by John Tristan
“Etan?”
I paused. “Yes, sir?”
“You shall be more than a plaything for—” he twisted his face. “You shall be more than this.”
I looked up at him. It might have been the Count’s Blood that lent my Adornment its magic—but it was Tallisk’s design, Tallisk’s skill, that truly created it. He saw me as his, I realized. The knowledge made my heart nestle in my throat. “I know, sir,” I said softly. “You shall make me so.” Then I turned away, and left him silent and alone.
Chapter Seventeen
The date of the feast had been set for a week hence. A single day after the contract had been negotiated, one of the Count’s servants had brought us the news, along with our display-clothes. Those had been brought in lovely wooden boxes, which we were casually informed we could keep as gifts, and wrapped in thin tissue-paper. The paper was blue and white, the colors of Karan’s house, and soft as silk.
With Isadel’s he had sent a silver pomander. It fell out of the folds, unremarked upon, as she unwrapped it, regarding his choice with a businesslike expression. It was a long skirt of crimson velvet, slit high to the hip. She held it up. “Well, it’s a good thing the flame on my stomach’s finished now. This will expose it for sure.”
We were in the dining room, which was empty save for the two of us and the two boxes on the table. Yana and Doiran were busy with their own work, and Tallisk could not be disturbed to fuss over our clothes, so Isadel took the task of it in hand.
I looked over her shoulder at the skirt. I could see no other clothing in the empty box. “Are you to wear no, uh, no...”
She laid the skirt back in the box, careful of its delicate seams. “No, of course not. We don’t get hired to cover our Adornments.”
“Still,” I said, “you would never see a woman in the street so bare.”
“Well, no, but she would have nothing to show, Etan. When we do our work well, no one sees our bodies as bared flesh. We are moving art.”
I chewed this over. “Count Karan—”
“Count Karan,” she said, “might be our patron, but he is not who I bare my Adornments for. He has us made because it is...the done thing, not because he is a connoisseur of art.”
I traced my fingers over the lacquered top of my box. I had not yet opened it; I half feared to. “Do you know what he asked? What the Count asked of me?”
“Yes. I know.” She closed her box with a snap.
My mouth had gone dry. I bit my lip. “Do you know what he expects of me?”
“Yes, Etan,” she said, more gently. “He asked the same thing of me.”
“Was it—was he—?” My face felt furnace hot.
She shrugged. “It—he—is tolerable enough.” A quick grin lit her face. “Sometimes, it can even be a pleasant diversion. But don’t dwell on it so much; your true work is the display. His Grace may not appreciate the art as much as the skin it’s inked on, but be sure that his friends have eyes.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She nodded curtly. “You’ll do fine. Besides, I’ll be there.”
“What, the whole time?”
She saw my face and laughed. “Count Karan is like a child with a box of candies. Why have one when you can eat them all at once? Now enough of this, let’s see what he’ll have you wear, shall we?” Still chuckling, she opened the box, carefully exhuming its tissue-wrapped contents.
When she lifted my outfit from its wrappings, all other thoughts fled; all I could think was how bare I’d be with that scrap of fabric my only covering.
It was, as far as I could tell, no more than a simple leather breechclout, fastened with scarves of leaf-green silk. It would leave precious little of me to the imagination. I fingered the scarves. “What am I to do with this?”
“I’ve seen boys wear this before,” she said. “It’s taken from an old Surammer style.” Her mouth curled in half a smile. “Perhaps you’re meant to be a herald of peace.”
“Oh.” I looked it over once more, the fine dark leather and the silk. I thought I could read a thousand books and always envy Isadel her easy knowledge.
With care, she put the breechclout back in its papery nest. “Come,” she said, smiling. “We’ll try on our clothes, shall we? You’ll have to be comfortable moving in it, if you’ll be displayed so.”
She was right. It took hours of practice before I felt anything less than a trussed bird, trapped and wingless, in the offered breechclout. My posture, my expression, even my way of walking had to change to suit the way I was to be displayed; to do anything less would be like showing a beautiful painting in a ragged, rotting frame.
