Chương 132: Chapter 125

Cale Ellara had a plan, a schedule, and a list, and I had made the mistake of owning an afternoon with nothing in it. The Veranor Galleria climbed four tiers up the inside of a rune-lit atrium, steel balconies ringing a fall of light some Technica house had trained to drift up instead of down. Every shopfront glowed. Mannequins turned on their own in the windows, wearing coats that cost more than a season of contracts. Sky-lanes carried couriers between the upper tiers.

It was the most expensive place I had ever stood in that was not actively trying to kill me, and Ellara walked into it like she belonged there, which I never would. A girl thing, maybe. Shopping. In the blood. I decided not to say that out loud. Rade came along. I still could not tell you why. He had no stake in a coat and worse instincts about clothes than I did, which was a bar you had to dig for.

Somewhere between the third balcony and the fourth he confessed it had been a standing ambition of his to watch me get, in Ellara's word, a makeover. I did not know what a makeover was. I knew I loved my sister, so I was prepared to indulge her. Then I passed a window where a mannequin wore what I can only describe as a coat having a seizure, and the little placard beside it called the thing art, and I revised my position. I would indulge her to a point.

"You need three things," Ellara said, counting them off.

"A cut. A fit that isn't combat-surplus. And to stop checking the exits every time a door opens." She caught my sleeve and steered me left.

"We can afford two of those." The salon lit up when I walked in, the delight of professionals handed a hard job. A woman with silver rings climbing one ear turned my head side to side with two fingers, made a sound of professional grief over whoever had cut my hair last, which was me, with a knife, in the dark, and got to work without asking permission for any of it.

"Vessa," Ellara said, dropping into a chair by the window like she held the deed to it.

"Do whatever you want with him."

"Oh, I intend to." Vessa circled me once. She did not look at me so much as take inventory.

"Good bones. Someone spent years teaching those shoulders to expect trouble. The stubble is a crime against vanity." She tipped my chin up on one finger and studied the result.

"You have been hiding. We are going to stop that."

"I like hiding," I said.

"Everyone likes hiding, sweetheart, but it photographs terribly." Two assistants arrived at my hands and my collar without a word passing between them, and a third produced a set of Technica trimmers that hummed on at a pitch I felt in my teeth.

"I would like to note my objection," I said.

"Note," Vessa said, pleasant about it.

"Now shut up and let me work." Rade had folded into the next chair, arms crossed, grinning, settled in for the show.

"Statistically," he said, "you survive this better if you stop bracing."

"I am not bracing."

"You are holding that armrest like you expect it to explode." I let go of the armrest. What followed was an hour I have chosen to forget in the details. There was a hot cloth over my face that could have talked a confession out of me. There was a wash that smelled of orchards and of a number my handler would refuse to expense. At some point a woman took my hand and did quiet violence to the cuticles and promised me the loss of feeling was normal, and I believed her only because I had no standing to argue.

I watched the mirror. Watching the room was off the table with my back to the door, and the Wastes did not care that this door led to a waiting bench and a rack of scarves. Ellara kept catching my eye in the glass and mouthing relax, which is the one instruction guaranteed to make a man do the opposite. Vessa took the cut herself. She combed through my hair, made one decision she kept to herself, and started cutting.

"You have the look," she said, scissors ticking.

"Tragic. The kind women build a whole evening around."

"I'm not tragic."

"Honey, tell that to the expression on your face. You have at least two backstories you don't discuss." From the window, not looking up from a tray of bracelets, Ellara said, "Three. At minimum." I found her eyes in the mirror. She found mine. Neither of us said the rest of it, because the rest of it was true, and a salon was a poor place to lay it out.

"Four," Rade offered, "if we are counting the thing nobody at this table is allowed to bring up."

"Stop making up origin stories," I said.

"I'm a simple, innocent schoolboy."

"Holy shit," Rade said, in genuine disbelief.

