Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  It seemed a long while before I encountered an ankle with my outstretched hand and then an upturned heel. The bones of the ankle were fine as bird bones, which told me nothing, but the heel was rough and hard, and by that I recognized Sunup. By working my way up, I came to her head and found her limp and insensible. I put my hand over her mouth and felt a faint breath.

  I uncovered my head and saw that while I had crawled, the fire had outpaced me. Now the tent was lit by a glowering light, revealing a landscape of fire and smoke: torrents of fire flowing above my head and streaming along the walls; roiling smoke pressing downward instead of rising. Everything upside down. A rain of sparks going up. Rags flying around us. A fierce, hot wind stealing the breath from my mouth. The air heavy with ash.

  I dreaded to burn. The dogs would have been more merciful.

  I moved as quickly as I could but I was hindered by coughing and blinded by smoke and tears. Sunup was under my hand. She’d fallen by the foot of Consort Vulpeja’s cot. The concubine was on the bed, but I couldn’t see her. Nothing but a smudge of shadow.

  I’d have to come back for her.

  I took off my cloak. It was splotched with small fires I hadn’t felt through the heavy sheepskin, and I smothered them. I crouched and wrapped the cloak around Sunup. Fire was writing its way across the thin white linen of the curtain around Consort Vulpeja’s chamber, leaving a black scrawl. I dragged Sunup under the burning tatters, bending low. I held my breath as long as I could, and when I gasped again I was scorched all down my windpipe.

  We were in the very maw of Wildfire now, and it roared with tongues of flame. I hadn’t truly heard till now that it roared at me. I felt its greed. I’d once presumed to think Ardor had some use for me—this was the use, then: to feed on.

  Well, we must be cooked first. This was no time to crawl. I hoisted Sunup in my arms. She was a light but unwieldy burden, her arms and legs and head dangling slackly. When I straightened up I felt heat enough to sear the meat off my bones with me still standing. Even the ground was blazing, for the dry heather in the pallets had kindled.

  The tent was ten strides square, no more than ten strides. I could go that far. I blundered toward the door, through the brightness, through the darkness. I found my way by what was underfoot, the brazier, Galan’s strongbox, meal sacks, casks. Fire caught at my skirts.

  I could have sworn I’d left the door flap tied open. Now it was hanging down in our way and all ablaze.

  I went through nevertheless, half—carrying, half—dragging Sunup. The heavy canvas raked over me and set my headcloth, my hair, and the back of my dress afi re. Someone took Sunup from my arms and then seized hold of me and rolled me over the ground to put out the fire.

  The man squatted by me. He wore Hazard’s red feather in his cap. I sat up and coughed and couldn’t stop coughing. I was helpless with it; I thought the bellows of my lungs would turn inside out. The drudge looked worried, but when he saw I’d live, he clapped me on the back and ran off, and I never saw him again to thank him.

  I stopped coughing and began to wheeze. Over the roar of the fire, I heard shouts and the frenzied bleating of our milk goat, tethered to a tent stake.

  My eyes still smarted and watered ceaselessly. There were drudges, a crowd of men and boys, rushing about to fetch water, but I couldn’t see well enough to tell those I knew from strangers. I could make out the tent, what was left of it, and the smear of smoke rising high above it. The canvas was waxed to keep out rain; men threw water on it and the water ran off and fire danced back. There were holes eaten in the roof and walls and nothing but flames visible within.

  I had no voice to call for help for Consort Vulpeja. I knew I must get up. But I was as unsteady as an infant who can’t find her own feet, and can only get about by crawling. Sunup lay where she’d been dropped, still insensible. I went to her on hands and knees. There were burns on her feet and her cheek. Despite the heat of the fire, despite my cloak, she was shivering. Even so, I needed the cloak and I took it from her, after dragging her farther from the fire.

  I found a shallow, muddy puddle and soaked the sheepskin in it, thinking that if it were wet it would shield me better from the flames. Even this little exertion made me gasp, and every gasp seared deep. I could think clearly again and my mind moved apace. I began to reckon what I should have done when I was inside the tent—what I must still do. Yet for all the haste of my thoughts, my limbs were laggard.

