The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue
by Patrick Honovich
Chapter 2: Opponents Worthy and Unworthy
part 2
The lamp-oil shifted color again, from pearl to what looked like liquid silver.
He made some small motion, as if he’d noted my mild irritation and was waving it aside.“You were going to ask what it has to do with Auntighur?”
“What will happen to the woman, if Auntighur intervenes?”
He gave me an intent stare, taking stock, although what he might have seen I couldn’t say. “That depends on you. Honesty is a useful tool indeed. It’s unfortunate the young squander it so. Divezha was one of the men who helped to force this place outside Imperial rule, although he was unable to visit it. And you needed a few moments’ time during which you could settle your nerves and I could gain some necessary information about the woman over there.”
He pointed, and I turned but didn’t stand to see.
“Say the word, and bring the Auntighur guards.” His steady green eyes seemed to urge me towards something, towards action, but I heard my master’s voice, saying again, Trust No One, not even this guide, and looked away.
“Wait.” I thought of reaching towards him, but stopped halfway as he swept his cloak over his bare wrist, a gesture that made him someone superstitious about the School, or someone who knew one of the ways my ink could work.
Again, I got a very careful appraisal in his glance. “Would you speak to her? I’d do so here, where you’re on neutral ground.”
She seemed to be half-smiling as she returned my glance. The sheer brass of the woman was fascinating. I nodded, started to rise. “Yes.”
Div gave a small cough. “Shall we hold the guard as an option, Mr. Nosso? If so, I should notify someone now.”
She turned to speak to a woman beside her, a small wishbone of a lady with grey hair. Were all the guides old, or solely these two? I looked around. The woman with the crossbow and I were among the youngest, the room half-full of grey heads, the floors a thicket of canes. Mindful of the plan, I wondered if venting a little here would help or hurt me, and couldn’t decide.
“I’ll keep my options open.”
This earned a brief smile. “That might be the first wise thing I’ve heard you say.”
Div turned the screw on the lamp again, and rapped his ring against the glass-bulb base twice. With a grunt and a little help from the chair he stood. I followed across the room. As we skirted tables, the light dimmed; the wicks on the lamps were trimmed short, their light made a little weaker, maybe not real privacy but at least the illusion of it.
Without a pause in his old-man’s step of cane-thump and foot-shuffle, Div rounded the bar, then cut across the rug to a table and chairs near the entryway. He flipped back the hood of his cloak with his fingers, brushing locks of long silver hair behind his ears in the same sweep, looked down, and cleared his throat. “Lady,” he said.
The woman with her back to us turned, short and frail-looking with close-cut grey hair, small nose, merry eyes — almost nonexistent lips making her look like a starling, or a Corremantean park pigeon.
“Pausha,” said Div, and she smiled, making her eyes larger, and rounder. I assumed it was another alias — a deliberate mispronunciation of a word in Old Imperial for bookseller, by the delivery, an old joke.
“Yes?” She raised her eyebrows in mock-surprise. “Might I help you, Div?”
I took a few deep breaths, deliberately staring at the wall behind the women’s heads. I stretched my fingers, cracked my knuckles, and rubbed the back of my neck, brushing my thumb across a particular stripe in the ink and feeling a wave of cold pass through me, sweeping the unrest away.
Div’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her, suggesting some other affection, but he spoke to me. “Is this the woman, Mr. Nosso?”
I raised a hand to hold him back. “One moment. We’re already proceeding from a bad start. I don’t know your name, miss, and you already know half of mine.”
“Besides which I’ve seen you naked and prodded your tenders with a crossbow bolt.” She stood, offered her hand, and smiled. “We didn’t get a proper introduction, earlier. You’re arrogant, pleased to meet you, and I’m Sarah Bailick.”
I felt a little tingle across my un-inked skin. I didn’t see the crossbow anywhere nearby, either, which meant she’d disposed of it somewhere along the way.
“Sarah Bailiwick?” I asked, and she smiled.
“Sarah Bailick, but Sarah will do.”
“Satet Nosso.”
Div cleared his throat. “Mr. Nosso?” From his tone, I assumed he thought I was making a mistake, but I ignored the warning in the question, and pressed on. Mistake? Possibly. But I needed to find out more about why she’d picked me before listening to the old man with the cane.
“One moment more.” I held my free hand up. “You’ve had your laugh?” I asked her and shook her hand. She didn’t immediately take her hand back after, either.
“A girl has to amuse herself somehow, in this world.” There was a flicker of deception there; she’d had some other reason to single me out, but she wasn’t saying. “You caught my eye in line. I thought I’d have some fun.” Which definitely wasn’t the honest truth.
I tried to size her up, saw too much at once to sort out, so I asked, “Why shouldn’t I call the guards?”
She gave me a smile. “You’re just not the kind of man to let someone else do his dirty work for him. Honestly, I doubt you’re all that humiliated.”
“You did pull a crossbow on me.” Her hand stayed in mine. She made a show of looking me over — I’ve had women give me that look before, usually when they wanted something they thought I wouldn’t give.
