The Devil's Garden (3 page)

Cillian chewed his lower lip at the implication prostitution wasn’t honest work, but there was no point in discussing his vocation with Cree.

“So.” She finished the other boot. “You’d be welcome to help me out on the docks again today, but I don’t know if I can get you paying work just now. There’s a bit of a demand for it. You could take it easy here, maybe run to the market for me later. I’ll split my dinner with you as payment.” Cree flashed her gentlemanly grin. “That is, if you haven’t somewhere to be.”

“I don’t at the moment.” Cillian kicked off the bedclothes and rolled onto his belly to look up at her framed against the brilliant blue of the autumn sky. He tucked his hands under his chin as he crossed his legs in the air. He could grow used to this vision.

“It’s nice imagining you waiting here for me.” She bent to give him a kiss while smoothing her hand down his back to the curve of his buttocks. “
Meeralyá,
but you’re a beautiful creature. Best thing I’ve ever scrounged up at the docks.” She winked and dropped a few copper
alyanis
on a crate beside the bed. “Pick up whatever you like at the market. I should be back before sunset.”

When she’d gone, Cillian laughed softly, jingling the
alyanis
in his palm. It wasn’t his customary fee.

Cillian disliked walking unshod in the city, but there was no helping that. After spending half a copper on a bag of pomegranates and a fresh loaf of blackbread to nibble while he shopped, he sat at the base of a statue of Alya in the common, peeling open the layers of bright seeds.

While he sucked the stains from his fingers, the red robes of a templar came into view. Cillian looked up into Nesre’s smiling face.

“Well, Master Rede. This is good luck. I left word for you at the pub, but no one had seen you. There’s been no question at all of your involvement in the matter we were concerned about. As fate would have it, the gentleman had many…unfortunate entanglements.”

“I see.” Cillian shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare. “That is a relief.”

“And as it happens, another matter has come up. I have an engagement for you.”

Cillian stood, awkwardly brushing crumbs from his tunic. This was not how he was used to doing business.

“A most respectable patron. It’s a private engagement at the temple, and I assure you there will be no repeat of the earlier unpleasantness. He’s quite particular that his courtesans should meet your qualifications.”

“Indeed?” Cillian crossed his arms. “There is the matter of my compensation for our last transaction.”

Nesre frowned. “I hadn’t forgotten, my boy.” Cillian flinched at the deliberate insult. The assumptions of power and respect in their relationship had shifted. Templar Nesre produced a purse from his robe that contained at least half a dozen gold
alyanis.
“Be ready in the Garden by the
nones.
”

“Ninth hour? That’s not two hours from now.”

“Your patron has a demanding schedule, Master Rede. I expect you’ll need to get started with your transformation immediately. Street urchins are not his particular proclivity.” Nesre turned on his heel into the crowd.

Cillian’s cheeks blazed. He closed his fist over the purse with a snap. He would show Nesre transformation. Ume Sky would not be disrespected.

At his feet lay the bag of pomegranates and bread.
Cree.
He hated to miss her, but there was no time to find her to explain. He headed back through the market and made a few quick purchases, selecting the finest trout he could find and a flagon of aged temple wine. He left them at Cree’s room with a gold
alyani
and the rest of her coin before hurrying off to his rooms.

Ume chose a rare, diaphanous silk of azure beneath an overdress of silver and black, embroidered in intricate detail with a pictorial ode to the Meer. She was the seamstress of much of her attire, but this piece she’d had commissioned for her acceptance as a sacred courtesan and had worn only once. Laces and closures of silvery velvet adorned the front, each ending in two long ribbons that swayed when she moved. Similar laces dangled from the points of the sleeves, and the azure silk hung like a delicate waterfall underneath. The desecration of her hair she mitigated by fixing it into a chignon at her nape, embellished with silver velvet ribbon. Edged in a dusting of diamond chips, more azure silk wound over the chignon to form the veil, held in place with a net of silver beads that brushed her shoulders with a sound like gentle water as she moved.

For the Irises of Alya, she selected a cool cobalt paint and fixed a trail of silver sequins in the corners. Just the lightest touch of kohl above her lashes made her amber eyes stand out, large and bright within the sparkling competition that adorned them.

She cursed Nesre for the lost slippers; they’d been her favorite silver pair, with diamond chips on the toes. Instead a pair in soft black velvet with silver ribbons for laces up the ankle would have to do. Before donning the slippers, she soaked her feet in jasmine water for as long as she dared, to soften the roughness of two days spent unshod on the street. At five minutes to the nones, she descended the carpeted back stairs of her apartments to preserve the soles of her slippers and crossed the cobbled path to the Garden.

