The Price of Beauty #2
“Would you like another glass, Olaf?” the Marshal asks.
He steps up to the balustrade, where he watches the crowd file in, packing the space so tightly their perfumes spark against one another.
A few captive Extemporists are led through the throng, wailing about revenge or justice or some other fleeting abstraction. “Artless hacks,” Sorav sighs.
Hock says nothing. As he returns to his dismal, overwhelmed body, he realizes a hundred rehearsals could do nothing to prepare him for what is about to happen.
“You know,” Max continues as an usher pries Olaf’s glass from his hand. “No one’s really here for the show. They’re not here for Bertram. They’re here for you. Half of them are scanning the boxes for you.”
Finally, Hock brings himself to speak. “How do they know what I look like?”
“There are a few pictures from the early Revival. Pictures of us together. You with your pen and notebook, like one of those political librettists.”
An urgent knocking draws Sorav’s attention to the door. He turns as a Tender Guardsman enters and mutters something in his ear. A dark shadow appears between his brows.
“Stay here,” he tells the Guardsman. “Make sure he doesn’t leave. Give him anything he needs, anything he wants. No one comes in or out but me.” He moves to the door, striking in his white tuxedo. “I think your brother’s arrived.”
“He just—walked in?” Olaf’s heart hiccups. “Did they just let him in?”
“Why wouldn’t they? He was invited.” Maximian glances back at Hock, an uncanny sharpness to his gaze. “Here. Let me fix your cravat. Bertram will want you looking your best for this.”
Mallory blends in with the thinning crowd, but not well enough.
The Marshal can readily spot him from his position in the galleries.
His embroidered cuffs poke out from under the sleeves of his dark overcoat, and his curls spill from the brim of his hat.
Without the haze of mayfly, Maximian can make out the shape of Tyro in the curve of his jaw, and in his long, angry stride.
“He came up from Sigmund’s tunnels,” says the Guardsman at his side. “He’s armed.”
“Good. It would be strange if he weren’t,” the Marshal replies. “Is Aster with him?”
“Not that we’ve seen.”
Sorav’s eye wanders from his target to the Crypsis agent tailing him, a pursuer that Mallory seems aware of and intent on losing. “Usher him up the third stairwell,” he says. “I’ll meet him in the hall. I don’t want to make a fuss.”
The Guard nods and disappears. Maximian eyes Mallory for another few strides, then retreats down the gallery into the dim green passages of the attendants’ corridors.
He can’t name the emotion that boils in his breast, the anticipation of a reunion that both is and isn’t their first. He wonders how many times they’ve met, how many times Mallory has shaken his hand, tipped his hat, passed him by unrecognized, how long he has been circling the Palas, and how closely.
As the Marshal positions himself at the landing to the stairs, leaning between two pilasters, he has to force steadiness into his hands for the first time in many years.
He crosses his arms, watching the lamplit shadows for movement.
Through the din of laughter and music and chiming glasses, he hears the click of shoes against marble, then footsteps disappearing into the softness of carpet.
Something creaks, and a familiar smell meets his nose; an echo of Joyous Healing, a mélange of herbs and cigarettes and pitcher plant steam.
He releases a breath, then takes another, tensing his jaw.
The scent flickers, and when Mallory trots past, Sorav falls into step behind him.
“Ty,” he says.
Mallory turns. Surprise darts across his face, then recognition.
The look is familiar; Sorav has seen it many times on the faces of his assassins.
First, the glint of determination when they see their target close and vulnerable, followed swiftly by triumph, then terror, then the abject helplessness of failure.
Mallory’s hand darts to the saber at his side.
He unsheathes only a quarter of it before Maximian pushes him against the wall, grasping the pommel and arresting his draw.
Mallory resists on instinct, grip tightening over the hilt, but Maximian leans forward, one hand around his assailant’s pommel, the other holding his wrist. Slowly, easily, he guides the steel back into its sheath.
“Eir vant Passand,” he says. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Mallory stiffens, Tyro’s defiance brightening his eye.
He says nothing. With one arm trapped, he shifts his attack to his other.
It’s swift and utterly predictable, and Maximian can sense it well before it comes.
With his left hand, he holds Mallory’s sword arm, and with his right, he meets the weapon tilting toward his ribs.
He expects a pistol, a lead seven-shot like his last would-be murderer.
He expects a bang, a flash of heat, and the ugly scent of gunpowder.
