Primrose gritted her teeth and tried not to cry at the unfairness of his accusations. Stupid brother.
Thomas Aquinas was an absolute corker. And Percy was tolerably certain no one had ever thought to link those particular words together before in the history of mankind. But there was no denying his popularity with the newly formed Spotted Custard philosophy-club-meets-book-group. Aquinas caused a sensation.
Percy had selected Summa Theologica (of course). It was a most agreeable collective that gathered in Mr Tarabotti’s cell to mull over the implications of human law versus natural law versus supernatural law and the relative merits of each when applied to preternaturals. Rue insisted that despite the fact that there was only one of her, and more metanaturals were unlikely ever to occur, she was almost comparable to a preternatural and ought to be included in the discussion. Which devolved them quickly into a debate on the nature of personhood and the rights of those with only partial souls. Even Spoo got in on it. Spoo had only recently learned to read but she was a crack at it. After discovering Percy’s library was on hand to loan books, Spoo was making quite a nuisance of herself. Percy didn’t mind overmuch, so long as she returned the books unsmudged.
Since Spoo was mildly terrified of Percy, the books always came back in pristine condition. Then she would hesitantly ask him about something else that interested her and he would consult his cloud about it and find her some tangential work and send her on her way. Percy wasn’t a hoarder, he liked to share his knowledge.
Anyway, when Spoo discovered that he and Rue (whom she practically worshipped) were reading philosophy together, she asked if she could as well. Which brought Virgil into the mix, because they were chums. Rue brought along Anitra and glared at him about it. Which Percy suspected had something to do with his lack of apology about the aravani question. Fortunately, the Drifter woman didn’t seem to be holding a grudge against him.
All this meant that Rodrigo Tarabotti’s quarters were overflowing with ship’s navigator, ship’s captain, head deckling, valet, lead interpreter, Footnote (of course), and, last but not least, ship’s prisoner.
Spoo and Virgil were rather endearing in their enthusiasm, even if Aquinas was a little much for such young souls. If Percy was being honest with himself, which he did try to be within the confines of his own head, Aquinas was a little much for him too.
With nothing better to do, trapped for several days in the grey, they agreed to move on to the next book and pass it around quickly, so they might discuss again sooner rather than later.
The discussion having come to its natural conclusion (Aquinas will do that to a crowd) they all turned to Percy expectantly.
Percy frowned at Rodrigo. “Do you feel improved, Mr Tarabotti?”
“What?” The Italian looked confused.
“Well, isn’t this a course of improvement?” Percy looked to Rue for help. Do I have this wrong?
“That’s what I thought,” said his Captain, grinning at her cousin. Something about Percy’s question seemed to amuse her greatly.
Percy slumped. I must have said something wrong again. He wracked his brain, which squelched at him, exhausted by charts and philosophy. Did Rodrigo not know our intent?
Anitra said, “Are we supposed to tell him that outright? Doesn’t it defeat the purpose, him knowing we are after improving him?” She darted quick, hesitant, dark-eyed glances at the Italian man.
“Know what?” wondered Rodrigo.
“That we are trying to save you.” Rue didn’t stop grinning.
Rodrigo frowned darkly, reminding them all of the murdering scoundrel who had first come aboard the Spotted Custard. “Basta. There’s nothing to save. I have no soul.”
Anitra gasped in a small hurt way.
Spoo and Virgil looked at each other, surprised not by the statement but by the vehemence.
Percy felt a little like a hero who had somehow fallen. He struggled to make the man understand. “That is the point of our whole discussion. We aim to see if we can reform you with reason, as we cannot save you with theology.”
Rodrigo Tarabotti sat back, long fingers steepled like the churches he would never have been allowed to enter. “You can reform a daemon?”
“That’s the point,” said Rue. “We don’t think you are a daemon. The argument being that soullessness doesn’t necessarily make you evil. Just soulless. Evil is what you do with that absence.”
