2.27. A Patch to Roll Around In

”Friends, Exarks, and Legionnaires: The 841 reaping season nears its conclusion.”

So orated the man at the crest of the ballroom’s balcony, whose bulky leather overcoat shone in bands beneath the spidery corpselight chandelier. Around him, on balconies and balustrates, the assembly awaited their cue. Hundreds of them—most in sleek black Legion uniforms and field coats, some in ivory high-collared sorcerer cloaks, and others like Lisa in finely appointed evening wear whose bright and blooming finery studded the monochrome company like technicolor planets in the night sky.

“The solemn task of the Verdugo’s passage once again draws them home to a welcoming Necropolis,” the man said. “As we feast and revel today, let us give praise to these returning Verdugos, at whose cold mercy—and by the Sorcerer General’s great power—justice for the faithless few is transmuted into safety for the grateful continent.”

The vast majority of them were human, but here and there gleamed the whiskers of a muran or a kari-kine perched on a shoulder. Seth even saw his first unlit sarkanian, a bleached-white lizard with a smooth-beaked snout and unfamiliar crest of horns. Judging by that, their petite height, and a certain bottom-heaviness, Seth wondered if this was one of the lovely she-sarkanians the Blue Ekadao had bragged of breeding by the dozen.

“Which one is that lady we don’t like?” he whispered to Ofelia, as the man’s heavy speechifying marched onward. “Al Vhesse, right?”

“Yes,” she murmured back. “Third from the speaker on the right. The woman with the tasteless fascinator.”

Seth couldn’t see much of her in the crowd. Another smiling, monochrome face, with a hairpiece of lacey mesh and crow feather pinning her hair up. “You were thinking about getting into fascinators, weren’t you?” he asked Ofelia.

“I am thinking again.”

“Rafiel al Kanap,” the man thundered, and the shoal of unlit around him burst into wave of applause. He waited for the tide to ebb, and cried “Annalise al Ydris!” and “Larson a’Lauvey!” after them, to surge them forth once again. “Hail and welcome!”

When Annalise’s name was pronounced, al Vhesse’s smile broadened, and her clapping hands met emphatically enough to rustle the feathers on her head.

Seth diverted his attention to the gorgeous goliath by his side, who had of late called Verdugo al Vhesse a stupid cunt. What bodies had these two swordswomen buried between one another? He had half a mind to ask Lisa to elaborate, but he wondered how much of the truth she’d tell. To love her truly was to love all of her— Annalise and Lisa and even Anna—but where Annalise’s words were bedrock, Lisa’s shifted under his feet. It didn’t escape him how little time he’d actually spent with her, and how badly they had previously parted.

Perhaps it was their moment in the carriage that so destabilized him: her whispers of tender, inescapable ownership leading to the magic word she’d taught him, still lingering on his tongue. He was never in danger. And it wasn’t disappointment he felt. Of course it wasn’t. He didn’t actually want to be a pet, now that his brain had reclaimed its fair share of blood and oxygen from his dick. But the curls of fear at the edges of his mind—they had been changing there. From fear to something more intoxicating he wasn’t sure what to call.

He smoothed his uniform out. He gave his sleeve just a quick tug. Just enough to see the barest hint of the shape. He shivered with that same unnameable feeling.

A broad white hand cast his in its shadow then landed heavy atop it, like a lioness descending on a gazelle. Lisa smiled and tugged his hand close to her waist, so his knuckles brushed the tightly drawn fabric at her hip.

As the deeply diaphragmed speechifier echoed down at them from his parapet, her thumb slid to the rim of his sleeve and traced the edges of the shackle, like a manor lord patrolling the perimeter of their territory. The way she was holding his hand was kindling the sweet-scented fog within his mind into a glowing ember. It wasn’t anywhere the Verdugo hadn’t touched him already, but Lisa’s touch was different, beyond the moisturized skin and the trimmed nails.

Annalise held his hand loose and comfortable, her fingers playing now and then with his, sometimes intertwining close and sometimes airy and open, in a gentle guiding pull that felt as motherly as it did matrimonial.

