Beasts of Tabat (27 page)

* * *

I go to the window and look into the whirling snow. There’s a limp little form in the corner of the window. Wind and snow greet me when I slide the window up, but I manage to gather the half-frozen little Fairy—Finch.

He’s fought with his fellows. They must have tried to drive him away.

Finch stirs and flutters against my hand till I release him.

He moves to perch on a shelf, watching me.

I’ve heard them chatter in mimicry of Human speech, like parakeets. Or more like mockingbirds. They repeat the sounds of their day: the distant bells of the duels of the Duke’s tower, the cries of the food carts. But they speak their own words as well, if you take the time to listen.

His stare is as direct as a cat’s.

I open the drawer that holds a bag of jewel-like hard candies, flavored with vanilla and molasses.

I can hear the bard on the flute a floor below, the sound buoyed up through the floorboards by the resonant notes of a blow horn accompanying him.

How can Skye be dead?

Teo comes in without knocking, and I feel a flare of irritation at his presumption. He no longer lives here. He is a visitor, and that is how he should act.

“Miss Bella, I need to talk to you about something that happened to me.” The words rush out. He’s so preoccupied that he doesn’t even notice the Fairy, now watching him intently.

All my enervation is gone now, swept away in a crimson tide of rage. How dare this boy intrude on my sorrow? How dare he think I’m concerned with whatever petty problem has ruffled his existence?

“Get out,” I say.

He blinks. “But …”

“Get out! Out of this house!” I don’t know what I’m doing, taking out all my anger on this target that deserves it not a whit, but it eases my soul to let this temper claim me, to do what it will.

I know how to scare him. “I’m sending a messenger to the Moon Temples to come and claim you from the circus today!”

He flees.

* * *

I try to go about business as usual.

“I’ve taken on a new apprentice,” Adelina tells me.

I’m surprised. “What happened to all your vows to never take an apprentice? You said, and I quote, it was a corrupt system.”

“Well, it was when I was one,” Adelina says. “I intend to do much better by mine than that ancient trull my mother hooked me to.”

“What changed your mind?”

She paces the room, hands clasped behind her back, as though assembling her thoughts for a speech. I wonder if she’s rehearsing what she would have told her mother, if this is part of the elaborate defense that someday she’ll be forced to launch into. “One, she is of an age where she can decide for herself whether or not she wishes to work and can say with some realism what she might decide to end up as.”

I can’t help it, this startles a laugh from me. “How old is she, thirty-five?”

She snorts. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” I settle on the couch, leaning back to laugh at her. “People change all the time, and what we are apprenticed to is often not what we become. Look at me, for example. Jolietta would have shoved me into life as a Beast Trainer, and imagine how unhappy I would have been there.”

“But you knew you didn’t want to be a Beast Trainer,” Adelina says.

“So your prodigy knows dead certain that she wishes to be a publisher?”

“Well.” Adelina settles down onto the couch beside me, and I tuck my feet underneath myself to make room for her amid the leather cushions and discarded books, two of them, as though she’d been reading them both at once while lying here. Her eyes are thoughtful. “I don’t know that she wants to be a publisher, I’ll admit that, but it is a good profession. She wants to be independent and comes from a family that would have seen her apprenticed into some work that does not use her quick mind as publishing will. They had talked of apprenticing her to the leather tanner.”

We both wrinkle our noses at the thought. Leather tanning is restricted to the southern side of town for a reason. It stinks. Both the butcher houses and the vats of pigeon shit in which the leather is soaked to soften it make the area around them redolent and the housing cheap.

“How did you come to encounter her?”

“I’d met her first because she’s the sister of one of the writers I’ve been working with.” I avoid raising an eyebrow as she blushes at some thought before continuing on. “I found her along Salt Way, crouched beneath Sparkfinger Jack’s statue.”

“That’s ill-omened.”

“There is no God for luck among the Trade Gods.”

“Since when do you follow the Trade Gods?”

“Perhaps there is a thing or two still that you do not know about me, Bello Kanto.” Her tone holds more tease than menace, but it makes a shiver run down my spine all the same.

Adelina insists on bringing the girl in to meet me. She’s tongue-tied in my presence, a slip of a thing, dark-haired but pale-skinned as though she holds more than a trace of northern blood. Her eyes are violet and would be pretty were her face not so pinched and thin.

