The Elusive Taste of Kolchoan Blue
by Patrick Honovich
Satet Nosso is trying to finish his apprenticeship at the Verrin School. He’s equipped with quick wits and potent magic in the form of a set of intricate, enchanted tattoos that embed his spells literally under his skin.
Satet serves a strict and calculating master. As his last task, to get his master’s approval to continue to the next part of his magical education, Satet is sent to acquire a few key items at Auntighur, the Imperial Auction House. When he arrives on the coldest day of winter, he encounters Sarah Bailick, another apprentice who might just be his equal or better.
Can he win the items he needs and keep from being hamstrung by the maneuvering of the other bidders? Or will the schemes of Sarah’s own Mistress be his downfall? Will his own arrogance doom him? If he wins his items, will he survive long enough to get them back to the school? The doors are open at Auntighur, and Satet feels ready for anything, but is he?
Chapter 8: The Mother of all Hangovers
part 1
Awake at dusk, sore and blindingly hungry, I stayed in my small bed staring at the sloping ceiling for far too long. Long minutes passed as I brushed my fingers over the ink, and nearly sobbed as I found a new texture. Was it gone? Scabbed-over? I sat up, and regretted it, the colors too bright, the fading colors of sunset still too bright, too much. I was starving and sick, my body dry and empty, hungry and amazingly hung over. Somebody tapped at the door.
“What?”
“Satet?” I recognized the voice of one of the other students, which meant I had rank to pull, so I said, “Let me dress.”
I pulled the bedsheets away and looked at my leg, my thigh, my hip, my side, everywhere I’d had ink. Where there had been a deep black ink before, the skin had changed, the color of the ink under my skin had taken on those of a rainbow, starting with black but rising along my body from a king’s purple to a storm blue to treetop green.
What had been black ink was now every color, and the skin where there had been ink seemed to gleam, as if metal. I brushed my ankle for clarity, and the enchantment worked, so at least it wasn’t ruined or gone. The world snapped-to, and I took stock of myself and regretted that, too.
With a creak Stephen waited on the landing in the narrow stairway outside my door. “Satet, the Master sent me to check on you.”
Talking made the whole room throb. “You’ve checked. Now go away.”
The floorboard creaked again, I guessed from the shift of his weight from one foot to the other. Clearly, he’d been told to bother me until I came out of my room. Master Tellrus would want a progress report.
I dressed, Stephen waited as I turned up my collar, and studied the three bottles on my desk to see which was which. I picked up my satchel and doctored the questionable bottle. The ink Master Tellrus uses to mark my flesh wasn’t kept under lock and key, and a few drops into the bottle, I hoped, would help blur the distinctions. If Cadzana was thorough and knew what to look for, she’d still find most of the things in the mixture she sought. All I had to do was fight just hard enough to keep it, to convince her, and pray that the goddess Cheshara showed me a little grace.
The doctored bottle, re-sealed with the scraps of old wax and marked with an x, went into my satchel. The other, maybe, went into the bottom drawer, and I took as a decoy the wine. I buckled on a short sword, as a just-in-case, and opened my door.
Stephen let out a startled squeak, turned too quickly, and lost his balance. A quick grab at the collar of his shirt just barely kept him from falling headlong down the stairs.
I gave him a hard stare with what felt like bloodshot eyes, hauling him up the two steps and almost to my chest to make sure he had no choice but to pay close attention. “Don’t make that noise again. I’m hung over, and I’m tired, and I don’t have the patience. Master Tellrus wants to see me. Let’s go.”
I let him go, and we met Master Tellrus in the workshop, surrounded by the rest of the school: twelve other students, various ages and temperaments, all of whom were still my responsibility until I left for Latidium.
“Ghita Cadzana has had two men with truncheons outside the door all day. Please deal with them, I’d like to take a walk.” He stared at my neck. To show him the color I tugged at my collar, and he nodded, smiling.
“Oh, and I made those notebooks copy themselves.” He pointed, and two thin books jumped into his hand. “Will you need them?”
“I’ll pick them up tonight.” I checked to make sure the short sword was loose in the scabbard, and walked out of the workroom, heading down the next flight of stairs with his parting “Trust no one,” still in my ears.
* * *
I knew the fading daylight would hurt before I put a hand on the door and faced the day. The setting sun and the shadows stretching across the street made my head feel like someone had put a spear-point at each temple and was boring each one through to the other side. Each burp still tasting of smoke and burnt earth, I took the steps down to the street. Every delicate shade of the Corremantean sunset felt like an insult; the sun sinking down past the gathered masts of the harbor in the distance seemed to be mocking my aching head, smiling with blazing teeth at my suffering, uttering all the while with hot breath, “You did this to yourself, Satet, no pity.”
Walking was worse. Thankfully I hadn’t taken more than half a dozen shaking steps, trying to fight the impulse to cradle my aching head, before two men fell into step on either side of me, and I had someone to take it out on. Still drunk, true, but more than capable, even so.
I felt an ugly boot-black hatred rise in my chest and, still exhausted from the night, I didn’t bother trying to keep the smile from my face. Guess whose lucky day it was?
“Satet Nosso?” asked the man on my left as I turned to keep the sun at my back, head still beating like stretched skin over the mouth of a drum.