  I pulled the wet cloak over me and the weight bore me down. I got one foot under me and then another, but couldn’t balance without the prop of one hand on the ground. I rubbed my eyes to clear them, and what I saw stole my strength and I fell to my knees again.

  The fire was swift and I had been slow, too slow. Our tent ropes had been smeared with pitch. They’d burned like wicks, and now the strands were parting.

  The tent lurched like a drunkard. It leaned, it leaned farther and farther, and then it collapsed with a great whomp and an exhalation of hot air and sparks and soot. A shout went up and the men stopped scurrying and stood gawping. A surprised laugh from one, a cheer from a few others: the fire was beaten, stifled when the tent came down.

  Then little flames got up and began to dash over the hills and valleys the canvas made over what lay underneath.

  I heard Sunup sob and call for Consort Vulpeja.

  A voice I recognized shouted nearby, berating the onlookers. It was the Crux’s cook. He roared that not a man among them had a feather’s weight of sense, and bade them go to the cliff path and form a line to pass buckets upward.

  I waved to him, having no voice to call out. His face and tunic were spattered with blood and I thought he had been injured. He came over and helped me stand. When I pulled urgently at his sleeve, he shook his head. He knew already; he’d not forgotten Consort Vulpeja.

  Cook followed me around the tent. I pointed to the large hummock over the concubine’s cot and he pulled out his long knife and began to cut. He shouted for water and more water, he cursed the men who brought it for being too slow. They emptied their buckets over the fire and steam rose up with the smoke. Cook was hardened to heat after all his years at the hearth fire. He cut through the burning canvas quickly and lifted it away with his bare hands.

  She was not on the cot. She must have crawled under it for shelter. She lay faceup on the ground with her hands folded, as she had been taught was proper, and I thought at first she was alive because she wasn’t burnt, not even her shift. Except for soot around her nostrils and on her eyelids and cheeks, she was unmarked. But she was dead.

  I had saved Sunup instead. Sunup, mudborn.

  Men and boys crowded close behind us. Most of them were cooks and kitchenboys and bagboys; any drudge or foot soldier with time to waste was down at the tourney field watching the Blood fight. They had come running from all over the Marchfield when they saw the smoke, for Wildfire was everyone’s concern. Wildfire gets hungrier the more it feeds; it would have leapt from tent to tent with the wind and devoured the king’s hall if they’d not kept it penned inside Sire Galan’s tent. I suppose they’d done well to do that much. For us it was too little.

  When they saw Consort Vulpeja, a hush came over them. Soon they’d begin to talk, and the tale would be carried all over the Marchfield. It would find its way home to the king’s court, to Galan’s keep, to his wife.

  I put my sodden cloak over the concubine, leaving her face uncovered. It wasn’t fitting they should see her in her shift. When I’d done that, I didn’t know what else to do. The ground where I knelt was hot, so I crawled away. I sat by Sire Fanfarron’s tent, which was pocked with small holes where sparks had caught before they were doused.

  I meant to go back for her. It was Hazard who chose for me, Hazard in every aspect, blind Chance and ruthless Peril and unyielding Fate. If I had touched Consort Vulpeja’s foot first, surely I would have saved her. But then Sunup would have died, and I could not regret that she lived.

  I regretted everything else. I
should have saved them both. I hadn’t thought, that was the trouble. I hadn’t thought of the hole in the canvas wall beside Consort Vulpeja’s cot. I could have widened the opening, gotten us all out. But the wall was a wall of flames—and I had no knife, for I’d taken off my belt with the sheath when I lay down to rest. Why, then, hadn’t I picked it up? For now the belt was lost and the knife and my herbs with it. And Consort Vulpeja.

  Maybe if I’d gotten out first, I could have found help in time for both of them. If I hadn’t crawled … I never thought the fire could move so fast.

  I should have cut my way out from inside when I had the chance—but already the wall was blazing, I couldn’t get near it. And I had forgotten my knife.

  And so on, round and round.

