Authors: Cat Rambo
Is someone paying her to spy on me? No. That’s one reason I pay her so well. She’s just nosy when it comes to her most famous boarder.
She stares at Teo as she sets the tray down on the table. He returns her look, his eyes nervous but wanting to trust, like a colt’s limpid depths.
She turns to me. “Anything else, Miss Bella?”
“You were complaining yesterday that the scullery boy had quit?”
“Aye. Ran off in the middle of the night. Took an armload of the best silver with him.”
I point at Teo. “I found you a new one.”
The meaning of it washes over them at the same time. Their mouths gape and they both say, “What?”
“You heard me. He’s been living on the streets. I’m sure he’ll work hard for his room and board. And for the occasional coin.”
Abernia looks at Teo’s face, which is radiant with hope.
“It’s not fancy quarters, nothing like this room. But it’s warm enough, and dark enough for sleeping in, at least. And all the meals that you need.”
She eyes him as though estimating how many days it will take to flesh out those emaciated ribs. Abernia is the sort of woman who likes a puppy now and again.
He holds himself straight under our gaze, eyes looking to my face for approval.
How long has he been on the streets?
“When did you arrive in Tabat?”
He cast his eyes up to the ceiling, calculating. “A white moon, give or take a few days.”
“How have you been living?”
“Badly,” he admits with a wry grimace. Still, it takes resourcefulness or very good luck to live as he has for more than a few days.
Good luck. Perhaps some of it will rub off on me. The fight’s not far away, and every magicker in the city must be casting ill luck charms my way.
* * *
“I’ll send him down to you when he’s ready, Abernia,” Bella said. “I’ll find him some clothes and get him cleaned up first.”
After rummaging through a closet, she gave him an armload of clothes. “These would’ve gone to the rag picker anyhow. They’ll suit you for now.”
The trousers were black canvas. He could tell they’d be baggy on him, and luckily she’d included a sky blue sash that would hold them up for now. There were two shirts of worn white cotton, socks of knitted wool and a scuffed pair of low boots, and a fancy wool jacket with bright brass buttons and patterned with sprigs of flowers.
Each garment she handed him roused a fresh surge of happiness. He’d known that if he could just find Bella Kanto, all his problems would be solved. And here he was, like a character in a penny-wide. Perhaps he’d even be in one, maybe save Bella’s life, or perform some other service worthy of being chronicled.
“Take a change and go bathe.” Bella directed him to a door painted with golden lilies on a cheerful green background. As the door closed behind him and he found himself alone, he gaped at the enormous tub of cast-iron, uncertain.
It was monumental. It crouched on bird’s feet, grasping enormous metal balls with ferocious tenacity. Silver pipes and faucets clustered at one end.
He examined it. Turned a tap experimentally, recoiled as water gushed out, turned it back off again. Then on and off again to test the water. It was cold as ice.
So was the water from the other one.
He pondered, then turned both on. He’d swum in mid-Winter rivers, sometimes it was worth it to be clean.
But by the time he pulled off his clothing, the left-hand tap gushed hot water. He happily readjusted the water ratio and got in.
There was soap smelling of minty citrus sweetness, a great yellow sponge three times bigger than his hand, and a scrub brush with a back carved of tortoiseshell. He experimented with all of these, and used the soap to wash his hair. He applied the brush with vigor to his feet, elbows, and hands.
He lay back in the soapy water and sighed happily. His hand gripped his cock and after a glance at the door, he soaped his hand to masturbate, letting the ejaculate float on the water in a cloud.
Emerging, he toweled off. The small table held a basin, more towels, and scissors, comb, and brush, too, all in matching tortoiseshell. The towels were blue, edged with tiny gold Gryphons that looked as though they’d be scratchy but weren’t.
He wrapped a towel around himself and looked at the mirror. He used the scissors to cut away much of his hair, careful to catch it in his hand, and put it in the basket for such things in the corner. He trimmed it back and it was better, sure, but still rough and uneven where he hadn’t been able to cope with the curls.
Bella rapped on the door. “Everything good in there?”
“Almost done,” he called. He shrugged on the shirt, gave his chin a hopeful examination for stubble, but still nothing was there.
He sighed and went out to what he hoped was a new life.
* * *
Abernia’s kitchen had brick walls bookending it on two sides, bricks protruding outward to form tiny shelves, on which perched brightly colored dolls, two or three inches tall. An enormous cast iron oven crouched near a back door, as short and round as Abernia, the red glow of its top echoing her gingery hair. A set of narrow stairs snaked around and behind two towering cupboards. The vast double sink sat to another side.
