[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu’s lips brushed his hand, and curled at the edges. A little smile, the kind he knew very well by now.

I know you can handle yourself, he said, and Tom thought with chagrin, You know me too well. And you know very well, he thought wryly, still tingling with the brush of his lips, how to distract me.

He couldn’t quite find an echo for his own face; he was good at making certain sorts of smiles when he had to, nearly too good at it, but none of those smiles were what he wanted to give Aremu. He wasn’t sure, after all, he wanted to give him a smile. If a smile meant easy agreement – if a smile meant that any of this was easy – he certainly did not.

He made a tired little noise in his throat instead, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Their hands were still warmly intertwined; his other was still on Aremu’s cheek, and he was stroking the curve of his cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, looking intently into his eyes. And he was not, indeed, in agreement. But he didn’t know if he disagreed, either; he thought despairingly he wasn’t sure what there was to agree or disagree with.

You know, don’t you, he didn’t think he had to say. You know the risk is greater for you? When men in his circles go down, they go down hard; I know that as well as anybody. I’ve seen it happen; I’m trying to make it happen right now in Vienda. I know what worst looks like for Anatole Vauquelin. I’ve never seen an arcane trial in person, least of all one of those, but I know what it would mean. And for Cerise? For her career? For her lad?

Dangerous to care. He could find another Pendulum man to take, he told himself, or – he didn’t chase that thought, now. But the Cause knew him as long as she did; the body, he told himself, didn’t matter. He thought with a pang of how little Aremu knew, and how little it was safe for him to know. They weren’t his secrets, any more than the King’s business, or the business that had taken him to Brunnhold last fall, was Aremu’s to share. He had trusted then; Aremu trusted him now, somehow.

Dangerous.

He could’ve chased the thought down more avenues, sitting here on the limb, surrounded by leaves and dappled sunlight. He could’ve thought about it: the border between Anaxas and Mugroba meant more than a little where safety and agency were concerned, but very little with regard to scandal.

“You know where I stand,” he said quietly, inclining his head and raising his eyebrows, “nevertheless.”

It is not a crime, he wanted to say, for a man to treat a friend with dignity. It sounded flimsy even to him; he held it close to himself like an iron shield anyway.

He felt the awful mess of it with a sudden surge of guilt, a guilt mingled with anger and stinging shame. Aremu had told him to let him make that choice for himself, the choice to endanger himself for – this – for him, whatever he was, man or ghost or monster. For them, he thought, looking down at their hands together.

He shut his eyes, and he could see them imprinted on the backs of his lids, ablaze with the sun. He was tired; what sun he could feel was sinking into him, and he thought he could’ve sat there all afternoon and evening, swaddled in it.

When he opened his eyes, he found that Aremu had shut his, too; they were both breathing steadily, and Aremu was smiling. He smiled back, a little and then more, blinking out through the leaves.

He sat with him longer in the quiet and the rustling and birdsong; he wasn’t sure how long passed, only that the slant of the shadows had changed slightly.

He stirred, feeling another prickle of leiraflesh when the branch moved underneath him again. “I don’t know when the observatory closes,” he said a little ruefully, though he smiled at Aremu. “I do know that, uh – that I’m going to need some help down from here.” He hazarded a grin, squeezing his hand.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
Beneath an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

In Tom’s words and the careful lifting of his eyebrows, Aremu thought he heard understanding. He couldn’t have said whether it was of all that he’d left unspoken, this time, but he thought Tom must have known most of it, for at one time or another, these last months, it had come spilling out of him. There was nothing here, Aremu thought, which was new; it was only that seeing Tsofo had brought it forward for him.

For them, he thought, softening a little; for the both of them. Just then he felt almost grateful, because there had been words on the bench below he’d never heard from Tom; he was grateful not for his misunderstandings, but for the chance to set them right, or at least to try. He could see, looking squarely at it, how it was best for such things to be out in the open, for him to have at least told Tom how he felt on the subject, whether or not Tom was ready to hear it.

He thought if they sat in the tree long enough, such words would turn slowly around on him; he didn’t know if he was ready for that, just now, even amidst the leaves.

They sat in silence for a little while, and Aremu’s mind wore along familiar tracks, finding well-trodden grooves. Sometimes too he thought what was beneath the feet of his mind was new and unbroken, and he couldn’t be sure, quite, what paths he was leaving behind on it. Sometimes he tried to give himself the gift of stillness, of being in the moment, because he wanted to write every bit of this on his memory – the two of them in the tree, together, Tom’s hand firm in his.

