Beasts of Tabat (13 page)

Impatience clutches me. Spoiled children who have never seen deprivation or painful longing. Or at least, I think, looking at Skye’s expression, they have not known the former.

I must learn to be patient with them, Lucya always tells me.

But why? No one was patient with me in those early days. They expected me to fail, too old to learn what they had to teach. Life is full of unfairness and tribulation. Look at the Beasts, born to serve us with no choice in the matter, their position only an accident of birth.

Skye has a crush. I’ve seen them before, although I’ve never been on her side of the matter. Leonoa said one time she thought me incapable of love. That stung. I’ve saved my love, not spent it on a mere person, a fragile body prone to breakage and age.

Instead, I’ve given it to this city, promised to serve it as a Gladiator, and it’s rewarded me for that act, made me its Champion. I owe everything I am to this city and no one else.

Lucya passes, dispensing chal. Guilt twinges. I do owe something to the Brides of Steel, but even there, there are hindrances and jealousies, petty feuds and politicking. And people agreeing to do each other favors. I reminded Lucya that no one stepped aside for me, and that made it all the sweeter, the day I dressed in Spring’s armor and struck Donati down, and thus began my career, for each Spring becomes Winter in turn.

I would not be here if the city—not just its populace, but the city itself—did not love me. Cities are not fickle in the ways that Humans are.

When I push myself away from the table, Skye’s gaze follows me. The girl beside her giggles and whispers something, but Skye says nothing.

I leave them to their breakfast. I’ve stayed long enough to inspire them. That’s all that’s needed, and worth much more to the school than my skills as an instructor.

Lucya watches me too, her mouth a thin line of disapproval. She wants to talk to me again and no doubt has prepared arguments for the occasion. I won’t linger and give her the chance to trot these things out.

I pause in the stable on my way out. The Centaur boy is there no longer, and no one can say where he is gone. Lucya will know, they say. Instead I go out onto the street where the air is cold, but I can breathe despite the snow being swept along by the wind.

***

Chapter Twelve

Teo’s Life in Tabat

Teo stood at the Moon Temple Gate.

Along the tile-paved Moonway leading past the Moon Temples, the path underfoot shifted in accordance to the foremost moon’s state of wax and wane, changing shade from dark to light. A subtle magic, but one he loved. Frail apricot trees lined the path. A few days earlier, they must have succumbed to a sense of spring’s imminent warmth, putting forth a flurry of flowers now frilled with dribbles of icy sap.

Sticky drops fell on Teo where he stood watching the gate, mixing with the icy rain dampening the cloak he’d improvised from a piece of stiff sail canvas. It kept out the wind, at least.

Three times now in the last two days, Teo had gotten as far as this gate. It was the one most pilgrims passed through to reach the Temples of the Moons, the second busiest a garden gate a few blocks away. The high archway, a lizard’s ruff of gray and sand colored stone, was carved right to left with triads of moons, ice-inset crescents, then halves, then full rounds.

If he passed beneath those markings, he would not come out again for years and then, only at the Temples’ whim, never his own.

Directly under the archway, dressed in robes dyed with Hijae’s ruddy hue to match her wind-chapped lips and cheeks, a matronly Priest smiled and nodded to each pilgrim as they entered. Most were fair-haired Northerners, travel’s rigors apparent in their dusty cloaks and unwashed hair, as though they had come straight from stepping off a steamboat. Once Canumbra and Legio had walked by, carrying long wooden staves, and he’d slid back into the shadows. That wasn’t the first time he’d seen them, either, but so far he’d managed to escape their notice. They hadn’t gone in the Temples, though, just past them.

A squat wicker basket sat beside the Priest, and passing pilgrims dropped coins in it. Teo thought the basket must be filling at a startling rate.

The Priest nodded another perfunctory thanks and turned to glance at the street. Was she looking at Teo? He ducked his head and felt another cough coming on. He’d had it for three days now. It wracked him for a few shuddering moments before he regained his breath.

The Temples reeked from the rotting lichen covering the lower portions of the walls, a latrine-like stench as though this wall served as piss-pourer for the entire neighborhood. A Winter’s worth of raindrops had left mottled stalactites of color under the eaves.

There were no animals or plants beyond the omnipresent lichen here. Even the little sparrows were shooed away by an apprentice rasping a twig broom over the flagstones inside the gateway, wider than Teo was tall, and no pigeons cooed or spooned on the moon-scalloped eaves.

As clean on the inside as it was dirty on the outside, yes. As clean and sterile as a moon’s face, sad and droopy-eyed with homesickness.

The inner courtyard was full of people who wanted to be there, unlike him. People who had been sorted into their places, people who knew where they wanted to be, and knew furthermore that their desire coincided with where they were supposed to be. He shrank back into a corner between buildings. He hadn’t been warm for a long time and he wanted to gather what he could of the sunlight’s warmth—but not under the greeter’s eye.

