Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  My eyes watered and I rubbed them. Smoke hazed my vision, smearing everything with gray, more smoke than I’d have expected from those few leaves. I took off my headcloth and fanned it to clear the air, and looked out from behind the curtain to ask Rowney to open the door flap. Galan eyed me strangely but did not forbid it. On their side it smelled more of onions and coleworts and wood smoke than of dwale and candlebark.

  Then I waited. I didn’t know whether she’d breathed too little, too much, or enough of the smoke. The dwale might need time to do its work; or just as likely its power had already been exhausted. I could do nothing but wait awhile. For yet a while. But patience came hard. Tired as I was, my limbs itched as if I would be moving.

  They had lit many lamps in the tent. I could see the shadows of Spiller and Rowney moving on the white curtain, and hear Spiller cracking bones and scraping them for marrow soup, and saying he could eat his horse tonight, he had such an appetite. Sire Galan spoke up and asked how far we’d ridden. There was a silence before Rowney answered, saying we’d gone into the Hardscrabble as far as the quarry. So they all knew that ground; I should not have been surprised. The Crux had ridden his men hard to make them hard.

  She was breathing easier, I was sure of it. Yet now her breath slipped in and out so quietly, I could hardly tell she was alive. I put the fingers of my left hand against the great vein by her throat and at the same time I felt my own vein, and was not reassured. The river of her blood flowed sluggishly, while mine coursed swift and strong, the vein leaping under my hand.

  I looked at her closely. The tattoo of Ardor’s godsign was dark blue against the pallor of her cheek; it had the stroke above it that marked the aspect of the Smith. She would never, as a concubine, wear the sign of Crux. Her eyes gleamed under the lids, a fixed stare. Where was she? Where had she gone, if she was not here?

  The smoke hadn’t roused her. She needed more. I crumbled three more leaves and this time I draped a blanket over us both so the smoke couldn’t escape, lifting a corner every time I drew breath.

  I knew it was dangerous; I couldn’t avoid the smoke entirely, it stung my nose and gathered in my hair. When the leaves were ash, I ducked out from under the blanket and held it over her like a tent. My arms shook. I was panting and my mouth was dry as lint. My tongue felt strange and thick, it no longer belonged in my mouth, and my face too did not feel like it belonged to me. It was numb, a mask of flesh.

  I dropped the blanket on the floor and staggered to the tent wall and leaned upon it. The canvas stretched around me, pulling against the ropes and stakes, and I sagged against the wall and slid until I was sitting down. I leaned over, or fell over, and my face was near the wall, and a little cold air threaded its way between the canvas and the ground. I gulped it in, along with the smell of seawater and mud and cesspits too, but it was not enough to banish the smoke, which hung in the air like chaff above a threshing fl oor or flour in a mill, but did not dance like chaff or flour. This smoke lay over and around everything, thick enough to rub between the fingers, quiescent as long-settled dust.

  I crawled back to Consort Vulpeja. Her heart was beating stronger, harder, faster than before. I leaned against the cot, on my knees. There was elation somewhere, and if it wasn’t mine, nevertheless I felt it lap through me like a warm tide. There were shadows in the smoke, in the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t afraid of shadows, I greeted them as old friends and felt myself slipping out of my skin and I began to laugh at being free of it again, but no sound came out and I was bending forward at the waist, rocking and laughing soundlessly, giddy with it, slipping sideways. Instead of becoming light enough to fly, I was heavy and lying on the ground, my eyes open and full of shades, and I could see Na and see right through her to the curtain hanging from the ceiling of the tent. Na was laughing too and rocking back and forth, her mouth cracked wide, her teeth worn and yellow. I wanted to ask what amused her but couldn’t utter a word, and it didn’t matter because the laughter was catching, like a yawn I gave to her and she gave back to me. My ribs ached from this gaiety, I wheezed and gasped. After a while Na stopped laughing and came closer and stooped over me as I had stooped over Consort Vulpeja, peering at me, and she told me to hold fast and then she was gone.

