by Cat Rambo
The lights vanished. The moment trembled and was gone.
Dusting his hands off, he bowed and turned, leaving, resigned to the loss of anything imagined with Lilia, not caring what picture he made.
CHAPTER 22
The tiles of the Coinblossom entrance rivaled the Silvercloths’, even down to another of the white tiles that signified Verranzo’s Shadow Twin.
Sebastiano touched the witch light beside the doorway. It dimmed. Somewhere inside the house, a sister light had darkened to signal his presence.
Studying the white tile, Sebastiano wondered what the founder of Tabat had been like. In the course of his studies, he had only seen two Shadow Twins. Both of those had been corpses, infants drawn stillborn from wombs cursed by the purple Moon, their skin the deep purple hue that gave them their name. Few survived—perhaps one out of a thousand, if that many—but those that did had potent mystical powers. The Sorcerers who had wracked the Old Continent with the Shadow Wars had a number of Shadow Twins in their ranks, and at least one was known to remain, the mad Treelord who held the southern edge, wracked in constant struggle with the upstart Pot and Kettle King who sheltered in the northern expanses.
The oak expanse opened to show a fish-faced footman. His gills flapped moistly as Sebastiano told him, “Sebastiano Silvercloth, to pay a visit to Marta Coinblossom.”
Candidate two, Marta Coinblossom. Not particularly remarkable in beauty, and known for the sharpest, most virulent temper in Tabat.
The footman bowed and withdrew backward. Sebastiano followed as smoothly as though they were caught in a dance. The hall was a good fifty feet tall, a staircase leading upward along the back wall. Sprigs of lavender, colored in violet and pale green, embossed the floor tiles. Gilt lanterns hung overhead.
Sebastiano waited as the footman vanished through a door. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he glanced to the side.
His reflection met him, looking forlorn but resolute. He tugged at the hem of his waistcoat, straightening it, and adjusted his cravat. He had other appointments today, but this was, perhaps, the most important.
Marta would know what he was in pursuit of from the first, even if her parents hadn’t already warned her, which he couldn’t imagine was the case. She’d be looking him over to see what she thought of his manner and chances. He held no illusions about that, although he’d seen others pretend at it, claiming love at first sight. He bared his teeth at the mirror before he saw who stood behind him.
“Sebastiano Silvercloth.”
Marta stood in an archway, inclining her head to him. The shade of pink she wore was an unfortunate choice with her ginger-hued hair, but her silver and butterfly pearl earrings were exquisite, cascades of deep black spheres on whisker thin silver strands. More of the same contained her hair with tight geometry.
He bowed, putting his heels together with an almost-click. She seemed unimpressed as he straightened.
“Come into the conservatory if you like, Sebastiano,” she said.
He trailed after her between ranks of portraits, two centuries of Coinblossom ancestors examining him, centuries of clothing and gems of different cuts, starting with the newest and going back, generation by generation, including a branch that had married into the Duke’s family. They all looked like Marta, somehow. Was it something about the ears? The somber eyes? The scowls that marked many of the faces?
They passed a pair of portraits whose clothing placed them as the same generation as Sebastiano’s own grandparents, who frowned at Sebastiano’s back as he emerged in the conservatory. It seemed as large as the house, a construction of leaded glass panes set in myriad patterns, scattering rainbows across the purple tiles of the floor. Potted plants, some flowering, some fruiting, others just intimations of leaves, occupied tables along the walls.
Everywhere on the tables and on the wrought iron shelves bell-shaped tanks rested. Each held at least a single plant, some inhabited by a medley of vegetation, as though chunks had been uprooted from some landscape and brought here to be housed. Sebastiano moved over to inspect the nearest.
“It’s an orchid,” Marta said in answer to his unspoken question. “They come from the southern regions. My father collects them.”
“It’s very pretty,” he said, although in truth it did not seem an impressive plant.
