Afternoon Riverscape with Boat #2
Mallory forfeits with grace, but it’s Elspeth who gives up the racket, throwing it to Florian. He catches it, flinching as if stung by the memory of his appropriated bodkin. Then he turns to Mallory, eyeing his opponent with eager malice. If not swords, rackets will do.
Elspeth trots over to her betrothed, slips onto his lap, and leans in for a long kiss. Aster can’t help but notice her back arching to avoid the hand reaching around to stroke it. By the time their tongues and perfumes disentangle, Mallory has already served the next match.
“Done already?” the Chancellor asks. “You howled for that court.”
“Well, I was about to break a sweat.”
“God forbid you sweat in your exercise gear.”
“Yes, well, it’s white—we’ve had a conversation about this.” A shout emanates from the court. Florian dives, racket outstretched, and misses. “Speaking of. I have something to ask the Seamstress Laureate about my dress.”
“I’m not letting you wear that green thing,” he says. “Not to my wedding.”
“Your wedding? Who are you marrying, dear?”
“I told you already. Glow-snail shells and stage lights don’t mix. You weren’t there for Sons and Brothers, but believe me, it was explosive.”
“It’ll be fine. Mallory has offered to make alterations.”
“Yes, yes—” He rolls his eyes toward Aster. “Embroidery is back all of a sudden. I know.”
“It’s practically the only thing I can see,” Elspeth says. “He makes all sorts of things, dear. He could make you a lovely cravat for the wedding.”
“Is he contracted?”
“No, he’s a free man. For now. Rumor has it more than one patron is considering courting him.
” She slides off his lap as a second round begins.
A ring of spectators has gathered around the game, less interested in the display of mediocre skill than of Florian unraveling.
Each missed strike sends his perfume searing with light.
“I’ll think about it,” the Chancellor says. “And that reminds me—Aster, tell your master to keep his paws off Demetrius Prophet. Don’t you dare let him outbid me again.”
“I’ll try my best,” Aster mumbles.
Florian shouts from the court as Mallory’s birdie thwarts him once more.
Bloodwort burgeons through his top notes, and when his next serve fails him, he turns from the court.
Because he cannot beat Mallory, he beats the ball boy instead.
He swings at the kid, breaking the racket’s frame against his shoulder with a shallow crack.
The boy falls, curls, and covers his head while Florian twists the handle around on flaccid strings.
The racket snaps again, neck splintering from the handle.
“Hey!” the Chancellor calls. “Oh, for God’s sake.” He stands. “Marshal! Leash your fucking animal!”
Mallory steps forward, reaching to his side for a weapon that isn’t there, but by the time he makes his way across the court, Florian has already thrown the remains of the racket over the gunwale and marched back into the crowd.
A few Crypsis agents, cloaked in outrageous costume and subtle perfume, follow him.
“Tawdry,” the Chancellor growls, and, arm around Elspeth’s, disappears into the buzz of scandalized whispers.
Mallory helps the ball boy to his feet, shaken but unhurt. He’s red in the face, mostly flattered at the sudden, if not passionate, attention. Mallory dusts him off, then gathers his jacket and approaches Aster.
“Nice lad,” he says darkly. “You really serve the same patron?”
“Who are you to judge, Mal? Are you the only good man in Tiliard?”
“Definitely not. But I do know him.”
She frowns, unsure if that’s the line that comes next. She hasn’t seen Porrain in an age. “Any luck with your search, Eir vant Passand?”
“Some. I have a lead, but we’ll see where it goes.” His eyes flit to the Chancellor, politely avoiding handshakes among the crowd. “Strange wound on that one.”
“You can smell it?”
“Sort of. It seems off.” He smiles. “Like it might be spreading.”
“It’s a bite of some kind, I heard. Though no one knows from what. He seems to think someone planted—oh, Eir Patron.”
The Marshal steps before them, a wall of stark, sanitary white. “Vant Passand, I presume,” he says. “The Chancellor informs me I must apologize on behalf of my hireling.”
“Oh. Eir Marshal. Not to me…” He trails off, glancing to where the ball boy last stood. “I’m … That’s quite all right. Pleasure. Such a pleasure. Truly.” Nerves thicken his accent, and despite his smile, there’s no hiding the tremor in his extended hand.
Sorav doesn’t take the offer. “They tell me you kidnapped my perfumer.”
“Oh, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as that.” He drops his glove. Like many who greet the Marshal, he does not look at his eyes, but the glinting medals at his heart. “I’ll be sure to ransom her next time.”
“Wise. She is worth quite a bit to me.” A small frown appears on his face. “Eir vant Passand, we’ve met, haven’t we? Aren’t … No, you’re too young to have fought in Ostlerfell.”
“I was.”
“But we have met.”
“Yes, Eir Marshal.”
“I’m afraid I don’t recall.”
“Understandable. I was only one of many boys you met that day. You came to Mongfestun a few years after the Revival. Spoke to my graduating class.”
“Ah, yes, the reformatory by the lake.” The Marshal’s formal note of bastion rose evaporates, leaving a scent of kinderflower. “No one else makes soldiers quite like they do.”
“You shook each and every one of our hands. You gave me my saber, looked me in the eye, and said my thumb name.” His voice falters. “I was in a dark place, then. You restored me. Genuinely. You gave me hope.”
“I’m … honored you found the event so inspiring.” Sorav steps back, drinking in his style, his open, honest look. His perfume churns as he tries to reconcile Mallory’s thin frame with the exemplar of a Mongfestun military man. “Did you serve after your release?”
“No. Got some work guarding the vineyards in Dagdrun. Escorted caravans up and down the Sawteeth for a few years. Nothing heroic.”
“A pity. The Palas could use men with discipline.” His brow furrows. “Where did you say you were from, Eir vant Passand?”
“I didn’t.”
Someone cries out near the bow. The Marshal surveys the deck.
Another scream emerges from the crowd, and a hoot of laughter.
A scuffle breaks out nearby, angry clouds of perfume erupting over a cluster of feathered hats.
Aster recognizes the stench, the bloody, wild odor breaking through Florian’s olfactory constraints.
The Marshal’s successor, it appears, has started something.
“Excuse me,” Sorav growls. His scent curdles, and for a second Aster is terrified that he is less angry with Florian’s outburst than with her inability to suppress it. She grips Mallory’s arm, instinct pulling him close, as if he has any chance of defending her.
The Marshal says nothing more, turning toward the crowd with a hand on his saber hilt.
He freezes when a raindrop falls on his shoulder.
It hisses against his uniform, leaving a snake of steam in its wake.
Someone squeals nearby, and the crowd shifts toward the canopies.
The cloud of Florian’s perfume sputters and dies, and Aster breathes a sigh of relief.
Sorav knows better than to glance upward. Instead, he looks back at Aster, then turns on his heel. A few minutes later, the call to retreat belowdecks is made. The first rains of Acid Moon have come early.
As the Clevette makes her way back to Tiliard, Elspeth paces her length, apologizing for both the inclement weather and the ugliness of the badminton match. She wears a resentful grin, though Aster can see a spark of cheer in it.
“Don’t worry, Vralen Scholin,” a bridesmaid tells her. “There’s still the potluck, and the dinner banquet, and the high tea—”
“How much does that woman eat?” Mallory mutters.
“Very little,” Aster replies, “considering how much she’s served.”
They lounge in an open stateroom as lunch is passed out on the middeck.
Quarters are cramped. Perfumes and conversations and motives seep into one another; sycophants congratulate and console the bride, conspiracies blend with pleasantries, threats diffuse into the miasma of flattery.
Near the stern, Florian’s indignant hollers barrage the doors of his locked cabin.
The jazz band valiantly tries to drown him out, while up top the rain hardens to hail.
Icy pellets hit the deck in thunderous drumrolls, and the Catoptric with no noise at all.
“Do they have much of this in the countryside?” Aster asks Mallory.
“Hail? In Dagdrun, sometimes. Never in Mongfestun. It barely rains there.”
“Don’t you need the acidity?”
“Not really. The place is barren. Too far from the Catoptric. Even the lake is lifeless enough to swim in.”
“To swim in,” Aster chuckles.
“It is. During Hound Moon we’d dive for old porcelain. Works by Dresden and such. Anything the officers could pawn off.”
Aster finishes her meal to the pleasant distraction of Mallory’s charming, if not dubious, storytelling.
He describes the lake as a quarry, rocky shores infested with naked military boys, but she still sees it as Rebau did when he painted it, a kaleidoscope of orange water contorting a castle in its ripples.
The more he speaks of the bald mountainside, the more the stateroom and all its idle chatter seem suffocating.
“Can we go?” she whispers. “I can’t breathe down here.”
He takes her hand and they make their way up the stairs.
Amid the hail-rattled umbrellas and broken glass, they find an abandoned sunshade sturdy enough for shelter.
A dozen paces astern, several of Elspeth’s bridesmaids bathe in the hail, exfoliating in red sheets.
Their skin will be smooth as glass, once the bruises clear.
Aster turns from the girls and leans on the golden railing. She coughs a few times, steadily but heartily, until she deposits a streak of blood onto his handkerchief.