Beasts of Tabat (3 page)

Of course, now I’m regretting putting it off.

Maybe she knows what’s going on. Maybe she’s sensed me cooling over the last few weeks, pulling away as she grew as clingy as a vine in one of the greenhouses her father, Milosh Dellarose, owns. Despite the trace of Northern blood lending her its fair skin and reddish hair, she is a child of wealth, so many of them are. She’s never known hunger or cold or fear of death. Her family has a fortune based on growing plants. Her father knows as many secrets about that as my Aunt Jolietta ever knew about training Beasts.

I suspect his methods are far less stringent.

Marta says as I approach, “I’ve been waiting for almost an hour now, standing while the snow grows thicker outside. I hate the snow.”

She shivers dramatically. Everything about Marta is dramatic.

As though she had to walk in the open. A warm carriage, pulled by horses or some more expensive Beast, will take her home.

“You know that after a bout I must go and report to the Duke.”

She sneers at that. “Yes, reporting, is that what you call it?”

“This jealousy does not become you.”

I can feel curious eyes upon us. I don’t like to conduct personal business in public. I prefer someplace quieter, calmer. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they make a fuss. It is better to be discreet about these things.

She must know what is going on, for I can only interpret her next speech as a preemptive move.

She says, “I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with sharing you with other people.”

“I never promised you anything about exclusivity.”

Her eyes harden.

“No, and that is something you will never promise anyone. It is too seductive, to be Bella Kanto, with half the city chasing after you, eager to get you into bed. And yet the honor seems cheap when so many have shared it.”

There is no putting this off.

I say, “Then let us be done with one another.”

“Very well,” she snaps. “Far be it from me to try and cage such a wonder.” Her voice is bitter as day-old tea mixed with vinegar.

She turns away. Some fool applauds. Others give me sour looks and mutter about Spring.

Marta doesn’t look back as she makes her way through the crowd watching the encounter.

Not how I would’ve chosen to stage this ending, but sometimes people make their own choices. And at least this saves me the trouble of figuring out how to do it later on. Still, it eats a little at my vanity not to have her more upset. She’ll regret it later. They always do. She’ll send notes, or gifts, or someone to speak on her behalf.

Outside the arena, crowds jostle around food carts, buying twists of spiced bread, nuts glazed with honey, paper cups of soup ranging from salty
chal
to mixtures more dumpling than liquid. I try to slip through the crowd unnoticed, but that never happens.

Many folks want to congratulate me. I shake hands, pat the heads of children, utter words of encouragement to the students who have come to watch. A group of Gladiators wants me to go with them to Berto’s, but I am not in the mood for bantering. I manage to slip away without offending anyone and go out into the street where the snow is still falling, flakes whirling in the cold wind.

There’s more riding on this match than in the past. Everything is unsettled by the upcoming elections. I’ve never had so much pressure to throw the match before.

Marta’s carriage rattles past and I catch a glimpse of her face through the window, looking out.

I raise a hand as though to hail her, then let it fall.

Sometimes I wish they would stay angry. It would be much easier. Perhaps Marta will.

***

Chapter Three

Teo on the Road

Teo knew from a distance by the long robes it was the Priest, although the man had belted them up to keep the hem from dragging in the road’s slush and mud.

He wanted to run, to flee into the underbrush, to make his way east as he had planned. But the Priest had already spotted him and was fingering a charm around his neck. Teo tried to back away, but his feet wouldn’t move, no matter how he strove.

He had never been caught by magic before. It was unfair that the Priest could use such means. His heart pounded. With every step the Priest took towards him, the pressure increased until he could not move at all. Even breathing was hard.

“And we meet again, young Teo,” the Priest said. His eyes were shrewd. “I am called Grave. It was good of you to start early. That’s wise. It means less delay saying goodbye and gets us along farther.”

He said nothing of the village or what they might have said about Teo’s absence. Had they realized he’d left and sent the Priest after him? Another betrayal.

Teo bowed his head, feeling the weight of the world slump on his shoulders. After making up his own mind, that decision had been snatched away from him. He had no choice now but to go to Tabat.

* * *

They camped along the road, not on it, but close enough to see it the first night, in a stand of elderly oaks.

Teo had never seen such trees before. It startled him to think that they were only a day away from the village, yet here was something he’d never seen before, something entirely new to him. Bit by bit, he thought, what he was used to would absent itself from the scene, slip away without him noticing, until finally everything would be different, everything new, an alien landscape surrounding him.

The Priest tried to strike up conversation, but Teo was sullen. Why bother making friends with his captor? It would only make it more difficult to make his escape when the opportunity presented itself. So instead he grunted monosyllabic answers, sometimes pretending not to hear the question at all, rather than to talk fully about what he liked, or hoped, or dreamed.

Because that was how the questions went. They weren’t about his family, or his village, or anything like that. Instead they were about
him
, interest of a sort no one had ever shown before. What did he like for dinner, what did he usually dream, and did he think he’d miss his little sister much?

