Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  That was that. Sebastiano knew that tone of voice, that determined angle of eyebrow jut. The point where the old man would never back down, would have gone down with the ship like the Naval Captain Sebastiano suspected his father would have preferred as role. Instead of anchors and cannon though, Corrado Silvercloth’s life was printed cottons from the Southern Isles, western silks and linens, northern wools, and Tabat’s own weave of patterned velvets, and the Bank fed by the flow of cloth into and through Tabat.

  “Do you have any particular candidates in mind?” he said sarcastically.

  His father’s swift nod made him gape. How long had the old man been contemplating this? A while, it would seem. He’d probably had an aide research it and present him with a list of possibilities …

  “I’ve prepared a list.”

  Sebastiano groaned inwardly. This wouldn’t be easy to slough off.

  Silvercloth Senior counted them off on his fingers. “Lilia Della Rose.”

  The inner groan intensified. Lilia was dark and beautiful and could have her pick of Merchant sons. Might as well tell him to wrestle a Phoenix or out-riddle a Sphinx. If all of the women were equally unattainable, he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Marta Coinblossom.”

  Marta might be more amenable. The Coinblossom House was newly risen to trade and old blood might tempt them. She was an almost-pretty girl who would, Sebastiano thought sardonically, breed well if one could get her into a good enough mood to do so.

  “Adelina Nettlepurse.”

  Adelina Nettlepurse. Sebastiano remembered her from childhood play: a shy, contemplative girl who wore her dark hair in two long braids twisted together into a tail. He wondered what she looked like now. She was a Merchant Scholar, he had heard, but his own studies had kept him immersed in the College, only rarely venturing out to socialize. Hadn’t there been gossip about her and that Gladiator, Bella Kanto? Come to think of it, he’d heard the same of Marta.

  He snorted. Was his father proposing he compete with the likes of a glamorous Gladiator?

  “You and she got along well as children,” his mother observed. The ferret nuzzled against her fingers. “Do you remember then, you planned to get married and start your own Merchant House?”

  That was because we were both dying to get out of our parents’ clutches, he thought but did not vocalize.

  “Adelina Nettlepurse is past age to be married. She’s had her nose in her books all her years, much like you. Emiliana Nettlepurse has suggested you pay court to her. She’s quick-witted and reasonably easy on the eye, and we’ve been looking for a way to tie ourselves to the Nettlepurses for years,” his father said. He poked the platter towards Sebastiano, looking pleased. “But talk to them all, see who catches your fancy. The families will be expecting to hear from you.”

  He nodded but had no plan on calling on any of them. Easy enough to disappear into the College for a couple of weeks, longer if needed, before reappearing to take a little shouting from his father. Once that was over, things would be normal.

  When he made his way out to leave, Letha met him at the door and pressed a paper-wrapped package in his hand. It was warm and smelled of pancakes.

  “I may be scarce until Father abandons this idea,” he whispered.

  “That may not be as soon as you think,” Letha warned him, holding up a hand, its skin pale as milk. He wondered, as always, how much of his alienation and estrangements at the College were his own inadequacy and how much the result of his fellow Mages’ opinions regarding his upstart ancestry. Corrado claimed he’d married for the dowry she brought, but Sebastiano knew the amount of scandal it must have caused at the time. Had it really been a love match that his father felt obliged to disguise lest his son follow in those footsteps?

  Letha’s kiss landed moth-wing light on his cheek. “Be well, Sebastiano.” He flinched from the touch, light as it was, and she said, “That is why I followed you. What accident befell you?”

  “It’s nothing. A Dryad’s scratch, acquired while she was trying to escape.”

  “Come now and I will dress it.”

  “There is no need. I am going to the Doctor at the College.” He smiled at her, despite the stab of it on his cheek. “You have not grown so proud of your cures that you would claim them more efficacious than a Doctor’s, surely?”

  She huffed and rolled her eyes. He changed the subject. “Were you at Bernarda’s gallery when it caught fire? That painting … surely that was one of Leonoa Kanto’s paintings.”

