Or maybe – and he kept coming back to this in his head, kept turning it over and over – maybe it was a threat, after all. A warning. That he’d send Niccolette, too, knowing who Tom claimed to be, knowing who he’d worked with. The more he thought about it, the likelier it seemed. Reminding him the King had eyes and ears everywhere. It opened other doors: it raised questions about how much Hawke knew. How close of an eye he’d been keeping on Vauquelin, these past few months.
Tom didn’t like any of it none.
The name of the ship, spoken in that faintly condescending tone, elicited a grunt from him. He hadn’t thought she’d respond; he wasn’t sure why she had. After a pause, he registered she’d spoken again. He blinked, brow furrowing.
Must you eat them?
He couldn’t help but snort; he hadn’t meant to, but once he had, out came another laugh, deep and genuine. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Niccolette Ibutatu joke, and he still half-wondered if she’d been serious. “Afraid not,” he replied. “The Lady Lambert.” His tone wasn’t quite patronizing, but it was wry enough: he reckoned the name spoke for itself.
Some of the anger’d bled from him, and in its wake, it’d left a muddle he was hopeless to sort through. He was still on his guard, or determined to be – he couldn’t bring himself to look over at her. He kept his eyes on the path ahead as it wound down, parallel with the water. Over an uneven line of rooftops below, Tom could see lights on the Mahogany, mirroring the stars. The thin lip that separated the water from the sky was invisible; with the clouds, you almost couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
Almost to the bridge, and then to the west side. He’d make it to Cantile, he promised. He’d walk on his own until Cantile.
Brellos pez Hirtka was enough to bring his gaze back over to her, eyes widened for a moment in surprise. He studied her face through the dark, through the haze, as she spoke; she seemed to labor at it. He caprised the slightest blue shift in her field, and he frowned again. Then it was smooth, indectal, and she was crossing her arms.
“On the edge of my beloved’s eyelash, flickering bright,” he recited, slurring a little on the last words, “the fire that burns the heart; he cleaves me from myself…” Shaking his head and swallowing dryly, he turned away. “Shit, did I? I don’t remember what I said. I remember I was – thinking about that poem, though,” he said, hesitating. “The whole flooding party.”
Too drunk for this. He knew what he was saying was risky, but he couldn’t bring himself to put on Anatole again. Even the memory of the party turned his stomach. Up until that moment, it was like the memory of being someone else. A flat, gray memory. The sound of busting glass jumped out at him, and the feeling of faint, cruel amusement, in the way that going through the motions left an imprint on your soul.
The night wasn’t getting less confusing. The boards of the bridge creaked underfoot. The sea swelled, and the solid wood seemed to shift, and his aching head spun. His lip twitched, curled again; he hissed a curse, felt like he was tipping. For the first time since he’d been sick in Voedale, a wave of nausea rose up in him, and he paused in his step to force it down. He shook it off with a shiver, forging onward, steps even more tremulous.
Pez Hirtka wasn’t a name he’d expected to hear on Niccolette’s tongue, but – thinking about it – flooding hell. When he was alive, of course, he’d never thought to notice any of the books in Uzoji’s library; he’d never’ve talked to the kov about poetry, of all things. Now that he knew, an interest in pez Hirtka didn’t seem at all out of place in Uzoji’s repertoire.
“Was it –” He wasn’t sure how to ask, or what he was even asking. “You knew it,” he said instead, with only the edge of a question. “Even then.”