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The first time Jade takes him shopping, Kakavasha tries to look like he doesn’t need her to.
It’s a ruse, of course. The little Avgin slave boy can’t have the first idea of what fashion is. But Jade decided before they came that she wouldn’t shackle his expression. Choose your desired identity, she had told him. Lady Bonajade always keeps her promises.
Golden Touch is Pier Point’s foremost menswear boutique for the nouveau riche. Kakavasha’s eyes light up the moment they step inside, but he keeps his mouth shut. She acknowledges that it’s a lot to take in; four-carat lunarite, Leviathan leather, and Puffergoat cashmere are opiates to the senses on first contact, and she sees their balm when he tentatively runs his hand along the sleeve of a Xianzhou silk undershirt.
She sends him into the aisles and tells him to explore to his heart’s content. The proprietor narrows his eyes over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses, but a withering look from Jade is enough to force his head back down to the diamond he’s grading. He’s taken the measure of her, but the old fool has no inkling as to the true value of her latest acquisition.
She watches Kakavasha from the vantage point of a stage draped in red velvet within a semicircle of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. He dressed himself this morning with the clothes she left for him: tan work slacks, a vertical-striped button-down in white and pale blue, and an IPC windbreaker. He put on the scarf, too, as she suspected he would, even though the day is warm. When she had him groomed yesterday, she suggested tattooing over his neck—make it look like a choice, his own brazen and incomprehensible fashion statement. He hadn’t had an answer for her then.
She can tell that he’s trying very hard to act grown-up. Though he insists he’s of-age by most interastral calendars—eighteen or nineteen years by his count—he was a child when the first manacle was clasped over his wrist. He’s aged beyond his years, yet he has never really known adulthood—what it truly means to be emancipated.
“Madam?”
He’s holding out a jacket with gold trim and astral mink fur. It’s a loud piece, difficult to coordinate without looking clownish, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s a silver-tongued husk like him.
So she smiles. “Do you like it, child? Then we’ll need to find some quieter pieces to downplay its magnificence.”
She, too, understands the desire to leave your own indelible mark on the cosmos, futile though it may be.
There’s a gold watch on display around a mannequin’s pallid arm, wide-banded and studded with tiny diamonds. She unclasps it and tells Kakavasha to hold up his wrist. He hesitates for a fraction of a second before he does. The gold is beautiful against his skin. She admires both as she fastens the watch that’s thirty times more valuable than his own life.
“What do you think?”
He gazes at the watch. On anyone else, it would be far too showy, but on him, it shines. With this, she won’t need to remind him of what she told him yesterday: He’s only trading his iron chains for golden ones.
“It suits me just fine,” he says at last.
He seems to understand.
She guides his next decisions as well—a silken undershirt in pale gold, a double-breasted vest clasped with ivory buttons, cotton satin trousers, and heeled short boots crafted with premium leather. She sends these with him to the fitting room along with the jacket. And she waits for his metamorphosis.
When he emerges, he holds himself with poise and confidence, putting on that false smile as he curls a hand against his hip. Jade leads him to the stage and orders him to turn in place.
“As I suspected, you clean up nicely, don’t you?” she murmurs, smoothing down the mink fur of the jacket.
She sees his smirk in his reflection. “Of course. Even the mud was clear water once.”
She wonders if the self-deprecation is intentional and concludes that it must be. She buries her own smile. He really is a diamond amongst coal; under pressure is where he’ll shine.
“Then”—she motions to the silk scarf he hasn’t removed from his neck—“let’s take this off. It doesn’t match.”
His smile slips. His fingers curl and flex. He looks at her, and then, when she doesn’t waver, he pinches the silk between his thumb and forefinger.
He doesn’t hesitate after that. But his discomfort bleeds into his every motion. He draws the fabric from his neck, baring that swollen red torment to her, to the proprietor, to anyone who might chance to step within the shop. It’s grotesque—not the scar tissue or the redness of blood and fire that stains his throat but rather the sheer fact of that naked exploitation of him.
And yet he’s beautiful—his eyes, his face, his shattered innocence. Perhaps he doesn’t yet realize just how he’s been commodified, but she knows. He’s worth those sixty Tanbas and so much more.
Now, though, his confidence is shaken. Now, he avoids her gaze. So she cups his chin and lifts his face until the skin of his neck stretches taut and those beautiful, uncertain eyes are forced to hers. It’s his softest spot, his biggest weakness.
But she’ll take pity on him today.
“Mm, this will do.” She tugs the scarf from between his limp fingers and twines it about his throat again. “Go ahead and get changed. Let’s put together a few more looks for you, shall we?”
“Yes, madam,” he whispers, as if he’s breathing for the very first time.
———
The second time Jade takes him shopping, Aventurine no longer needs her to. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that he is taking her shopping.
