Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

“Sire Bizco.”

  Spiller crowed and I asked, “Who?” I didn’t repeat the name, for it would call the dead man’s attention to us.

  Noggin said, “The armiger to the man who wounded Sire Galan, of course.” As if everyone knew. He was jiggling from foot to foot in his excitement.

  I turned to Sire Rodela. “Do you mean to tether this armiger here by his hair? He’ll haunt you for it.

  “I’ll haunt him. I mean to see to it that he stays close to the living long enough to savor every one of his regrets. Then I’ll burn this and send him on his way.” He tucked the swatch of skin and hair back in his pouch and sneered. “His first regret will be that he thought too well of himself and not well enough of me.”

  We had the rest of the tale from Sire Rodela by the time Spiller had finished bandaging his arm, for he was a sufficient braggart that he couldn’t keep it quiet. He used the dead man’s name freely, as if he delighted to think his shade could overhear. Spiller asked how he’d caught the armiger, and Sire Rodela said he’d come at his call, trotting to him like a hound. Both armigers had reasons to pursue the feud between Ardor and Crux privately, for their masters and on their own accounts too. In the tallies of shame and honor, it is not enough to have an even score; one must better the other. I remembered how Sire Rodela had been harried and overmatched by a man with a scorpion—Sire Bizco, no doubt—in the same tourney that ended with Galan injured and Sire Voltizo disgraced. But Sire Bizco had two other armigers helping him, and he’d thought to prove he could do the same on his own; Sire Rodela had planned to teach him otherwise.

  They met before dawn at the foot of the cliff below the end of the south-of-west road, and walked far out on the strand, for the tide was low, and they fought between the tide pools, churning up the sand and pebbles on the beach. High tide would smooth out the marks of their battle, and if two men’s footprints went under the waves and only one man’s came out, it was unlikely to be noticed. Sire Rodela had taken the wound on his forearm from Sire Bizco, but he’d dealt him a worse one in return and a fatal one soon after. They’d started in the fog and finished in the rain.

  Sire Rodela called for Noggin to bring his helmet. He cut off the lamb’s tail he’d attached to it after Sire Galan had shorn him. His honor was out of pawn now, he said with a lopsided smile, and he wrapped a lock of Sire Bizco’s hair in a leather cord and tied it to the crest of his helmet.

  “I don’t think you should flaunt it like that,” I said, “unless you want all the world to know.”

  “They’ll take it for a dame’s favor,” he said. He looked at each of us in turn. “Not a word on this to anyone, not even Sire Galan.”

  I said, “You can’t think to keep it from him, Sire. He’s sure to see. What would you have done if he’d been here?”

  “A lucky chance. And I intend to stay lucky.” He fixed his eyes on me and his smile was vicious. “If you tell Sire Galan or anyone else, I swear by my two sacs I’ll skin a piece of your pelt too, and not from your scalp. From under your skirts.” Spiller sniggered as if it was a fine joke, but I didn’t take it for one.

  CHAPTER 9

  Concubine

  hree days later Sire Galan came back from a visit to the Crux and told his jacks to clear a corner of the floor and to hang his linen bedclothes as curtains to make a private room within the tent. His cot should be set up behind the curtains.

  “Where should I put the baggage?” Spiller asked, for we were crowded in the tent already, with pallets and chests and sacks, pots and barrels, weapons and armor and horse tack.

  “Stow it well or stow yourself outside,” Galan said. His manner forbade further questions. He turned to me. “I’m bringing a concubine to the tent. She is in your charge and I expect you to care for her well, as you said you would.

  He’d not said so many words to me at one time since our quarrel over Maid Vulpeja. In all that while I’d fed my famished hopes on husks, such as a smile when he forgot to frown, an unguarded word, a look more hurt than angry. Now that he spoke to me, between the heat in his eyes and the chill in his voice I found myself with nothing to say. He’d heeded my counsel about Maid Vulpeja after all. But what did it avail me to win the argument if I lost Galan for it? Rue is ever a tardy caller, always too late, always unwelcome. There is a reason the bitterest herb is named for it.

