Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  ‘But then one night, she stopped resisting. And that made me guilty, as though I had broken her spirit somehow, and I said to her the next morning that I was sorry it had been so hard on her. Do you know what she said to me?’

  Rose shook her head, realised he couldn’t see her and said, ‘No. What?’

  ‘She said, “I’m all right now because I found Mama.”’

  A rush of feeling crashed over her. Her eyes grew damp.

  ‘She never displayed any fear of the dark after that. I was never quite sure what she meant. Perhaps she had a dream … I don’t know. It was enough that the thought of you gave her comfort.’

  Rose propped herself on her elbow. ‘I haven’t seen her for so long, Snowy. The idea that I might see her soon … it doesn’t feel real. And all the while, my other child is without me. Missing me. Maybe crying in the dark.’ No, not Linden, she reminded herself. He would endure and say nothing.

  ‘You have another child?’

  ‘Yes. A boy.’ She didn’t elaborate, didn’t name the father. ‘He’s nothing like Rowan, but I love him with my whole heart. And I often think, which of the gods did I upset so greatly that they won’t allow me to have both my children with me at once?’

  ‘The gods don’t care so much about any of us,’ Skalmir said. ‘I lost two children before they were even born. To me, you seem lucky. Yours are, at the very least, alive somewhere in the world.’

  Rose fell quiet, chastened. After a while, curiosity got the better of her. ‘Is that how your wife died, too?’

  ‘Yes. The child was due in the winter, but both died in a torrent of blood in the autumn.’

  ‘Did Rowan miss your wife?’ she asked gingerly.

  ‘Mildrith? Of course. In her way. She has a … hardness about her that I attribute to her losing you so young. She loves, of course, but to her mind love is always bidding farewell.’

  Hardness. Rowan had grown hard. Whatever happened next, whatever reunion and further separation they had to endure, Rowan was already changed by these years apart, by Rose’s own actions and the impossibility she had felt about giving up Heath. The thought weighed heavily on her. Love, now, seemed a gentler thing than it had then. Perhaps, in some bright corner of her heart, she’d kept believing that the Rowan who would return to her would be the little chubby-legged, smiling girl she’d last seen four years ago. But too much time and experience had passed, a river of change had washed through both of them. There would be no return, only reparation.

  ‘She has been happy,’ Skalmir said. ‘I promise you, she has been happy.’

  ‘But always so far from me …’

  ‘I’m sorry to make you sad.’

  ‘My life is sad.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But so is yours.’

  ‘If we live long enough, rough winds will eventually blow our way. But at least we are still out here, with the wind on our faces. Many are not. Many know only the still air of a tomb.’

  She sat up so that she could look at him, and he was smiling lightly, his eyes turned towards the darkening sky. ‘Bluebell could do a lot worse than marry a man like you,’ she said, then instantly felt guilty for bringing it up.

  ‘I don’t want to marry her,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of making a claim like that on her. I just hope that she will keep wanting to come to visit me and be with me, even when I am old.’

  Rose didn’t ask further questions. For some reason it made her desperately uncomfortable to think about Bluebell making love or being in love or talking about love or even thinking about love. Bluebell and love didn’t even belong in the same sentence. Besides, Rose was still monstrously angry with her sister for withholding news and information about Rowan for all this time.

  Her own thoughts turned to Heath, to memories of the full-bodied man she had loved, and to the half-bodied invalid she had left behind. And she smiled too, wondering if there might be a future with him that she had been waiting for all this time, without realising that was why she was waiting. Living with Eldra, not returning home. The irony of Heath raising Linden while Wengest remained Rowan’s father was almost too much for her to bear.

  ‘What was that?’ Skalmir asked, but without alarm in his voice.

  ‘What was what?’ she asked.

  He stood and pointed over her head, and she turned to see a handful of small, blue lights darting about between the trees. ‘Fireflies?’ she asked.

  ‘Not blue,’ he said, transfixed. ‘Is it a chance they are a sending? From Rowan?’

  ‘Or Rathcruick,’ Rose replied, her voice cautious.

  ‘Rowan is with Rathcruick,’ he said. ‘If we find him, we find her.’

