Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  The Crux stared back at him.

  Galan’s lips twitched. He began to laugh. “Oh, Uncle! All the Initiates of Carnal, all their secret rites and sacred powers, all defeated by one little sheath! For I’m not altered, except in this: I had been selfish, thinking to keep her by me, but now I want her safe at home. She’s better fitted for peace than war. She won’t endure it long.”

  Their talk had led roundabout to this end, and I’d followed blind and stumbling—for I’d never, not for a moment, guessed he meant to send me away. The Initiates must indeed have cured him, if he could suffer the thought of parting. I could not.

  Then I did what I knew to be folly. I braved the daunting stare of the Crux to cross that long, figured carpet; I stood before Galan with my fists clenched at my sides and said, “I won’t go.”

  Galan reached out and wrapped his hand around my fist. “I’m sending Flykiller back with the horses, since I may not ride, and I’ve charged him to see you home safe.”

  Every bone in me turned stubborn. “I have no home.” Unless you are my home.

  “You do. In my household, in my keeping.”

  “No doubt your wife will be pleased to look after me. You promised as much to your concubine when you wanted to be rid of her.”

  The Crux said, “She’s not so tender as you paint her, is she?”

  I flinched and kept my back to the Crux. Galan looked at me with his straight brows pinched. He said, “Uncle, enough. More than enough.”

  Divine Hamus came in with Sire Rassis. It was the priest’s task to keep the Landsbook, in which he recorded the wills of each cataphract and armiger in the troop as to the disposition of their lands, chattels, and goods; such bequests change as often as fortunes change in wartime, for one day a man may be poor, the next rich, and the day after, dead. Divine Hamus unfolded the book, a long, pleated sheet of linen he carried always in a pliant leather case wrapped around him like a baldric.

  Galan gripped my fist hard. He said, “Bear witness that I give my sheath Firethorn tenancy, for her lifetime, of my holding that lies on Mount Sair and is bounded by the Needle Cliffs to the north, Wend River to the east and south, and to the west the Athlewood; the stone house and byres, the lands, the rights to coppice and pasture, the spring.” To me alone he said, “We used it for a hunting lodge when I was a boy, to go falconing on the cliffs. It’s high land with a long view. You shall have a fine garden on the terraces. I think you’d like a garden.”

  The Crux was silent, his face bleak as granite. Divine Hamus wrote it all down fair in his book, and began another copy on a small sheet of sized linen.

  I looked down at Galan’s fist around mine. His knuckles were swollen and bruised. He let go of my hand; my skin had gone white under his fingers. He said, “I shall think of you there. I want you there when I come home.”

  “And if you don’t come home?”

  “I will.”

  “You’re always so careful of your word—would you now make a promise you can’t keep? And if you do come home, when would I see you? Once a twelvemonth, I suppose.”

  That made Galan glower at me. “I think you’ll find me at your door quite often. If you don’t want me there, you can shut it.”

  “She’s ungrateful,” the Crux said. “But she supposes right. You have your duties in Ramus, in your father’s keep. I shall have need of you too. Better give her a room above your stables, if you must have her. Without a bolt on the door. So you can visit whenever you please.”

  I turned to look at the Crux. He looked back at me with a glint in his eye like a spark struck from steel, and a little smile on his lips. He delighted to see us at odds. But the quarrel was Galan’s and mine. I wouldn’t quarrel with him too.

  I said to Galan, “What about your precious luck? Didn’t you say that Hazard gave me to you?”

  “Well, that may be,” he said. “But you are too much at hazard. Shall I count the ways you nearly died in the last hand of days?”

  “You must take me for a coward. There were twenty times you could have been killed yesterday, and you won’t turn back.” I crossed my arms over my ribs and squeezed hard to quell the shaking.

  “I know your courage—I trusted my life to it in the ordeal, and you stood fast. But where will you be if I’m killed in Incus and you’re alone in a foreign kingdom? In Pava’s hands or Lebrel’s. Or anyone’s.”

  “So you told me yesterday morning,” I said bitterly. “You’d pass me on.”