"Did you just make a joke?" I rolled my eyes.

"I do joke, Rade."

"Not that I've ever heard," Ellara said. The woman giggled. I glared at all of them. Vessa worked another quarter hour and gave me nothing to read off her face. Then she set the scissors down, turned the chair, and let me look. The man in the glass had walked in with me, and I had not met him before. The stubble was gone, and my face was cleaner than it had been in years. My hair sat back off my face, blue-black and a little unruly, like a photo someone took of me without warning and got lucky with.

There was a jaw under all of it. I had forgotten I came with one. Vessa lifted the cape off my shoulders and stood back to look at what she'd done.

"There. Now the whole Galleria has a problem, and it is not mine." She patted my cheek.

"Try to break fewer hearts than you're dressed to." I did not have anything for that. I have been threatened by professionals. It landed harder than most of them. Ellara rose, crossed the floor, and considered me in the glass instead of straight on.

"Told you," she said.

"You did."

"I would like it in writing."

"Rade witnessed it."

"Rade witnesses everything," Rade said.

"It is my great burden." The door chimed, and the room warmed a degree before I placed why.

"Vessa, tell me you saved my chair," Sarien said, flicking her hair as the door swung shut behind her. Ember, orange running to gold, a grin already forming. Then she caught sight of us, and surprise beat the grin to her face. Ellara was out of her seat before I could stand. The two of them collided in the middle of the floor, hands gripping arms, both talking at once about nothing. They had been friends a while. It showed. I stayed in the chair and let the math finish on its own.

From the chatter that followed, I picked up the following. Ellara did not know Vessa. She had met her through Sarien, who did. Apparently fallen nobles hell-bent on revenge cannot go more than two weeks without their hair done. Who knew. And so, the whole trick of the afternoon: Vessa was Sarien's stylist. My sister had not walked us into the most expensive salon on the tier by accident. She had been walked in, weeks back, by the woman who once came down a river path with six men and a promise.

Apparently they were besties now. Sarien had even helped Ellara dress-shop for the gala. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. I am to understand this constitutes the greatest of bonding activities. The Wastes teach you to sit still while the picture assembles. I sat still. Sarien clocked me over Ellara's shoulder, and the warmth banked half a degree, not gone, only aware of itself now.

"Arcanus." She took in the hair, the clean jaw, the rest of it.

"Vessa. This was you?"

"This was me," Vessa said, pleased.

"Huh." Sarien tilted her head and ran me top to bottom, and whatever landed she filed and did not show.

"Last time I saw you, you were less."

"You caught me on an off day." Her mouth twitched.

"That was your off day." She said it flat, and under it ran the thing she still had not squared, that she had brought six people and a plan to a river and left with neither.

"He scrubs up," Ellara told her, delighted, towing her toward the mirror.

"I said he had a face under there somewhere."

"You did not say it was that face." Sarien looked at me a beat past professional and let herself be caught doing it, because she did not embarrass.

"You two shop together," I said. It came out flatter than I meant, two facts still settling into one head.

"She helped me find my dress and even got me a discount," Ellara said, waving a hand.

"Sarien's taste is impeccable." Sarien shrugged, her face going slightly red. Vessa lifted a comb and pointed it at me like a verdict.

"The hair is done. The rest of him is a tragedy in surplus."

"He needs a fit," Sarien agreed, already somewhere ahead of the room.

"A real one. Bastien." Vessa and Sarien looked at each other and lit on the same idea at the same moment.

"What's a Bastien," I said.

"No questions, big brother. You're in for something you've never experienced," Ellara said, and gathered her things. I did not like the sound of that. Bastien was a he. A very flamboyant, very bright he, loud and dramatic and, according to Ellara, famous in certain circles. I have no idea what that means. Bastien's space took up half the fourth tier. It had no name. Apparently Bastien did not believe in names. I had expected a simple boutique.

