Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  “It is not as though you are enthralled yourself. You don’t usually come to these things,” she said.

  Leonoa shrugged, looking around. “I need to sell paintings,” she said frankly. She took a sip of hot punch. “And the Snowfields have an excellent cook.”

  “I thought I saw you from across the way,” someone said behind Adelina, and she turned to see Jilla Clearsight.

  “Ah!” she said, pleased. “I had not known to see you here, Master Merchant.”

  Jilla flushed. “Not yet Master,” she said. “Merchant only.”

  “She is starting her own trade, of a kind no one has yet licensed,” Adelina explained to Leonoa.

  The artist and Merchant exchanged greetings.

  “I must go and circulate, and ply my wares,” Leonoa said wryly. “A pleasure to meet you, Merchant. I hope to hail you as Master soon.” She slipped away into the crowd.

  “I had hoped to have you tell her about your pictures,” Adelina said to Jilla, chagrined at the painter’s swift exit. When she is bent on a thing, she thinks of nothing else. So like her cousin.

  “I meant to speak to you alone, nonetheless,” Jilla said. “Come, we will find a quiet spot and chat.”

  The quiet spot proved a secluded bench with a pleasant view.

  “You found that, when you were speaking, all power and knowledge fled you, did you not?” Jilla asked.

  Adelina nodded ruefully.

  “What if I told you I had a remedy for that, one that can make you speak as glibly as you write upon the page?”

  Adelina lifted an eyebrow. “I would ask why every speaker in Tabat was not using such a thing.”

  Jilla’s smile was a wry little mechanism. “Technically it is illegal,” she said. “It is a compound from the Rose Kingdom, and they have forbidden its use outside their borders.”

  “That seems difficult to regulate. How did you come by it?”

  Jilla shrugged. “Tabat is where many trade routes cross, as you know. Will you try it or not?”

  “Two questions. How much and what are the risks?”

  “The first time, free, and a golden galleon for each dose after that. It is not addictive, but it is not cheap.”

  “And if I am caught with it, the sanctions?”

  “A minor trade infraction, at best. Something a little more fine-worthy, at worst.”

  Adelina considered. She glanced over at Emiliana.

  Worth the cost, certainly. And the risk?

  “Very well,” she said.

  CHAPTER 30

  The party was held outdoors, despite the weather’s chill edge, and the guests clustered around the bell-bodied braziers placed every twenty feet, surrounded with baskets of artificial crocus and broad-bladed grass, throughout the grounds. The Merchants wore their warmer fur cloaks, and the more fashionable had their slippers or boots dyed to match their capes. Sebastiano wished he’d thought of that.

  Near an outcropping of the house, a slate-floored patio overlooked an expanse of city and bay. A crescent table there bore food, food, and more food. Sebastiano secured a fan of sausages and a glass of apple wine. He had been here before on other august occasions and even during his childhood—Festivals and birthdays. He knew where to find a secluded bench from which to survey the crowd.

  Except it was already occupied.

  Her face was just as he remembered it, and yet completely different. “Merchant Scholar Adelina Nettlepurse,” he said, and she rose with the same recognition in her eyes.

  “Merchant Mage Sebastiano Silvercloth. I thought I had glimpsed you coming in.”

  They shook hands gravely, smiling at each other. Adelina settled back and Sebastiano sat down beside her, tucking his toes underneath the bench.

  “Are you enjoying the party?” she asked.

  “More so now,” he said.

  “Oh, you’ve gotten much smoother than you were at twelve.”

  “We’ve both changed, I’m sure.”

  “You’ve been working with the College of Mages, I hear.”

  “Aye. I always liked playing with curiosities. Remember when we were trying to build a zoo, down behind your family’s carriage house?”

  An expression he couldn’t read crossed her face but she continued smoothly on the heels of his remark, “And the gardeners kept disassembling it when we weren’t around. Are you still zoo keeping?”

