by John Tristan
She dried him, then, with another cloth, and put on him a thin black robe. He sighed contentedly and turned back to me.
“She is very good at that,” he said. “She will do the same for you, if you wish it.”
Isadel looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I pulled the blankets closer, covering myself. “No,” I said softly. “No, I shall bathe myself.”
Chapter Twenty-One
When I woke, I was not sure where I was for a moment. Then I stirred, and felt my own bed familiar beneath me. My head was heavy, and my vision was edged with a blur, as if dust had gathered at the corners of my eyes. Experimentally I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My stomach churned with mixed hunger and nausea, and I groaned. I was sure I had not indulged so much at the feast to account for this; it seemed that Blooded liquors were more heady than I’d credited.
I stood and pulled on my robe. The light outside the window had the red-golden quality of sunset. My shoulders ached, and my legs, and other places; I was sore and languid, and sure I had not slept long enough.
The Count had wished to sleep off his indulgences in peace. After he’d finished with us, Doyan had driven us home, clattering through the hush of early morning. The light had been thin and grey, and even the bakers had still been in their beds. Yana had let us in, bleary-eyed, and bid us sleep as long as we liked.
Well, I had slept as long as I could, in any case. Now I could sleep no more. I opened the door, tiptoeing into the hallway. A buzz of voices came from below—from the kitchen, I thought. I descended and opened the door. The voices were Isadel and Yana’s, both in their house wear. Isadel was atop the counter, sitting with crossed ankles, her eyes as bleary as mine felt. There was a smell of sizzling fat; Yana was frying a slab of greased bread. My mouth began to water.
“Look who it is,” she said. “Shall I put in another slice, then?”
“Yes, please,” I said, and I pulled myself onto the counter next to Isadel.
“I thought you would be asleep for a few more hours,” Isadel said. “I would have wagered you’d sleep the night through ’til morning, but here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“Sound a bit cheerier, will you?” Yana said, flipping the bread. “You’ve just had your first display, and from what I hear it was a roaring success.”
“Was it?” I searched Isadel’s eyes.
She smiled, but her eyes were cool and appraising. “What do you think, Etan? The Count liked you, yes?”
“He was—” I shrugged. “Yes.”
Her smile reached her eyes, now. “He is a good man, of his own kind, you know.”
“Ohoho,” Yana said. “Don’t let old Rob hear you say that.”
“Don’t let him hear you calling him ‘old Rob,’” she replied, “or he’ll have your giblets for jewels.”
“If it’s the worst I ever say of him, he should ink an accolade onto me,” she said, cheerfully.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Our esteemed master?” Isadel smirked. “Sleeping off his own feast.”
“Emptied four bottles from the cellar, on his lonesome,” Yana said. “Well, one was half full, to be honest, but still. He’ll be nursing a sore head when he awakens.”
“Four?” I shook my head, disbelieving.
“He can knock back one without even making his needle-hand shake, but four’s enough to put even him on his back for a day.”
She tipped a slice of fried bread, redolent of bacon-fat, onto a wooden plate and handed it to Isadel, who attacked it with relish. I had never seen her eat so greedily, smacking her lips at it—but then, she’d barely had a morsel of food between her lips all of last night. Neither had I, for that matter. The delicate snacks and sweetmeats offered to us had not added up to a meal. I felt my mouth watering, watching Isadel at her breakfast.
“You wait your turn,” Yana said, waggling a finger. “I see you eying her breakfast.”
“I can wait,” I said, smiling.
“Something to drink?” she asked. “Some watered wine, or nice dark beer—that will cure any old aches of the night before.”
“No, thank you. Maybe some juice?”
She hissed between her teeth. “Are you sure about that? It’ll sour your stomach.”
“Water, then.”
