Beasts of Tabat (15 page)

Skye reaches across the table and touches cool fingertips to the back of my hand. “I need to tell you something.”

Alarm bells sound in my head. I straighten, withdrawing my hand. I’ve heard too many confessions of crushes from hapless students before. “Indeed? But we do need to head back to the school.”

Skye persists. “No, it’s important.”

There will be no avoiding it without injuring the girl’s feelings. I give that a fifty-fifty chance once we hit the moment of rejection.

Skye surprises me. “I wanted to tell you how much your example means, to all of us, not just me.”

Pleasure and embarrassment squirm together. I take a sip of tea and watch my cup’s rim as I set it down.

“Thank you.” I strive for a formal tone. “It is good to hear, and I urge you to say it to all of your teachers who merit it.”

“It’s not that,” Skye says. “I mean, you’re a good teacher, of course.”

“Of course,” I echo.

I reach for my tea again, and check the other tables to make sure no one is close enough to hear. The Gladiators have a rich tradition of mockery, and this sort of thing, no matter how touching it might be, will only fuel that. Can Danokin over there hear what Skye is saying? He catches my eye and raises his mug in salute; I rather suspect he can.

Skye continues. “It’s because you’ve achieved so much, so many things that inspire us to reach for the same heights.” Her cheeks are red with strong emotion.

“Skye,” I say. “I know what you mean. I appreciate that.” My gaze flicks towards the watching Danokin. “Come, I will walk you back to the school.”

Birds chitter at the blast of cold air as the door swings out to admit us to the outside world. The sunlight is gone, lost in clumps of wet snow, falling from the sky as though trying to strike the world, find revenge for some petty slight, hard ice needles on any and all exposed skin.

Skye is silent all the way back. Embarrassed, perhaps.

After I leave her at the school, I don’t head homeward.

Down along Stumble Lane, which leads away from Pin and Needle, winding into darkness. The Duke’s new lights are still reserved for the larger public areas, for the richer neighborhoods that can afford to subsidize their installation.

How many Dryads fuel those lights?

What will Alberic set to burning when there are no Dryads left?

A running boy stumbles past, heading up the Tumbril Stair. I pause, staring after him, but only see his heels flickering along the steps.

I wait, itching for a fight, but no one pursues him. The snow has become cold rain, which gusts and ebbs, carrying on a conversation of its own with the rooftiles. The omnipresent steam wagons trundle on a few streets over. I turn and go on.

***

Chapter Fourteen

Teo’s Continued Adventures

In the middle of the night, the Gryphon roused him, nosing at his pillow as though trying to slip underneath it. He presumed it wanted outside, and so he stumbled to the door and let it out. He waited a little while to see if it would come back in, but it didn’t. So he wandered, half-dreaming, back to the warmth of his cot.

In the morning he heard Jilla stirring in the kitchen. And then he heard her voice, high and shrill with alarm and anger. Throwing on his clothes, he scrambled into the kitchen.

The old Gryphon lay shivering on the tiled floor. She stooped and wrapped a blanket around it, gathering it up into her arms. She picked it up with difficulty, and the movement sent it into a coughing fit.

“Should I not have let it out?” he asked her back.

She said nothing, just kept holding the shivering Gryphon. She held it closely, carefully.

“Jilla,” it said, its voice clear. It raised a trembling claw as though to touch her tear-marked face. “Jilla.”

Teo recognized the voice he had heard before. “It can talk!”

“It was my father’s,” she said. She dipped her forehead to touch it to the Gryphon’s beak. “It speaks with his voice.”

But the Gryphon was silent now, and would not speak again with any sort of voice. She wrapped the blanket around it, totally obscuring its form, and laid it down on the table.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Teo said.

She rounded on him in a blaze of fury. “As you should be! You let him out into the garden to die of the cold! You killed him with your carelessness!” The muscles of her throat stretched taut as windblown rigging as she shouted at him. “What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he stammered. “I was dreaming, maybe.”

“Dreaming?” Her voice rose in pitch.

He grabbed his clothing and scrambled for the door, unable to bear the anger, the disappointment, the grief, the fear in her face. His heart was shattering with disappointment. He’d botched things. He’d wrecked the painting of a perfect world that had almost—so close!—been bestowed on him. He stumbled away down the street, not looking behind himself.

All the world had been held out to him and thensnatched away so fast that the image of it lingered like a phantom, lovely and unachievable.

