Beasts of Tabat (8 page)

“Fifteen terraces? How do people get up and down them?” Teo asked.

“Stairways, and plenty of them, and the water lifts. Or if you don’t mind paying, the tram line. There’s three …”

“What’s a tram?” Teo interrupted. “It sounds like a kind of basket.”

“And in a way it is, for great metal baskets full of people slide up and down the wires. It costs a copper skiff. I’ll give you each a coin to ride the center one, the Great Tram, which runs along the Heart Garden.”

He paused and glanced out the window.

“What are you looking for?”

“River pirates, like in the story,” Ridley answered before Eloquence could. “They lurk in the bends, though, and we’re in a straight stretch right now. Isn’t that so, Eloquence?”

“Aye, but it never hurts to be careful,” the Pilot said. “What I heard, though, was the Captain’s door. You boys best skedaddle before he comes patrolling.” He closed his book and rose.

Urdo’s footsteps came up the stairs as Teo and Ridley ducked behind the crate. The footsteps paused, presumably to survey the silent Dryads, then continued on to the Pilot’s house, where Eloquence already sat.

That night dreams of the river pirates haunted Teo. He woke, imagining every shudder of the boat was a pirate climbing aboard, knife clenched between his or her teeth.

Gradually his heart stilled. He lay back to dream of Tabat, and watching Bella Kanto fight.

***

Chapter Eight

Judgments

Sheets woven of silk from the Rose Kingdom cover Alberic’s bed, but my bed at home is the most wonderful place to be.

Ice glazes my window, takes the sunlight pouring through it and makes it into glowing lace, while the shadow of a Fairy outside flits past. I wake fast—I always do. But then I linger.

The sheets, thinly-woven cotton from the Southern Isles, cover a thick swan-down mattress, and are matched by an equally feathery comforter. The chimney leading up from the kitchen fire, lit earliest of any household fire, puts off a wash of drowsy heat from where it runs behind the bed. The air practically undulates with the heady smell put forth from the bouquet set on the low table near the window: Winter roses and hothouse-forced jonquils and tuberose.

Marta had placed a standing order. It amuses me to see how long it will take the Merchant to remember she’s done so. I suspect she has those bills sent quarterly, for she’s had plenty of time to cancel it.

A tap on the door. “Be wanting your breakfast, Miss Bella?”

“Aye,” I call. I slide from between the sheets and go to the door.

It opens to reveal a laden tray in the hands of the landlady. Abernia Freeholder runs one of the most select boarding houses in the city, but few of her customers can boast that she personally brings them breakfast in the morning. Abernia’s happy, not just for the steady flow of coin to her pocket, but to have associated glamour for the house in the form of a famous Gladiator as tenant.

Abernia sets the tray down and moves back to the door. “Your cousin sent a messenger, saying as you might want to join her for lunch.”

“Excellent, lunch.” Will there be another lecture about Adelina? It’s getting tiresome. Perhaps my taking a new lover will dissuade Leonoa. I certainly can’t go back to Marta. I burned that bridge far too thoroughly. I’ll have to find some new ardor.

The set of crystal and silver armor sitting against the wall regards me as I dress after eating. It’s waiting for the fight. Then it will be time to put it away for another year.

I splash my face with water and slip two good luck charms around my neck. This close to the Games, I can’t be too careful.

My home does not smell of linseed oil and turpentine, but rather of domestic comfort: linens and lemon oil and the candles Abernia burns to keep down the smell of Scholar Reinart’s dog Cavall, which she used to burn up here, when Gelerta was still alive.

I picked this house for its quiet. I could afford a household of my own, but that is tedious, all that arranging of things, so why bother? Abernia sees all my needs are met and houses me well in her third floor rooms with their wide windows overlooking her high-walled little garden letting out onto the Canal.

Here on the Fourth Terrace of the city, we are far from the factory noise of the Slumpers and close to shops and the largest of the tram lines, the first one built: the Great Tram itself. The shadows of its lines cut across the garden’s snow in blue slashes.

The garden keeps me entertained, though Abernia doesn’t approve. Two years ago, I kept her from calling a Pestcatcher when the Fairies first nested in the evergreen outside my window. I knew they were lesser Fairies that wouldn’t group more than half a dozen, and no danger to anyone. Not like their feral kindred in the wilderness who produce great stinging hives that kill unwary travelers or those who come in search of Fairy honey.

I’ve trained these with sugar lumps and bits of table meat. When I lean out into the cold morning air outside the window, they fly around me, darting in to take candies from my fingertips. They chatter like parrots, too high-pitched for most to pick out words.

