Thirty
I stand with my arms splayed like a mannequin as two older women fuss around me, adjusting hems and sleeves and collar until everything is just so.
This ordeal has gone beyond embarrassment and into simple boredom, and I’m starting to wonder if they’re caught in a loop of endlessly undoing each other’s fixes.
Eventually, though, they stop tucking and tweaking and step back, and I cautiously lower my arms. They’re looking at me, as though waiting for something.
“Do I need to stand on my head now, or what?” I ask.
The more senior of the two gives a bow, expression twitching not a whisker, and indicates a full-length mirror on the wall. I take a hesitant step forward and examine myself.
I’ve never been much involved in what passes for fashion in the Heap; people wear whatever they can get their hands on, patching and dyeing and repatching as things wear out.
Up on Malkuth, those who have the money like bright, garish colors, while the Yesod managers wear suits in a variety of sober shades.
The outfit I’ve been given is like some kind of mutant combination of the two, with the basic form of a dark suit—shirt, pants, jacket, plus some extra bits around my midsection—but shot through with subtle notes of brightness.
A splash of red around my pocket, silver and gold thread on the sleeves, colorful slashes on the inside of the jacket.
It fits, though. It ought to, considering how long it took to measure me; Ky’s tailor did everything but slap a ruler on my cock.
The pressure of the strange garments feels odd, but not entirely uncomfortable.
I try a few quick movements, and expensive fabric rustles.
My hair is shorter than it’s been for months, trimmed and styled by an efficient young man and then treated with various salves and powders. I resist the urge to touch it.
The maids still seem to be waiting for something. Eventually, one of them clears her throat and says, “Is it to your satisfaction, Master Taj?”
“What?” I glance from them to the mirror. “Oh, yes. It’s fine. Thank you.”
They give a relieved bow and hurry out. I spend a moment—all right, maybe a few moments—looking at myself in the mirror and wondering what everyone back home would do if they saw me like this. Laugh, probably, and throw trash at me.
There’s a rap at the door. “Taj?” Ky says. “Are you decent?”
“Um. I try to be?”
“I mean do you have your pants on.” Ky opens the door and sweeps in. “I hope Saree hasn’t overdone it—” She stops, taking me in, and a slight flush enters her cheeks. “Oh. Um. Hi.”
“Hi,” I manage to say, with the tiny fraction of my brain not occupied with staring.
I’d thought Ky looked good in the dress she’d worn for Pader, though that memory is confusingly entwined with both the image of her slipping out of it and that of her face turning purple moments later.
Compared to this, though, it seems like a garish monstrosity.
It doesn’t look like she’s wearing anything at all, but rather that she’s transformed into a glittering, ethereal creature, only partly of flesh and partly of gleaming, weightless silver.
The dress follows her slim lines, flaring at the waist and narrowing again around her ankles, and matching silver wire descends in weightless curls from her bare shoulders to heavy metal bracelets against her wrists.
Her white hair is gathered into an interwoven mass that sits on her right shoulder, looking like it’s about to slip off but somehow never actually doing it.
“You look”—I manage to peel a few more bits of brain away from my eyes—“nice.”
“Thanks.” She blinks and gives a little shiver, seeming to come back to herself.
“I think Saree’s been terribly bored with only fixing uniforms and such to attend to.
You know she started on this the minute we arrived?
It’s something my mother once wore, apparently, but you wouldn’t know it.
” When she raises her hands, the bracelets click softly against the silver wire. “You really like it?”
“Yeah.” She scarcely seems human. If the moon was a girl, she’d look like this. “It’s, um, pretty.”
“You’re not doing so badly yourself,” Ky says. “Who would have thought you’d scrub up so well?”
“Not me, that’s for sure.”
Ky barks a laugh; I feel a little relieved, like I needed evidence she’s still the same person under the glitter. She gives me another look up and down and nods appreciatively.
“Well. Carriage is waiting. Shall we?”
“What about Star? Will he be safe here?”
“Absolutely. Even Dreikin wouldn’t dare.”
I’m not sure I trust anyone on Hod to play by the rules, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I send Star a pulse of reassurance. We’ll be back soon.
[Sternly: you’d better. You crazy kids have a strict curfew.]
Same goes for you, I send with a smile. I don’t want to hear you got drunk and trashed the place.
[Guilty: who, me?]
