The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue

by Patrick Honovich

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: From an Unexpected Quarter

Anyone who comes through the Correm gates can, if they know the right streets and make the right turns, walk past the hunched brown stone building, touch the mahogany and brass doors, or run a hand over the bars covering the four windows facing the street. Auntighur is safe when she’s sleeping. One day a year at the lowest point of winter, those doors open, and the people whose business it is to know spread the word. Through the previous night and into the morning the staff prepares the house.

You can’t bribe your way in, or force your way in, it’s all about whom you know, and who owes what to whom. From the time when the staff arrives with drawn swords to the time when the sentries emerge to begin screening those who want in, no one and nothing is allowed in or out.

If you ask the right people, you’ll hear it corkscrews down into the earth, but nobody knows how deep it actually goes. Something about a loophole in Imperial Law; it builds down instead of up, and sincerely hoping I’d still have my head by the end of the day, I planned to see how far down I could go.

Looking at me, you might think I’m not much trouble: average height, average build, no weapons, worn-out secondhand clothes, and even on that day I didn’t dress up any more than usual, but the old saying about deceptive appearances was true. I’d spent the last ten years of servitude and study making sure it was.

I stood in the short line, waiting with the bargainers and liveried emissaries, hands tucked into my pockets to ward off the bite of a Corremantean winter so cold it had the urchins frozen together in clumps where they’d clustered for warmth. The wind off the river picked up a fine dust of ice crystals and tried to scour away every exposed piece of skin, which, in my case, would have been disastrous. I kept the hood of my cloak up and didn’t speak because my teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering.

The two guards at the door studied each man and woman in line, examining credentials, reading over letters, comparing the people against a list. The line hardly moved, shuffling forward by half-steps, everybody frozen nearly through. The man behind me coughed, hard, and sniffled, muttering something about indignity. I looked away, up the line, hoping to take two more steps.

I saw a girl. My breath caught in my throat, and I had to cough, too. She had her hood pushed back and, with sprinkles of ice and snow like a net of diamonds in her black hair, she took a step forward to begin speaking to the guards, then looked back. I caught her eye — a clear, determined blue — and she smiled, then turned towards the front of the line again.

Behind me, the same man continued to grouse. To be fair, it was cold and nasty, and getting more so by the moment, but the hacking and sneezing and theatrics I could’ve done without. The girl passed through the door. A few more half-steps and it would be my turn. I was shaking inside my clothes, the cold seeping through my warmest cloak, seeming to crack my bones over with ice.

I was a little too excited for my own good; the sting of the air should’ve been sobering, but instead of helping the chill in the air seemed to paralyze me, force me rigid, as if I was literally being iced into immobility. When they beckoned to me, I moved forward like the very old, or like someone recently brought back from a meeting with death itself.

“Name?”

“Satet Nosso.” I flipped a few signs as I presented my papers: Corremantean hand-slang, a way to talk without making a sound. Five or six different signs and he read, roughly, I’m calling in a marker, not causing trouble.

“Have they started, yet?”

He checked me off on his list and, before reaching for my papers, he flipped out signs of his own. From his fingers I read, You’re settled, then, but you cause trouble and we’ll skin you. A heart-beat later he said, “A few entries, but I don’t think bidding has opened. You’re not late.”

People seem to think telling me to behave or watch my step will lessen their chances of taking any collateral damage, which I’ve never quite understood.

His partner, who until now had been still and silent, just watching, brushed a little ice out of his mustache, then took a ribbed steel rod from a sort of scabbard at his belt, and fitted a pair of etched gold bands onto either end, waving it my way. Red sparks like dancing embers ran from one band to the other along the top of the rod, dropping with a series of small hisses as the sparks met snow. The mustache exaggerated the frown as his hand went to the hilt of his sword.

I said, “I’m the apprentice of Adam Tellrus, from the Verrin School.” Moving slowly to keep anyone from becoming nervous, I again presented my papers, and pulled the neck of my tunic aside to display the nearly complete ink under my skin. “This is what’s confusing your toy.”

