“Tell me something,” says the woman in furs. “If I asked you to come away with me, would you?”
Esmery’s head is spinning. It’s too much, too quickly. “Come away where?”
“Anywhere. North. Somewhere that isn’t here.”
Esmery thinks of her father, and endless lessons, and suitors who are dull as the dirt beneath her bare feet. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, in a heartbeat.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Esmery says.
When the magistrate’s man arrives at last with his folded, cream-colored paper, Esmery is gone and the woman in furs says, “I have heard that your master is seeking a husband for his daughter.”
“I do not think that is pertinent to—”
“Just listen,” the bride tells him. “I would like to make an offer to your master. I have heard of his daughter’s rare beauty.”
The courier nods, for yes, his master’s daughter is very beautiful.
“And I know that her father seeks to find someone to wed her, but none of her suitors are good enough, and of those who are good enough, she will not take any of them.”
This, too, is true.
“I would like to offer your master the use of my apple tree.” She points into the courtyard behind her. “Tell him that whoever shoots the golden apple from the top of the tree may have his daughter’s hand in marriage. This is a feat that must surely impress her.”
It is really a good offer. The courier takes it back to the magistrate, who is skeptical. “What does she want in return?”
“She asked for nothing.”
Unlikely. But still, it changes nothing, and perhaps it would make his daughter cease her choosiness, and select a man from the ones who come seeking her hand.
•
Word goes out throughout the town, through the surrounding fields and villages, that all suitors for Esmery’s hand should come to the merchant’s house three days hence.
Three days later, a crowd throngs the courtyard under the apple tree. All the young men from the best families have come. Esmery is there, too, in a demure green gown.
The magistrate stands before the crowd and holds out his hand. “To whoever shoots the golden apple from the top of the tree, I offer my daughter’s hand and the finest horse from my stables to carry her to her new home.”
The horse, a beautiful gray charger, is brought out to be admired. Esmery stands to be admired, too, very like the horse. But when the bride walks forth in her finery, Esmery thinks her heart might have stopped in her chest.
The bride wears her red deerskin, tied in such a way that one of her shoulders is bare. Her legs are bare too, long and lean. She carries her bow, and her long knife hangs at her hip. Everyone stares. The children watching from the top of the wall cheer, then fall silent at their parents’ glares.
Esmery leans forward and wishes that she could touch the smooth brown skin; then she is shocked at her own boldness.
And so the contest begins. Lots are drawn to see who will fire the first arrow. It looks very easy. But one man after another sees his arrow clatter uselessly to the cobblestones.
And this is no surprise to the bride in furs. The previous night, she climbed the tree as swift as a squirrel, and tied the golden apple to its branch with a firm twist of leather. No matter whether their arrows strike home or not, no one can dislodge the apple.
At last all the suitors have tried, and they stand looking humbled and disappointed. Then the bride in furs steps forward. “It is a very difficult shot, I see,” she says. “May I try?”
There is some laughter. The magistrate cannot resist the desire to see her humbled in front of all her adoring students. “Certainly,” he says, waving a magnanimous hand.
So the bride in furs draws her most special arrow, with all the secret names of the wind written upon its shaft. She aims it not at the apple, but a few finger-widths above, where the knot is tied. Her aim is perfect. The knot separates and the golden apple falls down, down, to be caught in the bride’s outstretched hand.
She turns and present it to the astonished magistrate with a bow.
Recovering, he wheezes, “You cannot wed my daughter. You are not a man!”
“You said that any who shoots the apple from the tree may wed her, my lord,” the bride in furs tells him. “You did not say they must be men.”
His astonishment cannot hold for long. The bride springs to the back of the gray stallion, and holds out a hand for Esmery, who without hesitation allows herself to be drawn up. The golden apple falls at the magistrate’s feet. The bride wheels the stallion about, and as she does so, the apple tree tilts and begins to fall. She had spent most of the night very carefully cutting through its great gnarled trunk, and then just as carefully removing all evidence of this deed. The tree’s weight was so delicately balanced that only the golden apple held it in place. Now, it tips and falls, as the onlookers flee, and rips a hole in the courtyard wall, letting in a spill of morning sun.
