Lois Bujold - THE SPIRIT RING

Thur handed the reins to Fiametta, and went to look for a piece of rope. He found a coil hanging on a nail in the stables. No one disputed his claim of it. He tied one end of the rope to a stirrup, wound it around the headboard of the crate lid, and tied the other end to the other stirrup, converting the lid to a makeshift drag or sledge. The white horse flared its nostrils in worry at the scraping sound behind it, and sidled, giving Thur a mad vision of the beast bolting across the country with Master Beneforte thudding and bouncing along behind in one last wild ride. But after a moment the horse settled down to its usual tired plod, and Thur judged it safe to help Fiametta aboard. She wrapped her hands in the long mane, and drooped over the animal's thick neck. Thur led them out the ruined castle gate and down the hill.

The streets of Montefoglia were growing quieter as the night waned. They passed only two small groups of excited men with torches, who yet swung as wide as the narrow streets permitted around Thur's little cavalcade. Thur was too tired to do anything but ignore them. They arrived at the wrecked oak door to Fiametta's house without being accosted. The walls were still standing, nor had the tile roof fallen in. That was nice, if unexpected.

Thur helped Fiametta down; she stumbled inside. His fingers numb, Thur picked at the knots in the rope, and freed the crate lid. By that time Tich came out with a lantern and led the horse around to the high gate into the back garden.

Together, they tied it out of range of the spring onions and lettuces of the kitchen vegetable plot. Tien brought the beast a bucket of water, which it drank thirstily, with a grateful snuffle that blew slobber all over him. In the general filth and soot of Tich's tunic it was scarcely noticeable.

"We'll have to find it fodder in the morning," Tich said in a tone of judicious expertise. "This little bit of grass won't last."

"Not the way it eats. I'll help you go look for your mules tomorrow, too."

Tich nodded, satisfied, and they locked the garden gate. Tich helped Thur carry Master Beneforte's plank inside, to lay in the front room next to Uri's; someone had moved him to rest again in this quieter place.

"They should be buried soon," said Thur. "Properly."

"There's going to be a lot of funerals tomorrow in Montefoglia, from what we've heard," said Tich.

"They'll make room for these two," said Thur. "I'll make them make room."

"Ruberta has put bedrolls for us in the front hall," said Tich. "She says we can guard the door that way till it's fixed."

Thur half-smiled. "I don't think anyone is going to bother this house." Bedroll. What a beautiful word. Thur could have wept at the beautiful charity of someone making a bedroll for him.

Tich retired to his bedroll before it had entirely cooled, but Thur stumbled one last time into the courtyard. A light shone there, candle or lantern—both, he saw, entering. Fiametta had stuck a candle-stub upright in the dirt beside the empty casting pit, and was holding up a lantern for closer inspection of the damages.

The place looked like a midden. Abandoned furnace, empty casting pit, broken-up furniture, scattered tools. The center of one side of the gallery was gone, the whitewash above it was black with smoke stain, and charred timbers swung dangerously loose in the corners.

"They got the fire out," Thur noted brightly.

"Yes," said Fiametta. "Ruberta and Tich and the neighbors. I did not know ... I had such friends." She sat down heavily upon the cinder-scattered flagstones in her sodden velvets. "Oh, Thur! My poor house is a shambles!"

"Now. Now." Gingerly, he eased himself down beside her and stroked her shaking shoulders. "Maybe it won't look that bad in the morning. I'll help you fix it up. That gallery's the easy part. I used to help build mine-timbering, you know. I can build you a gallery that won't ever come down."

Her breath puffed out between her quivering lips, whether in a laugh or a sob Thur could not tell. 'Is there anything you can't do?"

"I don't know." Thur considered this. "I haven't tried everything."

Her brows rose quizzically. "Do you want to try everything?"

He took a breath, for courage. "I'd like to try being your husband."

She blinked, rapidly, and rubbed her eyes with a soot-smudged hand. "I'd be a bad wife. My tongue is too sharp. Everybody says so. You'd get henpecked."

Thur wrinkled his brows. "Was that yes, or no? Come. Where else will you find a fellow brave enough to marry a girl who can set him on fire with a word?"

"I'd never!" Her spine straightened. "But truly. I talk a lot—Papa said so—and I'm not very patient."

"I'm very patient," Thur offered. "I'm patient enough for us both.'

"You weren't very patient with the caking bronze." Her lips curved up.

"Yes, well... it wasn't right. I needed it to be excellent." He needed to be eloquent. He shouldn't be trying to say these things when he was so damned tired he couldn't even see straight. He looked up, and was startled by an orange tinge outlined by the shadowy black square of the tile roof. Was the town afire? "Why is the sky that funny color?"

Fiametta looked up, too. "It's dawn," she said after a long moment. "The clouds are breaking up."

So it was. An apricot luminosity edged slate-blue masses. "Oh." His brains felt like porridge.

Fiametta giggled, and sniffled. She ought to be in a bedroll, and in a dry gown, too. He gathered her into his lap, and hugged her for warmth. She did not object. In fact, she twined her arms around his neck. And so they sat for a time, while the sky lightened.

"It looks worse," Fiametta observed in a dreamy voice.

"Huh?" Thur jerked awake.

"It looks worse. In the morning."

He stared over her rat's nest of hair at the wreck of a courtyard. "Well. Yes."

Fiametta's nose wrinkled. "Yes."

"Yes what?" Thur asked after a minute's pause decided him that he no longer had any idea what they were talking about.

"Yes. I want to marry you, too."

"Oh. Good." He blinked, and hugged her closer.

"I think it's because you understand excellence. What it takes."

"What is?"

"Why I love you."

A slow grin fought its way onto his exhaustion-numbed face. "Of course. That's why I love you."

By design, the high light of midsummer morning falling through the clerestory windows sent a beam directly down upon the altar of Montefoglia Cathedral. The light caught the garnet of the lion ring as Fiametta slipped it onto Thurs finger. The gem blazed like a ruby, like a star. The gold lion mask seemed to purr under Fiametta's hand, like the most satisfied and cream-stuffed of great cats. Thur felt it too, Fiametta thought, for he smiled like a great cream-stuffed cat himself. He caught her in an embrace that bent her ribs, till Bishop Monreale cleared his throat, and they took the hint and turned obediently, hand in hand, to receive his final benediction. Fiametta could not decide if Monreale looked more at home in his plain gray monk's habit, or as now, splendid in the flowing silk, red cloak, and high mitered hat of the bishophric. Equally easy, perhaps. Monreale was not made by his garments, and so his clothes always conformed to him.

Thur's clothes did not make him, she mused, so much as reveal him. She kept sipping little contented glimpses from the corner of her eye even while bowing her head. He had not let her see his wedding garments till this morning, a conspiracy between himself, Ruberta, and the tailor. Fiametta and Thur had frugally divided the purchase of a length of silk between them, so his green tunic matched her overgown. Still, the clever tailor had squeezed enough material for proper pleats. Thur's upright bearing made the modest decorative braid on the sleeves and hem look restrained rather than plain. And many a spindle-shanked rich lord might envy the calves that most perfectly filled those white silk hose. New polished shoes, and no one needed to know he only had one other pair of boots. His bright blond hair was topped by a fine big dark green cloth hat with a copper-gilt badge of Fiametta's own design. Eat your hearts out, ladies of Montefoglia. He's mine.