If only he’d thought about it, he would have realized that he shouldn’t let the old Gryphon out into the cold. How stupid was he not to have grasped that? He felt heavy with disappointment, as though made of lead or stone.

He’d heard a story that when the ninety-nine statues lining Salt Way were commissioned, there were only ninety-eight. A clever artist had brought in a Medusa, used it to slay a rival, then slipped him in among the other statues. What would that feel like, to be turned to stone? Maybe it would be a relief not to have to feel all the emotion that haunted daily life, all the sorrow and anger.

And disappointment.

Perhaps he should leave the city, head up along the coast to Verranzo’s New City. The Moon Temples didn’t rule up there. People said things were different in that city, that Beasts and Humans lived together, that some Beasts were even accounted citizens there, with rights and no fear of being captured and forced into servitude.

But even there, Shifters were not welcome.

And Verranzo’s New City would not have Bella Kanto.

He sorted through possibilities. He had come to Tabat in part because of Bella Kanto. Therefore, he would find her, and he would lay his problems at her feet, though perhaps not
all
of them.

But she would know what to do. If only he could find her, speak to her. Surely many must seek her counsel, but perhaps—just perhaps (and here a surge of hope ignited in him like a flame, despite his best efforts to douse it)—she’d speak to him.

He’d go to Spinner Press. She must come there sometimes.

But lurking outside the building, he was alarmed to see Eloquence exiting. Was the man looking for him? How had he known to come there? But no, he’d spoken of writing for Spinner Press. It must all be coincidence.

The city was Bella’s. He’d wander it, and perhaps somewhere, somehow, he’d find her.

Shivering and sneezing, he moved onward and downward, onto Twicetold Street, where the morning presses hammered like the hearts of leviathans in the great warehouses, slamming out sheet after sheet of gray and tangerine-colored broadsides. You could feel their shudder underfoot as you walked, a sideways feeling that reminded Teo of his days on the
Water Lily
.

A belt-shaped park, filled with icicles and yellow forsythia, separated the presses from a quiet neighborhood. When he heard the blast of music it spun him around where he stood to see a tiny parade making its way along the edge of the park.

A calliope rumbled along, singing its tune with blasts of steam. It was painted red and gold and white, and a window in its side showed the brass workings. It hooted and wheedled, whistled and warbled, a song that kept falling down and picking itself up with the cheerful imperturbability of a drunken Piskie. An elephant pulled it, ignoring the blast of noise occurring behind it, as though disdainful of its indignity.

Heading to the park’s verge, Teo hurried along in the calliope’s wake, hunched against the cold. This time of day the ovens on Bakery Row would have been roaring for a while and one could lean against the stone brick walls to soak up heat, and maybe beg some burned rolls from someone taking out the trash.

The procession led him into an older neighborhood, its buildings completely assembled and now occupied. Curtains twitched, and children’s faces peered out from the lower halves, a jostled jumble of expressions, gapes, and gawps before a parent called from the warm kitchen, teakettle hot, buns and bacon on the breakfast table. The curtains fell back into place, and Teo felt sad to see the other faces go. He missed being part of the pack of village children.

He walked along slowly, keeping the calliope in sight, thinking of home. They had pitied him at home. But at least he could live in Tabat unmolested, while they could not. It was a mercy, really, that he was
not
a Shifter.

How could he find Bella Kanto? He could wait for an occasion to see her in the arena, but that would give no chance to speak with her.

The calliope’s disgruntled song sang up and down, wavered and wandered, as lost as he was. The brassy notes led his feet in an illusion of purpose.

The elephant pulling the calliope cocked its tail and shat, a liquid spattering on the cobblestones as it loped along, a string of curses coming from the driver in the guttural, half-choked language of the Southern Isles. A gray and white cat sat licking its paws in one doorway, eying the elephant.

The wheels, trundling through the long puddle, left a slimy green line in their path for a few yards. The small porches, each two or three chairs wide, held snow-capped flowerpots.

A passerby jostled Teo and he blinked, realizing that he’d been standing still, daydreaming. He watched the other wagons in the caravan trundle by.

A wagon passed, its doll-sized dimensions emblazoned with flowers and fruit, sinuous wyrms crawling among the ripening colors. The Ape driver cracked his whip, hurrying the Manticore hitched to its wagon while beside the harnessed Beast, the Sphinx from the College of Mages walked, unhurried, speaking in a low rumble of thoughts.

Teo shivered, not entirely due to the cold wind. He’d heard of the Sphinx’s reputation. No one of the street crowd he’d met, beggars and con-artists and whores, would have dared to try to sneak onto the grounds of the College of Mages.