Percy tapped his cheek with a stylus he’d picked up at some point for some reason he could no longer remember. “Personally, I don’t even believe soulless is the correct way of thinking about a preternatural, nor for a metanatural. I think it’s simply scientists using religion to explain away a thing they do not understand.” Percy tried not to sound as annoyed as he felt. Really, it’s lazy science to go about anything that way.
Virgil tutted at him and took the stylus away. No doubt he was marking up his face with carbon smudges something fierce.
Rodrigo looked disbelieving, and then humbled. “Thus making my whole past a lie.”
“Not to mention the attitudes of various churches for generations. But that’s Percy for you.” Rue had no sense of propriety.
Percy shrugged. “Worse things have happened.”
“Not to me. You are cruel, professor.” Rodrigo’s dark eyes were introspective. His shoulders curved downwards. He looked… What is that? Shaken?
Percy would have none of it. This was self-pity disguised as an attack. “No. Your past was cruel to you. I am honest. Now, let me see, what was I saying? Oh yes. If the premise of the theory is at root faulty, to wit, that you are soulless and Rue here has only half of a soul some of the time” - Rue inclined her head and Percy continued - “then we must, perforce, formulate a new supposition.”
“Si? Big words, but I think I am with you.”
“And what supposition is that, Percy?” Rue played right into his hands. Percy thought, not for the first time, she might have made a decent stage actress had she not been born, well, quite rich.
Percy gestured at Rodrigo with the flat of his hand. “That you, my good man, are capable of basic human decency.”
“Oh. Now. Professor! Too far.” The Italian looked legitimately appalled at this accusation.
Spoo giggled.
Virgil glared at them all. Percy ignored his valet. What did a valet know of logical suppositions?
He hastened to make himself clear. “I’m certainly not accusing you of possessing basic human decency, or practicing it, Mr Tarabotti. I’m merely intimating that you likely possess the capacity for such.”
Mr Tarabotti tugged at his ear in a pained way. “You say there was…” He faltered on his phrasing, he was never very good with past tense. The rest of the book group held their collective breath. “I had a choice?”
Percy nodded curtly.
“Oh.” He looked… Percy could not quite figure the man’s face. Crestfallen perhaps. Something more.
They left him then. Best let a man reshape his view of the world on his lonesome.
Rue, who had no tact, commented on the man’s expression once they were outside in the hallway. Fortunately, she waited until Virgil and Spoo skipped off, leaving only her and Anitra behind with Percy to mull over what had so recently occurred.
“He looked shattered,” said Rue, and she looked sad. She had been hiding it before. Hiding it well. Is it part of being metanatural? Percy wondered. To take on other moods and other modes with such ease? Just like she takes on shapes. He never could. Too blunt, old Percy. Too honest. Lost his friendships because of it, not that he ever had that many.
Percy nodded. Shattered was a good way of putting it.
“Will this break him?” Anitra’s voice was low and soft, with a tremble to the question.
Percy was surprised at the very idea. Thought, of course, is powerful. But how can the study and discussion of philosophy destroy a man as tough as Rodrigo Tarabotti?
Rue was pract
ical and overly honest. “He’s broken already.”
Percy nodded again. True enough.
“You are harsh, Miss Prudence.” Anitra’s big brown eyes were filled with sympathetic pain. Percy wondered that anyone could be so compassionate. But then she was Formerly Floote’s adopted granddaughter. The ghost had quite revered his former master. Alessandro Tarabotti, Rue’s grandfather, was (so far as Percy could gather) not unlike Rodrigo. No doubt Anitra had learned compassion for deadly preternaturals at the feet of one who understood them best.
Rue defended herself. “Acknowledging the break gives us an opportunity to fix it.”
“I think we should invite Formerly Floote to join our group - once we are out of the grey again, of course.” Percy said it in that way he knew drove everyone around him spare, because he had followed his own train of thought, and they had not. Thus it seemed as if he wasn’t paying attention to their conversation and was starting a new one without cause. When, of course, it was all connected.
Anitra and Rue rounded on him. Anitra looked confused but Rue asked, “Why?”
“Because he was Alessandro Tarabotti’s valet. I think he may understand our troubled Italian friend better than most.” Better than anyone else aboard this ship.
“Because he once lived with his own version?” Rue’s tawny eyes were squinted in understanding.
“Exactly. And loved him.”
Rue started. “You think Floote was in love with my grandfather?”
Percy gave her a funny look. I thought everyone knew that. “Love of a kind. In love? I cannot say, but loved, certainly. How else do you explain his excessive loyalty?”
Rue and Anitra exchanged startled looks.
“Percy.” Rue tilted her head at him. “Sometimes you are so perceptive it’s uncanny, and the rest of the time you’re a ninnyhammer.”
Percy nodded. “You are not the first to notice this. Of course, I think I’m perceptive all the time, and it’s simply that the rest of the time you can’t follow my superior intellect.”
Rue said to Anitra, “And there he goes, off bobbing for arrogance at the bottom of the pickle barrel.”
Anitra gave a small smile. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s worse than Mr Tarabotti.”
Rue laughed. “He does come off as awfully soulless, doesn’t he?”
Percy did not rise to the bait. Which only proved their point, of course, but he would not be mismanaged. “Ladies, do pay attention. Our objective, as I understand it, is to make our charming friend there think critically about his past actions and realise that how he was raised was a manipulation that worked against his best interests. Not to mention the best interests of the world around him. Am I right?”
Rue nodded.
Anitra said, “I believe that has already begun.”
“And with this philosophy club we are giving him a new foundation, a way forward into feelings of benevolence towards his fellow man, as well as a means for him to believe in his own capacity for objective critical choice. I’m merely pointing out, ladies, that by doing this we also give him the capacity to eventually question us about our agenda.”
“Percy, sometimes you are as bad as Aquinas.” Rue was clearly getting annoyed.
Percy glared at his captain. “My point is merely this: we do have an agenda. And the very manner by which we are encouraging him to become less a killer and more a civilised gentleman will also provide him the means to question our own motives.”
“Oh,” said Rue. Understanding creased her smooth forehead.
“Oh dear,” added Anitra, following Percy’s reasoning as well.
“Independent thought,” emphasised Percy, “is independent thought. We cannot control the outcome. And if we try, we risk becoming the very thing we fear and are persuading him against. Evil.” He was blunt in order to drive his point home. He hoped both of them fully understood the implications of a proper philosophy club.
“So? What do we do then? I would rather turn him than see him hung for treason, be it in my country or his. He is, after all, my only cousin.”
Percy shrugged. “The only one you know of.”
Rue blanched at that.
“So what more can we do?” Anitra wrung her hands together, the bangles on her wrist flashing occasionally in the dim gas lighting of the hallway.
“What is it, in the end, that turns a man to the path of righteousness?” asked Percy, genuinely interested. Women, after all, were supposed to understand such things.
“Tea?” suggested Primrose, popping out of her own room to join them at that exact moment. She grinned. Apparently, all her worry over Miss Sekhmet had passed for the time being.
Percy glared. “Be serious, Tiddles.”
“Well, at the risk of idiocy, having only just joined the conversation, may I remind you of that old saying?” His sister closed her eyes to think. “To render a man’s soul without religion requires logic, love, loyalty, or legal tender.”
Percy nodded. Pleased. “Exactly, sister. So we are assuming Mr Tarabotti does in fact have some kind of salvageable consciousness or functioning emotions. Right now we are collectively trying logic. I recommend we attempt the other three as well: love, loyalty, and legal tender.”
Rue put a hand to her throat. “Percival Tunstell, how Machiavellian. I should never have thought it. You. Devious.”
Percy tilted his head back. “Don’t push me, Rue, I’m unwilling to sacrifice myself. I’m not that noble.”
“I say, Percy! What on earth do you mean?” All three ladies looked at him in utter surprise, but it was Prim who asked the question.
Really, thought Percy, am I the only one who pays attention to what is actually going on aboard this ship? And I don’t even like people. “I mean to say, I’m not willing to play the part of a seducer in order to try and render him in love.”
Primrose sputtered. Rue laughed. Anitra looked upset and thoughtful.
Silence descended.
Finally Anitra said, tentatively, “He gave you an opening?”
Percy shrugged. “So to speak.”
Primrose gasped. “Percy! Never say you…!”
Percy glared at her. “What’s so wrong with it? No, don’t answer. Simply because you are all caught up in society’s standards, never think I share your weak-willed pandering to the expectations of aristocratic snobs. You know me better than that. You all do. I don’t care what people think.”
Rue took a swallow and stepped forward. “You aren’t of the Dama persuasion, are you?”
Percy sniffed. “No, I’m not. Which is why you can’t use me on Rodrigo.”
“Oh,” said Rue, then, “Oh! But you think he might be?”
Anitra gave a pained little gasp.
Percy frowned at himself. Clearly I am doing this very badly indeed. Ah well, I’ve messed everything up, I might as well be straight with them. The thing is, Percy being direct with women had never done him any favours.
“Ladies. I am afraid I must be blunt, prepare yourselves.”
“Percy, are you trying to be… nice?” Rue grinned.
Percy glanced at Anitra, who was still looking upset. Poor thing, she seemed to be having a rough time of it of late. He took a breath. “It is my understanding that Mr Tarabotti favours both females and males. A varied diet, if you would.”
His sister looked, if possible, even more shocked, which didn’t really matter to Percy. She would pull herself forth from her ridiculousness or she would remain forever unhappy. There is nothing I can do to help her in the matter of her own heart when she willfully persists in ignoring it.
Rue, on the other hand, looked intrigued.
Percy risked another glance at Anitra. The sweet little interpreter had brightened up, even relaxed slightly at his crass statement. Good. Percy nodded to himself, gave a curt little bow to the ladies, and made for the safety of his library as quickly as possible.
Behind him he heard Primrose say, in a h
issed voice, “Is that possible? I mean, to like both?”
“Anitra, are you interested in our handsome criminal?” That was from Rue.
Percy did not hear what Anitra said to that, if anything.
He turned back to remind them, “Four ways, remember, ladies: logic, love, loyalty, or legal tender. You are, so far, thinking on only the first two.”
He was rather proud of that for an exit line.
So far as Primrose Tunstell was concerned, this was not a particularly pleasant journey thus far. First there was the disastrous confrontation in the hallway with the werecat-who-shall-remain-snubbed, then her brother was an utter bother, then everyone got all excited about philosophy, and then they became disgustingly direct about perverted Italians.
I am prone to thinking of my brother as bumbling through life in that obtuse manner of his, and then he surprises me by noticing the oddest things. Prim tried to flinch away from what Percy had intimated in the hallway. She could not quite countenance it. She had accepted, as one must after continued exposure to Lord Akeldama, that there were men who preferred the company of (and presumably some form of physical intimacy with) other men. Primrose shuddered to contemplate how that might even work. She did not like to think on, at all, the fact that logic then dictated that there be women who felt the same about other women. Because contemplating how that might function was shudder-inducing as well, although not in quite the same sort of way.
There were the practical dictates of the marriage bed to consider, of course, of which her own understanding was limited. No doubt Rue would be happy to elucidate in detail if her relations with Quesnel were proceeding apace. Not that Prim wanted to know, but at least she had that resource. Rue and Quesnel remained rather disgustingly happily unmarried, but they were as good as - if one took matters of the carnal into account.
And now. Well, and now it seemed there might be those who enjoy the intimacy of both. And Percy, of all people, seemed utterly unperturbed about this. Primrose herself had little exposure to Rodrigo Tarabotti, and now she thought she would limit it even further. She wasn’t certain how she felt about this revelation regarding his character. That character already being besmirched, not to say tarnished.
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