Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  The most infuriating thing about Bella Kanto, that quality. And at the same time, the most charming.

  What would the girl have thought of Bella as a lover? Adelina remembered Bella’s practiced grace, her hands, her expert attentions, honed by a hundred lovers. That would spoil you for anyone else. She wondered if perhaps Bella had not, after all, been rather lucky. A teen as fixated as Marta would be an uneasy thing to deal with.

  EMILIANA HAD NOT GIVEN up hope, Adelina could tell that. And indeed, she insisted on taking her daughter to see yet another speaker that afternoon, saying Adelina could learn much from her, and Adelina had acquiesced, rather than fight that battle.

  The young woman was introduced as Jilla Clearsight, a Merchant who was in the process of establishing her own trade, taking some kind of picture, from what Adelina could tell, although the introductory speaker was frustratingly vague about the technology.

  But Jilla was mesmerizing. Tall and straight, she stood and let her voice ring out clear as the bells from the Duke’s tower, speaking of days to come, of economic promises, of this and that, to the point where Adelina just let the words sing through her, without listening hard to their meaning.

  Afterwards, she made her way through the press of the crowd, who seemed dazed and murmuring, to speak to Jilla.

  “I saw you talk the other day,” Jilla said, pulling her aside. “Your mother brought you, yes?” Her eyes flickered over to Emiliana, who stood nearby talking with others. “She seems a formidable lady.”

  “She is,” Adelina said, disarmed by the comment, despite the discomfort of standing looking at a mirror of what she might have been, if she had not flubbed that first speech. “She means for me to try again.”

  “Will you?”

  “She is, as you said, formidable,” Adelina said with a touch of despair.

  “I might be able to help you,” Jilla said. “But not here. May I call on you?”

  “Come to the Press where I work,” Adelina said. “We will talk there.”

  She wondered what the woman meant by help, but she did not seem bent on seduction. Instead there was an earnestness about Jilla that was appealing.

  She considered Jilla as the woman thanked her. She had mixed blood, dark brown hair and pale skin.

  We’re of the same age. Children of this new, modern era. That’s what draws us together.

  On the way out, she said to her mother, “The speech was very beautiful.”

  “She is a clever young woman,” Emiliana said. Her face was perplexed. “But I cannot say that I remember much of what she said, only of liking it.”

  And cast her mind back as hard as she could, Adelina could say only the same.

  “Drop me at the Press?” she asked. “I have manuscripts to pick up to read at home.”

  “You work too hard,” Emiliana said.

  “I work to advance,” Adelina said. “Surely you approve of that?”

  Emiliana dropped a reluctant nod. As the cab paused outside Spinner, she said, “We will talk tonight.”

  Another speech, surely. But Adelina only waved and went inside.

  “YOU HAVE A VISITOR,” Serafina said as Adelina passed.

  “Oh?” Adelina paused. “I had no appointments this day.”

  “Eloquence Clement came to ask you questions,” Serafina said, her tone disapproving. “When I told him you were not here, he said he would wait, and went to look at the presses to entertain himself in the meantime.”

  Adelina angled her head to look at her secretary better in the light. “Why don’t you like him?”

  Serafina hesitated. “It is not that I don’t like him. But my family follows the Moon Temples.” Her fingers tugged at the silver coin hanging around her neck. “He acts as though he is wooing you, all smiles and winks, and that is not a relationship the Temples would approve of.”

  Adelina’s pulse fluttered in her throat. All smiles and winks? She swallowed and said, “I didn’t know you followed the Temples. Your name isn’t a typical one.”

  Serafina dropped her gaze to the feathery tangle of scrolls on the desk before her. “We keep two names, by tradition. My Temple name is Competence.”

  “Well-suited to you.”

  Serafina’s smile gave away as much as a sealed envelope.

  Adelina tried to keep her tone level. “Very well, noted. Send down and fetch him in a few minutes.”

  In her office, she hastily smoothed her hair and straightened her clothing. She stood in front of the little mirror beside the door, looking in the silvery glass to see her cheeks flushed, lips curling upwards of their own accord. Smiles and winks. She was glad that she had dressed for the occasion of the speech rather than for work.