The man with the rod waved it over the skin of my neck, and something in its inner workings clicked.

“As you can see” — I said slowly, to keep from provoking them — “it’s not finished.” I turned my head to show the very tip behind my left ear where the tattoo wasn’t filled in.

The guard adjusted the rings, resetting it, and waved it over me again. This time, no sparks. I cautiously exhaled. One hurdle down.

“All right. You check out.” He patted me down, brushing over every conventional hiding place twice, and giving me the speech. Once within the auction-house, I was bound by Auntighur’s rules and subject to its own justice. Anyone I knew would have given their left hand to hear the swish as Imperial Law was taken away, regardless of how heavy-handed the replacement.

I bowed slightly, and turned the brass dog’s head knob to open the door. As I crossed the threshold, my breath came out as smoke: the ground floor wasn’t heated, either. I kept my teeth clenched against the cold and hoped I wouldn’t have to speak much more before I got into one of the warmed rooms.

“Sir?” asked a voice from my left.

I turned on my heel. “Yes?”

The woman with black hair who’d gone in ahead of me held a crossbow pointed at my chest. I looked at her, mind ticking off details — shiny black hair pulled back in a braid, blue eyes sharp enough to split skin, healthy build, charcoal-grey pants, black boots, navy blouse, black wool cloak with a silver clasp — and she smiled again, something warm in the brittle air of the frosted room, almost naughty. She wasn’t a guard — she was here to bid — so how was she being allowed to pull a crossbow on me, right inside the door?

She opened a side-door, and motioned me through. She wasn’t working for the house — the top floor of Auntighur is empty, everyone goes down to the depths alone, it’s one of the reasons the line takes so long — but I thought about her favors instead of her potential for harm, so I followed.

“Your papers? Move slowly.” I found something delightful about her voice. Couldn’t have explained it, but still.

I showing her my letters, which she examined, then returned.

“You’ll relay my guaranty to someone official, I assume?” I smiled. I was dimly hoping she’d be impressed. I looked around the room, and saw chalk marks on the walls, and the floor. My guts gave a nasty lurch. I could read Old Imperial, enough to search the inscription and not find anything about my death, but there was some unpleasant stuff chalked around the border of the room, and because I’d been wondering about her body, I’d walked right into it. I thought I might die of shame.

“Guaranty? Of course. Take off the cloak, place it on the floor.” She was not impressed. I was in trouble. Three strides in, and I was in bad trouble. Dammit! I took a deep breath, feeling the cold air nip at my lungs, and tried to think my way out. What would Master Tellrus have told me to do? Besides, obviously, pay closer attention.

I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the flicker of lamplight, but the entryway was guardedly nondescript. The vanished cabinets along the walls and polished hardwood floor underfoot, all I could see, wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere else in the Empire. I glanced down again. The sigils were the kind used by the rest of the empire in binding rituals. I had the sinking feeling in the gut that usually accompanied one of Master Tellrus’ more brutal lessons. I had a bad feeling that hers would be painful. If I was bound in the circle, breaking out would be costly.

“It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it?” I asked, trying to keep up at least the illusion of calm.

She laughed, but the crossbow didn’t move. “Take off the cloak.” Her smile was tense and bright.

“All right, all right.” I unfastened and removed it, showing her both sides before laying it on the floor.

“Now the shirt.”

“Is this entirely necessary?” I tried to get a better look at the glyphs chalked onto the wood paneling of the walls. Some of the variations were foreign, but the overall intent was clear: glyphs of binding and of limiting.

“Yes, sir.” She flexed her finger around the grip to remind me who was giving the instructions. I unbuttoned my shirt and removed it, shivering, feeling like my chest was about to cave in, my nipples so hard from the cold they hurt. Master Tellrus trains us, right down the last strip of black ink and the last cord of taut muscle, but she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to my muscles, more to what was laid over them.

“The tattoo.” She licked her lips. “Is it Verrin, or is it for show?”

“It’s Verrin,” I said, knowing where she was going to go next.

“You’ll have to strip all the way down, sir.” Her faint smirk didn’t make the request any nicer.

