Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  Sebastiano felt abashed. “No, sir,” he said. “I came to say goodbye to you actually. I’ve enjoyed our conversations.”

  “I was afraid that was it,” Milosh confessed. “That’s why I prepared the tank. I wanted you to have something that might make you think of me sometime in the future. Marta can’t linger at home forever, and then we might be friends, when all of the courting nonsense is out of the way.”

  Sebastiano liked the older man—so much more interested in and encouraging of Sebastiano’s doings than his own father. A year or two without a chance to talk to him would be bearable. He beamed at him.

  Upstairs, Marta shrieked something at a maid. Milosh’s gaze drifted upwards. “I had hopes,” he confided. “Oh, I had hopes of you.”

  Sebastiano laughed at the wryness of his tone. “I do not think your daughter and I would suit at all, sir.”

  “I do not think she will find anyone she suits. My hope is to ship her off to another continent some day as a trade alliance. There I won’t have to listen to her complaints and she can be someone else’s problem.”

  The shrieks upstairs escalated in volume. Milosh sighed. “I must go and make sure she isn’t killing anything.” He held out his hand to Sebastiano, who shifted the aquarium’s weight in order to exchange handshakes. “Remember!” He nodded towards the tank.

  “I will!” And despite the fact that he’d eliminated two candidates from his father’s list so far, there was jauntiness to Sebastiano’s step as he made his way down the street and towards his lodgings.

  There he arranged the tank where it caught some light, but not much—the reflected sunlight down one of the wells sunk into the ceiling of the apartment building’s roof, sending a thin shaft of light down into each top floor domicile. The Fairies fluttered inside. He sighed again, remembering Milosh’s hopeful face. But it was a relief to have crossed Marta off the list.

  CHAPTER 38

  A delina reached to turn down the wicklight, feeling a throb of headache starting as the light’s brilliance struck her eyes like a blow. Her room’s walls seemed to push in on her. Any room became less welcoming when her mother entered it, and Emiliana stood in the middle of this chamber now, arms crossed and intent on discussion.

  Why now? I am still readying myself to tell her about the Press. If she’d given me some warning, I could have set the place in order at least.

  She could see her mother eying the books on the dresser and the makeup table that had been co-opted as a makeshift desk, and held several stacks of books, a leather folder of papers, an almost-empty inkpot, and three badly worn quills. A map of the Known World, surrounded by zephyrs at the cardinal directions, hung on the eastern wall. Two portraits of Adelina, one a cherubic seven years old with an enormous wolfhound and the other an unhappily intense thirteen, regarded it from the opposite wall.

  “I saw you speaking with Sebastiano Silvercloth. Do you remember playing with him as a child?” Emiliana asked.

  “Is he the Chosen One?” Adelina asked.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’ve seen you do this with seven cousins before me, Mother. You wait your time until they’ve gotten some experience under their belt, had their heart broken and sworn off love. And then, subtly, gently, insistently, you push them together with the mate you have chosen for them, and Death will tax their souls or yours, before they take anyone else. And now you think I’m tired of chasing after Bella and may listen to a hint or two. Or twenty.”

  The faintest of smiles tugged at her mother’s lips, but all Emiliana said was, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She lapsed into silence, wandering about the chamber as Adelina dressed. Hefting a heavy book of maps, she inspected it before closing it and putting it back on the heap atop the desk. At the windowsill, she picked up a sextant, then rearranged the set of quills in the jar beside the schooner-shaped cut-glass inkwell, bringing an abacus into perfect alignment with the edge. She pushed irritably at sheets filled with Adelina’s careful notes on the architecture of Market Square.

  Adelina folded her arms, watching. Emiliana looked around.

  “What?” she said, abandoning the desk.

  “Just get to the point. You want me to do something, presumably with Sebastiano, who I saw for the first time in a decade at that gathering. And that was not to my taste. You can say a good deal about Bella, but at least she takes me to interesting places.”

  “Like that riot, you mean! I cannot believe she took you into danger like that.”

  “Bella didn’t know. Nor did half the city, it seemed.”

  “Remember what we spoke of the other night? You liked him well enough when both of you were five and declared yourselves married.”

  “We thought it was a way we could break free of you all. We were going to form an independent Merchant House.”

  “It was adorable. You invoked Jateigarpra and Ablopmu. You’d obviously done your homework. And now his parents are looking for trade partners. It might be a good investment.”

  “Investment and not marriage?”

  Emiliana Nettlepurse sighed. “Marrying into another Merchant House is often the best investment. You can have children and see them with every advantage from birth, you and your Sebastiano.”

  “Not mine at all,” she said. She remembered the pale, knife-like face, and eyelashes that had always been longer, prettier than hers.

  He had been fussier of his clothes too, and more interested in the intricacies of fashion than she, able to pinpoint the inadequacies of their age-peers in a whispered aside that had made her laugh at the wrong time more than once.

  At twelve, the same year that Adelina’s mother had first taken her to see a Gladiatorial match, she and Sebastiano had a Summer’s worth of practice kissing.