She shrugged. “So I owe you a drink. I thought you needed it, and I wanted to see what you looked like naked.” I still held her hand, acutely aware of her curves, trying not to show any reaction. She smiled wide, then, but I caught a hint in her eyes, some sort of a gamble. “Man enough to drink with me, Nosso?”
I brushed a spot on my forearm, and a jolt, a kernel of thought, leapt between us, with a crackle like hot sap bursting from burning wood. She pulled, yanked her arm back and down with a twist, but I held on, and could feel the spark singe my skin as a small welt appeared on hers. Now I had a tag on her, a little marker specific to my mind and my ink to keep track of her movements and condition.
The ink didn’t have to be complete to effect such a minor charm — I’d been able to do it since I’d started my studies. Most people considered it an invasion — in certain quarters that spark would get you killed. The tag gave me an ace to hold. By knowing her signature, I could follow any of her moves back to their source.
“Sure, we’re all even, now, I’ll have a drink.” I released her hand.
She spit out a colorful and physically impossible profanity and the color left her face like a snow flurry let in at the door, a sprinkle of coldest white at her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, her forehead, spreading across her face and down her neck. Before she could get a knee up, I took a step back, which didn’t slow her down. Her small fist impacted on my nose, making my eyes tear up. Of course I took it, smiling, and I gave her opportunity, but she didn’t take another swing.
“You filthy bastard.” A guard jerked his head our way. I smiled for his benefit, and no one else’s. “I don’t know why you did that, but you’re going to regret it.”
I waved to the bar, and the bartender who was paying attention but trying to appear busy with other things. “Buy you a drink? We were talking of drinks a moment ago.”
She put hands on hips and glared at me, breathing hard through her nose. I think she was trying to decide whether to take another swing at me, or simply to accept the offer and work things out like adults.
“You’d better.”
“How delightful,” said Pausha. “The resilience of youth.”
Div scowled, but offered her his elbow, which she refused in favor of a cane of her own, as we turned to the bar and the now fully attentive bartender.
Div and Pausha spoke to each other in the quiet tones of those with a long history, not all of it easy. Sarah took a spot beside me. She looked comfortable bellied up to the bar, maybe as comfortable as I was. Another point in her favor. I still couldn’t decide whether the slight twinge of interest was her spell, or my own natural tastes in women, which Master Tellrus pointedly teased me about whenever possible.
Pausha whispered quickly in Sarah’s ear. Sarah nodded, asked a brief question, then nodded again at the answer. She looked at me and smiled, an expression like arms thrown around a neck in greeting. I looked at Div, mostly to avoid betraying any of the randy scenarios in my head.
She gave a short laugh. “You wish.”
“Or maybe you do,” I said.
She was quick — I have to give credit where it’s due, she was well trained, and if I didn’t have the tag on her, I wouldn’t have caught it, but she flicked a pinch of some sort of herb my way, whispered a few words in the Old Tongue, and I felt a warmth over my face and head. Some sort of spell, and since I caught her at it this time, I could tell what kind: by the feel and sound, it was something from the Middle Kingdom, something hungering for the heart.
She tried to bend me to her fancy, but the charm failed, and I flipped it back through the tag. For a split-second she looked at me with her eyes glazed over. So that had been her game: if she’d had her way, that flash of lust would’ve been blushed across my features, but as it was reversed, I had to smile.
She shook her head a little, and the spell vanished with a few soft unassuming sparks. Her eyes were calculating now. “What do you want, to drop your hook?”
“Nothing you can offer, I’m afraid. And what you might have to offer of interest, we don’t have time for. So you’ll have to stay close, where I can keep an eye on you.”
Sarah looked from my insincere smile to the bartender. “That’s cheap, Nosso. I have my own business to take care of.”
“Now you’ll have company.”
She glared at me as if she wanted to do something about it.
I chuckled. “Take your shot, then, if that’s how you want it to play. Your best shot.”
Div coughed. “No good will come of this, Mr. Nosso.”
After an acid silence, she asked, “What to drink, then?” She watched me without turning her head, as the bartender looked at both of us, waiting.
“No ale, no wine. Something that bites back.”
“Traducea, then?” Div frowned, and Pausha grinned again. I nodded as the bartender looked at me with charmed eyes, then poured into two glasses. Sarah added, “Make mine a double.”
The bartender nodded, poured, passed. The drink seared me on the way down, but it stayed down. Sarah tossed hers back, turned to me, and said without a trace of humor in her voice or on her face. “If you hold me back...”
I turned the empty glass mouth-down on the bar as she did the same, then looked up, keeping accord as if I’d brought her to my suite at the School for the first time. I flipped my fingers at her, the signs for “question” and for “place.” Upending the glass is a Corremantean habit.
She flipped back: “outsider, “student,” the sign for a particular park on the northwest side of the city.
I nodded. “Sounds fine to me.”
“No problems, then. We know better.” She laughed at a private joke, then shook her head. I should’ve been suspicious, or more suspicious. I thought I was studying her, as I looked her over again, but I should’ve looked closer.
“If you’re finished, dears, everything is starting soon. We should move on,” said Pausha.
Div sniffed and rubbed his nose.
Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich
