The Adorned

by John Tristan

  Isadel, looking over, lifted one corner of her mouth. “Well, well. I like it, Etan.”

  “I cannot wear this,” I said. “I’ve—I’ve no idea how to move in skirts.”

  “You did well enough in a breechclout, and it’s not so different. In Suramm all men wear robes near enough to skirts, in any case.”

  “This isn’t meant for a man,” I said.

  “No, of course not. You’re to play the lady at the men’s feast.”

  Tallisk put the dress down with a sudden violent motion, crumpling the delicate fabric. I looked at him, startled. He gazed down at me. “You’ll do fine,” he said, in a tone too savage to be compliment.

  Silence rippled between us, heavy as velvet. There was something fierce in his eyes—not anger, perhaps, but near kin to it. The name of Arderi Finn welled up in my memory. He’s you, Isadel had told me, in a year’s time.

  It took a pointed cough from her to clear the air, at least a little. Tallisk turned away.

  “I will help, Etan,” Isadel said. “If you help me. I’m not like Yana, to spend most my life in trousers. I’ve little experience of men’s clothes.”

  “You could ask Yana,” I said, attempting a smile.

  “Yana is not Adorned.” She coughed again and turned to Tallisk. “So when are these feasts, then? The same night?”

  He blinked and turned to her slowly. “Yes. The same night.” His voice was harsh. “You’ll be picked up.” When Isadel made to ask further questions, he stopped her with a harsh gesture. “That’ll be all,” he said. Then, with a last look at me, he left the dining room and thundered up the stairs.

  Isadel watched him, eyes narrowed.

  “Isadel.” My voice was low.

  She raised a brow. “Yes, Etan?”

  “Who is Arderi Finn?”

  Her smile was very thin. “Our kin, in a way. He was Arderi writ-Tallisk.”

  “Was?” I frowned.

  “Master Tallisk...disowned him, I suppose you’d say. Arderi was denied his mark and left unfinished. He is permitted to display his ink, but he will never be a masterpiece.”

  I felt a little ill. “I did not know that could happen.”

  “It can, should a tattoo-master take against his Adorned. It is rare, but...it does happen.”

  “You said that—” I swallowed. “You said I would be—”

  She gave me a compassionate look. “Just be careful with him,” she said.

  “With whom?”

  She stared at me as if I were a dog that had stood up and spoken, and just as bright. “With Tallisk, of course. Affection is a dangerous thing, in a man like him.”

  “He feels no affection—” I began hotly, but she stopped me with a curt gesture.

  “Try to fool me if you wish—you’ll fail, though go ahead and try—but don’t fool yourself, Etan. There’s the danger. You’ll blunder into treacherous ground, if you don’t keep your eyes open.”

  “Is that what happened to Finn?”

  “It was before my time here,” she said. “But, yes, there has been talk.”

  “Have you met him?”

  She shook her head, then grinned. “But you might.”

  “Me?”

  “At the feast. I have heard near every passing pretty boy with an Adornment has been hired.” She fingered the dress laid out on the table. “Seeing this, I can see why prettiness is in demand.”

  “You’ve heard, there’s been talk.” I shook my head. “Where do you hear all this, Isadel?”

  “I keep my ears open.” Her face turned strangely hard. “Always.”

  She left me with that, taking her own outfit with her.

  I stayed for a while in the dining room, brooding. Then I folded the dress carefully, placed it back in its box, and carried it carefully up to my room. It would need ironing, I thought, before I wore it. I placed the box gently on my bed and sat beside it, eyeing it like it was a half-tame creature.

  I sprang up suddenly. My legs had made the decision to move before the rest of me did; I was out of my room and halfway up the stairs before I caught up to them. I found myself standing in front of the atelier door. It was not quite closed. I saw a vein of lamplight through the crack.

  “Sir?” I spoke little louder than a whisper.

  I heard him stir; then he spoke. “Enter.”

  I came in. He was sitting in an easy chair, not working. A glass of liquor sloshed golden in his hand; one booted foot rested on a wooden chest. He looked at me and took a long sip, emptying his glass. “What is it, Etan?”