  “Aye, but I left before the trouble started, soon after the Duke left.” Her tone was evasive, and that rekindled his smile. The protective Corrado did not approve of Letha leaving the house, insisting she have things brought to her instead.

  He kissed her cheek in turn. “I won’t tell your secret,” he whispered in her ear, despite her irritated stiffening.

  She frowned at him. “Be well,” she repeated. And then added, “And come back when the Doctor fails you. I’ll be waiting.”

  Leaving, Sebastiano paused to finger the colored tiles set in the doorway. Glazed in a rainbow of colors, each tiny rectangle bore the name of a notable who had spent the night there.

  Some Houses had entertained so much over the centuries their tiles were layered, sometimes as much as four or six layers deep, each tile two inches long, a thumb’s width wide, glazed in unfading dyes that had in fact faded in some cases till a famous essayist might be confused with a notable ecdysiast. The Silvercloth entrance was no exception. The family had lived in this house for two centuries now, and some of their visitors had been among Tabat’s most distinguished.

  Philosophers had slept here, and Duke after Duke. Two notable Surgeons, a host of distinguished Doctors, and an Explorer. A rare, ivory tile signified that the being that had settled Tabat, the Shadow Twin of Giuseppe Verranzo, had sheltered here at least once, although that was cheating a bit, since the house had not been built at the time.

  Sebastiano had always thought that someday he’d be someone so eminent that tiles would be set for him: the deep purple of the College’s Magister, perhaps, or the silver starburst on a purple background that signified some great work of mind, like the Duke’s Waterfall or the furnaces beneath Tabat.

  Now he did not think it would come to that, and the sadness of that made him understand his father’s disappointment in him better. Few are ever happy with where they end in life, and many of those console themselves with the notion that their children will walk the paths they map out for them, consoling echoes of those earlier ambitions.

  He fingered his cuffs and the embroidery there. Am I truly a Mage? he wondered. Will I ever escape being a Merchant? And now to be linked to another Merchant … That was surely making his fate inescapable.

  He took a breath and squared his shoulders before facing the street. All I can do is go forward and find what the Trade Gods want of me, he told himself, and then winced at the thought that even there, in his heart, he was Merchant.

  CHAPTER 16

  A delina had done what she had always done in the face of her mother’s disappointment: retreated into manuscripts, and now even those had failed her.

  She wished she hadn’t read it.

  She’d done this before. She knew better, that was for certain.

  I don’t need this sort of complication. Why am I even thinking about it?

  Adelina squared the pile of pages with her hands and set them on the desk, leaning back in her chair.

  Once again, she was letting someone’s prose seduce her, letting the strong hands of their sentences summon up a presence assembled from metaphor and sensuous detail and sinewy verbs. This time she’d even seen the man, his shaggy-haired presence presumptuous and brash, and not just made a mental simulacrum of him or her, a ghost that could be exorcized by a face-to-face encounter.

  What sort of fool doesn’t bring his manuscript the first time he comes to visit a Publisher and instead makes her wait for it to be delivered?

  Seraf
ina appeared with chal, setting it down beside her unobtrusively before leaving. Oily steam rose from its surface. Adelina took a tiny sip, savoring the briny taste.

  The sort of fool who can write like this, fill in careful clause after clause like ornamental brickwork, arch-stoned with semicolons, every phrase sounding clear as a bell when taken by itself. The sort of fool who could paint the colors over a waterfall and whistle the chimes of naiads at play in its pools below.

  “Like laughing glass, breaking the forest silence,” he’d written, and it was as though she’d stood beside him, hearing that against the water’s chuckle, and smelling morning cedars wrapped in shafts of sunlight.

  He’d included careful pencil sketches of flora and insects, fish and, twice, birds that had caught his eye for their colors. Lacking paints, he’d used Merchantly adjectives to convey each hue: “saffron yellow,” “deepest olive black,” and “high grade butter amber in noon sunshine.”

  She wanted to publish him, to reproduce his sketches in glossy plates, to call him her writer. She wanted to be the one he brought his pages to after each journey, so she could sift through them, winnow them, assemble them into something to display to the world.

  The cup was one she’d brought from home, one she’d favored as a teen, pale blue porcelain with ships around the rim and the saucer painted with a view of Tabat from the docks. She sighed, wrapping her fingers through the handle and pressing them against the thin china to feel the liquid’s heat.

  Taking on this manuscript means spending time on it, time I don’t have. Despite her disappointment, Emiliana had gotten Adelina to agree to several parties she hadn’t wanted to attend, but which her mother had deemed of political import.

  She hasn’t given up on me taking political office, not by a long shot. What to do, what to do.

  Serafina had set two cookies beside the mug, signaling that it was mid-morning luncheon already.

  But before she could taste one, the door opened and the head she had been contemplating poked through the door.

  “Come with me for chal,” Eloquence said, “and I’ll take ye to meet my usual audience.”

  Her curiosity was piqued, but he refused to say anything more. A beloved teacher perhaps? A favorite market storyteller? A thought twinged at her: perhaps some girl, who liked to listen, liked to hear him spin stories in that gravelly voice with his slurring Tabatian accent.

  She stole glances at him as they walked. Bella is beautiful, but he’s the handsomest man I’ve ever walked with.

  They took the Blue Canal along the terrace’s edge, and then a basket tram across a few terraces. They were headed towards the Slumpers.

  “See how the houses are smaller here?” Adelina said. “Nowadays this isn’t a desirable neighborhood, but these were built during Tabat’s first expansion, when builders started filling in the first Duke’s plans.” She paused. Adelina, that is conversation dry as dust. You sound like a teacher.

  To her delight, Eloquence smiled. “But surely that is not how that one was built.” He pointed at the house they were passing, a much-built upon thing with a third story that looked shaky enough to descend on their heads at any moment.

  “Look again,” she said. “You can see the bones underneath.”

  He studied it. “Fascinating! It’s as though the houses themselves were history books.”

  Not just lovely of body and motion, but of mind. He is too enticing for his own good. If a writer had crafted themselves to draw my eye, they would have started with that, a love of history.

  They passed a Figgis bakery cart and the smell of burned sugar and baked wheat. Then Eloquence paused in front of a neat little house. He knocked at its door before letting himself in.

  “Eloquence!” came from all sides. Adelina’s first impression was a swarm of girls of varying ages. When they quieted, he lined them up and presented them to Adelina in order of age, from Perseverance, the oldest, down to the youngest, Obedience, who eyed Adelina with a truculent expression.

  “It’s everyone’s fifteenth day,” she said. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She be my Publisher and the reason ye had raisins to make cakes with yesterday,” her brother said.

  Adelina volunteered, “Had I known where we were coming, I would have brought some gift. But I saw a bakery cart a few streets down. Perhaps Obedience could advise me on what to buy, to have with our tea.” The number of children in the room pressed in on her. A step outside, and then I’m ready to face all these eyes again, wondering what I am to their brother.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Eloquence said. But Obedience had already gathered her hat and was ready at the door.

  The bakery cart was still rumbling down the street, rocked back and forth by the cobblestones’ vagaries. A huge metal compartment at the front belched gusts of spicy steam, the shelter nestled behind it holding hand rolls, pasties, and other small breads, their enticing nature enhanced by their warmth. Further back, shelves were stacked with loaves of bread and sacks of hard-crusted rolls. A red canopy sheltered it from roof-drip or rain. The placard along the low-slung body, colored in red and purple on a white background, proclaimed, “Figgis’s Best! As Good As the Duke Gets!!”

  The woman pushing it stopped at Adelina’s gesture.

  Obedience pored over the array of pastries with painful intensity. “Cinnamon buns for Perseverance and Silence,” she said. “Those two in the corner, because they’ve got the same number of raisins. Cream tarts for Honesty and Eloquence. A fish pastie for Absolution and a fruit one for Grace. A hyacinth cookie for Mercy and a two-and-two for Wisdom.”

  “And for you?” Adelina prompted.

  Obedience’s eyes swept the offerings again. The vendor stood with paper sack open, waiting. A cart passed, loaded with decorative tiles, glazed with dancing Gryphons on backgrounds shimmering like breeze-touched water, the color of Eloquence’s eyes.

  Even as her mind made the comparison, Adelina realized something. Everything lately was in comparison to Eloquence. Eloquence, a most unsuitable match.

  But I don’t just want Eloquence’s writing.

  I want him too.

  Her mother would be appalled that she could so fiercely desire a man not of her class. Adelina could take him as a lover. But he seemed the type that wouldn’t be content with that. He’d want a partnership, an alliance that tied them together as a team.

  What did he bring to such an alliance? Skills as a River Pilot and the knowledge that such trips would have brought him, knowledge useful to a Merchant House, particularly when recorded with a precision that noted grades of amber and temperature conditions along the shore with equal detail.

  So he brings a fine mind and a depth of training … those are two credits to his balance.

  She looked down at Obedience.

  And on the debit side, nine mouths to feed, or rather nine sets of hands to be set to one trade or another. That would be a handful and a half. Although it would be nice to have a ready-made apprentice, several if I wanted, at hand.

  “A sticky bun,” Obedience said. Her eyes were the same color as Eloquence’s, a blue rich with possibility.

  A blue I could stand to see every morning, smiling down at me.

  CHAPTER 17

  Today, Obedience decided, was torment and rapture in equal measure, a black cloak lined with velvet as golden as the sun.

  Torment, with Mamma scrubbing them to a roseate flush, and each girl braiding the hair of the sister younger than her, which meant Obedience fell under Honesty’s hands, sometimes prone to pinches, and always pulling too tight when braiding, until Obedience felt as though her face was stretched into a mask, bound on her head by the taut lines of pulled-back hair.

  And more torment in the form of her best clothes, eight times handed down, so that the hems were frayed and much mended, and the front bib stained where Honesty had dribbled raspberry juice on it. In it, Obedience felt poor and shabby and, as always, fiercely resentful that new things only fe
ll to Perseverance, the oldest, hers by right not of merit but of birth order. Just once, Obedience would have liked a garment that came to her with no history, that she hadn’t seen on one sister or another a hundred times before.

  Torment, for her shoes were too tight, and Honesty unwilling to pass hers on yet, treasuring the gilt buckles that had improbably survived through seven owners. Obedience suspected that would no longer be the case by the time they reached her.

  But rapture, over all, bright as a daffodil-colored lining, because Eloquence was there to take them to the Games. This was the first time she’d been allowed to go to the Gladiatorial Arena, and not just for any ordinary Game, but for the Season’s Turning, when, dressed in Winter’s white and silver armor, Bella Kanto would defeat her opponent Spring.

  For surely she would, as she had every time she’d fought this match before, for decades now! And this time, this shining day, Obedience would see her fight.

  They made their way out of the house, walking in line after Eloquence. The Games would start at the first evening bell, but it would take them a good hour to get to the Arena, particularly since their brother had promised them chal in one of the teashops that lined the square built around the Arena’s hexagonal walls. She wished Mamma could come, but she was unwilling to make the journey to the Games, which would have required a litter to get her into the stands.

  Obedience kept her eyes fixed on Honesty’s blue sash, mostly intact but frayed to the point of fringe on one end, and a little sun-faded. If they got separated she knew enough to make her way home, but that would mean missing the Games.

  At the gate, Eloquence handed over his tickets.

  “Brought your own crowd,” the guard remarked, eying the line of girls, but Eloquence only shrugged, looking back to count them all again. He was rarely home long enough to take them on outings and he was starting to look frazzled around the edges. He’d had to clean Grace and Mercy after Wisdom spilled chal on them; Silence had fallen and gotten muddy; and Compassion, normally a paragon of good behavior, had briefly gotten separated and been rediscovered where she’d stopped gaping in front of a troupe of fire-eaters.