Chapter Eleven The Bestiary
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE BESTIARY
A FULL WEEK passed under the misery of dark, gray clouds and endless summer rain. The third round was inching closer and closer, and Lythlet was yet of two minds.
Clutching the mail she’d picked up from Faravind Post, she made her way to Nestali Road, a street flanked by triple-story terraced shophouses, each painted a different color, chipped and weathered by the passage of decades. The Steam Dragon occupied a lot flanked by a fortune-teller and a clothier.
“Good afternoon, Schwala,” Lythlet greeted the teahouse dog, stepping over the threshold. It was past teatime, and the teahouse was half-empty. She seated herself on a stone stool and patted her lap to welcome Schwala and his wagging tail closer. “Have you seen Desil?”
Not in the least bit concerned with her inquiry, Schwala simply huffed and pressed his muzzle into Lythlet’s hand for the requisite number of scritchy-scratchies.
No thanks to him, she caught sight of Desil running around the back of the teahouse, and he joined them after a moment, looking frazzled with his apron tossed over his shoulder. He set a pot and some spare teacups on the table.
“Break time, Schwala-wala,” he sang wearily, kicking off a sandal to scratch the dog’s belly with his toes.
Schwala panted appreciatively, freckled tongue flopping out.
“You look tired,” Lythlet remarked, pouring hot tea into his cup first, and then hers.
Desil gave her a wan smile. “We ran out of sairan and orange rikri halfway through teatime, so I had to run down to the suppliers and hoist back a couple of leaf-tanks. It was a nightmare running around in the storm.”
Lythlet took a sip, closing her eyes as the bitterness invaded her tongue, slowly diffusing into a pleasant aftertaste. She rummaged through her bag. “I went to Faravind’s earlier. Your parents wrote to us.”
Desil’s face brightened as she handed him a letter.
A comfortable lull fell as he read it. She’d already read hers; Auntie Arathel’s letter had been nothing short of heartwarming, filled with small, cozy adventures the schoolmarm encountered with her pupils, save for a brief mention of how she feared the United Setgad Party’s proposed budget revision for Southeastern schools would mean even fewer sheets of parchment and charcoal styluses to go around.
Desil put down his letter and bumped her elbow. “Do me a favor, will you, and write back to my mother? Ma was asking me to have a nag at you—”
“I will, I will. I’ll sneak in some time when I head back to work this evening.”
“Much obliged.”
“There was something else at Faravind’s,” she said, pulling out a card. “Master Dothilos’s invitation.”
Desil eyed it. “Have you sent off our refusal?”
“No. We’ve three days to respond.”
“Do you need that long? You seemed so set on quitting last we spoke.”
Last they spoke had been the previous match. She hadn’t broached the question with him since, preferring to mull it over privately.
At her silence, he said, slowly, “You want to continue, don’t you?”
She nodded shamefacedly at her teacup. “I want to pay off your debt to Tucoras once and for all, and if my calculations are correct, we may be able to accomplish it with just two more jackpots. Can you believe that? Two months and we’ll be done with this debt that’s been crippling us for years.”
“You have the heart to continue, so let’s,” he encouraged.
“I only wish we had some way to prepare ourselves. I am not you, Desil, I can’t win with brute strength alone.
I must use my mind—but some beasts are just impossible to solve, especially when our backs are driven into a corner, and I don’t have time to think.
” I’m not silly enough to hear one speech from Master Dothilos and be swayed into risking Desil’s life again—I need more to have the conviction to be a conquessor .
“Have you thought of getting into contact with Ilden and Shunvi?”
“To ask what they fought and how? Certainly, but they would only know what they’d faced before or seen in other matches—they didn’t know about the anzura, did they?
And from what they told me, they faced only big, hulking beasts.
I have an inkling that Master Dothilos is less interested in testing my strength than my mettle.
He may throw trickier monsters our way.”
“Still, we’re short on options, so it can’t hurt.”
She grunted unhappily, flicking her now empty cup. “But it seems the logical choice is to quit now and save ourselves the heartache.”
They both fell silent, neither having any good ideas.
Two plates clinked onto their table, one filled with fried rice cakes, the other shelled prawns drowned in starfruit juice and herbs. Mister Millidin gave a bashful smile before leaving for the kitchens.
