26. TAROS
26
TAROS
Hyran led him through the Ferrean Grounds riddled with evening’s long shadows, taking winding streets and pretending it was intentional and not a scheme to confuse Taros.
“We’ll cut through the memorial garden if you don’t mind,” Hyran said, fiddling with his screen.
“I don’t mind. It’s always quiet there.”
“Good.”
Hyran turned left. The tall walls of the memorial garden were right there, engraved and painted scenes showing the bereaved, weeping but sheltered from the world by a wall of arms so the loss could run through them while they were safe.
It was much the same for every memorial garden, but Ferrea’s was big, too big for Taros’s taste. He’d left a grandfather in Argentea’s garden and knew the paths throughout well.
“What if I’d said no?” Taros asked, rolling his shoulders to ease the swelling there.
Hyran broke his smile before it bloomed, his split lip clearly bothering him. “Then we’d have gone around.”
“You’re an annoying man.”
“You must know. The first thing you see in the mirror each morning is an annoying man.”
They passed into the memorial garden, eyes locked like Hounds in battle.
“Aren’t you rather small for a panoplian?” Hyran asked.
“You have to fluff your hair to look taller than me. Or are you talking about size that isn’t immediately visible when one is wearing combat pants?”
“Interesting you should bring up your cock. Is it well?”
“Should you even be thinking about a cock that isn’t Col’s? Speaking of cocks, this place looks like a flaccid one.”
Hyran sniggered. “You equate a place to keep our loved one’s ashes to a cock? Taros, your leanings and desires are questionable.”
Taros gestured at a perfectly rounded tree, at walls bare of decoration, at the sheer absence of things that lived.
“It’s said the wild growth reflects the love that’s all we’re left with.”
Hyran nodded. “Ah. Here, we say, all the walls are bare, for the love we keep inside us. This place is for ashes and echoes. Love continues on in those who live.”
“Well. That’s different.”
Hyran led him through the streets of sighs, blank to show in their absence what had been lost. The kinetomancer stopped in front of a plate set low, at a Conduit’s eye level. It was matted silver, the lettering sharp, newly carved.
“Undora. Linar’s lover.”
Hyran nodded. “I wouldn’t have wanted to take Col here, but who knows what the Judiciary AIs will decide about Linar. I thought Undora might appreciate someone coming to visit.”
“Loquin was here when she was murdered. Do you think he did it?”
Hyran shook his head. “He was honest in his pain, even if he’s the one who hurt himself.”
“Then who?”
“Perhaps one of the champions. Perhaps someone else.” Hyran ran his fingers over the dead Conduit’s name, engraved on this piece of metal in this most silent of streets. “As it stands, only she knows.”
They kept silence for a minute at least. Hyran ended it by taking a deep breath, straightening, and walking on along the streets. Taros followed him through the orderly maze, and within a few more minutes, they exited on the other side.
“Are you going to lead me in more circles?” he asked Hyran.
“No. It’s right there.”
He pointed at a door, but it didn’t look like a restaurant at all.
“Very funny. We’ve walked all this way just so you could show me some door?”
“I told you it was a small place. It’s also not flashy. You either know it or you don’t.”
Hyran led Taros to the door, which was set low into a building’s wall, like the entrance to a basement. There, once they had gone down a handful of stairs, Taros noticed the small sign in pretty cursive, reading Whistle’s End: food and entertainment.
“Huh. That’s unexpected.”
“You thought I’d take you out here, then speed back to the Tower and lavish Col with my attention?”
“That sounds exactly like something you would do.”
“You are so charming to be around, has anyone ever told you, Taros?”
Taros beamed a very sharp smile at Hyran, even letting blades stand up around his hairline.
“People tell me all the time. Especially beautiful Conduits.” The humor went right out of him. After all, the garden still stood behind them, empty-walled and silent. “I mean…follow my words, that was in poor taste to say after visiting Undora. I’m sorry. Not for anything I insinuated about your dick before, but for this. Col isn’t Linar. I’m not Undora.”
Hyran’s nostrils flared, and he aimed a narrowed gaze at Taros. “He doesn’t love you? Nor anyone from this team?”
“Oh, he loves me. He loves all of us. We grew up together, experimented. I’ll spare you the details, but between Vin, Col, and me, we were good at the physical side of fucking. Easier than learning how random people like to be pleased.” He shrugged. “That’s what it was.”
Hyran didn’t move for several long heartbeats. Then he nodded and opened the door. “I messaged ahead. He’s here.”
“Here? Now? Kashana?”
“Well, that’s what you wanted.”
The ceiling was low, so low Taros could have touched it. The restaurant had been put into the bare, lithomanced walls of what might have been a building erected upon the founding of Ferrea. There were not even smart walls here.
