Malachite

by Kirby Crow

  Tris always addressed Kon formally as father, never the more common papa. That title was reserved for Dominique, as if Kon must be kept at some remove for Tris’s benefit. Jean's disgusting accusation leapt to Marion’s mind, and he shoved the thought aside.

  “You're angry,” Kon said regretfully. “Not without reason, I'll grant. Do you want to discuss it?”

  “Not just now.” Tris glanced coolly at Marion. “I've been standing here for two hours and I'm fucking starving. Are we eating or not?”

  Marion could have kissed Tris for the look on Kon’s face. “We are.” He linked arms with Tris. “After you, magestros.”

  ***

  Marion couldn't argue with Kon's choice of cafe, but he was painfully glad he wasn't paying for it. Kon ordered sweet eggs and iced plum wine, to be followed by plates of chicken baked with oranges, sepe al nero, orzo, bread, mussels in cream, shrimp with polenta, and almond cake with vanilla sauce.

  Kon excused himself from the table after the flustered waiter went hurrying to the kitchen, and Marion leaned closer to Tris. “Does he always do that?”

  “Order so extravagantly?” Tris unfolded his ironed napkin. “If I were you, I'd start watching the door.”

  Marion glanced at the exit. Unlike most cafes in the Citta Alta—which were open and crowded with striped umbrellas shielding patrons from the sun—the Sun Lion was tucked into a corner of Paladin's Square and had a low roof with a single arch that served both as entry and exit.

  Marion sighed. “What’s your dear papa up to?”

  “I honestly don't know. He's been odd for... well, for years, of course, but lately even more so.”

  Marion studied the curved, perfect lines of Tris's profile, noting that other men in the cafe were looking as well. The Sun Lion did a brisk business, waiters gliding around the dozen tables like dancers. A group of brightly-dressed merchants at a corner table raised their glasses to Tris.

  Tris bowed his head to them with demure politeness, then ignored them.

  Marion cupped Tris's knee under the table “Did you fight with Kon? What about?”

  Tris responded by studiously playing with his silver fork. A man raised by Kon would be quite capable of deception. The obvious deflection was Tris’s polite way of saying he didn't want to lie.

  “Whatever it is,” Marion said slowly, “you'll tell me if I need to know, yes?”

  Tris took a sip of water. “It was nothing, truly. He invited me to the Corsair.”

  “What?” Heads turned in the cafe. With an effort, Marion lowered his voice. “Kon took you to the Corsair? In the Colibri?”

  “Unless there's more than one Corsair, yes.” Tris sighed and rolled his eyes. “He was attempting to give me a lesson on imprudence. The lesson did not take the way he wanted, and I went home very early. In fact, I doubt it can be said I was ever really there at all.”

  Marion's head spun. “The Corsair. If he were any other man, I'd—”

  “Mi scusi.” The waiter returned, nervously holding a bottle of wine cradled in a wisp of white cloth. “This is for the young messere. In honor of your beauty, the gentlemen instruct me to say.”

  Marion suddenly hated the merchants. He hated Kon, the waiter, the cafe, and most especially the interested looks the merchants were giving Tris. “Go away.”

  Tris touched the waiter's elbow gently. “You may leave it. Send them my regards, please.”

  “Tell them,” Marion growled, “they can take turns shoving it up their collective asses. Sideways.”

  “Marion.” Tris shook his head sternly at the waiter. “Leave it. Go.”

  The waiter placed the bottle as far away from Marion as possible and fled back to the kitchen.

  Tris folded his hands and waited.

  Marion sighed and raked his hair back from his forehead. “I'm sorry. I can't believe Kon took you to that place, even as a joke. He had no right.”

  Tris tapped his finger on the tablecloth. “You’re marrying me, signore. Not purchasing me. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.”

  Nothing to do but accept defeat gracefully. “My apologies.” Marion spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Aequora. And it's only half over. I can't imagine what I'm going to be like by the end of the month.”

  “Don't blame Aequora. Actually, I'm rather enamored of the notion of a jealous promessa.” Tris fluttered his eyelashes dramatically. “Molto machismo. Will you be pummeling anyone on the way out? Tell me now, I don't want to get blood on my boots.”

