Hearts of Tabat Read online

  HEARTS OF TABAT

  CAT RAMBO

  CONTENTS

  Book Description

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If You Liked Hearts of Tabat

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  Fireworks, riots, and rousing speeches all mark the vast societal upheavals taking place in the city of Tabat. But personal upheavals reflect the chaos as well. Adelina Nettlepurse, noted historian and secret owner of Spinner Press, watches the politics and intrigue with interest, only to find herself drawn into its heart by a dangerous text and a wholly unsuitable love affair with a man well below her station.

  The match offered by Merchant Mage Sebastiano Silvercloth would be much more acceptable, but Sebastiano is hampered by his own troubles at the College of Mages, where the dwindling of magical resources that threatens the city itself. And worse, his father demands that he marry as soon as possible.

  When Adelina’s best friend, glamorous and charming Gladiator Bella Kanto, is convicted of sorcery and exiled, the city undergoes increasing turmoil as even the weather changes to reflect the confusion and the loss of one of their most beloved heroes.

  Meanwhile the Beasts of Tabat—magical creatures such as Dryads, Minotaurs, and Centaurs—are experiencing a revolution of their own, finally questioning a social order that places them at its lowest level. But who is helping the Beasts in their subversive uprising?

  In this second book of the Tabat Quartet, award-winning author Cat Rambo expands her breathtaking story from Beasts of Tabat with a new points of view as Adelina, Sebastiano, and others add their voices. Tabat is a world, a society, and a cast of characters unlike any you have read before.

  WordFire Press

  wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-638-5

  HEARTS OF TABAT

  Copyright © 2018 Cat Rambo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by Janet McDonald

  Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

  Edited by Kevin J. Anderson

  Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument, CO 80132

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  Created with Vellum

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dearest reader:

  If you’ve come to this book after reading Beasts of Tabat, I have both good and bad news for you. The good is that much of this book will shed light on some—but not all—of the events of that book. The bad is that if you want more of Bella and Teo, they are secondary characters in this book, which starts in time the same moment that Teo arrives in Tabat.

  If you’re new to Tabat, the good news is that if you like this one, you’ll like Beasts of Tabat just as much, I think. I believe either book serves as a decent entrance without spoiling the other.

  Why this odd and bifurcated structure? Because I’m playing around with the idea of a world created from many points of view. Because these were the characters best suited to move things along to the events of the third book, Exiles of Tabat, which returns to Bella and Teo. Because I didn’t want the books to be a traditional fantasy series, but to raise some questions about that particular structure. And because Sebastiano, Eloquence, Obedience, and Adelina all demanded their time too.

  With this manuscript off, I’m now working on Book Three, and plan to turn that in by year’s end. I’m learning how to do these quicker and more efficiently, so I can say that with some degree of confidence. Only time can tell whether that will be borne out or not.

  In any case, thank you for spending time in the world I’ve created. If you like it, there’s a number of short stories set in it as well, which you can find links to on my website at kittywumpus.net as well as links to other worlds in my fantasy and science fiction.

  Peace,

  Cat

  CHAPTER 1

  P anic froze Adelina, held her so she couldn’t move despite the screaming in her head. Her fingers were tight around Leonoa’s; she’d paused to let the tiny woman, hampered by her twisted frame, catch up amid the chaotic, crowded room.

  This is what a riot looks like: The flirtatious pink velvet of her skirt darkened to sullen plum by spilled punch. Flickers of firelight dancing like angry Fairies on the sticky surface. Two shattered windows, shards of broken glass highlighted by the glare from the aetheric lamps hanging over the street outside, actinic blue-white washing in over the parquet floor that was Bernarda’s pride, two hundred and thirty different kinds of wood, each dedicated to a different Trade God, zebra-striped bits of southern wood and chips of mammoth ivory and black coralwood from the depths.

  Adelina tried to shut off the relentless writer in her head, but it had always been her first refuge from terror.