She watches Adelina intensely, dwells on her every motion, almost mirroring it in miniature, half echoing every word under her breath. She takes Adelina very seriously, and this reassures me a little. And surely Adelina deserves a little hero worship of the kind I bask in every day, that of the students who surround me. That is one of the great pleasures of teaching young things, to watch them listening, to see yourself through their eyes, so much more splendid than you know yourself to be.

It reminds me too much of Skye. When I feel tears burning at my eyes, ready to be shed, I excuse myself and leave.

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Teo’s Struggle

The revelation that Miche and Murga were the same had shaken him to the bone. But it made sense. If a Beast could turn into a Human and back again, then couldn’t magic do something similar—change a person until they were no longer recognizable?

But that meant sorcery. Teo stopped where he stood in a passageway between the tents. Was Murga Shifter or Sorcerer? Sorcerers were more to be feared than anything. Sorcerers had led to the establishment of Tabat, a refuge for those fleeing the Old Continent, whose lands were torn and tattered from countless magical battles waged over them, regardless of the devastation.

Was that worse than being a Shifter or not? If he went to Bella, told her what he knew, would she kill Murga or him? Or both?

He remembered her coldness, her eyes looking through him as though he didn’t exist. He felt a quiver of anger. She had taken him in, and then thrown him out without a second thought. She’d sold him to Miche, for all he knew, or at least given him, like a trinket, to her lover. Like the discarded coat he still wore.

Perhaps she deserved whatever Miche/Murga intended to do.

Teo knew, deep in his heart, it was not anything good.

He went back to speak to Murga, pushing his way into the tent without looking to see who was there. The Sphinx towered over him as he entered, reacting to his presence by knocking him to the ground with a heavy paw.

“Let him up. The boy’s no threat,” Murga said.

Teo rose. The Sphinx snorted and Teo shrank back, embarrassed by the inadvertent gesture even as it occurred. He drew himself up a little, shoulders twisting towards the tent entrance. “I will go to the authorities.”

“’Deed you can,” Murga mocked. “Go up to the highest, boy. The Duke himself has a hand in all of this. He thinks to stir a false rebellion, to get the citizenry to set aside the elections for fear of rebellious Beasts. But little does he know, I’ll slip the reality in for his counterfeit. I’ll see this city burn before more Beasts die in its service. Do you know how many Dryads are burned alive each day in order to strip the magic from their bones? Three at least, and more when it’s needed. That’s what goes into keeping your friend Bella Champion of Tabat.”

Dizziness shook Teo. “The Duke …”

Murga took a step forward. His heat reminded Teo of Grave’s fever, a fierce sunlight evaporating Teo, reducing his will. “Thwart me, ordinary boy, and I’ll tip them off to a nest of Shifters up North. You know them well, as Ma and Da and little sister. You’ve seen by now what’s done to such. If you won’t behave for your own sake, then do it for your village’s.”

Fear froze Teo where he stood.

He’d never thought about the consequences for his village.

They’d send soldiers, burn them like the Dryads. He remembered them, crouched along the
Water Lily’s
railing, stroking each other’s hair and whispering. The look on the face of the one who’d helped him escape. What had happened to her? If Murga was correct, she would have been burned, burned to fuel the aetheric lights, the Great Tram, all the magicks and machineries that kept Tabat running.

Both the Sphinx and Murga were watching him. He realized they were seeing everything flashing through his mind, and that Murga had anticipated this moment.

“Get out, boy,” Murga said. “We have business to discuss.”

* * *

He rummaged underneath his cot. He didn’t have much, but he had accumulated a few things: the clothes that Bella had given him along with a few other pieces that others had discarded and a fine leather jacket that someone had left behind one night and never come to claim.

“What are you doing?” Maisie asked from behind him.

His heart leaped into his throat. “You mustn’t say anything!” he hissed. “I’m leaving!”

“Why?”

He thrust his clothing into a bag, adding a handful of souvenirs he’d gathered, like a brilliant red paper hat with a black feather cockade. “Murga’s a bad man,” he told her. “You should leave too.”

“I don’t have anywhere but here to go.”

“I don’t either,” Teo said, “but I’m leaving anyway.”

“Murga wants you.”

“Tell him you couldn’t find me.”

