Chapter 138: Chapter 139: Sonata Rondo

The party, contrary to my expectations, is wild and unbegrudging, and I enjoy it.

There’s a lot in that thought that I unpack as I more or less drift from one buffet table to another, doing my best to avoid concentrations of people or anyone who seems to want to talk to me. It’s a singular party, with some astonishing spatial warping magic that I can’t even begin to puzzle out or tease apart the pieces of, something sublime in its elegance that weaves together grand ballrooms and intimate little spaces so that you don’t even notice the transitions and you’re always where you want to be. It’s wild, loud and upbeat and full of passion and glory and unbridled expressions of art in schools that are literally a world apart from me; it’s unbegrudging, with not a single person seeming to mind, in the end, how the tournament ended.

And I enjoy it. I enjoy it in exactly the way Lily had said I would, when she dismissed me after the draw between Amber and Rei; I enjoy the hunger in so many gazes, the way my clothes seem to float around me and cling at the same time, the sight of the makeup in every glimpse of myself in a mirror. It would be different if it were the same crowd as at the stadium, the same people infuriated by my surrender and barely mollified by the spectacle of Amber’s duels with Rei—one draw and one win each—and the various ending ceremonies. But those people are all gone, now, discorporated into the energy reservoirs of the Temple and reduced to the runic frameworks that represent them, that are them, are their substrate; changed, grown, for their experiences over the past weeks, but still Imprints, ghosts living in the machine.

All that’s left are a few tens of thousands of those most favored. People whose labor and diligence and craft made the Tournament possible, people who were contenders, fellow Architects, and the like. They carry an attitude ranging from grudging to delighted respect for my ploy, and an envy that I had the wherewithal to indulge in it; instead of being displeased by the lack of blood on the sands, inasmuch as they care about me and mine they are instead focused on Amber, as every gossip and every onlooker delights in comparing her to historical figures and dissecting every motion of her sword and every curve of her body. I’m the subject of a great deal of envy and jealousy, most of it good-natured and all of it perfectly reasonable to me but nonetheless uncomfortable, and that’s a big part of why I go out of my way to avoid notice and keep to the edges of the room.

It’s imperfectly successful at best. You can find whom you’re looking for, at this party, and that’s an immensely stronger force than my desire to find some peace and quiet, so as the kiloseconds start to stack up and the food on the tables starts to shift from tiny artistic expressions of skill to more substantial exhibitions of talent, I keep getting… pestered. Not unreasonably, and not beyond my ability to deal with, but enough to keep me on edge and to stop me from being able to just relax and enjoy the spectacle on the dance floor.

Not that there isn’t spectacle aplenty in the people who approach me, nor do I particularly mind, even if I wind up disappointing almost all of them.

“Magelord James. Or, might I be so bold, Adam?”

“You have the advantage of me, Miss…”

“Oh, I should like to have the advantage of you.” She gives it a beat. I don’t react much; I’ve heard that same line, if not as well delivered, a few times by now. “Tori. Mistress Tori, if you like.”

I touch fingertip-pads with her on autopilot, which she uses as an opportunity to step closer, gently drawing my hand towards her and turning it to face downwards. Her fingers gently drift towards my palm, and I feel the pleasurable shiver as they stroke against my skin, furnace-warm. “The night’s young,” I say, trying for a non-committal tone. I know better than to think that I succeed. It’s been a long afternoon and now a long evening, and I’ve been refining my approach for dozens of aspirants, but every one of them reaches down into my core and pulls as though I’m as starved for touch and validation as I was the day I met Amber. “Come here for the hors d'oeuvre?”

“Oh, how disappointed I’d be if I had. The tide’s out, and all that’s left are the deeps.”

“Brutal. Savage. You’ve wrecked the hopes and dreams of everyone who crafted a puff of pastry, a mote of dream.”

“And just as substantial. There’s ten thousand like them in every hall, each as shallow.” Her two fingers have moved to my wrist from my palm, and she crooks them in a beckoning motion so gentle I can’t really call it a tug.

I follow, because of course I do. “Crystal-clear and comprehensible, though. A perfect morsel, perfectly encapsulated.”

“Some prefer the depths.” The corners of her eyes turn up, and her eyelids go to a quarter closed. It shows off the dusting of emerald green against the dusky browns of her skin, an emerald green that echoes the studs in her ears and the glimmers of woven metals that set off her waist-length space-black hair.

She’s intoxicating, and my head swims with the nearness of her and the swells of the curves under her form-fitting dress. We’re close, now, bare centimeters apart, and she’s taken a step or two back in the process, which means I need to disengage or give her the opportunity to. “There are leviathans in those deeps,” I murmur. I’m not exactly smiling, but I have no doubt that my enjoyment of the moment is coming across, and my regret to say what I’m about to say. “Sometimes, they stir, and nothing is beyond their gaze.”

“The Leviathan,” Tori says with a definite smile, “doesn’t take notice of a minnow, swimming peaceably. Dance with me?”

That surprises me enough for her to pull me onto the dance floor. She’s not the first to instantly understand what I’m hinting at, nor is she my first dance, but she is the first to blithely assert that none of the women who have arguably claims on my time—and there are, astonishingly, three of them, tonight—will mind her intentions, the first to so deliberately fan the flames and not back off when warned.

Those intentions of hers involve my left palm pressed gently against the front of her right shoulder and my right hand resting in her palm, her other hand around my waist, and the way she moves us across the dance floor has me drift in something of a haze, torn between wanting to break away before I risk doing something foolish and wanting her to pull me in closer. The music is at the perfect volume, because why wouldn’t it be when its volume is mediated by magic, and there’s never anyone in our way, but the dance floor still feels full. It feels like every eye is on us, on me, appraising and hungry, and for all that a small part of me is deeply embarrassed, the rest of me is drinking in the validation of the attention just as much as I am the joy of the dance and of my partner.

