Malachite

by Kirby Crow

  Marion bent to claim a sweet kiss as a chime sounded at the door. Tris grinned and ducked playfully out of his arms to answer it. He returned in a few moments with a large, flat package.

  “A messenger!”

  Marion raked his fingers through his hair and steadied himself, ignoring the hard, insistent ache below his belt. “Another wedding gift?”

  Tris handed it to him with a smile full of mischief. “This one is from me. Open it, per favore.”

  Marion stripped the thick paper aside and balanced the object on both palms. It was a heavy copper plaque, skillfully engraved. “Taliesin R. Sessane, Conservator,” he read. “And Marion Casterline, Highwarden.”

  “What?” Tris frowned and stood at his elbow to read. He shook his head and a lock of black hair fell into his eyes. “Damn that man, I told him... it will have to go back.”

  “Oh?” Marion inspected the gleaming metal surface. “For what reason?”

  Tris rolled his eyes, alluring and annoyed. The son of the magestros had a manner as tranquil as a moonlit pond. Like a flawless diamond, he emanated his own light, perfect and tempting. His anger was like smooth ripples, waves rather than a crash, and Marion knew of no other man who could manage such a trick.

  “They put my name first,” Tris said patiently, as if the defect were obvious.

  “And?”

  “And you're the lord warden.”

  “I repeat... and?”

  Tris plucked the thing neatly out of his hands. “I'll see that it's returned tomorrow.”

  Marion chuckled. “You realize that the coppersmith put your name first on purpose. You are a Sessane, after all.”

  “Stop reminding me.” Tris set the plaque on the carved oak table by the front door. The luxuriant, four-story house was old and well-furnished, arguably the best home in the Myrtles district. Kon Sessane would have nothing less for his son.

  “Don't you have to go?” Tris said. “It's getting late.”

  “I won't remind you of things if you won't remind me. Jesu alone knows what the waters will bring tonight.” That wasn’t exactly true. Marion knew what to expect from Aequora, but he was always surprised at how few of the exiles they took in were suitable to become citizens. Kon had told him that perhaps one in ten were true Malakhans without ever having known it. For the others, the adjustment period could take years. The city would be restless tonight, and sex would not answer every scrap. Heads would be broken.

  Most of the city's standing population had been brought here as children, cast-offs from the Cwen or penniless orphans from the eastern shore of Solari, and they had grown up knowing no other company but that of males. The world beyond the Lion Sea was very different.

  He watched Tris tidying a painted vase of white roses and ached to take him to bed. That would have to wait. The terms of the agreement he had made with Kon were very clear: a marriage first, then the happy couple could do as they pleased.

  “Do you want anything to eat?”

  Tris shook his head, and again a fall of dark hair swept over his eyes. Tris pushed it back impatiently and pulled a rose that had faded. “I've thought about a name for the house. What do you think of the Villa Luna?”

  “What happened to the Cortile Rosa?”

  Tris carefully examined the pale petals. “That would please my father, but roses are more his hobby than mine.”

  “You’ll be the master of this household, not Kon.” Marion moved toward the kitchen but paused in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame. “Name it whatever you want, and never mind about your father.”

  “Molto divertente,” Tris murmured. “That's easy for you to say.”

  “At least you have a father, bellissimo. I barely remember mine.”

  Tris gave him an apologetic look, rubbing a rose petal between his fingers. “I know. I'm sorry.”

  “Non importa. He was a drunk, anyway.” Marion headed for the kitchen.

  There was beef in the cold safe, heavily-salted and thick with fat. He was slicing it into slabs for bread when he heard the bells chiming again. Tris would answer it, but he made a mental note to ask Kon about the house portero. Tris had his own work and couldn't look after a household this grand by himself. He wondered idly if he could get Kon to pay for that, too.

  “Buonasera, Tally.”

  He bit back a groan. Jean. I can't believe it.

  “Don't fucking call me Tally.”

  “Don't say fuck,” Marion called out.

  “Warden Rivard is here,” Tris called back. “Again.”