But her eyes were adamant. She’d picked her side, and it wasn’t Teo’s.

***

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bella’s Last Day

I rise in the dark hours when false dawn tugs at the horizon, resolved to set everything right. I can’t bring Skye back, but I can live as though I was the person she thought I was.

I will busy myself with important things. I’ll talk to Leonoa, and we’ll sort this out. I will pay Leonoa’s bills and not leave them all to Adelina. I will say nothing more about Glyndia, who is surely just a fancy. If I continue to resist her, Leonoa will only grow more stubborn.

I can put up with Glyndia’s hostility for the sake of the cousin I love.

And then I’ll go to the circus, find Teo, and apologize. I’ll tell Lucya that I will be there at the Brides of Steel more often.

She’ll tell me why she felt she had to put Skye up. I’ll forgive her.

At least, I hope I will.

When I get downstairs, Abernia says, “I have a package of spices coming on a ship that’s just arrived. Will you pick it up for me?”

She looks tired. The fuss and furor have not been easy on her, and being known as Bella Kanto’s landlady seems a double-edged sword now. On the night of the riots, all her front windows were smashed. I will give her extra this month, much extra, to cover them. And I’ll run her errand first, then go to Leonoa.

By the time I get down to the docks, the day has worn on to a clear morning that retains a glacial edge.

I like this weather best, this ice-contained stillness. It suits me. I pass through preparations for two political rallies but keep my head down.

The planking of the old pier creaks in time with the clack of my boot heels. Overhead, gulls screech derisively, and slouch-bellied pelicans huddle on the pilings, one turning its head sideways to bite at the retreating water as a wave flows back past it.

At this time of day, many of the docks’ denizens are setting off after breakfasting, usually on chal and bread, or pastries. A press of sailors moves past, their pace less leisurely than my own. They are tanned men and women. Most are pure Tabatians, their olive skin burned brown by weeks of sun. A few are Northerners or mixed blood, their skin ruddier, often showing red where the sun has overpowered it.

Their eyes are pale blue or green. I’ve never found Northerners very attractive. They seem unfinished, at odds with the world as it should be. The sailors move past in a cloud of tobacco, sour sweat, and subdued voices. They must be fresh off one of the ships that constantly pass in and out of Tabat’s rock-clasped harbor. Situated on the southeastern corner of the New Continent, the city is a hub that served Verranzo’s New City, the northeast coast, the Old Continent, the Southern Isles, and the even further, more exotic continents such as the jungle-states and the desert lands, like the Rose Kingdom.

A quick glance tells me what I want to know. No many-masted, fat-bellied
Saffron Bloom
rides at anchor in the pier used by the College of Mages ships. I go into the small docking office maintained there nonetheless. Leonoa will appreciate word of when her mother might be expected. Outside, a quartet of dock workers shifts bales of cotton onto waiting carts pulled by sad-faced mules.

A bell jingles welcome as I enter. The usual press of people crowds the dock office, and the air is close and warm. A few recognize me, and a ripple of talk spreads through the waiting Merchants and Captains. A dark-haired, narrow-faced Captain waves me in line in front of him, despite a few mutters from further back in the crowd.

“I saw you defeat Donati,” he says. “Magnificent! And you haven’t aged a day since then, it seems.” I bow to him with a gracious smile.

The clerk sits taking advantage of the sunlight. He hunches over the counter making notes. Beside his elbow is a pamphlet entitled
A Basic Primer of Tabatian Politics
written by A Friend to the Common Folk. The light falls forward over his shoulders, onto the block-printed, thick pages.

“Any news?” I ask.

The clerk looks up. “The
Bloom
hasn’t come in, still no word. They’re not officially overdue yet, though. They were supposed to arrive sometime this week.”

“Picked your party yet?” I ask, nodding at the pamphlet. Someone behind me shuffles their feet, clearing their throat.

“It’s all so complicated,” the clerk says. “Everything changes depending on who’s saying it.”

“It’s easy enough for me,” I tease. “The Gladiators are supporting the New Year Party.”

“Ha, that’s what I heard,” he says. He is blonde-bearded, New Continent stock with more than a trace of northerner in him, and a wry smile. “Well, no one ever accused the Gladiators of spending too much time thinking.” He winks. Cute but unschooled, and beyond the physical, I find northerners irritatingly naïve, full of emotion and half-baked beliefs.