  Galan’s jacks stared at him, but Sire Rodela contemplated me. Whatever he saw on my face amused him. He sat leaning against his saddle, with his cloak of felted wool wrapped around him to hide his arm, which had swollen to the size of a thigh. The night before, Spiller had cut away his bandage after Galan went to sleep, revealing flesh streaked red and pus stinking of corruption. Sire Rodela had complained of a touch of ague to explain away both the cloak and his fits of shivering. Rowney had not been fooled but Galan hadn’t seemed to notice.

  It was not like Galan to be so incurious, but after coming home from the priests’ tent, he’d retreated to his cot, there to lie asleep or brooding, rising only to pace a little farther and a little longer each day until he was worn enough to rest. His men had fast learned to be wary of him, not to laugh or prattle, not to risk the edge of his temper. He’d not been above chaffi ng with them before. They were used to an easier master and had an idea who was to blame. The Crux, for one; they all took Sire Galan’s part in this, and though their master never once complained of his punishment or said he didn’t deserve it, his men said it for him when he was out of earshot. Me, for another. They knew Galan and I had quarreled. Impossible they shouldn’t know, when I slept beside his cot instead of beside him, when he fended off my touch. The silence between us had filled the tent.

  Sire Rodela spoke up and I marked how he didn’t trouble to hide his insolence from Galan. “Has someone new taken your fancy, then?—

  Galan rounded on him. “Maid Vulpeja is coming. You shall show her due courtesy or answer for it.”

  If Sire Rodela was surprised by this news, he hid it well. I suppose he reckoned quickly and what he reckoned pleased him. He raised his thick eyebrows and smiled at me. “Oh, we’ll make her welcome, won’t we?”

  Consort Vulpeja—she was a maiden no longer, now that she was a concubine, and she’d never be a Dame—was borne to our tent that afternoon in a closed litter carried by four jacks from the clan of Lynx, which had served as the go-between in the transaction between Ardor and Crux. Besides her disgrace, she had nothing but a chest of clothing to her name. Her clan had packed her off without a proper escort, handmaid, or horse. It was the makings of a shabby peace, if peace was what they wanted.

  The same Lynx men who set her down inside Sire Galan’s tent picked up a heavy sack and bore it away with most of his gold in it. I heard later from Mai, who had it from a rumormonger even before the song was all over the Marchfield, that the Ardor had raised Maid Vulpeja’s price when he found out who’d come to offer for her; raised it and laughed, and when Galan met the new price, asked for more. He demanded a colt of Semental’s get. There were few of these and no more to come now that Semental was dead, and Galan wanted to keep the two he owned himself. He wouldn’t give in and the negotiations almost foundered. In the end the Ardor accepted two warhorses of lesser lineage to be sent from Galan’s keep to her father’s. Each would be sufficient to dower one of her unmarried sisters.

  The Ardor never mentioned that Maid Vulpeja was ill. That was widely known already. No doubt he thought it a fine jest that Galan would pay such a price for spoilt goods. As for Sire Galan, he let himself be mocked and cheated and never said why.

  Rowney and Spiller lifted her from the litter to the cot in the curtained room. I could have done it myself. She weighed little more than a dame’s gown of velvet. She didn’t know where she was, perhaps didn’t know who she was. Her eyelids were half open, but her eyes were glazed, the whites grayish. Her long hair, the gold of ripe wheat, was now lank and dull. Where the top of her forehead had been plucked, a fine down had grown over the slope. Her skin was pale over a tracery of
blue veins. She was cold to the touch. The only sound she made was the scratching of her breath as she labored for air.

  I bent over her and pulled away her cloak: another sign of her clan’s contempt, for it was made of wool as coarse as sacking. Beneath the cloak she wore a stained underdress of muslin, thin enough to reveal the bent sticks of her limbs, her narrow bird-chest, her slack breasts, the shadows of her nipples and the triangle of hair over her quim. Whatever else was wrong with her, she was starving. Galan stood by with a frown, and when I met his eyes this time, his anger was not aimed at me. He asked his men if they did not have chores to be about, and they left us alone with her.

