Beasts of Tabat by Cat Rambo

one I might have used myself, that crab-step and feint combined. I told Lucya I’d take Skye as one of the special students. She was unsurprised. She likes to think she can predict what I will do.
    No sign of this as I examine the Dryads. If I don’t approve them, though, Alberic will send them to the furnaces and use the magic of their burning flesh and wood to fuel the city. This is part of the magic that keeps Tabat alive. For the last twenty years, ever since the College of Mages discovered the process that releases Dryad magic, Alberic has sent expeditions out to harvest them. He keeps a few in his menagerie, for entertainment and for the sake of his collection’s completion, and if—or rather when—they dissatisfy him, to the furnaces they go. I hold their lives in my hands.
    It’s not a feeling I like.
    “Which?” he says again. I point at random.
    “That one.” I don’t look at her or at any of them. I feel as miserable as I did with Jolietta when she winnowed her stables.
    Alberic points at her as well. She goes in one direction; her fellows are dragged in another. I don’t think about their fates. I don’t want to know.
    I don’t even know if I’ve done her a favor.
    “Come and see the menagerie. The Dragon gets cranky when you do not come speak to it often enough. And I have some new Beasts, kinds you may never have seen before.”
    I doubt that somewhat. During my time with Jolietta, Beasts flowed through the estate. Some she nursed, others she trained, and others she bought to study. I say, “I need to get back to the school. I have students there waiting to be trained.”
    Alberic laughs. “You don’t fool me,” he says. “I have never known anyone who liked Beasts as little as you do. You never want to come and see the menagerie.”
    I don’t explain to him that I actually like Beasts, that they prove better company, sometimes, than Humans. But I do not like the menagerie, do not like seeing the Beasts in their cages, their enclosures. They should be free, I think, even though such thoughts mark me as an abolitionist. But I can’t preach sedition, for I’m a public figure and have responsibilities.
    I remember a Beast, a Unicorn. Jolietta used me to catch it. I remember the weight of its head in my lap, the coarse shine of its mane, the way its flower-pupilled eyes looked at me, and the smell of lilies and vanilla that seeped from its fur. They are rare, Unicorns. Jolietta knew she could get a pretty price for this one.
    They caught it with ropes and nets. I scrambled away trying to avoid its thrashing. They dragged it into the stable and locked it in a stall.
    The next morning, I went down to see it even though Jolietta had forbidden me to do so; she had said I would disturb its training. I opened the stall door, thinking that I would give it a handful of sugar that I had filched from the kitchen.
    Everything smelled of blood and shit. It had battered itself to death against the stable wall trying to break out of its prison. It lay on the floor amid the dirty straw, and its white fur, that had shone in the sunshine the day before, was matted and discolored with its drying blood.
    “They don’t take well to captivity,” Jolietta said. And then she beat one of the Minotaurs, blaming it for what had happened, saying that it should have secured the Unicorn better. It was an unfair accusation, as most of her accusations were, but I did not speak in the Minotaur’s defense. I didn’t want to draw her ire upon myself, for she was in a fine fury that day knowing that she’d lost a good sum.
    She ordered it butchered and made the most of it, selling the hooves and certain internal organs to the College of Mages. She had it skinned and hung the shining hide and horn on her bedroom wall.
    These are the thoughts that haunt me whenever Alberic forces me to walk within his menagerie. I can never tell him so, for he does not take being thwarted well. He would take criticism of the menagerie as a