Beasts of Tabat (7 page)

“I know you prefer honey, but all I have is jam and fish-paste for the bread,” Leonoa says without apology.

“What sort of jam?”

“Apple butter.”

“Pah, not even truly jam. But I’ll take it over fish paste.”

I nurse the mug of salty tea that Leonoa hands me and stretch my shoulders. “Your friend gone already?” I ask.

“She works for a minor Merchant house,” Leonoa says.

“Interesting. What does she do there?”

“She is a Clerk.”

“An odd sort of Clerk. Can she fly with those wings?”

“I believe,” Leonoa says dryly, “she can flutter.”

A spark of humor leaps between us, but I keep my face straight. “So she could break her fall when plummeting long distances. Not a highly marketable skill.”

“You never know,” Leonoa says. “The Duke has commissioned a grand zeppelin, of the sort they are making up in Verranzo’s New City. I am hoping to paint a mural in one of the sitting rooms.”

It seems more than plausible. It’s exactly the sort of thing Alberic would do. I snort.

“I am looking forward to it, actually,” Leonoa says. “Imagine what it will be like to see the world from such a vista, to be able to study it!” Her eyes gleam.

“I am usually too busy keeping my food down when flying on a Beast,” I admit. “Too worried that a wing might slip and that they might lose their grip on the air.”

Leonoa gives me an amused glance. “The great Bella Kanto admits a weakness! I will sell it to your enemies and make hundreds!”

“Hundreds?” I protest. “Thousands, at least.”

This time it is Leonoa’s turn to snort. “You have always thought very highly of yourself, Bella Kanto.”

“If I do not do it, who will?” I look at my cousin.

Jolietta always referred to Leonoa derisively as “the dwarf.” I bit back a retort each time. My aunt was quick to discipline Beasts or apprentices who displeased her. I learned early never to contradict Jolietta. Although the lessons were easy for neither of us, Jolietta had decades of encrusted cynicism and shaping of others to her will on her side. Many of her training secrets went to her grave with her, for I won’t record them, no matter how much gold or favors the Duke’s chief Beast Trainers promise.

The years with Jolietta shaped me in spite of my best efforts to reject them. I would never have said it out loud, but sometimes I find myself looking at Leonoa as Jolietta would have, seeing the twisted frame and recognizing the constant, dire pain that shapes Leonoa’s waking existence.

If Leonoa had been a Beast in Jolietta’s care, she would have put her down without a second thought.

***

Chapter Seven

On the
Water Lily

Teo and Ridley, who was working his way as a cabin boy, shouted in unison as they pulled in the line. With a last pull, a vast catfish landed on the deck, its gills shuttering and opening as it lay gasping on the blood-slicked wood.

Others companoned it on the deck’s planking. The boys had set out lines baited with lumps of biscuit dough and caught almost two dozen of the bottom-feeders overnight.

The cook fried the slices in a pan, breaded in a way Teo had never seen before.

He asked the cook, who grunted and showed him a queasy bowl of yellow. “Eggs.” He pointed at the chicken coop that rode the boat’s port flank, opposite the side where the Dryads were kept.

He’d eaten birds’ eggs at home, but that was a rare springtime treat. Imagine keeping birds so they would lay eggs for you! Already he was learning new things.

After breakfast, they sluiced the slimy, bloody deck with buckets of river water, and the Dryads made fussing noises as the water edged towards the railing where they were chained. There were a half-dozen of them, captured to be taken to the Duke.

Tending them was only part of Teo’s duties. Life aboard the
Water Lily
held more work than he’d expected, but Eloquence, even when finding tasks for Teo to perform, made sure he was well-fed and even supplied gossip and news of Tabat. Eloquence was tall and lanky and stern but soft-spoken, where Captain Urdo was short, barrel-shaped, and full of shouts. Ridley, who had joined the ship only a week before Teo, had also become his guide and ally in this new life.

After breakfast, he scrubbed decking. The
Water Lily
had a great deal of decking and it required scrubbing with a harsh-bristled brush, river water, and soap, which left a trail of iridescent bubbles bobbing amid the icy fragments and water in the boat’s wake. Eloquence sat on a stack of crates with a few feet of discarded rope, unbraiding and rebraiding it, shaping it into bracelets for a wrist smaller than his own.

“Who are those for?” Teo asked. “Do you plan on selling them?”

Many of the crew engaged in small side ventures, like buying eagle feathers or some other easily portable commodity, to be sold when they returned to the city. He and Ridley spent their own free time staring at the shore, hoping to spot a Dryad grove for the substantial Duke’s bounty it would bring.

Eloquence’s stare was severe. “They’re for my little sisters. Blanca has some saffron and scarlet dye. I’ll color them before we reach home.”

“How many sisters do you have?”

“Nine,” Eloquence said. “All younger. Obedience, Compassion, Silence, Absolution, Grace, Mercy, Wisdom, Honesty, and Perseverance.”

“Why aren’t those like the Moon Priests’ names?” Teo said.

“Those not bound to the Temple are encouraged to take names of the qualities they teach us to strive for.”