  “I’m overlooking some of the Beasts at the College of Mages, actually. They just brought me up in rank so I could do that task. I’m tending one of the Duke’s Gryphons—and most of the creatures in their stables. And helping with a Manticore that a Circus just brought in.”

  “And politicking as well?” She indicated the party eddying and ebbing around their seat.

  “That’s the idea of one of the older Mages,” he said. “I’ve shown little aptitude for actual major practices, and so they think I can handle the politicking for them and free up some Scholar for real research. They have all sorts of money-making schemes partnering with the Duke, and so they want to be able to focus on those and leave the speech-making and pamphlet-printing to such as me.”

  That was not precisely true, but he comforted himself with the thought that it was a good idea, and thus would appear in Faustino’s head eventually. Earlier, if Sebastiano could manage it.

  What was true was that he’d known she’d be here. His third candidate. He’d expected recognition of his pursuit, but she’d registered none. Was it possible her mother had not forewarned her? If so, why?

  “Do you like doing such work for the College?”

  He shrugged. “I have undertaken worse jobs. That’s how I manage,. I grit my teeth and remember my earliest job, picking fruit one Summer. My father thought it would toughen me. Instead it convinced me that I didn’t want to go into strenuous labor ever again.”

  He left it at that. He didn’t want her to think him a weakling.

  “There are rumors you dabble in publishing?” he said, thinking to make small talk, and was surprised at how she glanced around.

  “Let’s not speak of it here,” she said.

  He nodded. They sat, watching the party, and making small, delightful conversation before Adelina’s mother appeared and fetched her away for introductions and evaluations.

  “Come round and see me, some time when you’re not busy!” she called over her shoulder to Sebastiano.

  He nodded, sketching a salute. “Indeed I will, Merchant Scholar Adelina.”

  He watched her move away through the crowd, watched the play of weak sunlight across the glossy velvet of her dress. Her mother looked back at him with a narrow, suspicious stare. He felt a foolish smile on his lips answering in turn.

  Motioning Adelina on as she passed, Emiliana approached, her gimlet gaze basilisk-fierce, more malignly piercing than a Dragon’s. He felt appraised, summed up, and found lacking when set in the scale beside Adelina’s weight.

  He had always admired the skill with which the woman applied her eye cosmetics to such an effect.

  He squared his shoulders, met her gaze. He’d faced down worse monsters in his time. He was unable to see what effect, if any, his defiance had on the older woman’s expression.

  “So you’ve finally started courting,” she said. “Who else are you looking at?”

  He hooded his eyes, kept his expression imperturbable. “That would be poor trade practice. Andoumu and his five handmaidens would frown on me.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. He could see people glancing over, curious about the interaction. Gossip would be flying by evening, if not sooner. Hopefully it would reach his father. “Good and pious speech. I didn’t know that you followed the Trade Gods.”

  “Does Adelina follow them?” he asked. Emiliana shook her head.

  “She is a trained Scholar and a skeptic,” she admitted. Was that a trace of pride in her voice? Surely it was. What mother didn’t take pride in her daughter’s accomplishments?

  Emiliana glanced over her shoulder and tu
rned to leave without saying goodbye. Adelina stood watching from the crowd where she had paused. Her mother caught up to her, swept past her. Adelina nodded to him across the distance. Was she smiling? He couldn’t make out her expression. She turned. Two women clad in peach and pink eclipsed her form, and she was gone.

  He found himself grinning.

  It was Adelina.

  Perhaps it always had been Adelina.

  He contemplated the thought. Surely something like that would have been somehow foretold in their childhoods. A carnival, a fortune-teller’s booth, a shared slip of paper. But he didn’t remember anything like that.

  And it didn’t seem to him that he remembered any particular tenderness of the sort he would associate with early love, although he did remember coaxing her into kissing him, sessions that had left him aching and inarticulate. After she’d gone, he’d crouch on the stone wall in the garden, hugging his knees into his body, cupping his balls, wishing he knew what to do beyond this delicious, horrible, captivating pain. How had he possibly forgotten that?