The gray charger leaps over the apple tree with the two women on his back, and his hooves pound the cobblestones, carrying them away. The bride gives a shrill whistle, and the two hunting dogs spring out of the alley to join them, one on each side.
“They will be after us,” Esmery gasps, leaning on the bride’s shoulder and clinging with both hands around her waist.
“I enjoy a chase, don’t you?”
“But—what of your husband?”
“Come north,” the bride says, “and meet him yourself. He is an interesting man. He loves to travel and says this town is a cage for him; he has little use for his house here, but I wanted to see for myself. He is, I think, the sort of husband who would not mind if I bring home a bride of my own. If you want to.”
Esmery’s answer is a wild, joyous cry. Her heavy green skirt flows over the horse’s powerful haunches, threatening to slow them down, so she takes the bride’s long knife and cuts it away, leaving only a short ragged fringe that barely covers her lap.
“Where are we going?” she asks as the horse thunders out of town. He is not even breathing hard yet.
“North,” the bride says, and they race away under the risen sun, as a ragged scrap of green fabric flutters to the road behind them.
•
Your
Figure Will
Assume Beautiful Outlines
Claire Humphrey
I spent every day of my first decadi in Savaurac staring at the likeness of a girl on a notice for corsets. I figured she was long dead of the clap, or maybe she only ever lived in some garret artist’s absinthe-blind eye, but she was a very pretty girl: deep bosom, low waist, and the sable hair shared by most of her people.
“Your figure will assume beautiful outlines.” That was written below her picture, along with the name of the corsetmaker.
The paper was pasted on the wall beside my Da’s special table, where he sat to score the matches. I sat there to labor over our application for residence, listening to the thump of fists on the training bags and running my fingertips over my knuckles, where the fight calluses were already softening.
The fight club used old notices for wallpaper because it was a poor sort of place, same as why they strewed the floor with sawdust and the shells of nuts, and most of the tables had one leg shorter than the others. The owner, though, Mr. Karinen, had promised work for Da if we came to Savaurac, and so we had.
The day I finished our immigration paperwork, Benno Karinen, the owner’s son, was going around the walls with a whalebone scraper, taking down the stained notices and pasting up fresher ones. When he got to where I sat, he went by me like I wasn’t anything, and set his paste bucket right on my table and his scraper to the top of the notice for corsets.
“Leave that one,” I said.
Benno looked down all haughty and went right back to scraping.
“I said leave it!”
His whalebone tore right through the ribboned curls on the girl’s head.
I
stood up then. Benno was just above my height and three stone heavier. I hit out straight for his nose.
Two decadis at least since I’d been in the ring last, what with packing up our things in Kervostad and getting set up here in Savaurac, and my fist had been getting thirsty for a face.
I pulled Benno’s cork for him, blood raining down into the paste-bucket. I laughed out once before I could stop myself.
Benno did, too, like he couldn’t believe it.
“Da!” he said. “Da, come and see the straight on our Valma.” It came out a bit thick. He spat into the bucket and grinned at me with blood outlining his teeth. “Da, you didn’t tell me she was a fighter.”
“Didn’t know it,” Mr. Karinen said, tossing his towel down and coming out from behind the bar. He eyed me from under a tangled ginger brow. “Well, little lady? How much do you weigh?”
“I’m a welterweight, sir.”
“Strapping girl, you have here, Igo,” he said to my Da. I tried to take my arm back, but he was still waving it. “How about it, Valma? Would you like to fight?”
He held up an open palm for me to punch. I smacked my fist into it hard enough to make him wring his hand after.
“Spirit, Igo,” he said, “she’s got your spirit. Let’s put her to spar with the lads tomorrow, see what she can do.”