Abernia saw him looking at the dolls.
“The Trade Gods that watch over this house,” she said. She pointed a few out: “Hospitality there. Good Value there. Fairness in Dealing. Attention to Detail. They have longer names in the trade tongue. I’ll spare you those.”
She turned on him, meeting him eye to eye. “You know how lucky you are, don’t you, boy?”
He stammered, “I’m very thankful.”
“Plucked out of the gutter by the likes of Bella Kanto. Serve her well, boy, and she’ll do right by you, set you in some good profession, perhaps.”
“Does she follow the Trade Gods?” His eyes returned to them. Fairness in Dealing held a tiny pair of scales; Hospitality a miniature jug and broom. They would’ve delighted his sister.
“No.” Without elaborating, Abernia opened the back door. It led to a room that looked like it might have been an open porch at one point but was walled in now. “It’s not the warmest room, but the cot’s set near the wall where the stove is so it’s always warm at night. There’s blankets aplenty there. You can put your things in the chest.”
Two windows looked out to the backyard, full of pine trees still green despite the snow that covered them.
“When you’re done, come back into the kitchen.” Abernia said and vanished back through the door.
He looked around. His good fortune rendered him nearly breathless, let alone capable of speech. A bed! With blankets! He prodded them experimentally and savored the thickness of the wool. The floor was made of unvarnished boards but so straight and true that a machine must have lathed them. He looked under the cot in case the previous occupant might have left something, but he found only a crumpled sock, thrice-darned, with a fresh hole in the toe.
He stroked a hand over his new clothing again, and then went to report to Abernia in the kitchen.
She surveyed him. “My maid is out sick, so you’re getting thrown into the middle of it. Go up and knock at each door. If they don’t answer, go in; if they do, wait until they call you in to enter. Swap out their towels and take away any food dishes or trays they have lying about. Don’t let the bard keep you standing there talking. In Scholar Reinart’s room—you’ll know which I mean, it’s full of books—remember to check the desk for dishes. Make sure Miss Bella has three washcloths, and if she’s out of soap …” She chuckled as he blushed. “There’s plenty in the towel cupboard.” She gestured him off.
He tried the downstairs first, but as he paused at the door, Abernia shouted from the kitchen, “The Captain’s off to sea; no need to bother with his room.”
Upstairs, he knocked on the first door. No one answered.
He tried the door and cautiously opened it. “Hello?” He stepped into the room. It was lined with books.
Tacked above the fireplace was a canvas, as wide as Teo’s outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip. It showed a dog, a mastiff, with two women standing between them as high as their waists, their hands tangled. Something in the women’s faces echoed that of the dog, and their brown hair matched its brindled hide. Elsewhere tall bookcases stretched from floor down to ceiling, crammed with books, some set vertically, others stacked and shagged with loose papers. A basket-woven chair, its arms shiny with wear, sagged beside the doorway to the bedroom.
A shape rose to greet him, growling—a dog, identical to the one in the picture, its teeth bared in menace. They were a rarity in the north, and he had never encountered one until he had visited Marten’s Ferry. And even there, he’d only seen them from a distance. It was not until he had begun to wander Tabat that he had fully encountered such creatures, and most of the time they seemed to be devoted to either keeping him from entering or chasing him out of a particular place.
But Abernia wouldn’t have sent him into danger. He stooped and held out his free hand, the one not gripping towels. “Just here to change at the towels, fella.” The dog sniffed his hand and dropped his head, permitting Teo to scratch along his ears.
Teo did so for longer than he thought Abernia might have approved of. The thought made him stand. He went to the bathroom, the dog at his heels, its claws clicking on the tiles.
Towels littered the floor. He gathered them up and put two to replace them on the chair by the door.
Going back into the other room he cast his eye about for dishes. He stepped to the desk. The dog growled again.
Teo said, “Looking for dishes, boy; no need to worry.”
He could’ve sworn the dog dropped a nod, but at any rate it stopped growling at him. He took a small plate, littered with crumbs and a large smear of butter, and three old tea mugs from the desk and went out, closing the door behind him.
In the kitchen he put the mugs in the sink and asked Abernia, “What is the dog’s name?”
“Did he leave it there by itself? Not like him to do that to Cavall much. He’s a friendly dog, sweet as silk. Take the towels down to the tub in the cellar, that’s where the laundry is.”