The carriage arrived precisely as scheduled, with Templar Nesre inside.

Ume laid her skirts across the cushioned bench as she sat before him. “You said this was a private engagement. By which I assumed you to mean I would attend my patron without your company.”

“Indeed. He is, alas, a rather retiring fellow and asked that I convey you to the temple on his behalf.”

She shrugged, letting the silver beads whisper together as she turned to watch the approach through the courtyard arches. The temple was less brilliant in the early afternoon but possessed a serene quality, ripe with rich, late-season fruit hanging from an arbor of olive trees and soft with willowy acacia branches floating like Ume’s ribbons on the breeze. White-feathered rivercocks spread the broad fans of their tails as they preened over the grounds, the Meeric iris iridescent at the tip of each plume. She closed her eyes and let her painted ones look on Nesre.

When they alighted from the carriage, he took her azure-draped hand and set it on his arm before mounting the steps to the central arch of the temple. “You are a vision, my dear Maiden Sky,” he murmured at her ear. “One would never take the boy you were this morning for the woman you are this afternoon.”

Ume sucked air between her teeth at the audacity. If he hadn’t done her such a service, she would have turned and left him empty of his prize.

“The cut of one’s robes gives no indication of what lies beneath them, Templar Nesre.” She did not add that his trailing red robes covered something of little consequence, but judging by the stiffness of his back, he hadn’t missed the implication.

Distracted by his slight, she didn’t question why they hadn’t turned toward the templars’ quarters along one of the outer arcades. At the end of a long hall of alabaster tile was the altar room, where the Meer sat upon his throne on a raised dais, having recently attended to petitioners. Before this visit she had only seen him between the curtains of his sedan on his annual processions. His silver hair hung straight and longer than hers had been; when he stood, it might hang to his thighs.

“Your patron,” Nesre said, and Ume turned, gaping in genuine astonishment. He smiled. “I was not at liberty to speak of the details outside the temple.”

“But the Meer are—”

“Celibate? Generally. It’s more a custom of age, I assure you, than any physical shortcoming. The Meer of Rhyman, after all, has produced an heir through his dalliances.” He put his mouth to her ear. “Report back to me everything he does, my dear, but tell no one else.” He straightened and bowed. “Do we have an arrangement?”

Ume nodded, and Nesre was gone, leaving her to walk the vast hall to the arch of the altar room alone. Two sentries of the temple guard acknowledged her and let her pass. Ume sank into a low curtsy when she arrived before the Meer, the silver beads of her headdress draping the tile as her forehead nearly touched the ground.

“Come,” said the Meer.

The azure silk snaked about her feet as she rose on trembling legs, and she lifted it to approach him. Had she tried to maintain the small, measured steps of a courtesan, she would have tripped on the glasslike tile and sprawled before him in a most uncourtesanlike manner.

To her surprise, MeerAlya was not at all elderly. If anything, his smooth face made him seem almost as youthful as a boy—a Deltan trait Ume was similarly blessed with. His silver hair gave the impression of age, and certainly his years would indicate the same, but if the Meer truly lived for centuries, perhaps they did not age in the manner of ordinary men.

“You are the Maiden Ume Sky.”

She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Your servant, my liege.”

MeerAlya stepped down and lifted her chin. With a smooth, slow stroke, he brushed the back of his other hand against the fabric at her cheek. “Such velvet honey.” His eyes were a pale, startling blue. “Come, Ume Sky. I have granted enough
vetmas
in this cold room.”

Tiled in platinum, the main corridors of the temple were as high as they were long. Beside the Meer’s towering height, Ume was a doll dwarfed by the dimensions of a giant dollhouse. She had expected his ceremonial dress to rival her own. Instead the white tunic and pants were simple, yet their fabric flowed with his body in a manner suggesting majesty, pointed sleeves draping his hands and wide legs swirling with his stride, giving the impression of layered skirts. Beneath them, MeerAlya’s bare feet made no sound, as though he floated incorporeal. But his hair and his pale complexion were the most striking, glowing with an almost unearthly hue in the light reflected off the thousand minute tiles.

Instead of to his bedchamber, he took her to a sort of studio, cluttered with tables and pedestals draped in cloth. He removed one of the drop cloths and directed her to a stool in the center of the room. As she sat, he stroked his fingers across the edge of her veil.

“May I remove this?”

“Of course, my liege. I am at your disposal.”

