"That"s right." Her pale eyes twinkled. "What did you think we were doing in there?"
Heat flooded his face. "Ia I wasn"t sure."
"Liar. You thought I was some sort of madam."
"But I didn"t want to think it."
She laughed at his protest, a happy, s.e.xy sound. How different she was from the women of his cla.s.s, how uninhibited. Which raised another question. Now that he knew he wouldn"t have to arrest her, did he have what it took to seduce her? The impatient pounding of his c.o.c.k told him it wouldn"t wait long for answers.
Paintings bought and sold, said the gold-leaf lettering on the door of McAllister"s Fine Art Supply. Esconced behind the counter, Roxanne pushed her admirably-in-the-black ledger aside. A demon couldn"t have balanced it more neatly, even if they were quicker than humans at ciphering. Pleased with more than her business success, she was too euphoric to heed the suspicions Charles had come here to share.
"Don"t tell me you still think he"s a criminal," she said. "Not everyone who lives in dockside is, you know. I think he"s just a decent working-cla.s.s fellow who"s trying to help a friend find his son."
"If he"s so decent, why hasn"t he mentioned a job he needs to get back to?"
"Does every decent person have a job? Anyway, maybe finding lost things is how he makes his living. Plenty of people would be willing to pay not to have to go prowling around Harborside, even people who live there."
Charles pushed his hair back in disgust. "He hasn"t offered to pay you for taking him in, has he?"
"I wouldn"t let him if he did. Be fair, Charles. Accept the fact that he"s just a regular person who happens to be more uptight about certain things than you."
"And you"re making it your mission to loosen him up, aren"t you?"
Roxie knew he was upset, but she couldn"t contain her laugh of agreement. The prospect of seducing her guest seemed so wonderfully achievable. Every time she came near him, his blanket tented up. She"d had men react to her before, but not like this. His shyness made flirting with him terribly entertaining. She was going to enjoy every minute of this, every second.
Charles propped his hands on his hips. "I never thought I"d see the day when you, of all people, would go in for a meaningless, sordida""
Clearly, he couldn"t think of a word he could utter in her presence. "Who says it will be meaningless?" she teased. "Or sordid? And even so, perhaps I"m tired of self-restraint."
"What self-restraint?" His handsome face purpled in outrage. "You"re not the sort of woman who has those sort ofa""
"Charles." She cut him off before he could choke on his splutters. "Don"t mistake me for a saint. Most women want a man now and then, whether they care to admit it or not. Maybe I simply never wanted one enough. In any case"a"she reached across the counter to pat his shouldera""I"m an adult Even if I were your mother, sweetie, I"d be ent.i.tled to a private life."
"Fine," he surrendered. "Just don"t come crying to me when he leaves you out in the cold."
Chapter 5.
"Those people can"t sing," Seamus Connell, proprietor of the Running Bull, was heard to say. "Can"t sing. Can"t dance. Can"t so much as beat time on the bar. Personally, I think it ought to be against the law for them to try."
a"Ill.u.s.trated Times account of the "Hawk"s Day brawl," in which three humans and two Yama died as a result of their injuries On the second day of Adrian"s convalescence, Charles caught him leafing through the packet of lost boys. He"d recovered sufficiently to be propped in the wing chair by the fire, but not enough to resume his search for Tommy Bainbridge. Adrian hated letting the matter drop, even for a few days. For a young boy, a few days in Harborside could last a lifetime. He considered taking his sometime partner, Farsi Ross, into his confidence. The sergeant was game and good-hearted, and one of the few officers who hadn"t drawn back from Adrian after he"d been "enhanced." Unfortunately, Farsi had moved here from the islands a few short years ago. The twists and turns of Harborside would be a bigger mystery to him than they were to Adrian, who"d lived in or near the city all his life.
"Give me those," Charles ordered, s.n.a.t.c.hing the sketches from his hand.
Slow out of the gate, but not that slow, Adrian shot out his hand to manacle the boy"s wrist. It wasn"t his implants that allowed him to do this, but a rigorous physical training schedule he followed on his own. Pride was part of the reason he kept it up. He refused to depend on Yamish technology alone. Thanks to his discipline, Charles tried to escape his grip but could not, obviously surprised an invalid could muster so much strength. Adrian might be breathing hard, but it would be a sad day when he let a fifteen-year-old get the better of him.
"I told you what those were, and I wasn"t lying," he said. "And they"re my only copy. I"m not giving them up."
Careful not to hurt the boy, he gave one more sharp twist. The papers dropped. Charles rubbed his smarting wrists.
"I was going to give them back," he said, his face sullen. To his credit, he didn"t whine or call Roxie for reinforcement. "I wanted to take them around Harborside myself. I know where the streetboys hang out. Maybe I can learn something you couldn"t."
"I don"t think Roxanne would want you out there."
"Roxanne is not my mother."
This simple statement carried an a.s.sortment of warnings. Adrian studied the defiant young face, measuringa"as he often had to doa"not just honesty but spine. Charles had more of the second than the first, but Adrian judged he was telling the truth about wanting to help.
Why, he"s got a crush on her, he thought. The discovery gave him more tolerance for the boy"s bad temper, though he felt obliged to object to his plan all the same.
"There are demons in Harborside who don"t pay the slightest heed to the law. A boy like you, as pretty as a daimyo, they"d s.n.a.t.c.h you up like candy lying in the streeta"and worry about "consensuality" later."
"I know how to steer clear of them," Charles said, his lip curling in contempt.
"You think you know."
"I know, old man. Things you wouldn"t want to see in your worst nightmare."
Adrian considered the boy"s anger-flushed features, aware of how close hostility could rub with tears. Roxanne might not have sold herself to live, but it came to him that this boy had. Maybe to the Yama or maybe not. Demons, after all, had not cornered the market on exploitation.
Who failed you? Adrian wondered. Parents? The Children"s Ministry? Or did anyone ever look out for you?
Knowing better than to let his compa.s.sion show, he bent down with a m.u.f.fled groan, collected the fallen papers, and handed them to Charles.
"Very well," he said. "I"d appreciate the help."
The boy"s eyes flashed with a surprise he quickly hid.. Nodding sharply, he tucked the packet under his arm and left.
Max and Adrian stood side by side on the roof. It was almost dawn. Roxie"s house was taller than most, and they could see clear across Harborside to the docks, though from this distance they couldn"t make out more than the pennants on the topmost masts.
To Adrian"s delight, Max"s welcome for the stranger in his household was warm, especially when he discovered Adrian"s talent for making floatable ships out of waxed grocer"s paper. Each evening while the others read or rested, he would spread his flotilla across the parlor and growl them back and forth around the claw-footed chairs. Constructing them for the boy gave Adrian a precarious sense of belonging, one he"d rarely felt in his own family.
Max was the only boy he knew who didn"t make wars with everything. Adrian had eight nephews. At Max"s age, they"d all been able to see an army in a bowl of grape pits. They would have sunk half his ships by now.
Of course, the glory of battle was a common Ohramese obsession. Here in Awar, they considered themselves the center of a grand empire. The center, in fact, of all the world worth knowing. Any insecurity they might have harbored at knowing Yamish weapons had saved their bacon from the fire, they compensated for with belligerence. In their hearts, naturally, they knew that if Victoria hadn"t made her devil"s bargain, the Medell might have been only the first of their subject nations to win back home rule.
Caught up in these thoughts, Adrian dropped his hand to Max"s dark, spiky hair and absently smoothed its tangles. He scanned the horizon. They were waiting for the sun to rise so Max could sail his new schooner in the birdbath. The day before, Adrian had made the mistake of telling him a ship always began its maiden voyage at sunrise.
Yawning so mightily his single crutch trembled, he shifted within his "new" secondhand clothes. Charles had bought and laundered and, Adrian suspected, even pressed the outfit. The young man might feel threatened by their guest, but he was too fastidious to leave a job half done.
Roxanne certainly hadn"t ironed them. Her own clothes, a shocking collection of loose silk shirts and snug men"s trousers, were always a little less than crisp.
The day Charles produced the outfit, she"d teased Adrian about the shame of covering up his body. She"d said she was tempted to keep him her naked slave. He"d grown so aroused at her playful words, he"d thought he"d leap off his chair and tumble her to the floor.
He"d wanted to touch her, but he"d held back.
