The Fires of Heaven twot-5 Read online

  Min grimaced, partly because she was growing tired of Siuan's Tairen fisherman's sayings, and partly because the other woman was right. So far they had outrun awkward news — deadly was a better word than awkward — but some news had a way of leaping a hundred miles in a day. Siuan had been traveling as Mara, Leane as Amaena, and Logain had taken the name Dalyn, after Siuan convinced him Guaire was a fool's choice. Min still did not think anyone would recognize her own name, but Siuan insisted on calling her Serenla. Even Logain did not know their true names.

  The real trouble was that Siuan was not going to give up. Weeks of utter failure, and now this, yet any mention of heading for Tear, which was sensible, set off a tempest that quailed even Logain. The longer they had searched without finding what Siuan sought, the more temper she had developed. Not that she couldn't crack rocks with it before. Min was wise enough to keep that particular thought to herself.

  Leane finally finished with her dress and tugged it on over her head, doubling her arms behind her to do up the buttons. Min could not see why she had gone to the trouble; she herself hated needlework of any sort. The neckline was a little lower now, showing a bit of Leane's bosom, and it fit in a snugger way there and perhaps around the hips. But what was the point, here? No one was going to ask her to dance in this roasting shed.

  Digging into Min's saddlebags, Leane pulled out the wooden box of paints, and powders and whatnots that Laras had forced on Min before they set out. Min had kept meaning to throw it away, but somehow she had never gotten around to it. There was a small mirror inside the hinged lid of the box, and in moments Leane was at work on her face with small rabbit-fur brushes. She had never shown any particular interest in the things before. Now she appeared vexed that there was only a blackwood hairbrush and a small ivory comb to use on her hair. She even muttered about the lack of a way to heat the curling iron! Her dark hair had grown since they began Siuan's search, but it still came well short of her shoulders.

  After watching a bit, Min asked, "What are you up to, Le— Amaena?" She avoided looking at Siuan. She could guard her tongue; it was just being cooped up and baked alive, that on top of the coming trial. A hanging or a public strapping. What a choice! "Have you decided to take up flirting?" It was meant for a joke — Leane was all business and efficiency — something to lighten the moment, but the other woman surprised her.

  "Yes," Leane said briskly, peering wide-eyed into the mirror while she carefully did something to her eyelashes. "And if I flirt with the right man, perhaps we will not need to worry about strappings or anything else. At the least, I might get us lighter sentences."

  Hand half-raised to wipe her face again, Min gasped — it was like an owl announcing it meant to become a hummingbird — but Siuan merely sat up facing Leane with a level "What brought this on?"

  Had Siuan directed that gaze at her, Min suspected she would have confessed to things she had forgotten. When Siuan concentrated on you like that, you found yourself curtsying and leaping to do as you were told before you realized it. Even Logain did, most of the time. Except for the curtsy.

  Leane calmly stroked a tiny brush along her cheekbones and examined the result in the small mirror. She did glance at Siuan, but whatever she saw, she answered in the same crisp tones she always used. "My mother was a merchant, you know, in furs and timber mainly. I once saw her fog a Saldaean lord's mind till he consigned his entire year's timber harvest to her for half the amount he wanted, and I doubt he realized what had happened until he was nearly back home. If then. He sent her a moonstone bracelet, later. Domani women don't deserve the whole reputation they have — stiff-necked prigs going by hearsay built most of it — but we have earned some. My mother and my aunts taught me along with my sisters and cousins, of course."

  Looking down at herself, she shook her head, then returned to her ministrations with a sigh. "But I fear I was as tall as I am today on my fourteenth naming day. All knees and elbows, like a colt that grew too fast. And not long after I could walk across a room without tripping twice, I learned —" She drew a deep breath. " — learned my life would take me another way than being a merchant. And now that is gone, too. About time I put to use what I was taught all those years ago. Under the circumstances, I can't think of a better time or place."

  Siuan studied her shrewdly a moment more. "That isn't the reason. Not the whole reason. Out with it."

