Hearts of Tabat

by Cat Rambo

  She took a breath to begin her next argument. Alberic’s hand flickered up, gesturing for silence.

  “Do you know the penalty for using magic on a Duke?” he said. “And do you not think I am defended against such things?”

  “Not magic,” she protested, then closed her mouth. Of course it was magic. How could it not be? She could feel everyone gaping around her. Now he’d arrest her, throw her in prison too.

  “You are lucky I respect your mother,” he said. “Go home, Merchant Scholar, and leave this to me.”

  He gestured. While the guards that escorted her to the gates never touched her, she dared walk nowhere but in the direction they led her.

  CHAPTER 44

  The Great Hive—she’d learned that was its proper name—drew Lucy. Proper names were important, which was why she had renounced the name Obedience. She came back to the hive over and over when she could, even though the College was so far from the Press. Still, if she spent a copper skiff from the change, she could ride the Great Tram up and back, and that gave her, if she was quick enough about it, two full bells’ worth of time to watch the Fairies go about their tiny lives, so like and unlike those of regular Humans.

  She was still unsure how smart they were, really. Sometimes when she looked, she’d see some of them, clustered together, watching her with what seemed like intelligence. Other times, observing individual Fairies flit and flutter around each other in circles, they seemed as mindless as butterflies or wasps.

  It was this watching that led her to a friend.

  She had seen the boy, her age or perhaps a year or two younger, a few times in the hall and thought he might have noticed her too. The hall was vast and you could pretend you were there by yourself.

  They would have continued doing so, but for the antics of the page, tapping on the glass to frighten the Fairies and make them whirl at the surface in retaliation.

  Both Lucy and the boy rushed forward in defense. “You are forbidden to do that” and “Can’t you read the sign?” collided before their startled eyes did the same.

  The page snorted indignation and darted off on her business.

  “They are easily startled,” the boy said diffidently.

  “She was being a bully!” Lucy exclaimed.

  After that, she and Maz, since that was his name, were friends. He was from far away and often needed Tabat’s customs explained to him, the more so since he seemed to have no friends of his own among the other students.

  So she had a friend, and a good apprenticeship, no matter what any of her sisters said. The only fly in the pudding was Eloquence, who glowered every time he saw her. And that was almost daily, because he was bringing new pages to Adelina, and taking the edits away, so the book could come out in the next white moon.

  Life at the Press was easy and wonderful. And nothing smelled. She even had some time to herself at midday, when Serafina would send her running errands. Serafina always had ginger cake in her desk, and everyone at the Press was kind and didn’t mind questions. In fact, Adelina had said she was supposed to ask questions, that it was the best way to learn, and every day they met, and Lucy could ask all the questions that had accumulated over the day before she went home to dinner.

  Though those sessions of questions hadn’t been happening lately, with all the trouble over Bella Kanto. At first Lucy had been overawed by the association with the Gladiator, but nowadays it seemed to her that such things were more trouble than they were worth. Everyone said she was a Sorcerer now, or as good as, and people talked about that in low tones that dropped away whenever Lucy neared.

  No, they were all better off without Bella Kanto.

  CHAPTER 45

  Bill after bill, each one saying the same thing.

  Some demanded early payment, even citing as reason that Spinner was a bad credit risk, although that was so far from the truth in the past! Just a few weeks ago, they had lined up, eager to give her credit on the best terms, simply to supply the materials that her Press consumed. How fickle of them.

  Adelina flipped through the pile of envelopes that had greeted her when she first arrived in the office. The ink makers and shipping office’s invoices on cheap orange paper. The Printers Guild’s official notification that her establishment was suspended, “pending investigation into sorcerous associations,” written on snowy parchment, as was the letter from the Press Maker declining to construct her fourth press and regretfully informing her that he would be retaining the deposit. Wax seals in a rainbow of colors on letters from Merchants withdrawing their association and projects from Spinner.

  Impotent fury burned in her. She clenched her fists and stared at the wall.

  I’ll show them, I’ll bring the Press back to glory, ten times the size that it was, shipping books all over, not just this continent and Verranzo’s New City as well as Tabat, but all the continents, even the Rose Kingdom and every major island in the Southern Isles. They’ll flog themselves when they realize how much money they have lost with their silly fears.

  I always thought that the Press might falter if Bella stepped down—when Bella stepped down, surely, I always knew in my soul of souls—but I had not realized that every petty grievance or slight would come home to roost if Bella were not here to keep them frightened away.

  And who knew how many of these blows are aimed at Bella herself, enemies she accumulated?

  Forcing these bitter thoughts aside, she considered the pile of papers.

  The demands on expensive paper were the ones to pay first, the ones who had the favor of the Trade Gods and who could cause serious damage if offended. Tabat’s debtor courts were notorious for dragging cases on for decades, benefiting no one in the end but the lawyers and the clerks and the Judges who maintained that vast machine. The Duke did not believe in prison, so such folk were shipped off to the Southern Isles and abandoned to their own devices.

