Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  A marriage of threes was not common, but it was not unknown. Sebastiano tried to imagine how complicated it would be to woo two people instead of one. He swallowed at the lump again, which had grown. Was Adelina hinting that she wanted him to bring another person into the arrangement?

  It would have to be Bella Kanto, he thought, and playing second string to a Gladiator is not what I want at all.

  It was best to be clear, to be direct. To get to the point. “Do you want me to submit a contract for your consideration?” he asked.

  “Do you feel yourself prepared to do so?”

  “No,” he admitted. He hadn’t known her long enough to construct a bargain that would be appealing. In an arranged match, he would have already have received all of that in a dossier, and as the seeker, rather than the sought, it would be his place to draw up the proposed contract and ready it for her perusal.

  “How long would you require for such research?”

  “A white moon,” he said.

  “That long?” she said. “Am I that complicated?”

  “A hundred white moons would not be sufficient,” he countered, and found himself pleased when she laughed.

  SHE COULDN’T TELL how seriously or not he was taking the discussion. She steeled herself. “Abkerdomma prompts me to tell you that I am already considering an alliance,” she said. She turned her back on the pain in his expression and went to the window to look out at the jagged icicles overhanging it.

  Eloquence walked out the door. If I relinquished Obedience back to the Temples, he’d be quick enough back, I think. But I can’t do that to her. But if I offered him marriage, would he understand how serious I am? Sebastiano is pretty enough, but a childhood flirtation is no foundation for a trade marriage.

  “An alliance serious enough that you wish to consider no other contracts in the interim?”

  She could see his face in the glass, thin and unhappy. “That is correct,” she said.

  He was silent for a few breaths before he said, “It is kind of you to invoke Abkerdomma. You will let me know when the interim has passed and if I should look further at that point?”

  His pained voice pulled at her heart. “It’s not that I don’t like you well enough, surely you know that,” she said.

  “I don’t know that at all.”

  “Sebastiano …” But she didn’t know how to coax him away from that bleak precipice without misleading him.

  It took her a while to talk him smoothly out of the office. But once he was gone, she put on her coat.

  Standing by Serafina’s desk and adjusting the buttons, she said, “What flowers are loved by the Moons?”

  I will buy Eloquence flowers, a love token. The place on Greenslope Way.

  The one Jilla mentioned.

  Serafina frowned but relented as Adelina continued to stand there. “The Temples do not attach meaning to flowers,” she said with a trace of hauteur. As though explaining to a child, she continued, “Sometimes folk pick them according to the Moons’ colors, which are, as you know, red, or white, or purple.”

  “Thank you,” Adelina said humbly.

  THE FLOWER SHOP was kept too warm, too stuffy, in deference to the orchids clustered on the shelves that stretched along the eastern wall, ceiling to floor, six long stretches of planking held in place with brass and gilt chains.

  Behind the counter, an Oread, a tray of little flowers in pots before them. Her gray-tinted nails flickered as she pinched off old blossoms and dying leaves.

  The Oread had been crying; her eyes were reddened.

  Jilla said if I spoke the right words, she will sell me more of the drug. Do I want to go down that path?

  Do I want to use it not just at a public speech, but to persuade Eloquence? Or my mother?

  She glanced around the shop.

  This is the place where I confirmed Bella would not love me forever. I caught her here, buying flowers for my successor, Tralia.

  Adelina remembered that first flirtation with Bella Kanto, the back and forth of banter. How her pulse pounded in the hollow of her throat whenever Bella looked at her, how her cheeks kept heating up despite her efforts to fight the blushes back. How Bella pretended not to notice, though a hint of amusement had tugged at the side of her mouth. How, all the time they were talking, all she could think of was what it would be like to touch Bella and be touched by her in turn.

  For three white moons, that had been their relationship, that fire, that constant fumble, that awareness of each other the instant one entered the room where the other was.

  “Yes, Merchant Scholar?” The Oread had dealt with Adelina before. What was her name? Flint? Yes, that’s it. Flint.