His stomach threatened to crawl up inside his ribs and go hunting for itself. That’s how hungry he was, and from time to time, fever grabbed him, shook him, made him doubt his sanity. He was surviving by running errands and finding scut work. It wasn’t enough. He’d hadn’t had the same spot to sleep two nights running. Someone always drove him off.

There was food for him inside those walls. And warmth and shelter and an escape from Canumbra and Legio.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to enter the Temples and leave this new world he’d discovered. He pushed himself away from the crevice, still avoiding the Priest’s eyes. As he wandered down the street, he felt her watching him, but he did not dare look back to see if it were true.

What would Bella Kanto do?

A thought struck him. He was in her city. He could find her.

He went down two staircases and stood on an upper landing watching the people getting on and off the tram. When he’d arrived, he thought he’d never seen anything so splendid.

Since then the city and its wonders had lost its glow, tarnished by the passing days. He had eaten stale bread doled out at the back of bakeries, an eel coaxed from under a pier to be roasted at an edge-town communal fire, where the very poorest rubbed back to belly, trying to get by.

The Moon Priests seemed to be everywhere. He’d learned to pick out the color of their robes, red or white or purple, depending on which moon they served. They seemed to be in charge of many of the city’s small doings: they drove night soil carts and collected refuse from the streets.

Several times he’d had sausages and beer from a political rally. By now he’d learned the magic of the feather cockades—they signaled what political party you had signed with, and as long as you were willing to pin one on for a bit, the rally would feed you.

Bella Kanto lived on Greenslope. He knew that. But heading up that road, he saw the Mage, the one from the docks. He ducked into the mouth of an alleyway, stiff with terror, but the man strode past him, turning into a florist’s.

He wondered if the Mage or Eloquence had reported him to the Temples. Or when Grave would return and reveal his absence. He was long overdue. How much time did he have before the Temples dragged him in, whether he liked it or not?

* * *

The third day, he saw a Shifter burned.

He had been hovering on the edges of a Jateigarkist rally, where they were passing out sausages and the purple and green cockades promising allegiance to the party sponsored by the College of Mages, promising new wonders for the city if they were elected, better than the sewer system created long ago by Ellora Twosails, better than the Great Tram, or the Duke’s waterfall or any of the other amazing things the College had produced.

The gates of the College, great spiky iron constructions, were now swung open and adorned with flutters of amethyst and emerald bunting, so the populace could crowd onto the courtyard before the College’s main building, its stone towers thrusting upward impatiently in the indifferent cold blue sky.

Teo was fifteenth in line. He’d been counting. He was waiting for one of the sausages steaming in the great iron pot. He jiggled in place a little to keep warm, but the bulk of people around him kept out the wind’s worst gusts.

He tried to see through the crowd when he heard the shouting. Purple robes could be glimpsed through the figures, hustling someone along. The Temples enforced many of the laws here, he knew. The Duke’s forces were called out for civil unrest of the sort that often seem to accompany the political rallies, but for day-to-day matters, it was the Moon Priests who sought out those who had worked magic unlawfully—or whose very existence was unlawful.

The crowd surged in that direction. Teo tried to keep his place in line but was carried along by the people pushing and shoving.

“Got some Shifter,” he heard, and his attention wavered. He hadn’t eaten yet that day, though, and the sausages smelled amazing.

“Going to burn ’em,” he heard another person say. He cast another look at the sausage pot. Sometimes they ran out. But the fellow was covering the pot, clearly thinking the event’s draw over.

Teo managed to make his way to the back of the crowd and followed in its footsteps. They headed to the Duke’s Plaza, the waterfall’s roar battling the muttering of the onlookers.

The three Moon Priests hauled their captive to a central pole. It was fixed in the stones directly below the space where the water would have poured, if it had not vanished into the great round of silver hanging in the air above them. This close, Teo could look up into the onrushing waters as they poured themselves into nothingness. He shuddered, imagining the weight of the falling liquid.

The Priest chained the man—Teo could see him better now—to the pole. He was an ordinary enough looking man.

“Don’t look like nothing,” the man next to Teo said to the woman beside him.

“That’s what makes them scary,” she said. “Could be anywhere. Anyone.” Teo’s empty stomach roiled as she rolled an eye over him. He tried not to look furtive or guilty.

Two Priests took what looked like water skins from their belts. Each had several tied to their waist. They poured the contents over the man, taking care to distribute it evenly. He shook his head wildly, pleading with them, it looked like.

Terror froze Teo to the spot. He watched as a Priest took out something and sparked it to light. The man’s head shook even more wildly, but the Priest tossed the flame onto him without hesitation.