“Thank you,” Lythlet said before cramming her mouth full. Starfruits were imported from the southern islands of the Ora Empire, and they came at a steep cost. To be given such a treat was an honor, and her gaze followed him as he joined his wife to help her at the back of the teahouse.
“I want that,” she whispered wistfully.
“A husband?” Desil said, surprised as his eyes fell upon the eternally shy, freckle-faced Mister Millidin.
“I’m looking at Madame Millidin.”
“A wife?” he said, even more perplexed.
“ Freedom ,” she said, frustrated. “Madame Millidin can rest knowing she provides for herself, her husband, and their children. She’ll never have to fear being beaten by an ill-tempered boss, nor forced to make a decision she disagrees with by an employer threatening her livelihood. She has a freedom I’ve never had.”
Desil wore a look of concern. “Has the inn been treating you well?”
She rested a hand on his arm. “I’m fine.”
“So you said for months until you revealed Valanti had been beating you.”
“I mean it this time. I’m not being treated badly.” Still she hesitated. “But Master Winaro did not start violent either. It grew as a weed, hidden at first before it spread everywhere. And I fear...” She drifted off.
“You fear it could start again in anyone.” He looked at her sadly, leaning over to kiss her head.
He’d always been sympathetic to her problems—there were commonplace threats she faced in the slums that he as a broad-built, imposing lad would never have to fear.
“You really have had the worst luck. Valanti was one thing, but then there were those usurers before him that gave you those bruises.”
“And before them were the fortune-telling scammers,” she added, grimacing, thinking of all the times she’d had her ears twisted and slapped.
“And the other pair of swindlers before them. And then of course, the brothel—”
Lythlet laid a hand on his. She murmured, quietly, yet warningly, “We agreed to never mention Madam Kovetti again.”
Desil pinched his lips together, nodding in complete understanding. “Sorry.”
Customers filtered in as they spoke, and amongst them was a party of one.
Lythlet’s eyes widened. It was Saevem Arthil in a custom-cut cloak, a gilded brooch clasped across his chest, clutching a package in his arms.
“I am looking for a Desil Demothi,” he was saying to one of Desil’s green-aproned colleagues, who pointed at Lythlet’s table in answer.
They rose as he approached, bowing. “Come for a meal, Master Arthil?” said Desil, smiling.
“Please, call me Saevem,” he said, brushing off the title.
Lythlet and Desil bowed again, the generosity of his gesture not escaping them.
“May we take a more private table?” Saevem requested, eyeing one at the back, partitioned away by florid mother-of-pearl screens.
Desil made the arrangements, and it wasn’t long before all three of them were seated in the private enclosure. A brand-new steaming pot of tea was delivered by Madame Millidin, and Desil filled Saevem’s teacup first.
“We’re glad to see you again, Mas—Saevem,” he said.
“And I you,” Saevem replied perfunctorily. “I did not come for tea and snacks, however. I have a merchant’s deal I would like to propose.”
Lythlet and Desil exchanged glances at each other.
“What sort of deal?” Lythlet said cautiously.
“One we can both benefit enormously from.” He set his teacup down and leveled with them. “I would like to request that you stay in the arena.”
“Master Arthil—”
“Saevem.”
“Saevem,” she corrected herself, unused to a highborn being so unostentatious, “as I mentioned before, this is no longer a gamble I am willing to make. I cannot risk Desil’s life, nor my own, for the sake of some coins.”
“Would this put your fears to rest?” He held out the item he’d been clutching, a thick package bound in cheap, unmarked parchment and tied with a brown string.
She yanked the string loose and unfolded the parchment until she discovered the object within: a bulky, black leather-bound book. The cover was textured, golden letters gleaming crisply on it, crammed together like a cluster of lightning-bees.
“‘ An Annotated Compendium of the Modern Beast by Scholar Yavida Lewenskiros ,’” Lythlet read the title aloud.
It needed no explanation, but perhaps the shock on her face drove Saevem to speak: “It’s a bestiary.”
“Goodness, there are hundreds of beasts in here,” Desil said in growing excitement as he riffled the pages. “Or thousands, even. And there are diagrams and annotations everywhere.”
Lythlet gawked. A book of this quality, with perfect ink drawings on fine vellum, was not easily found, much less purchased, by even the wealthy. None of the books she had ever stolen, not even those from the richest households of the southern sectors, came close.