“I promised myself,” Aremu said, when Tom spoke of down, “not to climb anything I couldn’t descend.” He leaned down and kissed Tom one last time, and thought he’d broken that promise, now, and more than once before.

There was a certainty to down; at worst, Aremu knew, one could always let fall. Down would come in a way up might now; whatever the harm, whatever the cost, down would come.

He didn’t say that to Tom; he didn’t think it would be very helpful, just now.

Down was messy, too, as it always was; there was the scrape of branches and bark, though nothing deep enough to rip fabric or flesh. Aremu dangled, and Tom clung to him, and for a moment again he held the weight of the other man, for only a moment – but it was the dull weight of his muscles working, and no sharp tearing. It was only pain, Aremu thought, breathing through it, and he could manage pain.

And then Tom was back on the ground; Aremu swung off the branches and dropped down beside him, landing as easily as he had earlier, and rising up from his crouch.

“How’s your hip?” Aremu asked, gently. His hand came and settled on it, gently; his thumb stroked over the joint. They did not, he thought, talk of it much; he never quite knew what to say. Even your hip had felt strange at first, lie-like; he didn’t think it did, as much, not anymore. It was Tom’s hip, Aremu thought, growing more certain of it all the time, now.

There was a burst of laughter from the path, the sound of a crunching footstep; Aremu drew his hand away, and went to the bench, picking up his amel’iwe and draping it around his neck, smoothing it out along his front and adjusting all the folds. The laughter held, and then drifted further away, and the footsteps too.

All the same, Aremu thought – all the same. It had been easy to forget, tucked there in the branches of the tree, and he found, still, when he looked back at Tom, it was with a face which had forgotten how to behave, eyes that were too soft, and a mouth which clung to the remnants of a smile it couldn’t have any longer.

[Tom Cooke]

En Route to the Observatory at Es’tsusiqi, Away’qexo College

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

T
hat, he thought, is a hell of a promise. And very much like you. His eyes softened; they fluttered shut when he leaned down to kiss him. He felt the same thrill through him, the shifting of the branches underneath, the sun on his foot dangling bare in the empty air, one of his hands in Aremu’s and the other sliding round the back of his neck, trusting.

It was a moment, just a moment.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever thought whether he could come down, when he’d climbed something – if you weren’t being literal, and if you were, he’d never climbed anything at all – and he hadn’t thought about the down this time, either. It was messy; this lurch in his gut was less pleasantly exciting. But he felt Aremu’s strength all the same, harness and muscles taut, and when he stepped off onto the bench and then the ground he was only unsteady for the fraction of a second. He felt a twinge in his hip, and then up his lower back, stiff from the tension.

He barely saw Aremu come down, but he felt the breeze of it on his face, saw him rise with the sun and shadows shifting over his face. He felt him come close then; his eyes widened slightly at the question, and at the brush of Aremu’s hand, tender as ever, lingering this time in a place he hadn’t expected.

He couldn’t remember if he’d complained about it to the other man before. He might’ve in passing, but he hadn’t thought – his eyes softened, and so did the press of his lips, meeting Aremu’s watchful eyes.

He opened his mouth, but they came apart before he could speak. They’d come down a little, from wherever it was they’d climbed to. He glanced over his shoulder at the shrubs, though there was no movement, just the laughter and chatter. When he turned back, Aremu was getting his amel’iwe off the bench, a flash of deep yellow round his shoulders.

He dusted the bark and dirt off his own tunic, brushed a leaf off his erse. “Better,” he began quietly, a little sheepishly, “actually. Thank you.”

He found his own amel’iwe, unfolding it carefully, shaking it out just as carefully. His clothes were no more rumpled than they’d been on the path; he knew what they’d risked, but he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he folded his amel’iwe about his shoulders, letting the whirl of flowers fall down his front, smoothing the hem.

When he turned, he found Aremu looking at him. It was quiet, a space between heartbeats. He found himself looking at Aremu too; he felt like his face might’ve been a window, for once. He smiled, holding onto the softness of Aremu’s lips, the warmth in his dark eyes, the line of sunlight down his cheek.

It couldn’t last forever, but it lasted. It was sweet like the sight of an osi over the shoulder, a thing to brace yourself on. He wasn’t sure which of them turned toward the shrubs first, but a little of the warmth lingered in his chest.