Deciding he wished to seduce her proved easier than getting himself off the mark. He didn"t want to offend her by moving too fast. Just because her sort talked bawdy didn"t mean she"d tolerate being treated with disrespect. Whatever "her sort" was. He"d been here four days, and he still hadn"t deciphered that.
"What in the worlda"" he said, noticing what he had under his hand. "Boy, you"ve got a cowlick that won"t quit."
Max went as still as a little statue. Had Adrian frightened him? But he relaxed a second later and leaned into Adrian"s leg, hugging it just above the knee. Even with the crutch, Adrian was almost too weak to keep his footing. Funny how he could be so long recovering from damage that had taken, at most, ten minutes to inflict.
"Roxie says my hair just grows that way," the boy volunteered indistinctly.
Adrian realized he had his thumb in his mouth.
"Is that so? Then I suppose I"d better not interfere with it."
"You can." The boy removed his thumb. "I don"t mind."
Adrian smiled in the gathering light and patted his cheek.
The launching successfully achieved, the Ka"arkastan Queen was sailing between rock and reed when Max looked up and said in his endearing, gravelly voice, "Are j you staying?"
Knowing instantly what he meant, Adrian"s heart squeezed tight.
"No, Max." He tweaked the boy"s pug nose. "I have a house of my own. I"ll be going back there as soon as I"m well."
"Oh." Max"s gaze returned to the birdbath, to the troop of white clamsh.e.l.ls that formed up around its edge. He reached for the Queen and pushed her in a new direction. The water wrinkled like silk under the young sun. "Is your house very far?"
Adrian steeled himself. It would be cruel to lead the boy on.
"Far enough," he said, his voice very low, very gentle. And then he couldn"t help relenting. "But it"s not the other side of the world."
The boy looked up briefly, his hard young face unreadable. Did Max realize what Adrian had implied? For that matter, did he? Where the h.e.l.l was the boy"s father anyway? He"d like to tell that blackguard a thing or two, abandoning Roxie and Max like that. If Max was Roxie"s. Up until then, he hadn"t found the nerve to ask.
The failure was ironic. He was a policeman. He poked his nose into other people"s business for a living. Just because a woman made him jump in his drawers didn"t mean he had to turn into a tongue-tied idiot.
I"m done with that, he told himself. From now on, I"ll find out everything I need to know.
His chance came later that day.
Roxanne was running errands, the boys were out, and Adrian decided to do some detecting. Within the hour, he"d searched most of the rooms on the floor, finding little of interest. The tiny storeroom behind the kitchen, however, was unturned soil.
Longer than it was broad, the storeroom overlooked the roof garden. There was no access to the outside, just two round windows of rippled green gla.s.s. Art supplies crammed the wall of metal shelving opposite. His eyes widened at the monstrous cans of dry pigment. Exotic names were stenciled on their sides: Thalocyline Blue, Southern Yellow. Beside the paint lay heaps of brushes still wrapped in tissue, tins of turpentine, and giant rolls of canvas.
Fascinating as all that was, it didn"t seem likely he"d find anything concerning Max here. He didn"t leave, though. He felt her here, among the tools of her art. He touched the brushes and the tins. His skin shivered with wonder. From such homely artifacts, her paintings came.
He found the portrait almost by accident. It was wedged in a corner, covered against the dust with a paint-stained sheet. Curious, he lifted the cloth, surprised to find the picture side facing the wall. As he turned it, he noticed what a nice frame it had: stained oak, carved elaborately and picked out in gilt.
He stared at the finished canvas. It showed a beautiful woman at her toilette, looking back over her shoulder at the viewer. Her upper lip was rouged, her lower bare, and her graceful hand held a red-tipped brush, poised forever in a moment of nearly completed cosmetic perfection.
The picture was different from the paintings in Roxie"s studio. Those were vivid and quick, bursting with juicy life. This displayed no less technical skill but was darker and more detailed. Adrian could count each facet of each gem in the sparkling rings, each lash that fringed the glowing eyes. Instinctively, he knew it was an earlier work.
He recognized the subject, of course: La Belle Yvonne. He doubted anyone who"d ever seen her would forget.