  And was glad again, when Eloquence, entering, said, “Ah, you’re full of grandness this day. I hardly dare speak to ye.”

  “Good day, River Pilot,” Adelina said, smiling as she settled herself behind her desk. I had forgotten the exact color of his eyes, like the sea at midday.

  “Call me Eloquence, Merchant Scholar, and we will put aside titles, aye?”

  “Very well,” she said, then dared to test his first name in her mouth. “Eloquence. Serafina said you had questions?”

  “I am preparing the next part of the manuscript and had questions about some of the instructions you had given me last time.”

  She cocked her head. “Didn’t you listen the first time?”

  “Aye,” he said solemnly. “But I would like to go over them all again, start to finish.”

  Her brows furrowed. “Why?”

  “Because it lets me sit and listen to your voice,” he said, smiling and winking, and despite how she tried to keep it down, her heart leaped up in return.

  CHAPTER 20

  If asked in the presence of his fellow Mages, Sebastiano Silvercloth would have claimed that he had always been oblivious to thoughts of clothing. If pressed by truth spell or by oath, he would have been forced to admit that the opposite was true.

  His eye for nap and weave would have surprised his father. Sebastiano knew the origins of the styles that swept Tabat on a seasonal basis and could foresee what might be coming next twice out of every three guesses. He could wield needle and thread, and while his clothing was not ostentatious in its material and cut, observant eyes would have noted that it was cleverly fitted for comfort, and something about the cut made the lankiness of his legs seem less so.

  He went early in the morning to Three Coins Tailoring for his new shirts. It might be the most expensive in town, but he felt justified in sending the bill to Corrado. Appearance breeds success, Abvioli’s first tenet.

  Starting with the silk shirt so fine it could be drawn through the signet ring on his finger, he assembled an outfit of the latest mode for calling on Lilia: blue silk waistcoat matching his coat, embroidered with half-moons and buttoned with silver coins; voluminous black trousers; polished black boots; an overabundance of lacy cravat under his pointed chin, a smoothing of pomade, a gift from Letha last nameday.

  As he put these items on, he paced in front of his window, looking for his reflection in the cloud-lit glass. Try as he could, he could not see his face, only the watercolor flutter of his hands, captive in the divisions between the branches.

  He had thought himself handsome enough at one point, but that seemed years ago. He hadn’t lost it to onset of age but rather to dullness. He simply didn’t consider his appearance with the same keenness anymore, didn’t think of how stripe and pattern interfered, or the translation of his cravat’s knot.

  He sighed, contemplating his expression’s absence. “She’ll have to take me as I am,” he said. He held a waistcoat button poised between thumb and forefinger, tipping it outward to look at it.

  The black wool that the new vest had replaced was just as well fitted, but the severity of its cut made him angular and stern. He hung the old vest in the closet, brushing it off fastidiously, and closed the door before saluting his ghost in the glass.

  The loft�
�s narrow stairs echoed beneath his boot heels, new and a little slippery. He made his way through the College and teetered his way down the great marble stairway and on to the street outside, past the children bouncing a rubber ball off the lowest steps, jumping and prancing as they ran back and forth. He ignored their derisive whistles and commentary on his gait and outfit.

  A few blocks down on Greenslope Way in a florist’s marked “Ellora’s Daughter,” kitten-headed blooms simpered at him. Parrot-faced flowers squawked in chorus as the clerk held a spray out. Sebastiano withdrew his fingers as the nearest snapped.

  “I want to entertain someone, not injure them!” he rebuked the clerk.

  The clerk, an Oread dressed in the shop’s uniform of green smock, was unabashed. “It all depends on their personality,” she retorted. “Some like livelier blossoms, while others prefer quieter, more contemplative blooms. Those eastern shelves hold simpler flowers, untouched by magic, all brought from the Southern Isles.”

  The Oread looked Human at first glance, but as with most of her kind, closer look revealed the flinty undercast to her skin, the oddly square shape of her pupils, and her abnormally thick, gray fingernails. Sebastiano could see the appeal, but it was not one that had ever reached him.

