried he’ll be availing himself of their vaunted hospitality?’ she asked, too sharply.

  A stillness fell between them.

  ‘Aye, well. It’s what they’re known for, the Footloose. Might as well be called Quim-loose or Cock-loose,’ she said with a bitter laugh.

  Katla bit her lip, remembering the tableau which had met her eyes inside that candlelit wagon. ‘And men are faithless beasts,’ she said at last.

  In the darkness, Mam raised an eyebrow. ‘Found the Vingo lad, did you?’ she said after a while.

  Katla stared at her, bridling. ‘I . . . I wasn’t looking for him,’ she said defensively.

  ‘But you found him.’

  ‘In the arms of a little nomad whore.’

  ‘Men’s pricks are like divining rods: they twitch and rise at the slightest hint of a damp hole.’

  Katla choked on her wine.

  ‘Besides,’ Mam went on, thumping her on the back, ‘since when did you give a damn about where Saro Vingo was poking his rod?’<
br />
  ‘I don’t!’ The denial came out as a splutter half of outrage, half of coughed-up wine. She turned away from the mercenary leader and spat heavily into the dirt. ‘Anyway, if you think Persoa’s lying with a nomad woman, why don’t you go down there and root him out?’ she said nastily.

  ‘What Persoa does is his own business. I do not own him and he does not own me.’

  ‘If I ever have a man I shall never share him,’ Katla said fiercely.

  This time both eyebrows shot up. ‘I thought you said you would never take a husband, Katla Aransen?’

  The conversation was not going at all to Katla’s liking.

  ‘Who said anything about husbands?’ she said crossly, shoving herself to her feet and grabbing up her belongings.

  She stomped off into the night, found a spot between some boulders, wrapped herself in the cloak and tried to use the last of the wine to dull her thoughts. But they were not to be stilled. Round and round they went, buzzing like a hive of bees; and by the time dawn light tinged the sky, she realised she had slept not a wink.

  Thirty-three

  Cantara

  For twenty-three years Cantara, the southernmost inhabited town in Istria, had been the domain of Tycho Issian, a bone tossed by the Ruling Council into the path of a barking dog to keep it quiet. It was little loss to them: other than the title which accompanied the prize, Cantara had had little to recommend it. Perched precariously on towering sandstone bluffs in the lee of the great mountains presided over by the Red Peak, the town had been poor, crumbling and disease-ridden, the population a rag-tag mix of those too poverty-stricken or lethargic to up sticks and leave for a better life elsewhere. Mountebanks and ne’er-do-wells avoiding warrants on their heads from all over the Empire rubbed shoulders with escaped slaves and women who had been condemned to stoning for adultery, indecency or merely for raising a protesting voice, women whose relatives had managed to smuggle them south beyond the eye of their accusers; and a mass of shanty-dwellers with nomad or hill-blood, eking out a hard living from the arid allotments bordering the desertlands.