The Adorned by John Tristan Page B

to her curves, carefully cut to show her tattoos; she answered, in person, my questions about what an Adorned would wear.
    As for those tattoos...they lay in coils winding around her, curves of scarlet and blush-pink and deepest maroon. At second glance, I saw that those coils were snakes , thick as tree trunks, their pointed tails at her slippered feet, their great green-eyed heads resting on her bosom.
    She moved, shrugging off a thin fur stole, and further beauty was revealed. The scales of the snakes, rendered in shades of red from deep crimson to pale pink, were not scales at all—they were petals, rose petals, and some of them had seemingly loosed themselves from the snakes and were floating on her skin: a single blood-colored floweret in the hollow of her throat, a rush of fluttering pink on the side of her neck.
    Only now did she seem to notice me; she indicated it by a raising of her eyebrows and a flicker of expression toward Tallisk. He stood impassive, arms folded.
    “Please,” he said to Gandor, in an oddly dull and toneless voice, “stay a while and take a drink with us?”
    “Oh no, that simply is not possible,” Gandor said. “I’m needed to witness a trial. Deserters, you know—they’ll all be hanged.” He smiled, as if that pleased him. “But...a moment in private with the master of the house, please?”
    That was clear enough; Tallisk and Gandor vanished into the parlor, leaving the three of us standing in the hallway. Isadel handed her stole to Yana, who folded it up neatly. She looked at me squarely now; for a moment I saw in her almost-black eyes a cool, assessing gaze, strangely akin to Tallisk’s. Then she smiled at me, and her eyes became warm. “Are you Tallisk’s new blood, then?”
    “Isadel,” Doiran said, “this is Etan. He’s to be your new brother-Adorned.”
    I half bowed, and she curtsied, as an equal. She had a dancer’s easy grace in the movement, making me feel awkward as a duck. My eyes were drawn to her tattoos by a pull stronger than courtesy.
    “This is the first time you’ve seen an Adorned’s ink displayed, isn’t it?” A smile touched her lips. “Don’t worry. You can look; no one will mind.”
    “I didn’t mean to—” My own gasp of breath arrested my words. Now that we stood closer, I saw the true wonder of her Adornment—the tattooed snakes had turned their gaze on me. They blinked at me, eyes lazy as sleeping sand-dragons, and flicked the tips of their tails back and forth across Isadel’s skin. The red rainbow of their scales shifted and rippled, as if they were breathing, or moving slowly through a pool of warm water.
    I swallowed, mouth gone dry. I’d never seen such magic—never allowed myself to think it could exist. “By the Lord of Stars...”
    “No.” She shrugged. “Only by his younger sons.” Now done with her introductions, she turned away from me. “Yana,” she said, “my things are still in the carriage. Would you mind fetching them?”
    “Not at all.” She vanished out the door.
    I wondered how Isadel wasn’t shivering in the winter air; she was wearing barely more than wisps of gauze. She caught my eyes and I flushed; I had still been staring. “Well now,” she said, smiling. “I suppose we had better get dressed for supper? At least I should, no?”
    Looking at the floor I went, I feared, as scarlet as her snakes, and said nothing.

Chapter Ten
    We were a small household, and we ate all together around a large wooden table in the dining room. It seemed strangely informal to me, from what I knew of city ways; I would have expected the master to dine with the household entire on a provincial farmhold, perhaps, not in Peretim. Still, no one else thought it out of the ordinary, though perhaps they were just used to Tallisk’s unconventional ways.
    I wore my new clothes; Doiran and Yana had divested themselves of their stiff outer coats, but had not changed in earnest. Isadel wore a long-sleeved robe, her sleeves tied