by Kirby Crow
“Truly beautiful,” Marion said with emotion. “And too generous.”
“Nonsense. Put it on.”
Marion took the Lord Warden's amulet from the box and pinned it to his shirt near his heart. The design was the alchemical symbol for antimony, representing the natural state of man, the strong animal nature, balanced with the reason of gold and the namesake green stone of the city. The stone was poisonous in some forms, inspiring caution. This badge differed from the ornaments worn by subordinate wardens in that it had three smaller green stones to match the larger one.
“Gold for justice, green for vigilance.” Kon clapped his hands heavily on Marion's shoulders. “I'm proud of you, Marion, and proud to welcome you into my family. You’ve chosen to remain known as Casterline, as is your right. All I ask is that your sons will bear the name of Sessane.”
“You have my oath,” Marion said formally. He brushed his thumb over the pin. “Grazie, signore. For everything you've done for me.”
Kon gifted him with one of his rare, distant smiles. “There is nothing I would not do for my family.”
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO
“Let me understand you...” Kon Sessane stripped the velvet gloves from his hands and placed them with care on a crate of clucking hens. “This is Jean Rivard’s request. Not yours?”
“It’s from both of us,” Marion said. The air in the storage room was close with the stink of caged fowl and mice. Marion sneezed as the tread of feet above their heads signaled yet another patron ascending the stairs of the Moray, the cheapest brothel in the Martello.
Jean locked gazes with Kon and crossed his arms. “It’s my request. What of it?”
Candlelight splashed deep shadows in the hollows of Kon’s cheeks. His gray eyes flicked to Jean. “Be silent until I speak to you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Jean,” Marion hissed.
Marion was clearly confused at the hostility between the two of them, and that made Jean feel even worse. It was not betrayal, he told himself. Not really. I came back.
“Magestros, please,” Marion said. “This is not what we discussed.”
“No, it is not,” Kon answered, short and clipped. “The message was that you would make a request of me. Not Jean. The last favor I granted Il principe got more men killed than the spring pox.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Jean broke in. “No one knew the graycloaks were burying treasure on the Spindle. Even Aureo didn’t know that!”
“Nevertheless,” Kon said, “the Spindle was mined and my soldati died. It was your plan to patrol the Spindle for illegals, so you are to blame.”
“None of this matters now,” Marion said. “The boy is in danger because of us. All of us,” he stressed. “Aureo already suspects him, and you know what that means.”
“A barrel of crabs,” Kon said stonily. He lifted his chin and looked at the boy hanging back in the shadows of the cramped room. “You. Come here.”
The boy chuckled. “Do I have a floppy ears and a tail hanging out of my ass? Talk to me like a man and I might obey.”
Kon crossed the room in three giant strides, the black silk of his consulente robes brushing the floor. He examined the boy with a ruthless study. “Who are you to speak to me like that?”
Jean tensed, not liking Kon that close to his new lover. Dominique was nineteen, with curling chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, pretty as a plum. Jean had been using him as a cover for traveling: a Teschio captain taking his pretty lover to the Martello for a night of drinking and a soft bed at an inn. The story was good enough, and it was not untrue, but Jean had only done it because he’d hoped it would annoy Kon. There were other covers just as good that would have involved no one.
Maybe he’d been a little too proud of showing Dominique off, or maybe he’d made some other slight mistake. It was too late now. Aureo was having Dominique followed. It wouldn’t be long before the knives came out and Aureo got his answers in blood. Jean could not allow that to happen.
Kon was taller than Dominique and stared down at him with a ferocious scowl.
Dominique returned the look with a cool appraisal of his own, and after a moment, Kon’s mouth curled in amusement.
Jean saw the glint in Kon's eye and bridled. The horny bastard! Dominique was half Kon’s age, and Kon was eyeing him like he was naked and wrapped in ribbons.
“What's your name, brat?” Kon asked.
“Are you going to write me a letter?”
“Are you claiming you could read it?”
