by Angela Boord
Ilena had long, notched nails on both hands, and she was haughty about it. Her mother was teaching her to spin—a more skilled occupation than combing—but her mother was demanding and jealous, and Ilena remained proudest of her nails. She used to sit on her straw mattress and spread both hands wide, admiring the way they caught the moonlight. The other girls both hated and loved her, but she saw in me someone she could beat down to make herself appear better than she was.
Ilena saw Arsenault first. We were sitting outside with the other girls and a handful of gavaros, taking our midday meal outdoors. The day baked with a dry heat which was still a relief from the steamy oppression of the silkhouse. My father granted all of us, from the lowliest swineherd to the most valuable silk weaver, the same midday ration—a slice of flatbread spread with a paste made of chickpeas or an onion baked in the fire. Because I could eat this meal one-handed the same as anybody, it was the one time of day I felt as if no one stared at me. But I still tried to maintain my distance.
Ilena’s soft exclamation made me look up. My father had come into the parched yellow courtyard formed by the silkhouses, accompanied by a tall, dust-covered man carrying a bag and an axe, a knife on one hip and a sword on the other. He wore the black felt hat with the rolled side favored by most gavaros, and so I understood that like all gavaros, he must bring all his possessions with him wherever he went. But even I was surprised by the axe.
And then there was his scar. He had his good side turned to us at first, and it was easy to see why Ilena was interested in him. He was a well-made man, tall, with broad shoulders and a strong profile. But as he talked to my father, he removed his hat and turned, so we could see his scar.
Even at a distance it stood out, a line jagging from his temple down his cheek into his beard. It must have continued across his scalp as well, because a shocking strip of silver-white streaked through his black hair just above it. Several of the girls gasped, and even the gavaros milled around, murmuring to each other.
“Will he guard the combing house, do you think?” Ilena said.
Ilena didn’t often ask me questions as if I were a person, so I thought she was speaking to someone else. I tried to hide inside the veil of my dirty, tangled hair and continued to eat my bread.
“Well?” she said impatiently. “It’s your father, isn’t it? Have you heard any news?”
Ilena never seemed to understand that I had no dealings with the house anymore. I shook my hair away from my face because I couldn’t push it back and hold my bread at the same time. “I don’t know if he’ll guard us,” I said. “My father should have no need of more gavaros.”
Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to see my father gathering more gavaros—to raise an army to crush the Prinze. But deep down I knew that the time for that—if there ever had been a time for it—was long past.
Ilena watched the new gavaro wistfully. “He looks like a foreigner. Maybe even from the north. He’s fair-skinned.”
I finished eating and licked the traces of oil from my fingers. “He’s not so handsome with that scar. Perhaps he’s only come to fight the fires.”
Fall had lasted an interminably long time. The rains were late, it was hot, and brushfires erupted in the canyons almost daily. Everyone—man or woman—was marshaled to fight them, frantically trying to save the groves of mulberry trees upon which all our futures depended.
Ilena shook her head. “But he’s carrying so many weapons. He probably got that scar in a duel.”
All Ilena’s dreams wore robes of silk. In the spinning houses, the women sat at their wheels, repeating all the popular romances of the time—eager to imagine being carried off by a foreign prince, wearing dresses sewn from yards of silk, unwound and combed from thousands of cocoons. Cocoons were the yardsticks of our lives.
But I was done with romances, myself.
“He probably likes boys,” I said.
Ilena shot me a barbed look. “He doesn’t seem the sort. I hope he guards the combing house.”
“I’ll be the one to bring him water,” I said for spite, and walked away while she glared.
There was no way to tell by looking at him then that he could do magic. But the aura clung to him like road dust, so even a girl like Ilena could feel it. In the beginning, the other gavaros avoided him, but if Arsenault noticed, he didn’t seem bothered by it. I myself paid little attention to him at first, barely sparing a passing glance for him on my errands. I kept my eyes down in those days and had no use for flirting the way Ilena did.
