Blade of Dream, page 21
When his father found him, he was sitting by the fire in the front drawing room with a split log of pine ready to go on the flames. Vasch looked up, and his mouth was as dry as sand.
“I think we can proceed now,” his father said.
Vasch reached into the grate, placing the log gently on the charred, glowing embers. Flame licked up around the rough bark at once, and sap hissed as it burned away. He stood looking into the fire and tried to find something calm in his heart. It was all elation and fear and guilt and hope, and none of it still between one breath and the next.
“Vasch,” his father said. “It’s time.”
The firmness of his tone meant he was afraid that Vasch would follow Garreth’s example. Maybe bolt out of the house and run down the streets to escape. He loved his father, but sometimes he wondered whether they really knew each other.
The group gathered before the altar was pitiably small. The priest and Yrith. Uncle Robbson scowling in his formal robe, and Serria smiling and taking the place of the lady of the house. The chaperone and Father took their places as well, and that was all.
The priest closed his eyes, lifted his hands. “We call upon you, Reyek-Ano, and the spirits of your house beyond the world. Witness now the union of these two, your servants in this house at this time.”
Vasch had been to weddings before, and though this one was small, the form was more or less the same. The calling of the gods. The blessings of the two families—in this case performed by Father and Yrith’s chaperone. The breathing in of smoke and the washing of each other’s hands. When he’d watched other people performing the rites, they’d seemed deep and resonant. Or at least meaningful. Now that it was him and it was her, he couldn’t help imagining how they would seem to Yrith. A series of actions and words, strung together in an order with no inherent meaning apart from the completion of a contract. If he had harbored any doubts about his own plans and intentions, the hollowness of the wedding ended them.
Half an hour after he’d stepped in, the priest put his hand and Yrith’s together, and set them to look into each other’s eyes as he waved a censer over them and stroked the smoke over them like he was petting a cat. They were married. He had a wife. She had a husband. To Robbson and Mother and Father, it meant they had a winter caravan and hope for the house to regain its footing. He looked into Yrith’s eyes for some emotion—amusement, anger, fear, pleasure, anything. Anything at all. Yrith’s smile was small and polite, and when the ceremony was over, she didn’t try to keep hold of his fingers.
Father and the chaperone signed the wedding vows, with the priest and Serria making witness marks. “Be sure the date is clear,” Father said. “It’s very important that it be legible.”
“Mannon, old friend,” the priest said. “This is a joyful day.” As if by saying it, it would be more nearly true.
“It is,” Father said. “And when we are called before the magistrate to justify our caravan’s arrival under guild rules, it will be joyful if we can answer clearly and in full.”
If the priest’s eyes betrayed a little pain, if the sacred nature of the rite seemed a little cheapened, if the celebration of love and union and all that it implied stood a little back from being sure all the copies of the marriage contract were identical, signed, and dated, still it was done. Father blotted the inked signatures with sand, and seemed to relax for the first time in weeks.
“There,” he said. “All in place. I will take these to my office. One for us, one for darling Yrith’s family, and one for storage in the Temple until it’s called upon. While I do that, Serria has prepared a little feast for us. Please don’t wait for me.”
The food was in the back drawing room, since the dining room had been taken up with the altar. Ham and beef and sweet potatoes. Seared spinach with cream. Blood pie. Everything heavy and rich, and the fire grate smoking just enough to flavor everything. Uncle Robbson and the priest talked over small things. Serria brought Yrith and her chaperone water flavored with lemon when they’d had enough of the wine. Father came in when they were half done to present leather scroll cases sealed with wax and handed them one to the priest and the other to Yrith’s chaperone. When he started eating, it was with enough gusto that they all finished their meals together.
The snow was still falling, though less heavily, when Vasch and Robbson saw the priest off. Serria brought him his leather cloak, and Vasch noticed that the silver torc had come off before he stepped into the street. Twilight was a dimming of the clouds. A darkening of grey.
