25- Tsu Lai

Aterat began to move her foot and Tsu Lai jerked his hand away so as not to smudge the paint.  She had been particularly fidgety all morning.  A week before, there had been an e-mail from Precia stating that Desiderius had awakened and that they would be arriving on this day.

It had been six years since they’d had one of Aterat’s children living with them.  She pretended her usual nonchalance, but Tsu Lai could tell she was nervous and excited.  He knew she had been lonely without one of her own around.  He just hoped that Desiderius wanted to see her as much as she wanted to see him.

The domestics were all busy making everything perfect for Desiderius’s arrival, so Tsu Lai had been the only one to attend Aterat herself today.  He enjoyed being able to serve her like this.  He had prepared her breakfast, helped her bathe, helped her dress, arranged her hair . . . and now he was very carefully applying enamel to her toenails.  They were red, with a gold latticework design on the tips.  It was very delicate work, and if he messed one up and had to start it over, he knew she would be very irritated with him.

Her foot stopped moving, and he gently took it up again so that he could continue applying the gold paint, smiling to himself as he did so.  Aterat wasn’t the only one who was excited about Desiderius’s return.  Tsu Lai had been lonely as well, over the past few years.  He hadn’t had an equal to talk to in so long.  And he hadn’t seen Precia in decades.  They had always gotten along well.

He finished the last thin line of gold and sat back to close up the bottle.  Aterat lifted her foot to inspect his work.  “Good,” she said, then added, “Shoes.”

Tsu Lai stood and nodded, then left the dressing room.  He placed the two bottles of nail enamel in the box where they belonged, then entered her shoe closet to select the appropriate footwear.  He stared at the shelves with their rows of shoes, trying to remember which ones belonged with that red silk dress she had on.  He was fairly certain it was a pair of sandals with lots of straps on it.  There were three shelves that held strappy sandals.  He closed his eyes and tried to picture what her feet had looked like the last time he’d seen her in that particular dress.

He sighed.  This was not his area of expertise.  

He knew Aterat would be irritated with him if he chose the wrong ones.  He was tempted to call the girl who usually dressed her, to ask which shoes he should pick.  But she was helping to prepare Desiderius’s rooms, and besides, asking her would just be too humiliating for him.  This was something he should be able to do himself.

He tried thinking logically.  Red dress.  Red and gold paint on her toes.  Gold ribbons and red flowers in her hair.  It would only make sense that the shoes would be either red or gold.  He took down the seven pair of sandals that met that criteria and arranged them on the floor.  Then he cast aside the two red pair that were darker than her dress.  That narrowed it down to five pair.  Tsu Lai leaned against the closet door and groaned.  Did every woman have this many shoes?

Tsu Lai heard a loud sigh from the dressing room.  Aterat was getting impatient with him.  He needed to hurry.  He grabbed a pair of nice-looking gold ones and left the closet.

He tried to be casual and not call any attention to the shoes in his hand as he reentered the dressing room, but Aterat’s eyes went straight to them.  She frowned.  “Those aren’t the ones I wear with this dress,” she said in a confused tone.

“I’m sorry,” Tsu Lai replied with an apologetic bow.  He turned back toward the closet to make a second attempt.

“Oh, forget it,” she snapped.  “Those will do.  I don’t have time to waste.”

She was irritated with him.  He could tell.  But she wasn’t as upset as he’d thought she would be.  He knelt down and strapped the little gold sandals onto her feet.  Then he slipped a small gold ring onto the middle toe of each foot and fastened a gold chain around her left ankle.  He placed rings on her fingers and bracelets on her arms, a pair of gold earrings in her ears, and a gold chain set with rubies around her neck.

He showed her a mirror.  She smiled.  Tsu Lai’s breath caught in his chest.  Aterat looked like a divine goddess when she smiled.  “Now do my face.”

Tsu Lai balked.  Her face?  As in . . . cosmetics?

Aterat’s eyes left the mirror and looked up at him, reading his expression.  She tsked and stood up.  “Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” she declared with a wave of her hand.  “You’d just make me look like a clown anyway.”  She seated herself in front of the vanity table in the corner and began opening a jar of some sort of green oily substance.  “Just go . . . prepare something.  Desiderius will be here in less than three hours.”