  Her breath smelled sweet, not sour. I knelt and put my head over her heart and listened for the faint beat under the louder sound of her gasps for air. The rhythm was uneven and so slow I could scarcely believe it. I felt for my own pulse and my heart made nearly two beats for every one of hers. I looked up at Galan and shook my head. “I’m afraid. She is—to hear she was dying was one thing, but to see it …”

  He came a step closer and said, “I didn’t quite believe you, till now. Are you sure it’s poison?

  “I wouldn’t call it lovesickness, would you?” I said. “I’m certain of nothing, except that she has wasted away in—how long has it been?—near a month since your wager. It’s hard for me to believe, even now that the signs are before me, that a woman would poison her own brother’s child. I’m glad I have no kin, if kin will do this.” I pulled the cloak up to her chin, weary of the sight of her. I put my hand on her cheek. She was so cold. Her eyes did not blink. I wondered if she heard us.

  “What signs?” Galan demanded. “Have you proof?”

  “This has an unnatural look. It might seem to be the wasting sickness. It’s like enough. But if it were, she’d have a fever, her skin would be yellowish, and her breath would smell of carrion. I think they might have given her dead-men’s bells, a little at a time, to make her waste away slowly—for that would raise fewer questions than a quick death. Dead-men’s bells would harm the heart, and her heart is surely weak. It beats uneven and slow, and then sometimes runs a few steps and slows again.”

  “You know too much of poisons,” he said harshly. “How is it you know so much?”

  “Dead-men’s bells is a medicine too—but dangerous in the wrong hands.” I hesitated, then stood up and met his eyes. He deserved the truth from me. “I’ll do everything I can, but I’m not sure I know how to cure her. I might kill her instead.”

  He gave me a bleak look. “You should have thought of that before.

  There was no answer to that. When we had quarreled I’d pretended certainty, after certainty had flown, laying claim to a god’s counsel, and he ’ d trusted me enough to act upon it—and now perhaps I’d led us straight into one of the snares hidden across the paths in Fate’s realm.

  He turned to leave.

  I said, “There are herbs to strengthen a weak heart, but I must search them out. I have none to suit such a dire condition.” I didn’t tell him that the most potent remedy I knew was also a poison, the herb called dwale. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, until I saw her and heard her laggard heart. At this time of year, it should still bear its inky black cherries, less baneful than root and leaf and perhaps easier to use, sweet where the leaves were bitter. “And I’ll need help,” I went on, “to watch her day and night. Let me send for a girl I know to sit with her while I sleep. We’ll need a goat for milk, and plenty of honey.

  Galan looked back over his shoulder. “Fetch what herbs you need, but go with Spiller and Rowney both. There is a truce, but it’s still not safe.

  “And the rest?”

  “Send for anything you require, but careful what you spend. I’ve almost emptied my purse for this …,” he said, pointing at Consort Vulpeja, “this bargain.”

  The concubine wouldn’t eat or drink, no matter how I coaxed her. I knelt by her side, holding a dug of cloth sopping with goat’s milk to her lips. She turned her head away, her mouth drawn tight, and the milk ran down over her chin. I tapped her cheek with my finger and whispered to her, calling her name, but though her eyes were half open, I couldn’t see a glimmer of sense in them.

  I bustled about that afternoon, sending Rowney to buy a goat and Fleetfoot to ask Mai to send her daughter Sunup to help with the nursing. I had Noggin and Spiller running back and forth for a brazier, a blanket, water for bathing, and things to entice her to drink: goat’s milk, mare’s milk, mulled wine, stomach-settle tisane, rainwater strained through the fi nest weave, ale, and on and on. Galan stayed away. But when the bustling was done and she was bathed and I’d chafed her bony limbs to warm her and rubbed her skin with scented oil and combed her hair and found a decent clean shift to cover her-and I was alone with her again—then the matter remained. She would not eat or drink.

  She must have gone wandering somewhere and left her body behind, commanding it to refuse everything. I’d grown impatient with her and then angry, but how could I stay angry when this stubborn refusal had likely saved her life? It was my advice she’d taken, my advice given carelessly to Mai and passed on, and I couldn’t fathom how she had enough strength to cling to it even in this strange state between sleep and waking. It had saved her, but it was killing her now.

  If she would only eat, I might not have to resort to dwale.

