Delfari Chapter 3 : A Sailor

Marri perched herself on the counter beside the till and cracked her father’s dusty copy of Myths and Histories open on her knees. Some strange banging had awakened her, she thought, but when she got up it had already passed, whatever it was. No one disturbed the silence this time of the morning, when the street lamps had burned out and the sun hadn’t come up. Marri couldn’t sleep, most nights, and the morning often found her on the counter, or tucked tight into a corner of the common room, reading by candlelight.
She had heard all the tales of the Delfaran War, about courageous Deyja and treacherous Mimora, of course, but Marri enjoyed reading them herself. She traced her fingers down the staves, to keep her place among the runes between them. Her father had brought this book from Karpanaken, after she had already read it in the language of Lochway. They wrote different in Karpanaken, but she could struggle through the strange spellings and odd prepositions because she already knew the tale.
So it was that Deja went into the forest of Loshwein, where Mimra waited in hiding, and did not know she had bewitched Omsu; and Omsu led Deja’s armies against him, and struck down the king.
The kitchen door creaked. Marri looked up at Thrad, standing shirtless in the doorway. His pants dripped onto the floor, dark with water from the knee down.
“Guests should use the stairs over there,” Marri said, and pointed into the common room.
“What is that?”
Marri lifted up the cover of the book so he could see the title carved into it.
“Bunch of lies,” Thrad said. “Mimora take it.” He stepped around the counter and through the front door. The door swung back with a thump.
Marri closed the book and slipped off the counter. She padded through the kitchen. Her feet found Thrad’s wet boot prints. She avoided them, where she could see them, and noticed that someone had disturbed the panel between the cabinets. She stopped and examined it in the dim candlelight that managed to penetrate all the way from the bar counter. Had she just not put it back properly? She couldn’t remember. Marri looked inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, everything was there.
She plucked the figurine out and rubbed her fingers over it. Her fingers warmed, but just barely. She pushed down the warmth, until her finger tips prickled and turned blue. She darted out the back door, the figurine clutched in her hand, and looked down the ally toward the starlit street. Puddles made glittering patches on the paving stones. It must have rained quick in the few moments Marri had slept.
A trail of misted breath hung in the air and mingled with the first bits of mist that would coat the city before the sun rose. It led from the front door of the inn, across the porch, to the stables.
Marri stuck close to the stable wall, and crept to the corner. She peeked around, and when she did not see Thrad she continued to the stable door. One side hung open. Marri hid behind it and peered into the stable.
Kit sprawled across a pile of hay in the corner. Thrad stood by a stall and patted the head of his horse, which stretched over the wall. He was a shadow against a shadow. Thrad turned toward the door, and his eyes shone in the dark, yellow like cat’s eyes. Marri jerked back under cover and hoped she didn’t jostle the door.
Just checking his horse, she told herself. Thrad appeared through the doorway. He paused in the street, and glanced back toward the stable. Marri pushed herself deeper into the angle between the door and the wall and held her breath.
Thrad didn’t close the door, he left it and returned to the inn.
Marri jumped around the door and pulled it shut behind herself. She ran across the floor to the corner where Kit lay. Fresh horse dung clotted in the air, mixed with the scent of wet hay. She hoped what sloshed between her toes was mud. “Kit, get up.”
Kit didn’t, so she kicked him until he did. “What?” he demanded. “Red?”
“Get up.”
“What do you want?”
“The knight was out here.”
Kit looked around the stables. Marri wondered how he could see anything.
“He’s not here now,” she said.
“You put it back, didn’t you?” Kit went to the door. He paused a moment in the muddy spot and said something to himself. Thatch, Marri thought she heard, and a swear word that reddened her cheeks whenever her mother was in a four block radius. Kit checked peeked out the door, then opened both sides all the way.
Mist rolled through the door and made swirls like waves crashing on a beach. The stars had faded and the sun splashed yellow across the eastern sky. The horses took notice and whickered softly at the dawn.
“I did. He was just checking his horse.”
Kit turned back toward her and stood framed in the dawn, on arm up against the door frame. “Why’d you kick me for?”
Marri clutched the figurine to her chest with both hands. “I wanted to check. I thought maybe he, what if he knew you took it, and. You know.” Her cheeks were red, she was sure.
“What’s that?”
Marri thrust the figurine toward him.
Kit took it and ran his fingers over it. “It looks like you.”
“No it doesn’t,” Marri said.
“The hair is red.”
“That’s just the color of the wood.” Marri snatched the figurine back. It grew hot in her hand. She felt the heat radiate up her arm, but barely noticed it against the heat in her cheeks.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I bought it.”
“With what?”
Marri worked the figuring around and around in her hand. Her arms blazed.
A grin crept onto Kit’s face and slowly exposed his teeth. “You stole it.”
