Wildfire by Sarah Micklem Page B

I’d been without sleep. Last night there had been a great storm over the city. I’d felt it coming from a long way off, by the smell in the night wind and by some other faculty of perception I hadn’t known I had—as if a weight pressed on some faraway part of me. An approaching tread.
     
  
     Then thunder had rumbled around like carts over cobbles, and Wildfire had scrawled across the sky and lit up the slashing rain. I sat in the balcony watching, frightened, unable to look away. There had been strange melodies in the storm. The spire above me hooted with every gust from north-of-west, and when the winds shifted, another spire would answer in its own distinctive voice, for each clan tower had a windcatcher that sounded only when the wind came from the direction ruled by its god. This was how the city sang its ships home in a storm. The windcatchers’ sounds had been there all along, crooning with every breeze, but I hadn’t heard.
     
  
     
  
By dawn the storm had passed and I was wearier than the night before. I sat in the balcony trying to do a bit of sewing, while Penna sat across from me working on Sire Edecon’s brigandine, replacing tow padding stained with sweat and blood. We worked quietly together, and I found it restful. Sire Rodela buzzed—he always did—but I could ignore him more easily during the day, when I kept busy.
     
  
     Both my hands did my bidding without weakness, but I noticed a strange thing: my right hand was always cold now, my left always warm. I squinted at the stitches, which didn’t march as straight as they should. I’d persuaded Sire Galan I couldn’t go about in wintertime clad in a thin shift, no matter if it was the fashion, and he’d given me green wool enough to make two dresses. Penna had helped me cut it, and now I was stitching an overdress with sleeves that laced to the bodice at the shoulders, and slits along the front and back up to my thighs. That way I could show off one of the gauze gowns Galan had bought me as an underdress, without showing too much of myself.
     
  
     He’d given me other presents: boots that laced about my calves, sturdy enough for many miles; a shiny willow green headcloth with a white cord to wrap around it; a small knife with an ivory handle to replace the one destroyed by Wildfire; a leather girdle with an oilskin wallet. I didn’t refuse his gifts. I’d lost that quarrel; by my master’s largesse I was reminded of my place.
     
  
     Mud soldiers were saying the king planned to spend the winter in Lanx and march on Malleus when better weather came in springtime, and I wouldn’t have minded. But Sire Galan said we’d be gone inside of the tennight, as soon as the army had provisioned. Today he and his men were off to the market of Carnal to buy horses (to buy whores, Spiller said, trying to make me jealous, for both were ruled by Carnal). The Crux had asked Galan to go, saying he had an eye for horseflesh. I thought it was cruel to send Galan to buy horses he couldn’t ride, but Galan seemed flattered to be entrusted with the task. The Crux’s horsemaster, Thrasher, would do the dickering, for in Incus the Blood would not soil themselves by buying and selling, and left all such negotiations to the mudborn. The custom had been readily adopted by the cataphracts of our army—and a fine custom it was too, for feathering a drudge’s bed.
     
  
     I tried to thread the needle, but my hands shook and the needle seemed to change size when I stared too long. I held the needle and thread out to Penna, and said, “Can you…?”
     
  
     Sire Edecon hadn’t bought Penna wool or boots. Perhaps he just wanted her for his convenience here in Lanx. I hoped she would march with us, for it would be good to have her company. She never spoke of her plans, nor of what had happened in the keep of Torrent. I allowed her the reticence she seemed to prefer; she allowed me my ignorance.
     
  
     I said, “I have wood enough for two, for two things you wear on