The door closed. The sounds of Serria overseeing the servants as they broke the altar down for storage and returned the dining room to its more usual function took the place of conversation or song. A less secretive wedding would have had speeches and gifts and all Vasch’s friends playing pranks on him and Yrith and their families, and then making amends in the form of wallets of coin. There would have been wine and dancing and merriment until late into the night. Instead, it was just over. No one in the house but the family. Yrith still hidden from the city until the caravan arrived.
Uncle Robbson seemed to sense the oppression. “Don’t suppose you and your lady wife would care to join me in a game of cards?” he offered with a forced jollity.
“Actually, I was hoping we could spend a moment alone, if that’s all right.”
Uncle Robbson coughed and reddened. “Of course, of course. I’ll… ah… you… yes.”
Yrith was in the hall by the kitchens, speaking to her chaperone in a liquid spill of syllables too fast for him to decipher. The chaperone was weeping and kissing Yrith’s hands. Vasch didn’t need to know the language to recognize a farewell. The older woman was leaving at once, going back by fast horse to her people and Vasch’s mother with confirmation that this part of the bargain had been kept. And there was no need for a chaperone any longer. He made himself wait until they were done before he approached his wife.
“I have something I’d like to show you,” he said.
Yrith nodded and took his hand. He led her up the stairs to the family’s rooms and down the hall to the bedroom that was supposed to be theirs. When she saw what he had made, her eyes widened.
The bed was covered by a bright quilt with a hundred different swaths of fabric in a complex pattern. He had arranged a circle of stones on the floor in imitation of a fire pit, and four lanterns burned within it. A tin pot hung over the flames, and a silver cup waited beside them. Yrith walked into the room slowly. He couldn’t tell if she was offended or amused or something else entirely.
When she put her hand on the quilt, he said, “It’s all scraps from my family. My grandparents. My uncle. My parents. My brother too. I took one of the shirts he left behind. I didn’t sew it myself. It wouldn’t have been any good, and I wanted it to last. It’s for you. It’s yours.”
Yrith plucked at the stitching. “It’s good. You chose your stitcher well.” She stepped to the false fire pit, looked down at it, and then up at him. A mischievous half-smile touched her lips. He sat beside the stones and she arranged herself across from him, spine straight and eyes forward like the floor was more comfortable and natural for her than any chair. Vasch poured the dark tea from the tin pot into the cup. It smelled pleasantly like turned earth. His hands were trembling.
“I’m sorry I don’t have a seer or a bluestone man,” he said.
“You’ve heard of bluestone men?”
“I asked around,” Vasch said. “I did have something that I wanted to say, though?”
Yrith put out one hand, palm up, giving him permission. Vasch took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This had all seemed like such a good idea before, and now that the moment had come, he felt like an idiot. If he’d stripped to the skin, he wouldn’t have felt more naked than he did now.
“I think about how I would have felt, coming to your people,” he said. “Even if what I found there was wonderful, I think it would be… I’d feel like I’d lost something. I’d feel… sacrificed. Exiled. I’d feel I wasn’t home. And so I imagine that’s something you feel too.”
He paused in case she wanted to say something. Hoping that maybe she’d interrupt. She waited, and he went on.
“We are doing something here for our families. And I hope it brings fortune to both our people, but that’s for out there. That’s the altar downstairs and the contracts and the business. That’s not in here. And we’re going to be doing something in here too.”
Her eyebrows rose and he felt himself grinning back at her. “That sounded less forward when I was just thinking it, but here’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t want the altar downstairs to be the only one. I never imagined marrying an Inlisc woman, because I never imagined being Inlisc. And I’m not, but now I also am. I have family in the north and I didn’t before. And you’re not Kithamari, but you also are, because you have family here now. And we aren’t going to fit with the world. Not your world and not mine. We’re something new. Even if other people have done something like this, they haven’t done this. They weren’t us.”
