Commandment (6 page)

“What have we here, Lysander?” The diva bubbled with delight at their approach. He then held up a small trumpet to his ear.

“This poor Acaanan was shivering in the vestibule,” the guide answered, speaking clearly into the ear horn. His voice now resonated with sympathy.

“Dear me!” The second acted galled, as if that were the worst state of Human suffering. He freed his hand from the tub and sucked on a dripping finger.

“Please sit.” Lakif’s guide smiled and gestured to the sofa, although his tone was more of a command. Lakif obediently sat down on the edge.

“I am Lysander, and this is my confederate…I mean confidant, Demetrius,” the guide introduced his reclining senior.

“A pleasure,” Lakif mumbled.

“What brings you to our doorstep, lad?” Lysander asked.

Lad! The two men thought Lakif was a male! It wasn’t the first time she was addressed as a male, for Humans struggled with this distinction in Acaanans. Then again, she remembered how difficult it was for her to dissect men from women in Dantillion’s Wares.

“I was looking for a tavern to slake my thirst,” Lakif stated, justifying her intrusion.

“That we have a plenty. Drink! Drink!” Demetrius rang a delicate hand bell. He then turned to face the back of the hall. Strangely, the object of his attention was a tapestry. Like all the others, it depicted an image. But this one illustrated an adolescent who was nude except for a fig leaf covering his genitalia. A moment later, the tapestry parted and a prepubescent boy emerged from behind. The kid faithfully followed the chiming bell to their table.

The lad was similarly dressed in a toga. But his was as thin as a napkin. The flimsy garment was too small for his frame, shamelessly revealing far too much of his slender, glabrous body. Seeing the meek lad quaking before the two elders forced the Acaanan to conclude that their warm greeting concealed ulterior motives.

As Lysander ordered drinks from the boy, Lakif cast the older gentleman a brief glance. The manicured milksop was ogling the Acaanan’s lithe frame. Lakif now regretted discarding her cloak. Unfortunately, her shirt wasn’t so damp that it would betray her feminine curves. She wrestled with revealing to the two her actual makeup, but wasn’t sure how they would react to the news. They could equally embrace it or exile her from the hall.

“Your shirt is damp,” Demetrius’ crenellated fingers stroked Lakif’s arm. He gestured to a low brazier nearby. “Let it dry before the fire, lest you catch pneumonia.”

While the brazier would indeed dry out her damp shirt, Lakif dithered. Removing any extra garments in the present company would, without a doubt, elicit an unwanted response.

“No, thank you. I shall not be here long.” Lakif cringed before the pervert’s ogle.

In response, Demetrius grunted and shrugged his shoulders, as if Lakif had forfeited a prize. But the creepy crony nonetheless inched closer to the Acaanan. At this point, the waiter skipped off to fetch their order.

“What is this place?” Lakif fidgeted away from the senior’s probing fingers. She was all too eager to steer the conversation toward platonic topics.

“The Titan’s Toe Tabernacle,” Lysander boasted.

“What’s your name, boy?” Demetrius demanded with an arched brow. It rose so high that it disappeared under his false hairline.

“Lakif.”

“Pardon?” He steered the ear trumpet toward the Acaanan.

“LAKIF,” she echoed.

“And no other!” Lysander hooted.

“What an excellent name!” Demetrius gushed, wringing his hands. Lakif noted that the senior had a single golden tooth stationed in front. This alone spoke volumes of the local neighborhood. Where Lakif had grown up, a golden tooth would be a fleeting treasure, surely to be knocked out by a hopeful in a brawl.

“Yes, a most appropriate name!” Lysander reassured her with a friendly pat on her shoulder, one that ended in a sly rub.

“By the way…I’m a girl.” Lakif hesitantly informed them.

“Of course you are!” Demetrius gushed. “That’s our delight!”

Lakif now knew they viewed her much like the waiter. Even Acaanan males were slim and often girly.

“You claim this to be a tavern?” Lakif inched along the sofa but was walled in by Lysander on her other flank. She was uncomfortably sandwiched between the two. Should she sidle away from the Scylla of one, she strayed dangerously near the Charybdis of the other.

“A
tabernacle
,” Lysander corrected her with a swaying finger, as if chiding a pupil’s misunderstanding.

“I see.” Lakif had absolutely no idea what the word referred to. “Do all of you work here?”

