Mindgames Ch. 21

Chapter 21: Breathing

Present day

What happened next was a blur for Mariah. She couldn't stop screaming at Master Cassender and then, suddenly, he was gone and she was sitting on the couch. Master Gabriel was pressing a glass into her hand. She took a sip. She started to choke. It burned.

"You poisoned me?" Mariah asked, still coughing, outraged as she came back to herself.

Master Gabriel gave her a worried smile. "A little," he admitted. "You've never had whiskey before?" Mariah shook her head. "Drink it slowly," he said. He poured himself a glass from the bottle sitting on the floor, raised it in a silent toast, and demonstrated. Mariah had a vague impression that Master Gabriel had swept Master Cassender and Mistress Tabitha out while she had stood in the middle of the room screaming.

She looked at the amber liquid, recognizing it now. She had served it many times. When she took another tentative sip it stung but she swallowed it. "I thought you don't get drunk," she said accusingly to Master Gabriel.

Master Gabriel sat next to her and sniffed the whiskey in his glass. "I can hold my liquor. And besides, this is medicinal."

"I'm not sick," Mariah protested as she took another sip.

"No," Master Gabriel responded. "You're magnificent." He drank his whiskey in one swallow. "I had an uncle who did two shots of whiskey a night. Rougher than this; his still couldn't refine like the ones here do. But he was never sick day in his life."

"Your uncle Donal," Mariah said. "The one who taught you to play chess."

"Do I bore you with my stories?" Master Gabriel asked with a put-upon sigh.

Mariah shrugged and didn't answer. She had been given wine a few times but didn't care for it. This whiskey though . . . The emotions that had rocked her that day - the fear in the corridor, the fury at Rose, the shock of seeing Master Cassender, the hysteria as the truth exploded from her - were draining, almost flying, from her.

Master Gabriel refilled her glass, and his own. They sipped together in a companionable silence.

Mariah wiggled her nose, trying to feel its tip. Giving up, she shifted so she was leaning back on the side cushion of the sofa, and put her feet up. They landed on something warmer than the sofa. Gabriel's lap. He leaned back with a sigh. "Sometimes I wish you would tell me some of your own," he said suddenly.

"My what, Master?" Mariah swallowed the last of the liquid from her glass and put it on the floor. "I hope Rose doesn't see." She giggled, waving vaguely in the direction of the glass.

"Your stories," Master Gabriel said. He spoke slowly, over-enunciating each word. "You know so much about my past, and I know so little about yours."

Mariah stretched and curled. The soles of her feet pressed against the side of Master Gabriel's' thigh. "What do you want to know?" she said. "I'll tell you anything." She understood now why Master Gabriel was working so hard to enunciate.

Master Gabriel shook his head. "Not now. My father taught me never to take advantage of a girl who's been drinking. I just wish that . . ." He trailed off.

"I made Rose cry this morning."

"Did you?" Master Gabriel raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm sure she deserved it."

Mariah gave a shocked laugh. "I wanted to spank some sense into her," she said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper.

Master Gabriel thought for a moment. "My learned opinion as a healer is that sain and pence . . . pain and sense . . . don't go together."

Mariah felt like she was floating. "Haven't you ever wanted to spank someone, Master?"

Master Gabriel flashed a grin. "Oh, yes," he said.

"Why didn't you?"

"Who says I haven't?"

Mariah sat up a little straighter and then sank back down to the cushion. "You do punish people, then?" Now she was dizzy.

Mariah wasn't sure Master Gabriel had heard her, because he didn't answer for a long time. Finally he said, slowly, in a dreamy voice, "Your tush . . ." He stopped and waited for Mariah to stop giggling at his choice of words. "A person's . . . ass has nerve endings directly linked to their sex." He had been staring straight ahead, but he turned and looked Mariah directly in the eye. "Under the right circumstances a spanking can be very pleasurable."

Mariah feebly waved her hands in front of her, protesting. "Spanking is a punishment," she said.

"If I spank someone," Master Gabriel said, "it might or might not be a punishment, but it would always be gratifying. For both of us." He reached under her ankles and put her feet back on his lap.

What was he doing? Mariah didn't care. She licked her lips. "What would the girl have to do for you to spank her?"

"She would have to tell me that she wanted it," Master Gabriel said. He added, "And I would have to believe her."

He put his hand on top of Mariah's foot. Mariah merely smiled groggily and slowly closed her eyes as her chin dropped to her chest.

Mariah remembers

The next morning Mariah, lying in bed, visualized the gate. She started at the top, with the blades. She could not climb over it, any more than any other part of the wall. She could not fit between the metal slats. She could not unlock the lock without a key.

But the gate existed. There was hope. Making sure that Master Cassender's eyes were still closed, she allowed herself a tiny smile.

Present day

Rose tried to hurry along the corridor, late to meet her master in the revel hall. But her feet would not move quickly. She kept replaying in her head the fight with Mariah. With all the good that had happened in the last day, it seemed even worse that she had somehow let her down.

Inside the revel room Master Animal was with another human, one arm around the man's shoulders, pointing with his other hand to the most recently-completed mural section. Perhaps a new student, as an easel with blank paper was set up. It faced a jumble of different sized boxes on the floor.

The door closed behind Rose with a loud click, and the two men turned and watched her as she crossed the room to them. "Is that her? I can't place her at all." The human Rose did not know peered at her with tired eyes.

"No," Master Animal said. "This one is mine." He smiled warmly at Rose as he said that.

"I'll take my leave then," the man said. He hesitated. "I thank you." He moved in to hug Master Animal, then backed on and slapped him lightly on the arm instead.

Master Animal watched him go. "Is he a new student, Master?" Rose asked.

"No," Master Animal said. "Old friend of Mariah's." He turned to Rose with a smile. "Come." Taking her hand, he led her to the easel.

"Do you want me to put this away, Master?" Rose asked.

"What? No, of course not," Master Animal said. "Don't you want to draw today?"

Rose looked at him blankly. Then she looked at the easel. The tray had charcoal and shammies on it. It was for her.

"Master, I don't understand," Rose said, her heart hammering.

Master Animal knitted his brows together. "What's to understand? You want to learn to draw, don't you?" Rose nodded. Master Animal spoke with the same annoyed tone he used with students he deemed lazy. "You'll never improve if you don't work at it." He picked up a stick of charcoal and thrust it at her.

Rose ignored the chalk and threw herself at Mater Animal, hugging him tightly.

Master Animal returned the embrace briefly but then pulled away. "Today you'll stop before you exhaust yourself," he said with mock severity. "I want you to focus on proportions. Use the lines of the parquet floor to help you." He turned and stalked towards his scaffolding. Although his back was towards her, Rose was sure he was grinning.

Mariah remembers

The gate, the gate, it was all Mariah could think of. During her waking hours it floated in front of her in her mind's eye. At night it haunted her dreams.

Present day, two weeks later

Mariah and Gabriel walked quickly through the corridors. Mariah seemed as anxious as Gabriel to get to the showers. They stank. Gabriel had forgotten how the smell of a cadaver would permeate you until you wanted to burn your clothes, shave your head, and burn your hair as well.

Their cadaver had been an old man. Gabriel had known him and obtained his assent for the dissection, but as they dug into the layers of the corpse he realized that he really had not known the man at all. Two stress fractures in his spine, long healed, that indicated that he must have played some kind of sport as a youth. But what? Some slaves were trained in various kinds of competitions, but he had never heard of humans participating. Had it been different decades ago? None of his students knew the answer.

That night they had turned the cadaver over onto its back. It was Mariah who had first pointed out the scars on the liver. Fredrick must have been a heavy drinker at one point in his life.

The other students whined. They didn't like the smell, didn't like the idea of cutting into a human corpse, didn't like the respect Gabriel showed Mariah. But a core group of four of them came back each evening; tonight there had been eight, counting Mariah. It had been crowded around the table. Gabriel wondered if he should get a second cadaver, to create more room. Perhaps a female one, for the anatomical differences. He sighed. Mariah had an excuse for her ignorance, but the others did not. Sometimes, remembering the difficulties of his own apprenticeship, he wanted to scream at them that they were lazy dilettantes.

He glanced at Mariah. She was grinning, almost laughing to herself. "What?" Gabriel asked, slowing his pace.

Mariah started to scowl, but then shook her head. "The way that Master Samin squealed when he cut into the intestine. . ." She managed to look almost serious. "Meaning no disrespect, Master."

