Read Online Firethorn by Sarah Micklem - Free Book Online Page B

Pava said, “She’s a dry well, Cousin. I know because I’ve plumbed her. Don’t waste your time. You ought to be doing your duty instead, begetting half-breeds to improve the drudges’blood.”
    Sire Galan took two steps toward him, saying his manners should be mended.
    I grabbed his arm and found my tongue. “Everyone knows Sire Pava needs help siring bastards.”
    Such was the license of the Days that this earned me a laugh rather than a beating. I saw the Crux lean forward and touch Sire Pava’s knee to turn his attention. Dame Lyra glared and I lifted my head high and went past her. There was nothing for it but to be as brazen as I was thought to be.

    Though the feather bed was soft, I did not do much sleeping. When Sire Galan tired I goaded him on. Our bodies were greased with sweat, and the curtains held the smell of our musk close. When I cried out, sometimes I thought of Sire Pava and hoped I was keeping him awake. Rage can lend its own heat to desire, and that night I mastered Sire Galan more than he mastered me. I left before daybreak, stepping around the pallets on the hall floor.
    That was the morning of the last UpsideDown Day, the day of the feast. I came back with the villagers in the evening. Plank tables were crowded into the hall, spread with white linens. They’d scrubbed and sanded the floor, and put out tallow lamps and candles. The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood—even the Crux himself—brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag, crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted well. We were forbidden to kill the deer that fattened on our coleworts and stole our grain, and the venison tasted all the better for the salt of revenge.
    I’d looked forward to the feast, but I’d never imagined Sire Galan, or how he’d steal my thoughts and make Dame Lyra’s fetching and Sire Pava’s carrying less important. Their humility was hollow anyway. When Sire Pava came around the table and bent his knee, offering a platter of pigeons baked in clay, he didn’t keep his head down as was proper; his eyes promised that tomorrow we’d serve him again.
    I watched Sire Galan. He had a walk like a stalking cat, and could carry a brimming cup so smoothly not a drop of wine would spill. Once he stood close behind my bench and pressed my back with his hip. I thought the feast would never end. Though I gorged until my belly was tight, I’d not had my fill of Sire Galan, and we had but one more night.
    The next day was Equinox. The priest would start the count of tennights and months. At the feast tomorrow, we would take our proper places, and the villagers would kneel and swear fealty again. Balance would be restored. But when the world has been shaken and cast at odds, only the gods know what is balance and what is chaos.

    That night I lay in the cabinet bed looking at the ceiling, tracing the carved and painted vine on the panel above in hearthlight that came through the curtains. The walls were too close, the air too still.
    I could feel Sire Galan watching me, and my face stiffened. The Days were over, and he’d be going soon. I would not show I cared. I turned over in my mind what questions to ask, so I might hear his voice: if I asked whether he’d been to war before, and he had not, then I’d be more afraid; and if I asked how long the campaign would last, he might think I hoped to see him on his return, but I was not vain enough for that. There was mischief in every question.
    He said my name twice, as if he liked it on his tongue, and turned my head toward him with his hand. “Come with me,” he whispered.
    I turned my face away, and tears came against my will, sliding down my cheek and into my ear. I’d heard what kind of woman followed a man to war: a sheath. A cataphract might share her with his armiger or lend her to a