Dominique looked at Jean as he jerked a thumb at Kon. “Funny old bird, ain't he? A parrot. You ask him a question, he asks you one right back.” He studied Kon. “Marion says you're real smart, parrot. Can't see it, myself.”
Kon chuckled. “Fearless. I admire that. Tell me your name, brave boy.”
Jean sidled close to Dominique and put his arm around him possessively. “Put your tongue back in your mouth, bastardo.”
“Jean,” Marion cautioned.
Jean gritted his teeth. “What?” He had known the risk when he involved Dominique. He was angry that he’d spoiled the nice thing he had going, but he had no one to blame but himself. Did he really think Aureo wouldn’t notice the boy?
“Do you want the magestros’ help or not?” Marion asked.
Jean wanted Mika to be safe. Appealing to Kon was the only way. “Not if he’s going to put hands on him.”
Dominique gave him a cool look. “I'll decide whose hands I want on me.”
“You'll do as I say.”
“I think the boy knows his own mind,” Kon said. He smiled charmingly at Dominique. “Don't you... Mika?”
It was the pet name Jean had given Dominique. So Kon had known about him. He just hadn’t given a damn.
Jean grabbed Dominique's arm and whipped him around. “You must need a slap to clear your head, boy.” He gripped the soft curls at the nape of Dominique's neck and bent his neck back.
Jean was amazed when he felt a cold, sharp, point under his chin, like a needle. He hadn't even felt Dominique move.
“I like you, Jean.” Dominique smiled, calm as ever, his neck bared by Jean's grip. “You're fun and you're a good fuck, but we’re done. The next time you think about hitting me... don't. You’ll live longer.”
The needle-sharp point of the throwing dagger pressed, puncturing Jean's skin.
“Let me go,” Dominique said.
Jean backed off and swiped his hand under his chin. His fingers came away red. “Paladin’s fucking cock,” he swore. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
Dominique only shrugged.
Marion watched Jean closely and with caution, as if he were a stranger. His brows gathered in a worried frown. “Jean?”
Jean shook his head. “Nothing. Never mind. Forget it,” he said, flat and without emotion. He shoved Dominique’s shoulder, pushing him close to Kon. “Here, take the slut as a present. I’m done with him.” He turned to leave.
“Wait.” Marion opened the hen cages and removed one of the birds. He sliced the hen’s head neatly off and splashed the blood on the floor. “Put your hands out.”
Jean allowed his hands and the front of his shirt to be smeared with blood. Marion did the same and handed the twitching bird to Kon. “Don’t leave it here,” he murmured. He looked embarrassed. “Apologies, magestros.”
Jean strode from the room without a backward glance.
The Moray was raucous with cheers and whistles. A dancer had come downstairs and was performing a lewd rendition of Paladin’s Surrender on a trestle table, complete with ropes and a pair of partners draped in black sheets to play the Starless Men.
Jean turned his back on the dancers and went to the bar. The storage room had a secret exit. As far as Aureo’s spies in the Moray were concerned, he and Marion had gone in there together with Mika and come out bloody without him. Kon would have to hide the boy for a while, maybe a very long while, but Kon hadn’t looked like he would mind that.
> Jean cursed them both to hell and ordered a beer. Marion joined him. The aging bartender served them without a single comment on the blood.
They drank in silence for a while. The dance came to a climax and the roars of the audience shook the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” Marion said at last.
“Don’t be.”
“About Mika. I’m sorry.”
“I said don’t,” Jean answered, rough and careless. “He was nothing to me, just a nice bit of arse to pass the time. I’m glad he’s gone.”
“All right, Jean,” Marion said softly, eyes all for him.
Jean could not hear him over the crowd, only the shape of his lips moving with the words.
TRIS
Aequora, Otto
(Day 8)
“You told him what?”
“That you were planning to visit a Pae before your wedding night,” Kon repeated calmly.
“Unbelievable.” Tris shook his head, amazed and irritated. “That was an inventive piece of fiction. Inspired, even.”