  “Do you use magic with them?” he said curiously. He wondered if Alberic had ever thought of putting Dryads in charge of his gardens, rather than chaining the tree-women in them as ornaments.

  She shook her head quickly, eyes wide. “No magic, sir,” she breathed, taking on a formal tone as though he had accused her of some wickedness. “My mistress would not tolerate such a thing.”

  “Indeed?” he said, puzzled. “I would have thought that if you had such talents, they would have been of great profit.”

  Her body language was odd and unexpected. What did she fear from him? Perhaps she’d been abused by students from the College of Mages, so close by, and learned to fear them. He straightened himself, putting his shoulders back.

  “I mean you no harm,” he said directly, putting as much reassurance in the words as he could.

  Her reaction was even more puzzling, for she actually flinched away from those words.

  “What’s wrong?’ he said, and fought the impulse to step forward. But of course. Nothing like saying you don’t mean someone harm to raise the possibility of the opposite, he thought ruefully.

  Another customer entered and she spun away to speak with them.

  Sebastiano didn’t press it. Beasts were irrational sometimes. Turning away to survey the banks of flowers, he hesitated over violets like sparkling amethysts and lilies that smelled like apple wine. One red rose had three blue butterflies, colored like a Summer sky, perpetually circling around it, held by whisker-thin lines attached to their thoraxes.

  In the end, though, he took irises, colored like Tabat’s own blue and gold flag, patriotic and yet poetic in their graceful shape, hard stems wrapped in damp orange newspaper imprinted with an auction listing, and marched out the door, off to his first siege in the Battle of Love.

  CHAPTER 21

  Dolls filled the too-warm room, layered up to the high ceiling’s plaster swirls in rows of lace dresses colored pink and blue and amber. The upper ranks were dark-skinned, with hair like shadows captured in an inkwell and eyes in every shade of jewel. A fire roared in the fireplace, poked by a gold-liveried servant who stooped and worked at it until the blaze of heat drove her away.

  All of the dolls were staring at Sebastiano, and after having been in the room for over an hour—he’d heard the Duke’s Clock chime twice now, and he very much feared that he’d hear a third any time now—they were starting to make his skin crawl, as though the gazes had a palpable weight, pressing inward on him.

  Candidate number one, Lilia Della Rose. Noted socialite, whose mother collected objects d’art. Such as dolls. Younger than Sebastiano by a decade, but ripe and ready for marriage, and possessed of holdings ample enough to qualify her to marry a Silvercloth, enough that she could be lazy and let suitors come to her.

  She had a conventional prettiness, to the point where he was a touch embarrassed by how alluring he found her. She could have been a marzipan figure atop a Coming of Age cake, slim-ankled and high-bosomed, clean and shiny and toothsome. He could imagine himself next to her, though—something out of a distinguished portrait or a newspaper’s engraving. Picture perfect.

  Sebastiano kept his attention focused on Lilia, despite the dull buzzing in his ears and the sweat trickling its way down his back. Towards the bottom row behind her were paler-skinned dolls, wearing livery of their own. A distorted reflection of Tabat’s social reality—or was it that distorted, after all? The headache lurking in the back of his mind cleared its throat and edged closer.

  Lilia didn’t seem to notice the room’s heat and stuffiness. She reclined on the couch, leaning back to whisper upward confidingly to the umber-dressed Captain, who tilted forward in turn to smile and receive the confidence.

  The female occupants of the room were Lilia and two of her maids? Friends? He wasn’t sure. Sometimes these richer Houses had folks who managed to be both. An annoying number of young, handsome, athletic, male, military officers floated through the room. Sebastiano counted seven at the moment, but they seemed to come and go, giving Sebastiano surly looks whenever entering or exiting, questioning his presence. He supposed his outfit stood out in the sea of umber.

  Finally, Lilia turned to give him a sideways glance that reckoned the exact cost of the buckles on his shoes and the stitch of his waistcoat. He maneuvered a scuffed toe beneath the edge of the chaise.