Gabriel smiled wryly. "He's been a healer for ten years," he said. "You wouldn't think a little scat would set him off."

"A vet, Master, not a healer," Mariah said. Gabriel frowned, but he didn't bother to argue the point again. He and Mariah reached the apartment and each went to their respective bathrooms. Gabriel took his time in the shower, scouring away the smell.

When he returned to the living room Mariah was sipping from a tall glass of lemonade. She handed him a glass as well. He accepted it, surprised and gratified, and sat on the couch next to her, happy to be off his feet.

Mariah cleared her throat. Gabriel knew what was coming; he suppressed a smile. Mariah would tell him some small tidbit of her past, then look away angrily as if he had insulted her. She had been doing this about once a day ever since Tabitha had brought Cassender to Gabriel's apartment. It was so obviously painful for her that Gabriel could only be pleased that she made the effort. Her comments, however, tended to be singularly unenlightening.

"I belonged to Master Townsend once." When Gabriel merely looked puzzled, Mariah said, with the exact scowl Gabriel had expected, "The man Master Animal was sketching with in the courtyard yesterday evening." Gabriel nodded. Animal had introduced them, but Gabriel had been rushing to the autopsy session and hadn't taken much note.

"Master, may I ask you a question?"

"Of course," Gabriel said.

"You told me that where you come from, there's no ice." Mariah shook her glass a little, so that the ice in it clinked.

"There's some," Gabriel said, curious where Mariah was going. "But not much."

"But you've dissected a cadaver before?" Gabriel nodded. "Without ice, how did you store it? Why didn't it rot?"

"Ah," Gabriel said. He was absurdly pleased that Mariah was sharing her curiosity with him. "There's no ice in Harmony. But east from Harmony there are mountains. We . . ."

"Mountains?" Mariah interrupted. "You mean, big hills like in the arboretum?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Much, much bigger," he said. He put down his glass and reached his arms up to try to express the scope of the landscape. "Their tops reach the clouds, and for several months a year they are covered with snow."

"Snow." Mariah rolled the word on her tongue. "From the stories? I've never understood what it is."

"I didn't either, until I saw it," Gabriel said. "It's frozen rain that falls from the sky in big white flakes. In cold weather it blankets the ground." He smiled at the skeptical expression on Mariah's face. "It's hard to explain. Anyway, on the mountains, there's a settlement of free people from further east . . ." When Mariah looked puzzled Gabriel stood up and took the atlas from the sideboard. Placing it on the table, he gently opened it to a page about a third of the way through the book. The left of the page was covered with blue. He pointed to it without touching the delicate paper. "This is the ocean," he said to Mariah as she joined him at the table. "Where Animal's friend Amalie visited. A huge body of water." Mariah nodded.

Gabriel moved his finger over a few inches to where the blue met beige. "Here's Alphronsia, a country much like Riviera by all accounts." He pointed at a few other places on the page. "Powell, Canton, Sterling . . . There are others." He stopped, tapping his finger for a minute. "Just like Riviera and Alphronsia, they were enclosed and started the slavery system during the Turmoil. But the truth is we don't even know if they still exist or, if they do, how the people there live."

He pointed at a spot well into the beige coloring on the map. "Here's Riviera, as you know." Mariah nodded. "Harmony would be here, but this book was made before it was settled." Gabriel kept moving his finger over, to deep green jagged lines. "These are mountains; they run from north to south."

He pointed to a spot close to the edge of the lines. "Right around here is Rattletown. Most of the people who live there originally came from . . ." he swept his finger further to the right, "here. They call themselves free people because they never enclosed their settlements with walls."

Gabriel could see Mariah trying to digest the new information. He could only imagine how strange it must sound to her. White specks that fall from the sky? Land that reaches into the clouds? People who have never been trapped by walls?

But she was already ready for more. She put her hand over the middle of the map, where the two open pages met. "Who lives here?" she asked.

It took Gabriel a moment to answer. Sometimes he was almost overwhelmed by the quickness of Mariah's mind, on those occasions when she relaxed enough to reveal it. He had seen more of the world than almost anyone he knew. He had traveled both east and west and lived among three cultures. And yet, Mariah's desire for knowledge could make him feel parochial.