She poured me a glass as my breakfast sizzled gently. I drank it slowly. Yana finished frying my breakfast, and I ate it slowly as well, so as not to upset my still-gurgling stomach. The food was delicious, crisped and greasy. The bread was dark, with walnuts hiding in it. After a few bites, hunger overcame nausea and I ate the rest with as much lip-smacking greed as Isadel had.
I wondered for a moment how Count Karan was feeling. I’d seen him drink easily more than Isadel and I combined—and he had been quite energetic, in his nighttime pleasures. I stared down at my plate. I wondered if he would call for my display again. Would he add a similar codicil to his contract, when he did? I didn’t think so; the formality was for first times. He might see the next as merely his due.
Isadel touched my wrist. “Etan?”
I put down my plate. It had only a few scraps of crust still remaining. “Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
She released me. “Have you a plan for today, then?”
“No,” I said. “I thought perhaps, when Master Tallisk awoke, he’d want to ask how the display went.”
“He never does,” Isadel said.
“He knows it went well if you’re requested again,” Yana said, nodding in agreement. She tilted her head. “Nothing bad happened, did it?”
“No! No, nothing bad.”
“Well, anything good? Above and beyond what we know, that is.”
I licked my lips. “Lord Loren asked me to dance.”
Yana laughed and slapped her hand on the counter. “Good for you!”
“Loren is highly placed among the nobles of the Sword,” Isadel said. “And known to have an...appreciative eye. It bodes well that he singled you out. It will make people take notice of you.”
Was there a bitter hint to her voice? I could not be sure. “Should I tell Master Tallisk of it?”
“Can’t hurt, I suppose,” Yana said, “and it may cheer him. Though I’d be careful: after a drinking jag like that he’d barely appreciate a Sword-accolade and a bottle of heaven’s nectar.”
I slid down from the counter, wiping my mouth. “Thank you for the bread, Yana.”
She tilted her head at me, smiling. “I may not be as accomplished as Doiran in the kitchen, but if it’s sizzled in fat I can hold my own.”
The sky had gone entirely dark. It seemed a regular supper was not planned for the night; Tallisk had still not emerged from his room, and Doiran had been sent for provisions earlier. I asked Yana’s permission to bathe; I’d wiped the cosmetics from my face, and the sheen of sweat from my body, before I’d slept, but I wanted to submerge myself, to soak. The night still seemed to cling to me, like a wet sheet.
She shrugged and told me to go. I hid a smile. It seemed that I was now trusted to bathe myself without supervision.
I ran a bath, the odor of the steam loamy and familiar, and tipped some unguents into the water until it went milky-white. I hadn’t realized until I stepped into the hot water how my limbs still ached with tension. I felt myself shiver with it, as it left me, and let out a sound that was almost a cry. If this was how one felt after every display, Isadel had been right: it was work, and hard work at that. I closed my eyes. Afterimages of the feast burned cool in my memory, like the firefly lights, like the Count’s vulpine gaze.
Gently, I touched the lines of ink on my shoulders. They were ever so slightly raised under my fingertips, and they shifted slowly, like blood pulsing through living veins. They were a matchless enchantment, it could not be denied...yet my only thought of them in that moment was to wonder when Tallisk would have me under his needles once more.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“It is entirely normal,” Isadel said when I questioned her in the library. “The life of an Adorned is not all the feast and the needle, you know. There is much waiting and sitting about.”
I made a face. It was not as if I did not know this; I had spent enough time waiting in the season before my display, to let my skin heal or for Tallisk to puzzle over some nicety of my design. But he had not even asked me how the display had gone, nor come to dinner with us. He was a ghost in his own house, padding about only when the rest of us were sleeping. I missed him; the house seemed emptier without his presence.
Isadel shrugged elegantly and left me, a book in my lap. At least I had plenty of time for reading. The sky was dark when I finished the book; I snuffed the light and left the library, going to my room.
I paused for a moment on the landing. There were footsteps coming from the atelier above me. They matched my heartbeat, pacing back and forth. I saw a shaft of wavering light throwing shadows on the wall, and then the door closed and the house was dark. Suddenly shivering, I made my way to bed.
