But they were. She could see six riders coming up from the Set with their sectbows. Well, what was a dead child’s funeral to the Landmaster? A girl child—less than nothing.
In spite of her disapproval, the clatter of hooves made her yearn to be down there, mounted on that plunging steed in place of the fat Landmaster. The Landmaster’s pudgy daughter, Bagriba, sat her gelding like a sack of meal. Only Landmasters’ women were considered clean and allowed to ride a mount. A common girl could drive her donkey or lead him in the fields, but never straddle him, and must never touch a horse. For the horse was a creature that shared in a meager way the sacred image, and so shared its holiness, too. For woman to touch a horse was to blaspheme that which was akin to the gods.
“You could ride to the hunt if you married the Landmaster’s son,” Meatha had said once. “No other girl cares about horses the way you do, you would be . . .” Zephy had stared at her until Meatha broke off in mid-sentence. Her friend looked innocent and serious, her pale-skinned, dark-haired beauty framed by the greening mawzee stalks. “Elij will be Landmaster one day. A Landmaster’s wife—”
“Like marrying a trussed-up hog from Aybil!” Zephy had snapped, thinking Meatha meant it. “Besides, why would he want me!” Though sometimes she had caught Elij Cooth staring at her so strangely she became uncomfortable. Then she saw the laughter in Meatha’s eyes, and they collapsed together in a fit of mirth.
“Besides,” Meatha had said at last, “you’ll marry no man of Burgdeeth, neither of us will.”
The hunt was below her, the horses’ hooves striking sparks on the cobbles. The quick jingle of spurs made a fire in her blood. Elij, tall and blond, was having trouble with his horse, which had begun to shy and stare behind into the shadows. Zephy looked back down the street as two figures stepped out from an alley, glanced toward the hunt, then turned away as if the riders did not exist. The boy dangling the jug and walking unsteadily was Shanner. You might know! With the Candler’s oldest daughter again. Elij steadied his horse and laughed. “Swill the moons, Shanner, my boy. What do you feel for in those dark alleys! Does she feel up good, is she warm and soft on this cold night?” There was a roar of laughter from the hunters. Crisslia’s face would be red. Zephy felt embarrassed for her, though she didn’t like her much. Shanner must be drunk as a lizard to be so silent. Sober, he would have charged out to pull Elij off his horse, the fight ending in laughter.
Kearb-Mattus, the dark Kubalese, sat his horse silently, watching the episode with contempt. How elegantly he was dressed for a hunt. You’d have thought he was riding in a festival, the dark heavy cape the man wore flowing out over his saddle. The wind caught at Zephy’s night dress so she drew back. When she looked again, the Kubalese was smoothing his cape carefully. What was tied under it behind the saddle to make such a lump? Maybe it was a sling for the stag they hunted. The hunt moved on, and Shanner and Crisslia were alone on the street. Shanner stepped across the gutter, pulled the Candler’s door open roughly, slapped Crisslia on her backside, and was gone before she got the door closed. Zephy watched her brother come up the inn’s steps, heard the wrench of the door that would never close quietly, and could picture Shanner glancing at their mother’s door that faced the inner entry as he began to climb the stairs. Then she sat looking at the empty street, feeling a mixture of uncomfortable emotions she could not name or sort out.
The dallying of the boys—and most of the girls—was common enough. Why did it upset her so? Maybe it was the attitude of the boys, Shanner’s attitude. She felt a sudden surge of satisfaction at the black eye Shanner had earned testing young Thorn of Dunoon. Sometimes her brother was too arrogant even by Cloffi standards. Dunoon boys were not so self-important as the boys of Burgdeeth. Nor did they play so loose with their girls. They were laughed at in Burgdeeth, made fun of for their reticent ways. Well, Dunoon boys fought well enough all the same. There was a long black welt across Shanner’s cheek, and his lip was cut and swollen. Zephy thought of the beating Thorn had received in the square, fighting the Deacons, and her blood rose hot with anger. Her hatred for the Deacons had increased this last year too; though she had never loved them. She could see Thorn’s face, closed in cold fury as the Deacons struck him.
The Landmasters of Burgdeeth set little store by the goatherds of Dunoon, yet they must be tolerated or Burgdeeth would have little meat. The people would be living on old hens and an occasional rooster, and a meager few dairy calves tough as string. That, and the garden produce, which was the staple of Cloffi, of course. The Dunoon goat meat, rich and fine-grained, was a delicacy that Zephy suspected went on the Landmaster’s table more often than on the tables of the town. She fingered Shanner’s soft blanket woven of Dunoon wool and felt suddenly, for no reason, that without the knowledge of Dunoon, of that one free village on the mountain, life would be dull indeed.
When Shanner came up the ladder, ducking his head away from the slanting ceiling, she was sitting very straight in the moonlight. He hated that, hated her to watch him come in late. He was drunk. He staggered toward his cot, gave her a long resentful stare, slipped out of his pants and jerkin, snatched his blanket from her, and lay down wrapped in it with his hands behind his head. “Why aren’t you asleep? Why do you have to sit in that window and spy? Curiosity felled the Farrobb tribes, little sister.”
She couldn’t help but grin. Even drunk and angry, Shanner could charm the feathers off a river owl. “You’d think,” she said slowly, reflecting, “you’d think the Landmaster would wait a day to ride to the hunt, with Nia Skane’s burial tomorrow.”
“Go to bed,” he roared. “You can’t help the dead by mourning. Why do you take on so! Why is it always something? Why can’t you just leave things the way they are? If he wants to hunt, so let him!” He rolled over, sighed, then growled, “No man wants a wife who doesn’t know her place,” and was asleep almost at once. The stink of honeyrot filled the room. Zephy stared at him indignantly.
She slid down from the sill at last, satisfyingly chilled, and padded across the cold floor to her own cot. She fell into it, almost dead for sleep, and she slept at once.
*
The cry of the vendor brought her awake. “Roasted marrons, hot saffron, buy my marrons and brew.” The rumble of the coal and bittleleaf wagons from Sibot Hill could already be heard and the squeak of water carts coming from the river. She knew, guiltily, that she had dreamed and lay in the darkness wrapped still in a sense of wonder; she wished she could remember the dream, but only a tide of glory remained, slowly deflating as she worried that somehow the Deacons would know she had dreamed.
But that was silly. She rose, lit the candle, glanced at Shanner, still snoring, then washed herself in the icy water from the blue crock. She bound up her hair, dressed in her everyday tunic, and, carrying the candle, started down the ladder to uncover and feed the kitchen fire before Mama should rise.
The sculler opened off the kitchen and was the first room to catch the morning sun. The round wire basket of the mawzee thresher glinted in the brightness. The stone walls of the sculler were lined with shelves that held crocks of mawzee grain, some of yesterday’s loaves, a bowl of charp fruit turning golden, and some oddments of tools and jugs and crockery. Zephy knelt by the low stone ice safe, opened its drain and let it drip into a bucket, then took off the lid of the safe itself and settled the bittle-leaf packing tighter around yesterday’s milk bucket and around the crock of meat. Outside the sculler window, the Trashsinger called and began a tune Zephy loved. She sang it with him softly, “Jajun, Jajun, come to the winter feasting.” She longed to reach down her gaylute from where it lay atop the cupboard, but to play it this time of morning when she should be doing her work would only anger Mama, and she guessed she’d done enough of that lately. She got her milk pails from the sculler and went through the kitchen, then the longroom, where one of the chamber girls was setting out plates on the tables. In the entry she passed her mother’s room, heard her stirring, then pulled open the heavy outer door.