by Cat Rambo
“Tell me there is hope,” he begged. It sounded like something out of a penny-wide and made him wince even as the words left his lips, but she didn’t seem aware of their triteness, just kept looking down at him as though seeing him fresh. New. For the first time, and in a light that was favorable, as well.
He felt as though he was made of air and fire and joy, but he didn’t dare move, didn’t dare let any of it show lest he scare her away.
“There’s hope,” she said, and her fingers coiled around his, then loosened. “I am not making promises, it is important to note that, Sebastiano.”
“I know, I know,” he said, smiling up at her. “You are making me no promises.”
And all of mine are made to you already. There is no escaping that.
Not that I would want to.
Vyra Serena, have you brought me my desire at last?
CHAPTER 54
What do you expect of the alliance?” Adelina asked, searching Sebastiano’s face. What is he thinking?
“Nothing,” he said.
“Everyone wants something. That is what the Trade Gods are all about.”
“Perhaps,” he said, “but there are Gods devoted to friendship and even …” He faltered, then continued, “… Love.”
“Do you love me?” she asked him.
“Always.”
“How can I know that is true?”
“I can brew a potion that will only allow me to speak the truth,” he said, smiling. “Would that satisfy the need?”
“If such a potion exists, why doesn’t the Duke use it all the time in trade?”
“Because he would have to use it as well, and he does better with trickery than with honesty. That is an important thing to remember about the Duke. He follows the Trade Gods more scrupulously than any Merchant, but leaves the charitable pantheon entirely out of his services.”
“He was quick enough to denounce Spinner Press,” she said bitterly.
“And what economic benefit did he accrue by it?”
“None that I know of.”
“That is what you should think about. As a Mage of the College of Mages, I am sworn to the Duke. He funds our College—it would be nothing without the support of his family over the centuries. The God of Fair Dealing is never seen without Promises, you know that as well as any other Merchant brat, myself included.” His eyes flickered around the room before he took a deep breath and met her gaze. “But if ever there was anyone for whom I would be forsworn, lady, it is you. Do you really ask it of me?”
The moment hung trembling there, and she felt as though she wanted to inhabit it forever, this instant when he had opened up the secret box of his heart and shown that what lay inside, its precious contents, were hers and hers alone. He would always do his best by her, and more than that, he would let her reckon what that best was, and spend it entirely as she pleased.
“No,” she said finally, holding her hand out to him. “What you have said is more than sufficient.”
Long fingers laced through hers, warm and strong, the pads marked with calluses and tiny scars.
“More than sufficient,” he repeated. “And myself, lady, am I more than sufficient?”
She answered him with a kiss.
Oh, so much more than sufficient.
They clung together tentatively at first, then with the intensity and astonishment of the drowning, offered a spar. His lips were cool at first, then warmed against hers, asking and answering, question after wordless question.
When they pulled away, both were trembling. They stayed close, his hands on her hips, hers on his shoulders. The fingers of her right hand stole up and tangled themselves in his hair; his palm tensed on her waist in reply. They breathed out in tandem, watching each other’s face, surprised and hopeful and full of joy.
CHAPTER 55
Sebastiano could not linger in that bliss.
Murga surely intended harm to the Duke. But before he charged to the hive, he had another destination.
“He answers to another,” the Sphinx had said. And Sebastiano thought he might know who that her was.
Adelina declared her intent to go to the Press, where she had work, she said. They agreed to meet there at the first morning bell.
The Silvercloth House was mostly dark, but a light burned in Letha’s stillroom. Sebastiano paused in the doorway to look at her. She held a two-headed snake in her lap. Sebastiano remembered creating those; the College sold them now for good coin. None of which came to him. But he had given his mother several. They did not live long; the one twined around her hand in a series of red leather bracelets, tongues licking at the air, must be generations away from his original gift.
She looked up to smile at him.
“Mother,” he said. “How deep are you in Abolitionist waters?”
She shrugged, her smile fading. “Why do you need to know?”
Sebastiano said, feeling his throat tight almost to the point of pain, barely able to release the words, “This is dangerous. They execute Abolitionists, Mother. Social position won’t save you if the Duke finds out.”
“I have no expectations that it would,” she said. Her tone was that affectionate exasperation that had ruled it when he was in his teens and constantly trying her patience. “Indeed then, I am in too deep to be drawn out of these waters.”
The confirmation smashed into him like an axe blade, dividing him into one self that was awash in astonishment, swept away by confusion and admiration and bemusement that she could have managed such a tricky thing. And another, full of anger at the deception.
“You’re the leader the Sphinx spoke of,” he said. Astonishment retreated, leaving shock and fear in its wake, but the anger remained. His mother. This was his mother. Or was it? Could she have been replaced by some sorcery?
But no. Letha, graying hair escaping from where it had been pulled back, and shrewd blue eyes. Shorter, so much shorter than the figure of his childhood, but still just as loved.
He said, “We’ve got to protect you. Get you out of the city.”
She started to laugh. “By every God, Sebastiano, what would give you that notion?” She shook her head. “No. I don’t lead them. But I do know who you speak of.”