  Perfect. Marion steeled his nerve and exited the kitchen with a sandwich in one hand and a bottle of brown beer in the other. Jean lounged in the center of the parlor, his long black warden's coat draped over his shoulders, mud on his boots, looking out of place among the brocade couches and silk carpets.

  Marion nodded at Jean. “Are you hungry?”

  “He's staying?” Tris asked archly with a He's Been Drinking tone.

  “Tris,” Marion sighed. “Please don't be difficult.”

  “Oh, lovely. He stumbles drunk into my house, insults me, and I'm in the wrong?”

  “He didn't insult you,” Marion said gently, aware of how insecure Jean made Tris feel.

  “I only called you Tally,” Jean joined in. “It's a term of affection.”

  Tris looked from Marion to Jean and back again. “To hell with you both.” He stomped out of the parlor and up the carpeted staircase.

  Marion took a bite of sandwich. “Don't provoke him like that.”

  Jean looked at Marion's hands. “Is that beef? You really are living rich.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I didn't provoke him. I only—”

  “You called him Tally. You know how much he hates it.”

  “Hates me, you mean. If you don’t like it, why’d you take my side?”

  “Because I know from experience that fighting with you is a hard habit to break, and I'd rather he not acquire the custom. Just leave him alone. He has more important matters to concern himself with.”

  Jean snapped his fingers. “Ah, sì! The big wedding.” His pornographic mouth curved upward. “So, is he walking down the aisle robed in white or have you busted that sweet young ass yet?” He clucked his tongue. “Papa won't be pleased if his spotless darling is well broken-in before the vows are said.”

  Marion rolled his eyes and fought for patience. “You're an ass. What are you doing here?”

  “You ordered me to Aequora.”

  “Did you see any ships in my parlor? Maybe the garden? No?” He shook his head, marveling at Jean’s audacity. “You only came to annoy Tris. I don't know why you're so angry with him. He didn't do anything.”

  “Marrying my man isn't reason enough?”

  His man. Marion nearly choked on his beer. “Don’t make jokes,” he coughed. “Was I supposed to become a priest?” He sat down.

  “Going into perpetual mourning is a perfectly reasonable option. Is a little public acknowledgement that I've ruined you for other men too much to ask?”

  Jean was in a mood to play with him and Marion wasn't in the mood to be a toy, but maybe it was best to get it all out now. Jean was his warden and his warden wasn't doing his damn job. “Where were you last night?”

  “Busy.”

  “Oh, Paladin's cock.” He glared at Jean. “You came to fight? Fine, let's fight.”

  “Good.” Jean strode to him and put his hands on the arms of Marion’s chair, leaning over him. “Why are you marrying him? Why would you do something so fucking stupid?”

  Marion struggled for patience. “It’s not stupid. I want to do something with my life, Jean. I couldn't keep waiting for you to pull yours together, not because I wouldn't have waited for you, but because there was no point. It was plain we didn't want the same things anymore.”

  “Well, now you've got it all.” Jean gestured at the lush furnishings of the parlor room. “Big house, big job, the pretty little housemaid, couple of brats on
the way.”

  “Tris is no housemaid and there are no brats.”

  “That's not what I heard. You're meeting with Yvon Moro.”

  How the hell did he find out? “Yvon grants many audiences,” Marion demurred, popping the last of the sandwich in his mouth. Just drop it, please, he prayed. Tris could hear them if he cared to. His room was only at the top of the stairs. In a house so old, every step echoed, every word carried. Marion heard the soft concussion of Tris's boots above them as he crossed his bedroom floor.

  “There's only one reason you'd want to see that old turtle.”

  Marion had hoped to keep that from Jean a little longer. “Who told you?”

  “Doesn't matter. It's true isn't it? So why now? You're the highwarden. You're Marion Casterline, for fucks sake!” Jean waved his arms. “You could've gotten the Orfani to give us kids, if you wanted them that badly.”

  Marion closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. He could feel a headache coming on. “I can't believe you're saying this. For one thing, I wasn't highwarden three years ago.”