“Look,” I say. “Let me leave you enough money to pay for a messenger, and when my aunt’s ship comes in, you can send me a runner?”

“Very well.” He takes the silver skiff I pass over and gives me a piece of paper. I write my address on it, and he tucks it in a cubbyhole with similar slips. He turns and looks at me as though wanting to say something. His eyebrows are blond, twisted like a Hippogriff’s.

“It’s okay,” I say as he hesitates. “Yes, I’m Bella Kanto, yes, I enjoy being a Gladiator, and my next fight will be a Midsummer Beast match.”

“No,” he says, forestalling me with a hand. “I just wanted to ask if you need change.”

Someone snickers behind me, but I ignore it.

Outside, the gulls are still jeering. The
Saffron Bloom
is always early. I find the lack of word worrisome. Should I say something to Leonoa, who is undoubtedly as aware as I of the absence?

I’ve always felt as though Leonoa’s mother Galia reluctantly shared herself but Leonoa’s parents did well by me nonetheless.

Years later, I pay my landlady well to keep the sheets turned down, a warming pan in the bed, and I always associate the moment of sliding into the bed’s comfort with my aunt and uncle’s presence. The world felt more right, somehow, when I could go every week to their mansion and eat solid, well-cooked food in their comfortable, clean surroundings. Later, when Coro Kanto died, it was myself and Leonoa, bantering back and forth beside the preoccupied Galia, who usually ate while studying maritime charts. Leonoa, who would have come for a solid meal herself, and who would scold me yet again for one thing or another, like the way I treat Adelina.

Thinking of Adelina, I feel guilty, but thrust it aside. Leonoa is altogether too ready to meddle in my life, and she always has been. I scan the horizon, the familiar shapes of the harbor’s rocky walls. Flakes of snow ride the wind, scudding along like ash in the crisp air and dimpling the sea’s surface with the unseen kisses.

My aunt is past due, but it isn’t time to worry yet. I’ll run Abernia’s errand. Then I’ll go to the Brides of Steel and help drill the students. Lucya can’t keep me away. I’ll maintain a presence.

I move along the street at a swift, fluid walk, wondering what else I should do. Adelina sent word that one of the largest bills is a series of daguerreotypes that Leonoa had commissioned to paint from, and that my cousin is angry about the loss. That will make a suitable offering of apology.

I bound up the front steps of Three Coins Tailoring. It has been recently inspected and placarded—a handbill on official yellow-colored paper, as yet unsoftened by wind or rain, is pasted up on the door.

I swing it open, reading the Certification of Suitability for Trade. Merchant’s Guild and Moon Temple approval skirt it, affixed in gloppy wheat glue. Seals cluster beneath that, testifying to the approval and patronage of several major political parties and an abundance of small ones.

Bolts of fabric line the shop’s walls, charmeuse to gauze. A spill of yellow velvet, figured with many-petalled crimson flowers, is unrolled on the counter to catch the sunlight coming in through the freshly-washed window, flickering in the shadows cast by passersby, wagons, and other trade. Spices perfume the air; bales of cinnamon and sacks of cardamom seeds that have neighbored the fabrics while cargo on its way into Tabat.

The proprietor’s twin sons, two or three years old, wear elaborations of the velvet on the counter. They sit stiffly as though admiring themselves in the long mirror opposite the door. Bess the tailor fusses over one, coaxing the intricate smocking of the aprons to best advantage, yellow cuffs bright against their dark skin. Each wears a floppy beret, one red banded in yellow, and its counterpart yellow banded in red.

“Is it a special occasion?” I ask.

Bess turned to face me with a smile.

“We’re going to a Merchants’ rally tonight!” she exclaims. Her voice is fluty and over-cultivated, and its cloying quality sets my teeth on edge. “It’s good for them to see the future, to know what it’s like as we step into a brand new age!” Her voice ascends in pitch and volume on the last words, as though declaiming from memory. She adds, “Plus, anyone seeing and admiring them can ask and know where to get the same for their own little ’uns.” She nods at the door. “Politicking’s good for business.”

“Of course,” I say. “I came to pick up my shirts. I had three black silk, full-cut, black glass beads at the cuff? Ah, perfect.”

