Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo

slip away into the city and circumvent his arrival at the Temples. But the Pilot only smiled.
    “You’ll become used to it with time,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Priests and thought about it myself, but I have family to support. Those who live by the Temples’ way come to embrace it, and gladly so.”
    Teo wasn’t so sure of that. Still, the Pilot’s conviction shook him. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Maybe it could even prove a good way to acclimate to the unfamiliar life in the city. Eventually, though, he knew he’d want out of the Temples and into an existence in the city itself.
    Definitely not a life within the confines of the Temples. There were so many things he could become in Tabat. His mother had been right. He loved the penny-wides and all the roles they offered up for his imagination to take on. He was still young enough to train as a Gladiator, for example. Or he might apprentice to a wealthy Merchant or Cook or Sea Captain.
    “How did you become a Pilot?” he asked.
    Eloquence said, “The Duke advertised for likely men and women and promised good pay, just for doing the training. He pushes at the frontiers, that one, and plenty of steamboats are an important part of that effort.”
    “Oh,” Teo said. “It wasn’t that you’d always wanted to be one?”
    “I read the same accounts that you did, I expect,” Eloquence said. “The early expeditions, the Mercy and the Tenacity . Flying islands and talking cactuses. Rivers of golden feathers and lakes of fire.”
    “Yes!” Teo exclaimed. That was exactly the sort of thing he dreamed of.
    Eloquence laughed at him, but not in a mean way. “Well, there’s still some to explore, to be sure, but the great wild places have all been discovered and mapped, son, with the Duke’s council already planning how to divide up anything of value.”
    “The westernmost lands are still a mystery,” Teo protested.
    Eloquence waved an impatient hand. “Grass and Centaurs. No rivers, so no trade except along the coast.”
    “And the Northern reaches.”
    “Forest, forest, and more forest. A few tribes of Shifters and Beasts, but no Human wants those lands except for what they yield in trade.”
    Discouragement slumped Teo’s shoulders. “You’re saying I might as well give up these dreams and resign myself to the Temples?”
    “I am saying there are worse things than letting the moons determine your life.” He clapped Teo on the shoulder with a companionable hand. “Now come and get some chal. You can’t enter the city until you have acquired the taste.”
    Teo didn’t think that would happen anytime soon. The cook kept a pot of chal, Tabatian fish tea, boiling night and day and all the crew drank mug after mug of it.
    Teo wasn’t sure he liked the taste of fish in the first place. He knew he didn’t like it mixed with black tea and bitter greens. He choked down half a mug for the sake of its warmth and went back to scrubbing.
    He’d rather be sitting watching the water, but all in all, the labor wasn’t too bad. It kept him warm and he could look at the landscape. Even though the day was chilly, it blazed with sunlight, which cascaded down on snow-laden banks and trees until everything dripped, and black tree limbs glittered with water, sending it everywhere in rainbow dance. The Dryads murmured together, braiding each others’ weedy hair where it grew like ivy, along the railing.
    The current pulled them on, aided by the throb and splash of the boat’s engine and wheel. Eloquence had gone back to the Pilot’s seat and was watching the river, but it was wide and deep and not dangerous here, particularly with the ice melting away from the edges of the channel broken by boat travel. The Lily had been kept north too long by the ice, Ridley had confided, and most of the crew, Tabatians, were ready to be home after five months of travel, ready to spend the money from their shares in the cargo, mainly furs and northern plants.
    The boat