But sometimes, I would find him watching me as I carried water to the men. I couldn’t carry the full bucket all the way from the well, so I had to dip it half-full and hook the handle over my forearm. I resigned myself to taking three times as long as a whole woman and endured the gazes and words of the men as they drank.
“Build up that arm, girl; we don’t have all day.”
“Is it a girl? I thought the Householder sent us a clay golem for a water boy.”
“Maybe that Prinze just wasn’t picky.”
Then they would laugh and turn to their work. But Arsenault never laughed. He only drank. I kept my gaze pinned to the metal ladle. I saw how his knuckles were nicked by dozens of tiny white scars and the way the ladle bumped against his chin, dripping water into his beard, leaving it shiny and black. But I never once lifted my eyes to tell the color of his eyes or if they were looking at me. Once the ladle was back in my hand, I immediately turned from him and dipped it for the next man.
Then one day, the next man was Vanni di Forza.
I should use the word man loosely. Vanni was the same age I was, seventeen at that time. He was a foster of my father, one of the many sons of minor families hoping to metamorphose kin ties into a more profitable relationship of silk. He’d lived with us for three years already, flitting about at the edge of my attention like the girls who fostered with my mother. As the Householder’s daughter, I had always been kept separate from the fosters. It wasn’t deemed seemly for me to fraternize in circles beneath my station.
Vanni di Forza had seemed so small when I lived in the big house, an insignificant speck in my universe of Caprine, Prinze, and Sere. But now that I had fallen, he loomed as large as a stray dog terrorizing the sheep.
As was my habit, I handed him the ladle without looking at him. I didn’t even know it was Vanni until he spoke.
“There’s not enough water here for me to drink,” he said, and poured the water from the ladle onto the dusty ground. Startled, I looked up. I didn’t remember him well, but then, a year between sixteen and seventeen can make an enormous difference in a boy; he was taller and broader than I thought he ought to be, with a brown fuzz on his chin as if he were trying—and failing—to grow a beard like Arsenault’s.
“I thought you were supposed to serve us, Kyrra,” he said. His mouth made a cruel twist some might have called a smile, but there was a glint in his dark eyes I didn’t like. A kind of mean amusement.
I brought the bucket up in front of me like a shield. “Is it my fault if you spilled the water? If you’ll hand the ladle back, I’ll dip you more.”
Vanni’s eyes flashed. They were a dark brown the color of rosewood and might have made him handsome had they contained a wholesome wickedness instead of the vindictive humor that lit them now. “This ladle?” he said, twirling it in his hands. “I’d rather have a cup.”
“I don’t have a cup. The gavaros all drink from the ladle.”
“Do we look like gavaros?” he asked the two boys who’d come down with him—both sons of minor clans I didn’t recognize.
The boys made negative noises like they were choking on laughter.
“I think we’re all householders here, Kyrra. Surely, you won’t have forgotten.”
I ground my teeth. “Of course not, Mestere di Forza.” I did my best to curtsey with a spine that felt stiff as a rod of steel, clutching the bucket in my one hand. “If you’ll give me back the ladle, perhaps I can find you a cup.”<
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“Sali, why don’t you give her back the ladle?”
Vanni threw it to the boy standing behind me. The boy plucked it out of the air and frowned.
Once, on a winter visit to Liera, I saw some boys in a back alley tormenting a dog. It was Longest Night, and the boys had tied Saien sparklers to the dog’s tail. When the boys lit the sparklers, a golden fizz of fire and sparks spewed out of the paper tubes, and the terrified dog bolted, streaking down the alley like a big rocket launched over the Mera di Capria. The boys bent over laughing, but all I could think of later was the dog.
“Then I might have to touch her,” Sali said. He threw the ladle to the boy beside him.
“Don’t look at me,” that boy said. “My mother said she’s a witch.”
He threw the ladle back to Vanni, who caught it easily. “Filipe, you coward. She’s not a witch. Everybody knows she just likes to do it in the dirt. I heard she had all the stable boys, too.”