Tsu Lai left the room.  He went to the kitchen to check on the preparations for the evening’s meal, then he went to Desiderius’s suite to see how it was coming along.  His rooms were beautiful.  Every amenity had been prepared for him.  There were new logs in the fireplace in his sitting room– the good madrone wood that had been seasoning in the woodshed for almost two years.  The bath had been supplied with various fine salts and oils, as well as a few strategically-placed scented candles.  The dressing room had new furniture, and the closets had new cedar clothes-hangers and sachets of dried flowers and cedar chips.  There were fresh flowers in the bedroom and new coverings on the bed.  And on one bedside table was a small stack of books– a gift for Desiderius from Aterat herself.  Tsu Lai inspected everything and ordered the windows opened to air out the residual smells of furniture polish and bleach water. 

He then headed up toward his own room, stopping along the way to check Precia’s room.  It was clean.  The floor had been swept, the furniture had been dusted, and the window had been washed.  The sheets on the bed had been changed and the curtains on the window were fresh.  He peeked into her bathroom.  It was clean as well– there was toilet paper and fresh soap, and some clean towels in the cabinet by the bathtub.  Good.

Upon entering his own room, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and decided a quick shower would not be remiss.  He washed, and then he dried and combed out his silky, knee-length black hair.  He brushed his teeth and shaved off the light sprinkling of stubble that had appeared on his chin and upper lip.  Since Aterat had been so particular about her own appearance today, Tsu Lai decided that he would also be expected to dress for the occasion.  He donned his best black tunic and the matching black pants and, thinking to please Aterat, he wrapped a bright red sash around his waist.  He laughed to himself as he slipped on his “special occasion” shoes, thinking of Aterat’s shoe closet.  He glanced at the clock.  It had been about an hour since he’d left her.  He wanted to be by her side when Desiderius arrived.

Tsu Lai opened the large wooden armoir in the corner of the room and perused its contents, trying to select a weapon.  He fingered his favorite katana.  No.  A long sword like that might call too much attention to itself.  He wanted to be subtle about it, so he wouldn’t risk offending anyone.  He looked over a few of his shorter blades, hesitating for a moment over a three-hundred-year-old sgian dubh that he had kept as a relic from their time spent in Scotland.  Then he saw it.  A beautiful Mughal dagger with an ornate gilded hilt and matching sheath.  It had been a gift from Desiderius himself, so long ago that Tsu Lai had almost forgotten about it.  He lifted it out and unsheathed it.  The blade was good.  And it was so ostentatious-looking that it could easily be seen as merely decorative.

Tsu Lai smiled.  It was only appropriate that he be wearing the dagger that Desiderius had given him when he went to greet the man.  He selected his finest sharpening stone and began to run it down the edge of the blade.

It wasn’t that he particularly mistrusted Desiderius or Precia.  He happened to really like them both.  He just knew better than to blindly trust anyone, especially where Aterat’s own safety was concerned.  He knew Precia would understand this, and in fact he was certain that she would be armed today, as well.  It had nothing to do with their personal feelings.

But he also knew that it was best to be always prepared for a change of fealty.  If Desiderius ever did decide to revolt against Aterat, he wouldn’t be the first to do so.  Or even the second.

Just because Aterat was the one who first brought Desiderius into this world– just because she loved him and treated him as her own son– that did not mean that he would remain eternally loyal to her.  After all, Aterat had left Shepetheleh.  And that had marked the beginning of a violent struggle that had been going on for over a millenium now.

Of course, not every falling-out had started a war.  Tsu Lai remembered when M’boku and Nadina had left.  Aterat had been so glad to finally be rid of that lunatic that she had calmly allowed them to go, asking only that they never return.  And when Lyudmila and Alexei had decided to follow after them, Aterat had put up very little resistance, claiming that Mila simply wasn’t worth fighting for. 

But then, a few centuries later, when Dellanira and Xerondar had chosen to break their ties with her, Aterat had been furious.  She’d tried everything in her power to prevent Nira from leaving, until the day Shepetheleh came to take advantage of their in-fighting and attacked while Aterat’s attention was divided.  She had been forced to shift her focus to him, and she’d had to let Dellanira go as a result.  To this day, Aterat was still dreaming up ways to convince Nira to return to her.

Tsu Lai looked down the edge of the blade, then tested it by shaving the fine little hairs off of one of his knuckles.  It was perfect.  He wiped it down with an oilcloth and slipped it back into its sheath, then tucked it neatly into his sash.

He glanced at the clock.  Desiderius and Precia would be arriving in about an hour and a half.  He decided it was time to get back to Aterat.  On his way, he caught the attention of a boy with a dustcloth and instructed him to have someone send a large vase of fresh flowers to Precia’s room.

He found Aterat in her study, pacing back and forth in front of her desk with an unopened book in her hand, thin layers of red silk swirling around her ankles as she moved.  Even in this nervous state, she made an impressive sight.  “Where do you plan to greet them?” he asked her.

She stopped and turned to look at him.  “Would it be too old-fashioned to have him come to me in the main hall, like we used to?”

Tsu Lai smiled.  Before, whenever one of Aterat’s children had awakened and come to her, they had been presented to her in a large hall and had knelt at her feet while she sat imperiously on a dias in the center of the room.  But these days it was a little ridiculous to greet someone that way, and even modern royalty almost never behaved like that.  “I think you’re right,” he replied.  “It might seem . . . impersonal.”

“I see.”

“Especially considering that Desiderius is newly awakened,” he reminded her.

“Of course.  His head is still full of his modern lifestyle.”  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “I’ll meet him in the sun-room,” she decided.  “We can . . . have tea together.”  She left to give the orders about the sun-room and the tea service. 

Tsu Lai followed her out, smiling at her awkward, anxious manner.  Most people never really tried to understand Aterat, and as a result she was often perceived as a cold, shrewd woman who only cared about her own self-importance.  But that simply wasn’t the truth.  He supposed he might be a little biased toward her, but Tsu Lai knew that Aterat had never bothered to hide any part of herself from him.  He knew her better than anyone, and in his view, she was a soft and vulnerable person with plenty of insecurities and a deep loneliness inside her. 

He also knew that if he ever described her that way to anyone, she would flog him mercilessly for it, just to prove him wrong.

24- Jacob

Sneaking one more glance into the library to make certain that Fortitude was still sleeping soundly in her favorite chair, Jacob ran a hand through his smooth brown hair and opened the door to the basement staircase. He'd been so busy lately that he hadn’t had a chance to get a decent workout in days, and today his body was begging him to go downstairs and give it a proper beating.

He didn’t have anyone to spar with. Karl was still on doctor’s orders to take it easy, and even if he weren’t, Jacob hadn’t even seen Karl since before his doctor’s visit that morning. And Hespah had been sulking around and avoiding him for the past two weeks. Karl said it was probably just jealousy. Seeing him with Fortitude made her want Shepetheleh even more. Jacob could understand that. 

Especially since Shepetheleh hadn’t even entered a carrier yet. His return was still a long way off.

So Jacob was working out alone today. Perhaps he’d start with a little yoga to stretch out his stiff muscles, then some calisthenics, and maybe an hour or two in the weight room, and then he planned to strap on some gloves and spend a good three or four hours breaking in his new punching bag. He grinned at the prospect– it had been a while since he’d last thrown a punch.

Midway down the stairs he heard the muffled sound of gunshot coming from the general direction of the shooting range. Curious, he ran down the rest of the staircase and trotted toward the far corner where the shooting range had been installed.

He opened the door and was instantly overwhelmed by a blaring cacophony of screaming voices and electric guitars, punctuated by the methodical rhythm of a gun being shot to the beat of the so-called "music". Grinning, Jacob took a pair of ear-plugs from the shelf by the door and shoved them into his ears before heading toward the last stall.

Karl was making a perfect pentagram of evenly-spaced bullet-holes in the center of the man-shaped target in front of him. He was wearing the black fitted Nike t-shirt Jacob had given him, and the gray rip-stop Dakine shorts with the little pockets on the back. Jacob loved those shorts. But alas, he was ruining the effect with a thick pair of brown wool socks. Brown. Jacob rolled his eyes.  That man would never learn.

The pentagram complete, Karl finished the target off with a shot to the center of its head, a shot in the center of each hand, and one in the crotch, before he set his gun down and pressed the button for a new target. Jacob took the opportunity to tap him on the shoulder while he was unarmed.

Karl turned around and flashed a dazzling smile, then fumbled for the little remote in his pocket to stop the music.

"Karl!" Jacob shouted with a grin as he removed the plugs from his throbbing ears, "What the hell are you doing?"

Karl shrugged. "The doctor said I can train again, as long as I don’t push myself too hard."

"And you don’t think firing a gun is going to jar your injuries at all?"

"No, it’s fine. Really." Karl rolled his eyes. "I’ve been trying to tell you for more than a week now, I’m all healed up."

Jacob crossed his arms. "And your doctor agrees with you about that?"

"Absolutely." Karl took a step forward and cocked a mischievous half-smile. "I’m fit to resume all of my normal activities."

Jacob raised an eyebrow at that. "Oh, really?" His eyes wandered over the fitted black shirt, the perfectly-tailored gray shorts . . . and those offensive brown socks poking up from the tops of Karl’s black and white cross-trainers. He sighed. "Okay then. Why don’t you meet me on the mat for a little light sparring?"

Karl grinned.  "You're on.  Just give me a minute to put things away in here."

"Of course. I have to stretch out first anyway."

Less than five minutes later, the two of them were circling each other in the center of a large blue mat.

Jacob began with a standard boxing stance. He kept his head down, his fists up to guard his face. He kept his knees slightly bent for freedom of movement and continuously shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, ready to dodge or strike whenever he had to. "Don’t worry," he said, "I’ll go easy on you."

"Don’t bother." Karl, as he usually did when the two of them had a bare-knuckle sparring match, adopted a basic jiu-jitsu stance– hands out in front of him, pawing lightly at the air like a cat swatting at a toy, feet apart and knees bent low, with most of his weight settled over his front leg, but ready to shift to the other leg at any moment.

Jacob made an opening jab with his left fist, but Karl dodged low and swatted it away with one hand. Jacob pulled back and bounced a little, then came back in with a quick one-two aimed low, which actually landed on Karl’s sides, and ending with a right uppercut aimed at his jaw, which Karl caught in an iron grip with his right hand. Knowing better than to try to pull his arm free, Jacob took advantage of Karl’s one-handed defense– and his lower stance– to send a candy cane punch right at Karl’s ear.

But as his left fist came down, his right arm twisted, and in one fluid motion, Jacob found himself on the floor, his face smashed into the mat, with Karl sitting on his back. Jacob wriggled backward until Karl was positioned over his shoulders, then thrust his body upward so that Karl was knocked head-first into the mat, then he bounced back up onto his feet, trying to regain his boxer’s advantage. But as soon as he was standing again, Karl’s right leg hooked around Jacob’s left knee, and his other leg swept across the fronts of Jacob's ankles so that he collapsed back down onto the floor again.

"Damn you, Karl," Jacob grunted as he tried to fend off the arms and legs that were wrapping themselves around his shoulders and knees. "You have the body of a snake!"

"Yeah, well . . ." Karl gasped as he hooked his elbows around Jacob’s shoulders and clasped his hands behind his head, pushing Jacob’s chin into the mat, "You said you were going to go easy on me . . ."

Jacob wriggled under Karl’s weight but found he couldn’t effectively move anything. "I was going easy on you . . . I thought you were still weak from your injuries . . . my mistake."

Karl climbed up off of him and sat down on the mat, breathing hard. "Well, it sure didn’t feel like you were pulling your punches . . ." he muttered as he pulled off his shirt to inspect his ribs.  In addition to the fresh red scars that still decorated much of his torso, two large, ugly welts had already formed on the sides of his body where Jacob had hit him.

Jacob sat up, rubbing the back of his neck and rolling his right shoulder where it had been twisted. "I always pull my punches when we fight," he muttered. "I don’t actually want to hurt you."

"No shit. Both of you were holding back."

Jacob and Karl both turned to see Hespah’s new face watching them from the foot of the stairs. She was dressed in a pair of gray yoga pants and a red tank top that showed off all of the tight, hard muscles in her arms. "If you two really fought with each other like you do with me, you’d both be completely ass-fucked for a week." She smirked at them, then added, "In a bad way."

Jacob grinned. He supposed that was true. What he and Karl did in here was really just play-fighting, after all.

Hespah kicked off her shoes and stepped onto the mat in her bare feet. "Now who wants to go against me?"

Jacob and Karl exchanged a wary glance.

"Well, Karl’s still supposed to be taking things slow right now . . ." Jacob told her.

She rolled her eyes.  "That's an old lady's excuse," she replied with a dismissive flip of her cherry-red hair.  Then she looked at Jacob.  "So what about you?"

"Well . . ."