“I never imagined there were so many different sorts of sun-cursed beasties out there.” Desil jabbed at a page. “Look here, a nine-headed dragon-snake. Venomous, and can only be slain when the one mother head has been isolated from the body. I hope we don’t get that—snakes spook me.”
“Shush now, you’ll jinx us,” she scolded. “I’m unlucky enough for that to happen.”
She turned to the next page: a lifelike rendition of a furry bugbear with pitch-black eyes and two arched horns protruding from the crown of its head greeted her.
For all of Master Dothilos’s theatrics about sun-cursed beasts, playing into the fears of the religious and the superstitious that they were demonic hellspawn sent by the Scorned One to plague mortalkind, this bestiary took another tack: it made it emphatically clear these were no more than exotic animals from the wilderness—that these ephemeral creatures could have their oddities studied, dissected into bare-bones facts and observations, and have their mystique and terror stripped away through rigorous research.
Lythlet peeled her eyes away from the fascinating ink drawings of creatures she had never heard of to Saevem.
“You’re giving this to us?”
He nodded. “I will, if this is what you need to stay in the games.”
“So you really are a bull,” Lythlet remarked, flipping through the pages.
Saevem blinked. “Pardon?”
“A bull,” she repeated. At his blank expression, she continued, “As opposed to a bear?”
“Ah,” he said, nodding politely, clearly not understanding.
Strange how he could be such an ardent supporter, gifting them so luxurious a resource, yet not know even basic arena nomenclature.
“What do you want in exchange?” she said. It no longer seemed likely he was doing this purely to profit from their victories.
He folded his hands together. “Two things. The first being your agreement that we keep this confidential.”
She nodded. This would be to both their benefits: Master Dothilos would likely confiscate the book if he knew about it, and Saevem would suffer a horde of angry bearish spectators descending upon him, furious that he’d upset their odds.
“The second being that, when the time comes, I will request your help on a certain matter. And when that happens, I would appreciate if you recalled the debt you owe me.”
She stared at him. “This is much too vague for me to agree to.”
“I am not at liberty to divulge much information at this moment,” he said, apologetically.
“All I can say is that your connection to Master Dothilos is precisely what I need to avenge a dear friend’s murder.
But perhaps this will convince you I am no conman.
” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a calling card.
Fingers delicately pinching the topmost corners, he held it before her.
Her fingers met the bottom two corners, and she bowed her head as she tugged on it—but to no avail. He did not release the card, and she then understood she was meant only to look upon it.
It bore no name nor designation and was blank but for a single symbol stamped on the front. A diamond, not filled with the Fated Ship as the United Setgad Party chose for their emblem, but by a single long-stalked hista , the flower of peace and one of the symbols of Tazkar.
The symbol was oddly familiar.
Then it hit her—she had seen it while idly browsing Master Winaro’s copy of The Setgad Dilemma during the rare moments of quiet in the hive-workshop.
It was the symbol the Coalition of Hope had co-opted for their political gerrymandering as they challenged Governor Matheranos’s reign over Setgad for next year’s election.
Lythlet raised her head, shocked. “Are you working for Corio Brandolas?” What the devil would the opposition leader want with us? With conquessing?
Saevem nodded. He quickly returned the card to his pocket, casting a furtive look around. “We seek allies. I can say no more at this time but know that the Coalition of Hope will care for those who serve us. Now, will you stay in the games?”
It remained a cryptic request, yet she considered the situation: this was a highborn offering her something she desperately needed just as she needed it.
Master Dothilos’s advice reverberated through her thoughts, that his success had depended upon rubbing shoulders with whatever highborn came his way.
Were she to not only win the favor of a highborn like Saevem but also ingratiate herself to the needs of a political firebrand and possibly the next Governor of Setgad like Corio Brandolas, the rewards would be unimaginable.
Of course, the odds were certainly unfavorable, but the notion of high risk, high reward remained at the forefront of her mind.
She cast a tentative glance at Desil, then down at the bestiary.
Her thumb traced the thick ink lines constructing the monsters, and a smile finally tugged her thin lips.
“This is what I’ve been looking for, Desil.
” She looked up and met his gaze, the fires of hope and ambition swelling in her heart.
Desil grinned. “I think it’s time you replied to that invitation.”