  “We’ll need to know how to do it when we’re grown up,” he’d coaxed her. She remembered clinging together under a bush snowballed with white blossom while a gardener searched for them. She half-smiled, then looked up to encounter her mother’s amused expression. She schooled her features into blankness.

  “I don’t really want to go into politics still, you know that.”

  “The world is not made of our own wants, Adelina, you know that in turn.”

  “Why shouldn’t I do what I want to do?”

  “Bury yourself in a study day and night, with nothing to show for it?”

  “I have written more books than Scholars three times my age!”

  “And how do they taste, those books, when you set them on the table? Do you serve them with gravy or with pudding?”

  “This family makes more than enough to support me.”

  “Why should it, if you contribute nothing?” Emiliana rubbed her fingers along the velvet of her daughter’s sleeve and dropped her voice to a more tender tone. “Political office—a minor one, nothing too taxing—sets you in a position to help out the family and show its influence. A season of campaigning, a few years of holding office, and after that you can become a Judge and spend your morning and evenings studying, if not your afternoons.”

  Adelina turned away sulkily. “Politics or marriage, is that the choice? What do they wear to these occasions?”

  Emiliana kept her smile to herself this time. “An afternoon dress—that one, the blue figured with golden ships—that will do nicely. I’ll have Dietta draw you a bath and do your hair, and she can brush out your clothes beforehand.”

  “Mamma, why don’t you just run for office yourself?”

  “Nonsense. You are young, strong, and more up to the rigors of a campaign. Here.” Emiliana handed Adelina a cockade made of red and blue feathers, with a stout steel pin to secure it. “You should wear the Jateigarkist colors at all times. I’ll have a box of them sent up.”

  “What does it matter? If the cockade is to show one’s support for a candidate, aren’t I just saying I support myself?”

  Her mother drew herself to her full height to give Adelina a glance as keen and direct as the cockade’s pi
n. “You are supporting the other candidates.” She took the cockade herself and pinned it to the blue silk.

  “Willowbark tea will take care of those spots,” she said to Adelina. “Are your courses near? Your face is marred.”

  “I’m sure you don’t realize how infuriating it is that you say that each and every month,” Adelina said.

  “Are you planning on getting your hair cut?”

  “Or that.”

  “What shoes are you wearing? Ah, very well.” She drew a pasteboard box from her sleeve. “This is for you.”

  Adelina’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as she opened the box to reveal a pair of opal-inlaid bracelets. Silver glinted in the wicklight as she took a bracelet out, holding the arc poised on her fingertips. She watched the light play across the metal before she spoke, “What’s this for? Are you trying to bribe me into doing this?”

  “They’re for wearing when you’re speech-making,” her mother said.

  “Moons, mother, I hope these are insured!”

  “You should wear blues or greens with them. I’ll send Dietta up to start your bath.”

  Adelina turned the shining bracelet over before slipping it on her wrist and holding it at arm’s length to admire it. “Pretty,” she admitted.

  “I know how to make a statement with jewelry,” Emiliana said. “See how they are made of rich materials, but the pattern is simple? That keeps them from seeming too gaudy.”

  “Mother, I’m not a child to be lectured!”

  “Then stop acting like one,” her mother said with the relish of a long-prepared answer.

  “What, exactly, do you want from me?”

  “What does any parent want? I want you to be happy.”

  “How does dragging me into politics do that?”

  “It makes you not be afraid,” her mother said unexpectedly, and Adelina paused, staring at her. After that, there wasn’t much she could reply.

  CHAPTER 39

  The street smelled wintry, like the damp ghost of salty ice, as Sebastiano paced down Salt Way.

  He passed Vyra Serena’s statue, a slim form draped in snow and frozen flowers. He’d take her a hundred wreaths this time, force her to make him lucky in love, to ensure that Adelina felt the same way.

  But how could she not? They would make an excellent partnership.

  If he could write up his observations of Beasts, perhaps he could prepare a monograph and persuade Adelina to ask the Publisher she worked with to publish it. How much did writers make after all? Everyone read the penny-wides and pamphlets. Surely their authors raked in enough that he could continue to pay his dues at the College of Mages and be free of his father’s yoke.

  He’d hung roses on the statue of Vyra Serena before, but only seeking a night or two of warmth unbending to embrace him. This time, he’d assemble his wreath with care. Winter roses, a profusion of them, with scarlet berries for passion and three silver skiffs tucked under the petals that clustered at its throat.

  As he entered the shop, the Oread looked up. Her face flickered with fear at the sight of him.

  What is it about me that evokes such tremors, he wondered. He tried to speak in soothing, calming tones as he ordered and she put the flowers together but no matter what he said, her hands shook as she bound the flower sprays into a circle.

  Perhaps she suffered from some disease. Her skin and hair appeared healthy enough, but the elemental Beasts often suffered from afflictions of the nervous system.

  “If you are ailing, you should tell your owner to send you to the College for treatment,” he advised as he gave up the last of his coins, wishing Winter flowers were less dear.

  At the words, her eyes widened and she actually recoiled, taking a step back, as though he offered her some assault.

  “What is wrong with you, you ridiculous creature?” he snapped.

  “Please, I don’t want to be taken apart!” she wailed.