Huffing air on my hands to keep them from aching. I looked at her for a few seconds, seconds in which her mouth smiled but those blue eyes didn’t blink. Attractive... and potentially deadly. I liked her. If she hadn’t been holding the crossbow, I would’ve made a pass. I tried to remember my lessons on defending against Imperial magic. I tried to visualize myself doing them while dodging a crossbow bolt. The picture wasn’t pretty.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.” I bent to unlace my boots.

“Tough.” From my examination of the floor, I watched her shift her feet.

I jerked the belt, unbuttoned each successive button on the pants, dropped them down to my ankles, and stared back at her with my eyes, at least, hard. I didn’t bother to hide my member in all its cold, limp, glory, because there wasn’t anything I could do about its current state; it was bitter cold in the room. Why there weren’t guards — real guards — I couldn’t figure. Had she paid someone off? If she’d paid someone off, how hadn’t I known who on the staff could be bribed? What was she after?

“If you’ll hold still, I need to inspect the ink.” She didn’t bother with the “sir.”

She stepped close, running her fingertips across the left side of my body, over all the inked skin, rubbing with warm fingertips to make sure the portions of the tattoo left unfinished were in fact unfinished and not, say, covered with face powder or paste. She put the cold metal stirrup on the end of her crossbow against my balls. Gently, with the tip of the bolt, she moved them aside to look at one of the places where the ink ties in.

“Why did I know you were going to check there?”

She snorted.

“You’re not going to dig through my clothes?” I had some dim hope that if I could get her talking I could weasel my way out of the situation.

She shook her head, no, brushed back her hair as she took up a position outside the circle, again with the crossbow pointed at my chest. She held it as if she didn’t miss, and I couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t actually use it. I was fast, I didn’t think she could’ve killed me, but I wasn’t fast enough to guarantee she wouldn’t hit me somewhere if I made a move.

She smiled and, keeping her weapon steady with one hand, took a pinch of some sort of black dust out of one of the pouches at her belt. I knew what she was doing, roughly, which gave me a second to go for one of the wards on my right arm, but not enough time to get out of the way. She blew the dust off the palm of her hand, and it expanded, swirling out, changing color to become a cloud the color of wheat, then swept on an unseen wind through the circle, at me.

The dust got into my nose, my ears, the edges of my mouth, and I felt a tingle as I brushed my arm to block it. I looked at her again, mildly impressed, intrigued, and not at all sure she hadn’t stuffed me into some sort of magic bottle. I wanted her; was it out of respect for her nerve or appreciation for her curves... or had I been charmed? I couldn’t tell, not with the dust still on my skin and pasted at the corners of my mouth.

As I coughed and spit, it felt like something cracked, magically, but I couldn’t tell whether the shattering I felt in the back of my head was her spell failing or my defenses being overwhelmed. Something slid over my skin. A shudder. When I looked up at her, I caught the door shutting as she backed away, leaving me alone, naked, covered in a fine layer of grit and freezing cold.

I shook my head a few times to clear it, dressed and. with the edge of my cloak, rubbed out the circle on the floor. The rest of the ground floor was frosted and empty. If she’d moved through she’d hurried, already downstairs. No furniture, no art on the walls, no rugs on the cold stone floor.

I walked counter-clockwise around the curl of the spiral, grounding and centering, regathering my focus. I wasn’t beaten, or at least I had to assume I wasn’t, and I still had delicate work to do. There was no room to get rattled, so I walked with the hood of my cloak pushed back, letting the cold force me into the here and now. The white stone of the walls looked like it had been kissed with frost and, when I opened the last door, the metal knob took a nip of skin from my palm.

I would not fail myself or my master, although to get what I was after, I could risk both. When I reached the ladder, I paused, remembering Master Tellrus’ voice and the sting as he hammered needles through my skin, inking lessons onto me so I could do as I did now and draw them up. A few taps and a brush of the fingertips over the ink helped return some of my clarity. A wisp of smoke curled up from some lower level, so I did what any reasonable man would do: I climbed down.

Proceed to Chapter 2...

Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich