Free Wildfire by Sarah Micklem Page B

whole shimmered with rainbow scales like a colorful fish.
     
  
     I sat swaddled in Mai’s gown, feeling useless. The swimming dark that had come over my vision had faded, but the world still seemed dim and flat. Except for Galan, giving off brightness.
     
  
     He came over and stood behind me. Hidden from the others, he teased a lock of hair out from under my headcloth and wrapped it around his finger, and when he tugged on the hair I felt it to my roots. He said, “What shall Firethorn wear? Not this rag.” I could tell he was smiling by the sound of his voice. He went to the bed, and turned around with a gown of gauze I’d noticed the night before. It shaded from azure at the shoulder to cobalt at the hem, and tiny gems were stitched to it like stars against an evening sky. The colors were of a brilliance that could only be achieved on silk. I’d never worn silk before.
     
  
     “Wear this,” he said.
     
  
     “I’m not in that,” I said.
     
  
     “Why not?”
     
  
     I mustered the only arguments I thought he would hear. “It’s…blood, bile—it’s not, not clean.” I meant to say blue and not green.
     
  
     “Not clean? It’s perfectly clean, not a mark on it.”
     
  
     “No—I mean to say it should ought to be greed. And besight, I won’t be shown through, it’s too fin, fine, thin.”
     
  
     “Are you afraid you’ll be stared at? It’s the custom of the country.” He gestured at Penna to show she wore a garment just as thin. “They’ll stare more in that sack your friend gave you.”
     
  
     Penna averted her face from him, and from the way she glared at the floor I knew the gown had been looted from Torrent. Sire Edecon began to laugh. He said I was the first sheath he ever met who could still blush.
     
  
     Sire Galan held out the garment. “I’d like to see you in it. I got it for you.”
     
  
     “How? Whose cut did you thropple for it?” That was an argument I hadn’t meant to use.
     
  
     “So it’s not your modesty that’s offended after all. You take me for a thief.” He dropped the dress into my lap and stood looking down at me. “Do you mean to give up eating and drinking?”
     
  
     I didn’t know what he meant. I shook my head.
     
  
     “I thought not. Because I never heard you ask where I got the coins to pay for your meat and drink. Where did the coins come from, hmm?” He leaned over, his hands on the back of my chair, his braced arms fencing me in. I thought the delicate carved chair back might give way in his grip. “What do you think a sheath is? What do you think a sheath does? Once my father took me to see a battle, and afterward I saw sheaths thick as crows after areaper, gleaning every coin they could find. You chose to follow me. You should have left your qualms behind on the other side of the Inward Sea.” He pushed himself away and turned his back on me.
     
  
     I was fairly bested. Even if my tongue had been obedient, I had no answer. In silence and in penance, I went to the bed and drew the curtain behind me. I looked over the cloth for rents and bloodstains and found none. I put on the dress, and my bruises showed dark under it. When I came out my face was burning and the rest of me was cold. I wouldn’t look at anyone.
     
  
     
  
Peace had come to the city of Lanx, so long at war within itself, and King Thyrse and Queenmother Caelum had decreed this a festival day. The victorious army paraded through the city, riding in great galleys rather than on horseback, for the principal streets of Lanx were water, not stone. The king in gilded armor stood with the queenmother on the bow of the first galley, under a canopy of cloth-of-gold. They led the procession from one keep to another, accepting the submission—freely given or not—of the clansmen in the city.
     
  
     We were aboard the galley of Crux, second in line, the clan having won its place by the notable victory over Torrent. The warriors of our company mingled with warriors from Lanx.