The thought crossed his mind that perhaps this was part of the Priest’s duties, to deliver not just Teo but also the key to him, the ways the Temple would be able to force him to obey, and how to train him, like a dog that would do anything for a bite of meat.

Wary of this notion, he became even more silent and sullen, dragging in firewood with head drooped, avoiding the Priest’s eyes.

Finally Grave lay down the flint and tinder that he’d been assembling.

“Teo,” he said. “Look at me.”

Teo did. The eyes were sympathetic, but there was firmness in their look as well.

“Do you think you are the only acolyte ever come to the Temple against his or her will? It wasn’t a fate I relished either. But it’s not a bad life, Teo, and better than the one you would have faced in your village, a more exciting one. You’ll see things that they’ll never see. Perhaps you’ll become one of the Temple emissaries and travel the world.” He grinned. “Perhaps you’ll find yourself, like me, journeying to collect those who have been dedicated to the Temples.”

If so, Teo thought, he would let them go. But instead he nodded and went back to gathering firewood, aware of the Priest’s gaze on him.

“We have a thousand words for the kinds of shadows the Moons cast. Those are the names we choose to use. For the first few years you will have no name. Then a Priest will give you one based on their assessment of your nature. That’s why I ask questions, to put in my report to them.”

“What does your name mean?”

“I was not quick to learn, so I am Grave, the color of shadow on bare earth around a stone. It means more than that, much more, but I chose to take it as reproach and worked harder, till I advanced and became a Traveling Priest.”

“What name do you think I would get?” Teo asked, staring into the fire.

Grave looked at him consideringly for a long time, so long that Teo grew uneasy under that stare. It seemed to reach into his soul, uncover all his plans for escape, and expose them for the small, ineffectual machinations and fantasies that they were.

“Gloisten, for the shadow behind cart wheels in the rain, perhaps.” Grave said. “You are quick of mind, I have seen that. You know the names for things; every tree and flower and bird I have pointed out. How did you come by that knowledge?”

“Lidiya, our herb alta, let me follow her,” Teo said.

“Few villages have an alta. Not many are sensitive and willing enough to take on the plant’s life and change themselves with the seasons as the altas do.

Teo shrugged. “She’s always been there.”

“What do you know of Tabat?”

Spurred by the earlier praise of his intellect, eagerness carried him away into boasting. “Lots and lots. I read all the penny-wides.”

Grave snorted. “The penny-wides do not tell you much of the city or its workings. They’re only about the Gladiators and the Duke’s Court, nothing but gossip writ large.”

Teo’s heart fell.

Grave poked at the fire and took a metal bowl from his pack, mixing in grain and water and setting it in the ashes to cook. “They live and eat simply in the Moon Temples,” the Priest said. “It’s more reason to become a traveling Priest. The food is better. But there is always plenty of it—mashed roots and cooked grain, fish every fifteenth day, and at year’s turning for all five feast days.”

“That’s all?” Teo said. He thought wistfully of village food: the dimpled nut rolls his mother made, the goat cheeses rolled in cracked pepper and ash.

“Some come to the Temples never having known what it is to have a full belly. The Temples take in many orphans and those left destitute by one calamity or another.”

“The Temples must be crowded.”

Grave nodded. “It makes it difficult to ascend in the ranks, it is true. But if you are smart and work hard, eventually you will rise. I came to the Temples a little younger than the age you are now, to wear the same acolyte robes you will don.”

Teo plucked the last bits of meat from the rabbit’s bones. He might as well savor such dishes while he could. “Are there no cooks that work for the upper Priests?”

“We all eat from the same platter,” the Priest said severely.

Teo flinched and fell silent.

“I am not a bad man, Teo,” the Priest said. “There are some of my order who are worse shepherds, who take advantage of those they’re sent to collect. I’m not one of those, at least.”

Teo wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but he didn’t want to ask, either. He supposed it meant the Priest didn’t intend to fuck him, which was a relief after some of the stories he’d been told. But again he nodded.

“How long were you an acolyte? Before you became a traveling Priest?” he asked.

“Ten years as an acolyte, then another eight before I was set to the road, first to travel with another, then by myself.”

“Oh,” Teo said. Ten years?!? He licked the bones and threw them into the fire, where they popped and sent up black smoke. The Priest said nothing more, simply sat watching him until Teo curled up in his blanket and went to sleep near the fire.

* * *

It happened when they were crossing the low line of hills that marked the first sight of the river. They’d stopped at the top to admire the view: a vista of dark green pines along grey rocks, unremarkable except for the length of silver shining in the sun behind them, the Northstretch River.

“Once we hit the river, we’ll head upstream,” Grave told Teo.

“Upstream?” Teo said, surprised. “But Tabat is far downstream.”

“Sometimes to take a step forward, you must take one back first.” The Priest made his way down a slope of rock scree and ice, testing each foothold beforehand with his walking stick. “Upstream is Marten’s Ferry, and we should be able to catch a trade steamer from there.”

Teo stopped. “We’re going by boat?”

He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him before. Of course they were going by ship. They would get to Tabat far sooner than he had reckoned. There would be no time to gain Grave’s trust, to talk him into letting Teo go.

Sand and rock slipped beneath his feet until he hardly knew which way was up. No matter how hard he tried, he was doomed for the Temples, he thought, as he followed in the Priest’s wake.

Grave glanced back. “You must keep up, boy,” he said, his voice impatient. The sentence broke off before he could add anything more, for a flat of shale had given way, and he was sliding, tumbling, limbs flailing among the tangle of his robes.

He landed at the bottom with a thump and lay dreadfully still.

Teo’s heart leaped. This was his chance. He paused. But he couldn’t leave Grave lying there hurt. He had to check and make sure he wasn’t dead. He made his way down the slope as quickly as he could. A crow squawked in the tree, summoning its fellows to a fine dinner of dead flesh?

But as he neared the limp form, he saw the rise and fall of fabric and heard the Priest’s labored breathing. He went to his knees beside the mass of huddled fabric, the cold ground biting at his knees with sharp, stone teeth.

“Sir?” he said. He stretched out his hand but hesitated, not daring to touch the Priest. Who knew what magics were laid on him to prevent attack?

A groan answered him. Grave stirred and tried to sit up, gasping with pain.

“Leg’s broken,” he said brusquely.

Teo knew that already. He was trying to avoid looking at the sharp edge of bone protruding through the skin.

“Pull my pack over to me,” Grave directed.

The pack had broken loose and tumbled further, but seemed intact. Teo dragged it over and the Priest searched through it with faltering hands, hands that shook as though with fever. His features were white as new stone and drawn. Teo could see the lines of pain pulling at his lips.

“Go and find firewood, make a fire here,” the Priest said. Fumbling a tiny bottle out of a pack pocket, he raised it to his lips and drained it. Some color returned to his cheeks as he set it down. “Lucky enough that it’s flattish here. We’ll make camp and see how I feel in the morning. Go find firewood, and while you’re looking, find three or four sturdy poles.”

“Are we making a tent?” Teo said.

The look was scornful. “No. Stay here and we’ll end up eaten by Beasts or bandits. You’re making a pull trailer, so you can take me upstream.”

Teo nodded and took the hatchet, going in search of firewood and poles. Again the possibility of escape danced through his mind. But the Priest had spoken truly: abandon him here and he would indeed fall prey to some menace. There was a reason few people lived in these hills.

When he came back to the Priest, he stopped short of the flat spot. A cloud of light surrounded the Priest, a mass of scintillations. It took Teo a moment to realize it was Fairies, a swarm covering the body entirely.

“No,” he shouted, dropping the wood and rushing forward, waving his arms. The host fluttered away, rising like a single mass. It hovered in the air a few feet away, and he saw the swirl of coin-sized, feral faces watching him. He stooped and grabbed a rock, but by the time he rose again, the Fairies were gone.

Grave was an unconscious mass of tiny ragged bites. That was a mercy perhaps, Teo thought. Fairy bites brought unconsciousness in order to paralyze their prey. Despite any possible blasphemy, he pushed the Priest’s robes aside, searching for any sign that they had done something more than bite.

On the broken knee, a few inches above the kneecap, he found a round hole of the type a Fairy sting would leave. Had there been time enough for the creature to lay its egg within? He thought not—surely it took a while and was not instantaneous. By the look of the bites, they had only just begun to feed on the Priest.

He considered the wound. He should cauterize it, he knew, in order to make sure, but Grave had already been through so much that Teo was afraid the shock of such an operation might kill him. Reluctantly, he bandaged the worst of the bites, fetching water from the stream (although watching the Priest every step of the short journey lest the Fairies return), in order to lave them.

He built the fire high. It would betray them to anyone watching from afar, but it would also keep creatures like the Fairies away. He kept dragging more wood to the heap that would feed it until it grew too dark to see. Then he sat cross-legged by the blaze and fed it knots of wood while he watched the sleeping Priest.

He could leave, he kept thinking. Did he owe this man anything? He was almost a slaver, after all, bringing the indentured to be enslaved to his Temple in Tabat. But Teo knew that Grave didn’t think of it that way. He’d spoken of all the advantages that the city would hold for Teo, had talked as though it was no question that serving in Tabat was infinitely better than a free life in the wilderness.

And would it be? Teo had to admit he was looking forward to seeing the site where so many of the adventures he’d read took place. He might even encounter Bella Kanto herself. He glanced over at the Priest. Grave had said he’d come to the Temples himself as a Promised One. It must not have been too bad for him if he was willing to bring others to the same existence.

The stars overhead were a swathe of glitter against the blackness. Sparks flew up from the fire as though trying to join them and become stars themselves, and the pine wood, rich with resin, popped and snapped, each new burst sending up a fresh handful of sparks. The smoke moved with the erratic wind, sometimes enveloping Teo and his companion, other times as docilely ascending as though guided by an invisible chimney.

Teo ate the last of the bread, reluctant to rummage through Grave’s pack in search of the grain that they had dined on the previous night.

Grave had taken his moon coin, saying he would give it back when they reached the Temples. It rested, hostage, in the Priest’s pocket. He thought about reaching for it. But Grave might wake.