“Dr. Levesque,” he went on after a moment, feeling the strangeness of untrod stones, “says I should, uh – use it more, actually. This sort of thing helps. Climbing, er… stretching. Among other things.”

It slipped out. He hadn’t meant it coyly, he told himself; he hadn’t meant it any way at all. But there was a flicker of a curl in his smile when he glanced up at Aremu, just before he ducked back into the shrubs, feeling worryingly shy.

He tried to banish all that coyness, before he came out on the other side – or tuck it away, at least, for safekeeping. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it; he could still feel where his chest had ached, where his heart had rattled hard against his ribs earlier.

He’d smoothed his expression out by the time they were both on the path, underneath the long branches, long leaves underfoot.

He’d remembered his anxiety, too, by the time they joined one of the broader main paths, bordered on either side by neat-tended, well-shaped plants. They passed arati, mostly now with the brush of quantitative fields, talking in Mugrobi or Estuan; they passed the occasional – very occasional – imbala, usually student-aged, with armfuls of books.

He had done some reading. The college of natural sciences had admitted imbali late, though not as late as some; they’d been permitted well before Aremu’s time, by his reckoning, and more had graduated than from Dzit’ereq, at least. He didn’t know if it would be worse, if Aremu might’ve been allowed into the observatory after all, back then. He knew a little of missed opportunities, and he thought it was usually best not to know.

It was hope, anyway, he could hold to. He glanced over as often as he dared, studying Aremu’s profile in stolen glimpses, watching the set of his shoulders.

He didn’t recognize the flowing Mugrobi script over the wrought-iron arch, at first. “To look inward,” he read when they were close enough to the Estuan, embossed and glinting even in the shadows of the leaves, “by looking out.”

His eyes rose above the tangling branches, above the trellis over the path beyond: he could see a glint of sunlight on the pale crown of a dome just above the treetops, a strange thing to his eyes. “Shall we, ada’xa?” he asked, taking a deep breath and looking over now, letting himself study him for a few moments.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Aremu’s eyebrows lifted a little when Tom glanced down and then back at him, the other man’s lips finding a coy smile. He grinned, then, not quite able to resist. Happy to help, he might have said, or else – perhaps later, we can – more than anything, he thought, something tight in the pit of his stomach, there was some part of him which wanted – now –

If they went to the other side of the tree, Aremu thought; the tan knees of the pants wouldn’t show much in the way of dirt, if he was careful about the roots. He’d – desire churned with something darker in his stomach, and he was glad Tom had already looked away, had already turned to duck into the shrubs. Aremu glanced around, looking down at the slim metal bench, and back up at the tree, and then turned to follow the other man back out to the path.

Guilt, Aremu thought: it was guilt, or else shame. He wasn’t sure it was at the thought of using Tom to settle himself, in that way; once he’d felt guilty about such things, but he thought, now, that Tom would understand, and perhaps that he wouldn’t mind. It was the risk of it, instead; after all he’d said in the branches above, after all he’d pledged to the other man and all he’d asked Tom for in return, to moments later think of risking compromising everything was beyond shameful.

He felt it still, a tightness in his stomach, creeping up to his chest and throat as they rejoined the path. It made it easier to keep his face smooth and even, to keep from smiling at the back of Tom’s head or down at his side. They rejoined the main paths; if anyone thought to look twice at the smear of dust on Tom’s crisp white pants, Aremu did not see it. If Tom looked over at him, if Tom struggled as much or more than he did with holding apart, Aremu didn’t see it, at least not in his own moments of weakness.

Before, he’d struggled to walk slowly enough for the other man; now, Aremu found, it was his own steps which slowed, and once and then again he had to take a half step to catch Tom, as they grow closer to the observatory.

The doors, Aremu thought, looking past the iron gate, were smaller than he remembered. He couldn’t have been much shorter then than he was now, and though he had as much muscle as he needed, he was still not very broad. He’d been even slimmer as a boy though, he knew, scrawny until sixteen or seventeen; either the doors really had been larger, relative to how he’d been then, or they’d only felt so.

It took him a moment to realize Tom had spoken to him. “Yes,” Aremu said, and cursed the uncertainty in his voice. He cleared his throat – it was dry, after all, as if he could hide the hesitation with that. “Yes, sir,” he said, a little more firmly this time, inclining his head towards Tom. He was smiling, or close enough to it, something thin and uncertain on his lips.