This was closer to a stage production, two floors of black glass and warm brass, the main floor open to a mezzanine so the people above could watch the people below being made beautiful. A single garment turned on a stand at the entrance under a light that had been argued with until it agreed to flatter. Sarien did not buzz or wait. She put a hand to the door and walked in, because places like this opened for her whether or not the registries still admitted she existed.

"We are closed for a private fitting," a voice began, and then a man swept out of the back, saw Sarien, opened his mouth to be delighted, saw me behind her, and lost the rest of it somewhere behind his teeth. He was tall and narrow, gold at both ears, a coat the color of a fresh bruise worn like it had been poured on. His hands came up on their own.

"No," he told the ceiling.

"No no no no, my dear darling Sarien. Where did you find this hunk of burning man."

"I would like to be excused now," I said.

"He found me," Sarien said, ignoring me, which I thought was super rude.

"Long story. Dress him."

"Bastien," Ellara said, reading the room.

"It's good to see you again."

"Beautiful Ellara! Child, you look amazing. That skin balm I gave you is doing wonders." Ellara beamed.

"Bastien, Cale. Cale, Bastien," Sarien said, taking a chair at the edge of the floor.

"He is the best in the city, and he knows it. It is his only flaw." Bastien was already circling me, one hand flat to his own chest like he was keeping something in.

"Shoulders. Waist. This jaw, which someone has been criminally hiding under a hedge. Where have you been? No. Do not tell me. Somewhere with bad light and no mirrors, obviously, a tragedy, we move past it." He took my chin, turned my face to the light, a fist pressed to his mouth, caught between a sob and a scream.

"Who did the hair."

"Vessa."

"Of course Vessa. Vessa is the only other person permitted to touch this masterpiece." He was moving already, stripping garments off racks without looking.

"You. There. In the light. Do not move. Do not breathe more than the work requires."

"I have somewhere to be."

"You have nowhere. Nowhere wants you a fraction as much as I do right now." Ellara opened her mouth at a price tag and closed it.

"Free." Bastien did not look up from a seam he had decided to hate.

"For him, free. For Sarien, free twice. I will lose a fortune and frame the receipt. Do you understand what he does to a jacket? What a jacket does to him? This is not commerce. It is a public service."

"I can pay," I said. I had money. Not student money. The kind that came from work I did not discuss at salons. I reached for it. Bastien looked at my hand like I had drawn a blade.

"Put that away. You will insult me."

"It's a lot of clothes."

"It is my cloth, my hours, my name in the seam. I set the price, and for you the price is nothing." He came off the seam and leveled the pins at me.

"Sarien. Tell him."

"He means it," Sarien said from her chair, not helping.

"He turned a duke away last spring."

"The duke had a chin like a doorstop, and he begged." Bastien flapped a hand and went back to the seam.

"You pay me by walking that door in it and letting Valecis Isle see what I can do. You have no notion what that is worth. Neither does that handsome face of yours. Turn." I turned. Owing sits wrong with me. Losing an argument sits worse, and I had lost this one before I reached for my coin. An assistant had started circling me with a small brass lens on a gimbal, catching the left, the right, the three-quarter Bastien kept barking for.

I filed it as a fit-scanner, some tailoring instrument, and went back to counting exits. That was the mistake. It was not a fit-scanner. My face was going somewhere, and I would learn where later, at a worse hour. He started me in charcoal. Circled once, frowned, waved it off before I finished the turn.

"Correct and boring. Charcoal is what a man wears to a funeral he is pretending he did not cause. Off." Word had already moved through the Galleria faster than I dressed. By the time the blue came out there were women at the glass, two, then five, then a row of them. The blue read black until the light caught it and gave it away. Bastien inhaled like it had personally saved his life.

"There. THAT is a color with a body count." He tugged a lapel a finger's width, then glared at me as though the flaw were mine.

"And you feel nothing. You are a beautiful cabinet. Fine. I will feel it for both of us." He flicked a hand at my shoulders.