“Do I know you, friend? Who?”
“Yer coming with us,” said the man on my right.
I raised an eyebrow. “Us?”
“Us. Now,” said left, starting to bring the hand with the club up as he reached for me.
Master Tellrus trains us to fight, and half his tricks he learned from the circles in Ordecca, dueling to last blood, so any of the Verrin school with hands strong enough to grip a blade can kill with one. I swept hard up, and the forearm I’d bruised and bruised and bruised to toughen up in training connected with the delicate bones in his wrist, forcing the club out of striking distance.
Before he could swing, I’d kicked the wind out of the other man, who dropped his club to roll away in the street, hunched over, starting to stumble, starting to think — too late — he was in bad trouble. I drove my thumb hard at lefty’s throat, and choking, he went to his knees. I didn’t need magics to follow through, just bad temper and, when I jerked my own knee into his face, feeling his nose give way, I wheeled around over his stunned body, jerked my sword out of the scabbard, and snarled at his still-reeling partner.
“Move and you’ll have to buy new clothes. I’ll slit his throat and soak you in blood.” The man whose greasy brown hair I had in my hand tried to get up, so I jerked his head back to throw off his motion, then smashed his face against the school’s stone steps, and he split blood at his partner, who looked suitably horrified.
“Now I’m in a nasty mood, and taking both of you down has given me the mother of all headaches, so I’m about this close” — I yanked his head back hard so he looked at the sky, and cracked him in the broken nose with my elbow and, howling, he sent more of his blood to the pale stone steps — “to killing both of you and not thinking twice. I’ll give you one chance.” I put my free hand on my sword, feeling like I might vomit on myself but more than ready to draw it.
“Tell me where I can find the woman who hired you to rough me up. Hold still.” Without his fair measure of common sense, the man I faced had taken a step. “Tell me, or I will make sure you suffer. I know Cadzana sent you, and I hope she’s paid you well for your pain. Now where is she?”
The man with his hair in my fist rolled, giving up the lost locks to get away. I kicked him in the back of the head as he tried to get up, and dropped him. The headache was making it hard to think, much less move, and more out of spite than anything else, I drew the sword. His partner swung, so slow I had time to strike twice, one slash of the blade to tear up his wrist, and a thrust into his kneecap that split bone. He screamed, and the scream made the ache in my head feel like it had been bringing in friends.
“Tell me now,” I said, the tip of my sword still in his knee. “Or I’ll twist, and snap the point of my sword off in your leg. Might ruin the sword, but you’ll be crippled for life if you don’t bleed to death here on the steps.”
* * *
In a few minutes, I knew everything he’d been told. I crossed Correm, to the other side of the river, past the harbor and slightly northward, still hung over, looking for Cadzana with the blood of her hirelings still on my sword. Every belch or groan or stumble was a reminder I should’ve stayed in bed. Bleary-eyed, I teetered from side to side on her steps and beat on her door with the butt of my sword, scarring the wood. Before it opened, I tapped my ink, and felt the familiar crackle of clarity as a little more of the hangover faded away. I double-checked my satchel. The bottles were intact.
“Come in, please, but—” Sarah paused.
I showed Sarah the blood on my sword, then slid it back into scabbard.
“You’re Cadzana’s pet, then?”
“No,” she said, dropping her voice. “Not a pet. Student, yes. But I have my own free will. Be careful.”
I had to ask. “How much do you know?”
“I know one more fact than she does, I think?” Sarah cocked her head to the side, looking at me.
I nodded. “The men your teacher sent for me will eventually heal, but I am not pleased, and you don’t want me for an enemy, so don’t get in my way. I’ll talk to you after.”
“And what” — she turned on her smile, seeming to steam with charm and grace — “would we have to talk about?”
“The whole world’s worth. I have a great deal to tell you. And a proposition.”
“I don’t know you well enough for propositions.”
“It’s not that kind of offer, but thank you for thinking so, I’m flattered.”
“You’re drunk.” She smelled the booze on my breath or saw it in my smile.
“Only half. Are you going to let me in, or do I have to waste time crawling the side of the building to kick in a second-floor window?”
She sighed, stepped aside, and waved me in. I shut the door behind me. A foyer of cool marble and dark colors helped with a little of the lingering ache and the stiffness in my joints, a check on the tag and a little extra stroke across my skin told me she was trying to ensnare me in some sort of charm, some spell of manipulation that wasn’t working. I smiled, wrapped an arm around her waist, and kissed her before she could think to be offended.
“Bring me to Cadzana. And watch your step.”
“You’re different.” She looked puzzled.
I gave her a grin. “I’m hung over; what do you expect?”
Obviously I couldn’t be left unattended, and I couldn’t follow her up the stairs, so she summoned a thin boy from another room in the place, and set him to guard me. I didn’t care enough to hassle him, and he left me alone, so I stood in the foyer admiring the sway of her ass from step to step while Sarah climbed the staircase. Several long minutes passed and a few doors upstairs opened, then shut. When Sarah reappeared, I’d already started up.
“Ghita will speak with you.”
“Take me to her.”
Sarah led me down a well-furnished hallway to a red and gold door with a brass knob, opened the door, and followed me inside.
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Honovich
