The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue
by Patrick Honovich
Chapter 8: The Mother of all Hangovers
part 2
“Mr. Nosso, wasn’t it?”
Lounging on a thick-legged maple or teak chair, outstretched legs crossed at the ankles, arms at rest, Ghita Cadzana resembled some sort of fabulous blossom. With the tones of the chair as leaf and branch; the hues of blouse and desk like the outer edges of petals, the jewelry at throat, ear and wrist like the intimacies of a flower, Cadzana’s eyes drew my attention like the curves of a bouquet, the way the center of a bloom, though empty, still holds the gaze. I had the feeling those floral eyes, though guarded, might not be so empty after all, and I don’t know how plant life can be predatory but there it was as well, in her slow stare.
“Did you bring my notebooks?”
“No. You don’t want the notebooks, anyway.”
“Perceptive boy. You have what I did want?”
I nodded. “I’d say so, I think.”
“I have further business with your master, Mr. Nosso, so if you’ll leave your bottles here, wiser minds can—”
I snorted. “You must be joking.”
Sarah made some small noise, then, a very muted motion, clicking tongue and shift of eye, not hand-slang, not language, but a reflex as Cadzana prepared to dismiss me. In a slight shift of her feet, she’d changed her focus, back to watching Cadzana. The tag gave me some insight into her moods, the weather in her inner worlds, which might have made the turn more obvious to my eyes. Even as she moved to correct it, I got a clear sense of betrayal. Because the feeling of being sold out by someone you trust was familiar to me, I had a bit of sympathy. She couldn’t have blamed me for it, tag or no, mild interest or no, she was watching Cadzana, and the over-dressed woman in the chair was causing the sense of injustice.
I raised a finger in the air, pointed at her. She looked offended. “You’re wrong there. You have business with me. My master won’t see you until you and I have spoken.”
To her credit, Cadzana shifted her tactics without a flicker or flutter. “Really? And I’d thought your interests here were purely with Ms. Bailick. Sit then, sir, come. Have a seat, tell me what you think I need to hear.” It was a rich tone, indulgent, as if she were speaking to someone who’d been kicked in the head by a horse, as if, instead of being a trained craftsman, I was someone’s idiot nephew. Might have been the hangover, but it made me surly.
She pointed. I checked the chair for enchantments, and found nothing, nothing harmful, in any case, although the wooden legs had been mended with magic. I sat.
“Sarah? Be a darling and bring us a bottle from the sideboard.”
“Two glasses or three?” Sarah asked and, before Cadzana opened her mouth, I answered, “Three.”
Cadzana didn’t like that, either.
Sarah looked for confirmation, and Ghita Cadzana nodded before turning to look me over with her most unforgiving and uninterested stare, again a strange combination of casual beauty and the hunger of a wolf at the gates in a hard Corremantean winter. I remembered what Master Tellrus had said: she was dangerous but not as deadly as she appeared. I thought of poisoned flowers, of tracks in snow.
“Do tell, Mr. Nosso. What use do I have for you, other than my own amusements?”
I slipped the satchel off my shoulder, lowering it to the floor, but kept the strap wrapped in my fist.
“Depends on whether you have anything to offer in trade.”
She sighed. “Some wine, Mr. Nosso?”
I nodded and, with a casual flick of one emerald-ringed finger, she had the bottle pour itself, filling the three goblets. I swept my fingers over the surface of the wine, taking no chances, and found it simply wine, a red from the west, a few years old. Nothing special, my enchantments said and, when I sipped, my tongue told me much the same.
“A decent red.” I downed the cup. “Not spectacular, but fair.” The red had no noticeable effect, other than a slight lessening of the ache in head and bones left by the Blue.
“I’m so glad you approve,” she said, her voice heavy with irony. “Perhaps then a better question would be: what do you want from me?”
“To be admitted to the Sage’s College, I need the approval of my Master” — I showed her my hand, his ring on my fingers — “and I need a marque of approval, from you.”
She laughed, but her laugh had nothing to do with amusement, or humor. That laugh was weighted with scorn, hard as a mason’s chisel. “Why in all the kingdoms do you think I would approve of you? You seem to be a decent enough young man but, really, aside from a vague curiosity about the habits of your pleasure, I have no interest in you. Your master certainly should have told you this.”