Lisa allowed no such freedom. Lisa held his hand as tight as a rescuer’s. She shifted it sometimes, burrowing it closer into her grip, getting as much of her skin on as much of his as possible, as if there were some last little bit of soul somewhere in there she hadn’t yet claimed. He tried to adjust his grip, not out of discomfort, just in fascinated experimentation to see if she’d let him. She tolerated it briefly, shifting her joints around his to let him find some new alignment between them; then she pounced again, pressing them palm-to-palm once more, thumb tucked atop his to keep it securely pushed against her. There was a pulse in their handhold, a low steady throb, and Seth didn’t know if it came from him or from her.

“Your sober duty is now discharged,” the orator called. “And as the year fades, let your joys be kindled. Vivat a Verdugez!”

“Vivat!” came the reverberation from every crenellated corner of the hall. The solemnity cracked and fell apart in its wake. The monochrome merrymakers whooped and applauded as they descended to the heroes of the hour.

Lisa was thronged immediately by handshaking hordes and wellwishers so eager to wish well that they’d have stepped right over Seth if they could have (and some of them nearly managed). She navigated the torrent with sylvan agility, Seth at her hip, keeping that tight grip the entire time as she absorbed the slings and arrows of fawning fame with her broad, vivacious smile.

Someone attempted to wrap an arm around her shoulder in camaraderie; she pirouetted gracefully away, turned it into a handshake, and winched Seth tighter for good measure. Someone pushed a congratulatory glass into her hand; she sipped, laughed at some joke, told her own, handed the drink to Seth with a whisper of “Try this, Love, it’s good,” and was handed another. Anecdotes were volleyed like catapult stones; she volleyed them back with such sparkling cheer that you’d never know she was doing everything in her power to extricate herself and her thief from the hurricane.

Seth spun round and round in this vortex of attention until it spat him and Lisa out at the edge of the din. She primped her hair and laughed effervescently. “This is why it’s best to come in early,” she said. “The crowds aren’t so big.”

Seth redid his crooked sash. “Could have fooled me.”

Lisa’s hand departed his. The air stung it. “Will you forgive me a moment?” she whispered. “I will be right back. Find the children if you need a screen; they’ll keep you dry.”

“Where are you going?”

“That sorceress there who’s making halfway eye contact with me.” With a wag of her chin she indicated a headscarfed kari-kine in sorcerer’s ivory, who sat on a balustrade’s banister, elegantly sipping a fizzy red. “She’s the one who helps me with heads. There’s some urgency about the latest. I hope you’ll not mind. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Your public will lack you.”

“They can bloody well lack. We’re only here to eat some food and shake some hands. And dance, because I have missed dancing with my man.” She gathered him back into her arms, chest-to-chest. Her eyes dipped to his jaw, showing the shine of her smoky lids. “Then I’ll take you away from all this, and lock us in our bedroom for the rest of the week. I’ve been so behaved. Sick of it.”

Her thighs shifted one in front of the other below her dress. A knee slid between his legs and opened them ever so slightly. “You and I have different definitions of behaved,” he observed.

“Show me yours,” she whispered. “Sit. Stay. Good boy.”

He rolled his eyes; she giggled, tapped his thigh, and with a squaring of her shoulders and a bold stride transformed from lovey-dovey mistress to icy-hearted Verdugo as she crossed the floor to her rendezvous.

Ofelia had found a girl in a Primary uniform who kept laughing a little too loud and touching the side of her own neck. Tiago was lingering by Riccana il Teremi and making a heroic attempt to interest her in the profoundly expensive finger foods. Rafi al Kanap had placed himself and the suit of armor he’d introduced as his spouse in Larson a’Lauvey’s path, in a clear effort to keep the man from the magnetic pull of the new woman, this al Vhesse. She craned her thin neck, firing beams of meaningful eye contact at the young Verdugo around the jocular boulder between them.