“You look dubious, young Sebastiano,” another voice said, “but I think there are aspects of that plant that you will find fascinating.”
“I didn’t realize you were in here, Father,” Marta said. “My father, Milosh Coinblossom. Father, this is Sebastiano Silvercloth, come to call on me.”
Marta’s father was a small, neat-boned man whose face bore the same cast as the portraits. “Indeed?” he said. He and Sebastiano bowed to each other. “I do not wish to intrude on your conversation.”
“Actually,” Marta said, “I need to go speak to someone quickly. Perhaps you might entertain my visitor?” Without waiting for a reply, she moved out the door.
“She has gone to get her mother’s advice on you now that she has formed an opinion,” Milosh said with a sly chuckle.
Embarrassment clutched at Sebastiano. It was bad enough to be forced into this wooing without other people observing his methods and techniques, and comparing them to those of the no doubt smooth, assured possibilities that called on Marta on a daily basis. She was well dowered, and surely he could not be the only candidate for an alliance. He cleared his throat and gestured at the plant before him.
“What aspects do you think I might find surprising?”
The older man moved to the jar. “You work with Beasts at the College, do you not?”
“I do,” Sebastiano said. “Not with plants at all, I’m afraid.”
“But perhaps with those plants that have come to be classified as Beasts, because they act as though they were such? Dryads, of course, and perhaps with Mandrakes?”
“I have only seen a Mandrake once,” Sebastiano said. “The College has deemed them too dangerous to be kept where the students might come to harm from interacting with them, and we have no Scholars working with magical poisons right now.”
“These are cousins to such creatures,” Milosh said. “As most Dryads inhabit trees, so too these flowers are sometimes known to hold a type of symbiotic Fairy. Solitary, unlike most of its kind. A cousin of mine has been importing them for some time, trying to cultivate a type that might prove saleable to collectors of curiosities.”
“Fairies?” Sebastiano said. He peered into the jar, searching the shape of the leaves for the betraying lines of a Fairy, but saw nothing.
With the tip of a finger, manicured nail square-cut, Milosh tapped the side of the glass.
Something hurled itself at the glass wall with a buzz of wings, darting at it again and again with audible impact, before it ceased its frenzied attack and hovered, poised, on the lip of a flower.
It resembled a gnarled humanoid with enormous stained glass wings, brilliant as jewels. Deadly looking emerald spurs tipped its hands and feet. Defiant faceted eyes returned Sebastiano’s gaze.
Interest surged in him. An entirely new type of Beast! That was why he had yearned to go to the Southern Isles for years now, but funding had been lacking, and his father had refused him a chance to go along with any of the Silvercloth trade ships.
He squatted on his heels in order to bring the Fairy to his eye level. It continued staring at him. Its wings flexed. Its claws slid in and out of their sheaths as though longing to sink themselves into softer flesh.
“Is it intelligent?” he asked.
“You would not think so, would you, given that most Fairies show no intelligence when separated from their hive minds?” Milosh said. “And yet they do show some signs of cognition, or so my cousin claims. Myself, while I like to look at them, I am less interested in conversing, and so I have not bothered to try.”
Sebastiano was not so sure. The Fairies of the Great Hive at the College of Mages claimed such a mind, but
many evidenced distinct personalities. He still mourned Quickblade. Perhaps he shouldn’t have suggested the Fairy speak to the Duke.
“What do they live on? Do they exist for the entire life span of the plant?” Sebastiano was tempted to tap the glass again in order to see the Fairy in flight, but he was afraid it might injure itself in a renewed struggle to be free.
“Ah, now that is interesting. The plants themselves seem to subsist on a variety of things. Decayed meat, lichen, and sometimes nothing at all, as far as I can tell. And the Fairy derives its nourishment from its host, much as a Dryad does.”
“What is your source for them?” Sebastiano’s fingers itched to examine the Fairy more closely, perhaps even to dissect it beneath a magnifying lens.