  “Yesterday Sire Rodela could still do you harm, and you were in need of a cataphract’s protection. Today I can’t abide the thought of another. Spare me. Go home.”

  I almost told him why I could not go, almost let it slip past my teeth how on one dark-of-the-Moon I’d dug up a womandrake root. She had two legs already and I gave her a face, arms, and a quim with my knife. She was as heavy as an infant and as wrinkled as an old woman. I’d wound the cord around her, I’d wrapped her about the head, the heart, the crotch, and I’d tied her hand and foot and buried her again in the mud.

  I felt that cord dig into me everywhere I’d tied it round the woman-drake. It was choking me; there was darkness in my eyes. How could I still be bound if he was free?

  I hunched my shoulders. “I won’t go.” I blinked to clear my eyes and tears brimmed over.

  I heard the Crux say, “Quarrelsome, rebellious, obstinate—insolent—I see why she caught your fancy. She shares your faults.”

  Galan sat back in his chair. “She may quarrel all she likes. There is no argument. She’s going home.”

  The Crux said, “You’re well rid of her. Better if you’d discarded her, but at least she’ll be out of sight. You’ll find, I think, she’s soon out of mind as well.” I heard satisfaction in his voice. Galan had given him what he wanted after all.

  Divine Hamus handed Galan the small folded sheet of linen on which he’d made a copy of the bequest. The priest would not look at me. He’d kept silent as he did his duty, but the hard look of disdain—no, disgust—on his soft round face spoke for him. Galan gave the sheet to me and I unfolded it and read; I let them see I knew my godsigns. It was all there, nothing stinted, nothing omitted.

  Sire Rodela was shouting, his voice rough, straining, breaking. “Spiller, bring me my sword! Where’s my sword? Whoreson coward, give it to me or I’ll run you through!”

  The Crux told Divine Hamus, “See to it that Divine Xyster keeps him quiet tonight, or none of us will rest.”

  The carnifex tried a sleeping draught, but Rodela spat it out. So they gagged him. They hobbled him and staked him to the ground inside the tent so he couldn’t wander, and it took five men to do it, or so I heard.

  When he was silent at last, I drew a deep breath and it was as if I’d forgotten to breathe all day. But the next breath stuck in my throat.

  When did it cross my mind to do what Galan asked of me, to go to the house provided and wait, tending a garden?

  Not at first, when we were back behind the wine barrels, when the Crux and his men had retired and all was quiet except for Spiller snoring. Galan doffed his velvet hat and unbuckled his baldric and unclasped the armband that held his little golden knives. He winced as he pulled off his surcoat and dropped it on the ground. He treated the garment carelessly, though it was embroidered with a winter hunting scene of owls and hares, and trimmed with lace threaded with gray pearls. It was a gift from Sire Guasca, and too tight across the shoulders. His eyes were skittish. He was ashamed—maybe because we’d quarreled before the Crux and I’d proved ungovernable—or because he’d given me too much and he regretted it.

  I didn’t care why, for I was in a fine rage that gripped the back of my head and buzzed in my ear. I pushed him. “You think you can dismiss me now? Maybe you want another sheath, more to your fit—someone tough and leathery, perhaps, or else tarted up with jewels and gaudy paint.”

  Galan took my wrist and pulled me down to sit on his pallet. Our knees were touching and mine were shaking. I’d been shiveri
ng all evening and now I thought I might clatter apart. He met my eyes and wouldn’t let me look away, and his anger answered mine. “This is unworthy,” he said.“I thought you had more sense.”

  “I’m not—I’m not your horse, to be sent home to the stables when you please. I chose to come with you, and I’ll choose when to go. I’m not yours to dispose of.”

  “You are mine.” He reached out and pulled off my headcloth.

  “I’ll go if you don’t want me. Swear you don’t want me,” I said, and pushed him down on his pallet. He took a handful of hair and pulled me after him.

  “I won’t be forsworn,” he said.