A troupe of black-scarved jugglers moved along, juggling anything and everything that came to hand. A baby was snatched up and whirled through the air before being restored to its startled mother’s arms. Three old men found their canes partners in a quick, airborne jig. The jugglers juggled coins into a fruit vendor’s hands, and he tossed them smooth- and hairy-skinned fruit, and fruit-like smiles and winks or round “Ohs” of surprise and approval.

Teo moved on.

He had to find Bella Kanto.

***

Chapter Fifteen

Bella and Adelina

Leonoa’s recent question nags at me no matter how I try to cheer my morose mood with thoughts of Skye or the Brides of Steel. Is Adelina Nettlepurse still in love with me?

It would make sense, after all. Adelina would hardly be the first to fall. My conquests range from the Heliotrope Sorceress to the upper echelons of Tabatian society, even the Duke himself. Everyone loves Gladiators, a fact I’ve been happy enough to take advantage of over the past two decades.

It’s a question of fairness, though. Am I really betraying her, capitalizing on Adelina’s fondness for me? Do I provide nothing in exchange? A troubling thought, even for someone who doesn’t follow the Trade Gods, who doesn’t reckon life as a series of exchanges.

I walk along the edge of the high limestone wall that edges the Nettlepurse estate and its great gardens, balancing with practiced ease. All three moons are in the sky. Their light glints like signal fires on the shards of dragon-glass inlaid along the wall’s top, spelled to bite deep into an intruder’s hand. Red, white, white, purple. Purple, white, red, white, white, white, white.

What is it about Adelina that keeps me from pushing her away, long after our romantic entanglement? She was an ardent lover—I wasn’t her first, but she admitted, I was the strongest, the deepest, the most passionate. But does that account for the friendship?

Not in my experience. I’m not known for leaving lovers happy. A choir of disgruntled Merchants’ and Nobles’ daughters and sons lies in my wake.

I blame some of that on myself. When I’m in full charm mode, no one can resist me. Including a Scholar Merchant who’s been called the smartest woman in Tabat.

Before I reach the gate, inset with two shouting homunculi, I somersault into a willow tree that seems too far to reach. I hang there, watching the gardens for any sign of movement.

For what it’s worth, Adelina lasted longer than most of my lovers. Not the longest, certainly—but it was a good six months before I found myself avoiding her. Finally she tracked me down, confronted me, and said bluntly that if we couldn’t be lovers—and that was fine with her—then we’d be friends, at least.

And to my amazement, Adelina has managed it, for close to twelve years now.

I shimmy down along the trunk.

A barbed trap crouches in one fork. I step around it and continue downward.

It’s true, I think, moving past its fellow, placed where my foot would have naturally fallen in by avoiding the first, that Adelina tends to see the most of me when I’m between lovers. Even so, we spend time together at least once a moon, even if sometimes it’s only a hurried break for chal.

At the tree’s foot, I wipe my hands off on my trousers and slip between low-set bushes and mesh-covered beds, green sprouts barely visible beneath the burlap.

Evening shadows embrace me and the dark purple cloak I wear. Underneath a smaller willow tree, half concealed in the downward-dangling wands, I take three bits of gravel from the pathway and flick them in rapid succession up towards Adelina’s lit window where it hangs in the darkness.

I wait. Soon enough the window’s latticed panes open outward like wings above the tangle of false balcony, and Adelina’s head appears silhouetted in the trapezoid of light.

She’s still not fully dressed, I note with a twitch of irritation. Adelina’s lateness is notorious among her friends. The most infamous incident was her showing up two days late to a country party four years ago.

It’s not so much the tardiness as her lack of acknowledgement of it. She goes about as though it were as normal as the city clocks chiming in the night.

“A quarter hour, and I’ll be down and meet you in the front hall,” Adelina says.

“We’re late as it is! Although missing the initial speeches and the Presentation to the Duke—that I’m willing to forgive you.”

“Go round. I don’t know why you insist on testing the gardeners by sneaking in. I told them you’d be coming and to let you be.”

I grimace but make my path through the bare bushes that line the southern wall of the Nettlepurse mansion. I glance in the windows as I pass. Each displays a well-lit vignette of wealthy Merchant life.

First the parlor, creamy wallpaper flocked with dark-blue ships, lustrous cobalt and burgundy rug underfoot. Above the fireplace, a portrait of one of Adelina’s ancestors. I never remember exactly who, but “uncle” figures in somewhere among all the “greats”—the ancestor who accompanied the original founder of Tabat, Giuseppe Verranzo’s Shadow Twin, and served as quartermaster on his ship, the
Loonblossom
.