His father's ironic smile answered him. Kon sat at the kitchen table, smoking a thin brown cigarette and sipping tea from a porcelain cup with a golden rim. A corner of toast with persimmon jam remained on his plate.
Tris collected his own cup and placed it in the basin. He marveled at his father, who with a single word or look could terrify the Consolari, but seemed to enjoy nothing so much as a cup, a good smoke, and a lie. Simple pleasures, he thought, knowing there was nothing simple about it.
“You're having far too much fun teasing my promessa,” Tris said sternly. “When next you see him, you will tell him that it was a joke.”
“Why would I do that?”
Tris wiped his hands on a linen towel. The wide kitchen of rustic wood and peach marble rivaled the kitchen of his father's castello. He planned to learn to cook, and Kon had taken special care to give him a worthy place to practice. Tough vines of late honeysuckle curled in from the window trellis and daily invaded deeper into the room, but he liked their scent too well to cut them back.
He plucked a sprinkle of white blooms. “You know why, and you know very well I'd never go to a Pae. I've seen them on the street. All that powder and paint.” He made a face. “I'm vaguely horrified at the idea. I wouldn’t even know how to go about hiring one.”
“Ask at the Street of Jades, if you're curious.”
Kon managed to seem amused and disinterested at the same time, a trick Tris was sure he'd never master if he lived to be a hundred. He leaned against the marble counter and sniffed the fragile petals, trying to banish his annoyance. Kon could be so trying. “Why am I the only adult in Malachite who's never had sex?”
“You're not. Don't be ridiculous.” Kon blew curling streams of blue smoke from his nose.
Tris twirled a flower between his fingers. Thinking about Marion made his heart feel like a butterfly battering its wings against the wall of his chest. He'd never met a man so determined and earnest in what he wanted from life, and who reached for it so surely. Tris was also very certain there was not a more handsome man in all of Malachite. Golden haired, blue-eyed, wide-shouldered, and with a face that might have been sculpted from marble, Marion's beauty was a legend in the city. More than once he'd heard Marion referred to simply as bell'uomo, and no one ever had a doubt who they were speaking of. There were statues of demi-gods in the Gran Consiglio that paled beside Marion.
“I fear,” Tris murmured, “that Marion finds me quite ridiculous.”
“He finds you irresistible. You own a mirror, little lamb. Look into it once in a while.”
He pulled a petal from the flower impatiently. “I appreciate the compliment, but perhaps you haven't taken into account that I'm not the kind of man Marion is accustomed to.”
“You mean you’re not Jean Rivard.”
He busied his hands with arranging the wilting petals in a row on the windowsill. I mean everything, he thought. Until he met Marion, he had never once defied his father. Once he'd accepted that he could never measure up to Kon Sessane's mighty reputation, he'd tried to shine in other ways. He was obedient. He studied endlessly and devoured every book available to him. He beat his chess master at every round, studied rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and astronomy. He could speak and read six languages, including the dead language of Paladin's time and the speech of Cwen. He was cleverer than any of his tutors, and still it was not enough to win his father’s respect.
He’d be happier if Marion was his son, Tris thought meanly. Maybe that’s why he said yes.
Kon admired qualities in men that Tris knew he'd never possess. Marion, however, possessed those virtues in abundance.
“I own a mirror,” Tris said serenely. “Several. I'm not afraid of competition, but Jean is different. He's one type of beauty, I'm another. I can acknowledge that without conceit. Marion's known him since childhood. They fought the crossbones together and—”
“They are the crossbones. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Were. Past tense, father. Don't get off point.”
Kon tapped his cigarette with a long finger. The ashes fell into a colorful tray of glass lampwork. “This conversation would go easier if you would kindly inform me what the point is.”
Tris hesitated. Kon was cutting to the heart of the matter, paring him down until he confessed his real worry. “They shared so much, for so long. Jean knew Marion as a boy. They survived Aureo Marigny together. How can I hope to compete with that?”
