Soul of the Fire

  Morley liked his stories, at least. Morley, and the others who had pallets in the room where Fitch slept. They all liked telling each other stories, and they all liked to get drunk. There was nothing else to do on their rare time off from work and penance assembly.

  At least at penance assembly they could sometimes talk to girls afterward, if their work was done and they didn’t have to get back to it. But Fitch, like the others, found assembly a depressing experience, hearing all those terrible things. Sometimes, when they got back, if they could filch some wine or ale, they would get drunk.

  After Fitch had brought in a dozen armloads, Master Drummond snagged his sleeve and shoved a piece of paper into his hand.

  “Take this down to the brewer.”

  Fitch bowed and said his “Yes, sir” before starting out. He couldn’t read the paper, but since there was going to be a feast and he’d carried such papers in the past, he guessed the columns of writing were probably orders for what the kitchen wanted brought up. He was glad for the errand because it didn’t involve any real work, and it gave him a chance to get away from the heat and noise of the kitchen for a time, even if he did enjoy the aromas and could occasionally snatch a delicious scrap—all that tempting food was for guests, not the help. Sometimes, though, he just wanted away from the noise and confusion.

  The old brewer, his dark Ander hair mostly gone and what was left mostly turned white, grunted as he read the paper Fitch handed him. Rather than sending Fitch on his way, the brewer wanted him to lug in some heavy sacks of trial hops. It was a common behest; Fitch was just a scullion, and so everyone had the right to order him to do work for them. He sighed, figuring it was the price for the slow walk he’d had, and the one he’d have on the way back.

  When he went out to the service doors where much of the estate goods were delivered, he noticed that across the way Brownie was still standing there with the butcher’s cart. He was relieved to see, stacked to the side of the loading dock, that there were only ten sacks to be lugged down to the brewery. When he’d finished with the sacks he was sent on his way.

  Still catching his breath, he sauntered back through the service halls toward the kitchen, seeing few people, and all but one of them Haken servants so he had only to pause to bow that once. Echoing footsteps swished back to him as he climbed the flight of stairs up to the main floor and the kitchen. Just before going through the door, he paused.

  He looked up at the stairwell’s square ascent all the way to the third floor. No one was on the stairs. No one was in the halls. Master Drummond would believe him when he explained that the brewer wanted sacks brought in. Master Drummond was busy with preparations for that night’s feast; he wouldn’t bother asking how many sacks, and even if he did, he wasn’t going to take the time to double-check.

  Fitch was taking the steps two at a time almost before he’d realized that he’d decided to go have himself a quick look. At what, or for what, he wasn’t sure.

  He’d been on the second floor only a few times, and the third floor only once, just the week before to take the Minister’s new aide, Dalton Campbell, an evening meal he’d ordered down to the kitchen. Fitch had been told by an Ander underling to leave the tray of sliced meats on the table in the empty office. The upper floors, in the west wing with the kitchen where Fitch worked, was where a number of officials’ offices were located.

  The Minister’s offices were supposed to be on the third floor. From the stories Fitch had heard, the Minister had a number of offices. Why he would need more than one, Fitch couldn’t guess. No one had ever explained it.

  The first and second floor of the west wing, Fitch had heard it said, were where the vast Anderith Library was located. The library was a store of the land’s rich and exemplary culture, drawing scholars and other important people to the estate. Anderith culture was a source of pride and the envy of all, Fitch had been taught.

  The third floor of the east wing was the Minister’s family quarters. His daughter, younger than Fitch by a maybe two or three years and dirt plain as Fitch heard it told, had gone off to an academy of some sort. He had only seen her from a distance, but he’d judged the description fair. Older servants sometimes whispered about an Ander guard who was put in chains because the Minister’s daughter, Marcy or Marcia, depending on who was telling the story, accused him of something. Fitch had heard versions running from he was doing nothing but standing quietly guarding in a hall, to eavesdropping on her, to rape.

  Voices echoed up the stairwell. Fitch paused with a foot on the next step, listening, every muscle stiff and still. As he remained motionless, it turned out to be someone passing along the first-floor hall, below. They weren’t coming upstairs.

  Thankfully, the Minister’s wife, Lady Hildemara Chanboor, rarely came into the west wing where Fitch worked. Lady Chanboor was one Ander who made even other Anders tremble. She had a foul temper and was never pleased with anyone or anything. She had dismissed staff just because they’d glanced up at her as they passed her in a hall.

  People who knew had told Fitch that Lady Chanboor had a face to match her temper: ugly. The unfortunate staff who had looked up at Lady Chanboor as they passed her in the hall were put out on the spot. Fitch learned they’d become beggars.

  Fitch had heard the women in the kitchen say that Lady Chanboor would go unseen for weeks because the Minister would have enough of one thing or another from his wife and give her a black eye. Others said that she was just on a drunken binge. One old maid whispered that she went off with a lover from time to time.

  Fitch reached the top step. There was no one in the halls of the third floor. Sunlight streamed in windows trimmed with gauzy lace to fall across bare wooden floors. Fitch paused on the landing at the top of the stairs. It had doors on three sides and the stairs on the other to his back. He looked down empty halls running left and right, not knowing if he dared walk down them.

  He could be stopped by any number of people, from messengers to guards, and asked to explain what he was doing there. What could he say? Fitch didn’t think he wanted to be a beggar.

  As much as he didn’t like to work, he did like to eat. He seemed to always be hungry. The food wasn’t as good as what was served to the important people of the household or to the guests, but it was decent, and he got enough. And when no one was watching, he and his friends did get to drink wine and ale. No, he didn’t want to be put out to be a beggar.

  He took a careful step into the center of the landing. His knee almost buckled and he nearly cried out as he felt something sharp stick him. There, under his bare foot, was a pin with a spiral end. The pin Beata used to close the collar of her dress.

  Fitch picked it up, not knowing what it could mean. He could take it and give it to her later, possibly to her joy to have it returned. But maybe not. Maybe he should leave it where he’d found it, rather than have to explain to anyone, Beata especially, how he’d come to have it. Maybe she’d want to know what he was doing going up there; she’d been invited, he hadn’t. Maybe she’d think he’d been spying on her.

  He was bending to put the pin back when he saw movement—shadows—in the light coming from under one of the tall doors ahead. He cocked his head. He thought he heard Beata’s voice, but he wasn’t sure. He did hear muffled laughter.

  Fitch checked right and left again. He saw no one. It wouldn’t be like he was going down a hall. He would just be stepping across the landing at the top of the stairs. If anyone asked, he could say he was only intending to step into a hall to get a look at the view of the beautiful grounds from the third floor—to look out over the wheat fields that surrounded the capital city of Fairfield, the pride of Anderith.

  That seemed plausible to him. They might yell but, surely, they wouldn’t put him out. Not for looking out a window. Surely.

  His heart pounded. His knees trembled. Before he could consider if it was a foolish risk, he tiptoed across to the heavy, four-panel door. He heard what sounded like a woman’s whimpers. But he also
heard chuckling, and a man panting.

  Hundreds of little bubbles were preserved forever in the glass doorknob. There was no lock and so no keyhole beneath the ornate brass collar around the base of the glass knob. Putting his weight on his fingers, Fitch silently lowered himself to the floor until he was on his belly.

  The closer he got to the floor, and the gap under the door, the better he could hear. It sounded like a man exerting himself somehow. The occasional chuckle was from a second man. Fitch heard a woman’s choppy plaintive sob, like she couldn’t get a breath before it was gone. Beata, he thought.

  Fitch put his right cheek to the cold, varnished oak floor. He moved his face closer to the inch-tall opening under the door, seeing, as he did so, off a little to the left, chair legs, and before them, resting on the floor, one black boot ringed with silver studs. It moved just a little. Since there was only one, the man must have had his other foot crossed over the leg.

  Fitch’s hair felt as if it stood on end. He clearly recalled seeing the owner of that boot. It was the man with the strange cape, with the rings, with all the weapons. The man who’d taken a long look at Beata as he’d passed her cart.

  Fitch couldn’t see the source of the sounds. He silently snaked his body around and turned his face over to use his left eye to look under the door off to the right. He slid closer until his nose touched the door.

  He blinked in disbelief and then again in horror.

  Beata was on her back on the floor. Her blue dress was bunched up around her waist. There was a man, his backside naked, between her bare, open legs, going at her fast and furious.

  Fitch sprang to his feet, jolted by what he’d seen. He retreated several steps. He panted, his eyes wide, his gut twisting with the shock of it. With the shock of having seen Beata’s bare, open legs. With the Minister between them. He turned to run down the stairs, tears stinging his eyes, his mouth hanging open, pulling for air like a carp out of water.

  Footsteps echoed. Someone was coming up. He froze in the middle of the room, ten feet from the door, ten feet from the steps, not knowing what to do. He heard the footsteps shuffling up the stairs. He heard two voices. He looked to the halls on each side, trying to decide if one might offer escape, if one or both might offer a dead end where he would be trapped, or guards who might throw him in chains.

  The two stopped on the landing below. It was two women. Ander women. They were gossiping about the feast that night. Who was going to be there. Who wasn’t invited. Who was. Though their words were hardly more than whispered, in his stiff state of wide-eyed alarm he could make them out clear enough. Fitch’s heart pounded in his ears as he panted in frozen panic, praying they wouldn’t come up the stairs all the way to the third floor.

  The two fell to discussing what they were going to wear to catch Minister Chanboor’s eye. Fitch could hardly believe he was hearing a conversation about how close above their nipples they dared wear their neckline. The image it put in Fitch’s head would have been blindingly pleasant had he not been trapped and about to be caught where he shouldn’t be, seeing something he shouldn’t have seen, and maybe get himself put out on the street, or worse. Much worse.

  One woman seemed bolder than the second. The second said she intended to be noticed, too, but didn’t want more than that. The first chuckled and said she wanted more than to be noticed by the Minister, and that the other shouldn’t worry because either of their husbands would be lauded to have their wife catch the full attention of the Minister.

  Fitch turned around to keep an eye on the Minister’s door. Someone had already caught the attention of the Minister. Beata.

  Fitch took a careful step to the left. The floor creaked. He stilled, alert, his ears feeling like they were stretching big. The two below were giggling about their husbands. Fitch pulled back the foot. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

  The two below started moving as they talked. He held his breath. He heard a door squeak open. Fitch wanted to scream over his shoulder at them to hurry it up and go somewhere else to gossip. One of the women mentioned the other’s husband—Dalton.

  The door closed behind them. Fitch exhaled.

  Right in front of him, the Minister’s door burst open.

  The big stranger had Beata by the upper arm. Her back was to Fitch as she was put out of the room. The man shoved her, as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow. She landed on her bottom with a thud. She didn’t know Fitch was standing right behind her.

  The stranger’s unconcerned gaze met Fitch’s wide eyes. The man’s thick mat of dark hair, in tangled stringy strands, hung to his shoulders. His clothes were dark, covered in leather plates and straps and belts. Most of his weapons were lying on the floor in the room. He looked a man who didn’t need them, though, a man who could, with his big callused hands, crush the throat of nearly anyone.

  When he turned back to the room, Fitch realized to his horror that the odd cape was made from scalps. That was why it looked like it was covered with patches of hair. Because it was covered with patches of hair, human hair. Every color from blond to black.

  From beyond the doorframe, the Minister called the stranger by name, “Stein,” and pitched him a small white handful of cloth. Stein caught it and then stretched Beata’s underpants between two meaty fingers for a look. He tossed them into her lap as she sat on the floor struggling for breath, trying mightily not to cry.

  Stein looked up into Fitch’s eyes, completely unconcerned, and smiled. His smile wrinkled aside his heavy mat of stubble.

  He gave Fitch a larking wink.

  Fitch was stunned by the man’s disregard for someone being there, seeing what was happening. The Minister peered out as he buttoned his trousers. He, too, smiled, and then pulled the door shut behind himself as he stepped out into the hall.

  “Shall we visit the library now?”

  Stein held out a hand in invitation. “Lead the way, Minister.”

  Beata sat hanging her head as the two men, chatting amicably, strode off down the hall to the left. She seemed crushed by the ordeal, too disillusioned to be able to muster the will to stand, to leave, to go back to her life the way it had been.

  Stock-still, Fitch waited, hoping that, somehow, the impossible would happen—that maybe she wouldn’t turn, that maybe she would be confused and wander off down the other hall, and she wouldn’t notice him there behind her, unblinking, holding his breath.

  Sucking back her sobs, Beata staggered to her feet. When she turned and saw Fitch, she stiffened with a gasp. He stood paralyzed, wishing more than anything that he had never gone up the stairs for a look. He’d gotten considerably more of a look than he wanted.

  “Beata…” He wanted to ask if she was hurt, but of course she was hurt. He wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know how, didn’t know the right words to use. He wanted to take her in his arms and shelter her, but he feared she might misconstrue his aching concern.

  Beata’s face warped from misery to blind rage. Her hand unexpectedly whipped around, striking his face with such fury that it made his head ring inside like a bell.

  The wallop wrenched his head to the side. The room swam in his vision. He thought he saw someone in the distance down a hall, but he wasn’t sure. As he tried to get his bearings, to grope for a railing as he staggered back, his hand found the floor instead. One knee joined his hand on the floor. He saw a blur of her blue dress as Beata raced down the stairs, the staccato sounds of her footfalls hammering an echo up the stairwell.

  Dazing pain, sharp and hot, drove into his upper jaw just in front of his ringing ear. His eyes hurt. He was stupefied by how hard she had hit him. Nausea bloated in the pit of his stomach. He blinked, trying to force his vision to clear.

  A hand under his arm startled him. It helped lift him back to his feet. Dalton Campbell’s face loomed close to his.

  Unlike the other two men, he did not smile but, rather, studied Fitch’s eyes the way Master Drummond scrutinized a halibut brought in by the fishmonger
. Just before he gutted it.

  “What is your name?”

  “Fitch, sir. I work in the kitchen, sir.” Between the punch and his dread, Fitch’s legs felt like boiled noodles.

  The man glanced toward the stairs. “You seem to have wandered from the kitchen, don’t you think?”

  “I took a paper to the brewer.” Fitch paused to gulp air, trying to make his voice stop trembling. “I was just on my way back to the kitchen, sir.”

  The hand tightened on Fitch’s arm, drawing him closer. “Since you were rushing to the brewer, down on the lower level, and then right back to the kitchen, on the first floor, you must be a hardworking young man. I would have no reason to recall seeing you up here on the third floor.” He released Fitch’s arm. “I suppose I recall seeing you downstairs, rushing back to the kitchen from the brewer? Without wandering off anywhere along the way?”

  Fitch’s concern for Beata turned to a focused hope to keep himself from being thrown out of the house, or worse.

  “Yes, sir. I’m on my way right back to the kitchen.”

  Dalton Campbell draped his hand over the hilt of his sword. “You’ve been working, and haven’t seen a thing, have you?”

  Fitch swallowed his terror. “No, sir. Nothing. I swear. Just that Minister Chanboor smiled at me. He’s a great man, the Minister. I’m thankful that a man so great as he would give work to a worthless Haken such as myself.”

  The corners of Dalton Campbell’s mouth turned up just enough that Fitch thought the aide might be pleased by what he’d heard. His fingers drummed along the length of the brass crossguard of his sword. Fitch stared at the lordly weapon. He felt driven to speak into the silence.

  “I want to be good and be a worthy member of the household. To work hard. To earn my keep.”

  The smile widened. “That is indeed good to know. You seem a fine young man. Perhaps, since you are so earnest in your desire, I could count on you?”

  Fitch wasn’t sure exactly what he was to be counted on for, but he gave a “Yes, sir” anyway, and without hesitation.