When he tried the next room, he understood what Abernia had meant when she said not to let the Bard keep him talking too long. The man there, who introduced himself as Lyman, kept up a cheerful flow of questions: How long had Teo been in the city, what did he think of it, had he been to any of the theaters, what ambitions did he have in life, and on and on. He ducked his head and said little. The man didn’t seem to notice, just kept up the commentary while Teo gathered up wine glasses and bottles and street food wrappers.
Bella wasn’t in her room anymore when he went up, though he hadn’t heard her go out. He desperately wanted to explore her rooms, but at the same time he thought it wouldn’t be nice of him, particularly when she had been so wonderful so far.
He stared out the window at the Fairies again, still feeling a thrill of fear despite Bella’s assertions that they were harmless. One buzzed near the window outside and he flinched back, heart hammering.
It hovered there, staring in at him. He couldn’t tell what it was thinking. He didn’t know whether they really thought anything or not. He went into the bathroom and replaced the soap that he’d used and all of the towels, picked up the few plates that were lying about, and then went back downstairs.
As he clattered down the wooden stairs, a wave of contentment overcame him. He thought,
I’m warm and safe for now. Bella Kanto has overtaken to see to my future. Who knows what sorts of wonderful things will happen now?
***
Chapter Seventeen
Bella Dreams
“Bella,” Alberic, 10th Duke of Tabat, says. We are dozing side by side in the hot springs below the castle. Musicians lilt and strum somewhere behind a screen. Alberic always has musicians near. A harp’s strings sound, echoing off the high ceiling and stony walls until I can’t tell where they come from. Layers of colored glass mute the aetheric lights till blue and gold stripes, Tabat’s colors, lie in stripes across the water slicked surfaces of our naked flesh, his dark skin beside my olive shade.
He strokes the inside of my thigh with a forefinger.
“What?” I know that tone, syrupy with assurance and the ability to back up promises with a thick purse. It means some unreasonable demand is coming:
Be my Champion in the Southern Games, Bella. It’ll be two months or so of journey there and back, that’s all, and there’s a lovely vineyard in the offing to add to your country estate if you do.
And hadn’t that been a nightmare, fighting sharks and Water Human attitudes, all in the name of getting the city better prices on certain spices, and sugar, and Alberic’s favorite rum, along with a deal on the whale-bone used for parts of some mechanicals.
Or:
Teach my Guard a few tricks, Bella,
and unbeknownst to any of them, an assassin from the Rose Kingdom was brought in by the Duke so I could “show them what real action was like.” I’m still paying guild-duty on that man’s death.
“The Merchants are making noises about Winter.”
“The Merchants are always making noises about Winter.”
“They say there will be riots and burning as a sign of what’s to come if Winter wins yet again. Get the rules changed and play Spring.”
“Spring must be younger than her opponent, that’s always the case.”
He abandons his exploration of my skin and reaches for the whisky cup perched on the edge of the bowl we sit in, carved from the rock around the spring’s natural base. The aetheric lights give the steam arising around us a peculiar hallucinogenic sheen. I watch a stripe of blue sweep across his face. He is still handsome enough, although giving way to middle age. I look with satisfaction at the taut line of my own leg, laddered in yellow.
“Just think about it,” he coaxes.
I shake my head. “I will do you many favors, Alberic, but I won’t change what I am for you. As long as I am the foremost Gladiator in Tabat, I will play Winter, and play her to win.”
The song ends as I speak. The words hung in the air. Alberic sips his whisky staring at me. He returns to stroking my leg, but it is less a seductive gesture than a possessive one. I like this mood of his least of any of the mercurial changes and tempers which Alberic is prone to.
Years ago, when Alberic sent me one fall to the Southern Isles, I stayed with the Governor and his pretty children on the side of a red-rocked volcano. In the mornings I swam in a lagoon surrounded by frog drum and cricket drone. Sorties of birds had blazoned overhead as I sliced through the clear water.
In the afternoons, I went out fishing, my guide a merfolk of uncertain legal status—technically he was a Beast and could only be owned by someone. The mistress of the local inn owned him in theory, and I paid his day’s wages each evening in three-sided copper coins, one reserved for him, to be tucked into his gum with long-knuckled grace.
I became enamored of the colors of the reefs. I learned to see them in the translucent water, to see the wave break, shaped by the thing I could not see but knew was there.
That skill was like dealing with Alberic. You try to steer through the imperceptible collisions of old and sometimes imagined slights, long-buried childhood resentments still adamant beneath the nebulous surface.
How bad could his childhood have been, though? His parents lasted until his late thirties, and while it was sad to have lost them both in the span of the same rainy Winter, I think it more survivable than the tumult of my own early years.