He paid no attention to the protest. “Verranzo’s New City. We can go there, you and father and I.” Corrado would leave his holdings for Letha’s sake—Sebastiano didn’t doubt that for a moment.
“No,” she said. Gentle but firm. Undeniable.
“Yes,” he insisted. He felt three years old, having a tantrum over candy or a broken toy. But he was an adult now and apparently understood that world better than she did. She would be killed as a result of her fruitless, pointless struggle.
“I understand what you want,” he said. “I agree, there should be better laws about their treatment. But autonomy? That will lead nowhere, Mother. They do as they are meant to—they do not experience choice as we do, but simply act according to their natures.”
“Don’t mouth training platitudes at me,” she snapped. For the first time, her tone was impatient, even angry. “I taught you better than that. Does your experience bear it out? Or rather—if you turned that same lens on Humans—would we not fail, just as readily, and fall prey to our own natures? Nobility is not innate in anyone, Sebastiano. It is something we aspire to, drag ourselves up to, whether we are Human or Beast.”
Perhaps too-long exposure to Leonoa’s art had driven her mad. That was why such art was suppressed, after all, because it could derange the mind, make it play tricks of all sorts. Surely all of this was only a temporary aberration, some fever of the mind that would pass.
“But why?” he said.
“Why what? Why defend them?”
“Why kill for them?”
“What?”
“You loosed the creature. Tell me what it is.”
“Sebastiano Silvercloth.” Her hands were on her hips. “Do you really think I’m some sort of murderous mastermind?”
“Ho
w well acquainted are you with Murga, the Circus Owner?”
“He is a fellow agent.”
He pounced on the last. “You both work for the same person.”
“We work for the same cause. It’s not organized or coordinated, Sebastiano. If it were, it could be dismantled. Different groups work at different efforts. I don’t agree with all the others, of course. But I didn’t know it would go so far as murder.”
“You’re saying one of them is responsible for the murders? But why?”
“Think of what other commonalities they had. Think of Beasts.”
He remembered the ground glass in Milosh’s greenhouse, savaged dolls in the Della Rose receiving room. “A Fairy did this?”
“A hive. Have you never studied why you let hives grow?”
The realization dawned on him, stole over him like a relentless sunrise.
“Not the Great Hive.”
Her chin dipped. “The very same.”
That was Murga’s mission. To free the hive. Why he’d initially thought Sebastiano an ally. And why he’d turned on Sebastiano, after Sebastiano had refused to be persuaded, even after he’d read the book Murga had thought would convince him.
Murga planned to take the Duke to the hive. Sebastiano could not think the encounter was one that would end well.
CHAPTER 56
A t this time of night, the hall was shadowed, the hive only visible with an occasional flash of red or purple moonlight off a Fairy wing.
Sebastiano had prepared himself as best he could for the encounter, but what weapon would avail him?
There, a glint of torchlight.
How had Murga talked the Duke free of his guards? Still, there they were, the two of them walking companionably together.
Sebastiano stepped forward. “My lord, that man means you no good.”
Both of them regarding him with astonishment, the Duke’s real, Murga’s feigned.
“You are drunk or ill, Mage,” the Duke said. “Go seek your bed.”
He spoke to Murga, ignoring the Duke. “What do you mean to do?”
Murga steepled his fingers, smiling. “The Duke will be killed in their escape.”
“What?” the Duke said.
Rolling his eyes, Murga gestured. The Duke collapsed to the ground in a heap of silk and gilded lace.
“That will keep him for now,” Murga said, turning back to Sebastiano. “We can speak of more important questions. Such as this: if you understand that they are intelligent, how can you justify keeping them captive? This hive’s Queen came back with the Tenacity; it is a hundred years old. And it has learned much, living here. Now let it free to go live elsewhere.”
“Not while it meddles in Tabatian politics.”
Murga tilted his head. “I will confess some of the plan my own. It is a relief to speak of it to someone other than those deepest in my counsel. I am curious whether you will think it as remarkable as I do.”
The man is not only insane but also vainglorious, Sebastiano thought. But he gestured, as though to say go on, while his mind raced. Murga was clearly his match—if not better—in magic. The night watch passed this way but once every few hours; they were unlikely to come any time soon, or to be much assistance when they did.
What could Murga do? Sebastiano did not think he knew the half of it.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I come from the Old Continent. There are several of us here at the College. Your boy, Maz, for one. He is more important than you think. And like him, I am a Sorcerer’s get.”
“Their child?”
Murga shrugged. “Ah, there’s the rub. Maybe he made me one way, maybe another. Was my mother creature or cauldron? Either way, I escaped and went to the Southern Isles, where I found a worse servitude than his, one that wasn’t a matter of whim but codified, written down, Beasts are less than Humans. What gives you the right to say that?”
“Not I, but the teaching of all the Gods alike, whether you look to the Trade Gods or the Moons or even farther afield to those who rule the Rose Kingdom.”
