Sorcery Rising (25 page)

‘Erno says she’s unwell,’ Marin said. ‘She may not even be able to come to the Gathering.’ She added this detail with a hint of triumph, it seemed to Jenna. ‘So I’m waiting here until he has a break to ask him whether he might spare me a dance instead.’

‘Marin!’ Jenna was scandalised. ‘You can’t ask Erno to dance with you. It’s not right. Not right at all.’

Marin looked wary. ‘What is not right about it? He doesn’t belong to Katla, whatever she may think,’ she added with some spite.

‘You can’t ask him to dance with you: that’s not how it’s done, not by grown women, at least; and Sur knows, you look pretty much a grown woman to me now, Marin: by heaven, you do.’

Marin folded her arms close about her chest, but the irrepressible bosom refused to be thus contained. As soon as pressure was applied to it from below, it flowed upward and burst joyously out of the shawl like an independent creature. With a yelp, Marin hurriedly readjusted her dress. ‘Oh, Jenna,’ she wailed, grabbing the older girl’s arm, ‘whatever shall I do? They just won’t stop growing!’

Jenna allowed her gaze to fall again. On Marin’s thin frame, the size of her new appendages did seem inordinate. ‘You should thank the Fates for such bounty,’ she said, as kindly as she could manage. ‘After years of being as flat as a flounder you should be pleased your womanly growth has at last come upon you. A goodly-sized bosom is no bad thing. I certainly intend to make the most of my own in the dress I shall wear for the King. What are you wearing tonight, Marin?’

The girl looked even more miserable. ‘I . . . I don’t know. The dress I was going to wear – you know, the blue one with the fur trimming—’ Jenna nodded ‘—is too tight now. I tried it on last night, and split the seams. Today I cannot even pull it up past my waist. It’s not natural, Jenna, truly it’s not.’

‘Of course it is, my dear,’ Jenna said in her most comforting and matronly voice. ‘It’s the most natural thing in the world.’

‘But it
isn’t
!’ Marin leaned confidentially towards Jenna. ‘You must promise you won’t tell anyone, for they will surely laugh at me for my stupidity; but I went to the Wandering folk.’ She looked guiltily around, and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s magic. Magic gone horribly wrong. I bought a charm. To make them grow. To . . . to make Erno notice me.’

Jenna gasped, remembering her conversation with Kitten Soronsen, and how that catty little madam had gleefully (if erroneously) reported that Marin had taken Erno to see the Footloose people to buy him a love potion, an idea Jenna had at the time thought preposterous.
How pathetic
, she thought now,
that the childish, scrawny Marin should have been driven to such lengths to make a man notice her. And to have had such unfortunate results for all her trouble
. . . She had to stifle a laugh, it was so ridiculous. And all for Erno Hamson, too, that dolt. Besides, anyone with eyes could see it was Katla Aransen he burned for. She sighed. Poor Marin.

‘Magic?’ Unconsciously, Jenna fingered her hair. ‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘that’s easily dealt with then.’

‘It is?’

‘Of course. We’ll just go right back to wherever you bought the charm from and ask them to give you something that will reverse the effect.’

Marin stared at her, mouth open, as if at an oracle. ‘Oh, Jenna, you’re so clever!’ Then her face fell. She dug in the pouch tied at her waist, tipped it up into her palm. Two small silver coins dropped out with a tinkle. ‘Oh dear. Not nearly enough.’

‘How much did the first charm cost you?’

‘Twelve cantari.’

‘
Twelve
cantari?’

‘It was all my savings,’ Marin said defensively.

Twelve cantari. Jenna had at least thirty in her own purse, but there was no way she was giving it to Marin Edelsen. Then a thought struck her. She grabbed Marin by the hand and began to tow her away from Katla’s stall. ‘Come with me!’

‘But—’ Marin cast an imploring look back over her shoulder at Erno, who, by the set of his head and carefully downcast eyes, was very deliberately taking no notice of the pair of them. ‘But where are we going? The nomad quarter’s in the other direction. I don’t understand—’

‘There’s absolutely no point in going to the nomad quarter until you’ve got the money to pay for a new charm. So we’re going to get you that money.’

‘But how?’

Jenna did not respond. Rather, she hauled on Marin’s arm so that the girl lost her precarious balance and had to run after her to keep upright.

‘Jenna,’ Marin cried, her voice rising to a wail so that Erno’s head came up sharply. ‘The Games are that way—’

‘I know, silly. That’s exactly where we’re going. Where there’s competition there’s betting. There’s this young Istrian everyone’s talking about, Fara Gilsen said. Handsome as a hawk and with a wonderfully exotic name: Tanto Vingo.’ She elongated the vowels luxuriantly. ‘Bound to win the swords, that’s what Fara said. We’ll bet your silvers on him and that should double your money.’ She clapped her hands, delighted by her own ingenuity. ‘Easy!’

Marin followed, confused as to how a lady should behave if she was not allowed to ask the man she liked for a single dance at a formal Gathering, yet could cheerfully mingle with the rogues and sharps at the betting stand. If her father saw her there, he’d surely give her a good clout. Fearful, but driven by her desperation, she trotted meekly in Jenna’s footsteps, her bosom wobbling unhappily with every step.

Tanto Vingo was at that moment throwing a tantrum. His final bout started in less than half an hour, and yet here he was, having found yesterday’s damaged dagger still in its sheath and no chance of ameliorating the situation in the little time there was to spare. And yet he had a vague memory that somewhere between wandering the Fair with his brother the previous afternoon and the araque binge in which his father and uncle had encouraged him last night, he had had in his hands another weapon; a wonderfully balanced blade that had fit in his palm like a deadly caress. He could feel it still, in his memory, like an amputated limb.

‘It’s not so bad, Tanto, truly,’ said his father soothingly. Saro watched him retrieve the blade Tanto had thrown on the ground in his fury, and dust it off. ‘See: the nicks are very small.’

‘It’s ruined!’ Tanto howled. ‘Just like everything else. How by the Goddess’s tits am I supposed to win the swordplay with a broken blade? Even against that scruffy old man? And if I don’t, then Saro better win the bloody yearling stakes, or his life won’t be worth living.’

And it wouldn’t, Saro knew that for a fact. He excused himself and went to attend to the horses.

He’d awoken that morning from a fitful sleep. All night he had been visited by dreams in which none of the import was clear, and even those that seemed to start well would turn suddenly to show him their dark underside. In the dream he recalled most clearly he had been on horseback, riding hard across an unknown moorland. Overhead, the clouds scudded across the sun behind his shoulder, so that while they galloped they remained always in the warm, but if they slowed, he knew the shadows on the ground that mirrored the racing clouds above would creep up and engulf them. It became imperative that they outrun those shadows. Whatever the reason might be, it evaded him. His heart had thundered in time with the horse’s hooves. When the lake had suddenly loomed up before them, he had known they were lost. And then the horse had vanished and he was sinking, down and down, fighting for breath, until he was swallowed by the darkness and knew he must drown. But just as he was thinking this, a sea creature had come to him – out of nowhere, it seemed – propelling itself powerfully through the water, a sea creature with familiar storm-grey eyes. He had embraced it gladly, and together they had spiralled to the surface, where the clouds had passed harmlessly overhead, leaving them bobbing in a pool of golden sunlight.

A sea creature, he had thought on waking, in a freshwater lake? He must be losing his mind. He had extricated himself from his twisted covers and sat on the edge of the couch, slowly recalling the events of the previous day. And then he had felt beneath his pillow, and there was the dagger he had stowed there, the dagger she had made, all silver knotwork and fiery patterns where the metal had been folded back on itself, forged and reforged in the flames until its natural dragon emerged, to mirror the elaborately worked one that coiled up the hilt. He had picked it up, cradled it in his hand like a living thing; and like a living thing it had thrummed against his palm, sending warm vibrations up the bones of his arm.

‘Katla,’ he said now, remembering again. ‘Katla Aransen.’

The sound of it was like a spell to him. He finished grooming the bay’s mane and laid his head on its fragrant shoulder. As he did so, he felt the horse tremble beneath his cheek, and then his mind roiled and opened. There was comfort there in the touch, a sense of companionship; a recognition that here was one with gentle, rhythmic hands who moved the brush with the grain of the hair instead of deliberately forcing it through knots to tug and pull; a recognition, moreover, that this was the one who carried delicious food inside his outer skin, where the other brought only pain and fear: the stone that stung, the foot that bruised . . . Saro pulled away from the bay with a start, and contact with the beast’s mind ceased abruptly. He felt himself go hot, then cold. It was bad enough that the old nomad’s so-called gift should bestow upon him unwanted access to other people’s buried thoughts; but to suddenly be a party to the unfamiliar geography of a horse’s mind was disorientating indeed.