“My cousin has shipped them up here. The only such specimens in all of Tabat,” Milosh said. He chuckled at Sebastiano’s inadvertent sigh. “Ah, well, young Merchant Mage—another factor in my daughter’s favor!” He winked at Sebastiano. His manner was so genial that Sebastiano could not help but be warmed by it and to smile in return.
“Sebastiano Silvercloth.” They both turned to see Marta again. Anger tightened her shoulders. She held herself in the doorway as though braced against a blow. “I have been told that you have been sent on this errand by your father and that I am surely one item on a list.”
Astonishment broke over him before distaste at her crassness replaced it. “I believe that is often the case, lady. Are you declaring that you would prefer I not court you under those unremarkable circumstances? I do not believe that my father would have encouraged me in this if you were not about to begin courting yourself.”
She glared at him. He didn’t understand the magnitude of her anger. What wasp’s nest had he stepped in here?
“My mother directs me to entertain you cordially,” she said sullenly. Her eyes slid over to her father, as though daring him to say more, but Milosh forbore.
She took Sebastiano into a close-walled parlor and they made stilted conversation. At first, Sebastiano thought to escape as soon as possible. But as the conversation went on, patterning itself with Marta’s tense answers, shot through with anger, in counterpoint with his light questions, minutiae of daily commerce, the most recent play she had seen, what sort of music she liked, he began to take an equally tense delight in forcing her to answer, knowing that for whatever reason, she dared not lapse into outright rudeness.
Finally, he said, “I have been asked to deal with a Circus, as part of my work with the College of Mages. Perhaps you might accompany me to one of their performances sometime?”
As close to a formal declaration as one could come. She stiffened but dropped her head. “Of course.”
By the time he left, he knew he’d made her hate him. And knew, somehow, that if he pressed his suit, she would not dare refuse him. Merchant children knew that their duty—first and foremost and above all else—was to the House that had raised them. Trained them. Invested in them. Her House had decided an alliance with the Silvercloths was advantageous. He had a wife.
If he wanted her.
CHAPTER 23
The table held all of them now with no jostling, Obedience thought, now that they had dragged Mamma’s big chair away and put it against the wall, because none of them could bear to sit in it. They had the three stools Father had carved, years and years and years ago, and a pair bought in the Rain Market with seats of woven purple cane, both sagging a little. A splendid pair of chairs that Mamma had bought at auction three years ago, and three more mismatched stools acquired at one time or another. The oak table was round as a coin, and had a shelf around the inside where all of them had tucked morsels of unwanted food or pills at one time or another.
The funeral had taken place at the Temples. Everyone had cried all the way through it, with the exception of Perseverance, who looked as though she were about to change her name to Resolution. Everyone had three full days off, better than any fifteenth day, but Obedience didn’t think any of them would have agreed to the price.
Grace said, “Apothecary Dockis is coming by later. He is helping Eloquence find an apprenticeship for you.”
“But …” Obedience said.
“But,” said Absolution sharply.
Compassion fingered the edge of the table. “With Mamma gone, father’s pension ends for sure. It is time for you to go to work.”
Obedience still didn’t think it sounded half bad. Apprentices were sent on errands, and to markets, and sometimes they got coins to spend on their own. Several of her old classmates had been apprenticed, one to Dockis, and they bragged on how much better their lives were, now that they had no daily lessons.
Still, she felt the need to protest. “I don’t eat much. It’s not as though we were poor.”
“We are poor now,” Grace said.
Obedience didn’t like the sound of that. What would it mean to be poor? Things had been skimped enough already.
“No more trips to the Arena.” She realized she’d said it aloud when they all stared at her.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” Honesty demanded. “We’ll all end up promised to the Temples of the Moons and you’re worried that you won’t see Bella Kanto? She killed our mother! I’ll never pay another coin for penny-wides, as long as she darkens the Arena.”
Honesty read far too many of the penny-wides as it was. She begged them off a neighbor down the road and frequently lapsed into their rhetoric. Her secret dream was to write for one.