They went through the wrought iron arch, and into the courtyard beyond; a small fountain, just as Aremu remembered it, burbled there; the courtyard was well-shaded, and cool even on the warmest of days. Just beyond were the doorways, open into the darkness of the observatory. As they grew closer, Aremu could see the glint of fabric in the entryway – above it, then, pale faces, and the gleam of light on red hair. There was a burst of laughter, and then the harsh tones of Anaxi Estuan, Vienda-accented.

He stopped; he hadn’t meant to, but he stopped, somewhere around the fountain. Aremu took a breath, glancing away off to the side, where the wrought iron fence that lined this part of the building tangled with branches and trees, half-grown over by the greenery. He turned his face towards the fountain, feeling the faint spray of the crashing water, thinking – he couldn’t, quite, seem to think.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi, Away’qexo College

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

Y
es, scraped soft from his throat.

Then the familiar sound: Aremu cleared his throat. It told him more than he could learn by looking; his eyes flicked away, down the leaf-strewn path, climbing the thatchwork of shadows to the soft-burbling fountain. Yes, sir, Aremu said quite firmly.

His expression didn’t change. It wasn’t a smile exactly, or a frown. It was pleasant; he looked about himself pleasantly and a little vacantly, like any Anaxi in a new place. But he tried to catch Aremu’s eye, only to find him looking forward, looking forward as if into the mouth of something full of tsuter teeth just out of sight, looking forward as if he could see nothing of the shaded way and the fountain and everything hidden behind it. Or perhaps as if he were seeing something else instead.

He almost stopped, but – it would’ve been a disservice to him. They’d both known going into it what this meant. Aremu spoke firmly. If he were looking up at a cliff, he’d’ve trusted him to know if he ought to climb it.

Onward, then, ada’xa, he might’ve said cheerfully; he didn’t think Aremu wanted Anatole’s cheer. Nor could he reach out and take his hand, which every bit of him burned to do, burned like anger or maybe like love or something that was one and the same. So he smoothed his amel’iwe, because he thought he’d reach for him anyway if he hadn’t that to occupy his hands.

And they went, and the burble of the fountain grew louder, and underneath it he thought he could hear something else, growing louder and louder.

Aremu had been beside and a little behind him on the way. He’d noticed – he couldn’t’ve otherwise – he’d noticed, though it’d taken him some time to adjust. Now he walked more slowly, as if distracted; he walked a little closer to Aremu, as if he were too distracted squinting up through the trees at the dome to pay attention.

He was, at least a little. He caught only snatches of it above the trellises and branches; he thought any minute they’d get close enough he’d get a clear view of it, and he hadn’t a damned clue what to expect. There was an observatory on Brunnhold’s campus, but he’d never…

They drew even with the fountain, and Aremu stopped, turning away. He saw them immediately, and he felt a sinking in his gut.

He didn’t turn immediately; nor did he look too hard at the coppery curls on one head, the lace froth of a lady’s parasol and the slim, asymmetric cut of her floral white dress. A towhead, puce in the face, was waving a frothy white fan.

“... inside, for the Lady’s sake,” came another woman’s voice, shrill even over the birds and the fountain, “my goodness, Alfred, wouldn’t you know I’m baking in this heat –”

“They say,” came another woman’s voice, and he thought it was familiar, and the thought that it was familiar stung and twisted inside him, “the – how do you say it – Esstsu… the Mugrobi here, in any case, have devised a –”

“Can we go inside?”

“Wait a while, Annabeth, Edward should be here soon…”

His eyes moved over Aremu, studying the deep yellow folds of his amel’iwe. He could see a quarter of his face, a little moist with spray; he couldn’t see where he was looking. He thought he knew this expression. He thought rapidly.

He felt a little spray from the fountain himself, when he stepped closer. “I did not expect such a crowd, ada'xa, and in this heat,” he offered, doing his best to look pinched. “Might we sit in the shade at least, before we go in? As long as it is no inconvenience to you, of course, ada’xa.”

You're looking at those trees like you might want to climb them, he thought wryly, and he wasn't sure he could keep the worry out of his eyes, for all his voice was cheerful.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

A moment, Aremu kept thinking, to look at the fountain, and then – the water that burbled up from the base splashed over and hit the underneath, frothing lightly. Something gleamed in the depths of it: maltalaan, Aremu kept thinking, and the students who threw coins and other precious bits into every fountain on campus, those who did not go to the Turga.

