Wild Magic

by Jude Fisher

  ‘My, my, what delight. What a charming prospect. And what should I wear for such an occasion?’ Danson’s eyes flicked to Halli, then shot away again. ‘Whatever am I thinking, to ask the messenger such a question? Let alone a messenger clothed as if he has dressed in the dark out of someone else’s wardrobe—’

  Katla grimaced at her brother. ‘He’s got you there,’ she mouthed silently.

  ‘We have been asked, also,’ Halli said, ignoring her, ‘to make an inspection of the yard and bear word back to our master of the marvels you carry out here.’ He was careful to avoid being too specific about who their ‘master’ might be. Let the shipmaker believe they answered to the King rather than to the chief of the mummers if he was so arrogant that he thought Ravn would have sent them personally with such a request.

  The deception worked. Katla could almost see the man preening. ‘Of course, of course. Follow me.’

  The tour was perfunctory, and delivered amid such a torrent of self-serving verbiage that by the end of it Katla felt ready to knock the shipmaker over the head there and then and save everyone the bother the following night. They had, however, gathered all the information they had come for. Morten Danson had commissions for three ice-breakers, was in the process of smelting the iron for a fourth, had felled every big oak in the eastern isles, including the sacred grove above Ness – ‘for they say war is coming, you know,’ the shipmaker had said, bobbing his head like a robin sighting a worm, ‘and then it’ll be he who has the wood who makes good’ – had cut a swathe through the Barrow Plantation, too, and had in his employ not only his own yard foreman, Orm Flatnose – a master craftsman of the finest order – but Finn Larson’s man, Gar Fintson, too. Any Eyran who wanted an oceanworthy ship built would be forced to beat a path to Morten Danson’s door and take their place in a growing queue. They would also have to pay his extortionate prices – ‘so little competition any more,’ the unpleasant little man had leered. ‘With Larson dead and what’s left of the Fairwater clan chopping rowing boats and rough knarrs out of the last of their seasoned timber. No wonder they’re reduced to selling off their prize cow.’ At which point Katla had seen Halli’s face cloud over as thunderously as their father’s could in the worst of his tempers.

  They had had the foremen pointed out to them; also the master steamer, who steamed the planking to shape by eye alone; and the riveter and the rabbetter too, and had ascertained that, given the number of urgent orders to be fulfilled, all lived on or near the yard site. Sailmakers and ropemakers they had aplenty in the western isles; there would be no need to bribe or kidnap any with these skills. They had marked the whereabouts of the finest heartwood and the best oak for the stempost. It would be hazardous sailing two barges through all the obstacles on the lagoon and out into the firth, but the barges were huge, the other vessels were tiny in comparison and the problem would be lack of speed rather than manoeuvrability. Katla did not envy her brother that task at all. She was, on the other hand, looking forward to rendering the shipmaker unconscious and carting him off to the Snowland Wolf as ungently as she could.

  The next day dawned with ill omen. The sun’s red light edged piling clouds with a fiery glow; then minutes later the whole sky turned as dark as dusk and a fork of silver stabbed down through the gloom. With a dull groan the heavens opened and rain came sheeting down. Katla stared out into all the greyness and took in the rain-slick stones, muddy streets and filth-choked gutters with a sinking heart. For the first time since she had slipped aboard the mummers’ ship, she wished she were at home in Rockfall, where storms over the sea seemed more like the theatre of the gods and the rain served merely to clear the skies, green the fields and clean the birdshit off her favourite climbs.

  Beside her, wrapped in a pair of old flour sacks, Halli mumbled something inaudible, rolled onto his side and began to snore again. He had slept badly, and as a result so had Katla, since she had been forced to elbow him forcibly on several occasions to quiet him. The word ‘Jenna’ recurred eight times in the course of his nocturnal ramblings. Katla knew: she had counted.

  Now, she inserted a chilly bare foot beneath the sacks and placed it firmly on the hot skin of her brother’s belly. Halli sat up, snorting wildly.

  ‘Wha—’

  ‘Time to leave your happy dreams behind,’ she said sternly. ‘You’ve a raid to lead and I’ve some tumbling to learn.’

  ‘She’ll be there. Tonight. I won’t even see her.’