  More details: the punch bowl, shattered by the first brick that had come in, that had landed soundly in the middle beside the overturned table. Punch and bits of curved luster-glass everywhere, a great puddle changing the colors of the woods beneath it, tinting them dark and rose and scarlet.

  Two paintings askew on the walls, others on the floor in a jumble that drew the eye as much as their impious and arresting subject matter, the cause that had set the riot off, had lit the torches ou
tside.

  How had they known about the paintings and their subject matter before the exhibition, she wondered. Someone must have known what the paintings would be like, must have tipped people off, organized the crowd. It was too orderly. Too assembled. But who could have done such a thing?

  Adelina matched gazes with the most likely culprit, dressed in Coinblossom colors, and staring from across the room. Marta’s eyes glittered hate at Adelina. Gods, even now the woman would rather hold her grudge against Bella and anything associated with her than worry about keeping herself alive in the middle of chaos. She remembered Marta from years ago, in the Merchant finishing school, as bitter and petty then as now, almost two decades later.

  This is what a riot sounds like: Angry shouts coming in through the windows, drowning out the frightened chatter all around Adelina (“Was that Bella Kanto who just went out? Of course I knew she’d be here.”) Bernarda, somewhere behind the scenes, ordering someone else to do something, it was unclear what, but her tones were unmistakable and imperious. The woman’s best chances of keeping her gallery further intact had just walked out the door in order to stand down the rioters, who had grown from the few dozen that had been here when Adelina and Bella first arrived, immediately after the now-absent Duke’s speech.

  And that person, her ex-lover and now best friend, Bella Kanto was, in theory, supposed to be concerned with Adelina, let alone worried about her own cousin Leonoa. But Bella had said “Yes, unfair, I’m sorry,” in a tone that said she was anything but sorry, and then had the colossal nerve to call Adelina “sweetheart” and tell her where to meet up afterward. As though she were ordering a child strayed past curfew on its way home.

  Someone jostled her, shoving her sideways so she lost hold of Leonoa’s hand. Her purse, in her other hand, was knocked loose, contents spilling, and she knelt, gathering a handful of silver skiffs, a quill and knife, a few papers, wondering where her little silver mirror had rolled to, before standing again and reclaiming contact. Leonoa stood wide-eyed over her, trying to make sense of the skirts and trousers pushing past. Like Adelina, she’d dressed in her best for the occasion; her stiff, gaudy skirts projected out around her, preventing the worst of the buffeting.

  Adelina took a breath, trying to slow her heart.

  This is what a riot smells like: smoke and sweat and alcohol and all the mingled pomades and perfumes. Who was still wearing vetiver? That went out last season. And what was that intriguing cinnamon and musk blend, was that an actual edge of rum in it or some remnant of the punch?

  There, in the crowd, that panicked face flashing past, was that Scholar Reinart? Gods, he was everywhere. She’d been invited as a Nettlepurse Merchant, not in her position as the secret owner of Spinner Press, but its business seemed to follow her.

  The crowd was a mix of upper crust Tabatians, most of them dark-skinned like Adelina, although there was a scattering of paler-skinned Northerners, new-come to wealth and seeking social status by buying art here at Bernarda’s gallery, patronized by the Duke himself. The only signs of the elections whose campaigns had been troubling the city for weeks were a few feather pins, fastened to collars or sleeves in colors that denoted their wearer’s party allegiance.

  That is what a riot feels like: Leonoa’s small fingers in Adelina’s own, Bella’s tiny cousin and the center of all this clamor, breathing hard, the gasps and gulps of air she took in when stressed.

  Adelina’s own pulse beat fists against the hollow of her throat, pressed tight fingers behind her brows every time the streetlights outside struck her eyes, hammered at the pit of her belly, unnerving her.

  Leonoa was watching the great double-doors, twice her height and then some, through which Bella had vanished with the two guards to face the angry mob. Her lips firmed, resolute. “This is absurd!” she proclaimed. Of all the people Adelina knew, Leonoa was the only one who’d allow indignation to make her totally ignore the danger all around her.

