“You spent Reformist army money on a fiddle?” I asked with feigned horror.
“The shopkeep gave it to me—said he’d give the Rebel Prince and the Reformist army anything they asked for.”
“And all you asked for was a violin.” I laughed as he tuned the instrument.
“No, all he had of any use was a violin. And some shoes. I took him up on the offer for shoes.” He struck up a lively tune—a harvest tune, I realized. One of the songs we danced to in taverns and in the square in Galitha City for Threshing Market.
Several of the men nearest us recognized the song, and began to clap and call to one another. A pair of women, camp followers married to soldiers, sat on the edge of the camp kitchen with their feet hanging into the narrow trench that ran around it. They jumped up and caught another three women carrying russet squash back to their kitchen.
Laughing, the five beckoned to a couple of messes of men, who happily joined them. With no dance caller but the formations well-memorized, they stepped into a simple country reel. I liked the easier dances common in the taverns at Threshing Market and at Galatine wedding parties, and I recalled the name of this one.
“Wedding Morning,” I said. “They’re dancing Wedding Morning.”
“Now to see if I remember it well enough to play the right amount of time,” Theodor said. He kept playing, and more lines of dancers formed in the parade ground.
Kristos and Sianh followed the commotion to the field. Sianh raised an eyebrow but smiled tacitly, and Kristos laughed out loud and caught my arm. “You know this one, Sophie!”
“I do, but Kristos—should we?” I glanced at Theodor and Sianh—was it improper for us to dance with the soldiers?
“Hang it all, who cares? They ought to see us having some fun once in a while, lest they decide we’re a bunch of sour old barn owls.”
Sianh shrugged his acquiescence, and I let Kristos drag me to a line just forming, short by one couple. Next to us, a corporal and his partner, a plump and red-cheeked farm girl in a faded gown of purple sprigged cotton, gaped at us until Kristos laughed at them and half shouted, “I promise we won’t trod on your feet!”
“I promise no such thing,” I added as I counted eight steps in a circle and then eight steps back. I had never been a graceful dancer, but the bright music and the dancers’ inevitable mistakes made for a merry time in the taverns; it was no different here.
Theodor finished the reel and began another tune, also one of the harvest songs. “Sheaves’ Return!” Kristos shouted, calling the name of a dance that moved in a circle, plucking first the women and then the men into the middle like sheaves of wheat. All around us, the dancers fell into step, forming circles that expanded and constricted with the music.
Suddenly a piercing whine cut through Theodor’s fiddle playing. I dropped the hands of the women in the circle with me, our sheaves of wheat broken as I searched for the source of the sound.
“Sianh!” I called. His face bore the same fear—could this be a Serafan casting trick? Some far-flung Royalist artillery? Around me, dances broke apart and Theodor finished a bar of music with an abrupt halt, leaving an eerie absence as the melody stopped, unfinished.
The whine intensified, droning as it took on multiple pitches, and was soon accompanied by hisses.
“It’s the kitchens!” Theodor called, and several soldiers ran to investigate. My stomach clenched—could someone have sabotaged the kitchens with gunpowder, with fuses? Were there grenades hidden in the squash? That was absurd, I thought—but I couldn’t convince myself anything was outside the realm of possibility. It could even be a Serafan curse, somehow.
The soldiers hesitated by the edges of the trenches, then steeled themselves and dropped inside. A moment later, one man shouted back.
“What did he say?” I asked Kristos.
“He said—it’s the apples?” Kristos asked the corporal next to him.
“He said apples,” the man replied with an incredulous shrug.
“Apples?” I shouted back to Sianh.
After a brief conference with the men who had investigated, Sianh joined us. He fought to keep a straight face. “The apples—that variety—they appear to have a very thick skin. Most apples will split when roasted, but these do not easily rupture. So the steam building inside eventually rents a spot near the stem and the result is not unlike a scream.”
“Banshee!” I grabbed Sianh’s arm. “They’re called Banshee apples.”
His lip quivered, and for a moment I thought he was angry, that he was going to blame someone for what now appeared to be less of a mistake and quite possibly a prank. Instead, he laughed.
He sat down hard on the ground, his legs bent under him, and roared with laughter. Kristos began to laugh, and soon I bubbled over with laughter, too.
“Alba…” he managed to say between fits of laughter, “did you know?”
Her shocked face answered for us, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh or go box the quartermaster’s ears for him. She blinked dumbly as Sianh began laughing again, so hard tears slid in bright trails from the outside of his eyes.
Then she began to laugh, too.
Theodor began his music again, and the dancing resumed. I caught Kristos’s hand and squeezed it.
“The two of us haven’t had this much fun in—it’s been years, I think,” Kristos said.
“It only took a war,” I laughed ruefully. He was right. Even before he’d grown invested in the Laborers’ League and become a leader of the Red Caps, I had pulled away from him, pouring myself into my business. I had told myself it was for us, and it was, at its heart, about security for my little family. It was about more, too—about my identity and my passions, and Kristos had never had an easy place there.
For all the time we had spent living in close quarters and relying on one another for our rent and our coal and our bread, we had grown distant. Here, with a common goal, we felt like family again.
“What’s that little scamp up to?” Kristos said, raising an eyebrow as Fig came barreling toward us from the far side of the camp.
“I’m surprised he’s not filching roasted apples,” I said with a laugh, which I stifled before Fig joined us. He took his role as messenger and errand boy seriously, and I remembered feeling very important when I sold thread buttons on the street at his age.
“Spotted off the coast,” Fig said, panting. “Fenian ship.”
21
KRISTOS GRINNED AS FIG TROTTED OFF TOWARD THE DANCING. “Excellent—it should be a shipment of cannon, not to mention powder and shot. Just the thing to celebrate Threshing Market.”
“And linen,” I reminded him. “Your army’s shirts are getting a big ragged.”
“They’re supposed to be mending those. You want to give a lecture on sewing patches?”
I laughed. “I suppose many of them need it—they don’t have their wives or their mothers here to mend their clothes any longer.”
“It’s one of the few military skills Sianh hasn’t taught them,” Kristos said. “You know that the regular army expects every man to carry a housewife.” He winked—the term meant a small sewing kit, but I laughed as I envisioned a beleaguered soldier’s wife riding piggyback.