The Adorned (7 page)

I did as he asked, straightening my hair and clothes until I looked as if I’d not just been dozing. We stepped out onto the landing; Yana was there as well, soberly dressed in a black groomsman’s suit, her hair slicked back.

And of course, the master of the house was present as well; he wore a suit of deepest brown, with a freshly starched cravat at his throat. He glanced at me, but his gaze passed over me, quick and perfunctory. It was as if I had already been part of his household for months, not arrived that very day. I stared down at the carpet, cheeks gone suddenly red.

“They should be here already,” Yana muttered.

“They will be taking their time,” Tallisk replied.

“When did that runner arrive, an hour ago? They should
be
here.”

“Quiet,” Tallisk said without force or reprimand, yet in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

At last, there was knocking upon the door. Tallisk tilted his head at Yana; the housekeeper would usually open the door, but the key-master would welcome honored guests. We all followed Yana—Tallisk at the front, and Doiran and I a pace and a half behind him. A rush of cool air was let in along with the new arrivals.

A man marched into the hallway; he was short and stout, wearing richly brocaded clothing. He cast about his gaze without truly bothering to look and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

Yana cleared her throat. “Geodery Gandor, key-master to Count Helsin Karan,” she announced.

He nodded at us; Yana and Doiran made full bows, and I followed suit. Tallisk, as master of house and craft, only bent his knee. That, I thought, seemed hard enough for him. Tension was writ in every line of his body.

“Maestro Tallisk,” Gandor said, with a thin semblance of a smile. “We are greatly indebted to you for the loan of your art.” He spoke in the subtly archaic dialect of the Blooded, expansively rolling the syllables around in his mouth.

“As I am for your master’s patronage.” Tallisk’s voice was flat and toneless. “All went well?”

“I am sure Isadel writ-Tallisk will answer that.” With that, he stood aside and let his companion inside.

Yana did not announce her—she was a member of the household, after all—but for a moment I felt an urge to bow, nonetheless. I had never seen anyone like her. She was tall, taller than I at least, with a fall of coal-black hair, and generously curved. Her skin was very pale, and nearly bare. A black, shining tunic as insubstantial as smoke clung to her curves, carefully cut to show her tattoos; she answered, in person, my questions about what an Adorned would wear.

As for those tattoos...they lay in coils winding around her, curves of scarlet and blush-pink and deepest maroon. At second glance, I saw that those coils were
snakes
, thick as tree trunks, their pointed tails at her slippered feet, their great green-eyed heads resting on her bosom.

She moved, shrugging off a thin fur stole, and further beauty was revealed. The scales of the snakes, rendered in shades of red from deep crimson to pale pink, were not scales at all—they were petals, rose petals, and some of them had seemingly loosed themselves from the snakes and were floating on her skin: a single blood-colored floweret in the hollow of her throat, a rush of fluttering pink on the side of her neck.

Only now did she seem to notice me; she indicated it by a raising of her eyebrows and a flicker of expression toward Tallisk. He stood impassive, arms folded.

“Please,” he said to Gandor, in an oddly dull and toneless voice, “stay a while and take a drink with us?”

“Oh no, that simply is not possible,” Gandor said. “I’m needed to witness a trial. Deserters, you know—they’ll all be hanged.” He smiled, as if that pleased him. “But...a moment in private with the master of the house, please?”

That was clear enough; Tallisk and Gandor vanished into the parlor, leaving the three of us standing in the hallway. Isadel handed her stole to Yana, who folded it up neatly. She looked at me squarely now; for a moment I saw in her almost-black eyes a cool, assessing gaze, strangely akin to Tallisk’s. Then she smiled at me, and her eyes became warm. “Are you Tallisk’s new blood, then?”

“Isadel,” Doiran said, “this is Etan. He’s to be your new brother-Adorned.”

I half bowed, and she curtsied, as an equal. She had a dancer’s easy grace in the movement, making me feel awkward as a duck. My eyes were drawn to her tattoos by a pull stronger than courtesy.

“This is the first time you’ve seen an Adorned’s ink displayed, isn’t it?” A smile touched her lips. “Don’t worry. You can look; no one will mind.”