  “What flowers are lucky for waterfarers?” she asked. I’ll combine those with a spray of yellow lupins, for the eloquence of his name.

  Maybe this fondness that grips me so tight right now will fade.

  How had it happened with Bella? She knew the when of it. By the time that fourth white moon rolled around, most of the fever blur had cooled, and she could see Bella for what she was: a sometimes overly demanding lover, one who needed daily reassurances and indulgence. Not the stoic Gladiator that Adelina had expected.

  I don’t need the drug. I will not speak again; it only leads my mother further down the paths of her ambition. I will simply buy the flowers.

  At her direction, the Oread combined blue and yellow flowers, added lacy white ferny stuff, then a layer of greenery around the bottom before wrapping the stems in cheap orange paper, so thick it cracked rather than bent, streaked with grainy green and blue.

  Under all that steely exterior, Bella was soft as pudding, really. That was why Adelina had let things proceed until Bella was ready to break with her, and not vice versa. It would have been cruel, and despite Bella’s flaws, Adelina had no desire to see her hurt. Bella made an excellent friend, if you were willing to stick around through her initial attempts to shed you: forgetting assignations, letting conversations trail off, a distant look and tone.

  Yes, if you stuck through that, Bella was good companionship, good conversation, and had opportunities to entertainments not open to most. Adelina had drunk with the Gladiators and heard all their stories, even written many of them up for penny-wides.

  The bells on the door jingled. Adelina glanced over her shoulder. Marta Coinblossom.

  Oh, Trollop Gods, what did I do to deserve an encounter with her?

  “Adelina Nettlepurse,” Marta drawled. She raked Adelina up and down with her eyes, stroking the fur at her own fashionable lapels. “What an … interesting outfit Emiliana has chosen for you today.”

  I’ll bite my tongue and just escape. I do not have the energy for this right now.

  “A pleasant day to you,” Adelina said as she started towards the door. Then an imp seized her tongue and she added, “I hope you are well, Miss Marta.”

  The address, as though to a child, made Marta redden and snatch her fingers from the fur, straightening, and opening her mouth for a retort.

  Before she could speak, the Oread’s nervous words interjected. “Merchant Coinblossom, it is good you stopped in. Your weekly deliveries to Bella Kanto have been refused by her, as of the most recent.”

  “Oh, delicious,” Adelina said. “How long has it been, Marta, that you’ve continued chasing? I had not noted obstinacy among the virtues courted by the Coinblossoms.”

  Marta’s redness extended to her ears. She snapped, “Merely a polite token. In the meantime, I’ll thank you not to meddle with Sebastiano Silvercloth. He is already contracted with my House, and we have begun drawing up arrangements.”

  It was surely a lie, but if so, one Marta believed.

  “I have no intentions towards the Merchant Mage,” Adelina said.

  “Perhaps he is looking for a public speaker, then,” Marta drawled. “I hear you did so superbly at your first speech.”

  Before Adelina could reply, she turned to the Oread. “And you will tell your Mistress you were speaki
ng of private customer business before other common customers and bid her to punish you. I will send a note to that effect.”

  She swept out of the shop.

  How dare she.

  Adelina turned to the Oread. “Jilla Clearsight said you might sell me a thing she uses in her business.”

  An obscure way of putting it. But those were the code words.

  The Oread seemed to understand, though. “I have a packet of it, good for three times.”

  Three times? Will I need it that often?

  Parting with a golden coin dismayed her, but to show Marta up … She paid it. Gathering her flowers, she left, still thinking of Marta.

  The tawdriness of Bella’s love life, showcased in a single woman.

  She wondered what readers would have made of it if she’d been truer to life and shown just how petty the Gladiators could be, how so often their lives revolved around a particular contest’s results. In theory the Gladiatorial combats played out the actions of the world of the Gods, but it was a complicated and abstract pattern and in truth the only people tracking the results beside the Gladiators were the penny foreseers that practiced on the docks or at trade fairs, claiming to be able to read which Gods favored you. It made as little sense as the beliefs of those who worshipped the three Moons, and held that their position at your birth moment dictated your success or failure in all manner of things in life.