  I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure why I was here, what I wished to say to him.

  “Well?” His voice was thick, brusque.

  I was aware of my heart beating, hard and clear. I took a step closer to him, and he shifted in his chair, the glass clinking against the wooden armrest. He tensed; I thought he looked like a wolf about to leap. Yet I was not afraid. Not of him, at least.

  “I won’t disappoint you,” I said softly. “At the feast.”

  “I know,” he said, receding a little. “I know, Etan.” He dropped his eyes. “You never do.”

  He rose—we stood together for a moment, too close to each other. Then I bowed to him and turned away, my footsteps matching the beat of my heart. I could not stay, not a moment longer. Treacherous ground, Isadel had said. How right she’d been. But knowing the dangers would do me no good if I’d step into them willingly, with eyes wide open.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The carriage was small and plush, a little jewel box, and I was the jewel inside—unless that distinction belonged to Artor Lukan. He sat across from me, his grin palpable on my skin. I shifted, awkward in the unfamiliar dress; this was just a foretaste of the feast, I knew, when eyes keener than his would be on me. Still, he discomfited me. Perhaps there was something too frank in his stares, too familiar.

  Isadel had left in a separate carriage. We had dressed together, she and I. She had applied a touch of color to my lips and eyes, and I had managed to help style her hair in a severe braid. With the clothes drifting over her skin like fog, none would have taken her for a man, exactly. The effect was a sort of pleasing blur.

  That same blurring, stranger to see, was about me when I looked in the mirror. The foreshortened bodice of the dress showed half my bare chest and the Adornments there; my hair was still short, combed back from my forehead. These things I recognized. But the tailor had done cunning things with the dress, the fabric tight here and billowing there, to suggest a shape I did not have.

  If I would not have chosen such a thing for myself, still I could not argue with the Count’s taste: I was like a midnight garden, my Adornments almost glowing green against the shimmery black, with here and there a barely-opening blossom in blue.

  Of course, the credit might not be his; it could have been Lady Vasan, with her Northern traditions, who had suggested this dressing up. I glanced again at Lukan. If she were anything like her grinning key-master, she might have just that sort of strange humor.

  I looked out the window. I could still see Isadel’s carriage. It was pulled by a black gelding trotting smartly down the cobblestones, with a stern-looking Northern woman at the reins. I wondered how two entirely separate celebrations would be managed at the Count’s manor. Though if anyone could do it, it would be Karan, who made feasting his life’s work.

  “Here we are,” Lukan said, shifting forward in his seat. He leaned close to me as he peered out of the window, his knee pressing hard into my thigh. Again his grin, as his eyes met mine. “I shall escort you.”

  With what I hoped was a measure of dignity, I nodded to him and took his gloved hand as he opened the door.

  I saw then how they had managed it. A newly erected wall of wrought iron and dark silk wound through the gardens, splitting them right through the center. I wondered how much the Count had spent on it alone.

  The garden gate was opened, but also split, and a fierce-looking bloodguard warded each side. I was led down the l
eft path, Lukan’s hand closed over my own.

  Two strains of music—harp at the right side of the garden and low drums on the left—made a peculiar harmony, and I heard murmured conversations from either side of the partition. It was cunningly done, I thought: the two feasts were separate, but near close enough to touch. It set an odd tension buzzing in the air.

  I do not know quite what I expected; what I saw, though, lived up to it. There were men in the fine clothes of the Blooded and their companions, and with them were the Adorned, flashes of moving color in the dark crowd.

  There were, I knew, perhaps fifty male Adorned of working years in the city, and it seemed the Count and his lady had hired near to half of them. I guessed they had limited their choices to those pretty enough to make charming half girls. There was no debauch on display, but its promise eddied under the surface; the men laughed, loosened by wine, and their hands were freer with the Adorned than they would have been with ladies.