  Was it first love or first sex? What was this dizziness at the thought of her? He felt smitten, clubbed down with fondness, at a loss for words.

  He strained his eyes, trying to see Adelina through the crowd, but she had gone.

  Without saying goodbye to anyone, he stepped outside into the more turbulent weather outside the walled garden.

  CHAPTER 31

  Bliss carried Sebastiano along the street. He had to talk to someone about all this happiness. His first thought was of Letha, but his father would intrude on that discussion, insist on a dissection and analysis that would dull joy’s sharp blade.

  He thought of Murga, of the Circus Owner’s appreciation of his work. He would find good conversation there, with someone who valued him.

  From a distance, the Circus was cacophony, but up close, the individual threads resolved themselves and somehow rebounded: food and sawdust and crowd-stink. Stepping up to the Minotaur and Satyr duo guarding the entrance, he asked after Murga.

  The Circus Owner was quick to appear.

  “I have not come in search of business but of conversation,” Sebastiano said. “I am celebrating, actually, and have few friends to share my news with.”

  Murga smiled. “Come to the tent and I will find something worthy of the occasion.”

  He led Sebastiano through corridors of canvas. A scamper of clowns moved past and Sebastiano moved out of their way.

  The clowns wore animal faces, paints drawn to give them whiskers, zebra stripes, bulbous snouts. Some wore ears, the fanlike protuberances of Dragons, or the great flapping ears of elephants, and some were even glamoured so their eyes were cat-pupilled pools of gold and green or many-petalled goats’ eyes. They moved as though they were Beasts. They lurched like charging bears or loped with the sinewy grace of panthers. They made him uneasy, deep down in his core in the same way Leonoa Kanto’s painting had, because no Human should move so like a Beast.

  Staring after them, Sebastiano said wryly, “I know they are meant to be amusing but I have always found them disturbing.”

  “That is because theirs is the most subversive medium. Anyone can paint,” Murga said. “Anyone can paint or write, and yet it’s controlled by things outside them, institutions like art critics and museums, things that allow them, institutions that tell us what is good and what is bad, treasure to be preserved, trash to be discarded. But a clown—everyone looks at a clown, and they don’t worry what it is that they’re looking at, they’re too busy laughing to notice what is happening.”

  “You are full of philosophy tonight,” Sebastiano said. “Have you been celebrating before my arrival?”

  “I so rarely get the pleasure of conversation with a mind of your caliber,” Murga said.

  After they had settled into his tent, the Circus Owner brought out a silvery bottle. “A man of your upbringing will have had such a thing before,” he said deprecatingly. “But this is Fairy mead.”

  Sebastiano’s eyes widened. “Indeed, I have but rarely tasted it,” he said. “That is perhaps a pricier celebration than my musings on my romantic life deserve.”

  “Is that our celebration? Then surely it is worthy enough.” Murga poured the mead into tiny cups carved of ivory. “I have a supplier who sends me a bottle time to time. I offer it freely in the name of Giobi, Trade God of Friendship.”

  By the time the bottle’s level had been reduced by a handspan, Sebastiano found himself speaking freely of his frustrations over his father’s directive, of the unsuitability of the first two women, and finally of the utter suitability of Adelina.

  “Indeed, she sounds a treasure. I have heard of her, I think. People say she is the key to Spinner Press.”

  “Rumor talking, I think. She is a Scholar there.”

  Murga shrugged. “She writes the stories of Bella Kanto.”

  “All herself?” Sebastiano said, surprised. “I have never read one.”

  “Indeed you should. Kanto is the key to understanding this city, for she is its Champion.”

  Sebastiano rolled his eyes. “Gladiators,” he said. “Popinjays.”

  Murga poured him another drink. By now the Circus noises had all stilled. Every once in a while Sebastiano heard animals calling to each other, or people passing outside the tent, their voices muted and indistinguishable. Wind tugged at the tent fabric and flapped it back and forth.

  “She is the one who should be speaking for the plight of the Beasts,” Murga said. “She knows it better than most.”