Isadel ran me through sequences of steps, correcting everything from the tilt of my head to the sway of my hips with the effortless sharpness of a musician pinpointing a false note. By the end of it, I was footsore and stumbling—but a little less ignorant for all of that, and that was worth more than my sore feet.
* * *
The night before the feast, we were sent to bed at sunset after a simple meal. We were to be fresh and rested for the next day’s display. It was a daunting prospect; I did not think I could have slept had Doiran drugged my soup. The sky was barely dimmed. I could still see it, purple-blue, peeking under the curtain.
Yana had been sent to purchase perfume and cosmetics; Isadel had her favored odors and colors already, but I required a different palette, a more masculine scent. I’d seen the cosmetics piled on the table in Tallisk’s atelier. He had claimed indifference to the niceties of display, but he still checked each pencil and dye against his inks to make sure it would not clash, and he sniffed the chosen perfumes to check them against his sensitive nose. Three of Yana’s choices were discarded before I had the pick of them.
Looking at the shifting colors of the sky, I wondered how I’d look tomorrow, primped and perfumed, the frame for my Adornments polished to a shine. I wondered what the Count would think. I wondered if he would smear the color on my mouth with his.
I must have fallen into some sort of sleep then, because the next I knew I was sitting up and blinking in the dark grey of nightfall. Some sound, some prescience, had drawn me out of slumber. The door to my room opened, slow and soundless, and I saw the soft gold glow of a lamp in a shadowed hand.
“Who’s there?”
A moment later and my eyes had adjusted to the light: it was Tallisk. He wore a robe, and his hair was loose and askew.
“Sir? What is it?”
He entered without speaking and set the lamp down on my bedside table. Its light turned the green of my Adornment autumn-golden. The tattooed leaves fluttered as if caught in a gale; I almost thought that unfelt wind would tear them from my skin.
He sat down on the edge of my bed, his face turned against the wall. The robe was low on his neck; I saw the edge of some bold design inked on his back.
“Sir?” My voice had dropped to a whisper, and my heart beat very fast.
He turned to me. The flickering light had turned his eyes from blue to black. “I came to wish you luck.”
His robe was half-opened. There was a blue starburst tattooed at his breastbone, partly hidden by a thatch of dark hair. Near his collarbone, there was a crescent moon, faded to foggy grey. Thin lines of writing circled the base of his neck like a noose, too faint to read in the dim light.
“Thank you,” I said.
“If you wish to cry off,” he said, “you tell me now.”
“Cry off?” It took me a moment, but I knew what he meant: not the display, but Count Karan’s codicil to it. I bit my lip. To refuse now—to break contract? Tallisk could not quite mean what he was saying. “No,” I said. Then, remembering myself, “No, sir.”
In any case, why should I be reluctant? After the other boys of Lun had cast off their virginities in fumbles with each other or their friends’ sisters and nieces, mine still clung to me. If now a Blooded noble wanted to claim it, why would I wish to deny him?
The lamplight flickered. Tallisk had turned away
from me again. I wanted to read the lines of writing circling his neck—a code of him I could decipher.
It seemed a small eternity before he spoke again. “Good luck, then.”
There was a brusque catch in his voice, and I swallowed.
“Thank you, sir.”
He sat silent again for a while. I listened to his breathing; I thought that I could almost hear his heart beating, as loud and steady as a drum. “Go back to sleep,” he said, softer now. “It is late, and I have kept you waking too long.”
Half turning, he raised a hand and brushed the edge of his knuckle against my cheek: a slow, soft gesture. I heard my own breaths, quickened and shallow, and leaned in to the touch. Tallisk made a sound, an almost-laugh deep in his throat, and withdrew his hand.
I looked up at him in the darkness. I could not quite see his eyes.
“Go back to sleep,” he repeated. Then he rose, leaving me.
Still breathing too quickly, I lay back, blinking into the gathering dark. Tallisk had left his scent behind like a ghost—ink and soap and lamp-oil—as well as the warmth of his skin. I shifted under my blankets. They clung to me, sweat-sticky. I was adrift on a dark sea; moments felt like hours, between sleep and waking.