He heard her sing when he was just thirteen. A big, sobby historical. If he closed his eyes he could see her voluptuous figure in the huge bell-skirted, cloth-of-gold gown. The dcollet had seemed to plunge to her navel, though it was probably banded behind with flesh-colored silk.
When she opened her mouth and that voice like liquid gold poured out, she seemed to embody the power of a female unrestrained by society. One of the Yamish diplomats, attending out of politeness, had fainted in his box. None of the Yama, daimyo or rohn, were used to the arts. The idea of wanting to express emotion was alien. Adrian"s reaction to the performance wasn"t quite that intense, but being the age he was, just discovering his s.e.xuality, her figure had loomed large on his symbolic horizona"mysterious but significant.
At the least, he could understand why the demon swooned. There was something frightening about La Belle Yvonne. Her charisma overwhelmed, like a creature from a world whose sun was too bright, whose night was too dark.
And she made him sad.
That mystified him most of all. When the opera was over and she stood on stage alone, beaming, taking her bows and collecting the heaps of crimson roses that were her trademark, she seemed somehow more tragic than the ill-starred heroine she"d just portrayed: surrounded by all that adulation and still bereft.
His father had sensed something was troubling him. He"d knuckled Adrian"s head and pulled him more tightly into his shoulder. But Adrian knew his father had spent a week"s salary on those tickets, a special birthday treat for his eldest boy.
His father didn"t even like opera. He"d had to ask the Jeruvian grocer down the street who was good, who was the best for his boy who had music in him.
His father wasn"t one for bragging, but, as he consulted that shopkeeper, Adrian could see the secret fairly bursting to come out. Isaac Philips had discovered it only by chance. He"d walked into the church bas.e.m.e.nt one evening to find Adrian practicing on the old choir-practice spinet, making music that could be recognized as music and, even then, a little more. His boy, the son of a callused shipmaker, could make magic. Surprised as he was, Adrian"s father never stopped to ask why Adrian had slunk in the dark to do this thing. And he never did tell the secret, not even to Adrian"s mother, not until his son was ready to tell her himself.
Isaac was proud of Adrian. Proud of a son too ashamed to admit he wanted to be more refined than his father.
Adrian knew only a beast would spoil this gift, so he smiled up from his tenth row center seat and said, "Wasn"t it wonderful, Father? Wasn"t she amazing?"
He hadn"t gone to see the diva a second time, not even when he could afford the price of a seat himself. He was in his twenties when Yvonne died, but for a moment, when he heard a newsboy call the headline, he was thirteen. The busy capital street had disappeared, and in the place of smoke and horses he smelled the perfumed heat of the crowd, heard the shuffling silken murmur, and once again thrilled to the belling note.
He almost jumped out of his skin when Roxie touched his shoulder.
"My mother," she said quietly.
He shivered under the warmth of her hand. "Your mother was La Belle Yvonne?"
She nodded. She was looking at the picture, her expression intent and, to him, cryptic.
"I didn"t know her last name was McAllister."
"It wasn"t. I made that up. As far as I know she didn"t have a last name. She was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you see, just like me."
She smiled at her mother"s image, a smile of mingled bitterness and acceptance. In that moment, he realized she was beautiful. Very beautiful. And no one knew it. Especially not Roxanne. But she ought to know. She needed to know.
"Your mother was beautiful," he began. His heart was pounding, as though he stood on the brink of some crucial turning point.
She nodded, still not looking at him, then laughed. "Unlike her daughter."
He could tell she"d used those words before.
"No," he said, "you"rea""
"Oh, stop." Her hand cut the air. "I hate that. Anyway, being beautiful didn"t make her happy. She"d spend hours peering into the mirror, terrified of getting old. And then she"d take a new lover, someone younger and prettier than the last one. Toward the end, she didn"t even care if they were rich. Shea" Roxanne swallowed. "People used to whisper that she was feeding demons on the sly. That this was how she kept her looks. It might have been true. Sometimes she"d sleep all day through, just like demon servants do."
He stared at her. He felt as if he were gazing through a lighted window at something he wasn"t ent.i.tled to see, but from which he couldn"t turn, pretending he hadn"t meant to look while knowing in his heart he had. As abruptly as a curtain being swept aside, Roxanne had become real to him. She had thoughts, feelings, an entire history that predated him. She was still a stranger, but she was real.