Foxfire in the Snow

by J. S. Fields

  Nine: Sulfur

  Everything crackled as the horse walked, from the frozen road to Magda’s cloak when she shook snow from the wool. Every crunch reminded me of little bones snapping—of dead men, and Mother’s house, and the conjuring in the woods. The temperature continued to drop exponentially as the sun finished setting, and I shivered into Magda and her thick cloak, which she’d wrapped around both of us. To compound the cold, what started as white dust soon mutated to thick, fat flakes of snow that iced with our breath.

  I sacrificed the well-earned body heat by sitting forward as we passed through the city wall of Miantri, which was little more than stacked stones. Set in a shallow valley halfway up the mountain range, a river ran along the eastern side, likely fed by a glacial lake somewhere farther north. Miantri was just before the tree line, so the houses were mostly brick with steep clay roofs in curved tiles. Smoke curled from every chimney, although I had to wonder if they were burning cow patties instead of wood. To waste scant trees on fuel seemed ridiculous, especially as the trees this high in elevation were scrubby and barely worth harvesting.

  Despite the hour and the temperature, the townspeople were about. There weren’t any children that I could see, but grown men and women gathered in the square as we passed on horseback. Everyone stared at a woman, wrapped in thick brown furs, erecting a small structure. A man whose hair curled like mine under his cap stood nearby, tatting what looked like lace curtains.

  “Late to be building and decorating,” I murmured into the snow.

  “For a good reason.” Magda whispered the words into my ear, her breath leaving a chill as the heat evaporated. “Look.”

  I scanned the perimeter of the square, then farther into town. Rooftops glowed yellow. Footpaths, what parts could be seen under the snow, shone a strange silver. We passed green paper lanterns hung on every signpost, house, and business. Green candles marked doorsteps and lined paths that led to the square. Everything flickered and danced in the starlight, and it was easy to let childhood fairytales sweep my mind, to imagine fairies laying foxfire mushrooms in a ritual of their own.

  “No music though?” I asked Magda as we edged the square. “Don’t festivals have music? Or did the musicians already freeze to death?”

  Magda shrugged. “It’ll get colder. Besides, guild musicians are expensive to hire as is, much less for a mountain town. Eastgate holds the musicians’ guild, so I bet the villagers couldn’t afford it.” Magda skirted the crowd and led us to a well-lit inn on the east side of the square. It had a stable to the right, bathed in the light of flickering green candles, and we headed in that direction.

  “But this isn’t an Iana ascension festival, right?” I asked as we entered the stable. “We aren’t in the right season.”

  “Miantri is a border town. They celebrate the festivals of Sorpsi and Puget. We’re somewhere in the week of tii.”

  Stable boys came out to greet us and took the reins. Magda’s hands slid from my waist and she sat back. I managed to drop from the horse without incident and grinned against the stuttering pain in my legs. I was maybe passably good at riding a horse. That was something. I offered my hand to Magda, but she raised an eyebrow at my unsure stance and eased off the saddle on her own. She bit her lower lip when her left leg took on weight.

  My grin vanished. “You’re still bleeding. You need to see a doctor.” I pointed to the fresh red stains on her pants.

  Magda waved her hand. “Let’s go inside. No doctor will attend someone during tii. I’ll come in and put some pressure on it. If need be, I’ll stitch it.” She limped out of the stable and around to the main inn door. I frowned and, on still-unsteady legs, ran-skipped to catch up with her.

  The lingering tightness in my shoulders from the conjuring evaporated upon entering the inn. Inside was warm and inviting, with the green lanterns hung on every available hook and the thick smell of chicken in the air. A man with a long beard and icy eyes brushed past us on his way out. I thought I saw at least part of a tattoo on his neck, but he disappeared into the snow and dark before I could figure out what to say. It had probably been my imagination anyway. With only the candlelight, shadows danced everywhere.

  There were four other patrons, besides us, sitting in two pairs on opposite ends of the long room. Both sets looked like travelers as their clothes were too thin for the mountains, which perhaps explained why they all looked so angry too. The inn itself had less wood than I was used to seeing, and decorated, tanned hides covered most of the available wall space, but it felt pleasant enough to be in, especially considering the alternative.

  “I’ve only one private room available,” the graying proprietor called to us. “You’d better be able to pay too. I’ve no more space for itinerants. Beds are available also in the communal men’s and women’s rooms. Take your pick.”

  All thoughts of food vanished from my mind. A familiar itching rose up on my arms.

  “We’ll take the private,” Magda said as she shook the snow from her cloak. She paused for a moment, possibly because she’d heard the uncomfortable rustling of my own cloak, and turned to look at me. “Okay? You can share with me or go to one of the communals. Your choice.”

  The proprietor walked past with a mug of yellow liquid in one hand and a key on a leather strip in the other. She tossed the key to Magda, who caught it.

  “Y-Yes,” I stuttered as my mind jumped between the three options. My fingers curled into fists.

  “I want to eat first.” Magda looked to the proprietor. “Clean table?”

  The woman bent and brushed crumbs off the nearest slab of glued-up wood, straightened, and gave Magda a look I couldn’t quite figure out. I caught more than a glimpse of cleavage pushed up from her green bodice. I was certain my face flushed, but if the woman noticed, she didn’t comment. Instead, she righted, wiped her hands on her apron, nodded at me, then went back into the kitchen.

  I thought about how Magda had looked at this serving woman, and the one at the pub in the capital. I bit my lip. Was it hypocritical to desire the very attributes I sought to hide? It made me uncomfortable to see Magda staring the way she did, but it didn’t seem right to be upset with her for an action I’d just found myself engaging in as well.

  Magda flopped into a chair and rolled her head back. “Uggh. I could sleep for a week.”

  “That’d be the blood loss,” I said flatly as I took the other chair—a dense walnut without a single glue joint that I could see, clearly guild-made.

  Her head snapped back up. She narrowed her eyes. “Food.”

  I raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue further.

  “Here you are then. More will be ready in about an hour when dinner is served.” The proprietor had returned with half a loaf of rye bread, cut into thick slices, and a bowl of hardboiled eggs. She set a tin pitcher at the edge of the table, then tipped it toward me to show the clear contents. “That’s glacial melt water. It’s clean and fine to drink, but sometimes tourists get funny about its source. If you want wine instead, let me know.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Magda said, a little too dismissively. She grabbed a slice of bread and slathered butter across it. “Thank you.”

  The woman turned to leave, then leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Maybe you want to tell the royal daughter that if she’s trying to stay disguised, giving orders like she’s the queen doesn’t help.”

  I laughed, then grabbed one of the eggs, peeled it, and took a bite. I liked this woman. She wasn’t staring, and she hadn’t gone announcing to the town that the royal heir was here either. The inn was quiet, my binding tight and flat, and I was almost warm again. Missing mothers and queens and guilders aside, it was really nice to feel relaxed and…free. Free of Mother, free of Thuja, free of assumptions.

  “You going to introduce yourself then?” the woman prodded, a smile quirking the corners of her mouth. My shoulders finally relaxed.

  “I’m Sorin the…trade alchemist, sort of, and it is a pleasure to meet yo
u.”

  The woman nodded, but her mouth turned down. “I’m Keegan. My husband and I run this inn, though it’s quickly turning into a boardinghouse with these ones.” She pointed to the booth in the far corner where a man and a woman sat, toying with the remains of their soup.

  “Are boarders not good money?” I asked. They seemed like reasonable people, if not a bit…distanced.

  Keegan sat in the chair next to me. “They keep wandering in off the glacier with some type of snow madness. They’re fine workers and have good minds, but they’ve got no real skills. Still, they can scrub dishes and clean laundry, so I suppose it’s fine.” She put her elbows on the table, then rested her chin on clasped hands.

  Magda eyed the other woman with amusement as she downed another piece of bread.

  Keegan chuckled, then turned her eyes back to me. “An unguilded alchemist? Should I ask about your business so near the glacier?”

  I wanted to talk more about the glacial wanderers, but a chance to talk about alchemy to someone who actually wanted to listen was hard to pass up. “I’m about to start my apprenticeship. I’ll be guilded and have my tattoo soon.” I grinned as I lightly touched two fingers to the burn on my neck where the tattoo would go.

  “Hmm,” Keegan said noncommittally. “Those tattoos really worth all that much these days?” She jerked her head at the corner table. “Hasn’t done much for them.”

  Magda’s eyebrow raised, and my eyes widened. “They’re guilders?” Magda asked.

  Keegan shrugged. “By tattoo. Not by skill.”

  “Excuse me.” Magda stood from the table and teetered. Spots of blood peppered the cloth covering of her chair. Keegan stared, and my chest twinged.

  As Magda gripped the table to steady herself, I stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe tomorrow?” I said gently, not wanting a rebuke that would almost certainly come. “They live here. They’re not going anywhere.”

  Magda pursed her lips and looked from me to the guild couple, then back at the food. With an exaggerated sigh, she slumped back to the chair. “Fine,” she muttered. “Tomorrow. Pass the eggs.”

  I stifled a smile, although if Magda could be so easily dissuaded, her leg hurt a lot more than she let on. It was best to eat and get her tended to. I took the last piece of bread and lathered it with butter. Light steam curled from the edges, and I reveled in the warmth. “Do you have a guild alchemist in this town?” I asked, hoping to take Magda’s mind off the guilders.

  Keegan sniffed and crossed her arms. “We don’t have the best history with the unbound guilds up here. Too sordid a history with the three countries. You’ll want to watch who you talk to.”

  Magda coughed, and I heard her mutter “not a good topic” before she took a bite of egg.

  I glared at her, then looked back to Keegan. “Unbound guilds are still guilds; they just don’t have guildhalls or grandmasters primarily housed in one country. They’re not part of the census. They’re—they’re not like traders, who have a base understanding of the skills and refuse to pay guild dues. Besides, alchemy is nothing like magic at all. Be afraid of witches, sure, but alchemy isn’t something to be feared, just understood.”

  Keegan dabbed at her mouth with the edge of her apron, then looked at me with an incredulous expression. “That’s what you think, is it? And you think joining a guild is going to help with this ‘misunderstanding’? Really? Also, if you already have the skills, why bother? Tradespeople can get just as much work done.”

  I tried to interrupt, but Keegan flicked her hand and cut me off. “Why constrain yourself with rules and old methods that can’t compete with machines?”

  “But machines will never be able to do the fine detail,” I argued as heat pushed up my neck and onto my cheeks. Tension had seeped into the conversation, and now the piece of bread in my hand was crushed so completely that parts of it squeezed between my fingers. “If you think the guilds will give up their secret knowledge, you don’t know much about guilds. They’d rather let knowledge die than share it. And then what? We lose not only methods passed down over centuries, but we lose craftship. Art. Attention to detail. Quality. History!”

  Magda stood, nosily grating the feet of her chair across the wood floor. “I’m going to the room. Sorin, come see me before you decide where to sleep? We have to leave after lunch tomorrow for Celtis, so don’t be up too late.”

  “Yes,” I said, not bothering to look at her. I heard her sigh as she left the main room.

  Keegan tried for a look of patience and failed abysmally. “Such vehemence. Is that you talking, alchemist, or the royal daughter? We understand the importance of history here well enough. We’re not so far from Iana’s Lake, in theory. She might have even come from this town. But we know, too, that we have to feed our families, and guilds.” She made a fist with her hand, then flared her fingers apart. “The machines are here, whether or not our queen wants to see it. That means poof—the guilds will disappear and take all those too sandy-headed to look around with them. Besides, in the end, a cup just has to hold water. It doesn’t have to look pretty or have a fancy rim. We don’t need guild technique.”

  I slammed my clump of bread to the table. “That’s not true!”

  “It is,” Keegan replied calmly. “How many guilders do you have left in the capital?”

  I shoved myself back from the table and stood. “There are plenty of guilders. They’ve just…gone somewhere.”

  Keegan’s look turned pitying. “Gone to get other jobs? They’ve had to leave here, then, noting how many of them are wandering back across the glacier. Guild jobs are some of the best in the three countries. You think they’d just abandon them all, collectively, to take a trip?”

  Her words fell around me like a suffocating blanket. I leaned against a pillar and stared at the ground. I didn’t want to hear this. Surely Mother would have told me this was happening! What reason did she have to keep it from me? It’s not as if it had just snuck in overnight.

  “Do you have any guilders in this town?” I looked back at the booth, which was now empty, the guilders perhaps having turned in for the night. “Guilders that still practice, that is?”

  Keegan sat back and blinked several times. “We tore down the trapper’s and trader’s guildhall over a year ago. We’ve not had a guild master of any specialty for at least five years, although we see a few scattered guilders from time to time. Travelers mostly. We’ve had a number of masters pass through, recently, but they never stay. It’s been this way for years up here, if not in the capital. We’re too remote for the queen to visit much, and we’ve no real reason to head south. The guilds are dead.”

  Keegan rolled an egg on the table, her eyes filled with something close enough to pity that I felt heavy. “Not really sure myself how you missed all this.”

  “I…”

  I’d missed it because I was living in Mother’s house.

  I’d missed it because Mother, who traveled regularly, had conveniently neglected to mention anything about it, and I’d never thought to ask. Why should I have, when Mother had kept me so entrenched in guild culture?

  I’d missed it because I’d been too fixated with alchemy to ask, and Magda probably didn’t think I was ready to hear it from her. Because guilds were all I knew, and all I had, and I was clinging like a piranha to a dying institution.

  I hit my head against the pillar as anger threatened to make me cry for the second time today.

  I was an idiot. I was an unguilded, starry-eyed idiot.

  What else had I missed while hiding away in the Thujan woods?

  Ten: Salt

  I walked, shakily, to the private room at the back of the inn. My inner thighs were chafed, my hips sore, and there was a funny tickle in my lower back. Horses. Damn horses. And damn Magda for not telling me how bad the guilds had gotten. Damn Mother, as well, since she clearly knew things were rotten and had never seen fit to mention it.

  “Magda?” I pulled my cloak from my shoulders and rappe
d on the door, trying to settle my emotions. “Are you all right?”

  “Come in,” I heard through the wood, and though her voice was muffled, it sounded strained.

  I pushed the heavy walnut door open and stepped into a small, sparsely furnished room. A double bed sat against the south wall. One sheepskin rug covered half the floor, and an iron table was wedged near the door. A woven hemp partition hung down from the ceiling, concealing another corner.

  Magda sat on a short stool in the center of the room, her cloak heaped next to her. Though the room was not overly warm, sweat beaded on her forehead. One of her boots lay crumpled to her right, the other still on, though unlaced—the one on her injured leg. I watched her hands clench and heard the catch in her breathing.

  “Might be a little sore from the horse,” she said as she looked sheepishly up at me.

  I quirked the corner of my mouth. “Definitely not the arrow wound. Here, I’ve got it.”

  I tossed my cloak with hers, knelt, and removed the other boot as gently as I could. She hissed only once when the boot snagged on her ankle, but it came off quick enough. Her wool socks were thick and finely knit but smelled the same as any others. I hovered my hand just above her leg, traveling from ankle to thigh. The left side of her pants looked almost entirely dark brown, and the area near her wound felt warm and moist.

  “We really need to do something about your leg. You sure we can’t ask for a doctor? Surely a doctor would attend to the royal daughter during tii.”

  “No doctor will attend me during tii celebrations. Pugins believe each village has a special spirit that guards their lands, and if you don’t take care of it when you’re supposed to, you know…” She caught my eye and smirked. “Consequently, you’d get along well with them. They also don’t like magic as they believe it takes from the natural world and, thereby, takes from the spirits. Spookiness of the unbound guilds and all.” She widened her eyes and made a whooooing sound.

  “Funny. I don’t like magic because it’s nonsense,” I retorted. I remained on my knees. There had to be a delicate way to get Magda out of her clothes so I could check the wound. All the phrases I could think of, however, only sounded suggestive.