  The priests say the dead see more clearly the farther they travel from us in the afterlife, until at last they see more like gods than men. The burden the dead carry on their journey is remorse. Duties left undone, even omissions that went unnoticed in life, often prove the most burdensome, and some deeds that seemed great to the living, for good or ill, turn out to be but a small matter.

  Passions do not long survive the body. Only regret. Powerless regret, for shades can’t set the balance right or turn aside any harm their past deeds will yet bring to the living. For the first time, I understood what a torment that will be: the heavier the remorse, the longer the journey.

  Crux Sun smiled down. I no longer saw anything benign in her smile. Rain and rain and rain, a month of rain, and today, when water from the sky would have been a blessing, she showed us her face.

  Ardor had spared me and taken Consort Vulpeja and I was baffled by it. All that I’d done to save her life, all that Galan had done: useless. I’d been so sure, for a time, that I fulfilled Ardor’s purpose. Now I wondered if I’d thwarted Ardor’s will when I healed her, and she was always meant for dying. But if I’d displeased Ardor, surely Wildfire would have eaten me?

  Or was it Hazard all along? Consort Vulpeja and Galan merely followed the path Fate ordained, and I, perforce, followed them.

  And so on, round and round.

  Sunup found me, and we huddled together. She bore the pain of her burns without complaint, but when she saw Consort Vulpeja she cried and called for her mother, and I was reminded she was a child. I comforted her and I was comforted, because she was alive. But my thoughts trudged in circles, mule yoked to a millstone, grinding small.

  The Crux rode up at a gallop by way of the east—of—north road with his men behind him. Others followed, among them the king himself, come to see the cause of the smoke. They crowded so close around our camp that horses stumbled over the tent ropes and the tents began to wobble. Sunup and I pressed close to Sire Fanfarron’s pavilion so we wouldn’t be trampled, and we found ourselves facing a horse’s hindquarters covered in a fine barding stamped with red diamonds. We could see little else.

  King Thyrse had a voice like a brass horn when he needed it, and when he roared, he was heard. He sent the idle onlookers away, drudges and Blood alike, and we could see again. There were heads of other clans present. The king bade them come to his hall that evening, and they left, though it was clear that the First of Rift, at least, begrudged the dismissal. Three or four cataphracts of Prey remained with their men, for a king is always attended. But they didn’t stay so close to the king’s elbow as to imply distrust of the clan of Crux.

  For the Blood of Crux were there, armed, as they had come from the tourney field. All save one—Galan. The Crux stood beside the king.

  Though our tents were near his hall, I’d only seen King Thyrse so close once, when we came to the Marchfield, and his clothes had been plain and worn. Today he was attired more like a king. His surcoat was of mail so fine it was nearly as soft as cloth, patterned all over with godsigns worked in countless gold and silver links. An armorer could go blind making such a hauberk. It was for show: gold and silver will not stand up to blows. He wore a cowl of rare white fox fur and his undersleeves were pinned back to show a lining of red fox. His face, in this splendor, was merely a man’s face—an angry face—with nothing about it to say: here is a king.

  The king didn’t speak and no one else would speak before him. He gazed at the ruined tent. The flames were gone but smoke and stink rose from it. Galan’s banners had been hacked down and stolen.

  Cook came up dragging a corpse by the heels. He let it fall at his master’s feet and he knelt beside it. Now I understood the bloodstains on Cook’s tunic. The man’s throat had been cut. It gaped wider than his open mouth. Blue and rose ribbons were sewn to the shoulders of his grubby leather jerkin: the ribbons, the jerkin, his face and hair were spattered with blood.

  King Thyrse said, without surprise, “Ardor.”

  The Crux spat on the carcass and wiped his mouth. His face was tight with disgust. “You did well,” he said to Cook.

  Cook bowed low, his face nearly touching his knees, and crawled away backward, to put himself out of sight of the king and his master. There was no pride in the curve of his broad back; instead I saw shame and, perhaps, reproach. I suppose he’d done well to catch the man and butcher him like a pig—but better he’d stayed at the fire, where we needed him. Yet it should never have fallen to Cook and his kitchenboys to safeguard our camp.