“I am the Duke of this city,” he reminds me.
“For another six months, until the elections.”
“Fah.” The force of his recoil against the edge of the bath sends ripples across it. “Why should I be bound by a promise made 300 years ago?”
“Because your family has always sworn to live by it. You have plenty of holdings outside the city that you will not lose, and your castle remains yours. The people expect it. They have been waiting for it for centuries now. You’d have revolt in the streets.”
His eyes icy midnight, he says, “As if there wasn’t already plenty brewing in anger at you. Get out. I don’t want to think about you and all the trouble you cause.”
Throwing me out?! I twist my body and am up and sitting on the edge in an instant. “Very well.”
I pause. Alberic is prone to sudden remorse at these moments, but this time he shows none. I breathe out resignation and go to put on my clothes. Fine, slippery silk—I always dress to fit my partner when dining or otherwise engaged.
He refuses to speak as I leave. I bite back the impulse to say, “Don’t expect me back” over my shoulder. We’ve played this scene out before, but it has been more frequent in the last few years. We’ve never been a partnership, just a coming together from time to time, or a chance for Alberic to preen with me on his arm at some great occasion.
A silent servant escorts me to the gate, where one of the Duke’s steam carriages waits. I climb in without a word and sit. The driver will already have been directed where to take me; everything in Alberic’s household functions with quiet, perfect efficiency of the sort only money and power can summon. I could manage to fund that sort of thing myself nowadays, but that hasn’t always been the case.
I would have liked to have seen Alberic undergo my childhood. Sleeping on straw in the stable because a Beast was about to birth, prodded awake by Jolietta’s kick, knowing hours lay before you and then a full day’s work expected as well. He would have curled up like a caterpillar, incredulous and incapable. I snort to myself.
The driver says, “Beg pardon?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Or something, really. Take me to Berto’s.”
There is always someone to flirt with at Berto’s.
But instead somehow I end up at the Brides of Steel.
* * *
I’d thought Miche a transitory pleasure, but he seems determined to work his way up to the position of lover. He comes by with trinkets—nothing valuable, he’s wise enough to know that I have other admirers whose pockets are far deeper—but sometimes little magicky things that will amuse me, like a puppet of a dancing Ape, or some plainer token, the latest penny-wide or a hyacinth cookie.
I meet him on my way out today, the newly appointed Teo trailing me with a basket in hand to catch my purchases as I run my errands.
Miche bows deeply and takes my hand to kiss the knuckles in greeting, in a way calculated to remind me of similar experiences in bed.
“Who’s your companion?” he asks.
Teo flinches at the look. He’s convinced the Temples are pursuing him. I’ve told him they’ve got better things to do than hunt stray boys. Sure, if he walked into the Temple, they’d snag him soon enough, but he’s safe with me. Miche’s eyes flicker as he notes the movement and he flicks an inquiring look at me. He’s too sharp by far, this one.
“This is Teo, who Abernia has hired as houseboy,” I say.
“A fine country lad,” Miche says. “That hardly seems like a suitable position for a strapping lad. I have a cousin who works with a circus. He’s always hiring roustabouts.”
“Perhaps once the boy has his bearings, he could see him,” I say. “Not today, though.”
Something about Teo fascinates Miche. He keeps stealing glances at him. He says, “But the sooner the better, surely!”
I don’t like the way he’s looking at the boy. The predatory gleam in his eyes sets my teeth on edge. I step between them and say, “We must be going.”
“Of course,” Miche says through his disappointment. He’s as pouty as a teenager. “Perhaps I might come by later?”
I shake my head. That look strengthens my resolve to pry Miche away. I’d thought he might distract me, but it’s easy enough to find bedmates.
“I have a book for you,” he says. “I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s about Jolietta Kanto.”
The book Leonoa tried to force on me as well. “Written by a Beast once in her care? I’ve heard of it. I don’t care to read it. I know all I need to know of my aunt’s training practices.”
“It doesn’t mention you at all. In case that’s what you’re worried about.”
At first I don’t know what he’s trying to say. Sly insinuation fills his tone. It comes to me that he thinks me willing in all of Jolietta’s practices. As bad as her. Anger rivets me to the spot for a moment. I pry its grip free in order to reply.
“Never speak to me of it again,” I say.
The anger that flits across his face is a different kind than I’m used to seeing. What schemes does he think to set in motion that need me? Because that’s the look there. But it shutters away as quickly as a slammed window. He doesn’t burst into apology, he simply says, “Are you sure, Bella Kanto?”