  Rose climbed to her feet and came to stand next to him. There was something hypnotic about the lights. They ducked and wove between each other, and she thought she could hear a faint musical hum.

  ‘Can you hear …?’ she said.

  ‘I keep thinking of the singing tree,’ he said.

  Suddenly, the lights gathered together in a blue ball and shot towards them. They stepped apart and the light arrowed through the air and into the woods.

  Skalmir bent to tie the rags back on his feet and started after them. ‘I’m going to follow,’ he said.

  ‘We oughtn’t –’

  ‘Wait here. I’ll whistle so you can hear where I am. I won’t go far, I promise.’

  Then he was limping after the blue ball, which disappeared into the gloom of the forest. Skalmir disappeared too, but she could hear his whistling and she waited, not quite ready to sit down again. She turned her eyes towards the sky, could see it was becoming light again. They hadn’t slept.

  Skalmir’s whistling abruptly stopped.

  A shot of heat hit Rose’s heart. ‘Snowy?’ she called.

  Nothing.

  ‘Snowy?’ Louder this time, and she could hear the note of panic in her own voice. She warily edged towards the woods, but it was dark still and the fire was bright. Perhaps he’d start whistling again soon. She waited, ever fibre in her body tensed to hear the whistling, to know that she wasn’t alone in this place.

  Nothing. Silence.

  Sæcaster was a town split in two by its deep, cold harbour. The dark green water smelled of salt and old tin, and withdrew every afternoon to reveal grey mud and barnacled rocks. On either side, long wooden piers had been built with storehouses laid out behind them, and merchants’ houses and fishing huts alike spread, crooked and narrow, up the sides of the sloping cliffs. Guthmer’s hall – Ivy’s hall – and its satellite buildings sat at the highest point, the hall tower looking down on all from behind the bowerhouses. To get to the docks, Ivy had to exit through the duke’s gate, the ruling family’s private entrance, and walk down one hundred and twelve stairs that Guthmer’s father had ordered carved into the rock fifty years ago. There was only one key to the duke’s gate and Ivy guarded it fiercely. Each steep stair had a curve worn in the centre, and she never wanted the boys near these stairs. The barest imagining that one of them might slip and go cracking downwards on rock made her skin twitch. She locked the gate carefully and made her way down to the port office, where she was due to meet with one of their most wealthy merchants, who had threatened to cease trading through Sæcaster because of Ivy’s burning of the chapels. Crispin had told her not to worry, that he was hardly going to move his entire business south to Brimhythe. Ivy didn’t know if that were true; all she knew was that she regretted burning the chapels. It had been a step too far, and the strongly worded messages from Wengest about reinstating them continued to arrive on a daily basis. Bluebell had told her to close the chapels, quickly and quietly, not set them alight.

  Too late now.

  Crispin was already deep in conversation with the merchant, a tall man with a long black beard and robes dyed red. Crispin’s dark curls gleamed in the sun and her heart leapt, as it always did at the sight of him. Ivy struggled to remember the merchant’s name – Bertric? Bertstan? – but she was glad she’d dressed for the occasion, in a dee
p blue dress over saffron shirt, gold and silver and amber hanging from her ears, arms and throat.

  As her foot left the stairs and struck the first board outside the port office, she saw a woman sitting among the rope cables on the end of the nearest pier, crying. She hesitated.

  ‘Ah, here is Duchess Ivy now,’ Crispin said, turning and taking her by the elbow. ‘My lady, you remember Bertmond.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, taking his hand and offering him her most appealing smile. ‘How good to see you.’

  ‘I wish I could say the same,’ he offered grudgingly, dropping her hand.

  ‘I know, I know. You are upset about the chapels. I must assure you that my orders were taken completely out of context. I never ordered them burned, did I, captain?’ She turned here to Crispin, who nodded.

  ‘She speaks the truth, Bertmond. The room was crowded, my men heard the command incorrectly.’

  ‘Even now, I am setting aside a small tax on every coin that flows through our port for a chapel rebuilding scheme.’

  Bertmond was not convinced. ‘You are of Ælmesse. You are no trimartyr. If you were, you would have the decency to hand the ruling of this city to a man.’