Like deferential servitors, golden candlesticks hold candles atop their poised fingers, filling the room with light. Adelina’s family is, if not the wealthiest in Tabat, at least one of the top three contenders, along with the owners of the Moon Bank, the Silvercloths, and the House of Two Sails, with its fleet of Merchant ships.

Persistent ivy tugs at my heels as I move along. The next window shows the Nettlepurse ballroom: elaborate parquet floor and siding, double chandeliers of crystal, luminous witch-lights swarming like a cloud of fireflies around the Wood Sprite servant who is cleaning the tear-drop shaped crystals.

He swats irritably at the lights with his duster as I watch. They scatter before settling along his hands and face, gleaming on his vulpine muzzle.

They’re feeding on the salts and oils on the boy’s skin. As a child, I possessed a glass tank of witch-lights. I loved putting my hand in among them and watching them paint my skin with brightness before I withdrew it, and they remained, tethered by their lodestone, a dull grey rock in the middle of the tank.

Framed by different windows, the servant appears and disappears. I take care to stay out of the light, but his attention is turned entirely to his duties. I round the corner. Here the bushes are evergreens, trimmed into waist-high ovoids, precisely measured in their configuration. Dry grass crackles underfoot as I pass into the pool of illumination cast by the witch-lights and trot up the flagstone steps.

The majordomo ushers me with cordial grace into the sitting room. I gave him a glove for his daughter—ten at the time and among my many fans—a few years ago. Ever since, he’s favored me, despite the coolness the house’s mistress, Adelina’s mother, maintains towards me.

The sitting room holds both sofas and a handful of chairs, all invitingly deep and plushy. I choose to ignore them. Instead I stretch my legs, pacing back and forth in front of more portraits: Nettlepurses bearded and balding, wigged and wattled. One maiden, who had died young, stands out among the others, her face pale and drawn with consumption, her arms thin as matchsticks in their heavily embroidered sleeves.

The door opens behind me and I turn to see Emiliana Nettlepurse. Adelina’s mother stands in the doorway looking at me.

I’ve never been able to read her. Emiliana is head of the Merchant’s Guild, a practiced negotiator whose wardrobe of expressions consists, as far as I can tell, solely of studied blandness or mild irritation. A small, heavy-set woman, she wears rich clothes, skirts stiff with the embroidered emblems of her house, ships, and telescopes. My practiced eye can place the tailor, Three Coins, the one I myself patronize, and the most fashionable in Tabat.

I incline my head. “Good evening, Master Merchant.”

Emiliana nods to me. Despite the difference in our statures, she inevitably makes me feel as small as a mouse contemplating a tomcat. “And here you are again in our house, Bella Kanto.”

An icy edge to her tone warns me of storms ahead.

“We have a few moments before Adelina will be ready, and I wish to speak to you.”

I wait.

“I intend to arrange a match for Adelina, and I’ll thank you not to interfere in any of the matter,” she says frankly.

I arch an eyebrow. “I don’t know why you think I would do such a thing.…” I begin, but Emiliana continues.

“She thinks the world of you and you have the power to influence her opinions. If the matter of marrying should come up, I’d prefer you exercise no sway. Let her choose by herself.”

“Why do you think I’d interfere?” I say, indignant.

“You take a great deal of advantage of Adelina, in my opinion.”

“She is my friend if that is what you mean to imply.”

“She acts as your patron, with few of the benefits the official position would accord her.” Emiliana’s smile is Winter cold. “Believe me, it’s nothing personal. I’ve profited from you over the years by betting that supplies would be dear by the beginning of Spring.”

“Perhaps you’d prefer that I leave right now.” I bounce on my heels, holding myself stiff with irritation.

“Don’t do that. Don’t pretend to be able to manipulate me as you do my daughter. I could make things uncomfortable for you, Gladiator. If you interfere with her happiness, I will.”

We stare at each other in mutual dislike until the door clicks open again.

“Ah, there you are, Adelina. Are you ready to go?” I say in relief. I glance towards Emiliana. Will the woman go so far as to forbid her daughter to accompany me? But Emiliana says nothing.

“Petra’s fetching my cloak,” Adelina says, even as the servant appears at the door with the fur-lined blue length. Like the servant who had been cleaning the chandelier crystals, Petra is fox-nosed, but her pelt holds a caramel color, shading to chocolate at the ears. The Nettlepurses use only Fae in their household—slaves—although I know they are well-treated. I help Adelina into the cloak.