“Things are different down there,” Murga continued. “Because the fevers kill so many Humans, Beasts and Mages abound. I stirred up rebellion down there, but I was unsuccessful. Humans still held sway. Even down there, Beasts were too scattered from one place to another to act together.”
Pausing, he gazed into the depths of the glass case. Inside, what Sebastiano thought must be every Fairy the Great Hive contained was awake and outside the nest, hovering.
“Do you know the one question every Beast answers the same way?” Murga’s voice snapped like a whip in the echoing chamber.
Sebastiano shook his head.
“This is it: between slavery—even with all its opportunities for protection and food and lodging and education and beyond all of that, to know yourself beloved of the Gods, whose will you enact—and freedom, shitty freedom where you struggle for every scrap, the sort of slight things discarded on a daily basis by you and your kind, which would you prefer? Can you guess that answer?”
“By your tone, I would say freedom,” Sebastiano said, “but I would ask proof before I accepted that ‘every Beast’ for the truth.”
“You spoke of your ‘friend’ Fewk the other night. What would he say?”
Guilt twinged in Sebastiano. He remembered Fewk saying, “We remember,” the fierce gravel of the tone. Deep in his heart, he knew what the Gryphon’s answer would be.
And Fewk had been one of the most coddled creatures in the College of Mages.
Maybe “every Beast” was more accurate than he would like to think.
“He never had the choice,” he said. “The salve you sent killed him.”
“Ah. Unfortunate. The Sphinx’s suggestion. I had meant it for you. It seemed best to eliminate the only Mage who knew enough of Beasts to possibly figure things out.”
In the distance the Duke’s clock struck a quarter bell; closer at hand, the hive buzzed and seethed, watching them, listening to them.
“How does Maz fit into this?” he said.
“Only a possible obstacle,” Murga said. “And one that I have eliminated already. I’ve sent him south, far from his father’s reach. Tabat is so chaotic right now. Too many sails are spread in these waters, and I will see the Pot and Kettle King’s loosed and set flapping. He has no right to try to intrude here.”
“You explain all this to me like a villain in a penny-wide. Do you think me as helpless as one’s victim?”
“I think you that close to redemption. You know the plight of the Beasts. You read the book. You are as weak and ineffectual as your mother, thinking love and sunshine will see them freed. But you are capable of understanding true revolution demands more. I was wrong to try to eliminate you, but I thought you might be best equipped to track my emissary. Now I see that you could be a valuable ally. I’d much prefer that arrangement. Wouldn’t you, Merchant Mage?”
“But how is sending a monster around to slay and terrify a revolution?”
“That is where I took the Duke’s initial plan and improved on it,” Murga said. “He wanted Beasts as villains, so he might put them down, even if it took using his lover’s magic to fuel that engine. And, true enough, people will come to believe a Beast did it. There will be other incidents, like the Duke’s death. It will be very hard for Beasts, here in Tabat for a little while. And then they will be pushed hard enough, and they will rise and take what should be theirs.”
He laughed. “You brought the creature into the city, you know. She was a Dryad then, before I transformed her, using a Shadow Twin’s magic that came by chance to my hand. I would show you her, but the Moons sail on without waiting, and I have other things to do tonight.”
His eyes flickered over to the snoring Duke. “Blood to spill, full of Tabatian magic. And Tabat is so vulnerable to such strokes right now. Tomorrow Bella Kanto is sent into exile, removing the city’s heart, and leaving it completely unprotected from the deep magics.” He smiled a
t Sebastiano. “Perhaps if your College had not been frightened of sorcery, they would have learned to counter it.”
“Tell me again why you tried to kill me.”
“Because you are unworthy!”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Sebastiano stepped up to the Great Hive. “They will not sting me. I have fed them for years.”
“I will tell them to!”
“I think not. And rather than having you twisting things, I will see them set free, but not at your hand, not with Duke’s blood.”
He spoke to the mass of Fairies that hung inside the glass, watching, listening. “Will you agree to that?”
“They will kill you,” Murga proclaimed. “You don’t understand their nature.”
Sebastiano frowned at him in the glassy reflection. “I know their nature better than any man, woman, or Beast here.”
“Truly? Do you understand what they have kept hidden all these years, since they were kidnapped and brought back for the amusement of your College? What took every scrap of their little glamours, so you thought them helpless? They have waited a long time to loose her.”
“I don’t—”
But the Fairy Queen, emerging, took his breath away.
She was bigger than any Fairy he’d ever seen, but the main mass of it seemed wing and feathery light, playing around her. Her hair was floating lightning, her eyes a brilliant glow.
Sebastiano, her voice said in his head.
“This man has deceived you,” he said. “He spins a plan to take down Tabat and has enmeshed you in it.”
Laughter stole through his mind, poking fondly at all the corners. It isn’t his plan. He sets things in motion, but for me.
“Why kill Lilia and Marta?” he said hoarsely.
Why not? He chose them, but Merchants had to die. The common folk are less with you than you think. If Beasts turn only against those exploiting them directly, it makes little difference to the day-to-day citizens of Tabat. They are as much under your yoke as the other creatures.