  Ivy steamed, but kept her smile applied. Her eyes kept returning to the crying woman, whose back was turned to her, her scarf drawn across her face.

  ‘She’s been out there for hours,’ Bertmond said, catching the direction of Ivy’s gaze. ‘Probably crying because of the poor government here in Sæcaster.’

  ‘I can assure you, I am not governing poorly,’ Ivy said, but her patience was wearing thin. ‘I can also assure you that if you take your business through Brimhythe you are reliant on the currents of the Wuldorea to move merchandise in and out of Blicstowe, while we offer a direct route to Folcenham and, via the Giant Road, to both Fifelham and Blicstowe. If you trust to river currents more than you trust to the rule of a woman, then feel free to take your business wherever you please.’

  Her eyes flicked once again to the crying woman.

  ‘I see you are making me choose between money and Maava,’ Bertmond was saying.

  ‘Who is that woman, Crispin?’ Ivy asked.

  Crispin narrowed his eyes against the glare coming off the sea. ‘I don’t know.’

  Then the woman turned, pushed her scarf off her face and Ivy recognised her as Joe’s grandmother. Leaden guilt settled in all her crevices.

  ‘I have to …’ she began, then didn’t finish. Couldn’t finish. She walked towards the old woman. Bertmond was calling behind her, using words such as ‘outrage’ and ‘disgrace’, but she paid no heed, striding across the wooden boards and up the pier, dodging crates and barrels and stepping over ropes.

  The woman sensed her and turned.

  Ivy knelt beside her. ‘Are you well, my lady?’

  The woman turned her eyes back to the sea, reached out a bony hand. ‘Just there, they found him. Just there.’

  Ivy took the woman’s hand and folded it in her own soft, young fingers. ‘I knew him,’ she said.

  The woman cried harder and Ivy folded her against her bosom. ‘I am sorry,’ Ivy said, and she felt it the truest statement she had ever made. ‘I am so very sorry. He was a good man, and too young to die.’

  ‘There are worse fates than dying young,’ the old woman said. ‘There is growing to old age like me, and having nothing left to love.’

  ‘Ivy!’ This was Crispin, his tone peremptory. She glanced over her shoulder. Bertmond was striding off; the set of his shoulders told her he remained unappeased. Crispin was beckoning her vigorously, and she felt the first prickle of irritation with him. Who was in charge here, after all?

  ‘I will make sure you are taken care of,’ Ivy said to Joe’s grandmother. ‘Joe was good to me, and I will be good to you.’ Then she was on her feet, hurrying back to Crispin.

  ‘He left?’ she said.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘He won’t take his ships to Brimhythe.’

  ‘If he doesn’t it will be because of nothing you’ve done.’

  Ivy stared him down, and he grasped her – rather roughly, she thought – around the upper arm and propelled her towards the port office and through the door, where he let her go.

  ‘Out!’ he barked to the assembled guardsmen. The little dark room was full of misplaced merchandise, stacked untidily and crammed in corners. Bolts of cloth, broken pottery, bags of spices that filled the space with tingling aromas.

  Once they were alone, Crispin closed the door and turned to her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The woman … it was Joe’s grandmother.’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘The stablehand. The one you had killed the same night you had Elgith killed.’

  ‘I know who he is, and I know what I did; but why was his grandmother more important than making nice to Bertmond?’

  She glared back at him defiantly, and his whole demeanour changed. He pulled her close, gently, and said, ‘I am trying to help you.’

  ‘You said yourself that Bertmond wouldn’t move to Brimhythe.’

  ‘But we needed to make him feel good about the decision.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  He nuzzled against her throat a moment, then said, so close to her ear that his breath tickled her, ‘Nobody else is going to help you but me, Ivy. They all hate you.’

  A cold barb to her heart. ‘Who hates me?’

  He stood back, squaring her shoulders and looking her in the eye. ‘The merchants. The thanes. The trimartyrs. Half your army hates you. I am all that stands in the way of your boys losing everything. Can you not understand this? Can you not simply trust me and my advice?’

  ‘It isn’t true. Nobody hates me.’ The thought made her feel desolate; the desolation made her angry with herself.

  ‘You’re losing your nerve. Does a stablehand’s death really trouble you? Can you not imagine what would happen were the world to know we are lovers? My authority would be in tatters; you would be the butt of every crude joke. Neither thane nor king would believe anything we had to say.’ He paused a moment, then said, ‘I thought you were smart, but here you are foolish. I thought you brave, but here you are weak.’

  Her pride prickled and rose up and she said, ‘I am not foolish.’

  ‘Crying over old ladies.’

  ‘I am not weak,’ she said, flicking him off her. ‘You killed a simple stablehand. I killed the duke.’

  Crispin’s eyebrows shot up and Ivy was at once satisfied and afraid.

  ‘You killed Guthmer?’

  Ivy nodded, heart thudding but determined to seem cool. ‘I poisoned him. It took four years.’ Why was it hard to swallow suddenly?

  ‘Does anyone else know this?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Elgith suspected?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then others would suspect.’ He glanced away, rubbing one fist against his opposite palm.

  ‘No, not a one. Not Hilla, nor any of his thanes, nor his own sons. I was very careful.’

  ‘Who sold you the poison?’

  ‘An old witch.’

  ‘Then she knows,’ he said, stilling his hands.

  Ivy’s stomach felt loose. ‘She’s no threat to me. To us.’

  ‘Take me to her.’

  Ivy shook her head.

  ‘I just want to ask how much she knows,’ he said with a soft smile. ‘Don’t think me a monster, Ivy. I am your Crispin. Your lover. I am a gentle man.’

  Ivy knew this wasn’t true. She knew it. Sunlight had shot through the shutter, making a striped pattern on his cheek. She could see fair light in his dark stubble. She wished it could go back to how it had been: when they spoke of nothing more consequential than kisses.

  ‘I won’t take you to her,’ she said at last. ‘She wouldn’t suspect a thing. I told her it was to poison rats.’ She smiled, though her lips felt stretched and stiff. ‘Trust me. I am not weak and I am not foolish, and I don’t care if everyone hates me.’
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  He shrugged, grudgingly. Then said, ‘Did you poison Guthmer so we could be together?’

  Ivy didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t know how to say that she had never set out to kill her husband, just to keep him away from her. That it hadn’t been a plan so much as an idea that evolved over time. That she had really just done it to see what would happen. If she told him that, he would believe her foolish.

  Perhaps she was foolish.

  ‘I’m tired of talking about this,’ she said.

  ‘As you wish, my lady,’ Crispin said with a deep bow. ‘I am sorry I questioned you.’

  She tried a smile, but he turned and was gone, closing the door behind him. Ivy felt she had let him down, and wondered if he still loved her.

  How deep she was in dark waters, now. She would have to warn Dritta, give her money, help her to leave the Tanglewood. She couldn’t let the old woman die the way Joe had.

  By the third time she told the story of Bluebell’s defeat of the dragon, Ash was nearly as drunk as her sister. The crowd in the inn at Stanstowe had grown thicker and and the room hotter since they’d arrived in the late afternoon. Ash, finally freed of years of loneliness and fear, embraced company and mead in equal measure. Bluebell had passed her dragon scales around and bragged, then decided Ash instead should be the teller of her tale. It was a tale that hardly needed embellishing, reported to her by Bluebell on their ride to Stanstowe: the raft that broke on rocks; the shield in ashes; the fire and blood. She played down her own role, still superstitious about her truth and power. But the listeners weren’t interested in her in any case, not while Bluebell was among them in the firelit room. They gathered around to gape at Bluebell’s singed knuckles, to inspect the deep claw mark in her calf. Some of the old folk said they’d always suspected there was a dragon down there, tales were told of decades of missing pigs, children who didn’t return from collecting chestnuts. Gartrude, the smith, was there, bathing in the reflected glory of her family’s contribution to the tale. She began the cry that they should send a party out to the dragon cave to cut off its head and hang it over the village gate. Bluebell approved vigorously and said that she would accompany them in the morning, but by this stage she was so drunk she could barely slur out the sentence, and the chance that she would remember anything in the morning grew very remote.