When she spoke, I felt a tickle as some subtle enchantment tried my defenses, then slipped away. Was it Sarah’s doing? It felt familiar, but as I looked at her, she sat, still, quiet, sipped her wine, and as she caught my gaze she made a show of glancing at Cadzana, then brushed a stray bit of string from the sleeve of her blouse. Again I felt the touch of someone else’s magic, and I looked at Sarah, hard, because the contact still felt familiar, but she was watching Ghita Cadzana and to my other senses she was cold, inactive.
Cadzana refilled my glass. “There may yet be a use for you. Sarah?”
Sarah looked up, and again from her I caught the same sense of wrongdoing, of deception.
“Yes?”
“Keep an eye on our guest, if you will. I have to look through a few papers in my study. Please excuse me.”
With a deliberate extra sway of hips, Cadzana rose, and with the faint scent of powder or perfume, brushed past, walking to a side door, which she passed through, but didn’t close. Again the same wave swept over me. Cadzana had added a few motions, as she walked, and it felt stronger.
I focused my will on Sarah and, with a few questions on my fingertips, found out what I needed to know: Sarah had been given a final test by Cadzana, to secure her own entry into the Sage’s College at Latidium. Me. She couldn’t exercise any control over me, thanks to the defeated charm from the day before and thanks to my tag, but Cadzana had made it her test, turning me to their purposes, as Tellrus had made the deception of Cadzana mine.
“More wine, Satet?” asked Sarah, while her mistress rummaged through scrolls in the next room. With her hands she asked, What do you want for helping me? “Name it,” she said.
“Of course. Hair o’ the dog, it’s good for a man’s soul. It’s not the finest wine, but I’ve been known to indulge.” I smiled, and I didn’t answer her unspoken question right away.
She stood, picked the bottle up to pour, instead of charming it into action on its own. I held up my goblet, not paying any attention to the wine, trying to read her eyes. She held my gaze, and I watched her try to will me into giving aid. I watched her frustration rise as she couldn’t. Cadzana moved out of view in the next room.
She kept her tone light, and asked, “How was your meeting with your master?”
“I’m nearly a free man.” I smiled again, and nodded at her glass .“You could use a little more.”
With my hands, I signed, Swear you’re not out to control me.
“I hadn’t noticed.” With her hands she sealed her agreement.
“Not the best wine, of course, but your mistress wouldn’t open her best wine, not for me, I understand. Probably doesn’t break out the good stuff for you, either.”
“You know, she might agree to send you next year.” With fingers she asked me, again, how, what I would do, but instead of signing out an answer, all I did was nod. It wasn’t out of cruelty; I did find Sarah Bailick tremendously attractive. More than that, I admired her spirit, the determination I saw in her actions. I thought I could see some kindred ambition, and seeing it somehow made her more enticing, failed charms or no. I might be reprehensible, and a scoundrel, and more than a little impulsive, but I still wasn’t fool or drunkard enough to forewarn her. Let her guess and wonder and worry. It wouldn’t hurt; or, really, it wouldn’t hurt me.
In the other room, behind a half-open door, Cadzana bent over the desk. I could see the column of arm and shoulder made by the drape of the bright blouse as she knocked over a cup of quills, but it didn’t fit; what kind of magician gets out of her chair to find a scroll? Her head was down but, as I watched, she seemed to know I wasn’t swayed.
Cadzana plucked a scroll from the spilled feathers, and looked up. Sarah put her goblet down on the side table, beside the bottle and, using her body to block her mistress’ view, she said one word in a split second with the curl of a finger: Meeting. The word she used was specific, one for shady dealings. I thought I understood what she meant.
Cadzana came back into the room, put the scroll beside the wine bottle and the empty goblet, and smiled again at me as if I were someone’s idiot child.
I caught the slight motion of her head, a slight tilt as if she saw something I couldn’t, and felt her charm wash over me like a warm cloth. She tried a stronger version of the trick Sarah had tried on me in Auntighur, but she couldn’t tell I wasn’t affected. I smiled.
The charm curled back against me like a soft wave, and returned to her, back to its source, forcing her to cut it short or be charmed herself. She glared at me, trying to see if it had at least done what she’d intended. I affected the expression of a man who’s just been struck in the head. Let her see what she expected to see.
“Mr. Nosso, I have a proposal for you. I have a letter to send to your master. Would you carry it for me?”