“Which I thought girls weren’t allowed in the ring here, sir,” I said. That much, Da had told me before we left, though I thought he only meant I would stop fighting before audiences, not that I would go without sparring or even bag-work.
“By law, no,” Mr. Karinen said. “But there’s ways. For a girl raised by Igo Topponen, there’s ways.”
My Da had taken the Kervostad Heavyweight Belt twice, when he was young. I could just barely remember: my Da with a lean-carved belly, sweat shining on him like oil under the galvanic lights of the ring. Someone holding his arm up high. Everyone shouting.
He wasn’t a fighter now. He was an old man with both ears cauliflowered and his hair razored close to his scarred scalp. He had given me his salt-rotted wraps and gloves and sent me up between the ropes while he watched from outside. He came past Mr. Karinen and took my other arm and raised it, proud as if I was a winner already, and with his mouth smiling wide I could see the two teeth he broke on Selmo Voroven’s fist the year I was born.
I felt the muscles in my arms knotting up with eagerness. I was his daughter, no doubt of it. Maybe I’d end up with teeth to match his after all.
•
“How’d you like a match next decadi?” said Mr. Karinen.
I’d been sparring with his lads since Plum-day, my knuckles scuffing open and seeping into my wraps. My Da poured vinegar over them until they finally healed over into dark pink scars.
“Yes, sir!” I said. “Which I’ll do you and Da proud.”
“No doubt of it, Valma, no doubt of it. There’s one thing, though, you see. The Provosts, they won’t allow lasses in the ring. There’s lasses among the Provosts, not that you can tell them for such without a hair on their heads. Why they can do magic but not fight, I don’t know, but it’s the Provosts’ law to make and ours to live under. But I know just the fellow who will help.”
Hanno Jalmarinen, charm-master, lived behind a copperworked door at the end of a long alley. He measured me up and down with his little pale eyes and then made me stand still for a half-hour while he did mysteries about me, and then he went to his workbench and muttered over a bit of metal for a moment.
Two hundred soldats, it cost Mr. Karinen, and I thought it a vast sum indeed, but when I put on the charm Mr. Karinen said it was excellent work.
The charm was a fine copper ring to go about my littlest finger, flat enough that it would not be felt beneath my wraps, let alone my gloves. “Mind you never take it off,” Mr. Karinen said. “And keep it secret. The Provosts have laws on everything.”
I did not feel any different with it on, but when I took it home and showed Benno, he stared and stared.
“Shut your mouth, you downy idiot,” I told him. Only my voice came out a bit lower, and cracked halfway.
Benno didn’t shut his mouth.
I looked in the mirror we used for shadowboxing. “I look the same,” I said, disappointed. Maybe my face was a bit more square, my neck thicker. I stood sideways and craned at myself.
“No, you don’t,” Benno said.
“What’s so changed, then?”
But he only shook his head and punched me in the shoulder and told me to get my wraps.
•
My first match fell on Madder-day, in a basement club on the poorest street in the Quarter. I fought Luko Vannen, who weighed four pounds less than me and had both eyes blacked from a previous fight. I blacked one of them for him all over again and laid him out at the end of the third round. My own eyebrow was cut and blood spattered the front of my singlet, and the crowd roared for me, such as they were, a double handful of factory workers and a few all-day drinkers. For me. I had not heard the sound since leaving home, and it was as sweet to me as the taste of water washing the metal-sour spit from my mouth.
I fought again a half-decadi later: a fellow with hands like granite already and heavy muscle twining over his shoulders above the torn neck of his singlet. I walked in thinking I was a fine gritty fighter, and I walked out with my tooth stuck through my inner lip.
I went straight home and found Benno behind the bar and spat out a mouthful of my own salty blood onto the sawdust at his feet. “Which you might’ve tried to hit me proper!” I said, spraying a bit.
“Eugh,” he said, and wiped at his sleeve. “What are you on about?”
“Pulling your punches when you spar with me,” I said.
“I never.”
“You know I’m a lass. That fellow didn’t. And he hit me twice as hard as you.”
“Maybe he’s just better—”
“He’s a welterweight, Benno. You’re nearly a heavyweight.”
“I’ve four pounds to go—”
I punched him in the ear as hard as I could.
He swore and shook it off. “You want me to treat you like a lad?” And he floored me with a straight that broke my nose.
I sat in the sawdust, hands cupped under my chin, Benno standing over me. “Your Da’s had most of the training of you,” he said. “And he’s known you were a lass all your life.” I don’t know if Da heard, but the next time he was working my defense, he jabbed me right over my taped nose. While I tried to wipe the water from my eyes, he followed up with a couple of hooks that knocked me sideways into the ropes.
I wanted to embrace him, but the bell hadn’t gone yet, so I bounced up and under his guard and pummeled him in the ribs until it did.
•
Benno and I waited until our fathers were busy with the night’s fighters and the usual fellow had arrived to tend bar. In the green room, Benno put on his Savaurin greatcoat and gave me one of his jackets.
I had my charm on, of course, and my hair queued like a man’s. We took a few soldats from the tip jar, Benno filled his flask with the stuff his Da kept on the bottom shelf, and we strolled over to Rue Prosper.
The theatre had a front like a tart’s bodice, all carmine velvet ruffles. Inside it was far too warm, and the lamp-oil was scented laudanum-sweet. Men and lads shuffled in and doffed their hats and bought glasses of gin from a girl at the back.
Benno and I passed the flask back and forth and I began to yawn; I’d been training in the morning and my shoulders had that pleasant deep ache.
Benno prodded me in the side and then snatched his hand back. “You don’t even feel like a girl,” he whispered.
I prodded him back, in the soft flesh of his belly. “You do.”
Then a man started playing a hurdy-gurdy, and the curtain rushed upward, and I got my first sight of Amandine Azur. She wore a plume upon her head and she danced with two great feather fans, flirting them before and behind so that now you could see only her eyes and the plume, and no
w a swift glimpse of her whole body.
She gazed at me, I swore she gazed at me, but when I said so at the end of her set, Benno scoffed and looked superior and made me come away without speaking to her, and I did not even learn her name until we were out of doors again and I saw it on the notice fixed to the theatre’s façade. They had drawn her peeping sideways over the fans, and the likeness was very good, delicate lines of ink capturing the snap of her brilliant eye.
I came back the next day. She was not seeing visitors, so I spoke with the gin-girl and left a note on one of my fight notices to come and see me at Karinen’s, and I said that she would be let in free if she wanted. But I did not see her in the crowd the night of my fight, and because I dropped my guard to look, I lost.
•
I went back to see Amandine’s show, sitting at the rear of the theatre beside the drafty door. That first time, I did not speak to her; I was tongue-cursed, brave enough only to look.
The second time, I came up to the base of the stage, and she looked down at me and flicked the feather in her hair and winked at me. Then she did the same to the fellow next to me. He was a grey-headed Savaurin with a sailor’s weatherworn face and half his teeth knocked awry. I turned and left. The third time, I gave the gin-girl a soldat to show me the rear door of the theatre, and I waited there for Amandine to come out. When she did—muffled in a long grey gown and a black coat, carrying a plain reticule—she saw me and checked, wary for a second, and then she came forward and touched her gloved hand to my cheek. I felt the nap of velvet.
Amandine smiled. Her lips were still rouged. She said, “You look a sweet lad, you do, and I can see you didn’t mean to frighten me, but you mustn’t lie in wait for a lady, you know.”
“I only wanted to ask you if you’d dine with me at Travere’s.”
“Ah,” she said. “A generous offer, and if I were a mercenary lass, I would take you up on it. But no amount of generosity will make me yours. It is not in my nature to love you.”
Heiresses of Russ 2014 Page 16