My face flamed. Vanni smacked the bowl of the ladle into the palm of his hand and grinned at me.
“Well, Kyrra?” he said. “What are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for you,” I said. “To give me back the ladle. Like a gentleman ought.”
All the boys laughed at this.
“Oh, a gentleman.” Vanni sketched an overwrought bow, flinging the ladle out with a flourish as if it were a sword he was pledging to the Mistiri of his House. “I must have missed those laws in my tutoring. Where is it written that a householder must be a gentleman to a kinless girl?”
“Where is it written that a householder ought to be an idiot?” I retorted. “You’ve had your fun. Now give me the ladle. You know I have to hand it back at the end of the day or Master Fenn will have it out of me.”
Vanni darted a glance at my rear end and his grin grew. “Out of your backside, you mean?”
Vanni wasn’t the only man who assumed that because I’d lain with Cassis, I would lie with anyone. Mostly it wasn’t the gavaros; it was the householders. Men who only a year before were competing with each other just for a chance to lift my hand to their lips.
But it made me angry, and I wasn’t afraid of Vanni. I lifted the bucket as high as I could and swung it with all my strength at Vanni’s head. As it turned out, I still didn’t have much strength. The bucket flew from my grasp, and Vanni had all the time in the world to step away from it. It barely grazed his chest before tumbling harmlessly to the ground.
Water sloshed his silk shirt, though, leaving big dark patches on the light blue fabric. He frowned down at it, smoothing the wrinkles with his other hand.
“Now, that was uncalled-for,” he said.
“You are a wretch,” I said, and launched myself toward the ladle.
He jerked the ladle upward, holding it over my head so I’d have to jump like a dog to get it. With tears of anger and frustration pricking my eyes, I almost did. Whenever I recall this now, I wonder why I didn’t just walk away. Deprived of their fun, the boys would have dropped the ladle and gone on to goad me with something else. But it was like I lived my life in a dream then, by dream rules and dream logic. Instead of walking away, I shoved at Vanni’s chest.
I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me against him with his left hand while he held the ladle out of my reach with his right.
I shouted. Vanni kept grinning his toothy wolf grin down at me, and then he hurled the ladle to one of his friends and put his other hand securely on my backside to ensure that I wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Behind me, boots thumped in the dust, and the boys’ laughter abruptly died. Vanni looked up and I twisted my head to see over my shoulder.
Arsenault stood in the center of the group of us, holding the ladle, which he had picked out of the air. I don’t know how he was close enough to grab it without any of us knowing he was there, but Arsenault was like that. He was a big man, but he could move like a cat when he needed to. In his hands, the ladle looked like a weapon.
“Hey, gavaro,” Vanni said. “We’re just having a bit of fun. Don’t you have other things to do?”
“I’ve come to retrieve the water girl,” Arsenault replied. His accent was strange, all the syllables rolled the wrong way. But his command of the language was good. “She has other chores to do today.”
“They can wait, can’t they?” Vanni said. “The Householder’s fosters have need of her.” He looked down at me, the grin making a reappearance, then pulled me in so my pelvis rubbed against his.
I stomped on his foot with my heel as hard as I could. I was barefoot and he was wearing boots, but I put a lot of force into it and he jerked his foot back with an mmph, pushing me away from him at the same time, though he still gripped my wrist like a vise.
“It seems as if she takes exception to your claim on her time,” Arsenault said. Amusement laced his voice, faintly. It only made Vanni’s temper flare.
“I’m a householder,” he said. “I am in charge of this situation.”
“Last I heard, Pallo d’Aliente was in charge of all the situations on his land. I’m sure you could take it up with him.” Arsenault’s voice was lazy, almost bored. He bowed minutely, adjusting his grip on the ladle. “Mestere.”
He looked at Vanni from beneath the brim of his hat. His stance was respectful, but even I could read the message in his eyes. I could read it but I couldn’t make sense of it.
