Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [89]
Mirabella, the court seamstress, walked around Mistral tugging at the coat she’d found for those broad shoulders. She pulled one side with a pale, slender hand, then smoothed a fold in the rich blue cloth with her black-and-white tentacle.
Her right arm was the tentacle of a nightflyer. She seemed perfectly human, except for that bit of extra. The tentacle was very dexterous, as I knew the nightflyers could be. She used both limbs without thought. It was the effortlessness of years of having both. Was she part nightflyer? The child of some attack, or even a willing roll in the hay? I wanted to ask, but it would have been rude.
Mistral looked amazing in the coat. The rich blue color seemed to make his eyes blue too, like a summer sky. The wide collar was lined with gray fur so that his own cloud-gray hair seemed to meld with it, and it was hard to see where fur ended and hair began.
Mirabella had him turn so she could see the long coat billow around him. There was more gray fur in a wide line down the back of the coat, so that the free spill of his ankle-length hair continued that mingling illusion—not an illusion of magic, but of skill and choice of clothing.
“It looks like it was made for him,” Doyle said dryly.
The seamstress smoothed her brown hair in its neat bun with the tentacle, then looked at him with the full force of her olive-green eyes with their hint of brown and gray, and even almost gold around the irises. They were the closest a human could get to having multiple-colored eyes like a sidhe. She was tall and lovely, and moved with that stiff, strangely graceful, perfect posture that said that she was wearing a corset under her dress. The dress looked very 1800s, and was a deep, almost blackish green, which brought out the green in her eyes. The sleeves did not match the historical accuracy of the everyday dress. They were puffed at the top, and belled wide at the bottom so that they spilled back when she raised her limbs, and you got glimpses of the tentacle which went at least to where her elbow might have been.
Sholto said, “Mirabella, did you make this for Mistral?”
She didn’t look at her king, but continued to fuss with the coat, which was almost more of a robe.
“I told you of my dream, Your Highness.”
“Mirabella.” He said her name with more force to it.
She turned, and gave him a nervous flick of eyes, then turned Mistral toward us, as if for inspection. He’d taken all her fussing without complaint. Queen Andais liked dressing up her guards for dinners, dances, or her own amusement. Mistral was used to being treated as if his opinion did not matter when it came to dressing. Mirabella had been utterly professional compared to Andais. Not a single grope.
Mistral was wearing a pair of black trousers, tucked into knee-high boots. Mirabella had tied a wide blue sash at his waist, and the color looked good against the moonlight-white of his bare stomach. The deep, deep blue of the coat framed his chest, all that pale muscled flesh. When Sholto had said that Mistral would be a very barbarian king, he’d been right.
“That coat was never made for my shoulders, Mirabella,” Sholto said, giving her a look.
She shrugged her shoulders, and something about the movement made me certain that there was a human shoulder under the sleeve, or something harder, and with more bone than the tentacle.
She finally looked at her king. There was anger, no rage in those fine eyes. She dropped to her knees in a spill of heavy skirts and a glimpse of black petticoats. “Forgive me, My King, but hubris has gotten the