The illumination came from light art, individual sources mounted along the walls and reflecting off the stark white plaster. Smaller ones sat on the tables, reminding Taros of the house in the forest where the Hound and his Guardian had burned wood to give them all warmth. Even with the remains of late afternoon light, the small place was so dark that the illumination was needed.
Like Hyran had said, this place was small. Taros counted eight tables, and they weren’t big. Along the walls, a few spare chairs stood, suggesting the place could get crowded even if it wasn’t today.
Three groups had taken tables, four Conduits on the left, chatting and sharing a large platter of food that sat in the center of their small table, two lower-rank Guardians engaged in some screen game between them, and a third group.
Taros gasped. Kashana. The Guardian sat between two Conduits or very low-rank Guardians, his white hair flowing between clasps and ribbons that made it look sculpted. His skin, vibrant and glowing, clashed with the white of his hair, darkness and light. He had blue eyes. They were striking, set in that face, especially because he was looking directly at them.
“That’s…that’s…” Taros said.
Kashana stood, and Taros forgot all words. The two people with him—they were designers, probably—followed as he crossed the small restaurant space and came to a stop in front of Hyran.
“I saw the stream. You should have chosen to stay in Ferrea, let me make robes for you to match your hair and colorless skin. I would have painted you in fabrics, Hyran.” Taros had never heard Kashana’s voice, because he wasn’t one for streams or public comments. It was thread-like, high and subtle, and not at all unpleasant. “This is the one you want me to see? You have purple hair, Guardian.”
“This is him. Guardian Taros of Argentea’s Team Three.” Hyran put a hand on Taros’s back, pushed him to take another step toward Kashana.
“Yes, purple. I’m really sorry. It’s not real.”
Kashana made a huffy sound. “Real is what we make of it. So. I hear you stole a neck robe off that Guardian who wore my dress so well and then broke it into tatters in battle. Such a magnificent sight, that.”
“That—yes. That was Vin. He’s so sorry he ruined that dress, but there wasn’t anything to be done. He knows how fond I am—how much I love your designs, and he generously gifted me your neck robe. He means no offense by it.”
“You are not wearing it. You are wearing rough combat things.” Kashana wrinkled his nose. “These combat roughs, they are unchanging. Guardian Vin did nothing wrong with the dress, and seeing something made for beauty come apart as beautifully as that dress did on his body—I will dream of it. I will design marvels from the memory.”
Taros nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
Kashana reached for him—the man was smaller, likely not an A-classer, although Taros didn’t really know. No one did. He felt along all over Taros’s chest, reached toward his legs and felt all over there too. Taros held still.
“Very nice. Pipo, we’re not staying for food,” the designer hollered at a server who had appeared without Taros noticing where from. “I am taking this one to my studio.”
“You…what?” Taros asked, uncertain of whether this was a dream or reality.
The two designers never left Kashana’s side, and they didn’t speak. The studio, it turned out, was in the same building, but in the part designed for actually being lived in, the walls and ceiling illuminating the space, a space so full of everything Taros had seen in streams or chats that he could have cried with joy. He didn’t, because he didn’t want to give Hyran the satisfaction, but it was close.
“Nice, huh?” Hyran asked.
“You’ve been here?” Taros tore his eyes from a red neck scarf that was draped around a life-sized doll.
“I have.”
More dolls like this stood silent and beautiful all around the large space. Tables, wide and empty but for the tools of the designers neatly stacked, clearly were the center of this space. Taros could imagine it, the work being done here. The wonders being created.
“Why is your lip a mess?” Kashana asked, curling his finger for them to follow him past more dolls decked out in neck scarves and thin belts.
Hyran touched his chin absently. “Oh. Me and Taros here trained a little earlier. We both got a bit enthusiastic with it.”
“You look as if training is bad for you.”
They went from the workroom to a storeroom. Here, on large racks, rolls of fabric waited to be turned into the things that sprang from Kashana’s mind, reds and golds, patterns and none, greens and silvers, thin, thick, textured, plain.
“He’s not too bad,” Taros said.
“Hm.” Kashana looked at him. “All of Team Three is so taken with you, Hyran. I asked him into my bed once. He declined.”
“Ah.” Hyran really is an idiot. I would have made love to this man all through the night and for most of the morning.
“He likes it when his head designers watch him having sex.” Hyran indicated the two Conduits still flanking Kashana though they had to move into single file, given the next room was behind a narrow door.
“You can’t shame anyone for their preferences,” Taros said. One of the designers nodded at him though the woman was unsmiling, instead observed.
“This is where it happens,” said Kashana, gesturing at the tall ceilings where dolls were mounted.