A moment, Aremu kept thinking, and he would look away, back to Tom, and smile, and they would turn their attention to the observatory.

The other man was standing close to him, already; had been, Aremu thought, when he looked back at it, for a little while. Tom came closer, then.

“Of course,” Aremu said, mechanically, his voice a little tight in his own ears. He glanced over, and met Tom’s eyes without meaning to, and for a moment all he could see was worry – worry, he thought, his chest tight, which shouldn’t be there – not here –

He thought of standing at the entrance, smiling neutrally next to Tom as they told him he could not enter; he thought of Tom, in front of a crowd of Anaxi, hearing it be said.

He thought of being inside, if they made it in, of being unable to look at Tom with anything but the politest neutrality in his eyes.

They were sitting. Aremu had been aware for the walk over; he had not blacked out, and he’d taken each step steadily and carefully. He sat down on the bench, his left elbow propped on his knee, and his right hand tucked into the shade of his thigh. He looked down at his hand, callused, a faint scuff on one edge – nothing – from the acacia tree’s back, and wanted nothing so much as to bury his face into it.

Don’t climb anything you can’t descend, Aremu thought, absurdly.

“I can’t,” he said, quietly, when he said anything at all. He looked at Tom; he could feel the frown running through his forehead, knotting his brows together, as if all of him would fold along the line of it. Aremu looked back up at frothy puffs of pale fabric topped with red and yellow hair, at the dark men’s suits and the red faces spotted with freckles, and then away, back at the greenery around them, back down at the wrought iron arm of the bench.

“I’m sorry,” Aremu said, then. His hand lowered; his palm pressed, firmly, into the tan slacks over his legs, the heel of it digging in; his fingertips dug in too, for a moment, and then relaxed, and he sat back against the back of the bench.

I’d rather not, he might have said if they weren’t here – he might have said if they could speak – find out this door is closed, not in front of you. I’d rather not make you hold it open for me – not this one. He knew he’d asked such things of Tom before, or at least he’d asked Tom to be ready, to hold a door open, but that had been for a purpose; it had been something he had needed to do in honor of Uzoji’s memory, and he could not regret it.

This, Aremu thought, glancing up at the observatory entrance once more, was only vanity, and he’d been a fool to ask.

I’d rather not, he might have said if they weren’t here, share this with you in front of them. I know; I know I said it didn’t matter to me, when it came to the pendulum. I know I promised you then that all that mattered was the seeing of it, together – that we could discuss it later – and I make a liar of myself, I suppose, with how I feel now, for all that I had promised you I would try not to lie to you. Well, Aremu thought, unable to look at it too directly; I’ve known what I am for a long time.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi, Away’qexo College

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

E
dward!”

There was a burst of laughter. “Eliza, my dear, I’m terribly sorry,” burbled a mild voice. This one was familiar. He had a vague impression of round, ruddy cheeks, a mustache, the taste of brandy; he remembered something about funding. “Those, what do you call them – the cable cars were simply swamped, and I nearly got lost…”

Aremu’s voice was even softer than the leaves. He was looking down at his hand; Tom looked, too. He studied the curl of it, the calluses on his long fingers, the lines and shadows and folds crossing the paler skin of his palm. He swallowed, finding the shape of a scuff along the heel of it. He tried to smooth his expression out again.

His fingers twitched on his knee, and he clasped his hands together in his lap. He tried not to wring them too tightly. He felt as if he were holding a bird down, keeping it from flying to its nest.

Aremu was looking up at him. He met the other man’s eye for a moment, and he didn’t know what expression was on his face. He tried to find the polite, neutral smile; he thought he almost did, before Aremu’s dark eyes slid past him, over his shoulder. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he glanced down at Aremu’s hand again. I’m sorry, the other man said, and he watched his fingertips dig into the soft tan cloth.

He shut his eyes; it shattered, whatever he was trying to hold. He heard, almost felt, the soft fall of Aremu’s breath. He felt Aremu sit back. He sat straighter, his shoulders square; his hands came apart abruptly, smoothing the white cloth over his knees.

Of course, ada’xa, he almost said mildly, opening his eyes. His lips parted and then pressed together again. “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he murmured instead, a quiet little risk.