"Stop standing like you are about to invade a building."

"I stand how I stand."

"You stand like the furniture insulted you. Chin. There. Now you are devastating instead of hostile, which sells considerably better." My eyes went to the door out of old habit, and he caught that too and leveled the pins at me.

"The door is there. It will remain there. Stop flirting with the exit, it is beneath you now." By the third change they were inside. Bastien had propped the doors and let them come, because a full shop sold more than any garment turning on a stand. They arrived in ones and twos and then in a current, off the sky-lanes, down from the mezzanine, women who had been somewhere else a minute ago and now had no errand between them. A pair by the door abandoned a real one.

Someone on the rail leaned so far Bastien called up to mind the finish on the brass. A woman near the front went the color of his coat and took a grip on her companion's arm, and the companion did not notice, because the companion was staring too. Bastien fed on all of it and did not lower his voice once.

"Yes. Look. This is what I do, on a slow day." He caught the woman gripping her friend and aimed a pin at her, delighted.

"Breathe, darling. He is only a man. A catastrophic one, but a man." The grey came last, soft and quiet, something I had no name for. Bastien went silent, which from him was an event. He set one cuff, stood back, and looked at me longer than he had looked at anything all afternoon.

"That one," he said.

"That one ends marriages." He turned to the room without turning his voice down.

"Someone write to their advocate. It is already too late." Each change, I lost another argument with the man in the glass. Every time, the room made the sound a crowd makes when a thing turns out better than the version it was promised. Somewhere in the grey one, I stopped fighting it. It had been years since I looked like this. That was not right. I had never looked like this, clean and cut and dressed like a man who belonged in a room with this much light instead of a man sent to case it.

I have stood in rooms one breath from becoming fights. The attention sits in the body the same, a prickle up the back of the neck, a count you cannot stop running. My hands wanted a weapon. There was a grey jacket instead, and a man in a bruise-colored coat telling a hundred strangers I was about to ruin their lives, and the strangers agreeing with him. Sarien watched it build from her chair at the edge, arms loose, and shook her head once, slow.

"I lost to that," she said, to no one, and there was something in it that had made its peace with the losing. Ellara had stopped enjoying herself and started glowing, which is a separate thing. She stood by the counter and watched the Galleria discover her brother, and she had never once in her life looked so much like she'd been right out loud. Bastien loaded us down. Boxes, garment bags, a coat he swore I would understand in a month. He pushed the last box into Rade's arms without asking.

"You. Carry. You have watched all afternoon and lifted nothing. Lift this." He pressed a card into my hand, kissed Ellara on both cheeks, saluted Sarien like she was owed back pay, and stopped in front of me one last time.

"Come back when you are ready to be looked at properly. And whatever you walked in wearing, burn it. Salt the ground where it stood." Sarien walked us as far as the sky-lane. At the platform the ease went out of her a little, the part that did not fully trust an afternoon this pleasant.

"Your sister's good for me," she said, which was not the whole of what she meant and came close enough. Then she looked at me a beat too long.

"You still don't add up. I'll figure it out."

"Let me know how that goes."

"You'll see me again. Not for a contract." She stepped onto the lane, and the crowd parted for her without being asked, and she was gone into the light drifting the wrong way up the atrium. Rade fell in beside me, humming, more than content with the afternoon he had come for. Ellara took my arm, lit up and unbothered by any of it.

"So admit it," she said.

"You had fun."

"A gang leader bought me a haircut and half the tier watched me change clothes."

"You had a little fun." I had a little fun. She grinned like she had won the war and not just the afternoon, and I let her have it, because she had, and because the lenses and the feed and the good hiding place I'd traded for a grey jacket were a problem for a version of me that did not have his sister on his arm in all that light.

"Ellara, why were they taking pictures of some random dude?" Ellara gave me a pitying look.

"Oh, big brother."