  I wished to see the Dame. I thought if Na was here she must be nearby too. I saw a figure in the distance carrying a candle and I was gladdened, thinking she came to me; then I found it was I who carried the candle. I wore Consort Vulpeja’s dirty muslin shift and my feet were bare and the ground was freezing. I was unsteady, stumbling. The candlelight was too bright; it hurt my eyes. I snuffed it out and then I could see better, shades all around me, multitudes of shades, yet each was solitary. I searched for the Dame a long time before I realized it was Consort Vulpeja I sought and I began to call her name. My voice was the only sound in a muffling silence, and when I found her she was sitting upright upon a stool in a gown of rose and blue silk, as haughty as she’d been at the tourney field—so long ago, when she was still a maid—and she wasn’t glad to see me, not at all. She rebuked me for disturbing her peace.

  I shouted at her with no regard that she was of the Blood and I was not. I called her a whore and a fool and a weakling and a coward and when my insults failed to rouse her, I began to plead. She turned to walk away. I struck her with my fists then, and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her behind me though she wailed at me to leave off.

  But I didn’t know where to go. All directions were the same in this dark and barren place that never saw the Sun rise or set. I stopped, and the concubine twisted in my hands and tried to get away, and I did hold fast, as Na had told me to. And I prayed, though I didn’t know where I was or whether any god could hear me.

  There was a sound, a humming, a wordless tune that came from somewhere behind me. Dwale’s song. It didn’t sound jaunty now, but rather forlorn and stately, and I thought, So that’s how it’s meant to be sung. I turned and heard it before me and I had a direction again, and I set out toward the song, and as I walked, pulling Consort Vulpeja by the halter of her hair, the melody became a path. She screeched at me so loudly I could barely hear the song, but I followed it note by note, step by step. When it climbed, we climbed, though the plain was flat, and when it descended, we went downhill. The way seemed longer going out than coming in. We tired, and Consort Vulpeja stumbled after me silent as a sleepwalker. At last I saw the white curtain in the distance, like a flag, and went toward it, and Galan was there bending over me, calling me by name. My fist was caught in Consort Vulpeja’s hair and he disentangled it gently and pulled me to sit up. He gripped my shoulders hard, shaking me, shaking me.

  “What have you done?” he asked over and over, and between the shaking and the shouting, my ears rang.

  I said, “Stop!” and grasped his sleeve, and after a while he heard me.

  “By the gods,” he said, “what have you done to yourself?”

  My head lolled upon my neck. His face was right before mine and yet I could hardly see him. The light was painful and I closed my eyes and tears leaked out.

  “This is foul,” Galan said. “You’ve spewed all over yourself.” He called for a kettle of water and when Spiller brought it he sent him away, he sent them all away. He pulled my dress over my head and took a rag and cleaned my face and hair and limbs. I couldn’t sit upright by myself; he propped me against the cot while he looked for something clean for me to wear. “Haven’t you another dress?” he asked. “I told you to get one.” I wanted to say that I hadn’t finished the embroidery, but my tongue was thick and in a moment I’d forgotten the question. He opened Consort Vulpeja’s trunk and took out a gown of rose wool. We were much of a size, the maiden and I, before she began to starve, except I was the taller. He dragged the dress over my head and guided my arms through the sleeves. I tried to help, but my limbs were heavy and unwieldy. He left it unlaced in back.

  I found my voice and asked for water. I couldn’t summon the spit to swallow, my mouth was so dry. When I’d dr
unk most of a cupful and the rest had spilled down my front, I said, “Take me outside.”

  Galan lifted me and I heard him gasp. It crossed my mind that he would hurt himself carrying me, but no thought could stay long in my mind except one: I had to remember to breathe. If I forgot to remember, I’d suffocate. I clung to this surety as other thoughts darted by, quickly past recall, such as Consort Vulpeja, such as dwale, such as Galan. This even while Galan carried me outside and sat down with me beside the tent. I sat between his legs, leaning back against his chest, held upright in the circle of his arms. I squeezed my eyes shut and sucked in air. He pulled a blanket around both of us and bowed his head against the nape of my neck. When I began to shiver he tightened his arms.