“No!” Marri waved the figurine at him. “I bought it!”
“Thief thief thief!” Kit teased.
“No!” The heat in Marri’s arms burst from her fingers. Flames sprang around the figurine and her fingers. She gasped, she dropped it.
“Piss!” Kit shouted and stomped on the figurine. He ground it into the mud. Marri’s arms turned cold, her flesh pimpled. “You did that,” Kit said.
Marri looked away from his stare and shivered. Char drifted into the air. The figurine still smoldered, even buried in wet mud.
“You did it,” Kit said.
“You can’t tell. You mustn’t.”
“I won’t.” Kit bent and looked at the charred figurine. “Can you do whenever you want?”
Marri nodded.
“Can you show me?”
“Not here. Somewhere private.” Marri moved around him and darted for the door. She stopped and looked back at him. Thrad’s war horse stuck his head over the stall wall and whickered at them. Marri turned and ran for the inn.

“Mah-ree!” Sarah yelled. She stood at the back door of the inn looking tired and pouty. Water stained the knees of her dirty dress.
“I’m right here,” Marri said. “And that’s not my name.”
“Mahri mahri mahri,” Sarah spat. “I can’t turn the water.”
Marri pushed her out of the way. Sarah had a bucket crammed under the tap. She ran over in front of Marri and threw her weight onto the valve lever. It didn’t budge.
“See?”
“That’s because it’s already open.”
“But nothing comes out!”
Marri bent over and looked at the tap. A fired clay pipe stuck through the wall. It connected to a bronze valve with grease oozing from it’s seams. A stick or pole stuck in the top could turn it. Sarah had it all the way open already.
“Cause there’s no water, stupid.” Marri shoved open the kitchen door, already yelling “Mother!”
Mother stood over a table in the common room, attacking last night’s mess with a rag dirtier than the table. “There’s no water!” Marri shouted at her.
“Already? Summer’s barely started. Well take some jugs and your sister and go to the fountain in the square.”
“But..”
“Do it yourself then, I don’t care. Just do it.”
Marri let the kitchen door bounce against it’s frame. Sarah had her finger stuck up the tap. “You heard her, go get the jugs.” Marri kicked her to make her move, then she shut the tap. The pipes would start to stink in a day or so, with no water in them.
She mopped up the water on the floor while she waited for Sarah, glad for once that Sarah always took so long to do simple things. Sarah managed to spill everything, somehow. If the water hadn’t been out, Marri would have a real mess to clean up this time. The water didn’t want to come out of the crack between the floor and wall. Marri passed the mop along it again and again, but each time a bead of water seeped out. She stopped mopping and watched it as it slowly spread across the floor. How much water had Sarah spilled?
Marri pushed the panel between the cabinets aside. A inch of water pooled between the kitchen wall and the cistern. Light crept through a gaping hole in the wall of the cistern. Tar covered rocks piled under the hole, spread by the push of water.
Marri ran out to the stable. Kit shoveled hay out of a stall. Thrad’s horse stood outside it’s stall while Kit emptied it, and so did Thrad. Thrad buckled his saddle on himself. Marri watched him until he led the war horse out of the stable and swung up onto it.
“Knobs,” Marri said. She leaned into the stall and held her nose. “Come on.”
“What?”
“Come on.” Marri grabbed his elbow and dragged him out of the stall. She led him around the inn and into the kitchen. “There’s no water,” she said.
“So what?”
“So the cistern is empty! Look in there.”
Kit stuck his head through the panel. “There’s a hole in it.”
They climbed around the beams in the narrow space, and into the cistern itself. They stood in knee-deep water and stared up at the circle of sky four stories above them. Marri tried to count the pipes jutting from the walls, but lost her place less than a quarter of the way around the cistern.
A slab stuck out of the water near the wall. Marri sat on it and traced her fingers down the runes carved across it’s top. Green slime, still moist, clung to it. She recognized the symbols, but not the words.
Kit stood and looked at her, with his hands on his hips. “So you can do it anytime?”
“Yes,” Marri said.
“Do it now.”
Marri held out her hand. “It happens by itself sometimes. But I’ve never tried to before.” She wiggled her fingers.
“How does it work?” Kit leaned closer and peered at her fingers.
“My hands get warm. And then fire comes out.” Marri concentrated on the warmth. Her fingers tingled. “I always stop it, now. I never try to make it.”
Kit poked her finger. She giggled and fell back across the granite slab, and looked up at the sky. Drops fell from Kit’s feet as he climbed onto the rock and made trinkling noises where they hit the water. Marri held her hand up in front of her face and examined it against the sky.
She focused on her fingers. The tingling grew. It became heat. Her nails seemed to glow against the sky. Suddenly, a flame burst out between her fingers. She pulled the warmth back, the flame sputtered like a candle in the wind, but she kept it small and it didn’t burn.