  Lukan had released me into the crowd and vanished. I looked around for the Count. I had not been told to present myself, merely to be there, a charming guest. The others, the true guests, looked at me with curiosity. Some had the doughty look of warriors, nobles of the Sword; others, provincial Blooded, were lean and lupine. I felt suddenly like a minnow in a pond of sharks, their toothy grins all turned on me.

  Shelves had been built into the trees and wrought to resemble giant mushrooms clinging to the trunks; they held silver trays filled with food and drink. I plucked a glass from one of these mushroom trays and drank it too quickly. The sweet wine warmed me; the air was autumn cool, and my bare shoulders shivered, gooseflesh rising.

  In a firelit copse, I saw the Count at last, and he—the sleekest, swiftest shark in the pond—saw me.

  He beckoned me with his free hand. The other was already around the waist of an Adorned—a tall youth with long dark hair. Glass trinkets dangled from the branches, glinting; blown-glass hearts, I saw, some containing inside them sparkling little jewels. This was a celebration of the heart: hence the fire, hence the warming wine always in arm’s reach.

  “Etan,” the Count said. “How wonderful you look.”

  I bowed. “Your Grace.”

  He smiled, showing what seemed like all of his teeth. “Come here.” He seized me round the waist and drew me close with his startling strength. I gasped; it was all too easy to forget the unseen steel lurking in his lithe frame.

  The other Adorned caught my eye. He was in women’s attire, just as I was, but instead of a dress he wore only a long skirt, slit high enough that his thigh slid out through the bronze-colored silk. He was, like Artor Lukan, of mixed blood, neither fair nor dark. There the resemblance ended, though; there was no hint of ugliness here, charming or no.

  His skin, too dark to show vivid color, had been Adorned with winding ribbons and heavy jewelry in subtle shades of bronze and grey. So artfully had they been inked, down to their shadows on his skin, that they near begged to be touched; they shifted minutely when he moved. It was as if a nude young man had dived headfirst into the jewelry box of an ancient queen and come up wearing her treasures.

  They were beautiful. He was beautiful. Next to him I felt, for a moment, garish and unfinished. Yet on second glance I noted bareness among his designs, places where I, were I a tattoo-master, would place further elaborations of his theme—and more than that, the unfinished ink had a strange familiarity to it, as if I had glimpsed shadows of his design somewhere before. With a slow crawl of shock, I knew where I had seen those shadows: they had their echoes on my own skin. His Adornment looked like Tallisk’s work, and unfinished...

  “Both of you look wonderful, in fact,” the Count said, smiling. He’d caught me staring. “Etan, this is Arderi. Have you met before?”

  It had to be him, then—Arderi Finn, who had once been Arderi writ-Tallisk. I snapped shut my mouth, which had been hanging slack in surprise. Arderi looked at me curiously, given license by my own stare. He was near half a head taller than me, and whip-slim; I saw more clearly now, on his lower legs and his arms, where he’d been left bare. He was incomplete, just as Isadel had said.

  “No, Your Grace,” I managed. I wondered if this was one of the Count’s private games, bringing us together to see what we would do, or if the needs of the men’s feast had merely had him seeking further afield for beautiful Adorned, bringing back those not sanctioned by a writ-name. Either one seemed likely, knowing the Count.

  “He is a little older than you, but,” the Count said, hand stroking Arderi’s long dark hair, “no less lovely, for that.”

  Arderi arched his slender neck as the Count petted him; a single great pearl with inked luster was tattooed behind his ear, in the same place I had a new-blooming leaf.

  “Come now.” The Count began to walk, taking us with him. “It is getting cold. Time to go inside.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The vast ballroom of the Count’s mansion was also divided. There was a folding screen, the largest I’d ever seen, worked in dark wood and lace. The shadows of women danced behind it. Their laughter resounded softly underneath the music, and somewhere behind it all began the gentle fall of rain against the windows.

  Arderi Finn kept stealing glances at me. I wondered if he knew of me, knew who my master was. He tilted his head, his lips working silently. He was working up the courage to speak, I thought.

  “Your Grace.” A familiar voice came up out of the throng, and Arderi shut his mouth.

  “Haqan.” The Count’s pleasure at seeing Lord Loren was unalloyed, and he released both of us Adorned to embrace him. “And you said you might not be able to make it.”

  Lord Loren wore a suit of dark red cloth, his waistcoat worked with gold embroidery. Slung at his side was a ceremonial sword. “The business of governance eats too much of our time. Grain shipments from the Lowlands have almost halved; I’ve sent riders to see—” He saw the Count’s blank look and smiled thinly. “But there will be time enough to speak of that, Your Grace. I am glad that I could be here to offer my congratulations on your engagement.”

  “Your gladness at it makes me twice glad,” the Count said, releasing him.

  I had not seen Lord Loren since the journey back from Fevrewood. A nervous tension stiffened my limbs. His eyes passed over me, over Arderi. For a moment, I thought he had not seen me at all, or else was deliberately ignoring me. A coldness settled in my stomach. Then he smiled, more broadly than before. “Etan writ-Tallisk,” he said. “What a pleasure to see you here.”

  Arderi did not start at Tallisk’s name, but his eyelids flickered, and his catlike smile seemed to freeze.

  “Lord Loren,” I said with a bow. “My pleasure is the greater.”

  “May I have a dance with you?” He inclined his head to Count Karan. “If, of course, our host does not object.”

  The Count smiled, but there was a chill something in it; I was to be his treat this night, after all. “Of course not, dear Haqan.”

  With a nod to the Count, he grabbed at me; I was spun onto the dance floor. A few others were dancing already, Adorned and guests. The Count followed us with Arderi on his arm. The music quickened to a trill of bells and drums.

  Lord Loren danced like it was a game, or a battle. His smile was ornamental. His eyes slid between me and the Count. He pressed close to me and leaned to whisper in my ear. “Is it true His Grace has you on a retainer, until his wedding?”

  I nodded.

  He sucked at his teeth. “There’ll be no way around that, will there? Ah, well. I suppose I can wait a little.”

  I blinked at him, mouth half opened in an unstated question, but he said nothing further. We finished the dance, and Lord Loren released me.

  “My lord,” I said, a little breathless.

  “Yes.” He curled his lip in something like a smile. All of a sudden he looked twice as lupine as any of the Blooded; he looked dangerous. A memory rose to the surface: I saw him sitting in his tent on the way to Fevrewood,
like a field commander before a battle, and I wondered what I was to him...an ornament, or a weapon.

  I bowed awkwardly and excused myself from the dance floor. I found a balcony to take some fresh air. My skin felt too hot. I leaned over the balustrade, closing my eyes, feeling the cool wind on my skin.

  A cough behind me made me turn back. It was Arderi Finn. He held the hem of his skirt, to protect it from the rain-slick balcony floor. “May I join you, Etan writ-Tallisk?”

  I bit my lip. “Of course.”

  He stepped over a puddle and joined me at the balustrade. I looked at his hands. One small ribbon, black in the moonlight, coiled around his finger like a ring. “So,” he said. “You are one of my old master’s, then.”

  It was not a question. Still, I nodded.

  “I saw you looking at me.” He tilted his head, almost smiling. “Is it a professional curiosity?”

  “Yes, something like that.” My voice sounded far away.

  “How do you find him?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your master, Tallisk. How do you find him?”

  I forced a shrug. “He treats me well enough.”

  “As he should. You are beautiful; a great investment.” He stepped closer to me; lightly, he touched my shoulder, brushing a furled ivy leaf. “I see his skill has not waned.” He sounded, almost, as if he wished it had.

  I pulled away from his touch. “How long were you with him?”

  “Two years. After that, he sold the remainder of my bond.”

  I struggled to voice the next word. “Why?”

  He laughed. “Tallisk may be a brilliant artist, but he understands nothing of what being an Adorned entails. He thinks that we should care only for his ink, his art. Not the Blood that makes us Adorned instead of merely tattooed. Not the displays that make our coin.” Arderi shook his head. “I made a mistake. I thought his passion a fine distraction, a compliment; he thought he should have me all to himself. He’d have had me ruin my career, for his sake.”