Seth found some wine and drank some down, and rubbed his thumb across the crystalline skull at the base of its stem, and wondered how much Nammi the Larramean fence would pay for it. Had to be worth a score, which meant the flinty bastard would start the bidding at five solitars.

He scanned the floor for Lisa, but she must have found a side room or something for her hush-hushery. That or Seth simply wasn’t tall enough to see past all the big broad martial masticators and polished brass. What did a few minutes mean, anyway?

Well, if she was going to take all this time, she couldn’t really blame him for occupying himself. He hovered at the edge of the gathering, looking as inconspicuous as he could, and stuck his thumb in his ear.

“—dobamo procidya iy pau Alice prestiz.” Lisa’s low voice muffled and crinkled as she spoke. Seth hadn’t found any spot on her body-hugging outfit to plant the cufflink except in the ruffle of her dress’s sash, and as she moved it rubbed against the gathered fabric near her stomach. “Di testzya.”

“Di testzya, naturally.” Another woman. That kari-kine sorceress, to go by the soprano squeak. “I’ll—”

Lisa shushed the other voice furiously.

“Saints, all right. I’ll see her, uh… conscrizya.” The sorceress was clearly less practiced than Lisa at the antique language of the Necropolis. “Must we really conduct this iya Nekrokantya, Madam al Ydris?”

“Yes,” Lisa hissed. “At invasyori mantan ways to hear us, Magra. Haz invitazi et blackfeather akta Alice titavol Shaheill. Ek intozikazi nim fognati Fontana, ek lopazya iy Prossimo. Crezo impria beszelparla minkyet essa. We have to be careful.”

“So—this is her? This is real?”

“It’s real.” Lisa was so inflected by excitement she didn’t even admonish her conversation partner for her Plaintongue. “Crezo et quya sazent santio, Magra. Maz a Seth il Gutierre sotrazi.”

“Seth il Gutierre?”

“My lover. You saw him tendizya et kez.”

“Valobaz, Lisa. The thief? Do you think that’s wise?”

“I trust that boy with my life, Magra. With the lives of my children.”

“But not with this, surely. Or he’d be here.”

A sigh. “Not yet. But once he—”

An insistent tap on his shoulder. He tugged his thumb free to a young man’s voice, reedy and unafraid. “—il Gutierre?”

He turned face-to-face with a wide-eyed Legion officer, whose light hair and brows gave his unlit face a wispy and half-formed look, like a vapor cloud exhaling from his brocaded collar. Seth didn’t know his epaulette chains so well; he thought this was a Capitan, maybe a Lanzcapitan.

“You’re Seth il Gutierre, aren’t you?” the legionnaire prompted. An embryonic smile stretched his thin lips thinner.

“I am,” he said. His posture straightened. A flash of the high horizon in his head, the view from the stormship. Had his name really traveled so far already?

“You’re from the Plainlands, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. Central Corridor.”

“Because I was wondering.” The mirth pushing tight against the back of the young man’s mouth finally bubbled out in a breathy scoff. “Did that dirt on your face come all the way from the Plainlands, or have you find a patch to roll round in our fine city?”

Seth was so spun by the flurry of introverted thinking that a confused hand went to his cheek, checking for dirt, before the mockery registered. The legion boy let out a guffaw. “Saints.” He looked back to a cohort of similarly foppish young officers, who jostled and laughed in giddy disbelief at their hilarious friend putting the provincial in his place.

Seth’s fist closed. What are you gonna do, punch a soldier in front of his soldier friends with swords? At a party your girlfriend took you to?

He turned away instead, and looked through the crowd in vain for Lisa, smothering the rage as best as he could. The bravos behind him kept braying a few seconds more, then seemed satisfied with their sport; they moved on, and nobody else approached him.

Nobody else was paying much attention to him at all, in fact. Their black gazes sailed over him, or briefly dropped to see him then scudded past on their way to fairer shoals. As if they knew he was only pretending. As if they could see right through the shave and the haircut and the spick-and-span new uniform he’d been so proud of, his first look in the mirror. Someone laughed, loud and bright, and Seth nearly leapt as if it had been a gunshot fired his way. He tried to tell his hammering heart that it wasn’t a laugh at him, surely it wasn’t, but it had slipped its bearings now. Have you seen the peasant the al Ydrises brought in? They’ve dressed up a hayseed in necroblacks. What a fine joke.

