The Adorned (6 page)

I drew in breath and made my choice.

“Yes.”

I said it quietly, so quietly that both men looked at me, not quite sure of what they had heard.

“Yes,” I repeated. “I will do it.”

“Good,” Tallisk said. He did not seem surprised. “We will draw up the contract now.”

“Now?” Maxen almost laughed. “But—”

“Why waste time? I have ink and paper here, and Yana can be our witness.”

If, callow country boy that I was, I made an unlikely candidate for Adornment, Tallisk made a fine master for me. From what I knew of the Adorned, there were niceties, ceremonies even, to be observed between a tattoo-master and his new canvas. Although I supposed those would have taken place when an Adorned-to-be had sought the privilege themselves, not been sold into it.

By Maxen’s uneasy laughter, I could see he was thinking the same thing I was. The bond-broker bit his lip and shuffled like an actor who had forgotten his lines; at last, he rallied and said, “I suppose you’re right. Why waste time, eh? We’ve got him here. I suppose you’ll want to start on your newest project right away?”

Tallisk looked at me. “He’ll need a lot of scrubbing, before I can begin.”

I bit my lip and looked away.

“I shall draw up the contract then, if you give me the paper—”

“One moment. Yana, come in here? We’ll need you to witness.”

She slipped into the room, standing to Tallisk’s side, hands clasped behind her back. She and Tallisk waited as Maxen bent over the desk, writing up my new contract. It did not take him long, his handwriting crabbed scratches upon the paper. “Here, ah, it is done.”

Tallisk snatched it up, ink still wet, and read it quickly. Then, unexpectedly, he held it out to me.

He did not seem surprised when I took it and began to read. I read the hurried lines of Maxen’s handwriting. There were careful clauses and appeals to the gods; I read through them to the heart of it. Five years would Tallisk have of me, and the right of my skin. More than that: as his Adorned, I’d take my master’s name. I’d not known that. Dairan would be a buried patronymic. From the moment I signed, I would be Etan writ-Tallisk.

And there, in a narrow parenthesis, was the question of money. For the purchase of my bond, Tallisk would pay Maxen Udred five thousand ral.

It was more money than had ever been in my father’s accounts.

The signing itself was over within moments, without ceremony. First I signed, then Maxen Udred. Tallisk signed his own name in a sloppily expansive scrawl, leaving a spreading inkblot upon the page. I read his full name and title upon the paper: Roberd guild-Meret Tallisk, Master Tattooist. Yana put her witness mark, and it was done: I was—in law, at least—an Adorned.

“Now, your payment,” Tallisk said. “Will it be coin or credit, Maxen?”

I almost choked on my next breath; did Tallisk really have five thousand ral lying about his house? Maxen turned a vivid shade of near-purple and muttered that a note of credit at a bank of Tallisk’s choosing would be perfectly, more than perfectly, acceptable.

“Done.” He wrote out a note of credit to Maxen, who received it in limp hands. “Yana? Show Maxen out, please.”

His mouth opened and closed at this show of rudeness, but he could not exactly protest with the ink still wet on the credit note held in his hands. “Will the boy stay—”

“Yes, he’ll stay here. Have his things brought, if he has any.”

“No.”

“No?” Tallisk glanced at me.

I shook my head. “There is no need. There’s nothing I own.”

Tallisk held my gaze a moment. I wished I knew what he was thinking, but his dark blue eyes were inscrutable.

“Well, it makes things easier, doesn’t it?” Maxen said, tucking the credit note into his coat pocket. He patted me clumsily upon the shoulder. “All luck to you, Etan. May the Lord of Stars bless and watch over you.”

I bowed to him, unsure of the protocol. My father had not been a pious man, even with his own gods. “Thank you.”

It seemed to satisfy. Maxen was hustled out of the house by Yana, who seemed glad to see the back of him. I was left alone with Tallisk, in his atelier. It was barely past the edge of the afternoon yet, but the light was rapidly fading from the day. The gauze of the windows lent a ghostly glint to the failing light, leaving the atelier in a grey twilight hush.

Tallisk said nothing. He only looked at me, half frowning. I wondered if he already regretted his purchase, impulsive as it seemed to me. He seemed to be waiting for something, but for what I could not tell.

At last he sighed. “Let’s take you downstairs. Doiran will find some proper clothes for you.”

I looked down at myself; my clothes had been well made, in their day, but even Doiran had seemed less faded in his dress.

“Have him bathe you, as well.”

He left the atelier and I followed him, cheeks flushed. It seemed that Maxen’s trip to the barber had not counted for much, in Tallisk’s eyes. My new master hurried down the stairs—no, I thought, he did not exactly hurry, but his natural speed seemed twice that of any other man. I had to hurry, myself, to keep up with him.

Yana and Doiran were both waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Doiran wore a wide smile; he had the largest teeth I’d ever seen, like the ivory keys of a harmonium.

Tallisk came to a halt in front of them, and I stood beside him, my head lowered. “This is Etan,” he said. “We’re full up now. Make him comfortable.”

With that pronouncement, he bounded back up the stairs; Doiran cleared his throat and he paused a moment, turning back, eyebrows raised.

“Will you be joining us for supper, sir?” he asked. “I only ask because Isadel will return today.”

He inclined his head. “Already? All right, most likely I will then. But send Yana to pick up supper from the Broken Keys when Isadel comes. I want you to get him,” this with a gesture at me, “cleaned up and settled in, not fuss about in the kitchen.”

Doiran inclined his head in a sort of bow. “Of course.”

“Anything else you want picked up, sir?” Yana asked him. “If I’m to go out.”

He seemed irritated to be twice stopped, and shook his head. “No. That will be all.”

They watched him ascend, waiting. Then the door of his atelier slammed closed. They both let out a long-held breath. Doiran was the first to look at me. His eyes were huge as his teeth; he seemed all over too large for his height. “Welcome!”

I bowed to him, clumsily. “Thank you. I am—well, you know, I am Etan.” I laughed, spurred by nerves.

“I am Doiran Teinne, housekeeper to Master Tallisk.” His accent twisted the tails of his sentences into a sing-song rhythm. “This is Yana Keel, who is key-master and groom.”

Yana first delivered a bow that was almost military, then grinned, the formality dropping from her manner. “Welcome to the household. Doiran,” she said, “you’d best get him settled in before Isadel comes home.”

He clapped his hands together. “Well, come then, Etan my lad, let us get you scrubbed up to Master Tallisk’s standards, shall we?”

I followed Doiran down another set of stairs, down below the streets, into the cellar. It was dark, but Doiran lit lamps as we descended. A damp warmth pervaded the air; this was like no cellar I had known. It was all marble, with a massive square tub against the wall. In a huge cabinet, nestled in the walls themselves, plush towels and uncountable bottles were arranged. I gaped at it all.

Doiran caught my eye and smiled. “It’s the hot springs, below the city. They feed the house, like in the public baths, then the water drains into the sewers. The
real
cellar is in below the garden. You couldn’t keep wine in
here.
”

“I suppose you could not,” I said weakly.

He pulled a chain above the tub. A stream of warm, bubbling water gurgled in through a tube. A deep, mineral smell pervaded the room; a loamy scent, like old earth. When the bathtub was full, he pulled the chain once more, and the stream of water came to a trickling end. He retrieved some bottles from the cabinet and poured them into the steaming water. Sharp, rich floral scents, like gardens pickled in wine, laid themselves over the undertone of loamy earth. “You’ll need to wait a few moments, while the water cools. I will leave you to bathe a while, and fetch some clothes.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Submerged in the warm water, I felt a kind of deep exhaustion. My nerves had carried me for too long; I had lived on an edge, these past few weeks. I had stepped off that edge, now, landing on one side or the other, and marked my choice in a hasty scrawl of ink. That choice, I knew, would be recorded on me forever. Whatever happened here in Tallisk’s household would be indelibly inscribed upon my skin.

I shuddered and sank deep into the water, letting it close over my shoulders. It cradled me like a subtle embrace. Suddenly, I found that my face was wet with tears. They dripped down my chin and into the water. I lifted my hand to my face, touching my wet cheek wonderingly. The tears had refused to come when my father had died, when I’d been turned out of the house I was born in. Now they rolled down my cheeks in slow torrents, and I could not quite tell what I was crying for.

Chapter Nine

Once I’d been bathed and dressed, Doiran pronounced me fit to be seen in Master Tallisk’s household and took me up to the first floor, where my bedroom was to be.

It surprised me, a little, to learn I would have my own room; the servants’ quarters in my own house, empty for years when my father died, were communal. So I thought it would be in every house; it certainly was in Lun. But then Adorned were a different sort of servant, though master-bound nonetheless. For one, at the height of their careers they would have wardrobes to inspire the envy of the most outrageous dandy.

The room that Doiran showed me had wardrobes enough to serve for this, though most were empty, the faint scent of mothballs their only cargo. One contained some outfits in the same style as I currently wore: well-made, comfortable breeches and high-necked shirts, genteel and slightly out of fashion. The sort of clothes a clerk’s young apprentice might wear, at work with his master. They had a certain sort of wear to them, the peculiar wear of well-loved old things.

“The grand tour can wait for a while. For now, you can get yourself settled, and maybe rest a bit until Isadel comes home,” Doiran said.

I frowned. That is one thing I had not asked. “Doiran, who is Isadel?”

“Isadel writ-Tallisk is Master Tallisk’s Adorned.” He laughed. “His
senior
Adorned, I should say now. She’s been on display, at Count Karan’s estate in Fevrewood.”

“A Count of the Blood?”

“Of course. Count Karan is the head of the Council of Blood, and Tallisk’s patron.”

My mouth formed a small O of astonishment, and Doiran laughed again. I did not feel he mocked me; the easy laughter was merely his way. “It might go to her head a little,” he said, “but it shouldn’t. All men need a patron, and Tallisk’s art is fine enough to warrant the Count’s patronage. You will meet him, soon enough.”

I felt a little weak at the prospect. Lun was under the rule of a Lord of the Sword who mostly took his taxes and ignored us; the Blooded who ruled the Sword-nobles were storybook figures to me, god-touched legends. A hard lump of nerves settled beneath the apple of my throat; to think that I would actually have to rub elbows with them—that I would be remade for their enjoyment—it made me understand Tallisk a little better, when he had said I had little idea of what becoming an Adorned entailed.

I tried to swallow away my apprehension, to pretend the idea of meeting one of the Blooded was nothing out of the ordinary. “What is she like?” I asked. “Isadel, I mean.”

He wrinkled his forehead, his lips working as if he were searching for the right words. “She is
Isadel
, and unique with it. You’ll just have to meet her.” He smiled. “I think she’ll like you. I think we’ll all like you, lad. You seem a good sort.”

I colored at his compliment. “Thank you.”

He seemed to have run out of words, then, and he adjusted himself a little, harrumphing softly. “Well, then. You’ll be fetched to greet her, when she arrives; she’s your senior, so be respectful.”

“Of course,” I murmured.

With that, he left me to my new room. My new home. I made long slow circles of the room, fingertips brushing each unfamiliar thing. It was near the size of my old room, where I’d grown up, though narrower and with higher ceilings. There was a small window that allowed in a bit of light, its frame just a little too high for me to reach. It was open a crack, and its lacy curtains fluttered in the evening breeze. The bed was small and narrow, but the pillows and the quilt were soft and stuffed with down. The wardrobes were empty, save for the few clothes I’d already found.

I played my fingers across the fabric; even these house-clothes were already finer than near anything I had worn in Lun. I wondered what I would wear when it came time to display my ink. Even finer things, I wagered, if the Blooded were my audience—garments of silk or velvet cut to show where I was Adorned...

Blinking away the fanciful images
that
thought conjured in my mind, I resolved to ask Tallisk the truth of it. Or, if I didn’t dare approach my new master, to at least find some book about the niceties of display. I might have been ignorant, but I did not intend to remain so for long, if I could help it.

For now, though, I was too nerve-worn to do any such thing. Instead, I sat down on the bed, my eyes heavy. I was very tempted to simply lie down upon the quilt, to sink into the pillows, and fall into sleep again. I knew it was not late in the day, but I was half in a daze, my skin still warm with the heat of the bath. I forced myself to sit, cross-legged, on the floor, leaning up against the bed. Still, I began to half drowse, my head lolling against my own shoulder. It was only when I heard commotion below that I snapped awake again; by that time, the light had the quality of evening about it, and I shivered a little. The breeze had turned to wind, howling softly through my small room.

There was a soft knock on my door; I scrambled to my feet. Doiran came in, now dressed not in his apron and white shirt but in a cream-colored suit, which made his ruddy skin stand out all the more. He looked clean-shaven and freshly scrubbed. “There you are then,” he said. “Straighten yourself a bit. Isadel’s almost home, and she’s bringing company.”