He shifted, looking back past the fountain. The Anaxi were still flocking round the open doors. “It’s a little crowded for me,” he said more loudly, frowning.

He thought of it for a moment, stepping into – he couldn’t picture it; telescopes, he thought, long polished floors, but all he could picture was stars – with a gaggle of Anaxi gollies. On an evening like this, sir, you can see Phaeta quite clearly. Would you care to –

It lurched up in his throat unexpectedly, but he didn’t gag. He looked back, and the Anaxi were gone, the broad dark doorway empty.

We’ll find another time, he wanted to offer, if only he knew it wasn’t a lie. This wasn’t busy; this wasn’t even half as busy as it would be during the exhibition. He didn’t think it was about that, anyway. He wondered if he might reserve an hour, two – he didn’t think he pulled that kind of weight here. A study room in Idisufi was one thing; the godsdamned observatory at Es’tsusiqi was quite another.

“Come,” he said, “walk with me.” The wrought-iron gate stretched its shadows longer and longer across the courtyard, but the light hadn’t yet turned. He stood, smoothing his amel’iwe.

He tried to think, but he couldn’t swim through the fog in his skull. He imagined more Anaxi pouring in, and the thought of one catching his eye scraped his nerves raw.

He needed somewhere to – “Let’s start back, ada’xa. You’ll walk me to the cable cars? I’ve heard there’s a quieter stop nearer here, toward the back of campus,” he offered cheerfully enough, “but I don’t know the way.”

Everything else aside, he knew they weren’t going in now. And from here, at least, he knew where to go; the plans he’d made sat warm and certain inside him, for once. He felt himself scratching at the skin of something else, if only he could think.

He tried to push all of the softness from his eyes, to tuck it away like a promise. He clasped his hands behind his back, because he was afraid of what they might do if he didn’t. Let me do this, he wanted to say, looking back at him. Let me take care of this evening, whatever happens; let me take care of you, this evening.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Paths of Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Nothing to apologize for, he said, softly.

For a moment Aremu couldn’t hear who – which – if it was the mask who spoke or the man. Nothing to apologize for, ada’xa, he heard in low-voiced, cheerful tones, pitched to carry; you couldn’t have predicted the crowds at this hour. Nothing to apologize for, dove; nothing at all.

Tom went on, raising his voice, and Aremu heard the shift and exhaled, more than he’d meant to, grateful at least to understand enough to take the words as they were meant, quiet and heartfelt.

They both sat there for a moment in the stillness Aremu had left behind; the harsh Anaxi accents faded away, and the last puff of a white dress vanished out of the corner of Aremu’s eye, into the darkness of the observatory.

It wasn’t that he never turned away from a challenge. He’d been a boy, once; there’d been a time when he’d never have called any height too high to climb, any distance too far to jump. There’d been a time when he’d pushed, and perhaps had thought it manliness, when it was arrogance and vanity in the end. For a liar, Aremu thought, perhaps, it was hard to know.

He’d stopped; he’d stopped such behavior, and long before he’d ever lost his hand. He took risks; he knew he did. He took them with reason; he took them when he could see no other way. He couldn’t regret such choices because he’d known when he made them what the costs might be, of failure and success both.

There were cliffs, these days, that he turned away from; there were climbs when he stopped, and jumped back off into the cliff to the water below, and began again. There were runs where he was sick and kept on; there were runs when he was sick, and turned and walked back to the house, keeping to the shade.

He should, Aremu thought, have been able to get up and walk away.

He didn’t; he sat there, still and silent, until Tom’s quiet voice parted the silence again. Aremu nodded at the other man’s suggestion; he came to his feet, adjusting the drape of his amel’iwe and tucking his right wrist into his pocket, all mechanical. They stood there, a moment, and Aremu looked at Tom without meeting his eyes, his gaze drifting over the other man’s forehead, his nose, the slope of his cheeks.

“Of course, sir,” Aremu said, evenly, when called upon. He didn’t look back over his shoulder at the observatory; he followed Tom’s lead and led him back out through the gates, back on to the neat, manicured paths through Away’qexo. “We’re not far,” Aremu managed, his voice calm and even, “from what we call the Ese line – the Raise line, sir, named so because it slopes up into the hills above Thul’Amat. It joins the Dejai Line close to the main stop.”

He could have gone on, Aremu thought, and yet he couldn’t; his voice came to an even stop, crisp, rather than trailing off, but he didn’t try to pick the threads of the words back up, once he’d laid them down. It was cooler, now, and edging into evening; campus was quieting, Aremu thought, just a little. The last classes of the day were underway, but the hour was such that most students had begun to stream off campus, away from buildings and classrooms, searching either for libraries or else dorm rooms and cafés. On an eight, he thought, it would be mostly cafes; the qinnab and tobacco joints in Dejai would wreath halos of smoke into the air already, mingling with late afternoon kofi and cigarettes.

He didn't try to think; he didn't try to guess. Three Flowers, he thought now, when he thought of it at all, and for all guilt stung and ached in his chest, he couldn't be sorry for it, for the chance to come together in private and strip away the masks. Not, Aremu thought, that the wearing of his mask had been his problem - not today.

Aremu had been breathing evenly; he hadn’t meant to, but he found his breath caught in his throat, and shuddered out, slowly. They were walking side by side – not, he thought, as slowly as he had going towards the observatory, but not so fast, either. Once – just once – Aremu shifted and glanced up, over and past Tom, towards the gleaming dome tucked amidst the trees. Then he looked away; his left hand clenched into the pocket of his pants, then loosened, and despite the tense ache of his shoulders, his face, at least, managed a smooth smile.

[Tom Cooke]

Across the Streets to Three Flowers

Early Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu’s voice stopped like the snipping of a cord. He waited, thinking he’d go on. He almost spoke. Aremu left it there, and so did he. He couldn’t think of any way to fill the silence, and he didn’t want to.

There was nothing in it; there was, he thought, no outward sign of stress, except – perhaps – for the discomfort any imbala would feel next to an Anaxi galdor.

But the shape of these strange letters was familiar now; he knew the syntax, knew the frame that held even the words he didn’t know. Every time he looked over, every glance he stole, he knew. When the set of Aremu’s jaw, too tight, caught the light from a gap in the trellis; the way he moved with an engine’s rhythm, not slow or fast.

In the early evening lull, quiet as it was, he thought he could hear the cord of Aremu pulled taut. He thought, if he laid his head on his chest, he could hear the muscles strained. And he wanted to – he wanted to lay his head on his chest, to run his hands over those muscles and find the worst of the knotting. He thought of the way Aremu’s eyes had gone to the wrought-iron fence, the twisting trunks and branches tangling up the side of the observatory just out of sight. He wanted to find them another tree to climb, another dozen trees; he wanted to grow him a tree to climb.

He thought of the fence again, his brow furrowing slightly. A soft laugh broke his concentration: a couple of arati – couldn’t’ve been much older than Cerise – were sitting on a bench in a shaded niche, murmuring softly, bookbags laid to one side. He shook his head, trying to hold his thoughts.

Warm, familiar smells drifted across the path sometimes, and he had a strange sad sense of the night stirring to life.

He thought Aremu looked over his shoulder once, at the tree-line. For his own part he couldn’t look back. He wasn’t sure when the smile smoothed its way across Aremu’s face; he knew only that he looked over and found it there, and he wasn’t sure how long they walked in silence before they reached the platform.

The car wasn’t long, and by then the tracks caught the sun evening gold over the rooftops. It was sleepy, with a handful of old men – professors in crisp white – clustered at the back, talking softly and laughing, and more quiet students dotting the seats here and there. In motion, it was full of the cooling breeze. A young imbala was working at something fried and wrapped in newspaper, an open book balanced precariously in his lap, dusted with crumbs.

He paid attention to the transfers. He felt strangely – crisply – sober, sharp. The crowd was thicker at the Dejai stop, and even thicker at the one after; there was no avoiding the curious looks of foreigners and Mugrobi both.

He had thought to get off at Cinnamon Hill, for them to meet at Three Flowers later. The thought galled him, now. They came apart once; he went to sit at the back, as if they weren’t together, and one transfer he forced himself not to look at him as he waited on the platform. But soon enough, there were no familiar faces in any of the crowds, not from the cable cars before or from anywhere else, and he came and stood with him again.

On the central line, they had to stand. The streets whizzed past, a roar of crowds and color; they caught the edge of the Windward Market, fell into the shadow of the Wall and then slid underneath it. The Turga was a strip of glistening orange light between the buildings, swollen from the week’s rains but easing back down into an uneasy sleep. They slid along right beside it once, and he watched a fisherman cast a net from a boat not too distant. He watched Aremu in the corner of his eye, and he pressed his hands together in his lap, aching and smiling politely.

The last line had been sleepier almost than Ese, full of tired workers headed to the Gripe. He stepped down from the platform, gesturing, and retraced a familiar path.

“Are you hungry,” he asked quietly, “or – do you want some quiet?” He thought he knew the answer already - he could imagine, hungry or not, how well Aremu felt - but he’d long wanted to break the silence, to ease off the mask even a little.

Tsúh’aqay was a quiet back street, after the floods little more than a narrow strip between the back doorsteps of offices and the broad gleaming Turga. It smelled of fish and the rainy breeze, with occasional whiffs of frying food.

It wasn’t far from the cafe or the room; the hotel’s back entrance was in an alleyway branching off from it, if you could call it that, and the cafe was a little further to the wharf, almost on the water. The map of it was laid out in his head; he’d retraced all his steps carefully. I have my head on backwards, usually, he might’ve joked, but tonight – He looked over and didn’t try to smile; his brow was furrowed.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Early Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
By the Turga, Three Flowers

Ese, Aremu thought, much too late, after they’d stood a little while at the platform, all the light slanted gold around them, shimmering in the pale white of Tom’s shirt and pants, when the cableway was coming towards them, easing to a stop with the quiet squeal of breaks. It’s a term used in airships, sir, he might have said. The translation in Estuan then might be something more like take-off, but specifically for a first flight.

It was used traditionally, he could have said, for a ship’s first flight; these days it is applied equally to the first flight of a ship with a new crew.

They were stepping into the cabin, then, standing a little apart; Aremu was conscious of the wash of Tom’s sage-soft field over his skin, his right wrist in his pocket, and the fingers of his left hand wrapping lightly around a pole. The cablecar jerked as it set underway, and the imbala student nearby grumbled something about floods, having only just caught his book.

Ese, Aremu thought, and he could nearly have smiled.

He’d lost it, somewhere along the way. They didn’t speak; there was little need for it. They came apart, once, and he saw Tom turn away, and – unsure – Aremu stood at the entryway to the car, and didn’t look. He got on, when it came, thinking – thinking – not thinking, not thinking as best as he could – and in the distant gleam of reflection he saw Tom make his way to a seat at the far end, and he didn’t look again, not until he felt the brush of the other man’s sage-soft field against him once more.

The city wove and drifted past, and it was all around him, and nothing he could see. He fixed his gaze out of the windows, and he couldn’t quite find his smile again. The city was a blur of camels and camels, of smiling and frowning faces. When he couldn’t bear not to think, he looked out the window for how he’d climb the city beyond, the path he’d take along rooftops, and let his mind drift out beyond what he could see, imagining distant pathways he would never take.

He didn’t have to look at Tom to feel it, when the journey came to an end. Aremu stepped down behind him, off the platform; two duri shifted around them, giving Tom a wide berth, talking to one another about the dinner they’d have as they left the quiet platform. Aremu followed Tom onto Tsúh’aqay, named only by a strip of hand-painted lettering high up on the wall, what must have been some year’s watermark. It hadn’t been reached, in this one; there was street to spare between the Turga and the bottoms of the doors against sanded-smooth paving stones and crisp metal steps.

“Quiet, please,” Aremu said, glancing at Tom. I’m always hungry, he could have said, but the words tasted strange and bitter on his tongue, and he didn’t want to think what to make of them.

There wasn’t much more to say; Tom led them down a narrow winding of road like an alleyway, and held open a door along it. Aremu followed him inside into a hallway. Through an open archway up a low flight of steps, he glimpsed a blue room and the edge of a mural: a woman leaning over the edge of a boat, a net in her hands, casting it into the water over fish that gleamed like jewels.

He watched it a moment, and turned his gaze back to Tom, the straight set of his back beneath his white clothing, amel’iwe still draped neatly over the front of him, just a flash of color at his collar in the back, a hint beneath his arms at his sides. Aremu followed him, onward, upward – for no hotel this close to the river in Three Flowers had rooms on its lowest floor – his left hand trailing over the polished railing of the stairs, around the edge at each floor which rose up into a smiling fish head, smooth carved eyes looking out at the platform.

Still – still – he didn’t try to guess what was coming for them, though he felt something thawing in him, in anticipation as much as reaction. Not yet, Aremu told himself, then; not yet. He trailed behind Tom, a little longer, and didn’t know who to be.