Both erupted into a chorus of astonished giggling at the absurdity of the question.

“Silly boy,” Demetrius corrected her. “It’s Monday. Who works on Monday?”

Lakif thought of the frazzled businessmen in the square outside. “Don’t many?”

“Only the man in the moon, boy!” Demetrius slapped Lakif’s knee affectionately.

“So true!” Lysander added. He was all smiles, as if he had uncovered a buried treasure in the Acaanan. From their tangential responses, Lakif readily gathered that they weren’t at work.

“Try the Patina de Piris, boy,” Lysander gestured toward a platter of pear slices covered with a gravy sauce. It looked appetizing, but she declined. To sample the delicacy would have indebted her to the scholars in an unattractive way.

“No, thank you.” Lakif tried speaking in her most natural, feminine voice, but suddenly feared that would only encourage the duo. “You come here on your holiday?”

“Holiday? Yes, this is a day of gay merriment.” One chuckled, although Lakif couldn’t be sure from which it issued.

“The warmth of your homes doesn’t appeal to you?”

“There are many flames here to warm the body, boy,” the elder cooed. The double entendre was clear enough. Lakif was becoming concerned with the repeated use of the word
boy
. Even if she were a male, she would be too old to deserve that title.

“The tabernacle is warmed by the flames of discourse, lad,” Lysander chimed in with a fortunately benign answer. Both loomed up close against the Acaanan from either side. Lakif felt like each had four arms and eight eyes.

“Perhaps you’re right. My socks are drenched.” Lakif promptly squeezed out from the encroaching cliffs of their shoulders. Socks seemed a safe article to discard and offered her a golden opportunity to extricate herself from the two trolls. The ruse worked. Pulling off her socks, she laid them under the brazier.

“What do you talk about?” Lakif suspected that the congregation was merely a pretext to revel in homoerotic activities.

“We don’t talk, boy,” Demetrius clarified, his tone now a shade coarser. His partner puffed his cheeks in frustration. As Lysander seemed the more innocuous of the two, Lakif resumed a seat on the other side of him.

“We debate,” Lysander continued his cohort’s thought. “Well-reasoned debate is the cherished bedrock of all scholarly advancement.” Lakif wondered if Lysander was spitting out a memorized mantra. Clearly, the Tabernacle was a place of vast academics.

The waiter returned bearing a porcelain ewer. Both men fawned over him, complimenting him on his efficiency and praising his delicate, developing muscles. Lakif’s stomach twitched at the show.

While the predators doted on the adolescent waiter, Lakif took full advantage of the perverse interlude to take in other features of the Tabernacle. As noted, all present wore an identical lily-white toga. But she noticed that the congregation varied in one aspect. Each wore a colored ribbon around the waist like a belt. Four colors were represented among the academicians. Her new-found admirers both wore lavender ribbons. This color was donned by the majority. The other colors were lime, rose, and turquoise. These latter colors were more or less equally represented among the attendants. Lakif imagined that the pastel belts represented a type of hierarchy among the scholars, although how such a division could be established bewildered her. If there was a ranking among the fraternity, it did not preclude them from mingling with colleagues of a different stratum. All colors blended equally together without any apparent restrictions.

Her attention was drawn to the Tabernacle’s rear. There, a section was partially closed off by statues. A group of men sat cross-legged on cushions beyond, forming a circle. One of the cushions was vacant. Its occupant stood in the middle of the gathering, reading from a scroll. Unlike the others, these men wore teal belts. Garlanded wreathes encircled their sagacious brows.

“There you go, Lakif!” Lysander eagerly handed the Acaanan a goblet of wine. Lakif flashed a forced smile, as much from an uneasy feeling with her neighbor as from the drink. She wasn’t a great fan of wine; moreover, she felt that by accepting the drink she was obliging herself to her hosts. Although she accepted the offering, she quickly placed the goblet on the table.

“What is that forum?” Lakif singled out the sequestered circle.

“Why, that is the quadrivium,” Lysander answered.

Lakif didn’t understand the word, which she viewed as yet more scholarly jargon. She interpreted it as some high-brow division of a university.

“But who are
they
?”

Without turning to confirm of whom the Acaanan spoke, Lysander replied, “The Laureates, of course.”

Lakif looked blankly.