I was still asleep the next morning when a visitor came to the door. I heard them knocking; almost without thought I rose and pulled on my robe. There was a murmur of voices downstairs. I opened my door, peering down with bleary eyes. I’d been too slow. The visitor had gone already. Yana stood in the hallway, an envelope in her hand.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“A courier.” She looked up at me, smiling. “Delivering a letter for Master Tallisk,” she said.
“Ah.” I smiled back, trying not to yawn; the last moments of sleep were still clinging to me.
She cracked the seal—as key-master, she had the right—and perused the letter quickly. Then she looked at me, eyebrows raised. “You may want to get dressed, Etan,” she said. “I’m guessing that he’ll want to see you in short time.”
She was right. Barely half an hour passed before she was told to fetch me; I quickly combed my hair and went to the atelier.
Tallisk was standing by the window, looking away from me. A storm of papers crowded the room, sketched with a hundred different designs: subtle green vines; enormous hallucinatory roses; snake’s eyes, yellow and grim; spiked iron that brought to mind thorns and fences.
“Sir?”
He stirred, not turning. “Lord Loren has requested your display.”
“He—he has?” I frowned. “I thought only the Blooded could—”
“He has been given dispensation from Count Karan.” Master Tallisk made a loose fist and rested his knuckles on the windowsill. “Loren has given a month of advance time. He expects you to be further Adorned, when he next displays you. That is unusual. Though it can be accommodated.”
There was a strain to his voice; I wondered if he resented it, being forced to the needle by Lord Loren’s request.
“I’ve not told you this,” he said suddenly, “but Count Karan gave an honorarium for you. A gift, beyond your display fee.”
My mouth opened in surprise. I was not sure of what to say.
“By law, it goes toward your care and expenses, since you are bond-sold. I had no need to tell you.”
I blinked. “Then why tell me? Sir.”
He shrugged. “You don’t wish to know about his generosity?”
“I do not care,” I said, then bit my lip. It was impolite in the extreme to voice this, but it was not my art that the Count was complimenting with his generosity. What I had given him, I would have preferred not to be paid for.
Tallisk turned to me, then. “It is a great compliment.” He did not sound as if he relished it.
Having already confessed, I could only repeat, in a whisper, my indiscreet thoughts. “I do not care.”
He took a step toward me; I could sense the warmth of him, too close to me. “What do you care about, then?”
I did not know how to answer his question. I looked at the ground, at our feet: mine bare, his booted.
“Etan.” He opened his mouth, closed it, and then heaved a kind of reversed sigh, a shuddered breath. “Etan, come now. Don’t—don’t cry.”
I touched my cheek. I had not noticed it, but there were tears there, warm and wet. I stared at them, shining on the back of my hand like an unexpected pearl in a dinner of oysters.
Tallisk took another hesitant step toward me. He touched my shoulder, clumsy, ham-fisted. “Is there anything...”
I wiped at my eyes again; they were dry, now. “I am sorry. I am not upset, truly. It is just—” I swallowed. I did not know how to put it into words. I did not even know why I had cried. I looked up at him and tried a smile. “Thank you.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Never mind,” he said, gruffly. “Are you in fit shape to be worked upon?”
I nodded. “Yes. Of course, sir.”
“Good. I’ve completed a design for your upper arms. I want it done before three weeks are over; you’ll have much time under the needle.”
He judged there was no need for a bath; he had Doiran bring up a basin of warm water and washed me with a soft cloth. I took my place upon the chair, watching him lay out his inks and needles. I closed my eyes.
The feel of the needles piercing my skin, when it came, was almost a relief. Here, I was in the hands of a master. Here, I needn’t worry or pose or make an impression. I was his canvas and he my artist, and all was, for the moment, as simple as that.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From my perch on the palace balcony, the city was spread out below me in a shadowy sprawl. Here and there in the foggy night, I could pick out familiar landmarks—the moonlit glitter of a lake, the domed roofs of the temples—but I could see nothing of Nightwell Street.