The mass of his oil-soaked body burst into fire. Thick black smoke surged up and roiled from his struggling form to the crowd.

That was all right until the thought came to Teo,
It smells like sausages,
and that was too much for him. He stumbled away to the outskirts of the Plaza to the shelter of a statue, and kneeling, poured out what little was in his stomach upon its stony feet.

* * *

He hadn’t meant to intrude on a street corner claimed by someone else. He’d thought the other boy not there that day, and so he’d taken up early morning post outside the Manycloaks dock offices, which frequently needed runners, and waited.

When he saw the gang of street children approaching, he knew they wouldn’t listen, but he tried, holding up his hands. But as the kicks and blows continued, he curled into himself until they tired of the sport. The cold street cobbles bit against his skin. For a moment he wondered if they would kill him in their anger.

When they finally let Teo go, he fled the area, dazed, reeking, and bruised. His sides ached and whenever he took too deep a breath, he could feel a stab of pain. A broken rib, he suspected.

He cleaned himself as best he could in a rain gutter’s icy drip, shuddering at the cold. Afterwards he felt cleaner, but the damp clothes clung to him like snares for the wind’s chill.

He went north where, after a brief up and down of a rocky spur, the city gave way to a long, sandy beach cluttered with driftwood and weathered logs. Drying kelp fluttered like rags on the rocks at the shore’s edge among chiming shards of ice. The water was intervaled in dark and pale blue. In the sunlight, the kelp leaves had a dusky, autumn-colored translucence.

A line of smoke split the sky up ahead. Smoke meant fire. And fire meant warmth and possibly food. Shivering, he pressed on, stumbling in the soft sand.

From afar, he could see the group clustered around the pile of burning driftwood, but it was only when he got nearer that he realized it was a group of Beasts. They stirred at the sight of him, but did not flee. He suspected he might be the least threatening figure possible—bedraggled and blue with cold. He paid them little mind. The bonfire was his main objective.

But as he moved to the fire, a figure interposed itself.

He stared. Where the Minotaurs at the dock had been bulky, imposing walls of muscle, this one had been stooped by age. His brown eyes were clouded, one completely misted by cataract. His gnarled horns spiraled inwards.

“What do you want, boy?” the old bull-man said.

“Please, may I stand by your fire?” Teo blurted. His stomach growled as the wind teased him with a whiff of soup. A kettle nestled to one side of the fire.

“Go away, little Human. This be a fire for Beasts.”

“I’m not Human!” he said.

Every head turned to him, every gaze focused like a steel spear.

“Indeed,” the leader said. His tone was almost conversational, but there was menace in his posture. “You look Human enough to me.”

“I’m a Shifter,” he said. Relief washed over him. The Beasts would accept him, save him. Would protect him from Canumbra and Legio, and the beggar boys, and all the other perils of the city. They would take care of him.

“Prove it,” hissed a figure, its snake tongue flickering out.

He tried. If he tried hard enough, surely. Surely.

He closed his eyes, strained imaginary muscles, willing the change. Nothing happened. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut and took a deep breath, ignoring his rib’s twinge. He pushed and squeezed internally, tried to pull himself into another form.

Nothing.

He opened his eyes to their hostile faces. “My parents are Shifters,” he said. “In the north. They sent me to the city.”

“It’s a stupid ploy, child,” the old Minotaur said. “Men hate Shifters for being able to pass as Human, and Beasts hate them for the same reason.” He took a step towards Teo. “You’re the most incompetent spy the Duke’s sent yet. Go back and tell your Master we’re no threat to him.”

As Teo opened his mouth to reply, a blow from a massive fist knocked him to the sand. His rib blasted pain and he yelped.

“A ten count and I will let them kill you,” the Minotaur said, gesturing at the others. “One.”

Teo did not wait for two, but scrambled to his feet and ran southward. There would be no rescue from that quarter. His feet thudded dully in the sand, and the laughter of the Beasts pursued him as he fled.

* * *

Sides aching, led by a distant roar, he clambered up stairways and arrived in the Duke’s Plaza. In the center, the waterfall thundered down from the cliff’s face, falling into the immense silver hoop suspended in nothingness. As the water poured into the glimmering circle, the gilded lip of a vast, invisible goblet made of a ribbon of yard-wide gold, it vanished.

As before, below it in the plaza no water touched the people walking about in the shadow of the ring except for a coiling mist, damp, tendrilled, but almost imperceptible.

At the opposite edge of the Plaza, beneath a pair of green-leaved rhododendrons, their ice-stunted blossoms like wads of sodden paper, a young woman dressed in severe black had set up shop. At the foot of her cloth-draped apparatus was a decrepit Gryphon on a chain.

“Souvenirs!” she called to the passing crowds. “Have your portrait taken with a minor Gryphon, patron animal of Tabat!”