  “No one is going to take you apart!”

  “That’s how the College runs!” she screamed, collapsing into sobs on the floor.

  He started to say, “don’t be absurd,” but paused. It was true. The College subsisted on the bodies of dead Beasts. He swallowed.

  “We don’t kill Beasts,” he said, quietly. “I don’t. I tend to them.”

  Why am I trying to explain myself to her? he wondered. I’m only making things worse.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed, and fled the shop with his wreath.

  Snow, still falling even now, crunched under his feet as he approached Vrya Serena. Someone had brushed the accumulation away from the statue recently; grains of it still clung to the folds of her gown and ice cobwebbed her fingers.

  He had to climb onto the pedestal to put the wreath around her neck. Most chose to lay flowers at her feet; his feet dislodged snow to show frozen petals still bright.

  He hopped down and stepped back to regard it.

  The statue regarded him in turn. A thoughtful look. What did she see? He was a decent Merchant, and an excellent Mage. He’d been praised for his research into the intelligence of Beasts, even though some preferred more lofty subjects. And he stood to inherit the Silvercloth estate and a good share in the company, which meant he’d never have to worry that he couldn’t provide his share in a marriage. He was fiscally sound, if you overlooked the fact that his father held the purse strings at the moment.

  No, no, he was an excellent prospect. A Merchant woman would be a fool not to accept him.

  His stomach felt as though he had eaten butterflies or minnows, too many to count or contain. He tugged his lapels in place and made his way down the terraces, having spent the last of his money on the flowers.

  He had not visited the Press before. As he stepped in through the double doors, he expected someone to meet him, but everything seemed to be at sixes and sevens, with people rushing back and forth, excited.

  He stopped a clerk as she rushed past and asked the way to Adelina’s office. He’d expected it to be somewhere small and humble in the back of the building, but he found the chamber they directed him to in the front, on the second floor, and guarded by a hard-faced secretary, who immediately required his name and business.

  “I’ve come to speak to Merchant Scholar Nettlepurse on a private matter,” he said stiffly, and didn’t care for the clerk’s raised eyebrow or the way she looked at him.

  “I will go and ask her,” she said in a dubious tone.

  She vanished through the doorway. After a moment, she reappeared with Adelina, who did not seem pleased to see him but said, politely, “I beg pardon, Merchant Mage, but we are in the middle of some staffing controversies.”

  He saw a familiar face behind her. “Obedience.”

  Adelina blinked. “You two know each other?”

  “Aye, we watched the Arena match together,” he said, winking at Obedience, who was all smiles.

  “She is my new apprentice.”

  His turn to blink. “Indeed! Well, that is a piece of pretty news, and you will like it here more than the College of Mages, certainly.” He directed his next words to Adelina. “Perhaps we might have a private word? It will only take a little time, I think.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  He followed her into her office, swallowing hard.

  Vyra Serena, hear my plea …

  CHAPTER 40

  A delina sat down at her desk and gestured Sebastiano to a seat. He sat down, anxiety evident in every inch as she looked him over.

  Apparently my hems are long enough for him nowadays. I will act quickly and directly, and that will be the least painful in the end.

  She bit her lip and said to Sebastiano, “So you have come courting?”

  The question struck him to the quick, as though she had swept away a blanket of subterfuge and left all the tiny machinations in the light to be examined for their soundness. His reply was almost a gasp. “Indeed.”

  “Indeed you have?” she pressed.

  “Indeed, I have been tol
d to do so by my father,” he said, as carefully as though he were placing a wager for very high stakes.

  The rueful sound of his voice, admitting that, reminding her of all the times her mother had boxed her in, had made decisions for her without consulting her, thawed her a degree.

  Maybe marriage would be a chance to get out from under that, or at least to offer up several children in my place, ones that Emiliana could focus on shaping, ones that had never yet disappointed her.

  Sebastiano’s face was serious and intent. His eyes were the color of the sky over the sea at twilight, a clear day, one of those last hot Autumn days, when evenings came cool as a kiss.

  I am … not opposed to him at all. Is that fickle of me? Her pulse quickened. This is a moment for careful speech and negotiation, not thinking with your nethers.

  “That sounds as though you yourself are not bent on such a thing,” she said.

  “Indeed,” he said, “the truth be told, I would just as soon have left all this unplanned and devoted myself to my studies.”

  That answer deflated her. It precluded certain assertions, such as her presence making that duty pleasant enough to reconcile him to it. She considered him.

  SEBASTIANO STARED into Adelina’s eyes. He had no idea what she might be thinking, what she would say next. It was a feeling that he did not like, this sense that anything could happen and that whatever did occur, it would be a contingency that he had not planned for. He swallowed, trying to force down a lump in his throat, grown from nervous nothingness.

  Adelina said, “Why don’t you say no to your father and tell him you do not mean to marry to please him?”

  “Do you find it that easy to say no to your own parent?” he countered. Emiliana was notorious for being as implacable as a force of nature.

  She snorted. “Fair enough. But surely a match of two people, neither of whom can stand up to their parent, does not bode well for breeding backbone. Perhaps you should strive for a third.”