Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo Page B

the boat has left Tabat and travelled three days north.”
    Eloquence read with a finger passing below the words, but he read as well as anyone Teo had ever heard back in the village, including Neorn. Eloquence’s voice dipped and slowed, just enough that you knew this was a performance, something special, that every word was weighted.
    He just wished Eloquence had been reading a Bella Kanto story rather than this one, which was slow going. It was not until river pirates entered the scene that the story got interesting.
    A shiver of fear worked its way down Teo’s spine, but it was delicious fear, quivering along the edges while he held the scene in his mind and while Eloquence’s grave voice supplied the details, one by one, to be savored. Everything around them was silent except for the splash-song of the river and the plangent cry of an owl overhead. The Dryads were quiet, clustered near the railing, their hair grown together in a great green and brown clump, strewn with tiny amber and yellow flowers, shining in the lamplight as though determined to create the spring they would never know.
    Eloquence’s voice graveled with the arrival of the sorcerer in dreadful league with the pirates. Teo shivered. Sorcerers and Sorceresses might do anything. They had surrendered themselves to magic, so their slightest whims and impulses might become real. That was only one of the things that made them so dangerous. All of the magic of the Colleges of Mages in Tabat and Verranzo’s New City were devoted to discovering Sorcerers (and Shifters) and keeping them from taking over the New Continent, lest they destroy it as they had the Old Continent, which was nothing now but fiefdoms of ash and magic detritus.
    But in the end both sorcerer and pirates were eluded. Teo thought it would have been more interesting if there had actually been some fighting, rather than just sailing.
    Eloquence turned to the next story.
    “No, no,” Ridley said. “Tell us about Tabat.”
    “Ah, Tabat,” Eloquence said. “What should I tell you? It’s a wonderful city. It sits on the southern coast, fifteen terraces leading down to the water where the harbor lies. The rocks to the west form a range that twists around to protect the harbor, and you can see the Duke’s castle at the highest point, with flags flying blue and gold.”
    “Fifteen terraces? How do people get up and down them?” Teo asked.
    “Stairways, and plenty of them, and the water lifts. Or if you don’t mind paying, the tram line. There’s three …”
    “What’s a tram?” Teo interrupted. “It sounds like a kind of basket.”
    “And in a way it is, for great metal baskets full of people slide up and down the wires. It costs a copper skiff. I’ll give you each a coin to ride the center one, the Great Tram, which runs along the Heart Garden.”
    He paused and glanced out the window.
    “What are you looking for?”
    “River pirates, like in the story,” Ridley answered before Eloquence could. “They lurk in the bends, though, and we’re in a straight stretch right now. Isn’t that so, Eloquence?”
    “Aye, but it never hurts to be careful,” the Pilot said. “What I heard, though, was the Captain’s door. You boys best skedaddle before he comes patrolling.” He closed his book and rose.
    Urdo’s footsteps came up the stairs as Teo and Ridley ducked behind the crate. The footsteps paused, presumably to survey the silent Dryads, then continued on to the Pilot’s house, where Eloquence already sat.
    That night dreams of the river pirates haunted Teo. He woke, imagining every shudder of the boat was a pirate climbing aboard, knife clenched between his or her teeth.
    Gradually his heart stilled. He lay back to dream of Tabat, and watching Bella Kanto fight.
    ***

Chapter Eight
    Judgments
    Sheets woven of silk from the Rose Kingdom cover Alberic’s bed, but my bed at home is the most wonderful place to be.
    Ice glazes my window, takes the sunlight pouring through it