Where another might have named them, I’ve listened long enough to know the names they have for themselves: Dust and Yellowhair, and their offspring, Finch and Flutter and Wall. They shelter in the evergreen and build nests of scraps of paper and rags. In this cold, they wrap bits of cloth around themselves in mimicry of clothing.

They like candy the best, but meat second to that, the fresher and bloodier the better. They scorn vegetables or breads, though they will take fruit when it is at its ripest, just before it spoils.

They trust me.

Yellowhair lights on my fingertip, and I can see her body, the wings like bits of glass or candyfloss, the limbs so fine and spindly. So perfect. Her wings flicker, keeping her balanced, moving so fast that you can’t see them, only their shadow in the air.

She eyes the line of mirrors lining the sill, set vertically along it to repel ghosts. Fairies have a love-hate relationship with mirrors. I’ve seen them scold them and try to feed them more than once.

Abernia hates the Fairies, but I pay her enough to overlook my eccentricities and to ignore the demands of the estate a few houses down, whose garden the Fairies raid each summer.

I’ve assured her I won’t let them in the room. I’ve only broken that promise once or twice, when it was truly cold.

The Fairy clings to my hand, watching me.

What do they think of me? I have tamed them as surely as Jolietta ever tamed any Beast, but I used different methods, bribes and caresses. I turned on her in the end; would these Fairies turn on me if they thought it would gain them more candies?

I would like to think not, but Beasts are ever true to their natures.

Humans too, perhaps.

* * *

Lucya tells me the new student, Skye, was the best in her class, that Dina was grooming her to face me eventually. But she hasn’t had the advantage of my training. Over half of those who’ve faced me in the arena have been to this school and were trained to my standards. Sometimes the other schools do produce prodigies, but I suspect it’s natural talent shining through, not any of their teaching. That’s the only time I’ve faced men standing for Spring, when another school has produced such a contender, and Lucya counts each time a loss for the Brides of Steel.

I test the new students one by one. The first two, the ones Lucya has taken because they’ll swell her money chest, are unremarkable. Like most new students, meeting me leaves them nearly speechless, staring down at their hands as though afraid my gaze will turn them to stone.

Not so Skye. She’s dark-skinned, old Continent blood, and holds herself with the arrogance of the well-to-do. Her eyes are jet-black, set round with lashes so thick they’d make a poet weep. She’s tall, with the angularity of her age, slightly taller than me, but I’m used to that. She meets my gaze with a hint of challenge, a hint of something else too, and steps into the ring with training sword up, ready to meet me.

I test her methodically. She’s fast and strong, but she doesn’t know many of the counters for my moves.

She’s pretty as she dodges. Graceful.

I ignore that, leave her a few bruises as I feint, and easily avoid her counters. She’s breathing hard by the time we’re done. That’s not good. She’ll have to work to build up endurance, do the exercises I lead the best students in, build her reserves of strength if she thinks (as all of them do) that she’ll meet me in reality one day.

I smile as I step out of the ring. A mistake. She grins at me as though we were equals, puffs up her chest, knowing that she’s done better than the other two.

I make my tone severe as I say, “Adequate.” That takes the wind out of her sails, and lets her know she’s been presumptuous. I see her droop and an unexpected pang touches me. Still, I keep my face stern. It does no good to coddle them.

Later she catches up with me in a corridor, comes running up fast and desperate enough that she almost bumps into me. She skids to a halt as I pause, looking at her.

The words rush out of her. “I just want you to know it means a lot to me that you’re my instructor. I’ve read all the penny-wides about you. You’re why I wanted to become a Gladiator.”

I nod. She waits as though expecting me to say something back to her, but adulation bores me. I’ve seen this look in the eyes of students before, many times.

She says, “I will work very hard in order to catch up. I’ve studied hard, but I know that the students at the Brides of Steel are the best. That’s why I wanted to come here.”

I nod again.

Color rises to her cheeks as she stands looking at me.

I say, “I will come by at dawn. You’ll go with the group I am training.”

Now that is what she was waiting for. Her eyes sparkle, her lips purse in delight, and she throws her shoulders back, standing a little taller, a little straighter.

I nod again and go about my way without saying anything more.

I don’t tell her that she’s the best I’ve ever seen. I don’t tell her what enormous potential I glimpse within her. Such talk only makes them overconfident.

I wander the school, pretending to myself that I am noting items that need taking care of, but truth be told, Lucya is far more efficient than I.