“That’s a lot of sisters.” Teo had found two—one living and one dead—more than sufficient. He wondered what it would be like to be the eldest of a pack of siblings. It might be a lot of fun to boss that many around. “Do you always bring them presents?”

“Aye,” Eloquence said, twisting a braid under itself to form a neat little loop through which a matching knot could be slipped. “And half my wages for my mother, so she can pay for things like their clothing and schooling. You were asking earlier what the Temples were like. They’re like that, like having a family you’re responsible to.”

Teo felt dubious. What sort of family fed you mashed roots and stewed grains and never let you outside?

“There’s a hierarchy and a way of doing things,” Eloquence said. “You always know what you should be doing, and there’s never any questions of how you should act. The Moons know, and they tell you through the Priests.”

“What does your mother do?” Teo asked.

“She mourns my father.” Eloquence’s tone was clipped. Teo thought he might be offended, but he wasn’t sure what he might have said that would prove unwelcome to the Pilot.

Eloquence tucked the bracelets away in a deep, saggy-lipped pocket of his worn blue coat, time-polished but warmer than the shawlcoat Teo wore. “The Temples are a very structured life. You’ll always know what to expect and what’s expected of you. I envy you that.”

“I would trade with you if I could,” Teo said. Perhaps Eloquence might be persuaded to look the other way, let Teo slip away into the city and circumvent his arrival at the Temples. But the Pilot only smiled.

“You’ll become used to it with time,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Priests and thought about it myself, but I have family to support. Those who live by the Temples’ way come to embrace it, and gladly so.”

Teo wasn’t so sure of that. Still, the Pilot’s conviction shook him. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe it could even prove a good way to acclimate to the unfamiliar life in the city. Eventually, though, he knew he’d want out of the Temples and into an existence in the city itself.

Definitely not a life within the confines of the Temples. There were so many things he could become in Tabat. His mother had been right. He loved the penny-wides and all the roles they offered up for his imagination to take on. He was still young enough to train as a Gladiator, for example. Or he might apprentice to a wealthy Merchant or Cook or Sea Captain.

“How did you become a Pilot?” he asked.

Eloquence said, “The Duke advertised for likely men and women and promised good pay, just for doing the training. He pushes at the frontiers, that one, and plenty of steamboats are an important part of that effort.”

“Oh,” Teo said. “It wasn’t that you’d always wanted to be one?”

“I read the same accounts that you did, I expect,” Eloquence said. “The early expeditions, the
Mercy
and the
Tenacity
. Flying islands and talking cactuses. Rivers of golden feathers and lakes of fire.”

“Yes!” Teo exclaimed. That was exactly the sort of thing he dreamed of.

Eloquence laughed at him, but not in a mean way. “Well, there’s still some to explore, to be sure, but the great wild places have all been discovered and mapped, son, with the Duke’s council already planning how to divide up anything of value.”

“The westernmost lands are still a mystery,” Teo protested.

Eloquence waved an impatient hand. “Grass and Centaurs. No rivers, so no trade except along the coast.”

“And the Northern reaches.”

“Forest, forest, and more forest. A few tribes of Shifters and Beasts, but no Human wants those lands except for what they yield in trade.”

Discouragement slumped Teo’s shoulders. “You’re saying I might as well give up these dreams and resign myself to the Temples?”

“I am saying there are worse things than letting the moons determine your life.” He clapped Teo on the shoulder with a companionable hand. “Now come and get some chal. You can’t enter the city until you have acquired the taste.”

Teo didn’t think that would happen anytime soon. The cook kept a pot of chal, Tabatian fish tea, boiling night and day and all the crew drank mug after mug of it.

Teo wasn’t sure he liked the taste of fish in the first place. He knew he didn’t like it mixed with black tea and bitter greens. He choked down half a mug for the sake of its warmth and went back to scrubbing.

He’d rather be sitting watching the water, but all in all, the labor wasn’t too bad. It kept him warm and he could look at the landscape. Even though the day was chilly, it blazed with sunlight, which cascaded down on snow-laden banks and trees until everything dripped, and black tree limbs glittered with water, sending it everywhere in rainbow dance. The Dryads murmured together, braiding each others’ weedy hair where it grew like ivy, along the railing.

The current pulled them on, aided by the throb and splash of the boat’s engine and wheel. Eloquence had gone back to the Pilot’s seat and was watching the river, but it was wide and deep and not dangerous here, particularly with the ice melting away from the edges of the channel broken by boat travel. The
Lily
had been kept north too long by the ice, Ridley had confided, and most of the crew, Tabatians, were ready to be home after five months of travel, ready to spend the money from their shares in the cargo, mainly furs and northern plants.

The boat couldn’t travel fast enough for them. But Teo wasn’t ready for it to arrive.

* * *

Ridley woke Teo late that night. “Come on,” he said. “Eloquence is sitting watch by himself. He’ll tell us ghost stories if we sit with him.”

When they appeared in the Pilot’s house doorway, Eloquence nodded, solemn as an owl. He poured amber liquid, three shot glasses half-f, and set them on a shelf to one side. The liquid roiled sap-thick in the glass, trembling as the boat shifted.

Ridley took a glass, passed Teo his. He licked at a smear on the rim: sweet, blindingly sweet. Eloquence watched him with an amused smile.

“I suppose you have Fairy honey all the time. The pleasures of the bucolic life,” he said. Teo wasn’t sure what he meant, but he did know what Fairy honey was. Back home, a hive of it would be drained if found, half to be saved for the Duke’s share and the other half for consumption or trade, depending on the village’s finances that year.

Ridley sipped, smacked his lips, and rolled his eyes in pleasure. “Fine as I remember it.”

It smelled like flowery beeswax. Its perfume cloyed in his nostrils, but he drank. Fire and sweetness filled his mouth, and seconds later he felt an odd sensation, as though his spirit had been removed from his body and placed a foot away in misalignment. Odd and disquieting, the warmth in his stomach spread like sunshine, making him calm. He took another sip.

“Carefully, carefully,” Eloquence said. “That’s your allotment for the night. It comes out of my share, and I’ve nine siblings at home with unlined pockets.”

“I’m sorry,” Teo said. “I could carve something for your sisters if you like. As payment.”

Eloquence looked even more amused. “Perhaps it will come to such barter, now that I know you can carve,” he said. “But for now we will leave it to my standing you a glass. And you telling me a ghost story I have never heard.”

“No, tell us a story,” Teo said, emboldened by honey glow. “Can you tell us one of the Bella Kanto tales?”

“No,” Eloquence said, reaching towards a shelf. “But I will read you something else. Let us go outside where the air is sweeter, while Septa spells me a little while.”

The
Water Lily’s
wheel was silent. They had tied up just off an islet, anchored in a nook that sheltered them from the icy current’s drag. Stars gleamed in the sky overhead, so thick they reminded Teo of the Fairy lights surrounding Grave. He wondered if the Priest was recovered yet.

Eloquence set the lantern on a crate near the Dryads and settled himself onto the planking. He opened the book, large and leather-bound, and tilted it to catch the lantern’s buttery light. The boys sat down nearby.

Curiosity sparked in Teo. “That’s not a penny-wide,” he said, leaning forward to get a better look. The book was handwritten, with jagged and spidery script.

Eloquence looked flummoxed for the first time since Teo had first met him, but Ridley filled the gap. “Eloquence writes his own,” he declared with pride.

“Really?” It had never occurred to Teo to think that a person lay behind the tales of Bella.

“Aye,” Eloquence said. His cheeks were red.

“He’s going to write for the penny-wides!” Ridley elaborated.

Eloquence waved a hand as though shooing the words away. “I have a meeting, once we’re back in Tabat, to speak with Spinner Press.”

“That’s the one that prints all the Bella Kanto adventures!” Ridley leaned forward to supply more, but Eloquence gestured him to silence. “If we’re going to get started, then let’s do so.”

Ridley settled back.

“Tales of a River Pilot,” he read from the water-damp page.

Near them, a Dryad said something to another one, her tone low and bitter.

Eloquence’s nose pointed through the darkness at her. “I don’t have to read it here.”

The Dryad kept silent.

The page rustled with a bat wing sound as Eloquence turned it. “When we begin, the boat has left Tabat and travelled three days north.”

Eloquence read with a finger passing below the words, but he read as well as anyone Teo had ever heard back in the village, including Neorn. Eloquence’s voice dipped and slowed, just enough that you knew this was a performance, something special, that every word was weighted.

He just wished Eloquence had been reading a Bella Kanto story rather than this one, which was slow going. It was not until river pirates entered the scene that the story got interesting.

A shiver of fear worked its way down Teo’s spine, but it was delicious fear, quivering along the edges while he held the scene in his mind and while Eloquence’s grave voice supplied the details, one by one, to be savored. Everything around them was silent except for the splash-song of the river and the plangent cry of an owl overhead. The Dryads were quiet, clustered near the railing, their hair grown together in a great green and brown clump, strewn with tiny amber and yellow flowers, shining in the lamplight as though determined to create the spring they would never know.

Eloquence’s voice graveled with the arrival of the sorcerer in dreadful league with the pirates. Teo shivered. Sorcerers and Sorceresses might do anything. They had surrendered themselves to magic, so their slightest whims and impulses might become real. That was only one of the things that made them so dangerous. All of the magic of the Colleges of Mages in Tabat and Verranzo’s New City were devoted to discovering Sorcerers (and Shifters) and keeping them from taking over the New Continent, lest they destroy it as they had the Old Continent, which was nothing now but fiefdoms of ash and magic detritus.

But in the end both sorcerer and pirates were eluded. Teo thought it would have been more interesting if there had actually been some fighting, rather than just sailing.

Eloquence turned to the next story.

“No, no,” Ridley said. “Tell us about Tabat.”

“Ah, Tabat,” Eloquence said. “What should I tell you? It’s a wonderful city. It sits on the southern coast, fifteen terraces leading down to the water where the harbor lies. The rocks to the west form a range that twists around to protect the harbor, and you can see the Duke’s castle at the highest point, with flags flying blue and gold.”