“Bella Kanto didn’t make anyone kill Mamma,” Obedience said. “They were rioting!”
“In a riot caused by her!” Honesty spat. She got up out of her chair and crossed around to Obedience. She pushed at Obedience, who fell backwards off her stool, hitting the floor with a thump. Pain and copper mingled with astonishment in her mouth; she’d bitten her tongue. It throbbed. Honesty loomed over her.
“Don’t pick on her, she’s the littlest,” Perseverance said.
“You know how Mamma died!” Honesty glared at Perseverance.
Perseverance rose. Obedience thought she’d come to help her up, but instead she went to the doorway.
“I’ll be in the parlor for fifteen minutes,” she said to Honesty.
“Perseverance!” Obedience’s tongue, a thousand times bigger in her mouth than it should have been, rendered the word into a croak.
Compassion and Silence stood to join their oldest sister, as did Absolution.
Grace and Mercy came over to Obedience. They’d pull Honesty away, she thought, but instead Grace drew her foot back and kicked Obedience in the ribs.
Obedience’s outraged shriek was cut off when Mercy followed her sister’s example, picking a spot a few inches further down.
She tried to curl into a ball to protect herself, but Honesty was kneeling on her shoulders, pinning her against the gritty floor. Her hair, caught in the press, yanked tears into her eyes.
“Honesty, I didn’t,” she tried to say, but Honesty slapped her again and again, silencing her.
“Shut up, you little bitch,” Honesty said. The words shocked them all, made the room silent for a moment. Obedience yelped as Honesty slapped her again.
“She went looking for you and got killed, and you come prancing up with some fucking rich ponz!”
She shifted her weight forward, knees as sharp as knives. Obedience screamed.
“Shut her up!” Honesty snapped, and Obedience felt Grace’s arm like an iron bar across her throat, cutting off any breath she could have used to protest.
Warm wetness on her chest. Honesty had hiked up her skirts, standing over Obedience’s midsection, and was pissing on her. Obedience fought for air. Black spots danced in the air. Were they going to kill her? Was this how she was destined to die?
Finished, Honesty kicked her again and again. Obedience choked and gurgled and moaned, breathing in the piss-reek.
“Let her up,” Honesty said with another kick. Obedience breathed in a whoop of air, trying to catch her leg
s to her chest and avoid any further blows. Which came, again and again, before Perseverance returned to the doorway. Then they left Obedience, spitting on her before they went, to play outside.
Perseverance, standing over her.
Obedience tried to stretch out a hand. Everything hurt. Her nose and mouth were bleeding.
Perseverance’s face, cold as the white Moon.
“Go clean yourself up,” she said.
AS SOON AS Eloquence was in the door, still shivering and shaking off his coat, he found himself faced with Obedience, at him for something or other. Before he could make anything out, Perseverance dragged her away.
Perseverance had been right when she’d been arguing with him the night before. He hadn’t agreed at the time, but seeing Obedience’s face twisted in anger and protest over the coming change, he was forced to agree.
Time for her to live up to her name.
CHAPTER 24
C ome tonight,” Eloquence said to Adelina. “To the Night Market.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because my Pilot’s sense is a weather sense, and I think the candle moths will be in flight.”
Adelina caught her breath.
How would I write this moment, in a book?
In the earliest days of Spring, before any flower, even the little primaflora, the candle moths come home to Tabat. They have overwintered down in the little islands that lie on the way to the actual Southern Islands, where so many goods come from: sugar and rum, ornamental Fairies and orchids, singing fish and denseweed.
The moths always come at twilight, when the last bits of sunlight lie on the water’s surface in broken spangles, before they sink down to the deeps, among the Merfolk and the great squid. The moths come up along the coast from the west, and sweep over the city. People call to each other when the first ones are spotted, and lovers go find bowers where they can stand and watch the moths fly by and whisper tender things to each other.