“Knobs look!”
Kit rolled over and looked. He bounced up onto his knees and reached his finger toward the flame. It danced between Marri’s fingers.
“Careful it’s hot.”
Kit pinched the flame between his fingers. A tiny column of smoke erupted from it as it burned the oil of his fingers. The smoke clawed at their noses. Marri leaned forward on her hands, fingers splayed across the runes.
Kit waggled the flame on his finger and flicked it from finger to finger. The flame grew as it sucked fuel off his fingers, like a candle drawing up wax. “How do I put it out?”
“Stick it in the water I guess.”
Kit leaned over the side of the slab and lowered his hand toward the water. The flame spun around his fingers and licked up the back of his hand. He flicked it at the water. The flame tore up his bare arm and singed off his hair.
“Make it stop,” Kit said.
“I don’t know how to.”
The flame swirled around Kit’s arm. Kit flailed it in the air. “Make it stop!” His shout echoed back off the cistern walls. Kit dove forward off the slab and rolled in the water. The flames danced around him.
Marri leaned off the slab but jerked back away from the steam. Kit flailed in the water. The flames tore all around him and ate his flesh despite the water and steam. He screamed.
“I can’t! I can’t!” Marri shouted back, louder and louder to hear herself over the roar of fire and death. She reached for the flames, she flailed at them, and they danced just beyond her reach and laughed at her.
Kit lay on the bottom of the pool. The water boiled and churned above him. Steam rose around Marri. She dug her fingers into the runes on the slab. Flame danced in the steam as the fire consumed the water itself, then licked up the stone walls.
The fire swooped over Marri’s head like diving gulls.

Shen continued to hammer his heels against the crate even after his father told him to stop. Jamear drifted up and down the dock, bribing officials. Once he bribed one, he had to bribe them all, but that knight had been very clear. No one could open this crate.
“Better show up soon,” Jamear muttered as he passed close. “Could of slept in a bed last night instead of been out here throwing away my profit margin.”
“You’re going to sleep at the inn?”
“Of course I am.” Jamear stopped pacing to peer at him. “Don’t you start getting any ideas. You’re going there too.”
“She isn’t my mother.”
“You’re to treat Meredith like she is. And your sisters will be happy to see you.”
Shen looked at his feet instead. He knew his step mother only from a few faded memories and these brief visits, every three months or so. He knew the wenches in Pryley and Karpanaken better. He was eight when Jamear took him on the ship. Five years at sea had turned him into a man, if he would just grow some more. How old was Marri when he left? Four? Why should he care if she was happy?
The knight arrived. Shen recognized Sir Thrad. A few more tears in his mandilion let his chain mail show, and he had a sword instead of a hammer, but Shen couldn’t forget that unnatural skin, that let all Thrad’s veins out like rivers drawn on a map.
Thrad led his horse and two ponies onto the dock. Shen dropped off the crate to take the reigns, but Thrad put the reins from the ponies into the horse’s mouth instead. The horse worked his teeth around on the reins and actually stood there and held them.
Thrad stepped around the crate. He paused to run his hand over one spot, and examine a chip in the wood. Jamear stood off to the side.
“Open it,” Thrad said.
“What?” Jamear said. “You wanted it here untouched, it hasn’t been.”
“It’s here now, open it.”
Shen stared at the horse until Jamear jabbed him. “Wake up. Go get a crowbar.”
Shen darted down the dock to the sailors unloading cargo and snatched a pole from them. Jamear thrust it in the seam between the crate and it’s lid. The nails squeaked as they came out of the wood. They stuck, just before they popped, so that each nail sprang from the crate like a cork from a bottle.
The lid clattered onto the dock. Jamear tossed the pole down on top of it. Shen darted in, before they could tell him otherwise, to peer into the crate.
Straw, mostly wet now, filled it nearly to the brim. Thrad dug into it and heaved great handfuls out of the crate, heedless of where it landed. A stone tablet emerged, slowly, from the bottom. It was the size of Shen’s head and covered in runes. He recognized the alphabet, but not the words.
Thrad lifted the tablet out and turned it around in his hands. “Made it here in one piece. It’s been a pleasure, Captain.”
Jamear grunted. “You didn’t bring a wagon.”
“No need,” Thrad said. He stowed the tablet in his saddle bags. “It will be safe right here.”
Thrad walked off the dock, and his horse turned and followed him without being led.
“Lars!” Jamear shouted. Shen watched the knight go. The tone of Thrad’s boots changed as he crossed from wood to stone. “Lars! Keep her tight! No penetration, you understand? Come on Shen.”
“I’d..”
“No arguing. You’re going to the inn.”