  Katla stared at him. ‘What on Elda are you talking about?’

  ‘Jenna.’ Halli’s face looked grey, though perhaps it was just the light.

  ‘How do you know she’ll be there?’

  ‘I saw her, yesterday, riding in with the rest of them.’

  Katla remembered the cavalcade of wagons that had rumbled past them on the road from the east the previous day – the group of giggling girls, the long blonde hair; Halli’s stormy mood thereafter – and felt a fool. ‘Oh, Halli – the wagon that nearly ran us off the road . . .’

  He nodded. She could tell how his jaw was tensed by the cords of tendon that stood out on his neck.

  ‘That stuff the shipmaker said about the Fairwater clan—’

  ‘—selling off their prize milch cow,’ he finished bitterly. ‘She’s up for marriage to some ancient, crippled retainer, no doubt. Or some fat lordling jostling for position and favour, thinking he’d do well to take the runner-up to the nomad whore.’

  Katla made a face. ‘You had best not say such things in the King’s city if you care to keep your head.’

  ‘My sister, the diplomat.’ Halli laughed shortly, then moved to the window of translucent membrane made from the stretched stomach lining of a seal, or suchlike, and peered out. ‘Is that a shadow I see up there, or a flying pig?’

  Katla stared up into the clouds, her eyes narrowed in mock concentration. ‘A pig, definitely.’

  They stood there in silence for a few minutes, just gazing out into the racing sky. Then: ‘What can I do, Katla?’ Halli asked in an anguished tone. ‘I have Father pushing me one way and my heart and conscience another . . .’ He passed a hand across his face. ‘If I carry out Da’s plan, I’ll be miles off down the coast, stealing ships and timber, while Jenna is parcelled off without a friend in the world to save her, and I’ll have lost her forever.’

  Katla didn’t know what to say. She squeezed his arm. ‘Do you really love her?’

  Halli nodded. ‘But I fear she doesn’t love me.’

  Katla grinned. ‘Jenna knows how to love no one but herself, and that not as well as she could. I will find her tonight and talk to her. Trust me, brother.’ She pushed herself off the wall into an awkward back-flip and landed in a tangled heap on the floor. There was straw in her hair and dust streaked across her cheek. She looked about four years old. Halli could not help but smile. ‘A fine and limber serpent you will make tonight. Best run along. You need as much practice as you can get.’

  By the time Katla got to the stables where the mummers had arranged to meet to rehearse, it was clear she was late, which was not entirely surprising since she had got lost and had then compounded the error by deciding to explore the town beneath the castle, finding a pie-shop and a knife-maker in the winding lane below the walls and had eaten her fill in the first and got into an interesting conversation about quenching metal in the second.

  The performers in Tam’s troupe, their first exercises completed, stood around in knots, sweating profusely. The men had stripped down to linen clouts or soft leather breeches, while the women had bound their breasts flat and their hair into long tails. They all stared at her as she ran in. Tam Fox, resplendent in his shaggiest cloak, gave her a cool, assessing glance that took in every detail of her attire, and every inch of flesh beneath it, and beckoned Urse One-Ear, his huge deputy, to him. ‘Tie the second and third fingers of her left hand together,’ he bade the hulking creature. ‘It may serve as a reminder to her to be punctual later.’ He turned back to Katla. ‘Four fingers,
fourth hour after noon. The Great Hall. If you’re late then, I’ll have Urse cut both fingers off.’ He walked away without a backwards glance.

  ‘You can’t treat me so!’ Katla shouted furiously after his retreating figure. ‘Not with my father paying—’

  She regretted this as soon as she’d uttered it. Not just because it sounded peevish and spoiled, but because it was stupidly indiscreet and now everyone had stopped their chatter to listen. Tam Fox turned back slowly. His eyes were steely. ‘Your father, my dear,’ he said softly, ‘is a fool and a madman, and penniless to boot. I do this for my own reasons, and you had best remember that and knot up your loose tongue.’

  Urse turned his ruined face to Katla. It was hard to read an expression, she thought, that was half-missing. Some accident with an axe, she’d heard from one of the women; a run-in with a white bear, said one of the men. But had she been pressed, she’d have said he was smiling, and not pleasantly. ‘Hand out, girlie.’