  “Gladiators think only of themselves and pageantry, in my experience.”

  “Meanwhile more and more is done without thinking of it. Take communication, which lags behind the other sciences now,” Murga said. “It’s only a matter of time, though, before the Mages turn their attention that way. They’ll make crystals from extracted brains to speak across distances and power them with the life source of some poor Beast.”

  “Surely,” Sebastiano began, but then did not know what to say. Surely people would not allow such things to happen? He knew better.

  “You know how thin the boundaries are,” Murga said. “What if they rewrote the books and made the definition geographical—only the beings of the Old Continent are Human and their New Continent counterparts without exception Beasts? Or determined by age, or intelligence, or the amount of money one can place in a Bank? Do you see what an advantage being the ones to set the definition provides?

  “Have you read the book I gave you?” he asked abruptly.

  Sebastiano shook his head. “I have not had the time yet.”

  “You will find it instructive,” Murga urged. “You understand something of the picture but not the whole of the canvas.”

  He spoke in a rapid stream, a smooth flow of words, his eyes compelling Sebastiano’s to look back, seeing the flush of sweat on his temples and the grainy stubble artfully dusted on his cheeks. There was always something artificial about Murga, even now.

  HOURS LATER IN HIS ROOM, still a little drunk from the mead lingering on his lips, Sebastiano sat on his bed and cracked the red-bound book that Murga had given him, unsure what to expect.

  At first it seemed an ordinary enough account, the story of a Centaur taken and brought to Tabat for auction. Soon enough he was sold to Jolietta Kanto and began to endure her training.

  At first Sebastiano kept reading it in order to find out what he could glean of Jolietta’s training. She had been a Beast Trainer whose methods were renowned, and so many of them had been lost at her death. He wondered yet again, Why did Bella Kanto choose to forego the amounts of money that Jolietta’s fellows would have paid for that knowledge? Certainly she had never hurt for money once she was a Gladiator, but before then—well, who knew how those finances had been shaped, and did it really matter, until the moment when Kanto had enough motive to write them down?

  But the details of that were vague and he found himself in a curious position, as though he was the Centaur, exp
eriencing all this, but in the same way a Human would have. It was a remarkable feat, and he was sure that an actual Centaur could not have written it. No, this was written by a Human that has chosen to pretend otherwise.

  He flipped through the book, reading through the chapters with increasing ennui. Predictably, there was mistreatment. Yes, that happened sometimes with Beasts. Not everyone was ethical, something Letha had impressed on him. She had always made a practice of healing the Beasts harmed by bad ownership. She was a rescuer.

  The ending was melodramatic. Overblown and silly, he thought.

  But he realized he’d read it all the way through the end, despite it being such silly stuff.

  A Centaur. He ran the basics of them through his head. They were not known for their intelligence. Perhaps the story itself was true, had been told to a Human who wrote this version, but it was a translation. Not how a Beast would think.

  Surely not how a Beast would think.

  He sat there for a while, petting the cover of the book absently with his fingertips, as though it were a cat in his lap.

  Finally he took it and went downstairs to Fewk. The Gryphon was drowsing in his stall, but opened sleepy eyes at Sebastiano’s approach. He slipped the latch and went into the stall itself, sitting down beside the Gryphon, leaning back on the warm side. A wing slipped down and over his legs like a down comforter, light as air, but so warm.

  “I met a woman today,” he said. “Or rather, I saw her and it was like I met her for the first time.” He scratched his fingertips among the base of a clump of feathers.

  As far as he could tell, the Nettlepurses had not a drop of New Continent blood, but traced their lineage back to the Old Continent. Adelina’s skin was the deep brown of mahogany, her hair black and glossy as obsidian, her eyes a deep green. He rather thought any children might have a good chance of looking like her.

  That was an enchanting thought, the idea of children produced by their pairing. He would want that in a pairing, that they be contracted for at least two children of his own body, and they would raise them with the choice of Houses, which would be a boon many Merchants’ children lacked.