“You look lovely,” I say to her. “Is that spider-lace?”

“A friend bought too many and sold them to me,” she says lightly. Her eyes flicker in warning towards Emiliana. She still hides her ownership of Spinner Press from her mother, but sooner or later her expensive tastes will give her away. Emiliana knows she can’t afford Altosian silk on her allowance from the House.

“Will you be late?” Emiliana asks Adelina, ignoring me.

Adelina glances between us.

“Not too late,” she says. “We will hear the Duke’s dedication—”

“Not unless we leave soon,” I interject.

Adelina ignores me as well. “And then we will eat. I hear Bernarda has commissioned a marvelous new caterer, lots of Southern dishes. We’ll look at the pictures, see and be seen, perhaps go out for chal afterwards.”

Emiliana inclines her head. Adelina turns to me. “Shall we?”

As we exit, Emiliana says under her breath, pitched for my ears alone, “Remember what I said.”

* * *

“Let’s take Spray Road,” Adelina says as we make our way out the front entrance of the estate, past a gardener who salutes stiffly as we pass.

“Feh, too many people.”

“I like to look at the shops,” Adelina says. She flutters her eyelashes mockingly at me.

I eye her warily, remembering Leonoa’s words.

Adelina pushes the vamp farther, saying in sugary tones, “Indulge me.”

I snort. She’s not flirting with me but mocking Marta, who still hasn’t taken very well to my break with her. Her distant relationship to the Duke makes it hard to ignore her. If I were forced to admit it, I’m taking Adelina in order to keep Marta at bay, and Adelina is as aware of that as I am.

We walk along the quiet promenade, passing below the ancient oaks there to make our way down a side stair and emerge onto Salt Road.

It’s busier here. Vendors call to the hurrying pedestrians, offering fried fish and spun candy, bread knots and salted nuts. A hurdy-gurdy blares, reeling listeners in while two little girls crank the machine. The song is “Waltzing Josephine.”

I could have brought Skye, but she is already preening herself a little and thinking herself overly important to my existence because I haven’t discouraged her chasing after me. She’s already setting up house with me in her head, and that only leads to heartbreak and uncomfortableness.

That is why you shouldn’t kiss students, no matter how pretty they are. It’s a complication I’ve avoided before today, and one I will keep avoiding.

But stern thoughts do not belong in this pretty evening, with the city lights jewelling its terraces. I spin to take Adelina’s hands and dance her through the crowd, maneuvering her for a giddy moment, people parting with indulgent expressions while the sky gleams overhead with evening’s promise. I smile, imagining the picture we make.

Two small wagons, their bodies nothing but cage, the fronts set with high driver’s perches, pass. One is pulled by striped black and white horses and is full of chattering monkeys. Shaggy humanoids, towering over the crowd, tow the other which houses a fat Satyr clenching a wine-jug and shaking his cock at the onlookers. The city is so full of circuses and other election entertainments lately, how could anyone be unhappy with it?

The drivers speak back and forth as they go by at a leisurely pace.

“Heard your outfit got caught passing the pox on to the populace at large, Amos.”

“Yeah? I heard they caught you feeding glamour dust to yours and trading them off as Unicorns.”

“How’s your mother been? I ain’t seen her in a while.”

“She’s coming up from Caloosa. She’s been running a hootch and pony show. I’ll give her your love.”

“You do that, aye, see that you do.”

I laugh and draw Adelina’s arm through mine. I smile at the passing people and they smile back, recognizing their Champion.

It is a fine evening. I deserve a fine evening, in the city I love most, with my friend.

Everything will be fine.

But the charms around my neck warm at moments, deflecting spells. There are still those out there who wish me harm.

Let them try. I am the undefeatable Bella Kanto.

* * *

Shouting Tabatian citizens swarm the plaza outside the gallery. The crowd, perhaps forty or fifty all told, are a scrabbly lot, dressed in sail-cloaks and cloth lashed boots. Many hold signs, neatly lettered.
You’d think a professional had done them,
I think. The signs read things like: “Beast and Man—Separation is Order!”; “Beastly MANners to Mix!” and “Art For the Social Good!”

Across the way on Printers Row, workers line the windows, watching the tumult, while on Spray a steam-wagon has flattened a pedal-cab. The drivers stand shouting at each other, a secondary crowd gathered around them.