It’s an easy dance, a gentle dance, but a close and intimate one. She maneuvers me, and soon enough I go soft and pliable in her hands, molding my body against hers as she gently pulls me closer in a little bit at a time, one pattern traveled at a time. By the time the song ends, we are one conjoined line from our hips to our shoulders, and she bends me backwards in a dip that’s only supported by her hand, and my eyes flutter closed as she kisses me.

It’s not a long kiss. It lasts as long as it lasts, and I’m already savoring its memory when it ends. I do my best to brand into my memory the way her hips feel against mine, the way the cloth of her dress bunches into its tight clasp at her waist, the indulgence of her smile and the warmth of her proximity.

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And then I tilt my head back and take one small step back, pressing my palms against her palms as I’ve seen people do after each dance, and smile, eyes nearly shut for the intensity of my contented joy.

“Thank—”

“I am—”

I open my eyes back to full, tilting my head and raising an eyebrow at her.

“I am grateful, Magelord.” Her smile develops a lopsided edge, and her voice gains a definite degree of humor. “You do me tremendous grace.”

It takes me a moment to figure that out, but I realize after a beat what just happened; by going to thank her first, I was positioning her as above me, socially, which would have been ridiculous, per the social rules here. I know that dynamic, have had it explained to me repeatedly, for all that I keep forgetting it. I’m still flushed with joy and there’s a tingling fire running through my body, though, and she’s ever so beautiful. “Thank you for the dance, Mistress Tori.”

“I… Adam!” She flushes, visible even against the darkness of her skin. I savor the shattering of her composure for the brief second it lasts, the effects of my words exactly what I was trying for, and then she visibly pulls herself together again, grinning hugely. “I won’t forget your kindness, but I won’t overstep. May your every dance partner find as much joy as you brought me.”

She’s gone before I can process that. “Unfair,” I grouse in a low tone. “She says that as though I was doing her a favor by dancing with her.”

“Perhaps, my lord, you are as much a pleasure to dance with as you find in dancing.”

I turn the forty-five degrees that the dance calls for, mimicking the other dancers. The sequence of dances is set-slow, set-fast, freeform-fast, freeform-slow, challenge; that means that when everyone else who’s dancing follow brings their arm up around their partner’s neck, I can follow suit without being behind, and when their partners all lean forward, I know to tilt my head up so that the speaker can brush my lips with a kiss.

The dance starts with a spin. Her arms are around me, and one hand pushes me out while the other holds me steady. It’s my fifth dance of the evening, so I’m riding the curve between my muscles starting to grow weary and being warmed up; my feet are light, and silk panels rise into the air as I twirl. I step out, and, half following her guide and half following my memory and observations, flex my knees outwards to dip my body downwards. Up, and I’m stepping back in with another spin, feeling the strength and safety in Amber’s hands and arms as I let her guide me and root me in the right tempo, the right angle of my body.

My palm is firmly ensconced in her hand, my other palm up against her shoulder, but this time it’s with my elbows at something close to right angles, keeping me farther away from her, alas. The next steps are just that, steps; out, to opposite sides, back in, and then back together to end up in the position we started in, all in patterns of three and motions so small they’re almost nothing but flair. There’s a pause, a flick of the head and a moment where we can just smile at each other and feel the giddiness rise, and then she’s twirling me and I’m twirling her right back.

We promenade, arm in arm, and I bobble the footwork, which the people around us will all have noticed if they were looking at us at all. I don’t care; Amber is smiling at me, my arm tucked into hers, and she transitions me out of the promenade into a long twirl, four full spins, and while the world takes a moment to stop spinning afterwards I follow the guiding pressure of her hands on my waist to work my hips from side to side, tossing my head in counterpoint to them. There’s twelve beats of that, six two-beat couplets, or maybe four three-beats that I’m syncopating, and then it’s the freeform section, and my heart is racing because, well.

It’s the freeform section. I don’t know the steps, because there aren’t any.

The panic lasts only a split second. This is Amber, I remind myself, and on the first twirl and three-step, everything melts away and nothing exists other than the guiding pressure of her hands, her clear intent, and my body moving in alignment with that intent and that guidance. It takes me around her, circling her as she moves her body in time with mine, telling me with her physicality what we’re going to be next, giving me something to echo and repeat and embellish on.

I flounce, working my hips in a circle. My feet cross, or one foot rises and the other roots me into the dance floor as I slowly pirouette, and then we each have one arm around the back of the other’s neck, turning in a full circle together.

I’m so relieved to have passed through the freeform steps without falling to pieces that I almost miss the transition back into the restatement. Amber has me, though, and I’m putty in her hands, and with the hard part over I can finally relax into the moment. It’s like I’m floating through the steps, like when she twirls me she could pull me up into the air and I wouldn’t come down; it’s like there’s the rushing of an ocean, and it’s overpowering me and all I can do is ride the swells and the valleys and be witness to its glory.

The dance is over too soon, and at the same time, there’s nothing left in me. She lifts me, rather than dipping me, her hands gripping me at the ribcage and my arms resting lightly on her shoulders, my eyes locked on hers, my core burning. She’s leaning back maybe forty five degrees, and her arms are holding me at the same angle without the slightest bit of wobble, and after a moment that lasts forever she brings me gently in towards herself and kisses me.

I don’t even notice when my feet touch down, but the music is over, and we head together for something we’d caught sight of out of the corner of our eyes.

If the magics of the party have brought the rest of our party together, at a proper table, we’re not averse to taking the hint and joining them, if only to catch our breath.

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