  Marion pinched Tris's knee, and Tris giggled like a boy.

  But he is a boy. The disparity in their ages was just short of shocking, and men were already talking in whispers about it. It would be years before Tris grew into the man that he was destined to be, into the role that Kon had groomed him for. Maybe one day Marion would be able to share what happened last night with that man, and the black sails on the horizon.

  Kon returned from the lavatory and noted Tris's wide smile. He also took note of the wine. “Was there some merriment while I was absent?”

  “We were discussing Marion's combat skills. Given time, I think he could turn me into a competent fighter.”

  Kon pressed his lips together and he hummed in disapproval. Marion expected him to parrot the old line about the graveyards being full of competent fighters, but perhaps he didn’t want to ruin lunch with an argument. Far from putting Kon in a bad mood, Marion’s report of black sails in the Lion Sea seemed not to touch the magestros at all.

  Hijacking a Cwen vessel, even to save the exiles, was a serious crime, but Kon had only asked if he was certain the Cwen captain would keep silent. Marion swore that he would, and that seemed to satisfy Kon. The matter had not been mentioned again.

  The eggs arrived, and the three of them whiled the afternoon away with food and drink, picking at dessert and sipping black tea. Kon's mood turned affable. He could be a charming bastard when he wanted to be.

  Kon smiled wryly when Tris said he supported the Consolari’s resolution to fund the drainage of flooded neighborhoods in the Zanzare.

  “That’s politics for you,” Kon said cryptically. “Never spend a penny for practicality when you can spend a pound and call it charity.”

  “Surely there is some good will behind the gesture,” Tris protested. “It can’t all be politics.”

  Kon gave his son a tolerant look. “Why do you think politics exist, lamb?”

  “To give men a say in the making of their laws and how their lives are governed.”

  “Are you sure?” Kon's storm-cloud eyes were inscrutable. “Because that sounds like voting to me.”

  Tris ducked his head and fiddled with a corner of the tablecloth. “I'm not much of a politician, I admit.”

  “I disagree. You're the best kind of politician, because you're no kind at all.” Kon shook his head patiently. “My boy, politics only exists as a stick to herd one group of men into thinking and acting exactly like another group. If you're not part of the ruling body itself, you can only ever be a follower of it. If not a shepherd, a sheep. Sadly, some men in the Consolari are still mutton to be herded, no matter how much power they have. I can't trust those men. The ones I can, I've taken into my confidence.”

  Kon was seldom wrong about whom to trust.

  “Politics make me thirsty,” Marion joked, disturbed by Tris’s forlorn posture. He poured their wineglasses full again.

  Kon told Tris the newest jokes, spun stories of shocking gossip, and chatted with them animatedly about clothes, boots, fabrics, books, a portero he was interviewing for the Myrtles, and a new kind of stove from Cwen that could cook with sunlight.

  Tris lifted an eyebrow dubiously. “How does it work?”

  Kon rummaged in a pocket for a silver case of cigarettes. “It's a metal box with a shield of black glass. The glass is placed in the path of the sun, and it heats whatever is inside the box.”

  “Sounds like more of your gossip.”

  “It is not,” Kon said primly
. “But you don't have to believe me. It's been purchased for your kitchen. You can see for yourself tomorrow.”

  Tris laughed. “What's wrong with the stove I have?”

  “Nothing. Dominique saw the thing at the docks and thought you'd like it.”

  Tris's smile faded. “When is he coming to visit me?”

  Kon flicked open his cigarette case. “He hasn't said. Oh, I'm out.” He waved the empty case at the waiter and crooked a finger, and a minute later the man returned with a small pouch. Kon passed it over to Tris. “Would you please, dear? You do it better than me.”

  Tris shook the dried leaves and herbs onto the little paper and used both hands to quickly roll a tight cigarette. He licked the paper to seal it.

  “You see?” Kon said. “Much neater than mine.”

  Marion took Tris's hand as Kon allowed the waiter to light his smoke with a match he struck on the small ingot of flint they all seemed to carry.

  “Mika’s not angry with you,” Kon said. He pursed his lips and blew a stream of smoke to the ceiling. “And no, I'm not lying.”

  “Then why won't he come?”

  “Perhaps he's waiting for you to come to him?”

  The last thing Marion wanted was Tris traveling down to the Arsenale. Swimming with sharks would be safer. Unlike Kon, Dominique had flatly refused to give Tris his blessing. Dominique had still not moved back into the castello.

  “Where is he now?” Tris asked.

  Kon rolled the smoke between his fingers, studying the end. “The Gryphon, I should think.”

  “You haven't been to see?”

  “Why would I want to board that old hulk? She stinks of seaweed and cat piss.” Kon gave Tris a look that would have wilted Marion's hardiest warden. “And he was the one who walked out.”

  Tris didn't wilt. “Because of me.”

  Kon stubbed the smoke out on a dish. “If you're old enough to make your own choices, then you're old enough to realize that some of them will have consequences, lamb.”

  “Don't you love Mika anymore?” Tris looked so forlorn.

  Marion focused his eyes upward and bit the inside of his cheek, staying out of it.

  “I don't let my feelings for him rule me,” Kon replied, skirting the question. “I have my pride, and as you've seen, so does he. We fit well together, but only if we both respect the rules. He broke my rules and that was hard. Lies can come between even the most loving of men. I dislike like secrets in my house, unless they're my own.” He waved his hand. “Oh, I know that isn't fair, but I never claimed to be fair. More of those rules I mentioned.” Kon nodded in Marion’s direction. “Your promessa knows what I'm speaking of.”

  “Don't involve me in this,” Marion said.

  Kon leaned forward. “Surely you agree that there are some matters my son is safer being ignorant of. If it were commonly known that the highwarden shared his troubles and plans with his husband, how safe would Tris be from your enemies?”

  Tris's sharp chin jutted out. “I don't need protecting, and Marion already shares his plans with me.”

  Kon chuckled. “I very much doubt that he does.”

  Marion had heard enough. “If there's any blame for your rift with Dominique, it should fall to me.”

  Kon raised his tea cup and sipped. “Because you're the elder?”

  “Age is the least of the reasons. I could have waited. Dominique might have been more agreeable next year.”

  “I didn't want to wait,” Tris said fiercely. “Your greatest wish is for a family. I want to be the man to give it to you.”

  Kon smiled gently at Tris over the rim of his cup. “Consequences.”

  ***

  The Castello Rosa was much closer to the Gran Consiglio than the Myrtles, so Kon flicked the end of his cloak over his shoulder, kissed Tris’s hand, and left them in Paladin's Square. When Kon's dark figure vanished into the crowd, Marion took Tris in his arms.

  “That could have gone worse.”

  Tris hummed and stroked Marion's arm. He could feel Tris's long, thin fingers through the linen of his shirt. Tris had the hands of a musician.

  “Do you think you'll ever get used to it?”

  “What, dealing with your father? Not in a thousand years.”

  Tris laughed and Marion brushed a kiss high over his cheek. He hugged Tris as the sun warmed their shoulders. “It's growing late. I should go.”

  By custom, the Aequora boats would linger in the distance offshore, waiting for full dark before approaching the seawall, but he didn't intend to make them wait a moment more than necessary. Not after seeing the black sails.

  “There's plenty of time.” Tris nuzzled his nose into Marion's throat. “You said Jean was wounded, too?”

  “Slightly, but yes.”

  “Wounded in service of the city. Shouldn't he be acknowledged?”

  “Maybe. What did you have in mind, maestro Sessane?”

  “Nothing too ostentatious. He should be rewarded, but not so much that your other wardens will resent it. Did he save a life?”

  Marion considered carefully. He could not tell Tris about hijacking the Cwen boat, nor about the Cwen captain’s death. “Yes.”

  “That's worth a house, at least.”

  He stroked Tris's hair, cautious now. “What kind of house?”

  “A modest one, perhaps in the Copper District.”

  The Quartiere di Rame was much further away from the Myrtles than the Colibri. He slid a finger beneath Tris's chin and urged him to meet his eyes. “It's a fine idea, but Jean would refuse.”

  “Because it comes from you?”

  “Of course not. I can't afford a house. He'll know it came from the Sessane fortune, and he'll suspect your hand in it.”

  Tris’s gaze was fearless. “If he's really as smart as you say he is, he'll take the house before my father finds some reason to put him out of a job, in which case he will get nothing. Not even a pension.”

  “Kon won't do that.”

  Tris caressed a short curl of hair at Marion's nape. “Oh?”

  Marion took Tris's hand away from his neck and kissed it. “I'd rather we leave the intrigues out of our marriage, if we can. I understand that will be difficult, each of us being who we are, what we are, but I'd rather not come home every night to a plot.”

  “There's no plot. Father did mention he wasn't happy with Jean. Considering he never broadcasts his intentions, I think that's as close as we'll get to a warning. He probably even meant it kindly.” Tris's mouth turned down. “I don't want to have to choose between my father and you.”

  “I thought you'd already chosen.”

  “I did,” Tris said with some heat. “So please spare me from repeating the action. I've chosen, but he's still my father and something about Jean makes him very angry. We can't just ignore how that affects us.”

  Marion sighed deeply. Kon was family now. Jean wasn't. There was a time when he suspected that Jean had some unspoken feelings for Kon, but Jean had always denied it. Anyway, the notion was ludicrous.

  Tris gave him a doubtful look.

  “I'll really speak to him.”

  “And I know how difficult that will be for you. You have my thanks,” Tris said formally. He suddenly clasped Marion closer to him. “I know how you feel about him,” he whispered, so quietly that Marion could have pretended not to hear him.

  “I don't mean to hurt you,” Marion said into the softness of Tris's neck. He smelled jasmine and cologne, soap and clean sweat.

  “You're not holding me that tight.”

  “That's not what I mean.”

  Tris nuzzled closer. “You won't hurt me. When the time comes, you'll decide not to. You'll decide you want to be with me.”

  That had the sound of prophecy. Tris tilted his head back and smiled up at him, fearless and beautiful and young, so damned young.

  “And if you don't, messere,” Tris whispered, “that will be your very great loss.”

  “I refuse to lose you.” Marion pre
ssed his forehead to Tris's and stood holding him in silence for moment.

  A pale motion in the sky caught Marion’s eye. He took it for a seagull at first, but more followed. Pages. They fluttered out of the sky in reams and littered the pavement. Watchers in the square exclaimed and began catching them.

  Tris put his arm out to catch a page. It fluttered almost obligingly into his hand. He read the bold headline aloud: “L'arciere?”

  It was a very good printing, the thin page stamped with several paragraphs of neat letters below a fine lithograph of a hooded archer. The archer’s body was etched in stark lines, caught in mid-stride, his robes flowing behind him.

  “Men of Malachite,” Tris read. “The Graycloaks are come to liberate you from the corrupt and greedy wolves of the Consolari. The dogs of the Citta Alta keep you under heel while they feed from the bowls of the rich...what is this? My father's name is here.” He skimmed the rest of it. “The time has come for the blood of tyrants to stain the streets red. Kon Sessane, the king of thieves, the heir of Aureo Marigny...” Tris stopped reading and tore the page in half, throwing the leaves to the wind.

  Marion looked up and scanned the many balconies of the Gran Consiglio. Leaflets were still floating down from the direction of the building, but he saw no one at the rails. “Go home,” he said. “No, don't. Go to the castello.”

  “I'm going to work.”

  “You’re going to your father’s house.”

  Tris kicked one of the pages away with the tip of his boot. “I will not run and hide. I most especially will not run from filthy insurrectionist gibberish. Go and do what you must, but I'm taking a sandolo to the Gaol as I intended. I'll pick up my blueprints, and then I'll go home.”

  Marion gritted his teeth in frustration. “Forget the damned blueprints! They’re not important. You’re important.” He hushed Tris’s protest with a desperate kiss. “Your father’s name is on those pages. You’re a Sessane. Go home, please. Do it for me.”

  Tris bowed his head. “You know I can’t refuse when you ask like that.” He kissed Marion's cheek. “But I’m not afraid.”

  Marion escorted Tris to the steps of the canal and saw him into a sandolo before he hurried back to the square.