  I’d told Mai I knew of poisons only where they touched on healing, and that was true as far as it went. But sometimes healing and harm were so close a hair couldn’t slip between them. I’d learned from the Dame that every poison had its twin, each an antidote for the other, but of these twins only a few were known to mankind: such as dead-men’s bells and dwale. The one could cure too much of the other; either could kill.

  Rift ruled poisons. Rift, of all the gods the one I feared most, terrible in every aspect: the Queen of the Dead, the Warrior, and Dread. And dwale was in the domain of the Queen of the Dead.

  To start a heart or still it, so the song of dwale went. It was a jaunty tune, such as Rift Queen favored. And why shouldn’t she be merry? The population of her realm grew day by day, and never diminished.

  The song was all riddles. Search here and there and I’ll let you be, search high and low and you might find me. The Dame had sung it for me once, on the day we’d come across dwale growing from the stones of a ruined tower deep in the Kingswood. The tower had been built on a rock outcropping, and the slope below it had been so overgrazed that the trees had never grown back, though the herds were long gone. She told me dwale liked rocky ground such as ruins and quarries, lands disturbed by man. It thrived in poor, spent soil. But she also warned me away from it, saying most of its uses were ill ones. I asked what it might be good for.

  She said, “Dwale has its uses in extremity, for a failing heart; I’d not chance it for anything less. Look for a languor close to death and most of all a laggard pulse. If the heart is very weak and very slow, dwale will strengthen it. But give too little and it slows the pulse even more; give too much and the poison kills.” I’d asked her then, “How much is too much?” “ and she’d leaned on the pommel and said, “I don’t know. I’ ve never had cause to use it. Sowmaster had two children who died of it. They ate a good many berries before they got sick, and it took them three days to die.

  If I used dwale I’d likely kill the concubine. Yet she’d starve if I couldn’t rouse her.

  There, by the cot, I opened the bag of finger bones. I would ask the Dame to tarry for me, though I had no claim on her of kinship or obligation. When she was alive she’d told me what she knew of dwale, and it was little enough. But they say shades grow wiser on their journey and see farther. Perhaps she could help me now, as she’d helped the night she showed her palm to me.

  I pulled out the drawstring and flattened the pouch and there was the compass of gods Az had embroidered on the leather, smaller than the one she’d drawn in the dirt. It would do for the purpose. I smeared charcoal on my eyelids, as Az had done, to help m
e see. I blew on the two tiny bones to warm them, and I threw them down on the circle, asking the Dame and Na to bless me with their counsel if ever they were fond of me.

  I left the concubine in Sunup’s hands. Mai’s daughter was thin enough herself to need a good feeding, and she was shy and hid behind her hair, but she was also gentle. She began with a grave air to coax Consort Vulpeja to suckle the warm goat’s milk and honey. She patted the woman’s arm and hair as if she were a child; I’d seen her do the same with Tobe, her little brother.

  Galan was standing in the doorway of the tent when I came out from behind the curtain that concealed Consort Vulpeja’s sickbed. I told him I’d take Spiller and Rowney to look north of camp for the remedy she needed, and that I’d return as soon as I could but I wasn’t sure how far we’d have to go to find it. We couldn’t afford to waste another day.

  I sounded more sure than I felt. The bones had spoken; I’d understood only a little of what they’d said. I’d been given a direction and a sense of urgency. By that I knew I must chance the dwale or lose her.

  Galan nodded and stood away from the door so I could get by. His looks were unforgiving, when he looked at me at all. Often, as now, he looked anywhere else. Sire Rodela watched us from the corner. He was lying huddled on his side with his cloak about his ears, too miserable, for once, to enjoy another’s misery.

  Galan’s silence wounded me. He was such a miser he wouldn’t grant me one word, not even fare-thee-well. I wanted to answer his silence with a scream; a harridan’s shriek was pent up in my throat, and it was for Consort Vulpeja as well as myself. I swallowed it down and ducked my head and stepped past him.

  The afternoon was gone. The air was chill but not so damp as it had been of late. The year was on the wane and bit by bit night battened on the day. I could see the Sun already heading seaward behind the high clouds. If we hurried, I might find what I sought before dark.