The words were coming more flowingly now. He still felt as exposed, as raw, as defenseless before her. But he knew what he meant, and he could feel her listening.
“You asked if marriage was like our gods. Not too much there. Real, but not real. That isn’t what I want for us. I imagine how alone you feel. How alone you’ve been. And I want to be that alone with you. I want us both to be in a new place that isn’t like where we came from, and where it’s just us.”
She glanced down at the cup in his hand. He lifted it to his lips and drank. The tea was peaty and complex, and the aftertaste had a bloom of sweetness. He handed the cup to her, and she drank too.
“That was a good blessing,” Yrith said, putting the cup down. “You could have been a priest.”
“I have my brother’s bed. It’s just down the hall. I won’t… we don’t need to…”
She pulled back, her mouth twitching into a scowl. “You don’t want me?”
“Oh, I do. But I don’t want to be your obligation. When you’re ready—”
She waved her hand and the little flames shuddered. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“What?”
“This. You were doing so well, and now this. Your brother, I understand. He didn’t want me. Good on him. You say you do, you do all this to seduce me, but you don’t ask. You tell me it’s my choice. It’s whatever I want, but you don’t ask me what I want, and you don’t ask me for what you want. What does this start? Try again.”
“If you aren’t ready… if you don’t love me—”
“We are a crafted union. I like you very much. You are good company, and you’re pretty, and you’re sweet and smart. You understand well. I am glad to be joined to you. The love will come. Until then, you are skin and blood and bone. Ask for what you want.”
Vasch was silent. He could feel his heart in his chest beating not quickly but strong.
“Can I have you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and blew out the lamps.
Old Boar’s face squeezed into a vast scowl. “Why would you care about those candy-ass fucks?”
Garreth tried to act casual about it, as if the question was just a passing curiosity. “I’ve never been to the palace. I know they’ve got their own guard, and I didn’t know how that worked.”
They were walking down a narrow street in Newmarket. Old Boar and Garreth were in front and Maur and Frijjan Reed behind. The air bit with cold, and the cobbles were slick with ice where they weren’t hidden by grey snow. The cold was harder to bear because it was new. When the depth of winter came to thicken the city’s blood, this same air would seem like a warm hug. Now, with harvest barely gone and memory of summer still not quite forgotten, people bundled into wool jackets and cloaks and scarves and rushed through the streets with their noses and ears and bare fingers red-bitten. Even the winter sun hurried across the white-haze sky like it was impatient to find some shelter for the night.
Old Boar shrugged. “It’s a soft enough post if you like that kind of thing. It’s just another barracks and a different captain. The difference is down here you do something, and up there your whole duty roster is clearing poor folks out of the paths of their betters, holding a stick between your ass cheeks, and pissing contempt down on the rest of us.”
“Do people shift between them?”
“You want to work up there?”
Garreth heard the buzz in the words like a hornet coming too close. “No. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the palace for myself.”
They came to a smaller building. Iron brackets in the walls showed where an awning would fasten come market days, but now they were just the source of long streaks of rust. The windows were small and shuttered, and the door was painted a yellow that was likely meant to be cheerful. A stairway clung to the building’s side like a long-dead vine. Old Boar held up a finger—Hold that thought. Frijjan Reed and Maur took places at their side—four men together instead of two and two.
“City guard,” Old Boar shouted. “Open in the name of the prince.” His boot hit as he said the word prince, shattering the frame and slamming the door open. He stepped into the gloom, drawing his blade. Garreth followed with his own sword at the ready.
The interior of the tailor’s shop was grim and small. The only light was the glow that leaked through cracks in the shutters. A long table had bolts of cloth and thread and long woven leather thongs ready to be crafted into shirts or cloaks or gowns, but the air smelled of sour wine and dust. A thin Hansch man whose hairline had retreated up past his crown stumbled down the thin stairway, rage in the shape of his mouth. If he saw the open blades, he didn’t care.