Mariah fidgeted. Gabriel suppressed a grin. She was already impatient at his delay in answering. "It used to be empty of people, after the Turmoil. But in Rattletown they told me there are a few settlements there now, of people who have come from further east or up from the south." He pointed to the right and then to the bottom of the map. He knew that Mariah would be disappointed that he had reached the end of what he knew. He should have sought more information when he had the chance. He thought of his sister, pestering everyone with questions all the time. He felt suddenly melancholy.

Mariah's interrupted his reverie. "You've been to Rattletown, Master?" she asked. "You've touched the sky?" She sounded almost awestruck.

Gabriel nodded. He wondered if this would be the thing that would finally make Mariah respect him. "All healers pass a season there during their apprenticeship. That's where I did my first autopsy."

Mariah blinked. She started to turn the page of the mapbook, but Gabriel stopped her. He traced with his finger floating above the page the inches from Harmony to Rattletown.

"My little sister stowed away in a supply wagon and came with me," he said softly.

"Isn't she much younger than you, Master?" Mariah asked.

Gabriel nodded. "Eight years. She didn't think it was fair that I should have all the fun, so she hid until we were more than halfway there and couldn't send her back."

"Did she get to stay?" Mariah looked intrigued.

"She did. We tried to punish her. Put her on ice-cutting duty for the entire season." He laughed a little at the memory. "But you'd never know that she was in disgrace. She made friends with everyone in the settlement, and they taught her to glide on the frozen lake on two metal rods attached to her boots, and to walk on top of the snow in net shoes." He stopped, realizing that Mariah could have no idea what he was talking about.

She stared at him. "You miss her," she said.

Gabriel nodded. "I do. My sister, my father, my friends." He hadn't realized how much until that moment. "Everything." He traced the route from Harmony to Rattletown again. Then he pushed the book away.

Mariah put her hand on top of his. It was such an unexpected gesture of comfort that Gabriel's throat tightened. He must cut a pathetic figure if Mariah was touching him, by choice. She was being kind to him, by choice. He allowed himself to look at her, to look into her green eyes. She met his gaze, unblinking. She was so beautiful, so strong. He wanted . . . And Mariah seemed to want . . . But, no, she couldn't. He couldn't.

He forced himself to slide his hand out from under hers. He gave a snort of humorless laughter. "I see now why the kindness mindgame is so dreaded," he said. "Don't play it with me. My heart can't take it." Mariah made a wordless protest, almost a gurgle. Gabriel stood up. "I'm sorry," he said. He didn't know whether he was apologizing for what he hoped was a false accusation, or because he had pulled away from her, or because he did not want to do so.

Avoiding her gaze, he cleared his throat and flailed for something to say. "What did you think of what Izak said, about the healers in the west fields who use needles to cure people?"

Mariah swallowed and blinked hard and turned away. Gabriel could see her breathing deeply as he had taught her. She said, "Master Izak said slaves were doing that, not healers."

Gabriel sat on the couch, grateful that she had decided to play along. "They heal people. That makes them healers." Mariah shrugged, her back still towards him. "Do you think it's true?" Gabriel asked her.

"That slaves are healers?" Mariah asked.

"No!" Gabriel said, too sharply. "Well, yes, actually. Izak says they've passed the technique on from one generation to another. Do you think that would be possible?"

Mariah finally looked at him. "Not from parent to child," she said slowly. "But far from the mansion, in a place with few humans, older slaves could teach younger ones."

"That's what I think, too," Gabriel said. "I want to go there." He was surprised by his own words. Wanderlust was suddenly upon him. "I want to find out what they're doing." But not without Mariah. "Would you . . . "

He was interrupted by a soft knock from the corridor. He watched Mariah compose her face into blankness as she walked across the room and opened the door. A slave girl he didn't know had raised her hand to knock again. She was young, and what Mariah would call fresh. "Please," she said, "I am to ask for Master Gabriel."

Mariah crossed her arms. "He's resting," she said and started to shut the door. The girl stopped her.

"I must see him. My mistress will punish me if I don't. Please..."

"It's okay," Gabriel said. "Come in. I'm Gabriel."

The girl immediately fell to her knees in the doorway, but did not lean over to touch her forehead to the ground. Her eyes were a deep blue, almost violet, her hair long and sandy blonde, her skin flawless, her body unmarked. "I am called Kishamie. I am a gift to you from Mistress Esmerelda," she said, looking Gabriel in the eye.