I did sleep, though, and woke to daylight. There was a knock on my door; I sat up.
“Sir?”
No—of course not. The knock had been soft and subdued. Doiran opened the door with a dubious smile. “Afraid not, my boy,” he said. He laid a thin, soft robe down on the foot of my bed and averted his eyes as I slipped it on. “There’s a bath waiting for you; you better hurry before it goes cold. There’ll be no time to waste today.”
Chapter Eighteen
We were bathed, and fed our breakfasts in the hush before sunrise. Tallisk, it seemed, had seen no need to get up with the rest of us. I heard his snoring reverberate through the house as Doiran laid out our clothes and cosmetics. Between him and Isadel, they began to primp me: my hair was short, for a Keredy man’s, but though they could not weave it through with ribbons they combed and oiled it until it passed muster.
Isadel’s face was pale with powder, and her mouth had been painted a very vivid scarlet while her eyes were shadowed with smoky grey. I myself had been powdered, though only lightly. Still, the feel of the makeup lay heavy and unfamiliar on my skin. We both still wore our thin, white dressing robes. My eyes had been colored, very lightly, with a shimmery green pigment. Isadel had informed me it had been made from crushed beetles—something I had not quite needed to know.
At last, the time came to dress. Isadel went first, with the ease of long experience. Her skirt fit her as if it had been stitched onto her hips, low-waisted and high-slit, a twisting river of velvet. Her hair was loose and wild and shining, falling over her shoulders. The rest of her was bare. She wore the snakes of her Adornments as if they were the finest scarves; they flicked black tongues across her shoulders, darting to the hollow of her throat.
Then it was my turn. Doiran helped me knot the silken ties of the breechclout; I was arranged so at least some dignity was preserved me. “There you are,” he said, standing back. “Not a bad sight, for a first display.”
I smiled, looking at my feet. They were bare; it was strange to me.
“You look fine, Etan,” Isadel agreed. She smoothed back a strand of her hair.
“Are you nervous?” I asked her.
“No. Why would I be? This is my work. Is a carpenter nervous when they hammer planks; a farmer, when they milk their cows?”
“I would hope,” came Tallisk’s sudden voice from the door, “that you comport yourself with more grace than that, Isadel.”
I had not expected to see him awake and dressed; it seemed like not half an hour ago he was still snoring. But there he stood, dressed in work clothes, his fingers already ink-stained. Yana stood beside him, holding a parcel in her arms.
“Perhaps you underestimate the grace of carpenters and farmers, sir,” Isadel said.
He half smiled. “Perhaps.” He gestured to Yana; she placed the parcel on the table. Tallisk went to open it. “I’ve a gift, for the two of you.”
Isadel’s eyebrows rose. “A gift? It’s no occasion for it.”
His lip curled. “Do you say so to all gifts not on your feast day?”
Nonplussed, she took a moment to apply some last touches of powder to the soft crease of her cleavage. “What is it then?”
He lifted from the parcel a hooded cloak with silver fastenings. It was beautiful, the color of a blackbird’s wing, rich and soft. The lining was a subtly darker shade, the black of starless night. There were two of them, a matched pair; he handed them to Isadel and to me.
“I don’t want you traipsing about in those clothes, uncovered.”
Isadel held the cloak at arm’s length. “We would not exactly be traipsing; the Count is sending a carriage for us.” Then she smiled and bowed, sweeping the cloak around her shoulders. “But thank you. It’s beautiful.”
Following her, I pulled on my cloak. It was warm and weighty as an embrace. “Thank you, sir.”
He adjusted the fall of my cloak with a brush of his hand; Isadel’s, of course, was perfect. “You’ll let me know when you return,” he said.
“And what if you slumber, sir?” Isadel said with a grin.
“Then you’ll tell Yana.” He tightened his hands into loose fists and nodded. “Right. Well, do well, that is all I ask of you. Good luck.” With that, he left; Yana remained, watching him ascend the stairs.