Crouching before her, MeerAlya drew the silk from beneath her headdress. “Disposal, Maiden Sky, is not what I have in mind for you.” He set the veil aside and stood back to observe her. “My templar described you as an unparalleled beauty among the temple courtesans, but I believe he was mistaken.”

Blood rushed to her face, and she blinked back tears, unnerved that he could shake her composure so easily. It was the Meer’s right to speak as he pleased.

“I have been In’La’s Meer for over a century and have seen beauty in all its forms.” As he spoke, he rummaged through the contents of a cluttered table for a sheaf of parchment and a piece of graphite. “Yours, dear Maiden, is unparalleled in nature itself.” Alya sat on the edge of the worktable with the parchment on a board in his lap. “May I sketch your likeness?”

Despite her disciplined ability to maintain a tranquil exterior in the face of whatever desires a patron might express, nervous laughter rose in her throat. “Forgive me, my liege, but why? I mean, why would you want to sketch
anything?
”

“And with what else should I occupy my time, Maiden Sky? Granting
vetmas
for the people grows dull over a century. Giving daily audience to my petitioners, being attended to by my servants, riding in procession at my templars’ whims—what in that should give me joy? I prefer creation for its own sake to merely fattening the coffers of my supplicants.”

Ume was quiet as Alya began to sketch. If he could truly create with just a word from his tongue, why would he bother with such mundane pursuits? She had never believed in the divinity of the Meer. They ruled by custom, and their blessings were bestowed by perfectly ordinary means, through the work of their templars. So he was bored and liked to dally at drawing. There was nothing magical about him, as she’d suspected.

Though he concentrated on his drawing, the corners of his mouth turned up. “Magic, my dear, is entirely subjective. Some might say
your
touch has magic in it.” As heat rose in her cheeks, his blue eyes twinkled and he winked, so fleeting she might have imagined it. “And she blushes again, true to her appellation. No need to be alarmed or, indeed, embarrassed. I cannot read minds—not in the literal sense, but I am astute at reading the emotions of my subjects. You don’t believe the stories you have heard about my kind. You’ve seen no evidence to challenge your beliefs. That does not offend me.”

Ume tucked her ankles beneath the stool as she tried to remain still, intensely uncomfortable under his studying gaze. She had spent years cultivating her ability to attract a man’s eyes with a look or a movement. Why was his scrutiny so difficult to endure?

“I create many things here. Whether art or invention, I find it more satisfying to use my hands than to merely manifest my thoughts with divine speech. I have engaged an engineer on occasion to help me bring my ideas to fruition, so that they might live on beyond the scope of my words. Power that may be harnessed by the ordinary man, such as light and locomotion.” The Meer paused to pick out another piece of graphite. “Raise your eyes, Maiden Sky. Just so.”

He went silent with concentration, only the whisper of graphite on parchment piercing the quiet, but took up his one-sided conversation again when she suppressed a yawn, as if he’d merely paused midthought.

“Have you noticed how all power comes from conflagration? Whether of flammable gases or fluids or even the boiling of water. That which burns is transformed, much as the spirit is after death. Released through conflagration, life reincarnates, power multiplies.”

Ume shifted on the stool, and the Meer held up a hand.

“Please, if you would, sit still.” He paused a moment, his graphite poised in the air. “That is, unless you are uncomfortable there. Perhaps you would be more at ease if I sketched you in my bed, where you hold the power.”

“My liege—”

“Escort Maiden Sky to my bedchamber.”

A servant she hadn’t noticed stepped forward from the shadows to attend her.

Dismissed, Ume followed the servant, the sound of her beads no longer delicate in her ears. She was not pleasing the Meer; it was not a sensation she was used to. His eccentricity had caught her off guard, and she must adapt. Who knew what the consequences of failing to please him might be? Perhaps there was a reason she’d never heard of a courtesan being summoned by the Meer.

The sky was growing dull through the arches, and the sparkling lights of the temple began to glow in their sconces. Ume marveled at them—twinkling stars that had found their way down from heaven. Invisible to the eye until ignited by flame, delicate gases burned in luminous colors inside their glass baubles.

When the servant had delivered her to MeerAlya’s bedchamber, she positioned herself carefully among the curtains shrouding the bed and arranged her skirts to drape the length of one outstretched leg. She would take her cues from the Meer. Ume was skilled at discerning a man’s desires, and he was no different, just a man with peculiar tastes; she’d known many of those.

MeerAlya appeared presently, a roll of parchment and a tin of drawing implements under his arm. If he still wished to sketch her, then she would be a gracious subject.