Soul of the Fire

  “Well, if you got your uniform, then what are we doing—”

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “Why?”

  Fitch growled in frustration. “Morley, they’re looking for a messenger and a scullion. If you put on a messenger’s outfit, then we’ll be two messengers.”

  Morley’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. That’s a good idea.”

  In a rush Morley stripped out of his filthy scullion clothes. Fitch held out the lamp as he searched the shelves for outfits of messengers for the Minister’s aide. He tossed Morley some dark brown trousers.

  “Do these fit?”

  Morley stepped into the legs and pulled them up. “Good enough.”

  Fitch pulled out a white shirt with ruffled collar. “How about this?”

  Fitch watched as Morley tried to button it. It was too small to fit over Morley’s broad shoulders.

  “Fold it back up,” Fitch said as he searched for another.

  Morley tossed the shirt aside. “Why bother?”

  “Pick it up and fold it back up. You want us to get caught? I don’t want it to look like we was down here. If they don’t know someone took clothes, then we can get away better.”

  “Oh,” Morley said. He plucked up the shirt and started folding with his big hands.

  Fitch handed him another that was only just a little too big. In short order Fitch found a sleeved doublet quilted with an interlocking cornucopia design. The edges were trimmed with the distinctive brown and black braided-wheat banding of Dalton Campbell’s messengers.

  Morley poked his arms through the sleeves. It fit fine.

  “How do I look?”

  Fitch held up the lamp. He let out a low whistle. His friend was built a lot stouter than Fitch. In the messenger uniform Morley looked almost noble. Fitch never thought of his friend as good-looking, but now he was a sight.

  “Morley, you look better than Rowley does.”

  Morley grinned. “Really?” The grin vanished. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Fitch pointed. “Boots. You need boots, or you’ll look foolish. Here, put on these stockings or you’ll get blisters.”

  Morley hauled up the stockings and then sat on the floor while he matched up boot soles with the bottom of his foot until he found a pair that fit. Fitch told him to pick up all his old clothes so no one would know they had been there and taken an outfit, if they even discovered it missing—there was a lot of livery stored in the room and it wasn’t orderly enough to tell if one outfit was gone.

  When they heard boots in the hall, Fitch blew out the lamp. He and Morley stood frozen in the dark. They were too terrified to breathe. The boots came closer. Fitch wanted to run, but if they did they would have to run out the door, and that was where the men were.

  Men. He realized it was boots from two men. Guards. Guards making their rounds.

  Once again, Fitch felt panic at the idea of being put to death before a jeering crowd. Sweat trickled down his back.

  The door opened.

  Fitch could see the man, standing with his hand on the doorknob, outlined in the dim light from the hall. He could see the sword at the man’s hip.

  Fitch and Morley were back a ways in the room, in an aisle between shelves. The long rectangle of light from the doorway fell across the floor and came almost right up to Fitch’s boots. He held his breath. He dared not move a muscle.

  Maybe, he thought, the guard, his eyes accustomed to the light, didn’t see the two of them standing there in dark.

  The guard closed the door and walked on with his fellow, who was opening other doors in the hall. The sound of footsteps receded into the distance.

  “Fitch,” Morley said in a shaky whisper, “I’d be needing to relieve myself something awful. Can we get out of here? Please?”

  Fitch had to force his voice to return. “Sure.”

  He made for where he remembered seeing the door in the pitch blackness. The light of the empty hall was a welcoming sight. The two of them hurried on to the nearest way out, the service entrance not far from the brewer’s room. Along their way they dumped Morley’s old clothes in the rag bin near the service dock.

  They heard the old brewer singing a drunken song. Morley wanted to stop and lift something to drink. Fitch licked his lips as he considered Morley’s idea. It sounded good to him, too. He surely would like a drink right then.

  “No,” he finally whispered. “I’d not like to be put to death for a drink. We have plenty of money. We can buy a drink later. I don’t want to be here a second longer than necessary.”

  Morley nodded reluctantly. They rushed out the service doors and out onto the dock. Fitch leading, they hurried on down the steps—the steps Claudine had come up the first time he and Morley had their talk with her. If only she’d listened to them, and done as Fitch warned her.

  “Aren’t we going to get any of our things?” Morley asked.

  Fitch stopped and looked at his friend standing in the light coming from the estate windows.

  “You got anything worth dying for?”

  Morley scratched his ear. “Well, no, I guess not. Just a nice carved stick game my pa gave me. I guess I don’t have much else but some of my other clothes, and they’re just rags, really. This outfit is better than any of them—even my assembly clothes.”

  Penance assembly. Fitch realized with a sense of joy they would never have to go to penance assembly again.

  “Well, I don’t have anything worth taking, either. I got a few coppers left in my trunk, but that’s nothing compared to what we’re carrying now. I say we get to Fairfield and buy some horses.”

  Morley made a face. “You know how to ride a horse?”

  Fitch looked around to make sure there weren’t any guards about. He gave Morley a gentle shove to get them moving.

  “No, but I reckon we’ll learn fast enough.”

  “I reckon,” Morley said. “But let’s buy gentle horses.”

  As they made the road, they both looked back over their shoulders at the estate for the last time.

  “I’m glad to be away from there,” Morley said. “Especially after what happened in there today. I’ll be glad not to have to go into that kitchen again.”

  Fitch frowned over at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what? I was off in Fairfield delivering messages.”

  Morley grasped Fitch’s arm and brought them to a panting halt. “About the fire? You didn’t hear about the fire?”

  “Fire?” Fitch was baffled. “What are you talking about?”

  “Down in the kitchen. Earlier today. Something went crazy wrong with the ovens and the hearth—the whole thing.”

  “Wrong? Like what?”

  Morley lifted his arms up as he made a roaring sound with the spit in his throat. His arms spread, apparently to imitate flames expanding outward. “It just flared up something awful. Burned the bread. Got so hot it split a cauldron.”

  “No,” Fitch said in astonishment. “Did anyone get hurt?”

  A fiendish grin spread on Morley’s face. “Gillie got burned real bad.” With an elbow he jabbed Fitch in the ribs. “She was making a sauce when the fire went crazy. She got her ugly prune face burned up. Her hair was afire and everything.”

  Morley laughed with the satisfaction of one who had waited years for recompense. “She probably won’t live, they say. But at least as long as she lives, she’ll be in a horrible of pain.”

  Fitch had mixed feelings. He felt no sympathy for Gillie, but still…

  “Morley, you shouldn’t be glad an Ander got hurt. That just shows our hateful Haken ways.”

  Morley made a scornful face and they started out again. They ran the entire way, diving into the fields three times when a carriage came along the road. They hid in the wheat, or the sorghum, depending on which side offered the most cover. There they lay and caught their breath until the carriage passed.

  In a way, Fitch found the ex
perience of running away more a liberation than a frightful flight. Away from the estate he felt less fear of getting caught. At night, anyway.

  “I think we should hide in the day,” he said to Morley. “In the beginning at least. Hide in the day somewhere safe as we go along, and where we can see if anyone is coming. We can travel at night so people won’t see us, or if they do, won’t be able to see who we are.”

  “But what if someone finds us in the day when we’re sleeping?”

  “We’ll have to stand watches. Just like soldiers do. One of us stands watch while the other gets sleep.”

  Morley seemed to find Fitch’s logic a marvelous thing. “I never thought of that.”

  They slowed to a walk as they neared the streets of Fairfield. There, they knew how to disappear as effectively as they did in the fields when a carriage came along the road.

  “We can get some horses,” Fitch said, “and still make some distance tonight.”

  Morley thought a minute. “How we going to get out of Anderith? Master Campbell said there are places where it don’t matter that we’re Haken. But how we going to get past the army at the border with the Dominie Dirtch?”

  Fitch gave the shoulder of Morley’s doublet a tug. “We’re messengers. Remember?”

  “So?”

  “So, we say we have official business.”

  “Messengers have official business outside of Anderith?”

  Fitch gave that some thought. “Well, who’s to say we don’t? If we say we have urgent business they can’t keep us until they send word back. That would take too long.”

  “They might ask to see the message.”

  “We can’t be showing secret messages to them, now can we? We’ll just say it’s a secret mission to another land we can’t name with an important message they aren’t allowed to see.”

  Morley grinned. “I think this is going to work. I think we’re going to get away.”

  “You bet we are.”

  Morley pulled Fitch to a halt. “Fitch, where are we going to go? Do you got any idea about that part of it?”

  This time it was Fitch who grinned.

  43

  Beata squinted in the bright sun as she set down her bag. She wiped her windblown hair back from her eyes. Since she couldn’t read she couldn’t tell what the sign above the towering gate said, but there was a number before it: twenty-three. She knew numbers, so she knew she’d found the place.

  She stared at the word after the number, trying to remember it so she might someday recognize it for the word it was, but trying to make sense of it was impossible. It just seemed incomprehensible marks carved in a piece of wood. Chicken scratchings made no less sense. She couldn’t remember a chicken scratching; she couldn’t understand how people remembered the seeming indecipherable marks that made up words, but they did.

  Once again, she hoisted the cloth bag holding all her belongings. It had been an awkward load to lug along, what with it bouncing against her thigh, but it wasn’t unbearably heavy and she often switched hands when her arm got tired.

  She didn’t really have all that much to carry with her: some clothes; her pair of cobbler-made shoes, which had belonged to her mother, and which Beata only wore for something special so she wouldn’t wear them out; a comb carved out of horn; soap; some keepsakes a few friends had given her; some water; a gift of some lace; and sewing supplies.

  Inger had given her a lot of food. She had a variety of sausages made from different meats, some as thick as her arm, some long and thin, some in coils. They were the heaviest things in her bag. Even though she had given several away to people she’d met who were hungry and one to a farmer and his wife who gave her a ride in their wagon for two days, she still had enough sausages to last a year, it seemed.

  Inger had given her a letter, too. It was written on a fine piece of vellum and folded over twice. She couldn’t read it, but he read it to her before she left so she’d know what it said.

  Every time she stopped for a rest along the way, she’d taken out the letter, carefully unfolded it in her lap, and pretended to read it. She’d tried to remember just the way Inger told her the words so she could try to tell which word was which. She couldn’t. Hen scratching was all it was to her.

  Fitch made marks in the dust one time, and told her it meant “Truth.” Fitch. She shook her head.

  Inger hadn’t wanted her to leave. He said he needed her. She said there were plenty of other people he could hire. He could hire a man with a back stronger than hers. He didn’t need her.

  Inger said she was good at the work he needed. He said he cared about her almost as if she were his daughter. He told her about when her mother and father first came to work for him, and she was still a toddler. Inger’s eyes were red when he asked her to stay.

  Beata almost cried again, but she held it in. She told him she loved him like a favorite uncle, and that was why she had to go—if she stayed, there would be trouble and he would only be hurt because of it. He said he could handle it. She said if she stayed she would be hurt or even killed, and she was afraid. He had no answer for that.

  Inger had always made her work hard, but he was fair. He always made sure she was fed. He never beat her. Sometimes he’d backhand one of the boys if they talked back to him, but never the girls. But then, the girls didn’t talk back to him in the first place.

  Once or twice he’d gotten angry at her, but he never hit her. If she did something foolish enough to get him angry, he’d make her gut and debone pullets till well into the night. She didn’t have to do that very often, though. She always tried her best to do right and not cause trouble.

  If there was one thing Beata thought was important, it was doing as she was told and not causing trouble. She knew she’d been born with a vile Haken nature, just like all Hakens, and she wanted to try to act better than her nature.

  Every once in a great while Inger would wink at her and tell her she’d done a good job. Beata would have done anything for those winks.

  Before she left, he hugged her for a long time, and then sat her down while he wrote out the letter for her. When he read it to her, she thought he had tears in his eyes. It was all she could do to keep hers from erupting again.

  Beata’s mother and father had taught her not to cry in front of others, or they would think her weak and foolish. Beata was careful to only cry at night, when no one would hear her. She could always hold it back until night, in the dark, alone.

  Inger was a good man, and she would greatly miss him—even if he did work her fingers to the bone. She wasn’t afraid of work.

  Beata wiped her nose and then sidestepped to make way for a wagon rolling toward the gateway. It looked a big place. At the same time, it looked lonely, all by itself out in the windswept middle of nowhere, sitting up on its own low hill. The gate through the bulwark appeared the only way in, except straight up the steep earthwork ramparts.

  As soon as the wagon went by, Beata followed it through the tall gates and into the bailey. People were bustling about everywhere. It was like a town inside the gates. It surprised her to see so many buildings, with streets and alleyways between them.

  A guard just inside finished talking to the wagon driver and waved him on. He turned his attention to Beata. He gave her a quick glance up and down, not showing anything of what he might be thinking.

  “Good day.”

  He used the same tone as he used with the wagon driver—polite but businesslike. There were more wagons coming up behind her and he was busy. She returned the greeting in kind.

  The dark Ander hair at his neck was damp from sweat. It was probably hot in his heavy uniform. He lifted a hand and pointed.

  “Over there. Second building on the right.” He gave her a wink. “Good luck.”

  She nodded her thanks and hurried between horses before they closed up and she’d have to go all the way around. She narrowly missed stepping in fresh manure with her bare feet. Crowds of people were going in every direction. Horses and
wagons made their way up and down the streets. It smelled of sweat, horses, leather, dust, dung, and the new wheat growing all around.

  Beata had never been anyplace but Fairfield before. It was intimidating, but it was also exciting.

  She found the second building on the right easy enough. Inside an Ander woman was sitting behind a desk writing on a rumpled, well-used piece of paper. She had a whole stack of papers to one side of her desk, some well worn and some fresh-looking. When the woman looked up, Beata curtsied.

  “Afternoon, dear.” She gave Beata a look up and down, as the guard had done. “Long walk?”

  “From Fairfield, ma’am.”

  The woman set down her dipping pen. “Fairfield! Then it was a long walk. No wonder you’re covered in dust.”

  Beata nodded. “Six days, ma’am.”

  A frown crept onto the woman’s face. She looked to be a woman who frowned a lot. “Why did you come here, then, if you’re from Fairfield? There were any number of closer stations.”

  Beata knew that. She didn’t want a closer station. She wanted to be far away from Fairfield. Far away from trouble. Inger had told her to come here, to the twenty-third.

  “I worked for a man named Inger, ma’am. He’s a butcher. When I told him what I wanted, he said he’d been here and knew there to be good people here. It was upon his counsel I came here, ma’am.”

  She smiled with one side of her mouth. “Don’t recall a butcher named Inger, but he must have been here, because he’s right about our people here.”

  Beata set down her bag and pulled out the letter. “Like I said, he counseled I come here, ma’am.”

  He counseled her to get far away from Fairfield, and this place was. She feared stepping closer to the desk, so she leaned forward and stretched to hand her precious letter to the woman.

  “He sent this letter of introduction.”

  The woman unfolded the letter and leaned back to read it. Watching her eyes going along each line, Beata tried to remember Inger’s words. She was sorry to find the exact words fading. It wouldn’t be long before she recalled only the main thrust of Inger’s words.