  No one, not even the priests—whose omens were clear now it was too late—had expected Ardor to come during the day when the fighting men were gone. It was as clever as it was craven. But why should this surprise the Crux, or any of us, after Sire Voltizo and his false weapon? The honor of Ardor was counterfeit.

  Yet the feud had been over till they found Sire Bizco’s mutilated corpse. That was Sire Rodela’s doing. There were, in feuds as in tournaments, or even war itself, certain proprieties. Once those bounds were overstepped, one base act was answered by another, and where would it end?

  All this blame to share, and my burden was not lessened one whit.

  “They sent their jacks,” said the king.

  “Their hands are still sullied, Sire,” the Crux said.

  “Indeed,” the king said in a dry voice.

  But Sire Rassis, the Crux’s armiger, spoke up, saying, “He’s no jack. I know him, King Thyrse. He’s my wife’s cousin’s husband’s brother—armiger to Sire Pisar.” He was careful not to say his name.

  Cook rubbed the dead man’s face with his sleeve, and sure enough, there was Ardor’s godsign on his cheek.

  “And who is she?” asked the king, inclining his head toward Consort Vulpeja, her face very white amidst the heap of blackened canvas.

  “She’s late of Ardor herself,” the Crux said.

  “Is she the one?

  “Indeed,” said the Crux, in a voice as dry as the king’s.

  The king stepped over the dead man and approached Consort Vulpeja. He was not three paces from us; Sunup and I never moved, for fear we’d be noticed and sent away. He lifted the cloak from the concubine and covered her up again, and I heard him sigh. When he straightened up he said, in a voice meant to carry, “Have you ever seen such a wonder? Wildfire took her gently—she isn’t marred. Surely this is a sign the god Ardor has taken her back and counted her offense paid and her honor cleansed. But the clan Ardor, which killed her, what of their honor? May the god curse their hearths for loosing fire in the Marchfield.”

  It might just as well be said that Ardor, the god, had not wanted her, for she was left untouched. But if the king said her death was the coin to redeem the reputation she’d pawned, that was the way the rumormongers would sing it. They’d sing of the curse too. Even the gods must heed a king’s curse.

  The king looked from the concubine to the crowd around him. “And which of these men of yours is the hotspur who made the wager? It’s his tent, surely.”

  The Crux answered, “He’s not here, Sire. He goes on foot these days, and goes alone. But I’ve sent for him.”

  “I would see the man behind so much mischief.”

  “He has much to answer for,” s
aid the Crux. “But not all of it.”

  “Oh, Ardor will answer too, you both shall answer. This feud will not come with us to war. I’ll have an end on it.”

  A lesser man might have knelt before the look on the king’s face, but the Crux merely bowed his head.

  King Thyrse said, “Send your man to me when he comes. And, if you please, attend me tonight in council and we’ll settle this matter.”

  When the king was gone, the Crux said, “Not empty—handed. It will never be settled without steel.”

  Not long after, Galan came running. He ran all the way from the hills where the Crux’s jack, Tel, had found him. He ran while his men rode, and when he arrived he was at his last extremity of wind. He bent double, his hands on his knees, and fought for air with great tearing gasps. When he mastered himself he straightened up. He was helmetless. His cheeks were flushed but his brow was pale. He wiped the sweat from his face with his quilted sleeve and looked about him.

  By then the Sun was westering over the sea, a flock of small clouds scattered about her. Her golden light dazzled and spared nothing. All that had been laid waste was made clear. When the shadow of a cloud passed over us, the dimming was a relief.

  Galan’s eyes sought me out where I stood by Sire Fanfarron’s tent, and when he found me I know he found some ease, though his face was still grim. Then he looked down at Consort Vulpeja and his mouth twisted.

  I didn’t go to him. His fellows came, cataphracts and armigers alike; they offered him their voluble anger, which suited better than sympathy. Ardor had outraged them all. Someone brought Galan a horn cup and he tilted his head and drank quickly, and when he lowered the cup there was a trickle of red wine on his chin. He handed back the cup and nodded, courteous by rote. The cloud passed, the Sun came forth again, and his eyes were dark under the shadow of his brow, staring at Ardor’s handiwork. Though the crowd pressed him close, he stood as if he were alone.