  I forgot to remember to breathe and yet I went on breathing, and in time the shaking subsided.

  He asked me again, and now I heard his anger, “What have you done to yourself, hmm? Tell me.

  “It is the dwale,” I said.

  “Dwale? What is dwale?”

  “The bane,” I said. “The remedy.”

  He gave me a shake. “What do you mean?”

  Words eluded me, except one. “Smoke,” I said.

  He pulled back my damp hair and hissed into my ear. “If you have harmed yourself—for her—He took a breath but didn’t go on.

  “I will be well. In a little while.”

  “You’d best be well,” he muttered.

  I could feel my swollen heart and my blood in spate pounding in my ears like the sea against rocks, wave upon wave. The waves came too fast. I wondered that Galan couldn’t hear them, they were so loud. And I could not see clearly. We’d left the smoke behind in the tent and yet it hung before my eyes—or it was in my eyes—a smudge, a shadow. But my mind was clearer.

  “What of Consort Vulpeja?” I asked. “How is she?” I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d killed her with my cure. Somewhere there was fear and remorse, but it was distant and had no sting.

  He said he didn’t care, but I persisted. Presently he sent Sunup to look at her, and soon she came back and said, “She’s awake, Sire.”

  Glad news, but I didn’t feel it. “I’ll see to her,” I said.

  “No, you will not. Tell the girl what needs to be done.”

  Sunup stood waiting with her head bowed, glancing at us sideways. She looked dim and insubstantial.

  “I must listen to her heart. Let me up,” I said, for his arms were locked tight around me.

  “You can’t even stand,” Galan said, “so be still and let the girl tend to her.”

  His anger didn’t daunt me this time. I leaned against him and turned my head, and his breath was on my cheek.

  I whispered, “If I can stand, will you let me?”

  “Try,” he said, but didn’t loosen his arms.

  But I didn’t try; I had neither the strength nor the will to stand. I told Sunup to give Consort Vulpeja water, as much as she would drink, and the girl went away. I said to Galan, “Let me lie down. I must lie down,” for I was overtaken by dizziness. I lay on the earth and it reeled and turned under me, and I felt the immensity of it, the expanse of fields and forests and mountains and seas reaching beyond the circle of our horizon to the horizon only the gods see, the very rim of the world; I felt also how small I was, borne on this wheel. And yet we were at the center, as if the Marchfield was the hub of the spinning world. The sky above was a luminous gray, brighter than a full moon would have made it, and it was only when the east began to blush red that I understood the night had passed, the hours unaccounted for.

  Galan’s head was fringed with light. It was hard to see his face against the dazzle above. “Never, never, never,” he said, and once he said, “Fool,” and with each word he pushed and I made way for him and I thought he could not go deeper but he did. When he was done he lay on me without moving, his face against my neck. It was the sky that spun now, but slowly, and the earth stayed in its place. I couldn’t breathe for the weight of him and I told him so, and he raised his head.

  “Swear by Crux you’ll never do such a foolish thing again.”

  “I thought it necessary,” I said.

  “What, for my honor?” he asked bitterly.

  I shook my head; I’d not speak of his honor again. He lifted himself off me and lay on his back with his arm over his eyes and his hose disheveled. I sat up, which took no small effort, and straightened my skirts and looked down at him. My pulse resounded still, thudding through my body, but the beats came more slowly than before. “No harm was done,” I said, “and maybe some good. I took a chance. You gamble yourself, you should understand.”

  He took his arm away from his eyes and looked at me. “I wouldn’t hazard one hair of your head for her, not to save her life.” There was nothing tender in his voice but rage.

  I couldn’t help it: I laughed in his face. I plucked out a hair and dangled it before him. “Take one, take as many as you like. A hair is nothing. You cost me more than that when you wagered that the maiden was a whore.” I let the hair go and it glinted as the wind took it. I struggled to my feet. The earth started to move again and I balanced unsteadily. “I’ m going in,” I said, and walked away.