Hespah growled, then pulled off her tank top and tossed it aside, revealing a black sports bra and a set of eight impossibly chiseled abs. "Fine then," she said as she crouched down onto her hands and feet like some wild cat coiled for a pounce. "I’ll take both you assholes."

Jacob knew that look in her eyes, even with the new face. Taking a deep breath, he adopted a wide, low stance and raised his fists up to guard his head.

Hespah smirked at Jacob, then turned to Karl. "Come on, blondie," she called, "I promise I’ll be gentle."

Reluctantly, Karl stepped forward, then decided to forego the usual opening stance and dropped right into a strange seated position, his arms and legs out at odd angles, his hands open like he was ready to catch something. It was an odd sight for Jacob, but Hespah apparently recognized this pose, because she smiled, reared back, and launched herself.

23- Alexei

Alexei tugged absently at his shirt and glanced around at the other passengers on the plane. He didn’t recognize any of the faces, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He closed his eyes and tried to relax back into his seat. In just a few more minutes, he would be out of South Africa. And by this time tomorrow, he would be starting fresh in a new city.

He tried to look out at the clouds, but it was still mostly dark outside, and all he could see was his own vague, distorted reflection staring back at him from the smudged window. He could make out the mop of thick, pale blonde hair that covered his forehead and tickled the back of his neck. The round, boyish face. The small mouth with its full, pouty pink lips. The reflection showed only watery shadows where his large, round brown eyes were. In fact, it was so blurry that he could almost see the perfect, doll-like face that he had once had. He stared at that reflection for a moment, remembering what his life had been like back then.

"Oi– Are you alright?"

Alexei started and turned away from the window. The young woman in the next seat was staring at him. "I– I’m fine, thanks."

He watched her go through the usual reaction to his face. Her eyes widened, then she looked away, then she focused her gaze on his right ear, then his mouth. "Oh . . . well, that’s good, then. You just looked so sad . . . I was worried you might be crying. . . ."

He smiled for her, faintly amused to see the flustered confusion pass over her features. How many women had told him? That gorgeous, youthful grin, contrasted with that gruesome scar and those sad, beautiful eyes . . . It all combined to make him appear dangerous, yet sensitive, and playful at the same time. A combination that could easily get him into a lot of trouble, if he were even remotely interested in any of those women. Alexei laughed. "No, really, I’m alright."

The woman blushed and smiled, and Alexei turned back to the window.

There was only one woman whose opinion mattered, and she would never find him attractive again. She couldn’t even look at him without showing her disgust.

Alexei looked down at his hands. Young, smooth, pale-pink skin spread over long, pretty fingers. Just two days ago his knuckles had been a raw, bruised, bleeding mess. And now there was no sign of it. Every injury that he’d ever received had healed up without even a trace. Every injury except one, that is. He couldn’t even get a real suntan because his skin healed too quickly. After all this time, he still looked like a healthy fifteen-year-old boy.

He chuckled softly. Looking this young could be very inconvenient at times. People were always more likely to suspect that his identification might be fake, he was often watched with suspicion when he went into a shop by himself, and he was rarely treated with any respect by anyone. But it definitely had its advantages, as well. Sometimes, in certain situations, being underestimated and disregarded could be an enormous advantage.

Especially in a new city, where no one knew who he was or what he was capable of.

Alexei bit his lip and glanced around at the other passengers again. He’d had to leave Sun City in a hurry. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go back– not for another twenty years, at least.

But he was sure he would have better luck in Macau. Alexei always had a change of luck when he moved to a different city. He sighed. That was what he hoped. He only had maybe ten years to turn things around before Mila would be needing him.

He reached into his pocket and grasped the old, threadbare scrap of satin ribbon between his fingers, lovingly running his thumb over the precious fibers which had once been snowy white, but had since faded to a dingy brown. He never took it out in public anymore, but he kept it in his pocket and carried it with him at all times. Whenever he touched it, he remembered how it had looked in her hair all those years ago– a dainty white bow, the ends of it falling down to bounce alongside her red-brown curls.

That memory drove him to persevere when his luck was down. It gave him the courage to do what he had to do to survive . . . whatever he had to do, to be ready for her when the time came.

Yes, Macau would be good for him. In ten years– maybe even five, if he played things right– he would be in a position to properly care for her. To make sure she had everything she needed. Everything she wanted.