The efficient Bess takes the paper-wrapped packages from a shelf. I breathe out admiration as she unfolds one enough to let the beading, a pattern of leaping rabbits worked into the three inch cuffs, flash in the light.

Bess writes up the bill, brows crinkled in concentration as ink spatters through the curlicues of her name, on a long slip of white paper stamped with the shop’s title.

The children and I contemplate each other in embarrassed silence as she does so.

“They’re cheerful outfits,” I say to the tailor, receiving a handful of Moon Bank skiffs in change. The mother beams effulgently despite the dour expressions on her children’s faces.

“Enjoy your outing,” I say to them and exit, package tucked under my arm. I feel a surge of gratitude that I’m no longer a child and now capable of choosing my own costume, thank you very much.

On the steps I pass a lanky figure, some sort of Mage by the cut of his clothing and the lack of golden chain around his neck, but with northern blood to him, judging by the blue eyes and the pale undercast to his skin. He nods to me as we pass each other. Is he familiar? I think he might be one of the Silvercloths. It irks me not to be able to place him, but some avoid the games, for one reason or another, a few of them good.

On Light and Lattice Street, I pause at the photographer’s shop. Larger shops shoulder it on either side, looking as though they might squeeze it out of existence at any moment. An abandoned cage occupies the front window. In previous days, hasn’t there been a Gryphon that used to be there, dozing in the sunlight?

Photographs line the walls inside, each an invariable four inches by six inches. One line features people photographed with the Gryphon. Below that, there’s a procession of people photographed with a Sphinx outside the gates of the College of Mages, and a small Dragon, each time with a different toddler posed beside its toothy smile. I shiver at the last and look back to the Gryphon pictures. I’m amused to see Teo in one, looking thin, awkward, and newly arrived.

“I’m picking up a package for my cousin.”

The photographer pauses, eying me. She’s a square-faced, serious young woman with a beaky nose and glossy brown hair. “Who’s that?” she says.

I shrug. “Leonoa Kanto. How much does she owe?”

Still eying me, the photographer does not reply, but pushes a thick envelope of daguerreotypes over the counter.

I flip through them with impatient fingers: Miche surrounded by Beasts; a herd of zebras posed with tigers on their backs; a vast coppery tank and its lurking denizen; a pair of Mermaids combing out each other’s hair; a vacuously grinning man thrusting a broom at the camera; Miche again, all taken at the circus, presumably. No pictures of Glyndia, which I am just as glad of. My dislike for the swan-winged woman has not faded with more familiarity.

“Miche Courdeau,” the photographer says, looking over my shoulder. Of course, she must have taken these. Something in her voice snags at me. I’m well acquainted with the signs of someone coveting one of my lovers.

I pay it little thought as I linger over the pictures of the Humans. The ones of the Beasts remind me too much of the pictures that Leonoa painted, the impossible, blasphemous pictures that seemed to ask: What if Beasts were Humans? I worry about the city’s disruption when Alberic is ousted, but if the Beasts rise up in protest, it will be a thousand times worse.

I put it aside as she push the pictures back into the brown paper envelope and pay the bill, whistling in surprise at the charge. No wonder Leonoa couldn’t pay it.

“Chemicals aren’t cheap,” the photographer says. “And we don’t usually get slides brought in on their own like that, that we end up doing the developing on. It’s the latest science, you know—you pay a price for this sort of thing.” She shrugs, and I shrug back.

“Miche owes some as well,” she says. “You recognized him, didn’t you?”

There is a truculent hint to the way the young woman speaks. I allow myself a faint smile. A Gladiator’s glamour is something no ordinary lover can compete with.

“I’m not responsible for his bills,” I say, but she remains sullen as I count out my coins.

* * *

I buy irises from the flower shop. I’ll keep them by my bed.

* * *

The ship Abernia mentioned, the
Jasmine
, is down a few docks. An area I’m more familiar with, where the buildings are a little more rundown, the shops shadier, where there are more pawn and dice shops, disreputable apothecaries, and taverns. The crisp air smells of salt, carried on the wind from the south.

Skye would have appreciated this day.

I make my way up the gangplank, admiring my reflection in the glittering water as Skye might have seen it. I’m still lithe and lean. I get better with age. No wonder people are drawn to me.

A sailor directs me aft to where the Captain stands.

“Captain?” I say, approaching.