  Picking her way through the slush, Adelina reflected. People make their own path in life. There are advantages and disadvantages that some must overcome, but those are a result of the societal position you found yourself in at birth, which was pure chance. I could have been born a Beast and thus be destined to servitude.

  The Trade Gods were said to have made Beasts to serve Humans. And within all that pack of Gods, there were none for Beasts except ones overseeing the protocols of buying and selling them.

  No God who oversaw the Abolitionists, who maintained that the Beasts should be freed, that they should be full citizens of Tabat. Adelina was not entirely convinced of the success of such a course. For every Beast she would have thought able to exercise sufficient judgment to concern themselves with matters of governance, she could mention a dozen she considered incapable of something so serious. She’d as soon give a vote to the mindless Fairies that haunted the larger public gardens as to one of those.

  Children ran past her, and she realized that, while lost in mediations, she’d come to one such public space, the Midnight Terrace. This time of day, children played in a circle and their nannies and parents lounged nearby, the cut of their clothing signifying which of the two distinct groups they belonged to. A lone bench, unoccupied, divided their areas, as though designated for those who could not make up their minds. The ones that had just run past were throwing a blue and yellow ball back and forth, shouting something she couldn’t distinguish.

  There were no Beasts here, even among the nursemaids, she noted as she tossed a coin into the fountain in passing. All the recent unrest makes parents unwilling to trust their progeny’s lives to those that might use them as weapons. Adelina avoided the unoccupied bench and opted instead for a low stone wall, its upper surface pleasantly warm from the sun. There. She knotted her hands in front of her and let her eyes rest on the lacy patterns of foam tossed into the air by the fountain as she sank back into contemplation.

  Eloquence believed in the Moons. Moreover, he did so fervently. Could Adelina accommodate herself to that belief if they tried a partnership of some sort? What would happen if she could not? And what if that was not enough for Eloquence, what if he demanded that she truly believe? Was that something she could even do? And what of Sebastiano? Had she been serious when she’d mentioned a marriage of three?

  She did not burn for Eloquence the way she had for Bella. Instead, it was something that felt more natural, as though he were the sun and she a flower turning its face toward it, wherever it went in the sky, and yet—at the same time—it was the same for him, with her the sun in turn, and that was what made it wonderful, whenever she allowed herself to believe in it.

  If the drug allowed her to make him understand that as clearly as she did, well, then surely it was worthwhile. And if it helped her deal with her mother as well, surely that was just as valid an action.

  Emiliana had gotten her to agree to another event tomorrow on behalf of the Jateigarkist Party. It was her mother’s way of driving in the thin edge of the wedge of making it a full-time profession, but Adelina was up to it. The drug would make the crowd hers, would make her words sing.

  Afterward, buoyed with the confidence the successful speech would bring, she would speak to Eloquence.

  She headed back to the Press to prepare.

  CHAPTER 41

  Three days after he’d laid flowers at Vyra Serena’s feet, up ahead, serendipitous, Sebastiano saw Adelina.

  With her—why was that man familiar? Eloquence, the River Pilot. And, Sebastiano saw with outrage, smiling at Adelina with familiarity, like a friend. Or possibly a lover!

  Adelina was Merchant-bred, like Sebastiano, though. She’d seek no permanent alliance with an unmonied Pilot. No, this was some transient relationship, all presumption and assumption on Eloquence’s part.

  He walked quickly, stepping over icy puddles, to catch up with them. I will tell her I want to talk of a publishing venture, he thought. A basic guide to Beast-keeping. That was a very good idea, one that might bring in enough coin to keep him independent from his House and at the same time give him reason to spend time with Adelina.

