Beasts of tabat, p.19
Beasts of Tabat, page 19
Teo did so for longer than he thought Abernia might have approved of. The thought made him stand. He went to the bathroom, the dog at his heels, its claws clicking on the tiles.
Towels littered the floor. He gathered them up and put two to replace them on the chair by the door.
Going back into the other room he cast his eye about for dishes. He stepped to the desk. The dog growled again.
Teo said, “Looking for dishes, boy; no need to worry.”
He could’ve sworn the dog dropped a nod, but at any rate it stopped growling at him. He took a small plate, littered with crumbs and a large smear of butter, and three old tea mugs from the desk and went out, closing the door behind him.
In the kitchen he put the mugs in the sink and asked Abernia, “What is the dog’s name?”
“Did he leave it there by itself? Not like him to do that to Cavall much. He’s a friendly dog, sweet as silk. Take the towels down to the tub in the cellar, that’s where the laundry is.”
When he tried the next room, he understood what Abernia had meant when she said not to let the Bard keep him talking too long. The man there, who introduced himself as Lyman, kept up a cheerful flow of questions: How long had Teo been in the city, what did he think of it, had he been to any of the theaters, what ambitions did he have in life, and on and on. He ducked his head and said little. The man didn’t seem to notice, just kept up the commentary while Teo gathered up wine glasses and bottles and street food wrappers.
Bella wasn’t in her room anymore when he went up, though he hadn’t heard her go out. He desperately wanted to explore her rooms, but at the same time he thought it wouldn’t be nice of him, particularly when she had been so wonderful so far.
He stared out the window at the Fairies again, still feeling a thrill of fear despite Bella’s assertions that they were harmless. One buzzed near the window outside and he flinched back, heart hammering.
It hovered there, staring in at him. He couldn’t tell what it was thinking. He didn’t know whether they really thought anything or not. He went into the bathroom and replaced the soap that he’d used and all of the towels, picked up the few plates that were lying about, and then went back downstairs.
As he clattered down the wooden stairs, a wave of contentment overcame him. He thought, I’m warm and safe for now. Bella Kanto has overtaken to see to my future. Who knows what sorts of wonderful things will happen now?
***
Chapter Seventeen
Bella Dreams
“Bella,” Alberic, 10th Duke of Tabat, says. We are dozing side by side in the hot springs below the castle. Musicians lilt and strum somewhere behind a screen. Alberic always has musicians near. A harp’s strings sound, echoing off the high ceiling and stony walls until I can’t tell where they come from. Layers of colored glass mute the aetheric lights till blue and gold stripes, Tabat’s colors, lie in stripes across the water slicked surfaces of our naked flesh, his dark skin beside my olive shade.
He strokes the inside of my thigh with a forefinger.
“What?” I know that tone, syrupy with assurance and the ability to back up promises with a thick purse. It means some unreasonable demand is coming: Be my Champion in the Southern Games, Bella. It’ll be two months or so of journey there and back, that’s all, and there’s a lovely vineyard in the offing to add to your country estate if you do.
And hadn’t that been a nightmare, fighting sharks and Water Human attitudes, all in the name of getting the city better prices on certain spices, and sugar, and Alberic’s favorite rum, along with a deal on the whale-bone used for parts of some mechanicals.
Or: Teach my Guard a few tricks, Bella, and unbeknownst to any of them, an assassin from the Rose Kingdom was brought in by the Duke so I could “show them what real action was like.” I’m still paying guild-duty on that man’s death.
“The Merchants are making noises about Winter.”
“The Merchants are always making noises about Winter.”
“They say there will be riots and burning as a sign of what’s to come if Winter wins yet again. Get the rules changed and play Spring.”
“Spring must be younger than her opponent, that’s always the case.”
He abandons his exploration of my skin and reaches for the whisky cup perched on the edge of the bowl we sit in, carved from the rock around the spring’s natural base. The aetheric lights give the steam arising around us a peculiar hallucinogenic sheen. I watch a stripe of blue sweep across his face. He is still handsome enough, although giving way to middle age. I look with satisfaction at the taut line of my own leg, laddered in yellow.
“Just think about it,” he coaxes.
I shake my head. “I will do you many favors, Alberic, but I won’t change what I am for you. As long as I am the foremost Gladiator in Tabat, I will play Winter, and play her to win.”
The song ends as I speak. The words hung in the air. Alberic sips his whisky staring at me. He returns to stroking my leg, but it is less a seductive gesture than a possessive one. I like this mood of his least of any of the mercurial changes and tempers which Alberic is prone to.
Years ago, when Alberic sent me one fall to the Southern Isles, I stayed with the Governor and his pretty children on the side of a red-rocked volcano. In the mornings I swam in a lagoon surrounded by frog drum and cricket drone. Sorties of birds had blazoned overhead as I sliced through the clear water.
In the afternoons, I went out fishing, my guide a merfolk of uncertain legal status—technically he was a Beast and could only be owned by someone. The mistress of the local inn owned him in theory, and I paid his day’s wages each evening in three-sided copper coins, one reserved for him, to be tucked into his gum with long-knuckled grace.
I became enamored of the colors of the reefs. I learned to see them in the translucent water, to see the wave break, shaped by the thing I could not see but knew was there.
That skill was like dealing with Alberic. You try to steer through the imperceptible collisions of old and sometimes imagined slights, long-buried childhood resentments still adamant beneath the nebulous surface.
How bad could his childhood have been, though? His parents lasted until his late thirties, and while it was sad to have lost them both in the span of the same rainy Winter, I think it more survivable than the tumult of my own early years.
“I am the Duke of this city,” he reminds me.
“For another six months, until the elections.”
“Fah.” The force of his recoil against the edge of the bath sends ripples across it. “Why should I be bound by a promise made 300 years ago?”
“Because your family has always sworn to live by it. You have plenty of holdings outside the city that you will not lose, and your castle remains yours. The people expect it. They have been waiting for it for centuries now. You’d have revolt in the streets.”
His eyes icy midnight, he says, “As if there wasn’t already plenty brewing in anger at you. Get out. I don’t want to think about you and all the trouble you cause.”
Throwing me out?! I twist my body and am up and sitting on the edge in an instant. “Very well.”
I pause. Alberic is prone to sudden remorse at these moments, but this time he shows none. I breathe out resignation and go to put on my clothes. Fine, slippery silk—I always dress to fit my partner when dining or otherwise engaged.
He refuses to speak as I leave. I bite back the impulse to say, “Don’t expect me back” over my shoulder. We’ve played this scene out before, but it has been more frequent in the last few years. We’ve never been a partnership, just a coming together from time to time, or a chance for Alberic to preen with me on his arm at some great occasion.
A silent servant escorts me to the gate, where one of the Duke’s steam carriages waits. I climb in without a word and sit. The driver will already have been directed where to take me; everything in Alberic’s household functions with quiet, perfect efficiency of the sort only money and power can summon. I could manage to fund that sort of thing myself nowadays, but that hasn’t always been the case.
I would have liked to have seen Alberic undergo my childhood. Sleeping on straw in the stable because a Beast was about to birth, prodded awake by Jolietta’s kick, knowing hours lay before you and then a full day’s work expected as well. He would have curled up like a caterpillar, incredulous and incapable. I snort to myself.
The driver says, “Beg pardon?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Or something, really. Take me to Berto’s.”
There is always someone to flirt with at Berto’s.
But instead somehow I end up at the Brides of Steel.
* * *
I’d thought Miche a transitory pleasure, but he seems determined to work his way up to the position of lover. He comes by with trinkets—nothing valuable, he’s wise enough to know that I have other admirers whose pockets are far deeper—but sometimes little magicky things that will amuse me, like a puppet of a dancing Ape, or some plainer token, the latest penny-wide or a hyacinth cookie.