I didn’t know why he would care what happened to me. When I lived in the big house, I never went anywhere without an escort of gavaros. If Vanni had attempted to touch my shoulder without my permission, they would have drawn steel. But that was only because they were paid to protect me. Arsenault had no reason to put himself crossways with Vanni di Forza, and so I didn’t understand why he stood there in the circle of boys who outranked him, jeopardizing his livelihood.
I knew my father wouldn’t grant me any special treatment. If my father was caught giving me protection, the Circle would slap more penalties on him and maybe me, too. The Prinze would make sure of that.
Vanni laughed. “You’re saying that Pallo d’Aliente cares whether this girl dispenses her water every day?”
Arsenault shrugged and stuck his free thumb into his swordbelt, swinging the ladle up and around with his other hand. “How do I know what the Householder feels? All I know is that he has certain rules, which he expects to be followed. I must confess I’m still learning your customs, but I think one of them is that fosters swear to abide by the rules of hospitality. Which means they do no harm to the Householder’s family or his property, is that right?”
The other boys shifted nervously. “He’s right, Vanni,” the one called Sali said. “She’s not the Householder’s daughter anymore, but she’s still his property.”
Vanni looked between the two frowning boys and Arsenault, who stood there unconcerned and not quite deferent. Then he swore and pushed me away. I stumbled backward, almost going down in the dirt, but Arsenault caught me by the elbow, righting me. When I turned to look at him, he brought the ladle up and handed it to me.
“Master Fenn should have this back,” he said. “I’ll wait for you.”
My brows pulled downward. But there was no lie in Arsenault’s eyes as he bent and offered me the ladle.
His eyes were gray…but not gray. Gray was the color of an overcast sky or a stormy ocean. Arsenault’s were the color of hammered steel. They lit for a moment like light tracing a blade, until I thought that maybe a strange ray of sunlight had played a trick on me.
But then the light faded and he was just a man with an ugly scar, handing me a ladle while I stood barefoot and rumpled in the dust.
After I returned the ladle, Arsenault brought me to the gavaro barracks.
In my life as Householder’s daughter, I hadn’t spared a thought to where the gavaros lived when they were off their shift. I didn’t expect the low, rectangular building built of mud and straw, painted white to reflect the sun and covered in a wild profusion o
f fading magenta bougainvillea blooms. Its wooden shutters and huge iron-barred wooden doors were thrown open in the afternoon heat, and off-duty gavaros lounged outside in the courtyard playing cards, wearing their shirts untucked, their feet and calves bare, swordbelts slung over chair backs. Meanwhile, on-duty gavaros walked in and out of the building, fully armed and dressed in their burgundy tunics and black felt hats. Small knots of women formed amid the gavaros, scrubbing laundry in big wooden tubs or hanging it to dry on lines strung between two scraggly pine trees—talking and laughing with each other and with the men. A few children ran around underfoot, most of them too small to be out of dresses, and some of the women wore babies strapped to their backs.
I felt as if I had stumbled onto another world—a world which had somehow been tucked into the folds of the world I knew, like an object kept secret in the folds of a robe.
Arsenault strode past the washerwomen with a long, deceptively easy stride I couldn’t hope to match and walked through the large, open oak doors. I put my head down and concentrated on his boots. They were big, dusty, brown leather boots cuffed at the knee, and their hobnailed soles rang on the stone tiles, the only sound in the dim quiet. He greeted several of the men with brief nods as he led me down the corridors, but he said nothing until we reached a small room near the back of the building.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Only gavaros with rank had their own rooms. The raw recruits slept together in a big room in the center of the barracks. Utîl, the leader of our gavaros, had a larger room near the front of the building. Arsenault, as a new hire but clearly a veteran, merited one of the smaller cells at the back.
The shutters on the one narrow window were closed, and it was hard to see after being outside in the bright afternoon light. I could make out a cot on one wall and a table littered with scraps of wood and metal shoved against the other, a chair pushed under it. His axe hung in a rack above the table and glittered in a stray shaft of light.