  Hurling a small brush into the box, Leane blazed up in a fury. "The whole reason? I do not know the whole reason. I only know I need something in my life to replace — what is gone. You yourself told me that is the only hope of surviving. Revenge falls short, for me. I know your cause is necessary, and perhaps even, right, but the Light help me, that is not enough either; I can't make myself be as involved as you. Maybe I came too late to it. I will stay with you, but it isn't enough."

  Anger faded as she began resealing pots and vials and replacing them, though she used more force than was strictly necessary. There was the merest hint of rose scent about her. "I know flirting isn't something to fill up the emptiness, but it is enough to fill an idle moment. Maybe being who I was born to be will suffice. I just do not know. This isn't a new idea; I always wanted to be like my mother and my aunts, daydreamed of it sometimes after I was grown."

  Leane's face became pensive, and the last things went into the box more gently. "I think perhaps I've always felt I was masquerading as someone else, building up a mask until it became second nature. There was serious work to be done, more serious than merchanting, and by the time I realized there was another way I could have gone even so, I had the mask on too firmly to take off. Well, that is done with, now, and the mask is coming off. I even considered beginning with Logain a week ago, for practice. But I am out of practice, and I think he is the kind of man who might hear more promises than you meant to offer, and expect to have them fulfilled." A small smile suddenly appeared on her lips. "My mother always said if that happened, you had miscalculated badly; if there was no back way out, you had to either abandon dignity and run, or pay the price and consider it a lesson." The smile took on a roguish cast. "My Aunt Resara said you paid the price and enjoyed it."

  Min could only shake her head. It was as if Leane had become a different woman. Talking that way about…! Even hearing it, she could hardly believe. Come to that, Leane actually looked different. For all of the work with brushes, there was not a hint of paint or powder on her face that Min could see, yet her lips seemed fuller, her cheekbones higher, her eyes larger. She was a more than pretty woman at any time, but now her beauty was magnified fivefold.

  Siuan was not quite finished, though. "And if this country lord is one like Logain?" she said softly. "What will you do then?"

  Leane drew herself up stiff-backed on her knees and swallowed hard before answering, but her voice was perfectly level. "Given the alternatives, what choice would you make?"

  Neither blinked, and the silence stretched.

  Before Siuan could answer — if she meant to; Min would have given a pretty to hear it — the chain and lock rattled on the other side of the door. The other two women got slowly to their feet, gathering their saddlebags in calm preparation, but Min leaped up wishing she had her belt knife. Fool thing to wish for, she thought. Just get me in worse trouble. I'm no bloody hero in a story. Even if I jumped the guard—

  The door opened, and a man with a long leather jerkin over his shirt filled the doorway. Not a fellow to be attacked by a young woman, even with a knife. Maybe not even with an axe. Wide was the word for him, and thick. The few hairs remaining on his head were more white than not, but he looked hard as an old oak stump. "Time for you girls to stand before the lord," he said gruffly. "Will you walk, or must we haul you like grain sacks? You go, either way, but I'd as soon not have to carry you in this heat."

  Peeking past him, Min saw two more men waiting, gray-haired but just as hard, if not quite so big.

  "We will walk," Siuan told him dryly.

  "Good. Come, then. Step along.
Lord Gareth won't like being kept waiting."

  Promise to walk or no, each man took one of them firmly by the arm as they started up the dusty dirt street. The balding man's hand encircled Min's arm like a manacle. So much for running for it, she thought bitterly. She considered kicking his booted ankle to see if that would loosen his grip, but he looked so solid she suspected all it would earn her was a sore toe and being dragged the rest of the way.

  Leane appeared lost in thought; she half-made small gestures with her free hand, and her lips moved silently as though reviewing what she meant to say, but she kept shaking her head and starting over again. Introspection wrapped Siuan, too, but she wore an openly worried frown, even chewing her underlip; Siuan never showed that much unease. All in all, the pair of them did nothing for Min's confidence.

  The beam-ceilinged common room of the Good Queen's Justice did less. Lank-haired Admer Nem, a yellowed bruise around his swollen eye, stood to one side with half a dozen equally stout brothers and cousins and their wives, all in their best coats or aprons. The farmers eyed the three prisoners with a mixture of anger and satisfaction that made Min's stomach sink. If anything, the farmwives' glares were worse, pure hate. The rest of the walls were lined six deep with villagers, all garbed for the work they had interrupted for this. The blacksmith still wore his leather apron, and a number of women had sleeves rolled up, arms dusted with flour. The room buzzed with their murmuring among themselves, the elders as much as the few children, and their eyes latched onto the three women as avidly as the Nems' did. Min thought this must be as much excitement as Kore Springs had ever witnessed. She had seen a crowd with this mood once — at an execution.

  The tables had been removed, except for one placed in front of the long brick fireplace. A bluff-faced, stocky man, his hair thick with gray, sat facing them in a well-cut coat of dark green silk, hands folded in front of him on the tabletop. A slim woman who showed as much age stood beside the table in a fine, gray wool dress embroidered with white flowers around the neck. The local lord, Min supposed, and his lady; country nobility little better informed of the world than their tenants and crofters.

  The guards situated them in front of the lord's table and melted into the watchers. The woman in gray stepped forward, and the murmurs died.

  "All here attend and give ear," the woman announced, "for justice will be meted today by Lord Gareth Bryne. Prisoners, you are called before the judgment of Lord Bryne." Not the lord's lady, then; an official of some sort. Gareth Bryne? The last Min remembered, he was Captain-General of the Queen's Guards, in Caemlyn. If it was the same man. She glanced at Siuan, but Siuan had her eyes locked on the wide floorboards in front of her feet. Whoever he was, this Bryne looked weary.

  "You are charged," the woman in gray went on, "with trespass by night, arson and destruction of a building and its contents, the killing of valuable livestock, assault on the person of Admer Nem, and the theft of a purse said to contain gold and silver. It is understood that the assault and theft were the work of your companion, who escaped, but you three are equally culpable under the law."

  She paused to let it sink in, and Min exchanged rueful glances with Leane. Logain would have to add theft to the stew. He was probably halfway to Murandy by now, if not more distant yet.

  After a moment the woman began again. "Your accusers are here to face you." She gestured to the cluster of Nems. "Admer Nem, you will give your testimony."

  The stout man eased forward in a blend of self-importance and self-consciousness, tugging at his coat where the wooden buttons strained over his middle, running his hands through thinning hair that kept dropping into his face. "Like I said, Lord Gareth, it was like this… "

  He gave a fairly straightforward account of discovering them in the hayloft and ordering them out, though he made Logain near a foot taller and turned the man's single blow into a fight, where Nem gave as good as he got. The lantern fell, the hay went up, and the rest of the family came spilling out of the farmhouse into the predawn; the prisoners were seized and the barn burned to the ground, and then the loss of the purse from the house was discovered. He did slight the part where Lord Bryne's retainer rode by as some of the family were bringing out ropes and eyeing tree limbs.

  When he started on the "fight" again — this time he seemed to be winning — Bryne cut him off. "That will be enough, Master Nem. You may step back."

  Instead, a round-faced one of the Nem women, of an age to be Admer's wife, joined him. Round-faced, but not soft; round like a frying pan or a river rock. And flushed with something more than anger. "You whip these hussies good, Lord Gareth, hear? Whip them good, and ride them to Jornhill on a rail!"

  "No one called on you to speak, Maigan," the slim woman in gray said sharply. "This is a trial, not a petition meeting. You and Admer step back. Now." They obeyed, Admer with a shade more alacrity than Maigan. The gray-clad woman turned to Min and her companions. "If you wish to offer testimony, in defense or mitigation, you may now give it." There was no sympathy in her voice, nor anything else for that matter.

  Min expected Siuan to speak — she always took the lead, did the talking — but Siuan never stirred or raised her eyes. Instead, it was Leane who moved toward the table, her eyes on the man behind it.

  She stood as straight as ever, but her usual walk — a graceful stride, but a stride — had become a sort of glide, with just a hint of willowy sway to it. Somehow her hips and bosom seemed more obvious. Not that she flaunted anything; the way she moved just made you aware. "My Lord, we are three helpless women, refugees from the storms that sweep the world." Her usually brisk tones were gone, changed to a velvety soft caress. There was a light in her dark eyes, a sort of smoldering challenge. "Penniless and lost, we took shelter in Master Nem's barn. It was wrong, I know, but we were afraid of the night." A small gesture, hands half-raised, the insides of her wrists to Bryne, made her seem for a moment utterly helpless. Only for that moment, though. "The man Dalyn was a stranger to us really, a man who offered us his protection. In these days, women alone must have a protector, my Lord, yet I fear we made a poor choice." A widening of the eyes, an entreating look, said he could make a better for them. "It was indeed he who attacked Master Nem, my Lord; we would have fled, or worked to repay our night's lodging." Stepping around the side of the table, she knelt gracefully beside Bryne's chair and gently rested the fingers of one hand on his wrist as she gazed up into his eyes. A tremble touched her voice, but her slight smile was enough to set any man's heart racing. It suggested. "My Lord, we are guilty of some small crime, yet not so much as we are charged with. We throw ourselves on your mercy. I beg you, my Lord, have pity on us, and protect us."

  For a long moment, Bryne stared back into her eyes. Then, clearing his throat roughly, he scraped back his chair, rose, and walked around the opposite end of the table from her. There was a stir among the villagers and farmers, men clearing their throats as their lord had done, women muttering under their breath. Bryne stopped in front of Min. "What is your name, girl?"

  "Min, my Lord." She caught a muffled grunt from Siuan and hastily added, "Serenla Min. Everyone calls me Serenla, my Lord."

  "Your mother must have had a premonition," he murmured with a smile. He was not the first to react to the name in a like way. "Do you have any statement to make, Serenla?"

  "Only that I am very sorry, my Lord, and it really wasn't our fault. Dalyn did it all. I ask for mercy, my Lord." That did not seem much alongside Leane's plea — anything at all would seem insignificant beside Leane's performance — but it was the best she could find. Her mouth was as dry as the street outside. What if he did decide to hang them?

  Nodding, he moved over to Siuan, who was still studying the floor. Cupping a hand under her chin, he raised her eyes to his. "And what is your name, girl?"

  With a jerk of her head, Siuan pulled her chin free and took a step back. "Mara, my Lord," she whispered. "Mara Tomanes."

  Min groaned softly. Siuan was plainly frightened, yet at the s
ame time she stared at the man defiantly. Min more than half-expected her to demand Bryne let them walk away on the instant. He asked her if she wished to make a statement, and she denied it in another unsteady whisper, but all the while looking at him as though she were the one in charge. She might be controlling her tongue, but certainly not her eyes.

  After a time, Bryne turned away. "Take your place with your friends, girl," he told Leane as he returned to his chair. She joined them with a look of open frustration, and what in anyone else Min would have called a touch of petulance.

  "I have reached my decision," Bryne said to the room at large. "The crimes are serious, and nothing I have heard alters the facts. If three men sneak into another's house to steal his candlesticks and one of them attacks the owner, all three are equally guilty. There must be recompense. Master Nem, I will give you the cost of rebuilding your barn, plus the price of six milkcows." The stout farmer's eyes brightened, until Bryne added, "Caralin will disburse the coin to you when she is content as to costs and prices. Some of your cows were going dry, I hear." The slim woman in gray nodded in satisfaction. "For the bump on your head, I award you one silver mark. Don't complain," he said firmly as Nem opened his mouth. "Maigan has given you worse for drinking too much." A ripple of laughter among the onlookers greeted that, not diminished at all by Nem's half-abashed glares, and perhaps spurred by the tightlipped look Maigan gave her husband. "I will also replace the amount of the stolen purse. Once Caralin has satisfied herself as to how much was in it." Nem and his wife appeared equally disgruntled, but they held their tongues; it was plain he had given them what he would. Min began to feel hope.

  Leaning his elbows on the table, Bryne turned his attention to her and the other two. His slow words tied her stomach into a knot. "You three will work for me, at the normal wages for whatever tasks you are given, until the coin I've paid out is repaid to me. Do not think I am being lenient. If you swear an oath that satisfies me you don't have to be guarded, you can work in my manor. If not, it means the fields, where you can be under someone's eyes every minute. Wages are lower in the fields, but it is your decision."