Shen followed his father. He kept a few paces between them so maybe he could feel like he walked alone, if only for a moment. They followed the docks for a while, around the curve of the bay. The Basilica grew larger and grander until they came right up against it’s wall. Shen lost site of Thrad in the crowd as they passed through the square.
The merchants were inn, from the ships and the road, and stalls and tents squatted around the gallows forming a network of twining paths like the braided streams in a river delta. They setup every morning, except holidays, and packed up again every night. You couldn’t find the same stall two days in a row except by searching the entire square again.
“Don’t skulk,” Jamear said.
Shen grunted something just to appease his father. Why shouldn’t he skulk? He was the one being dragged from his home, the ship, to see his whore of a stepmother. Marri had the same limp red hair as they did, but that younger one, she had golden curls and not a freckle on her. Why couldn’t Jamear see that the little brat wasn’t his?
A strange smell creeped into his nostrils. Shen puckered his nose at it. He took his eyes off the cobbles. Thick smoke flowed over the city. “Fire!” someone shouted, not far away. Almost immediately they were pressed from all sides. Merchants hurried to pack their wares.
Jamear grabbed Shen’s arm and dragged him through the crowd. Elbows and knees buffeted him. Shouted names and orders and Fire! again and again all competed to be heard over the roar of flame. Suddenly they burst from the throng onto empty street.
The buildings around them bulged at their seams like a badly darned sail. Flame sputtered through their windows and lapped across brick and stone in search of fresh fuel. The heat sucked the moisture from the air, and the ash clawed at Shen’s throat until every breath was like swallowing sand.
“Go back to the ship!” Jamear ordered.
Shen didn’t heed him, but followed him up the street instead. Shen ran to keep up, with his arm held up to keep the soot out of his eyes. He saw something, a pattern in the flames, out of the corner of his eye, and had to look again to be sure. Flames crawled over the face of a row house. They swirled together in a tube. The tube kept it’s shape as it moved across the bricks, like a fire snake, except it had limbs. Shen kept moving as he watched the fire snake.
The snake paused. It clung to the frame of four different windows and looked straight at Shen. It’s head tracked him as he ran down the street, it’s swirling fire eyes never blinked. Shen could not pull his eyes away. He was drawn into the fire snake’s gaze, until suddenly something streaked across the space above them. A plume of flame leaped from the roof of a combination tavern and book store and arced across the street. Wings spread from the head of the plume and it opened a beak to shriek. The tone drove into Shen’s bones, and the fire bird dove into the snake, and both vanished into a tangle of flame.
Shen turned, spurred to new speed. He raced to catch up to Jamear who had gotten well ahead. He tried to ignore the giant cat that paralleled him along the roof tops. He glanced, once, in search of the source of the hoof beats pounding the cobbles behind him and did not look again. A horse and a stag ran abreast, each with a long tail of flame trailing behind them.
Fire bubbled from the top of the cistern like a pot boiling over and flowed down over the inn. Shen’s step mother stood in the street, with Sarah’s curly head pressed into her stomach. Both were covered in soot, with fainter patches where they had rubbed at their eyes. Shen heard them from farther away than he had expected, over the fire.
“Marri!” Meredith yelled. Tears traced lines in the soot on her cheeks.
Jamear ran to them, and grabbed Meredith’s arm and pulled her around. Meredith did not recognize him immediately, overwhelmed by the fire perhaps.
“Where is she?” Jamear asked.
Meredith stared, her mouth unmoving.
“Momma!” Shen heard, faint. And then again, “Momma!”
“Did you hear that? Jamear! Father!”
Jamear turned, surprised that Shen was there.
“She’s inside. I heard her.”
Jamear looked between Shen and the burning inn, then took his coat and held it over his face. “Keep them safe,” he told Shen, then plunged into the fire.
Shen waited, unable to do anything but fidget. Meredith came over to him, with Sarah still clutched against her, and put her hand on his shoulder. Shen leaned into her and caught Sarah looking up at him, wide eyed and tear streaked.
“Shen!” Jamear yelled in his command voice. It cut through the wood and the fire. Shen ran toward the inn. “Shen!” Jamear yelled again, and Marri flew from a second story window. Her arms wheeled in the air as she fell. Shen got under her and caught her, and they collapsed onto the hard cobbles with no hurts but a few bruises.
Jamear stood framed in the window for a moment, and then the inn crumbled. The third floor fell into the second, and the second into the first, and the entire inn into a pile of burning timbers on the ground. Embers sprang into the air and drifted around them like stars falling out of the sky. Shen felt them sizzle against his skin. The fire swelled over the inn, and Shen saw the fire snake crawling through the rubble consuming the wood, while the others watched and the fire bird wheeled in the air overhead.
Marri hugged him. “I can’t stop it,” she said. “I can’t stop it. Can’t stop it,” again and again.