The Dreikin estate is a few kilometers inward and anti of Ky’s place, so we clip-clop in the runic carriage over the narrow roads and look out at the endless gardens and forests. Worker runics trundle along, trimming and weeding. The lights overhead are darkening for evening.
“Your goal for tonight is to learn as much as possible about the other fighters without giving too much away,” Ky tells me. “And to get close to Alzimyth, if you can.”
“You’re not going to be with me?”
“Not until dinner. It’ll be easier if we split up. There’s some conversations I need to have.”
“With whom?”
“Council families. Allies of my father’s. It’s a long story.” She glances at me. “Even if you win, there’s going to be a lot of work to do.”
I suppress the panic rising in my chest. “Fine. I’ll try not to be embarrassing.”
“If it helps, expectations for you are very low. They think people from the undercity are barely human. Don’t show your ass or shit on the tables and you’ll be ahead of the game.”
We ride in silence for a few moments.
“Did you ever think that?”
“Think what?”
“That we were barely human.”
Ky frowns thoughtfully. “Father always said that people are just people, wherever they come from. We’re all just as shitty as each other.”
“He sounds like quite an optimist.”
“I think the two of you would have gotten along.” She takes a deep breath and points out the window. “There’s Dreikin’s place. We’re here.”
Ky’s home, large as it is, still feels like a house, a single building meant for people to live in.
This is something else entirely. Instead of one structure, it’s a half dozen, each the size of the Tranto residence and all arranged around a massive central courtyard and garden.
A fountain several times the size of our bakery sprays dozens of jets into the air in an ever-shifting pattern illuminated by colored sigwork lights.
Huge glass doors open from the largest building onto a broad veranda overlooking the greenery, while a single room that could have housed Venci’s whole fighting pit is set with large round tables around a dance floor with a recessed pit for a dozen musicians.
There are hundreds of people here already, in the finest costumes Hod can produce.
I’m already feeling pressure in my chest by the time we reach the door.
“You’ll be fine,” Ky whispers, somehow sensing my nerves. “Just follow my lead.”
Whispers follow us as she sweeps in, and she is suddenly the focus of all eyes.
It’s not just that she’s the most beautiful girl in the room, though she is; the elite of Hod society has been waiting for her.
The lost daughter returned, and who knows what will happen next.
It’s high entertainment. The guests chatter among themselves, but no one actually steps up to talk to Ky until Devon Dreikin himself comes forward.
He gives a bow, graceful in spite of his bulk, and tiny bells attached to his thick braids chime softly.
“Kycilea,” he says. “You’ve come back to us at last. And in such a… dramatic fashion.”
“I do love giving everyone something to talk about,” she says airily.
“And this must be your… friend. The barbarian with the homemade runic.” Devon gives me a dismissive look and a fake smile. “How unusual. Congratulations on passing the first round.”
I’m probably supposed to say it’s an honor or some such shit, but why bother? It won’t make them think more highly of me. Instead I just give him my best smirk and an insolent nod. I hear a few chuckles in the surrounding crowd, and Devon jacks his smile a notch wider.
“Charming.” He looks back at Ky. “Be welcome, then, both of you. I hope you find the night’s entertainment to your satisfaction.”
“I’m sure I will,” she says, and takes my arm. We walk off, crowd parting before us, and I can feel her nails digging into my skin.
“Pompous bastard,” she mutters under her breath. “You hear him as good as say I’m fucking you as payment for fighting for me?”
“No?” The subtleties of Hod insults are clearly beyond me.
“You’re the only one who didn’t, then.” She lets out a breath. “He’s been at me since Father died, like a rat gnawing at a corpse. Wanted to marry me to one of his worthless grandsons. Any of three, he said. No doubt I’d conveniently go mad or have a tragic accident soon after.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“Of course not. This is just the opening salute. It’ll get really vicious over dessert.” She shakes her head. “Sometimes I think you Heapers have it better.”
I could enlighten her, explain about Uncle Claw’s enforcers and the plagues and Twisted burrowing out of the walls, but I think she’s just letting off steam.
Several people have followed in our wake, drifting along so they don’t look like they’re following but ready to catch Ky’s eye and fall naturally into a conversation.
She looks them over like a general surveying an enemy army.
“You’d better go, unless you want to stand around collecting insults,” she says. “Eat some of Devon’s food and see if you can find the other runic masters.”