Those are just like Sen’s books, Taros thought, even as he could barely decide what to admire first. Dolls filled the floor as well, a force of frozen limbs and colorful clothes. There were so many of them, stacked ten deep, wide as the room itself. It was an army of elegance.
“It’s—it’s breathtaking, Designer Kashana.”
“No. It’s Kashana. My name is what I do. I need no title. I am the work.”
Taros flushed. “Yes, Kashana.”
“Take off your clothes. They are not right for you.”
“M-me? You want me to get undressed?” Taros looked at Hyran, who shrugged.
“Yes, you. You seek. Something that isn’t like all the other things, something that is you, a skin not the one you were born with, and yet your skin. I need to see to match you with what already belongs to you.”
Oh, fuck . Taros stripped faster than he had ever stripped, dropping his combat pants where he stood. Kashana and his designers watched. When he was naked—and just a tiny bit visibly excited about all of it—Kashana took him in. It was not an appraisal of lust or anything so physical. Kashana measured him with his eyes, and Taros could almost feel it.
“The blue scale dress,” Kashana said.
“Yes, it’s the one,” the designer on the left said.
“Yes, it’s him,” the designer on the right said.
“You will give it life. Come.”
Kashana vanished into the forest of dolls all around them, and Taros followed. Hyran and the designers didn’t. It was a maze almost, much like the memorial garden but so full of color, so lively. All these designs, I’ve never seen them worn. They look like one of a kind, like art, not like clothes at all.
“Kashana, these are all…they are extravagant.”
“They are waiting. The dolls are their coffins. They can only live if they are given a body.”
“Oh. Yes. I see.”
Kashana stopped. “This is the one. This is you, Taros of Argentea’s Team Three.”
Kashana pointed out a dress, and Taros was glad it was a dress. It had been crafted of dozens upon dozens of diamond-shaped pieces of cloth, one layered atop the other, blue around the neckline, deep and beckoning dreams like the sky just before heavy rainfall, then fading like a drop of dye in water. The train was white scales, pearlescent and beautiful, reflective, gleaming.
“T-this is for me? You want me to try it on?”
“I do. We will wrap it for you, package it so it doesn’t get damaged before it’s time. I should be lucky to watch how this fades in a fight. You are a panoplian, rare and offensive in your defensive nature. I think this dress will hold long in any fight. My price for it is but to see you wear it once.”
Taros nodded and hurried to comply. Kashana helped him, and before long, the blue scale dress was off the doll and on Taros.
“It fits perfectly,” he said.
Kashana made an amused sound. “Of course it fits. Come. You get a moment in the mirror with it.”
He led onward through the dolls until they reached the wall. Upon Kashana’s touch, it mirrored over, and Taros gasped. The blue matched his hair. He hated that he’d braided it to bruise Hyran’s ass, but there was nothing to do there. Still, Taros loved the dress the instant he saw it on himself, loved it like he had never loved an inanimate object. And a lot more than a good amount of people.
Kashana came up behind him, closing his arms around Taros, and running his fingers along the scales. “It’s perfect. It breathes with you. It suits you so well.”
Before he knew what was happening, Kashana had spun him on the spot, had reached up to guide his head, and without hesitation, he pressed his lips to Taros’s own, who was almost too stunned to enjoy this, almost. The kiss deepened, needy, urgent.
It might have been the best or the worst kiss Taros had ever had. After, he wasn’t sure anymore, couldn’t tell at all. The sensation, much like the first time putting on the blue scale dress, faded all too quickly, and they broke apart.
“Kashana…” Taros’s voice sounded rough to his own ears.
“There you are.” Hyran walked along the wall toward them, Taros’s clothes in hand and the two designers in tow. “They say they need you to change again so they can wrap it.
“But—”
“It needs to be wrapped. It isn’t ready yet. It must be worn and die in glory. Strip.” Kashana’s words were a command Taros had to follow, so he did.
“Kashana, would you like to…I was thinking, maybe I could stay a little while?” Taros had just put his pants back on. They felt insufficient.
Kashana looked at him. “Why would you stay? There is nothing more for you here.”
Hyran snorted. “Going by the state of his cock, he is hoping.”
“Ah, that. It’s not unusual, but it is not what we came here for.”
“But…” I came here to fuck! Not at first maybe, but I am so happy to fuck this man or let him fuck me.
Kashana shook his head. “No, Taros. Your burden is the dress now. Give it a good life.” He gestured at his designers. “You see him out. I need to give in to my inspiration.”
“Yes, Kashana,” they chorused.
Kashana himself vanished into the forest of dolls.
“We’re going to pack you up a few extra things. Kashana won’t mind,” one designer said.
“He forgets to suggest it. We always remember for him,” said the other.
“Oh. Okay.”
Taros was still dazed. He was missing the feeling of blue scales on his skin and would give anything for Kashana’s lips on him again.