“Men change. Perhaps you haven't taken into account that a man’s palate can evolve with time. All wine tastes the same to the young. Perhaps Marion has matured to the point where he can appreciate a finer vintage.”
Tris blinked. “And I'm the finer vintage?”
“My dear, you're an exquisite vintage, more so because you don't boast of it.” Kon took a last puff of the cigarette before stabbing the coal out into the tray. “I know it's late, but I'm wide awake and hungry.”
Tris was instantly contrite. “Tea was a bit scanty, wasn't it? I'm sorry. We're still moving in and I didn't have anything prepared.”
“Why are you apologizing? I came unannounced and very late. No guest has a right to expect more.” Kon stood up. “But the fact remains that I hate to dine alone. Would you care to accompany me to the Corsair?”
Tris stared. Kon was a longtime patron of the Corsair, but he had never extended an invitation before. The salon's orgies were scandalous even by the standards of the Colibri. “What brings this on?”
Kon sniffed and looked down at him. “You're master of your own household now. You should find a cultural guild to give your support to. Some artist or actor. Or perhaps a useful tradesman. The guild of potters, for example.”
“Ah.” Kon never suggested anything lightly. “The guild of potters. This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the terrace of the Gran Consiglio needs repair, would it?”
“Politics, son. All is politics. You're a Sessane, and with that comes many expectations.”
“I thought your strength is that you never do what's expected.”
“Ah, no.” Kon held up his index finger. “I do what's expected of me quite often. I never do what is predictable.”
“Oh, we're chopping semantics tonight?” Tris chuckled. “Now I know it's Aequora.”
“There are many nights I don't sleep, not just during Aequora.” Kon gathered up his cloak—heavy black satin sewn with silver, the lining in multi-colored brocade—and draped it over one shoulder. The pleats fell to his knees. “Are you coming?”
***
The Citta Alta was also called the Island of Laurels, where lived the great artists, the rich merchants, the professori, the engineers and conservators, and the guardiers of the Gaol. It was the home of the Villa Merlo, where the children and young boys lived with the priests of Paladin, as well as the academies, the men of the Consolari and lesser councils, and the wardens of the Black Keep. South of the Citta Alta was the island named Ma
rtello, with its Copper District filled with the modest homes of boat captains, tradesmen, carpenters, masons, stevedores, and all manner of skilled laborers. At the eastern end of the Martello was the Carcassa refuse yard and the deep harbor and bustling quays of the Arsenale.
Until Tris moved into the Myrtles with Marion, he had never lived anywhere but the Castello Rosa. Kon had rejected the small manse that traditionally housed the magestros' family and purchased the castle when Tris was a baby. Kon had never allowed him to study with the other boys at the Villa Merlo, instead employing private tutors at great expense. His father had also never permitted him to cross the Canal Catena to the boisterous, plebian Martello, and certainly he was forbidden to seek out the Zanzare slums. He had never known Malachite as anything but a fine, orderly city of clean streets, tidy insulae, ornate castles, and markets patrolled by guardiers in their red and black. Wherever he went, men stepped aside and touched their foreheads in respect for his father's name.
But some areas of the Citta Alta were forbidden, too. He had glimpsed the alleyways of the Colibri while drifting by on the Canal Catena, or in a covered lowcoach with his father. The Falena tavern was only one such infamous den of the Colibri, and the Corsair was a notorious salon of artists, musicians, painters, prostitutes, and actors. Until tonight, he had never even considered visiting there. He would not disgrace his father's name like that.
Kon could not abide hired sandoli. Their sandolo was not painted the familiar bright blue that signaled a vessel for hire, but was pure black with the red Sessane crest on the hull. It was also larger than the regular vessels and sported a lush, curtained cabin. The sandolier was one Tris had known since childhood, a man who could navigate the canals of the Citta Alta with his eyes closed. Tris reclined on a fat bunch of cushions and pushed the curtains aside to watch the stars drift in the sky, picking out constellations and planets. Swarms of fireflies confused the pattern and led his eye to create new ones with fanciful titles.