Even in her hobbies. She grows a few plants to supplement the kitchen as well; starts them indoors each year and brings them outside only when it’s warm enough. While they are growing, she sweeps her hand back and forth among them, bending the stems but not breaking them. This makes them tougher, makes them used to the blows that they’ll experience later from wind and rain.

That’s my philosophy with students as well. Bend them, but do not break them.

Sometimes you need to find out how far they can bend first.

* * *

I never know what mood Alberic will be in. Sometimes he’s imperious, sometimes wanting to be dictated to.

Today he receives me in the menagerie, where he’s examining new acquisitions, a medley of Dryads. He’s been trying to breed them lately.

He’s explained it to me. A forward-looking man, he knows someday the forests will stop yielding the Dryad logs that fuel the city. Even now they’re scarcer by far than a few decades ago when the College of Mages first learned the secret of using them to fuel the Great Tram and the engines here beneath Alberic’s castle.

A sullen and unpromising lot, these five Dryads. Hair gone straw brittle with travel’s rigors, their skin stretched over their bones till you can see the shape beneath it.

Chained while in his presence, the custom ever since one tried to strangle the Duke three years back. They’re stronger than they look.

He sits on a carved wooden chair looking them over. Sometimes he chooses a Beast for his bedchamber, but he won’t pick one of these. They’re too miserable looking, lacking the spark of defiance he likes. He beckons me over. I disengage from the cluster of servants and advisors and go to his side.

“You have a good eye for these things, my dear. Which shall I take?”

I don’t want to play this game. Offer them a slow fatal existence in the menagerie or a quick death that at least doesn’t force them to endure his experiments?

I shrug and smile. He’s not a kind man, he never has been. He flicks his hand, irritated by my refusal, and I come closer to pronounce my judgment.

He gestures. A Dryad is dragged to kneel at his feet so he can look her over. He leans down to run his hand along her shoulder, testing the texture of her skin.

I’d thought he’d wanted some bed-play from me, but it seems that today is just about making me dance to his tune. He’s been doing that increasingly this year, and I know why. The elections are still coming, much as he would like to pretend that they’re not. He’s caught by the decision his ancestors made when Tabat was first founded. Easy enough for them to promise a descendent would step down when the time came. Now he’s living with that promise, and it eats at him more and more every day.

He’s always been a pretty man, but anger’s eroding that from the inside.

I don’t like standing here. It’s too much like being back under Jolietta’s tutelage, under her rule, being forced to help her train her Beasts. I entertain myself with thoughts of Skye, of how she danced sideways when we sparred. A good move, and one I might have used myself, that crab-step and feint combined. I told Lucya I’d take Skye as one of the special students. She was unsurprised. She likes to think she can predict what I will do.

No sign of this as I examine the Dryads. If I don’t approve them, though, Alberic will send them to the furnaces and use the magic of their burning flesh and wood to fuel the city. This is part of the magic that keeps Tabat alive. For the last twenty years, ever since the College of Mages discovered the process that releases Dryad magic, Alberic has sent expeditions out to harvest them. He keeps a few in his menagerie, for entertainment and for the sake of his collection’s completion, and if—or rather when—they dissatisfy him, to the furnaces they go. I hold their lives in my hands.

It’s not a feeling I like.

“Which?” he says again. I point at random.

“That one.” I don’t look at her or at any of them. I feel as miserable as I did with Jolietta when she winnowed her stables.

Alberic points at her as well. She goes in one direction; her fellows are dragged in another. I don’t think about their fates. I don’t want to know.

I don’t even know if I’ve done her a favor.

“Come and see the menagerie. The Dragon gets cranky when you do not come speak to it often enough. And I have some new Beasts, kinds you may never have seen before.”

I doubt that somewhat. During my time with Jolietta, Beasts flowed through the estate. Some she nursed, others she trained, and others she bought to study. I say, “I need to get back to the school. I have students there waiting to be trained.”

Alberic laughs. “You don’t fool me,” he says. “I have never known anyone who liked Beasts as little as you do. You never want to come and see the menagerie.”

I don’t explain to him that I actually like Beasts, that they prove better company, sometimes, than Humans. But I do not like the menagerie, do not like seeing the Beasts in their cages, their enclosures. They should be free, I think, even though such thoughts mark me as an abolitionist. But I can’t preach sedition, for I’m a public figure and have responsibilities.

I remember a Beast, a Unicorn. Jolietta used me to catch it. I remember the weight of its head in my lap, the coarse shine of its mane, the way its flower-pupilled eyes looked at me, and the smell of lilies and vanilla that seeped from its fur. They are rare, Unicorns. Jolietta knew she could get a pretty price for this one.