As he simmered, Ofelia sidled through the crowd to his side, as did Tiago, his jet plate piled with fire-blistered peppers da fiega and tarragon-glazed chicken wings. “Did that pathetic Lanzcapitan al Proiet just say something stupid and awful?” he asked.

“Said there was dirt on my face.”

“Like as not he’s talking about your stubble,” Ofelia said. “The Legion trend is clean-shaven.”

Tiago pointed with a greasy thumb over his shoulder to the thin diamond-point of hair on a laughing Sorcerer Teniyant’s chin. “Or whatever the hell that artillerist has hanging off his face. If you go unlit early enough, it takes you forever to grow a proper beard, so we made it fashionable not to have one.”

“Seth has noticed, I’m sure.” Ofelia wiggled a finger at the dusting on Tiago’s upper lip. “He has an object lesson before him.”

“Yeah, ha ha. You’re making him feel so much better.” Tiago gnawed another wing and looked over his shoulder. “The peppers da fiega are delicious, by the way, Ms il Teremi. If you’d like one.”

“No thank you.” Riccana, in her featureless long-sleeved dress, looked as eager as Seth felt to merge with the furniture. “Not hungry.”

“Do try to ignore the Lanzcapitan, Seth,” Ofelia said. “I know it’s hard when he’s so loud. Just one of Verdugo al Vhesse’s little suck-ups. He’s fishing for scandal and incident with one of us. It’d make her day.”

“I’m okay,” Seth said. “Just a big fly buzzing around.”

“Uh huh. Al Vhesse is—hold on—” Tiago sucked the last shred of meat from the drumstick and set it on the jade-rimmed edge of his plate. “She’s a horse’s ass. No wonder she attracts them.”

“The legionnaires like her because she calls them down to her miserable territories with some regularity,” Ofelia said. “And it’s much more fun lopping arms off peasants than checking seraph charges. I imagine he saw you and Mother holding hands and thought riling you up would earn him a kiss on the head from his mistress.” She cleared her throat. “To be clear, I think your thing with Mother is far less infantile than his with the harpy. Totally different, really.”

“Thanks.”

“Mother puts out, for one,” Ofelia said, and when Seth barely reacted to that choice strip of bait so impishly dangled, her brow furrowed.

Tiago reached for the plate; there were no fresh wings to be found. He picked at a pepper da fiega awkwardly. They were clearly his second-stringers. “Where is Mom, by the way?”

“Went off with a frogwoman sorceress.” Seth’s collar felt too tight. “Think they’re talking about Alice.”

“Ahh,” Ofelia said. She was watching him closely now. “Well, it must be hush-hush if she’s not taking her Seth with her.”

“Uh-huh,” Seth said, half listening. His fingers itched so badly he shoved his fists into his pockets to keep from picking at them. He wished Lisa’s hand was here to keep them secured. They didn’t itch when she was holding them.

He was a thief, yes, but he was a thief second now, and a Verdugo’s retainer first. No, he was Annalise’s boyfriend first, and a retainer second, and thief third, at most. Probably fifth, if he had the time and materials to list it out.

Come to think of it, there were probably some awful nice pens around here, if he had to borrow one.

No. A man like him, a man in mastery of himself, would not sneak away from a party to steal from the Sorcerer Fucking General’s Bastion. No matter how legendary a thief that would make him. Seth had learned his lesson from the stormship. He’d wait here with Tiago and Ofelia and—

Wanna be a legend, huh, kid?

Seth jolted a look over his shoulder momentarily. But no, of course nobody was there. Not on this side of his skull. He was hearing a voice he hadn’t heard for weeks. One with a vulpine grin curling its vowels into a crooked, beckoning finger.

Let’s see what we can do about that, said the Fox.