Behind me, I heard the fading susurrus of laughter, the sharp bell-like tones of glasses clinking together. In front of me were wind and darkness, and the low-burning lights of the sleeping city. I breathed in; the wind was cold and clean, coming down from the northern forests.
“What do you think of it?”
Lord Loren had stepped out onto the balcony, two glasses in hand. He held one out to me. I caught the aroma of almond liqueur, sharp and sweet.
I took the glass. “Of the palace, my lord, or the city?”
He smiled. “Of both.”
“They are beautiful,” I said, and I meant it. At the foot of the palace, the city was a puzzle of purple shadows and golden lights; I had never thought I would see it from such a vantage point.
Once, the palace had been the seat of the Blood Kings, and more a fortress than anything else, glaring down on the land below. Now the bones of that fortress formed the skeleton of a beautiful jewel box, still high on a hill above the rest of Peretim, and the Council ruled in place of ancient kings. All of the Blood had apartments here. A few among the nobles of the Sword had old armories and storehouses upholstered with plush carpets and tapestries, as well.
Lord Loren had been given a prince’s tower. I felt the Count’s hand behind this, doling out a treat for his favorites. When the palace apartments were full with Council business or feasting, the Count himself took the old royal quarters, which usually stood deserted.
Lord Loren stepped forward and put his own glass on the stone railing. “Where I was born, there is nothing such as this. No city as large, no tower so high. There are few of the Blood in the south. Few with the power to make their ambitions real on such a scale.” He turned to me and half smiled, showing an edge of teeth. “Of course, some might say this is no bad thing.”
I took a sip to cover my silence, remembering Isadel’s advice: remaining quiet, she had said, did not detract from beauty, but speech could if one was not well-spoken. The liqueur was strong and sweet, with a heady almond taste; it burned pleasantly
on my lips. I had not drunk it pure before, but the taste was familiar; a long time ago, my father had sometimes poured some into a glass of spiced milk, to soothe me before bedtime.
“When the Blood Kings still ruled from this palace, this tower belonged to their young heirs, their princes. This would have been their first glimpse of the city. Of the world, all spread out below their feet.”
“It seems a long way down from here,” I said.
“Yes.” He grinned. “Too far to fall and live.”
I shivered, and Lord Loren’s grin faded to a solicitous smile.
“I am sorry; you will be getting cold in those garments. Let us go inside.”
I followed him; he shut the door to the balcony. It was stained glass, showing a full moon high over a ragged mountain. I thought it must look beautiful with the sunlight blazing through, but in the foggy night the effect was almost eerie.
The soft laughter and the clink of glass on glass had quieted. I had not marked how long I’d been on the balcony, but it seemed it had been long enough for Lord Loren’s guests to disperse. The doors to his chambers were closed, and a single manservant busied with clearing the table, vanishing too quickly for me to mark his face.
It had been a small feast, at least compared to the revelry in Count Karan’s gardens. The Count had been there, of course, first among the guests: a gathering of Blooded and the aging Sword-nobles they had raised to lordships during the Bandit Wars. I had sat at their table, charming centerpiece, and Lord Loren had invited everyone to guess at the growing theme of my Adornment.
Tallisk had tattooed a single acorn on my left shoulder, twined into ivy; oaks were a Northern tree, seldom seen near the Grey City. The nobles puzzled over my ink, as if I were a parlor game. The Count had hovered over me with keen interest, and when his cool fingers brushed my new ink, I had shivered. Afterward, when the feast dwindled, I was invited to simply lounge about and decorate the room. That had been the hardest part of the evening, to look lovely and be still, save when a glass was offered me, and to keep myself from falling into a slumber. I had wished ardently for a book to read.