  Turning cartwheels came naturally to Katla. She’d been tumbling her way around the islands since taking her earliest steps; but with the leather binding on her fingers it required a lot more concentration, and Tam Fox’s punishment took on a rather more subtle significance. Urse had tied the thong with a series of bowlines and hitches so that the whole arrangement remained tight and unmovable even under the strain of her whole body. She became aware of the pressure of the ground beneath her palm in a way she would never previously have noted had she been springing freely in her usual way, could feel the buzz of energy released in an ever-replicating, increasingly focused arc between her body and the stone of the floor. By the end of the rehearsal, she was exhausted, but glowing with pleasure from the intense satisfaction of her body’s coordination and control. It was a simple routine, to be truthful: all she had to do was to cartwheel across the floor, then, in a series of handsprings and leaps, threaten the actor playing the god, and fall over when he hit her with a gigantic straw-stuffed anchor, as they played out the tale of Sur and his encounter with the Serpent whose desire it was to swallow the world; then Bella, another of the tumblers, would come running out of the shadows with her striped costume and mad whiskers and play the Fire Cat; at which point ‘Sur’ would whistle up the Snowland Wolf, who would toss the Fire Cat into the audience, before turning to do battle with the Dragon of Wen. It was childish stuff, but apparently the King’s favourite tale; and at least she had no lines to deliver.

  She accepted gratefully the flask of spiced water Bella handed her, swigged from it greedily and then started trying to untie the thong. It was a finicky business, with one hand. She had just started to loose the first knot when she suddenly realised there was more to the arrangement than functionality: Urse had tied a message into the binding. She angled her hand away from the other mummers and stared at it in disbelief.

  Meet – a goat-hitch twisted back on itself.

  End – a single granny knot.

  Practice – an elaborate knot, the name of which eluded her.

  I have – two simple hitches, crossed.

  Plan – a bowline and half of an eight.

  3 Tree – three twists and an oak-hitch.

  Gate – a double bowline to finish the binding.

  She looked around. The way she had come in had been oblique: through the postern and a snaking path between the outbuildings. No gate that warranted the name there. Still fingering the knots, she got to her feet and began to wander away from the group. She passed a group of men in long cloaks, then a gaggle of women bearing baskets of bread heading up the hill towards the castle’s kitchens. No one paid her any attention. She skirted a pond on which ducks and geese clacked and honked, climbed the hill beyond it and found herself looking down on a line of oak trees leading to a tall wooden gate.

  Grinning, she ran down the avenue, stopping at the third oak from the gate. There was no one there. Sur’s nuts, she cursed silently. She circled the tree. Nothing. He must have despaired of her intelligence and given up the tryst. She could hardly blame him. Annoyed with herself, she walked slowly back up the line of oaks.

  ‘Hoooo—’

  It was odd to hear an owl in daylight. She looked back. High up in the boughs of the third oak from the gate there indeed was Tam Fox, now making himself visible to her, his long legs dangling.

  He cocked his head at her. ‘Get up here, and make sure no one sees you.’

  Katla looked around. There was no one in sight. The oak was broad, and the first branches were out of reach. She wasn’t used to tree climbing: in the Westman Isles the only trees that could survive the hard winters and horizontal north-west winds that came howling straight off the ice floes were low-growing birches and goat-willow and a few oaks and ashes that never reached their full potential. But she hadn’t been climbing rock her whole life for nothing. At waist-height there was a small depression in the bole of the trunk, and above it a protuberance where a branch had lived and died and fallen away. Standing up on the tallest of the spreading roots, she inserted a toe into the depression, grasped the protuberance with her right hand and nimbly levered herself upright. Now she could reach the lowest branch; and after that it was easy. A moment later she was seated astride a huge gnarled branch facing the mummers’ chief.

  ‘Very ladylike,’ he observed, grinning to see how her kirtle had ridden up to her waist.

  Katla, who never had much thought for such proprieties, firmly tugged the fabric down. ‘It cannot be a very crucial plan if you have time to waste on staring up my tunic.’

  ‘How could I consider that wasted time?’ His teeth were white amid his beard. And when Katla’s eyes sparked at him, he said swiftly, ‘I have a role for you tonight I believe you’ll enjoy.’

  Katla lay on the floor, gasping. Flint Erson was standing over her, triumphant in his tattered robes of sea-grey and storm-grey and his huge black beard of dyed sheepswool. His vast, straw-stuffed anchor came down again.

  ‘Damn it,’ she hissed, dodging the direct blow. ‘Not so hard!’

  But the crowd were roaring with laughter, whistling and stamping their feet, clearly enjoying the show. Though not nearly so much as Flint Erson seemed to be. Then there were oohs and ahs, and here was Bella as the Fire Cat, sewn into a supple costume of painted horseskin in such a way as to best show off all her lush assets. Flames licked their way from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, played suggestively over her thighs and chest. The Fire Cat dropped to her hands and knees and began to purr. She twisted herself around the god’s legs in ways no mere woman should be able to. Bella was double-jointed.

  Katla smiled. With the crowd suitably distracted, she slithered quickly out of view and took off the Serpent’s head, stitched neatly from cured salmon skins. It had held up remarkably well to the tumbling, she thought, turning it this way and that; but it smelled awful. Her first task was done; but it was not yet time to carry out her next piece of play-acting. For the first time this evening, she was able to relax sufficiently to gaze around the Great Hall, taking in the monumental architecture of its carved pillars, stretching fifty feet or more to meet the great fans of wooden beams that spanned the high roof, the fabulously-coloured tapestries adorning the thick stone walls depicting scenes from myth and history – King Fent and the Trolls of the Black Mountains; The Battle of the Sharking Straits; Sur standing waist-deep in the Northern Sea, skimming his stones into the ocean to make the islands of Eyra. Then she turned her attention to the assembled guests. It was like the Gathering all over again, she thought: the Eyran nobility all turned out in their gaudiest, least tasteful costumes, all vying with one another to be noticed by the King. Ravn Asharson – who had let the Istrians take her to be burned without lifting a finger or his voice to prevent it – had eyes for no one apart from the woman he had now taken officially as his wife, and therefore Queen of the North. He sat with his handsome head turned from the entertainment (so much for all that rehearsal, Katla thought crossly) speaking softly with his companion, his hand in her lap,
her long white fingers fluttering along the underside of his wrist in the sort of sensual, hypnotic rhythm of one stroking a favourite cat. Behind the pair sat an austere-looking woman dressed all in black with the hawkish nose and bearing of Eyran royalty. She was not watching the entertainment, either: rather, she had her eyes fixed with undisguised loathing on the new Queen of Eyra. The Lady Auda, Katla realised: the King’s mother, widow of the Night Wolf, the Shadow Lord himself, Ashar Stenson, now displaced as the first lady of the realm by the nomad woman who sat before her, her only son bound tightly under her spell. No wonder she looks so sour, Katla thought, to be forced to give way to a Footloose woman with no name and no heritage, and to lose not only your status, but your son as well.

  Her eyes strayed back to the nomad woman again. It was the first time Katla had had the chance to examine the Rosa Eldi at her leisure: being manhandled by a troop of Allfair guards on her way to the stake had hardly been conducive to giving the nomad woman her undivided attention. She was, thought Katla, used to the robust females of Eyra, an odd-looking creature, being so thin and pale and delicate that she might have been raised in a snow-cave without sun or sustenance all her life: but there was something more to her than met the eye. Others had called the Rosa Eldi ‘blonde’ and ‘fair’ and ‘fragile’, but Katla had seen the pelts of the white-bears from the coldest regions of the Northern Isles and been intrigued by the hairs on them that on closer inspection when held up to the light revealed themselves not to be the pale, yellowish-white colour you might expect from seeing the beasts at a distance (always the safest way to view them, for despite the deceptive way they ambled along, they were renowned for their speed and ferocity, as Urse could probably attest to), but as translucent as an icicle trapping frozen fire. And that was how this woman appeared to Katla: pale and cold and beautiful, with her finely drawn features and her willowy limbs, yet filled with some dangerous, invisible energy that at any moment might break its deceptively fragile bonds, flare out into the hall and kill everyone there in an instant.