  Adelina shuddered, imagining that fate for herself, for every employee of Spinner Press. I allowed Serafina to invest some of her money in the Press; I even prided myself in allowing all my employees that opportunity at ownership, a share of the profits that would motivate them to do their best. It was all under the aegis of Lazhkepyaomu, but I forgot the most important part of that.

  A share of the profits is also a share of the risk.

  She ran through the figures in her head, totting up numbers, trying to make them add and subtract in ways that they resisted with obdurate obstinacy. Could she scrape enough from her own reserves to make sure that none of her employees were out of pocket? She did not think she could, without asking for money that only one person would—perhaps—be willing to give her.

  Emiliana. If she threw herself on her mother’s mercy, confessed her plight, would her mother actually come to her rescue? Adelina was not entirely convinced of it. Emiliana had allowed a number of things to happen to Adelina over the years in the name of teaching experience, and it had given Adelina a wariness that had become a perpetual part of her character.

  She had loaned Leonoa money, but there was no way to reclaim that. Leonoa was still suffering public disapprobation, and only the most radical purseholder would buy her art.

  A knock at her door, a brisk rat-tat-tat that could only be Eloquence. At least she had him. She found herself smiling as she called, “Come in.”

  His face was smiling too. “Esteemed Publisher, I see you are no longer so angry with me and you will be even less so when you learn that I have brought you another chapter.”

  “Hush!” she said, waving him in. “Most people do not know I am more than someone who checks dry facts on drier manuscripts.”

  He advanced, giving her a perplexed look. “You keep your role a secret?”

  She found herself blushing under that direct gaze. “My mother would not approve.”

  Now she had shocked him, she could tell. “Your mother does not know? You kept it even from her?”

  Adelina hadn’t thought he’d act this appalled. But it made sense. He was
so dutiful towards his family, he would have never practiced a deception of the type she had. Truth be told, the magnitude of it frightened her, for every day added another spark-in-waiting to the conflagration of fury that would be Emiliana’s reaction.

  She found herself scrambling for excuses, trying to justify it all. “It started with writing for the penny-wides. I found I was good at it. At first it was just a way to make a little money of my own, but it began to add up. A friend wanted to start a Press, but she abandoned the idea halfway so I picked it up and then it became more successful than I’d ever dreamed.”

  Her shrug carried a touch of defiance. Deception or not, I am a very good Publisher, with or without the official title.

  Eloquence laid his manuscript down on the desk. His face was sober, withdrawn in thought. His smile had vanished.

  “I am not sure Obedience can remain under such circumstances. I gave in on her apprenticeship, but now I find this one puts her soul at peril.”

  “At peril? You think me a bad influence for this?”

  He hesitated before replying, and the pause struck her like a slap. But he said then, “It is not what I had expected. Not what the Adelina in my head would have done.”

  “I am sure she is a paragon, that creature, but I am not,” she said, folding her hands together on the desk. “Perhaps you should look elsewhere for her.”

  Anger kindled in his face in answer to her tone. “Perhaps I should!”

  The door slammed behind him. Adelina put her head down on the desk and abandoned herself to tears.

  A timorous knock sounded on the door, so soft she barely heard it.

  “Come in,” she called, wiping her face.

  Obedience. No, Lucy, Adelina corrected herself. The girl stood there, looking a little frightened.

  “It’s all right,” Adelina said. “We had a little quarrel.”

  “He’s easy enough to quarrel with,” Lucy said. “He’ll be back once he cools down. But there was a lady here earlier, your mother, I think.”

  Fear dried Adelina’s mouth.

  “She asked to see you and I said you were working with a writer. And then she scowled and said that was outside your duties as she understood them.”

  Emiliana. Why or how, Adelina didn’t know. She stared at the girl. “And what did you say then?”

  Stammering, Lucy said, “I said that you ran the Press, so why wouldn’t it be?”

  THE EMILIANA that advanced into the room, arms folded, was a tower of silence. Adelina knew that trick, had applied it herself. She could feel herself starting to dissolve into a stream of words. If only I had been forewarned, what better time to use the drug than this moment!

  She said, forcing it out, “This is not a good time, Mother.”

  “And it never will be, it seems.” Emiliana’s look took in everything, even the faded secondhand curtains. “This is the final straw, Adelina.”

  “I would think you would be proud I have made such a fine business.”

  “As though you built a statue out of shit and expected me to admire the dimensions,” Emiliana scoffed. “Whose idea was this in the first, yours or Kanto’s?”

  “Mine.”

  “I find that hard to believe. At any rate, she certainly has found it convenient to have you feathering her nest with your labor.” Serafina in the doorway, an interruption that was at once welcome and stupendous. Serafina never interrupted.

  “A word with you, Merchant Scholar.” Her face was cool and composed, as though Emiliana did not stand there.

  “One moment.” Adelina hated to leave her mother alone in her office, where there was a set of ledgers, as intimate as any underwear drawer, but Serafina beckoned, and even swung the door shut.

  The secretary murmured in Adelina’s ear. “She’s known of your ownership all this time. She pays me to monitor you. Don’t let her frighten you.”

  “You’ve been working for my mother?” Adelina said. Betrayal stabbed into her, forced heat into her eyes.

  Serafina hesitated, and then nodded.

  “From moment one?”

  Another nod.

  Adelina tried to sort out this new configuration for the world. Her mother knew about Spinner Press, had known all along. What could Emiliana possibly think of the enterprise? Is it conceivable that she might understand what a coup its position is? That she might be secretly proud of me?

  If she did, she hid it well, and if she did, it was certainly a mixed pride, Adelina realized. Her mother had said so much against Publishers in the past that it would be difficult for her to switch her song from scold to praise.

  “How often do you report to her?” she said, fascinated. Only my mother would set someone to spy on her own family member.

  Color burned in Serafina’s cheeks as she confessed, “At first daily, but then things became uneventful enough that she asked it of me only once a purple week, which made it easy enough to coincide with my free day.”

  “What do you tell her?”

  “Everything,” Serafina said simply. “I keep copies of the major ledgers that I take to her each white moon. She knows what books have been acquired and what stage they are in, and what you plan for each as far as putting it before the public eye goes.”

  She certainly did well in subverting Serafina rather than some other employee of the Press. And that was symptomatic of Emiliana, who thought things out years in advance, whose plans might run decades in fulfillment. Particularly the ones she has for me. They’ll chase me all my life, keep unfolding when I least expect it.

  How does this knowledge of hers play into that?

  How will she use it against me?

  “Why tell me now?” she whispered.

  Serafina looked at the door. “Well,” she said, pragmatically, “it certainly doesn’t look like she’ll be doing so any more in the future.” She grinned, the first time Adelina had ever seen the expression on the dour secretary’s face. “You can handle her, Publisher Nettlepurse. I’ve seen you tackle ten times worse.”

  With that, she reopened the door and said, much louder, “Thank you, Merchant Scholar. I apologize for interrupting your business.”

  Rather than standing near the ledgers, Emiliana was at the window, looking out. The sunshine was cruel to the lines of her face, plucked out the wrinkles, and for a moment Adelina paused. She doesn’t want this argument any more than I do.

  She squared her shoulders and marched into the inevitable.

  Emiliana swung around to face her daughter. Adelina flinched at her expression. “A Publisher, someone who spreads scandal and crime and other lurid stories, that is a degradation of your heritage.”

  “It is a Merchantly trade.”

  “Not for a member of my family. You will sell the Press directly.”

  “No.”

  Emiliana’s eyebrow rose until it nearly vanished in her hairline. “Are you defying me? Forcing me to rip up your charts? All that work wasted, you foolish child? Even the cup you’re drinking from was purchased with Nettlepurse money.”

  This was the moment that Adelina had been dreading. She squared her shoulders and drew herself up to her full height, before saying, “Yes.”

  AN HOUR after Emiliana’s silent departure, Adelina was still sitting staring out the office window. She hadn’t wanted to give her mother the satisfaction of seeing how upset she was, but once Emiliana had swept out of the room, Adelina did let tears overtake her.

  It wasn’t that she was worried about supporting herself. Even though times will be lean, the Press makes enough for that. But the rejection stung. The scorn with which Emiliana had uttered the word Publisher stung even more.

  Still, a thread of excitement wound through all the grayness and anger. She was her own woman now. She could even set up her own Merchant House, take a new surname if she so desired.

  She suddenly thought, “I’m not sure where I am going to sleep tonight.” Certainly there were cots in the press room, but that would only be a short-term solutio
n.

  Maybe I could rent a room in the same way that Bella does. That seems to work out well for her. She doesn’t have any of the trouble of maintaining a staff, just lets her landlady take care of everything for her.

  Or I could buy a house, after all. It would be work, certainly, but someday I’ll have to set up my own household anyway, if I marry.

  Which she had always intended to do, although she had never been sure exactly whom, at least until the appearance of Eloquence and Sebastiano. Bella had made it clear that she was not in that running. Thank Fayapprima, Goddess of Prevented Losses, for that.

  CHAPTER 46

  The summons was the last thing he’d expected.

  Faustino’s study seemed more cramped than ever with the little host of Mages, a Ducal envoy, and a police sergeant in it. There’d been an attack, though no one seemed quite ready to describe it.

  “But why,” Sebastiano protested, “have I been selected to serve as the investigator?”

  “An excellent question, and one that shows the very sort of qualities we are looking for,” Faustino began, but the Ducal envoy interrupted him.

  “Because this stinks of Beast magic, and in all the College, only one man has chosen to study such things at depth and length. That is you, and you will be better able to read the scene than most. “

  He took in a deep breath. “Most of us deal with Beast Magic,” he said cautiously.

  A firm headshake. “Not like this. We believe it a deliberate act of war, by someone controlling a number of Beasts. And so we need someone who understands their mentality better than most. Once we understand what has happened, we will find their owner. Some Abolitionist who thinks that they will bring light to the cause this way, make the city deal with Beasts.”

  The older man’s tone had taken on a fervid froth, and the glaze to his eyes made Sebastiano think that these words were long rehearsed, old in their practice. It would do no good to argue with him.