Free The Adorned by John Tristan Page B

the palette. A regimen of cleansing baths will even out your complexion. I will give Doiran instruction on your care.”
    I stood, holding my jacket in my hands. Tallisk, who’d turned to arrange his sketches, frowned at me.
    “Well?”
    I opened and closed my mouth, very like a fish.
    Tallisk’s mouth twitched. He was almost smiling. “I’m done with you,” he said. “For now. You may go.”
    I ached to remain, to ask him all the questions gathered in my mind. Instead I went, without even a murmur; he closed the door behind me. Once it was shut, I let out a breath, deep and shuddering: a breath I had not been aware of holding.

Chapter Twelve
    Tallisk did as he promised.
    First, he gave Doiran instructions as to my bathing regimen, specifying with humiliating precision the how and when. Every day he called me to bathe, sometimes twice; the luxury alone seemed stunning to me. There were exotic soaps he had to purchase, and special creams to “even my complexion.” At least I was allowed the small mercy of applying them myself, after I insisted to Tallisk that I would take pains to scrub every plane and crevice of me until it met his exacting standard.
    Second, he arranged for me to watch him at work.
    He waited for a clear, bright morning, then summoned Isadel and me to his atelier. We went together; she wore her usual light, silken robes, without her coat of brocade. A wise choice, I learned; Tallisk had set the braziers working until it felt like midsummer.
    He had his sleeves rolled up, and I glanced at his uncovered arms, where half-faded tattoos lay over corded muscle. Set out before him were a reclining chair and a low table filled with the tools of his trade: bottles of ink, needles, wooden hammers, paints and brushes, calipers and rods. Half surgeon’s tools, half artist’s. A shiver of fascination passed through me at the sight of them.
    “Good,” he said, “you are here. We’ll begin.”
    There were no niceties, no preambles. He simply gestured to the chair.
    Isadel inclined her head. “Shall I disrobe, sir?”
    “No,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I intend to tattoo your clothing. Off with it!”
    She winked at me. I realized she was making a little show of it, for my benefit. She untied the ribbons at her sleeves, and the cord at her waist, and handed them to me. “Will you hold these for me, please?”
    I nodded mutely. She moved as serpentine and languid as the snakes tattooed upon her, taking off her robes and hanging them on a hook beside the door. The snakes moved subtly upon her skin, like painted puppets in a shadowplay; with her every step they shifted, as if they were trying to cling to her curves. There was such ease in her motion; though she was mother-naked, it seemed she wore invisible robes and jewels upon her. I found myself entranced, and jealous; a strange, constricting envy had settled in my chest.
    Tallisk, on the other hand, seemed less impressed by her show. “Sit down.”
    “What will we be working on today?”
    “The flame. As I said last time.”
    She sprawled on the chair and parted her legs. There was a flurry of scarlet petals on her inner thighs; they seemed to be shifting as if breeze-caught. Tallisk sat upon a wheeled stool and rolled it between Isadel’s legs. He pulled closer his worktable, with all his tools and inks. “Etan,” he said, and I started. “Come closer.”
    I came, though slowly. I felt as if I were an intruder on some private thing. Tallisk and Isadel did not seem to feel this way, though; she caught my eye and winked at me again.
    “Don’t worry so much,” she said.
    “I’m not worried.”
    “Quiet, the both of you,” Tallisk said. His broad hand hovered over his tools. He took up a thin paintbrush and a palette of inks and touched the brush to the base of her pubis. The curled dark hair there was clipped short. Slowly, he outlined a small colorless flame. Flame or petal; it was hard to tell. It seemed to straddle both, half flower