Cosmic Star is a finer boutique than Golden Touch by several orders of magnitude. It’s the apex of Penaconian style and renowned throughout the cosmos. It’s no wonder that he’s chosen it for some retail therapy after his ordeal in the primal dreamscape. Jade is only surprised that he requested her presence.
He must be grateful to escape with his life once again. That, or he’s still reeling from it.
He leads her to the jewelry counter where gemstones coruscate under the heady fog of memoria.
“You must be tired of jade accents. Let’s find something to really bring out the color of your eyes, ma’am.”
His hands sift through the display case, looking for all the world like some young scion’s. Only she can see the blood between the knuckles, the agony entrenched in every line of his palms. His bracelets clink like shackles as he draws out a silver chain strung with an iridescent opal. She wonders if he even notices anymore.
“Beautiful,” she says as he holds the chain up to her throat, “but it reminds me of him.”
Aventurine laughs. “I was wondering if you would notice.”
He puts the necklace back. He must have quite the rapport with the shop owner to be able to freely handle such priceless jewels without supervision, even within the facade of the dreamscape. She doesn’t doubt that he does; even after time and near-constant use, that silver tongue has never tarnished.
She lets him choose things for her—an ammolite brooch, a pair of white gold earrings, a ring set with red beryl. They’re ostentatious yet tasteful pieces, and she commends his refined eye. Those empty words make him laugh, but he must know she’s pleased with his growth. She wouldn’t have entrusted her Cornerstone to him otherwise.
She isn’t used to curating feelings of affection, but she feels it for him. He’s like Jelena in that way—small and hopelessly pathetic, drawing out that instinct to mother and nurture that’s inevitable in all sentimental beings. She doesn’t begrudge him for it just as she has never begrudged Topaz. After all, they let her feel that which fate never ordained for her.
He spends his credits carelessly—recklessly, even. Anything that catches his eye he earmarks for purchase with the sales associate who hovers at his elbow. Jade is certain she’ll see some of these pieces again. The rest, though, will lie forgotten at the bottom of his wardrobe. She knows him well enough to know that. It’s a compulsion and perhaps a pathology, just like his fixation with games of chance. She doubts he enjoys either at this point. He simply can’t stop.
She understands. She has her own pet obsessions, after all.
When Aventurine at last sends the sales associate away to prepare his purchases in the real world, there’s something of a defeated slump in the ridge of his shoulders. He looks, Jade thinks, like a man conquered by his own vices. But when he speaks, there’s still honey in his voice, sweetening that false confidence he’s cultivated all his life.
“Do you remember, madam, the last time you took me shopping?”
His mouth is smiling, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. There, she finds the usual emptiness and perhaps a strain of sadness.
She smiles, too, to reassure him. “Of course. You have always had a taste for the extravagant. That hasn’t changed even now.”
Kakavasha. It truly is a pretty name, but uncut and unpolished and therefore useless to her. Yet she repeats it in her head from time to time because she likes the sound of it, likes the music of sand and rain that it evokes. Perhaps it’s destined to be forgotten, like most things are, but she knows that she won’t. It survived the depersonalization of Number Thirty-Five, engraved into his neck like an epitaph, after all.
“Feeling nostalgic?” she presses him.
He turns from her, not to hide his expression but perhaps to add more weight to his words away from the lies etched into his face. But even the black ink of the tattoo he shows to her now conceals the truth of that unhealing wound.
“I suppose I am.”
He doesn’t retreat often, but she can always tell when he does. It’s because the Nihility still lingers on him, salting his wounds and zesting the pith of his aching bones. That bruise in his perfection, in his humanity—the red-hot brand that collars his neck and makes commodities of his flesh and soul—will remain with him forever.
“Look,” Jade says then, running her fingers along the wooden edge of the jewelry case. “There’s topaz, opal, sapphire, pearl, jade. But no aventurine.”
He follows the sweep of her hand. “Well, of course. A high-end boutique isn’t in the habit of serving up scraps that don’t belong.”
She smiles. “But aventurine is the perfect stone for you, isn’t it? The lucky stone, cheaply bought, yet once it’s cut and set, it hides its true value beneath its endless facades.”
She traces a fingernail along the outline of the first necklace he showed to her. “No flashy opal can do that.”
Is she trying to comfort him? Even she doesn’t know anymore.
He laughs. “Diamond chose well for me. Or perhaps it was fate itself that chose?”
“Perhaps. But tell me, Director Aventurine: Are you happy now?”
It’s a simple question. It demands a simple answer, and he dutifully gives it when he hums his assent.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I get to enjoy the sort of wealth most people would kill for.”
His poker face is unwavering. Even to her, that carefully constructed mask bears hardly a chip in it. There’s just the one—the same one, the one that he’s always nursed and hidden and feared. He no longer conceals it with silk but with impudence, with the sheer audacity to bear it to the world unashamed. And yet the shame ever lingers.
But she has come to understand that chatoyancy is no defect to clarity, and that cat’s eye band shields behind it the silk-soft cores of aventurine and jade alike.