  “Aye, and in evening on the riverbanks, ye see the little white ponies come down to drink and point their horns at ya,” Eloquence was saying.

  “Unicorns?” Adelina asked.

  “Not like the fancy ones of the Duke’s. They’re smaller, like goats …” Eloquence broke off as Sebastiano panted up.

  Sebastiano felt at a disadvantage. He was puffing more than was fit for a man in his early thirties.

  “Sebastiano!” Adelina said. “Have you two met?

  “Aye,” Eloquence said. “Once or twice.” He and Sebastiano exchanged nods.

  Sebastiano turned his attention to Adelina. “I was hoping to talk to you again, this time about a publishing venture. Perhaps this afternoon?”

  “I am bound elsewhere, I am not sure for how long.” She looked to Eloquence.

  “No more than an hour nor two,” Eloquence said. He grinned at some unspoken joke that set jealousy sharp as any heartburn in Sebastiano’s throat. He is the potential partner she spoke of, he thought. But surely not? Emiliana would not countenance such an alliance.

  Bile surged in him as Adelina gave Eloquence a fond look. They were either fresh in love or just making up after some fight, he thought sourly. “Perhaps at third afternoon bell? I would be glad to buy you nuncheon.” He was down to the last of the money he’d wheedled from Letha to support his suit, but it would be coin well invested if she warmed to his idea, as she surely must.

  She shook her head. “After third bell, I’m busy through the eve. In the morning, perhaps, at its second bell?”

  Ugh. An early breakfast. But he forced a smile and nodded, then was compelled to walk along with them to the next block.

  He said, “I’ll see you in the morning at your office,” and waved, heading off. Before he knew it, he was lost in a tangle of small streets and narrow houses, their high shoulders bumping each other till he could barely see the sky, as though he walked through sunless canyons.

  For a while, he wandered through the Brownie Market, ignoring the displays of tiny dishes. Townsfolk came here to buy the dishes for milk that fed Brownie servitors and kept them in one place.

  He frowned down at the white rounds.

  This was unthinkable. But his anger faded, and he found himself scheming. She was mistaken and it would be easy to show her how mistaken, with time. Eloquence’s common blood would drag him down.

  How best to win her? He would win glory, somehow. Sail to the Sou
thern Isles and discover one of the magical artifacts there. Or write a book. That surely would impress her.

  He might consult with his father, but he shied away from that notion. Magic was no use in love, everyone knew that.

  But he knew the wisest woman on the face of the earth, did he not? He could go and talk to Letha, and perhaps supplement his pocketbook as he did so.

  “Spring in Tabat, the poet Tullus informs us, is the season of whimsy, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the Festival of Lights,” a guide told the flock trailing in his wake, lower class Merchants down from the north by the cut of their clothing and the styling of their hair.

  Sebastiano brushed past without making eye contact with any of them, keeping his head down lest the guide recognize him as a Mage and point him out as one of the sights.

  But the guide did not. He scowled and stepped aside for Sebastiano, then took up his address to the crowd once again. “On the Festival evening, the Festival participants, dressed in costume, will make their way down to the harbor, where they will find bands of musicians waiting to facilitate the beginning of the revels that will last till the sun rises the next day.”

  His voice trailed off in the distance as Sebastiano moved along, full of purpose. Rather than seeking Letha’s advice, he needed to talk to Adelina again. He needed to find out how she felt about this upstart River Pilot, even though the question was absurd. Mixing classes was a guarantee of disaster and incompatibility.

  No, it was absurd indeed. For another thing, her mother wouldn’t tolerate such a bond. She wanted wonderful things for her daughter, the sorts of things precluded by an alliance with a commoner. That would surely be enough for Adelina. She had always been terrified of her mother.

  Eloquence was a commoner. But Adelina might want to keep the partner even after marriage. It was heard of for someone to maintain relationships outside marriage. Marriage was about economic bonds, after all. That was the most important part. As long as any child she bore was Sebastiano’s, who was to say she couldn’t find other entertainment?