t was going to be a Low Tide sort of evening. That he knew, oes, sure as he knew the way the sky was turning and the way the wind carried its warm dry salt-sea smell through the street. That he knew, sure as he knew where his feet took him through the streets of Voedale, round the alleys where he tossed his tallies to the familiar bowls of familiar beggars.
His heart was full up with it, sloshing over. His head was full of nothing but the sun he’d soaked in, the taste of Hullwen lingering on his tongue; he’d still the faint buzz of it glowing in his veins, making his step buoyant and light.
So he crossed Grasmere and Mary, bowed his shoulders and raised his hat to the tumbles smoking outside Oake’s, who laughed and grinned their gap-toothed grins at him. He passed near the Dogyard, where a laoso-faced tsat cried hoarse-voiced at the crowds that were thickening in the early evening like milk brought to boil; he passed the cages where dogs snapped at the bars, flashing the whites of their eyes at him. He shouted up at the lads working at the almshouse roof, bare backs red and slick with sweat, and they shouted back to him.
The sky’d been brilliant, bright blue all day; that was how he knew what it would look like when the night came. It’d been so for the past week, hot as hell, but the nights had been cool. He knew the way the sky turned pink and red at the horizon, turning the trees and the rooftops to silhouettes, deepening to a Yaris night sky so dark it was almost purple. Most nights he’d had off, this week, and spent in fine company.
Last night’s qalqa he wore in the ache of his muscles and the bruises that purpled along one side of his jaw. He wore it too in the heaviness of his wallet; such was the way as one thing paid for another.
It was the few nights before he wore in the words he mouthed, whenever he could – as if his mung natt tongue’d lose it, if he didn’t keep it close – sana’hulali, he’d repeat, sana’hulali, hama’d helped him say, for all hama couldn’t remember much of Mugroba, for all he said it more clumsily than he’d’ve liked. Imbala, hama could not help him with; imbala, and even hama’s brow knit, and their words wandered elsewhere.
Funny, such things as he thought when he thought of this kov.
There’d been a new scar, this time; Aremu’d found it the first night he’d come to him, still fresh, for all it’d healed enough for the bandages to come off. He hadn’t known how to name the feeling he got when those long, callused fingers traced across it, slanting from underneath his chin across his throat. The imbala’d had more of them, too, some fresh enough to sting. Was the way of their qalqa – they were both tender in new places, tougher in others. The finding of them’d been half the fun, and the pain, and the laughter, too.
But still he’d caught sight of his lopsided, bruised face in a dark window in Voedale, and he’d wondered; even a night apart, and he’d wondered.
A night ago, a long dark walk and a man’s fist in his face ago, he’d told him – they’d lain together, with those fingers tracing Circle knew what engineers’ patterns across his chest, and he’d told him: after your qalqa’s done, and mine, meet me at the corner of Gristwill and Peters, down by what’s left of the old Barley-Fleet warehouses; I’ve somethin’ to show you, dove.
And so now he waited, his hat pulled down over his face, his hair pulled back up off his sweating neck. Was a quiet narrow street lined with derelict warehouses, near empty, with the leering broken-windows bulk of them throwing their shadows over the cracked stones. Wasn’t too far a walk from the King’s shipyard in the Paw, but he’d not go so far as to find the imbala himself; he’d not go so far.
The sky was turning peach – a narrow sliver of it he could see between the tall shadowy walls, cloudless and clear. Close enough to the docks he could hear, a few streets down, muffled sounds of men crying and the clanging of bells.
He waited, as the sky started to turn.