Night’s Harbinger whickered and nosed at him, but Saro dodged away, his own thoughts in turmoil. Surely to ride the horse now would be some sort of an intrusion, a violation? But then, to ride any horse would prompt the same response. How, then was he to go about his life, if he could touch neither man nor animal without this unwelcome flow of feelings? The subject was too huge: it shied away from examination. For now, he thought, trying desperately to focus on the smaller scale, on the manageable, there was the matter of the race to be decided. He dropped the grooming brush there in the dust and turned on his heel. He would tell them the horse was lame, that it could not run. Perhaps his father and uncle could find another way to make up the bride-price and save him from a beating. But what then of Guaya and her poor grandmother? Without the money he had determined to collect for them, how would they manage? His thoughts ran on and on, mercilessly tangled. The problem grew, took on further implications and consequences, became insoluble. His thoughts were as knotted together as the eight arms of the mythical Sucker of Ships after the hero Sirio the Great had vanquished it, so that he could find neither beginning nor end to them. By the time he reached the sword-ring, he still had no idea of what he would say or do.

A considerable crowd had gathered for the bout and blue-cloaked officials had trouble keeping the onlookers behind the ropes that marked the edge of the fight arena, for still they kept coming, more all the time, as if word had spread far and wide across the fairground that this was the main event. Of the two contestants, though, only one had so far arrived: Tanto, who strolled nonchalantly about the ring as if it were his own, smiling and pressing the hands of the prettier women who leaned over the ropes to give him a word of encouragement, a touch for luck; a favour. He kissed one on the cheek, another (more voluptuous) on the lips. They giggled and blushed. The second tied an embroidered ribbon about his bicep, where it fluttered in the light breeze like a pennant. A nomad woman threw him a flower, and, laughing, he caught it in mid-air and tucked it behind his ear. The women loved that, Saro noticed bitterly. It was as if Tanto held them somehow in thrall, for the shyer ones fluttered and blushed if his eyes fell on them, while the bold plumped up their bosoms and made lewd remarks. Saro realised, with a jolt of envy, that this was what it was to have outer beauty and arrogance: the women cared nothing for the man beneath the handsome surface, for the cruelty and pettiness that he knew so well, so long as they were able to flirt and be teased. He wished with sudden vehemence that he could transfer to each of them the gift he had received from the old nomad. Then perhaps they would be less keen to attract his brother’s attention.

Across the far side of the ring, the crowd began to move apart to make way for a tall man, wearing the wound cloth headwear of the desertmen. He came striding through the throng, followed by a half dozen of his followers, all clad in the same outlandish fashion. When he reached the ropes, instead of ducking beneath them in the usual fashion, the first man scissored his legs and cleared them neatly. A momentary hush quieted the crowd, then everyone started talking at once.

‘The Phoenix, they call him,’ Saro heard a man in front of him say to his companion, ‘the carrion bird that rises from the embers.’

Saro studied the desertman closely, intrigued. He was, for all his imposing appearance, no taller than Tanto, he realised, slightly disappointed. It was the headcloth that had made him seem so; but still he was impressive: being lightly built, but wiry. A deceptive sort of man, Saro thought; one who did not wear his prowess like a peacock. Indeed, the Phoenix’s gear was old and filthy. His undershirt, where it showed at hem and cuffs, was of stained and indeterminately coloured, crumpled cloth. Over this he wore a plain jerkin of tanned leather, cinched with a plaited rag belt and over this a breastplate of thicker leather covered with a hundred overlapping rounds of dented iron. His breeches were of the same dun hue as the jerkin and bound tight from knee to ankle in the barbarian fashion with strips of crossed hide from which not all the hair and flesh had been successfully flayed. Black and brown tufts stuck out this way and that where the bindings met, but Saro could not even begin to hazard a guess as to what sort of hideous creature had donated its ugly hide to the purpose. With the folds of the headcloth obscuring all but the Phoenix’s eyes, it was hard to put an age to him. From his bearing – experienced, confident, fluidly fit – Saro could imagine him anywhere between thirty and fifty or more years of age. And the eyes did not help, either: they were dark and gleaming, but the crow’s feet that fanned from their corners were, when the man stopped frowning (or smiling: it was hard to tell which) pale against skin that appeared dark with years of sun and wind. A tough one, Saro thought: hardly the ‘scruffy old man’ his stupid brother had dubbed him. The phrase ‘a seasoned fighter’ came unprompted to Saro’s mind, as if the very definition of the words stood there before his eyes. And indeed it fit the man well: he did look as hard as seasoned yew or oak – left out in the elements to harden or rot. And when he rolled the sleeves of his undershirt up, Saro saw a maze of white scars criss-crossing his forearms. What chance did his brother stand against such a man?