  Adelina allowed the irritation to set the tone, to be the touchstone by which all the rest of the scene was rendered normal and therefore acceptable.

  Otherwise I’ll think about the fact that my best friend is facing down a mob, aided only by two fellow Gladiators, and while Bella Kanto is the best in the city, the best that Tabat has ever seen, those are still long enough odds that someone could get hurt.

  Anger at Leonoa, the center of all this chaos, flared, and Adelina released her hand and took a step forward, towards the center of the room. The paintings still pulled Adelina’s attention to them, drew her like forbidden angers. Irritation sparked inside her. “Surely you knew something would happen, that there would be consequences for painting such …” She paused, at a loss.

  What words can encompass the enormity of what Leonoa has done? Beasts—creatures of magic—are part of the social and economic order of the city, the thing Tabat’s economy depends on. But they are less than Human, things rather than people, and yet Leonoa’s art depicts them as though they were the latter.

  Take, for example, the nearest canvas, splayed open to Adelina’s eyes, so close that three steps would have allowed her to stroke the surface: a Minotaur, dressed in Merchant fabrics that matched her chestnut eyes, handing another Minotaur a handful of Tabatian coins, golden galleons and schooners. Both Minotaurs, female and male, didn’t look at the viewer, and something about the posed-unposed nature of that made the picture all the more shocking.

  Or the next image, a Dog-Woman, dressed in silver armor that Adelina knew well, the very armor that Bella wore each year as Winter’s Champion when she fought in the ritual battle that determined whether Spring would be early or—as it had been now for decades—late. Its presence on a Beast was impious and shocking. The Dog-Woman’s orbed eyes gleamed as fiercely as Bella’s, and her nose flared as though she scented an opponent.

  The Duke had forbidden Abolitionism and all the works advocating or teaching it, though everyone knew that some nobility dabbled in such causes. But would the Duke spare Bella’s cousin the way he would have one of his fellow Nobles? I doubt it.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said to Leonoa, cutting off the words the painter was about to emit. “This isn’t a play—they’ll burn it down around our ears. And when the Peacekeepers arrive to sort things out, there’s a good chance they’ll just haul everyone off and throw them in cells without bothering to sort out who is responsible for what and who does or doesn’t have an invitation.”

  Leonoa’s lips thinned even further, forming a single, adamant line. “I’m not ashamed of what I’ve painted. Art is art.”

  “Your art is illegal heresy.”

  “No one should have the right to forbid art from taking on a subject. That is counter to civilization.”

  Leonoa has always been one of those souls prone to taking up causes, but she’s never taken up anything illegal before. Adelina thought back on her conversation with Bella, coming down to the gallery. What was it that Bella had said? That her cousin had become involved with someone who resembled a Beast but claimed to be something other than that—claimed to be a Human who’d fallen victim to sorcery.

  She took another breath of perfume and fruit punch. Is that smoke? “Is this really the time to be having such an argument?” Reaching again for Leonoa’s hand, she caught it. “Bella said to meet her in the Duke’s Plaza. If we go out through the servants’ hall, we should be able to give the crowd the slip. Look, there goes Bernarda.”

  The gallery owner was indeed crossing the room. Her height, build, and upstanding, intricate hairdo made her resemble a warship ready for battle. She allowed no one to stop her, charting her course across the intricate floor and through a smaller archway. Despite her demeanor, her actions were that of a thorough retreat. It was clear that she had chosen to abandon her gallery and everything in it to the riot. Out in the street, Adelina could hear the clash of swords, more shouts.

  With a whoosh, the curtains around the broken windows went up in flames, the bright silk, its patt
ern echoing the wooden flooring, flaring into heat. The crowd screamed panic.

  Where are the Duke’s Peacekeepers? Although this was not the most fashionable area of town, it was not one that she would have expected to be so lightly policed. Perhaps some other crisis was happening elsewhere?