The Spirit Ring

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "It's not that bad," Thur said mildly.

  Tich hopped in a circle, shaking the drops off. "Mad mountain man!" He stuffed his foot back into his boot.

  "The water in the mines is much colder."

  "God save me from the mines, then," said Tich fervently. "I'm for open road. Isn't this the life?" He waved a possessive arm at the encroaching spring evening, as if he owned it all to the horizons. "You should join us, Thur, not shut yourself up in some nasty little dark shop."

  Thur shook his head, smiling. "It's the metal, Tich. Hundreds of men labor to get metal like the copper we're carrying into the hands of some fancy smith, and who gets the credit? The artisan, that's who. Besides..." Thur paused, hesitating to confide his heart's hope to a possibly unsympathetic ear. I want to learn to make splendid and beautiful things. "Besides, it can't be any darker or more nasty than the mines."

  "It's all in what you're used to, I guess," Tich allowed, too amiable to argue.

  Pico strolled over to redirect Tich's energy. "Come on, boy, you've got mules to curry."

  Thur shrugged his dusty wool tunic and leggings back on. Those must last till he reached Montefoglia, and found a washerwoman. Perhaps he could strike a deal, split firewood or something in exchange. Working his way with Packmaster Pico, Thur had not yet had to tap his little store of coins, and he hoped to make them last as long as possible, so as not to be wholly dependent on the charity of his brother Uri.

  He shared his soap with Pico, while Tich attempted to dragoon the ten-year-old Zilio into helping with his assigned chore, and Zilio protested. Their squabbling faded in the distance as Thur and Pico walked across the road to the inn. The men's shadows lay long in front of them as the sun reached for the rim of the hills to their backs. Thur's stride lengthened. The pink inn seemed poignant with some undefined promise, drawing him on. Thur decided it must be his thirst.

  He shouldered through the front door after Pico, who called cheerily for Catti. The whitewashed front room was set up with benches and tables on trestles. A few coals glowed in the banked fireplace, ready to ignite a neat stack of wood waiting to be piled on later as the evening cooled. Several promising kegs with taps sat on more trestles against one wall.

  Master Catti emerged from the back of the building, wiping his hands on a grimy linen towel. He was a graying man, his waist thickened more with age than good living, and he stumped along quickly on short legs.

  "Ah, Pico," he greeted the packmaster eagerly. "I saw you come in. Have you heard the news from Montefoglia?" His smile was welcoming, but his eyes looked strained.

  Pico, arrested by the hushed tones, dragged his gaze from the kegs to his host. "No, what?"

  "Duke Sandrino was assassinated, four days ago!"

  "What! How did it come about?" Pico's mouth gaped. Thur's happy warmth washed from his belly in an instant, to be replaced with a cold knot of ice.

  Catti rocked on his heels, grimly satisfied with the effect of his gossip. "They say he had some sort of quarrel with the Lord of Losimo at the betrothal banquet for his daughter Julia. Daggers were drawn, and... the usual followed. A terrible mess, by the accounts I've heard so far from people coming up the road. Lord Ferrante's troops have captured Montefoglia, at least for the moment."

  "My God. Have they sacked the town?" asked Pico.

  "Not much. They still have their hands full with —"

  "My brother is in the Duke's guard," Thur interrupted urgently.

  "Ah?" Catti raised his eyebrows. "He's just botched himself out of a job, I'd say." And, a little less tartly, "I hear some of the guards fled with little Lord Ascanio and their wounded behind the walls of Saint Jerome, with the Abbot Monreale."

  And some of the guards, presumably, had not. Yet Thur could picture Uri defending the boy-lord, getting him safe behind the monastery's stones. Being last through the gate, no doubt.

  "Ferrante's troops march about and glare at the walls," Catti went on, "but they don't quite dare attack the Brethren. Yet. Ferrante has the Duchess and Lady Julia as hostage, and has sent to Losimo for more troops at the quick-march."

  Pico the packman whistled through his teeth. "Bad...! Well, my place lies outside the town, and there's little enough to steal there. Thank the Virgin I brought Zilio with me this trip. I often leave him with my neighbor. I think I'd better lay over a day or two with you, Catti, if I can have your pasture, till we get some hint of how things fall out."

  "I should think you'd get a good price down there right now for your metals, from one side or t'other," said Catti. "They'll be wanting armor, weapons, bronze for cannon...."

  "I'm more likely to have it stolen from me, by one side or the other," said Pico gloomily. "No. 'Twould be better to cut over the hills and go west to Milan. My mules will eat most of my profits in the travel, though." He glanced at Thur. "You're free to go on to Montefoglia if you wish, Thur. To seek news of your brother. Though I'd be sorry to lose your strong back."

  "I don't know...." Thur stood stiff with doubt and worry.

  "Stay the night," suggested Catti. "Decide in the morning."

  "Yes, that would be best," Pico agreed. "There may be better news by then, who knows?" He clapped Thur consolingly on the shoulder, in awkward sympathy.

  Thur nodded thanks and reluctant agreement. "Do you still want your ham?" he remembered.

  "Not now.... I tell you, though, Catti, if your wife has any of those big smoked sausages, I'll take one. We can toast slices over the fire, tonight and on our way to Milan."

  "I think she has a few left from the last pig, hanging in the smokehouse. But —"

  "Good. Thur, go pick out one for us, will you? I had better go tell my boys the bad news." Frowning, Pico went back out the door and re-crossed the road.

  Catti shrugged and led Thur through the inn and across the back yard. Thur readily identified the small shack that was the smokehouse by the aromatic gray haze that seeped out under its eaves and hung promisingly in the still evening air. Thur ducked into the smoky dimness after Catti. Catti bent down and inserted a couple more water-soaked sticks of apple wood into the coals of the fire pit in the center of the dirt floor. The aromatic cloud thus released tickled Thur's nostrils, and he sneezed.

  "There's four left." Catti reached up and tapped one of a row of brown, gauze-wrapped cylinders hanging from the blackened rafters, making it swing. "Take your choice."

  Thur glanced up, then his gaze was riveted by what lay in the shadows above the rafters. A board crossed them at right angles. Balanced on the board was the nude body of a gray-bearded man, close-wrapped in the same sort of gauze as the sausages, like a thin swaddling shroud. His skin was shriveled and tanning in the smoke.

  "Pico was right," Thur observed after a moment's stunned silence. "Your wife does smoke the most unusual hams."

  Catti glanced up after him. "Oh, that," he said in disgust. "I was just going to tell Pico the story. He's a refugee from Montefoglia who didn't quite make it. Penniless, it turned out—after the bill was run up."

  "Do you do this often, to guests who don't pay?" asked Thur in a fascinated voice. "I'll tell Pico to settle our bill promptly."

  "No, no, he was dead when he got here," Catti exclaimed in impatience. "Three days ago. But the priest was gone and there's none to shrive him, and none of my neighbors will allow an unshriven dead sorcerer to be buried on their property, and frankly, neither will I. And the hellcat girl won't pay. We had to do something with him, so I thought of the smokehouse. So there he lies, and there he can stay, till his bill is settled. And so I told my wife. She can flounce off to her sister's in a fury if she wants, but I won't be cheated by a dead Florentine's servant." Catti crossed his arms, as if to emphasize his resolve.

  "I think he eats and drinks but little, Master Innkeeper. How much are you charging him for the smoke?" Thur inquired, still craning his neck upward.

  "Yes, but you should see how the horse he rode in on gorges," groaned Catti. "As a last resort, I'll confiscate the horse
. But I'd rather have the ring, for surety. The ring won't drop dead suddenly, as the nag looks to do." He waved an impatient hand against the rising smoke, pulled a sausage down off its hook, and motioned Thur out of the smokehouse ahead of him.

  "You see," Catti went on, after drawing a lungful of clear air, "three mornings ago this half-Ethiope girl dressed in filthy velvet came dragging him up the road, slung across that white nag now in my pasture. She said they'd fled the massacre in Montefoglia, and been robbed, and him murdered, by Lord Ferrante's men, who pursued them past Cecchino. Except he hadn't been murdered—there isn't a wound on him—and she hadn't been robbed, for she wears a big gold ring on her thumb a blind bandit couldn't have overlooked.

  "I had my suspicions, but she seemed in distress, and my wife has a soft head, and she let her in and got her cleaned up and calmed down. The more I thought it over, the more suspicious I became. You have to get up early in the morning to make a fool of old Catti. She claimed the old man was a Florentine mage, and her father. The Florentine part I'll grant. I think she was his slave. He died of apoplexy on the road, or maybe black magic. She robbed his body and hid his things, and rolled in the dirt and made her hair wild, and came in telling this tale meaning to be rid of him at my expense and circle back later for his treasure. The proof of it is, that gold ring is a man's ring. She probably stole it off her master's finger. Well, I saw through her ploy and charged her with it."

  "And then what happened?" said Thur.

  "She had a screaming fit, and refused to give up her stolen ring. She said if her father were alive, he'd turn me into one of my own bedbugs. I don't think she could turn beer into piss. She's barricaded herself in my best room, and screams curses at me through the door, and threatens to set fire to my inn, and won't come out. Now I ask you! Isn't it suspicious? Is she not a madwoman?"

  "You would almost think she fears being robbed again," Thur murmured.

  "Quite demented." Catti frowned, then his gloomy gaze traveled up Thur. A dim light animated his eye. "Say. You're a big, strong lad. There's a pot of ale in it for you if you can pull her from my best bedroom without breaking any of my furniture. How about it?"

  Thur's blond brows rose. "Why don't you evict her yourself?"

  Catti mumbled something about "aging bones" and "hellcat." Thur wondered if Catti were seeing himself as a bedbug. Could a mage even turn a man into an insect, and if so, would it be a man-sized insect, or tiny? Well, he'd been thinking about dipping into his coins and buying some ale to go with that toasted sausage tonight. The tap room had breathed a delicious aroma from the vicinity of those kegs.

  "I could try, I suppose," Thur offered cautiously.

  "Good!" The innkeeper reached up and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come this way, I'll show you where." He led Thur back inside.

  On the second floor of the inn, Catti pointed to a closed door, and whispered, "In there!"

  "How is it barricaded?"

  "There's a bar, though not a very stout one. And she's wedged it with something. I think she dragged the bed against it."

  Thur studied the wooden door. From downstairs came a man's voice calling, "Catti! Hey Catti! Are you asleep up there? Get your fat self down here and pour me a mug, or I'll help myself."

  Catti wrung his hands in frustration. "Do your best," he urged Thur, and hurried downstairs.

  Thur watched the door a moment longer. The strange, inarticulate longing that he had identified as thirst, outside, was much stronger now, knotting and coiling in his stomach. His mouth was dry. He shrugged, and went up and put his shoulder to the oak. He wedged his foot to the floor and tensed. The door resisted; he pushed a little harder. An unfortunate splintering sound came from the other side. Thur paused, worried. Had he just lost his pot of ale? He pushed again against a skreeling of wood across wood that reminded him of the windlass in the mine. The gap widened a bit more. He stuck his head through, and blinked.

  Some black iron bolts holding the bracket for the door bar had torn out of the doorframe, and the bar swung loose. A bed with four posts holding up a canopy had been shoved a little way back by the inward-moving door. Standing not three feet from him was a brown-skinned girl in a red dress with long linen undersleeves, holding a heavy flower-painted ceramic chamber pot high in both hands. Its contents sloshed ominously under its ceramic lid.

  Thur's breath stopped. He had never seen anyone so extraordinary. Midnight-black hair tumbled like a storm cloud. Skin like toast, breathing the heat of a Mediterranean noon. A petite, alert, yet well-padded body that reminded him of the walnut-wood carvings of angels around the altar of the parish church in Bruinwald. Brilliant eyes, the warm brown color of his mother's precious cinnamon sticks. She looked warm all over, in fact. She shrank back, glaring at him.

  That wouldn't do. He squeezed the rest of himself through the door, shifting the bed across the floor with another shattering skreek, and clasped his hands together in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner. His hands felt as big as cheese paddles, and as clumsy. He swallowed and remembered to exhale. "Hello." He ducked his head politely at her, clearing his throat.

  She backed another step. Her arms bearing up the chamber pot sank a little.

  "You really can't stay in here. Not forever, anyway," Thur said. Her arms were shaking. "Does that greedy innkeeper bring you any food?"

  "Not... not since yesterday, when his wife left," she stammered out, not taking her wary gaze from him. "I had a bottle of wine that I was making last, but it's gone now."

  She was staring at him as if he were some sort of monster. Really, he wasn't that big. He bent his knees a little, and slumped his shoulders, and tried futilely to shrink. It was the little room that set him off to such disadvantage. He needed a bigger room, or the outdoors.

  The gold ring on her pot-clutching thumb riveted his eye. A lion mask with a red gem in its mouth seemed to glow with a Saharan heat, drawing him like a fire. He nodded to it. "Is that the ring Catti wants to steal?"

  She smiled bitterly. "He wants to, but he can't. He's tried twice, but he can't keep hold of it. Only one man can wear this ring. I'll prove it." She tossed her mane of wildly curling hair and set the chamber pot down on the floor. "I was planning to break this over Catti's head, but on you I can't reach that high." She grimaced and shoved it away with her foot. She pulled the ring from her thumb, and, sourly smug, held it out to him. "Just try to put it on. You'll find you can't."

  It glowed in his palm. When he closed his hand over it, it felt alive, like a beating heart. Automatically, he slipped it over the ring finger of his left hand, holding it up to the last sunbeam, a golden slice of light that penetrated the room's shutters and made a bright line on the wall. The tiny lion's mane shimmered in singing waves, and the little gem burned. He turned his hand, making the red reflection dance like a fairy over the opposite wall. He looked up to find the brown girl staring at him with a look of utter horror on her beautiful soft features.

  "Oh—I'm sorry," he apologized, he knew not what for. "You said to put it on. Here." He tugged at it against his wrinkling knuckle.

  "A muleteer?" she whispered, still with that aghast look. "My ring has brought me a stinking muleteer? A big stupid German lout —"

  "Swiss," Thur corrected, still tugging. A big stupid Swiss lout, yah. She must have been watching him from the window when Pico's pack train arrived. He grew scarlet, like the gem. His knuckle was red and white, and swelling. "Excuse me. It's stuck." He twisted the ring around in embarrassment, but it still jammed. "Maybe some soap. I have a bit of soap in my pack. You can come with me. I'm not trying to steal your ring, Madonna. I was going to Montefoglia. My brother has apprenticed me to a goldsmith there, or he was going to, but now I don't know what's happening. My brother Uri is a captain in the Duke's guard, you see, and I don't know... I'm afraid... I don't know if he's alive or dead right now." He twisted and pulled more frantically as her face, stunned, began to crumple with tears, but it was no good. The ring was stuck fast. "So
rry. Can... can I help? Can I help you, Madonna?" He opened his hands to her, offering—well, he didn't have much. Offering his hands, anyway.

  To his alarm and distress, she sank to the floor weeping, palms pressed to her face. Awkwardly, he levered himself down beside her. "I'll get the ring off somehow, if I have to... to chop off my finger," he promised recklessly.

  She shook her head helplessly and gulped out, "It's not that. It's the whole thing."

  Thur paused, and spoke more gently. "That really is your father in the smokehouse, isn't it? I'm sorry. That innkeeper is a bit of a monster, I'm afraid. I'll break his head for you, if you like."

  "Oh..." She put her hands out flat on the floor and leaned on them wearily for support. She stared down at them, then looked up at Thur, searching his face. "You don't look much like Uri. I didn't expect his younger brother to be so much bigger. And you're so blond and pale, compared to him.”

  "I worked in the mines most of this winter. I scarcely saw the sun." He must look as repulsive to her as a white worm winkled from under a rock... his thought stuttered, jerked about. "You know my brother Uri?" And, more urgently, "Do you have any idea of his fate?"

  She sat up straighter, holding out a hand to him in sad irony. "Hello, Thur Ochs. I'm Fiametta Beneforte. Prospero Beneforte is my father. You have arrived just in time to become apprenticed to a smoked corpse." Her lips compressed on an angry sob.

  "Uri's letter didn't mention a daughter," Thur blurted in surprise. He grasped her hand quickly, lest she take it away again. "His letters are always too short, Mother says."

  Her voice lowered. "I last saw Captain Ochs take a sword thrust through his chest, while trying to defend little Lord Ascanio from Ferrante's murdering men. I don't know if he's alive or dead, or if he got away with the other wounded to the healers at Saint Jerome. But it was no small wound." She released his grip and plucked jerkily at the wrinkled velvet of her skirts, bunched in her lap. "I'm sorry I have no better news, nor more recent. My father and I fled away for our lives. Or we tried to."