  I thought I’d won our quarrel when my hands were on his shoulders holding him down and I slid over him and his eyelids came half down and he turned his head aside and I leaned to take kisses from the corner of his mouth. But I was greedy and took my pleasure too soon and when I tired he turned me under him. The pains came back to me, the sting of the wound Rodela had given me, the burns on my back scraped raw. But scratch an itch until it bleeds and still it feels good and you scratch some more. I wrapped my legs around him and he bucked against my grip. He braced himself on stiff arms and he watched me with that appraising air I’d marked at times before, as if he reckoned how best to grind me small. He drove the breath out of me and all constraint and I let him do as he pleased—I would have let him do anything—but even so I thought of other women, how he must have watched and toyed with them. He was too complacent and I’d devour him for it. I did try.

  I suppose it was a draw: for every argument, an answer. One couldn’t best the other, not for long.

  Afterward his prick was smeared with blood and so were my thighs, as if I’d had a maidenhead after all. He was appalled and asked if I was hurt. I said, “It’s my tides. I am sorry for it, truly. I didn’t know or I’d have warned you. They came early and unexpected.”

  I wanted to drift or sink toward sleep—already I was heavy and half submerged—but Galan wore a dark look on his face as he lay down facing me. I took it for disgust, because the Blood think a woman’s tides will defile them, causing sickness and worse. But I was glad they’d come.

  “I thought you had quickened by now,” he said. “Are you barren? Surely not.”

  One doesn’t speak of childbane to a man. I shrugged one shoulder and said, “It’s for the best. Since you don’t want bastards—to trouble your household, you said once. Well, you’ll get none from me.” Then I remembered I had no childbane left. It had burned in the fire, and unless I could get some from Mai, unless it grew in that other kingdom across the sea, my boast would be hollow.

  “Yours, I want,” he said.

  A shock of heat went through me, and I couldn’t have said why: anger that he meant to breed me or pleasure in it. Or even that I’d so far vanquished his dead concubine.

  Nor did I dream of going to that high stone house, his hunting lodge, when at last we slept.

  I dreamed I was stifling. I was small and stifling and hot under heavy linens. I was in a box, a chest. I heard screaming that went on and on. I’d been told to be quiet but I couldn’t stop whimpering. The box was opened and a hand reached in and grabbed my leg. I woke covered in sweat, and Galan was saying, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just a dream.” I lied, for it was not merely a dream, it was a true dream. I knew it by its reek of smoke and flesh burning.

  Galan was right, I wasn’t fit for war. That he was—was frightening.

  Nor did I consider leaving Galan and taking the peace he offered when one of the priests’varlets came running to the Crux’s tent in the morning to give him the news: Sire Rodela had died sometime in the night, choking on his own spew.

  Divine Xyster had gagged Rodela and the Crux had told him to, and they didn’t disown the blame but neither did they linger over it. The blame that was mine I kept to myself. I had expected to be glad when he died, but I wasn’t glad, only a little less afraid.

  No one forbade me to follow when they took Sire Rodela to his pyre on the charnel grounds at the edge of the sea cliff. The wood had been bought at great price and drenched with oil so it would go up quickly, as Rodela was likely to have a restless shade.

  The Crux poured a libation for him, but all he’d say in his praise was that he was a brave man. Galan wouldn’t give one word to his shade, and for a libation he spat on the ground. He stalked away, and left me there by Rodela’s pyre.

  Nearby the dead drudges were burning. The bodies had been laid two deep in a long row, and piled with sea hay and gorse and thistles gathered from leagues around. There was no wood to squander on mudfolk. They’d been burning since yesterday. With such poor fuel the pyres would not burn hot, so they needs must burn long. When rigor had overtaken the dead, some had been caught in awkward gestures, an arm upraised, legs akimbo, head twisted. Now they shifted under a blanket of ash.

  I held the end of my headcloth over my nose against the stench. Cook, who stayed to tend Rodela’s pyre after the others had gone, said he’d seen and smelt worse in his years of going to war, and he told me, for kindness, that I should hie off home before I learned what he meant. I shook my head.

  When no one was watching, I threw the scrap of flesh and hair Rodela had stolen from me—which I’d stolen back—on his pyre, so the smoke would carry my words to his shade: while fire gnawed his flesh and cracked his bones to get at the marrow, I told him under my breath how I’d killed him. I didn’t regret his murder. Perhaps remorse would come to me when I died, and my shade would have to bear it.

