Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo Page A

couldn’t travel fast enough for them. But Teo wasn’t ready for it to arrive.
    * * *
    Ridley woke Teo late that night. “Come on,” he said. “Eloquence is sitting watch by himself. He’ll tell us ghost stories if we sit with him.”
    When they appeared in the Pilot’s house doorway, Eloquence nodded, solemn as an owl. He poured amber liquid, three shot glasses half-full, and set them on a shelf to one side. The liquid roiled sap-thick in the glass, trembling as the boat shifted.
    Ridley took a glass, passed Teo his. He licked at a smear on the rim: sweet, blindingly sweet. Eloquence watched him with an amused smile.
    “I suppose you have Fairy honey all the time. The pleasures of the bucolic life,” he said. Teo wasn’t sure what he meant, but he did know what Fairy honey was. Back home, a hive of it would be drained if found, half to be saved for the Duke’s share and the other half for consumption or trade, depending on the village’s finances that year.
    Ridley sipped, smacked his lips, and rolled his eyes in pleasure. “Fine as I remember it.”
    It smelled like flowery beeswax. Its perfume cloyed in his nostrils, but he drank. Fire and sweetness filled his mouth, and seconds later he felt an odd sensation, as though his spirit had been removed from his body and placed a foot away in misalignment. Odd and disquieting, the warmth in his stomach spread like sunshine, making him calm. He took another sip.
    “Carefully, carefully,” Eloquence said. “That’s your allotment for the night. It comes out of my share, and I’ve nine siblings at home with unlined pockets.”
    “I’m sorry,” Teo said. “I could carve something for your sisters if you like. As payment.”
    Eloquence looked even more amused. “Perhaps it will come to such barter, now that I know you can carve,” he said. “But for now we will leave it to my standing you a glass. And you telling me a ghost story I have never heard.”
    “No, tell us a story,” Teo said, emboldened by honey glow. “Can you tell us one of the Bella Kanto tales?”
    “No,” Eloquence said, reaching towards a shelf. “But I will read you something else. Let us go outside where the air is sweeter, while Septa spells me a little while.”
    The Water Lily’s wheel was silent. They had tied up just off an islet, anchored in a nook that sheltered them from the icy current’s drag. Stars gleamed in the sky overhead, so thick they reminded Teo of the Fairy lights surrounding Grave. He wondered if the Priest was recovered yet.
    Eloquence set the lantern on a crate near the Dryads and settled himself onto the planking. He opened the book, large and leather-bound, and tilted it to catch the lantern’s buttery light. The boys sat down nearby.
    Curiosity sparked in Teo. “That’s not a penny-wide,” he said, leaning forward to get a better look. The book was handwritten, with jagged and spidery script.
    Eloquence looked flummoxed for the first time since Teo had first met him, but Ridley filled the gap. “Eloquence writes his own,” he declared with pride.
    “Really?” It had never occurred to Teo to think that a person lay behind the tales of Bella.
    “Aye,” Eloquence said. His cheeks were red.
    “He’s going to write for the penny-wides!” Ridley elaborated.
    Eloquence waved a hand as though shooing the words away. “I have a meeting, once we’re back in Tabat, to speak with Spinner Press.”
    “That’s the one that prints all the Bella Kanto adventures!” Ridley leaned forward to supply more, but Eloquence gestured him to silence. “If we’re going to get started, then let’s do so.”
    Ridley settled back.
    “Tales of a River Pilot,” he read from the water-damp page.
    Near them, a Dryad said something to another one, her tone low and bitter.
    Eloquence’s nose pointed through the darkness at her. “I don’t have to read it here.”
    The Dryad kept silent.
    The page rustled with a bat wing sound as Eloquence turned it. “When we begin,