He’s almost relieved when he feels the cold point of a knife in his palm.
The tip breaks through his glove, his skin, his muscle, and a refreshing shock of pain runs to his elbow.
The blade stops halfway through his hand, and when Mallory twists it, ruthlessly, it scrapes against his bones with the satisfaction of a cracked knuckle.
“You think you’re the first to try that?” Sorav asks. He pushes against the knife, shoving his palm down the widening blade, all the way to its base. He closes his fingers around the cross guard and holds it tight. “You forget who I am, princeling.”
A sneer passes over Mallory’s face. Trapped with both hands still around his blades, he tenses, shifts one foot, but doesn’t move again. Maximian uses the moment of stillness to look him over, to study his gold-brown eyes, the petulant dimple on his chin.
He tightens his grip, leans in, and breathes Mallory’s scent.
He can’t tell if it’s a perfume or only a startling lack thereof, but he can make out the smoke of Three’s workshop, the sour hint of BSPAF, the floral soap of the bathhouses, the sleepy tang of the siblings’ sweat as they toss and turn beside him.
Dawn shivers as the barracks close over his head, as he rises to the buzz of a firefly lamp, turning to watch Guy sleep in those precious few minutes before the Borisch & Sons jingle rings through the damp morning.
Something tickles his cheek as he leans into Mallory, something more viscid than air. It almost burns his skin.
“Is this my perfumer’s work?” he asks quietly.
“This is nothing,” Mallory hisses, scent curling through bared teeth. Shadows flicker across his feral grin as the Tender Guard mounts the stairs, Crypsis at their heels. “You should see what else she’s made for me.”
Gravity tugs at Maximian’s gut. With a painful shiver of metal, Mallory releases his hold on the knife, either withdrawing his hand for a strike, or to grope for a third weapon—the Marshal doesn’t wait to find out.
He takes a step back, turning his knife-pierced palm toward his assailant.
Fingers clasped over the hilt, he whips it across Mallory’s face, striking his temple.
A jolt of fresh pain travels up Sorav’s arm as the young man staggers.
Without hesitation, Maximian strikes him again.
This time, as he falls against the wall, the Tender Guard advances. They grasp his elbows and shove him to the ground, wrestling the sword from his hip. Maximian sighs, steps back, and extends his hand to the nearest Guard, who withdraws the knife.
“You’ll need new gloves, Eir Marshal,” he says.
“I suppose so,” Sorav replies. He checks his sleeve, hand throbbing. “A jacket, too.” He removes his gloves and flexes his bloody fingers, lamenting, for the thousandth time, Bertram’s stubborn insistence on white uniforms.
Mallory, pinned on his stomach, does not resist as the Guard disarms him. One by one, his weapons are revealed and presented to the Marshal: his sword, his knife, a second knife, a straight razor, a derringer at his belt, a garrote in his pocket.
“Odd assortment,” Maximian admits, looking over the saber. He passes it from his good hand to his injured, examining the opals in the pommel, the ancient symbol of Mongfestun hammered into the sheath. He can’t help but ask. “Is this the one that killed my son?”
Cheek flattened under a Guard’s knee, Mallory still manages to smile. “You gave it to me, Eir Marshal,” he says. “Maybe you remember now?”
Cold rage streaks through Maximian, and he restrains himself from driving his shoe into Mallory’s face. “We have a lot to talk about, Eir vant Passand. We can reminisce later.”
Mallory grunts as the Guard yanks off his overcoat, then his embroidered dinner jacket.
They haul him back to his feet, removing his hat, untying his cravat, slipping his belt from his waist, searching his silk blouse for handkerchiefs or embroidery needles or atomizers.
When he is stripped of everything that could be construed as weaponry, they release him, and Crypsis steps forward to take their place.
A handsome usher offers Mallory his arm, and a lady presses a silver gun to his back.
His jaw tightens, his bare fists clench at his sides.
A streak of the Marshal’s blood stains his cheek.
“Wait,” Sorav says. He pulls his sleeve over his wrist and wipes the droplet away.
When he is done, he leans in, uninjured hand encircling the back of the young man’s neck.
“Listen to me, Eir Mallory vant Passand,” he mutters.
“This could go well for you. This could be a very happy night for your brother.” He squeezes his nape. “Don’t break his heart.”
“You coward,” Mallory hisses as Crypsis redirects him down the hall. As he cranes his neck over the gun at his shoulder, his snarl resembles a grin. “You fucking dog—”