  But I swore to myself that if ever I had cause to kill again, it would not be by a slow and chancy poison.

  It was when I turned my back on the pyres and the sea, and came down into the clamor and commotion of the Marchfield, all stirred up by news of the war’s imminence—walking alone, as I hadn’t walked for many tennights, and any man who dared to hoot at me or reach for me got a look that reminded him sharp to mend his manners—and how and when had I come by that look?—it was then I knew that no matter how I denied it, I was tempted by thoughts of an aerie for myself alone, a garden, the Athlewood, which carried such a welcome-sounding name.

  I went to the tents of the clan of Delve, seeking Mai, and I found her sitting on a boulder with her back to the Sun. The day was cold but the Sun was warm. Tobe pulled on the piebald dog’s tail, the dog whined and bared his teeth, and Sunup picked Tobe up and sat him down not far away, and he began to whine too.

  I didn’t like the look of Mai’s face: her wattles hung too slack, as if she’d lost substance, her skin was a shade too gray. Her feet were so swollen she’d given up wearing shoes. “Are you well?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “I’m just tired, always tired. Too much to do.”

  Horses’bardings and caparisons, sacks and casks and bundles were heaped and strewn about the yard, and more provisions coming in carts and on backs, and varlets bustled everywhere, most at cross-purposes and cross besides.

  “And you?” Mai said.

  “Oh, what shall I do? Sire Galan means to send me home—he’s given me a house, some land—he gave it before the Crux and all and they put it in the Landsbook.”

  “Do? Why go, I suppose.” She spoke offhand, but the look in her black eyes was not altogether amiable.

  “I can’t go—you know why—even if I wanted to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The binding, of course.”

  “Oh, child, sit down, sit down!” she said.

  I sat down beside her, both of us with our backs to the Sun. Her bulk cast a great shadow and mine a little one, and when I leaned toward her, the shadows merged.

  “You said there was no way to undo it, Mai, and no way to bind one without the other, but the Crux found a way to free Galan, and I’m still bound, and how can I bear it?”

  “Oh, indeed? How did the Crux do such a thing?”

  I whispered, “The Initiates of Carnal.”

  Mai laughed. �
��Balderdash!” It was a hard, mocking laugh and I took it hard.

  Sire Torosus came out of his tent, squinting in the sun, the crow tracks gathering at the corners of his eyes. He smiled at Mai and nodded at me, and strode off, shouting at one of his men, “No, not that one! Use this one!” He came to Tobe sitting in the yard and stooped over him. “Well, little man, what’s the fuss?” he asked, and Tobe squealed and crawled away as fast as he could, and they had a chase. Sire Torosus pounced and snatched him up and swung him this way and that until Tobe screamed with delight. When he put him down, Tobe waddled after him. If Tobe lived to be a lad, would his father keep him close, have him serve at table, clap him on his shoulder and say with pride his son would make a fine man? Or would Sire Torosus grow distant, set his mudboy to herding sheep on a mountain suitably far away?

  Tobe trusted his father’s affection—he was too young to know better. But Mai trusted too, and she was no innocent. When I set out to be a sheath, I thought it was all between a man and his woman, for a campaign or two; I never expected to see a family.

  Mai laughed at me, so sure of herself that she teased me for doubting. I envied her certainty.

  She turned to me and said, “Listen, I told you about the binding that day because you needed something to ease your mind. I told you it couldn’t be undone so you’d believe in its potency, and belief would give you strength. I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know what you could do.”

  “So it can be undone?”

  “If it can be done at all, surely it can be undone.”

  “Why do you speak in riddles? Answer me plain—how can I undo it?”

  “Dig her up and cut the cord and burn her,” Mai said. “That might work.”

  “Might?”

  She shrugged. “Well, you’re a cannywoman, after all. I don’t know quite what you did when you made the binding. If you managed to twine your lives together in her, there may be no way to tease those strands apart gently; and if they are severed that might harm the both of you. Or you might cut them, only to find that something more holds you two together.“ “