“The Laureates have achieved the highest ranking among us,” Lysander continued. Out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t fail to see Demetrius flirting with the waiter. He wove a beka before the boy like a treat tempting a dog. His fingers danced around the lad’s toga, searching for a pocket to deposit the tip in. Lakif felt sorry for the lad, but for Lakif’s sake, his presence offered a happy distraction for the troll.

“What is he speaking of?” Lakif referred to the central figure who was expounding at length.

“Speaking?” Lysander was quick to correct Lakif.

“I mean debating.” Lakif looked about, now feeling the weight of several stares.

“Debating?” the scholar echoed forcefully, and Lakif felt she had committed a gaffe.

“Nothing so base breaches that perfect circle. The Laureates have graduated beyond debating. That exercise is for us with puerile standing. Instead, they
pontificate
.”

“On what?”

“What could be today’s theme?” Lysander paused to scratch his chin. At this juncture the waiter skipped off, and Lakif knew that the lewd partner was back in the fray.

“Pardon?” Demetrius blinked as if he had just awoken from a sweet dream. His hairpiece now sat askew on his crown, as if he truly had bed-head.

“Lakif asked about the Laureate’s theme today,” Lysander informed him, bringing him up to speed.

Demetrius merely shrugged his shoulders and sipped his wine. From the sound, he was lapping up the drink with his tongue, a clear message to the Acaanan.

“Over here, lad,” a voice harrumphed in the background.

Lakif cocked her head, fully expecting to see someone standing behind her. Instead, a scholar reclined at ease on a cushioned chair nearby. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, in the characteristic habit of a tailor. Like his academic compatriots, he was well advanced in years. Not a single hair blemished his shiny scalp. Thin, circular glasses rendered him a pedantic look, particularly so when juxtaposed on his thin face. A white beard masked his thin lips, which sucked on a polished wooden pipe. A thin train of smoke crept upward in ever widening circles. In his lap lay a clipboard, which he tapped with a quill. He was garbed in the customary uniform of the Tabernacle, but unlike Lakif’s licentious benefactors, he wore the rose variety of belt.

“Excuse me?” Lakif wasn’t certain the remark was directed at her, or if there had actually been a remark for that matter.

“The descent of man from Clothorai?” Lysander wondered aloud. He was still stewing of the Laureate’s topic and hadn’t noted Lakif’s distraction.

“That was last week.” Demetrius shook his wigged head. A stray curl fell from the mat and dangled before his nose.

Lakif was only half listening to their dialogue. The outsider now intrigued her.

“The fall of Khante?” Lysander continued to speculate. A second negation came from his colleague.

“I wonder…” Lysander began, then paused. “Eureka! The Renaissance!” He shrieked, beaming with pride at his stroke of insight.

“Well done!” Demetrius hoisted his goblet in salute. The wigged gentleman went on to extol his colleague’s sheer brilliance, affirming that he would be next to don the lime ribbon. The other denigrated his insight as pure luck.

“My consultation is free today. Come, relax,” the reedy voice squeaked out again. There was no doubt it issued from the same stiff. The neighbor was beckoning Lakif and pointing to a sofa nearby. The seat only obliquely faced the scholar.

Fortunately, her overzealous hosts were too engrossed in mutual admiration to notice the invitation. Lakif seized on the offer as a pretext to excuse herself from the florid duo. But should she accept? She briefly feared that she was moving from the frying pan into the fire. But as she had been directed to sit at a sofa somewhat removed from the fellow, Lakif felt that his intentions were probably platonic.

“Have you seen the public baths?” Demetrius suddenly boomeranged back to Lakif. His offer was an unmasked, last-ditch effort to corral the Acaanan. Apparently, he sensed they were losing their hold on the prey.

“Pardon me.” Lakif excused herself from the thorny situation. She thought that her exit would encourage protests, but they accepted the bailout without a fuss. It was all the better, for Lakif was eager to leave the salacious scholars behind.

“T
HANK YOU.”
T
HE
A
CAANAN DROPPED TO THE SOFA BUT WAS HESITANT TO
assume a fully reclined position. Nearby glistened a marble basin for hand washing. “What consultation do you refer to?”

“I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to analyze an Acaanan,” the man tapped his pipe over an ashtray.

“Anal…yze?” Lakif feared there was lewd imagery at play. The two perverts had left her hypervigilant.