  Not only was her appearance conventional, but her personality seemed sculpted of the favored trends of the day. Her beguiling, compliant personality with just a hint of baby talk was taken from the character of Stella, the antagonist of a popular ongoing play. He was not sure why she had chosen the sometimes villain rather than the always hero, but it must have meshed well with some pattern of her psyche. Did that bode well for marriage? He was not sure that it did.

  “You are a Scholar Mage,” she said politely. “What does that mean, to be sure?”

  “Merchant Mage,” he corrected. “And that title means I am the marriage of Science and Magic,” he said with a practiced dip of his head. He had given this speech before, to the bewildered friends of his parents. Usually they would stand there tensed as though the contagion of such thoughts might spread to their own offspring if they were not careful.

  But Lilia’s look was different. Perhaps she realized the glamour, the lonesome nobility of such a position, willing to bear the scorn and slings of both sides in a pursuit of actual Truth, the sort that could only be boiled out of the mixture of science and Spirit.

  “Sounds like a great deal of studying, eh?” an officer guffawed.

  Lilia’s expression of polite curiosity did not shift. Merchant children learned early to dissemble, to keep their internal assessments and calculations to themselves. What does she make of me? he wondered.

  He glanced covertly at the officers. How do they always seem so immaculate, as though they had never sat down and wrinkled their clothing, he wondered. Look at the guffawer, leaning with insouciant ease against the arm of the couch he shares with Lilia.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Sebastiano said to him.

  “Benji Khentor. Junior Cavalry.”

  The handshake was firmer than it needed to be. Was this Sebastiano’s chief competition, then? It seemed so, as though the others had dropped back a step, like a circle of hounds watching two of them considering when and how to attack. He sighed. Had Humans come so little distance from the days of being ignorant savages, as bad as any Beast or animal?

  “Cavalry, eh?” he said. “Perhaps we might compare notes sometime. I have not dealt much with horses, but a few of the larger cloven-hooved Beasts, such as Catoblepas? And Riddling Deer, of course.”

  The man actually grimaced.

  Why is he in the Cavalry then, Sebastiano thought irri
tably, if not from a fondness for horses? The Cavalry was small and a purely honorary guard. The Duke relied on major mechanicals, produced in a laboratory not far from Sebastiano’s own Beast enclosure, for actual protection.

  “I tend to stay out of the stables,” Benji said with a touch of hauteur.

  “Why?” Sebastiano asked. He realized his faux pas when the other man frowned in annoyance.

  Lilia interjected, “Riddling Deer? I’ve never heard of those.”

  “Purely a product of the Old Continent. They were created in the Third Shadow War,” Sebastiano said. “Distinct to one Sorcerer, a lesser one in the Dusil Province.”

  “See, and you studied all that, eh?” Benji said. “I like fresh air, myself, rather than sitting over musty old pages.”

  “They’re usually not musty,” Sebastiano said. “The College has been printing up some of the new research, but the ink’s barely dry on the pages, sometimes.” He regarded Benji and Lilia’s exchanged look and sighed.

  “I must be going,” he told Lilia, brushing wrinkles from the knees of his trousers as he stood.

  There was no point to this. Lilia was on the market, that much was apparent, but she was paying court to the military men. Her strategy must be some sort of alliance with the Duke. Ambitious, but not unknown.

  He squinted against the sunlight filling the reception room to illuminate the faces of the dolls. It was all so brilliant: the gleam of metal on the uniforms, the faceted glass panes splintering the light like prisms, the eight-sided spangles on the robes of the uppermost dolls, their patient servitors arrayed below them. Inspiration struck him.

  He gathered a palmful of bits of light, plucking them from the air, before leaning over Lilia’s palm to scatter them there.

  “What—?” she breathed in wonder. The flecks of light circled her palm, sparkling upward, borne by the warmth of her skin.

  Sebastiano smiled. He had learned a dazzlement or two through the years. Everyone at the College had a signature move and it was refreshing to swim in a circle not yet jaded by petty enchantments.