“Right,” she echoed. “All is ready. Now we just have to wait.”
* * *
The feast would begin at sunset; Count Karan’s carriage arrived for us an hour before. The driver was a man even Isadel did not know, a dark Southerner with a haughty cast to his mouth. He looked us over, taking in our fine black coats, our shimmering cosmetics, and bowed slightly. “Isadel and Etan writ-Tallisk. Your company is requested.”
The carriage, small and plush, rattled down the cobblestones. I craned my neck, peering out the window. The houses moved past us, silent and half-lit.
On the far corner of Nightwell Street, a group of men had gathered, passing a cigar between them. I saw their faces through the smoke, watching us go by; they looked, almost, like the men who had robbed me. “Hey,” one of them called out. “Hey Blood-pet, how many widows’ pensions are they spending tonight?”
The driver cracked his whip bare inches from their leering faces, and the horse’s hooves sped. Another man had gathered a clump of dirt from the gutter; he threw it toward the carriage. It skimmed one of the back wheels and fell away onto the stones. Isadel made a soft scoffing noise. She caught my look, rather more serious than hers, and raised her eyebrows. “You think they have a point?”
I looked past her. The little crowd was receding, retreating back into smoke and shadows. Would I have been among them, had I not sold my bond? No—I would probably be cringing in a dark corner, without even the pride to sling mud. “I think they’re desperate.”
“No doubt.” She shook her head. “And they always have someone else to blame for it.”
I said nothing more, and I watched the city pass by our little window. Finally, we rolled onto the smooth, straight roads of the Blooded. I looked out at their eerie, twilit gardens.
Isadel’s hands were folded in her lap. Wearing the dark cloak, she seemed strangely older, like a widow or witch—as if she were about to read my fortune.
She caught my eye. “Still nervous?”
“No,” I lied.
She watched the gardens pass us by. “How did you come to sell your bond, Etan?”
I shrugged. The cloak moved over my bare shoulders, soft as a kiss. “It seemed the best offer to me. I didn’t have anything after my father died.”
“Often the case.”
“And you?”
A hard smile twisted her lips. “My family also had debts.”
My teeth clicked together. For a moment I did not know what to say
. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be,” she said. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
That moment, the carriage drew to a jerky halt, and we were thrown about like sacks. We regained our composure in time for the dark man to open the door. We were in an enclosed courtyard, all of white stone. Around us people bustled with bottles and barrels, with wreaths of ivy and honeysuckle. It took me a moment, but I knew the place: we were behind the Count’s manor.
“Where to now?” Isadel asked.
“Inside. The Count awaits.” The driver deftly moved through the throng, and Isadel followed, leaving me floundering in their wake.
We were led through the kitchens, where the smells of vanilla and roasting meat incensed the air, and into a great arched hall—a ball-room, a feast-room. Lamps studded the walls and hung from the ceiling in complex constellations. The floor was black marble; here and there a mote of crystal had been inlaid, so it seemed we walked on the night sky. It was cool beneath my bare feet.
There was more: the great room bloomed with plants, small trees, wreaths everywhere. It was almost the garden brought indoors, a forest out of a book of tales. Some of the trees were made of paper and colored glass, with living vines cunningly woven around them. Here and there, pools of shadow had been created by the placement of a false tree, or a mound of crumpled silk shaped like a rock. Servants bustled, making the final adjustments to the decor.
Finally, we saw the Count, still and smiling in the midst of it. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he seemed entirely at ease. He saw us and came closer. He moved quickly, taken from stillness to stillness by a single moment of blurred motion.
“Dayon,” he said, addressing the Southerner, “take our guests’ cloaks.”
“Yes, milord,” he said; he took Isadel’s first. She let it fall off her shoulders with practiced grace. Some of the servants around us stopped in their movements; one shrug, and all eyes were upon her, on her bared back, her long legs, the lines of her Adornment vivid against her skin. The Count smiled; the snakes flicked their tongues as if scenting for prey.