“What in the shit is this? You can’t come into my shop like this! I pay my tax. I’ve complied.”
“It’s not that this time, Josie,” Frijjan Reed said.
A shadow moved on the stairway. Someone was at the top of the flight, listening, their body blocking the light. Garreth locked eyes with Maur, and they moved to be ready for anyone else who charged down while the older guards saw to the main business.
“You’ve been shaving coins,” Old Boar said.
“The fuck I have.”
“The magistrate’s had complaints from ten people in the last three weeks,” Old Boar said with a grin. “Not putting your fair dip to the tax count’s not good. Scraping the edges off old Ausai’s silver head? That’s near sacrilege.”
“Gods on a fucking string,” the balding man—Josie—said. “All right. I’m not saying I did, but what’s the fine that makes you bastards go away.”
“We’re past that,” Old Boar said.
Josie’s expression shifted between one heartbeat and the next. “You can’t take me to the gaol. I’ve got to work the shop.”
A shriek came from the top of the stairs. A woman came barreling down. She was in a plain cotton robe with a stain on the left breast. Her hands were bent into claws, and Garreth prepared to fight her back. Instead, she dodged between him and Maur and leapt for Josie.
“You said you’d stopped,” she screamed as she clawed at the man. “You said when you’d paid your debts clear, you’d stop! You promised.”
Maur grabbed her around the waist and hauled her away from her target. Garreth sheathed his blade and grabbed her arm. She thrashed like a snake while he tried to find a restraint hold that would stop her.
“I didn’t do anything,” Josie said, his hand to a cheek where she’d scratched him. “I did stop. I didn’t lie.”
“You always lie,” the woman shouted. Garreth found the lock, set her elbow against his forearm, and pushed her against the wall with it. He knew from when it had been used on him how much it hurt, but a deeper kind of pain had possessed her. She didn’t fight back against him, just sagged and craned her head to see Josie. To show him her tears and her anger. “I wish I’d never met you. I wish I didn’t know you.”
“Love, no,” Josie said, and Old Boar grabbed his arm, shifted it, and Josie fell to his knees with a yelp.
“Don’t hurt him,” the woman said. “Don’t you fucking hurt him.”
“We’re just doing the job, Yan,” Frijjan Reed said. “It’s not personal.” He gestured for Garreth to release her. She seemed to forget him as soon as he wasn’t touching her.
“He’ll walk. You don’t have to tie him,” the woman said, and punched Old Boar on the shoulder. It was like seeing a sparrow attacking an ox.
“Reed?” Old Boar said, and pushed the prisoner toward the street. The bound man was weeping.
Frijjan Reed took the woman by the shoulders. When he spoke, his voice was strangely gentle. “Don’t get in the middle of this. Let him do what he needs to do, and stay clear.”
“This is you!” she shouted. “Why are you doing this to me? It isn’t fair.”
“Josie’s been shaving down coins again,” Frijjan Reed said. “That’s the only reason we’re here. There’s nothing more than that.”
“You two,” Old Boar snapped to Garreth and Maur. “Come on.”
He pushed the prisoner stumbling out ahead of them. Garreth looked at Maur, and the two of them followed. When Garreth looked back, Frijjan Reed had an arm around the woman and she was sobbing into his shoulder. Josie walked with his head bowed, staring at the cobbles with emptiness in his eyes.
“They know each other, then?” Maur asked.
“Yan and Frijjan spilled a little salt when they were young,” Old Boar said. “Whenever we have to roust Josie here, he comes with us to help with Yan.”
“Help with,” Garreth said, wondering what the words meant. “Is he coming back with us?”
“He’ll catch up before we’re at the magistrate’s,” Old Boar said. “They don’t fuck, if that’s what you’re thinking. They got that done with each other a long time before now. But he still wants well for her, and she can get where she’s not thinking things through when she’s upset. It’s better this way.”