  There was still too much smoke in the tent. I wondered that no one else noticed it. There was another smell too, a stench, and it came from Sire Rodela. Spiller and Rowney were both kneeling by him. He had a leather strap between his teeth and sweat on his furrowed brow. The stinking bandage was in a heap on the floor. I could see his swollen forearm had darkened around the wound.

  Spiller had a knife and Rowney a bowl. I asked what they were doing, and Spiller said, “Bleeding him, of course.”

  I said, “You should call the priest—I’ve said it before.”

  Spiller said, “Divine Xyster would just bleed him too. Now leave us be and see to your own charge.”

  I fumbled my way from the door to the curtained room. There were obstacles everywhere: the baggage and pallets and Noggin grinding meal. Sunup was perched on Consort Vulpeja’s linen chest with her back straight, keeping watch. It shamed me to see her so constant in her duty.

  “Did she take water?” I asked.

  “A little,” she said in a hushed voice. “I think she’s sleeping now.”

  “And you? Are you sleepy too?”

  She shrugged.

  In this room the smell of dwale was pungent; the smoke had clung to the curtain and the bedclothes. And I had sent Sunup in here without giving it a thought. I said hastily, “You must go out now, go right outside the tent and stay there awhile. Get Noggin to give you food and water. Sleep if you can, and I’ll send if I need you.”

  She looked at me round-eyed and scurried away.

  I took out my knife and cut the threads that held together a long seam in the tent wall, and opened a window where there’d been none before. I should have thought of it last night—for I knew how easily it could be done—but my head had been as befuddled as the air in the tent, and needed a wind to clear it.

  Then I turned to Consort Vulpeja. I’d delayed so long, fearing to look at her.

  There was a scarlet flush on her neck and creeping up her cheeks. I put my head on her chest to listen and her breath was quiet but her heart was loud. I couldn’t measure her pulse against mine because mine was still galloping and yet hers was trotting at a good and steady pace. I lifted my head and she was staring at me. Her eyes looked strange. I’d never seen eyes so black; her hazel irises were thin as gold rings. I could see myself peering in, reflected in the devouring pupils.

  “I think you might live after all, Consort,” I said.

  Her eyes followed me as I stood.

  “That’s my gown,” she said. Her voice had rusted from disuse. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Sire Galan’s …,” I hesitated over the word, “… his sheath.”

  She squinted at me. “Take it off. Burn it.”

  I laughed. “You are better indeed, Consort. I rejoice to see you restored to yourself. I’
ll take the dress off, and gladly, but I’ll not burn it. Your kin have left you poor—you can’t afford it.” I fingered the wool of the skirt. It was light and finespun. The weave was plain, the only ornament being flamestitch embroidery that ran up the front of the bodice and around the neck, in thread the color of gold, but not of gold wire. No doubt it was meant to be worn under an ornate surcoat and over a gauzy underdress. But the Ardor hadn’t seen fit to send those. This was the best garment left in her clothes chest.

  The flush spread until her whole face was red.

  I went outside the curtain to fetch my green dress from the bundle where I kept my things. I hadn’t finished embroidering the vines. When Galan had been wounded, I’d put it aside and forgotten it. I came back and stripped off her gown and folded it neatly and put it away. My breasts and haunches were round, compared to hers, and I didn’t care if she knew it. My dress was of wool nearly as fine as hers. Her gown fastened in the back, and she needed a handmaid’s help to dress. Mine laced up the front. It fit well; Mai had seen to that.

  I looked at her and she’d turned her face away. Her cheeks were sunken, her jaws clamped. I rued my temper already. If she’d not been so weak, no doubt she’d have made me improve my manners. The trouble was, she put me in mind of Dame Lyra, and I remembered her manner too well.

  I softened my voice. “Will you take some nourishment, Consort Vulpeja? I have goat’s milk, very soothing, or broth if you like. Either will give you strength.”

  “Whose tent?” she asked. It tried her strength to speak; she hoarded her words.

  “Sire Galan’s, of course. You can see by his colors.” I gestured to the tent wall with its stenciled pattern of green and gold fletches.

  I thought she’d be glad to hear this, but she shut her eyes and a few tears leaked out.