I meet him on my way out today, the newly appointed Teo trailing me with a basket in hand to catch my purchases as I run my errands.
Miche bows deeply and takes my hand to kiss the knuckles in greeting, in a way calculated to remind me of similar experiences in bed.
“Who’s your companion?” he asks.
Teo flinches at the look. He’s convinced the Temples are pursuing him. I’ve told him they’ve got better things to do than hunt stray boys. Sure, if he walked into the Temple, they’d snag him soon enough, but he’s safe with me. Miche’s eyes flicker as he notes the movement and he flicks an inquiring look at me. He’s too sharp by far, this one.
“This is Teo, who Abernia has hired as houseboy,” I say.
“A fine country lad,” Miche says. “That hardly seems like a suitable position for a strapping lad. I have a cousin who works with a circus. He’s always hiring roustabouts.”
“Perhaps once the boy has his bearings, he could see him,” I say. “Not today, though.”
Something about Teo fascinates Miche. He keeps stealing glances at him. He says, “But the sooner the better, surely!”
I don’t like the way he’s looking at the boy. The predatory gleam in his eyes sets my teeth on edge. I step between them and say, “We must be going.”
“Of course,” Miche says through his disappointment. He’s as pouty as a teenager. “Perhaps I might come by later?”
I shake my head. That look strengthens my resolve to pry Miche away. I’d thought he might distract me, but it’s easy enough to find bedmates.
“I have a book for you,” he says. “I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s about Jolietta Kanto.”
The book Leonoa tried to force on me as well. “Written by a Beast once in her care? I’ve heard of it. I don’t care to read it. I know all I need to know of my aunt’s training practices.”
“It doesn’t mention you at all. In case that’s what you’re worried about.”
At first I don’t know what he’s trying to say. Sly insinuation fills his tone. It comes to me that he thinks me willing in all of Jolietta’s practices. As bad as her. Anger rivets me to the spot for a moment. I pry its grip free in order to reply.
“Never speak to me of it again,” I say.
The anger that flits across his face is a different kind than I’m used to seeing. What schemes does he think to set in motion that need me? Because that’s the look there. But it shutters away as quickly as a slammed window. He doesn’t burst into apology, he simply says, “Are you sure, Bella Kanto?”
“I thank you for your kindness,” I reply, cool and formal. I don’t look behind me as we walk away.
Teo, showing considerable wisdom, says nothing either.
* * *
I pose before my dressing table mirror, glancing past my form to examine the familiar map of my bedchamber, made new territory by the darkness. I like looking at myself in the shadows. They do interesting things to make my nose seem more chiseled, my cheekbones sharp as knives.
When I turn my face to one side I can smell the perfume left behind by the bouquet, but the other way brings the gingery smell of Lucya’s ointment. At this time of night, the streets outside the house are quiet. Abernia’s snores resound from a floor below, and Miche’s quieter breathing echoes from the bed.
I find the sounds comforting. They remind me of the times I’ve slept in a stable, warm in the straw, knowing other creatures were around. I always sleep better in a group. The presence of slumbering others drives away old nightmares. My retired arena hound Gelerta died when the snows had set in at Winter’s beginning two years ago. I haven’t had the heart to replace her. The bedchamber and its adjoining sitting room still smell of dog in wet weather—like tonight.
The fire’s last embers crackle and pop, sending up sparks like half-hearted fireworks. Another month of Winter, another month of people grousing about the weather and casting dirty looks my way. Everyone finds me predictable. No wonder people think I’m on the edge of failing, about to step aside for someone younger, stronger, more valiant.
I am Bella Kanto. How could they want anyone else?
I go to the window and flatten my forehead against the rain-spotted window glass. The window faces southward, over the garden, across the canal, and down towards the harbor, but I cannot see the water, only rooftops swallowed by rising mist. Bats and fickle ghosts ride the wind outside. I crane to listen to them but hear only the expected night sounds. A steam wagon’s whistle and warning hoot lingers in the distance.
In the bed, Miche stirs. After the fight, he proved handy and young and handsome and just as willing as I was. Since then I’ve fucked him more than once and let him stay until the morning.
Usually I don’t go for his sort, but there is a romantic cast to his bony face, his long-lashed black eyes. His pallor with his dark hair make him seem caught between Old Continent and New Continent blood and give his narrow smile an exotic touch. Pretty as a posterboard, a pantomime pirate.
The bedclothes rustle as he slips out of bed. Coming up behind me, his face swimming up in the moonlight, Miche Courdeau ladders his fingers across the flat plane of my naked stomach.
“Do something for me, love?” he whispers into my ear.
I listen to the night for advice but the steam wagon doesn’t speak again. I lean back against him, considering.
“Do something?” he repeats. His fingers go on doing interesting things in the neighborhood of my belly, my hips, the crease of my thighs, reckoning the taut muscles, tallying each quiver. I spread my long toes for better purchase on the wooden floor and push myself back into him, testing his strength.
No match for me, really, unless he possesses some unexpected skill or a sorcerous augmentation. No match at all, not like Skye. But like her, young and smooth-skinned, and supple as a Selkie. And possessed of the same arrogance of youth, the presumption that his sinuous grace has enchanted me. I sigh inwardly. Am I getting old, that he thinks to trick me so easily? I’ve heard that wheedling tone before, from other lovers, and it never means good.
I reach back and feel at his neck, but he does not wear the pierced silver coin that Moon Temple followers carry. “What moon were you born under? Some say that you can tell a person’s reliability by the moon that rides them.”
“Hijae’s red stare,” he says.
“Ah, Hijae of blood. Not auspicious.”
He drops a kiss on the bump of bone at the top of my spine and lets his tongue slide warmly around it.
“What do you want?” I ask. I’ll let him coax this favor from me, but he’ll pay for it in many acrobatic ways.
His lips nuzzle the nape of my neck, breathing out the words like afterthoughts, less important than the kisses.
“The boy. What sort of place is that for him, working in the scullery? Let me take him to my cousin at the circus. He’ll learn a better trade there than washing pots. I’ll make sure he’s watched over and you can come and visit him to be sure.”
At Teo’s age—at any age, really—the choice between housework and circus work is easy. The boy doesn’t need to be under my eye all the time. I should do what I do with my students, encourage independence.
Circus life seems chancy, but he’ll learn enough there to suit him to some other employment by the time the elections are over and most of the circuses have gone back to traveling back and forth along the coast.
“Let me think on that a little longer,” I say. “Ah, do that some more.”
He obliges, dragging his mouth along my spine, setting the skin alight with pleasure. He tilts his head to watch my face in the mirror. “Good,” he says, licking out the word and sighing coolness across the letters in a way that makes my half-lidded eyes flicker open. “Good.”
“Come back to bed,” I say and drag him back through the wash of moonlight from the many-paned window, its shadow an inky net on the floor.
* * *
Teo found the book lying beside the pile of boots he was supposed to shine for Bella, thrown there in a pile of other discards, a torn scarf and a glove worn past mending. He picked it up reverently. Books were not something that he had seen much of in his village. They were rare and precious, to be saved for teaching with. And here was one that Bella apparently did not want.
When he opened it and began to read, he realized that it was about the place where Bella had spent her early years, years only mentioned briefly in the penny-wides, sometimes not at all. It was about Jolietta Kanto, the preface said, told by a Centaur that had once belonged to her.
He took the book with him to his room, and that night, by candlelight, began to puzzle it out. It did not begin with Jolietta Kanto, actually. It began with the Centaur in his own land being captured by slavers and the adventures that gradually took him to Piper Hill.
The book made him sad. When he read of the Centaur, packed on a ship with the other slaves, taken forever from his home, he found himself crying. He closed it and wiped his face. What was the good of a book that made you weep? Books should thrill you, should tell you of adventures, not of sorrows.