“I didn’t mean to—” My own gasp of breath arrested my words. Now that we stood closer, I saw the true wonder of her Adornment—the tattooed snakes had
turned their gaze on me.
They blinked at me, eyes lazy as sleeping sand-dragons, and flicked the tips of their tails back and forth across Isadel’s skin. The red rainbow of their scales shifted and rippled, as if they were breathing, or moving slowly through a pool of warm water.

I swallowed, mouth gone dry. I’d never seen such magic—never allowed myself to think it could exist. “By the Lord of Stars...”

“No.” She shrugged. “Only by his younger sons.” Now done with her introductions, she turned away from me. “Yana,” she said, “my things are still in the carriage. Would you mind fetching them?”

“Not at all.” She vanished out the door.

I wondered how Isadel wasn’t shivering in the winter air; she was wearing barely more than wisps of gauze. She caught my eyes and I flushed; I had still been staring. “Well now,” she said, smiling. “I suppose we had better get dressed for supper? At least I should, no?”

Looking at the floor I went, I feared, as scarlet as her snakes, and said nothing.

Chapter Ten

We were a small household, and we ate all together around a large wooden table in the dining room. It seemed strangely informal to me, from what I knew of city ways; I would have expected the master to dine with the household entire on a provincial farmhold, perhaps, not in Peretim. Still, no one else thought it out of the ordinary, though perhaps they were just used to Tallisk’s unconventional ways.

I wore my new clothes; Doiran and Yana had divested themselves of their stiff outer coats, but had not changed in earnest. Isadel wore a long-sleeved robe, her sleeves tied back with ribbons so she could eat without them drooping in her plate. I snuck a glance at her now and then, though nothing of her Adornment could be seen.

Tallisk was at the head of the table. He wore simple breeches and a white cotton shirt. He would not have looked too far out of place dining in Lun’s inn, save for his well-scrubbed hands. Another thing set him apart: his shirt’s collar was slightly open, its laces only half-tied, and my eyes were drawn to the triangle of skin on display at his breastbone. There I saw the terminus of some bold design, a starburst of deepest blue.

Of course, all tattoo-masters, before they could claim such a title, had years of practice on themselves, and on each other. In public he would have to cover them, but this was his own house, and he was free to show them or not as he preferred. His own tattoos did not shift and breathe, like the ones on Isadel’s skin. Still, it discomfited me to see them so casually displayed, mostly because they kept drawing my gaze.

I averted my eyes, deliberately looking at the food on my plate instead of Tallisk. What if he saw, and thought me rude for staring? I
was
rude, to gape so openly. My cheeks felt hot, even in the comfortable cool of the room. It seemed I had not ceased blushing for hours.

“Etan,” Isadel said, and I started. She was looking at me, smiling, with her fork half-raised between plate and mouth. “That’s an unusual name.” She took a bite, chewing it slowly and swallowing before speaking again. “Are you Gaelta? You have such fine green eyes.”

I blinked, taken aback by her compliment, but recovered enough to answer. “I am half so, on my father’s side.”

She looked between me and Doiran. “I thought that Gaelta did not mark their bodies—that their gods forbade it.”

“I’m half-Gaelta by blood, but I was raised with Keredy ways. I barely speak Gaelte. Just some songs, really.” Landless now, the Gaelta marked their borders with their language. My father stopped speaking it to me when I was five, mindful that I was picking up his accent. I never heard it from his tongue after that, save when he was dying. Even then, though, in those last awful days, hearing its cadences had been an odd comfort to me. Maybe it was just that he’d used the same tongue to sing my lullabies, once upon a time.

She lifted her brows. “I did not mean to offend.”

“I’m not—I didn’t mean—” I bit my lips, looking at Doiran, but he seemed nonplussed. Lowland Gaelta were proud of their tongue, but they still lived among the remnants of long-ago conquest: shattered stone circles, upturned grave mounds and desecrated quarries. Perhaps it was different in the Grey City, where dozens of languages warred and mingled—where the guards would stop Keredy soldiers from kicking in a half-breed boy’s head.

“No matter,” Isadel said, smiling. “If they are willing, and look the part, any could become Adorned, whether Keredy, Gaelta or even Surammer. Is that not so, Master Tallisk?”

He made a grunting, noncommittal reply.

“Speaking of Suramm,” she went on, gesturing animatedly with her fork. “The Count tells me Lord Loren is returned at last from Er Surain. With a new Surammer aide-de-camp in tow.”

This perked Yana’s interest; she looked up from her plate. “A war captive?”

“No, a turncoat, or so I’m told. The catamite of a Surammer warlord, nonetheless. And what’s more—”

Tallisk seemed uninterested in the gossip; he cut off Isadel’s next breath with a request for more wine. She scowled at him, but it seemed in good humor.

“What did Gandor have to say?” she asked him.

He snorted. “I think you know. Further displays with your Count to arrange. He is become greedy for you, Isadel.”

She waved her fork airily. “It gives a chance to be seen. That’s not to be belittled.”

Tallisk snorted again, and returned to contemplation of his wine-goblet.

Doiran had poured wine for us all, and I took slow sips of it; it was strong, dry and cold. The rest of the meal was passed in silence. It seemed this was not unusual. I glanced about, as covertly as I could, and surveyed the faces of those around me. Tallisk seemed to ignore me entirely, almost as if he had forgotten I was there at all—or forgotten that I was a newcomer, that I had not always been a fixed feature at his table. Yana and Doiran smiled at me, now and then, as we passed the bread-basket back and forth, but neither attempted to engage my conversation.

After the one question she’d asked me had been answered to her satisfaction, Isadel seemed to be more of Tallisk’s mind. She poked at her meal with the air of one who had already had all she desired that day, but endeavored to arrange it as if she had eaten more than she truly had. “Excuse me,” she said at last, rising from the table. Tallisk remained seated, still working at his lamb. She departed, presumably to her room. I watched her go; her robes were short enough to display a hint of the scarlet snake-tails tattooed upon her calves.

Looking at her felt like looking at my future, in a skewed mirror. It made me slightly dizzy. I wished that I could follow her; there were a thousand things I wanted to ask. How was it done, I wondered—what art had made the designs on her skin shimmer and breathe as if alive? And how badly did it hurt, to have such inscriptions made?

I could not trail her, though; even if she would welcome my prying, which I did not think she would, I would never excuse myself from the table while the master of the house still ate. It spoke to Isadel’s standing in the household, or perhaps merely its unusual habits, that she did without even a murmur of complaint.

Tallisk polished off his food and downed the last of his wine. I rose as he did, my plate long-emptied. His eyes finally seemed to take me in. “I’ll expect you at first light,” he said to me. “There is much work to be done.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, in a small voice.

It seemed to satisfy. He left the table and ascended, a little slower in his steps now a full belly weighed him down. Once he had gone, Doiran stood and shooed us out of the dining room.

“Go on,” he said. “I have to clear up. Why don’t you give Etan a tour of the house, eh?”

Once in the hall, Yana stuck her thumbs in her pockets and looked me with a sidelong smile. “So, a tour. Would you like that?”

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t feel—I mean, don’t worry if—”

“Don’t fret too much. You’ll settle in soon enough. We’re a good house, all in all, and Isadel’s not nearly as high-nosed as she seems. You two will get along just fine, given time.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I merely said, “Thank you.”

“Now come on, follow me. I’ll show you around. All of us are on the first floor, Master Tallisk on the second, and of course the atelier on the third. And you’ve not seen the library yet.”

I followed her; true to her word, she gave me a grand tour.

She took me up the stairs and down the narrow hallway. The carpets were deep and soft, of a rich red-brown color, and everywhere the lights burned. This, it seemed, was not a house concerned with its expenses. In his last year, my father had carefully hoarded his candles, straining his eyes to read by scarce-augmented moonlight.

“Mistress Keel...”

She made a face of comical disgust. “Oh, Gods! It’s Yana, if you please. Then I’ll forget you ever called me that.”

I smiled. “All right—Yana. May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Isadel—her Adornment—” I groped feebly for words. “Are all Adorned so...”

“Oh, yes.” Her face had become sober. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Beautiful, and strange.”

With that, I could only agree. “How is it done?”

“As to that, you’ll have to ask Master Tallisk. It isn’t something I am privy to. Here we are,” she said, and she halted before a vivid red door. The door to the library, I guessed. It stood ajar; she pushed it open and we stepped inside.