  “Leaving me has helped you move up in the world.”

  That was too much. “Please,” he scoffed. “Leave you? I didn't leave you. We had a fight and we both left.”

  “I came back.”

  “Six months later!” Marion surged out of his chair. “I kept that loft for weeks waiting for you, hoping you'd realize what you were throwing away. But you were too busy drinking and chasing ass in the Colibri to spare me a thought.”

  He heard Tris's door close and his pulse jumped. He should have kept his temper, should have held his tongue. Tris had probably heard. He stepped close to the man who'd once been his whole world.

  “What if you had come back, Jean? What if we'd patched things up and I'd gone to the Orfani? We might still be together. I might even be highwarden, if I could have managed to keep a career alive while mopping up after you. And then what? Would you still drink and whore while my son was in our house? Was I going to wake up every morning wondering if I had to scrape you up out of the gutter or haul you out of the Bailey half-dead, like I've done a hundred times? Is that the kind of life you had in mind? Well, mi scusi, old friend, but—and I mean this sincerely—no thank you.”

  Marion paced the room, his hands clenching. Jean wanted a real fight, but he wouldn't be provoked into throwing a punch. Not in Tris's house. Not in their house. “We spent fifteen years putting this city back together, and now we have what we both wanted. The harbor is open and the city—our damned city—is the only point of trade between two queens who fucking loathe each other. It's making Malachite rich again, even men down in the Zanzare. You want to know what I want? I want peace. I want something of what we built to last, and I want a family.”

  Jean stood quiet and stock-still like a tree taking root, his head down, hurt in every line of him.

  Marion felt a pang of regret, but the sad-puppy look wasn’t going to work. Not this time. “We were good together when we were young. I want children. The Orfani were never going to let us have that. They were never going to let you look after a child.”

  Jean’s head came up. “That's why you're marrying that smug brat, so the Orfani will give you some kids? Is that all?”

  Marion bridled, but let the insult to Tris pass, feeling less pity with every ticking moment. “No, it's not all. For the father's sweet sake, life is more than the next orgy. It’s more than wine and brawling every night until dawn.”

  “I could give you more,” Jean murmured. “You know I can. I can make you think the gods themselves have come down to suck your cock.”

  That was just like Jean, to think he could solve anything with sex. “That song’s old. You need to learn a new one.”

  The softness in Jean vanished. “The day I sing to you is the day I put you in your shroud.”

  Marion made himself count to three. “You're angry, so I'll let that go.”

  “I'm not—”

  “We've never lied to each other. Let's not start.”

  Jean shook his head and his voice turned plaintive, that fallen angel face slipping into an appealing pout. “I just don't see why you have to marry a Silk.” He made a helpless gesture. “I never tried to put chains on you. You could always do just as you pleased, with any man you pleased. Why is he any different? If you want to fuck him, then fuck his silly brains out. Put him in a harness and you two can swing around your fancy parlor and you can ball him until the moon turns blue, but don't... don't... marry him.”

  Jean had never sounded so wounded before. Before they went their separate ways, Marion had begun to doubt that Jean had any feelings at all.

  Too little, too late. He gentled his voice. “It's not like that at all. I told you: Tris is a good man.”

  “Boy,” Jean quibbled. He dragged his wrist across his nose. “I've seen kittens with more machismo.”

  “He's of age. He's also from a prominent family and I can't just ball him—as you so politely put it—and move in. A man with a famous name is expected to act a certain way, and Tris has a great deal to live up to. He has his father's rank to think of.”

  Jean snorted. “Is that why you’ve got to put a ring on boy-pussy's finger before he starts playing buggery-fuggery with your fat cock?” He tapped a silken tassel hanging from one of the velvet curtains, humor gone, vulnerability slipping into a hard mask. “I’m not too sure you’ll be the first man to break that tight hole in. Papa didn't keep his sweet boy locked up all those years just to study sums, you know. Be careful when you kiss, you don't know where his mouth has been.”

  Hearing his dignified, soft-spoken Tris reduced to such an obscene accusation made Marion's vision turn blurry with rage. He picked his beer up and resisted a vicious urge to smash it across Jean's nose. “You need to leave my house.”

  “Damn right I do. I have better places to be, better men to fuck.”

  When the front door slammed, Marion rested the empty bottle on a table and mounted the stairs.

  Tris's white rose was discarded on the top step, laid there like a stop sign barring the way. He bent and retrieved it. He found Tris in the library, stooped over the massive cherry drawing table. The table had been a gift from Kon.

  When you came right down to it, everything in the house was a gift from Kon, including Tris.

  “Salve. There you are.” Marion waved the rose like a flag of surrender. “I thought you'd be in your bedroom.”

  Tris had a heavy, familiar blueprint in his hands, black ink on gray. Detailed in the drawings were the seawall foundations and the known ruins of the Mire. Tris had been restoring and copying ancient maps for the Consolari since early spring. It was tedious, dusty work, but it was important. Before they could begin reclaiming the Mire they first had to know about the ancient foundations beneath it. A great deal of that knowledge had been lost, and Tris had been searching the archives for months to find more.

  “I was in my bedroom.” Tris blew dust from the paper. “But it felt too much like pouting and waiting for you to come find me, so I went to work.” He began rolling up the blueprint. “He’s gone?”

  “Yes.” The wood-paneled library was lit with a yellowish glow that mimicked candlelight. The gaslight lamp was an artistic thing of glass and wire on a tall brass base, but the bottles had to be refilled frequently. They were an expensive indulgence, common in the Myrtles, but much less so in other parts of the city. Marion had never lived in a home with so many lamps.

  “You fought,” Tris stated, carefully bland.

  “We always fought. Nothing new on that count.” Marion refused to report the filthy things Jean had said. He prayed Tris had stopped listening before that.

  “News of our audience with Yvon Moro set him off that badly?”

  “He claimed it was about the wedding.”

  “No.” Tris began to gather the long, rolled blueprints, balancing them carefully on one arm like a tidy stack of kindling. “That’s not it. Eventually
, he would have gotten used to the idea. Jean is too conceited to think that a little marriage could stand in his way. He would've thrown you a party and shown up drunk to be your best man. Regardless, he's planning to seduce you back to his bed and he’s confident that he can do it.” Tris's mouth thinned. “But sons... Jean can’t compete there. It's something I can give you that he can't.”

  True. When Marion was a child, men from the Zanzare had been able to adopt children, but that practice had ended when the Teschio came to power. The first ones the gangs went after in the slums were the young boys. Now, all children taken from Aequora remained in the Citta Alta until manhood, and only men from the Citta Alta could adopt. Marion's youth in the Teschio had been spoken of, but marrying a Sessane made those years a non-issue.

  “Jean doesn't want to be a father,” Marion said. “He never did.”

  “He knows how much you want it.”

  “Here now.” He went to Tris and gently took the blueprints from his arms, helping to stow them away under the table. “I want our wedding every bit as much, carino.”

  Tris smiled faintly. His gray eyes had violet shadows under them. “No. You don't.”

  It nettled Marion that Tris appeared to be agreeing with Jean's assessment. “You don't think I want to marry you?”

  “Oh, you do want that. If there's one quality about you that stands above the others, it's your confidence. You wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to court me on a whim, or if you were undecided. Your mind was made up to marry me the day we met.” Tris tilted his chin at Marion and appraised him coolly. “You must marry me to achieve your goals, but you're not doing it for purely sentimental reasons. You like me well enough and you'd be content raising sons without a marriage, but the Orfani wouldn’t allow that, would they?”

  “That's not—”

  “I know. Sons aren't the only reason. Marriage also means you'll have a partner to share a life with. A real life, as you said, and it's not like I'm coming to the table empty-handed.” Tris's sweet mouth turned wry. “There's all my money, for one. We could build something in Malachite together, something wonderful that will last and that you can be proud of. Jean's idea of life is having as much wine and men as he can get his big, grubby hands on.”