“I thank you for your kindness,” I reply, cool and formal. I don’t look behind me as we walk away.
Teo, showing considerable wisdom, says nothing either.
* * *
I pose before my dressing table mirror, glancing past my form to examine the familiar map of my bedchamber, made new territory by the darkness. I like looking at myself in the shadows. They do interesting things to make my nose seem more chiseled, my cheekbones sharp as knives.
When I turn my face to one side I can smell the perfume left behind by the bouquet, but the other way brings the gingery smell of Lucya’s ointment. At this time of night, the streets outside the house are quiet. Abernia’s snores resound from a floor below, and Miche’s quieter breathing echoes from the bed.
I find the sounds comforting. They remind me of the times I’ve slept in a stable, warm in the straw, knowing other creatures were around. I always sleep better in a group. The presence of slumbering others drives away old nightmares. My retired arena hound Gelerta died when the snows had set in at Winter’s beginning two years ago. I haven’t had the heart to replace her. The bedchamber and its adjoining sitting room still smell of dog in wet weather—like tonight.
The fire’s last embers crackle and pop, sending up sparks like half-hearted fireworks. Another month of Winter, another month of people grousing about the weather and casting dirty looks my way. Everyone finds me predictable. No wonder people think I’m on the edge of failing, about to step aside for someone younger, stronger, more valiant.
I am Bella Kanto. How could they want anyone else?
I go to the window and flatten my forehead against the rain-spotted window glass. The window faces southward, over the garden, across the canal, and down towards the harbor, but I cannot see the water, only rooftops swallowed by rising mist. Bats and fickle ghosts ride the wind outside. I crane to listen to them but hear only the expected night sounds. A steam wagon’s whistle and warning hoot lingers in the distance.
In the bed, Miche stirs. After the fight, he proved handy and young and handsome and just as willing as I was. Since then I’ve fucked him more than once and let him stay until the morning.
Usually I don’t go for his sort, but there is a romantic cast to his bony face, his long-lashed black eyes. His pallor with his dark hair make him seem caught between Old Continent and New Continent blood and give his narrow smile an exotic touch. Pretty as a posterboard, a pantomime pirate.
The bedclothes rustle as he slips out of bed. Coming up behind me, his face swimming up in the moonlight, Miche Courdeau ladders his fingers across the flat plane of my naked stomach.
“Do something for me, love?” he whispers into my ear.
I listen to the night for advice but the steam wagon doesn’t speak again. I lean back against him, considering.
“Do something?” he repeats. His fingers go on doing interesting things in the neighborhood of my belly, my hips, the crease of my thighs, reckoning the taut muscles, tallying each quiver. I spread my long toes for better purchase on the wooden floor and push myself back into him, testing his strength.
No match for me, really, unless he possesses some unexpected skill or a sorcerous augmentation. No match at all, not like Skye. But like her, young and smooth-skinned, and supple as a Selkie. And possessed of the same arrogance of youth, the presumption that his sinuous grace has enchanted me. I sigh inwardly. Am I getting old, that he thinks to trick me so easily? I’ve heard that wheedling tone before, from other lovers, and it never means good.
I reach back and feel at his neck, but he does not wear the pierced silver coin that Moon Temple followers carry. “What moon were you born under? Some say that you can tell a person’s reliability by the moon that rides them.”
“Hijae’s red stare,” he says.
“Ah, Hijae of blood. Not auspicious.”
He drops a kiss on the bump of bone at the top of my spine and lets his tongue slide warmly around it.
“What do you want?” I ask. I’ll let him coax this favor from me, but he’ll pay for it in many acrobatic ways.
His lips nuzzle the nape of my neck, breathing out the words like afterthoughts, less important than the kisses.
“The boy. What sort of place is that for him, working in the scullery? Let me take him to my cousin at the circus. He’ll learn a better trade there than washing pots. I’ll make sure he’s watched over and you can come and visit him to be sure.”
At Teo’s age—at any age, really—the choice between housework and circus work is easy. The boy doesn’t need to be under my eye all the time. I should do what I do with my students, encourage independence.
Circus life seems chancy, but he’ll learn enough there to suit him to some other employment by the time the elections are over and most of the circuses have gone back to traveling back and forth along the coast.
“Let me think on that a little longer,” I say. “Ah, do that some more.”
He obliges, dragging his mouth along my spine, setting the skin alight with pleasure. He tilts his head to watch my face in the mirror. “Good,” he says, licking out the word and sighing coolness across the letters in a way that makes my half-lidded eyes flicker open. “Good.”