“No.” I shook my head. “You sent two men to collect me, hopefully roughly, in front of my school; you’ve been keeping track of me pretty closely so far; you’ve been interfering with my business, and I have little interest in doing your work.”
The smile disappeared. I reached into my satchel, and pulled out two bottles — the fake bottle, marked with an x on the cork, and the bottle of inert wine.
“One of these bottles will pass your tests. The other won’t.”
She started to rise from her seat, saying, “Give me those, boy—”
I whipped my arm back, and threw the bottle of wine with all my force. It smashed through the glass front of an Andalucean bookcase, and shattered, dousing floor, shelves, and volumes with a very old and very un-magical burgundy. Cadzana snapped one arm towards it so fast I nearly heard the tendons creak, and both wine and glass drew away from shelving, settling onto the floor, splashing and breaking further.
I raised my arm. “Tell me again you don’t have business with me? We’ve run into each other too often for people with no business in common.”
“Mr. Nosso,” — her voice was frost itself — “put the bottle down. I might let you live.”
“You’ll do nothing,” I said. “You strike me down, and my master will come for you, himself, friend or not. Now tell me,” I sat back down, holding the bottle close to my chest. “What do you have that I might want, in exchange?”
Sarah looked at me as if I’d suddenly been engulfed in flames.
Cadzana’s poised and artificial smile returned, and she even laughed as she sat again, clasping her hands with their crust of precious metal and gems together.
“Well played, sir.”
I sat, but kept my grip on the wine-bottle’s neck.“Can we be civilized again?”
She nodded. “I want it. Name your price.”
The smile I offered was one of my laziest, betraying nothing, saying little. “I wouldn’t even consider giving you this if your apprentice hadn’t convinced me.”
“My apprentice?” Cadzana gave Ms. Bailick a withering gaze. “When did she convince you, and of what?”
“While you were in the other room.”
“I heard nothing.”
I flicked my fingers to spell out a particularly caustic curse on her ancestry in hand-slang. “You don’t have to talk to speak.”
Ghita saw the gestures, but apparently couldn’t read them. She looked from Sarah to myself. She smiled again, now seeming brittle, poorly contained. “Very well.”
A snap of her fingers brought another scroll flipping end over end through the air from the other room. “Ms. Bailick, please take this scroll and leave my house. You will be sent to Latidium in the spring.”
I couldn’t quite figure out the look Sarah gave me, but she took the scroll, and left, shutting the door behind her.
“And you, Mr. Nosso, have caused enough trouble for one day.”
“All I require is your marque. Not your continued goodwill.”
She dropped the smile as she heard the downstairs door slam.
“Have a drink then.” I had a good idea then that I was seeing her as she actually was, old, tired, somewhat stiff, but not ill-spirited or particularly malicious. “I know I could use one.”
She picked up the scroll and passed it to me. I unrolled it, read it to see that everything was in order, and slipped it into my satchel.
“I really hold you no ill will, Ms. Cadzana. In other circumstances, we might even be able to have a civil conversation.”
Her voice was ragged around the edges with weariness. “Hand it over.”
I passed it over. She uncorked it, sniffed the cork, and began a series of incantations, her hands leaving glowing trails like lines of fire in the air around the bottle’s neck, cocking her head to the side, frowning.
She looked at me. “This might be what you think it is. It might be.”
She poured a bit into Sarah’s empty goblet, smiled, and said, “Drink.”
“If you think I’m trying to poison you—”
“Humor me.” There was no humor in her voice.
I sipped. It wasn’t Blue, but it burned my tongue, and my throat, and seemed to set my innards back at a dull roar. I brushed my ink as I started to slide off my chair, centering, and stayed on the floor pretending to be unconscious as I heard her call Sarah back in.
“I need to run more tests.” Cadzana stood up. From my spot on the rug, I noticed that she had dark bruises on her ankles, welted skin, a network of fine blue veins. Cadzana may have looked like a deadly flower from a normal perspective, but from down on the floor, I’d have to say her roots looked poisoned.
Sarah came back in, and with a short bit of Old Imperial, I heard her cast a quick spell to lift my body off the floor. I kept my expression slack, my limbs loose and easy. She stuck the letter into my hand, and I closed my fingers around it.
Cadzana spoke as if to a servant. I could imagine her pointing at the door. “Send him back to his school, and if he comes around, tell him you will see him in the spring at the start of the new term.”
Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich
