[Closed] For Every Shadow a Source of Light

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

N
kemi was tucking in with an enthusiasm like Tom hadn’t seen in a while. She’d looked at the tray Detta had set down on the table like it was treasure, like the curving red peppers were stuffed with priceless jewels. Thank you, ma’am, she’d said. It had lit her whole face as he had poured the tea, and he had watched her take a small, satisfied sip before squeezing in the lemon and adding a little sugar.

It felt like somebody had lit a few more candles at the table; it felt a pina manna easier to see what was in front of him. He had never had lemon in his tea, he realized. With a thoughtful frown, setting down his spoon, he squeezed a wedge into his own cup.

This vraun was sweet and tangy, just spicy enough to burn, but not enough to make his eyes water. Across the table, ada’na’s brigk’s posture had loosened, and she was bent over her bowl diligently, with a good four generous spoonfuls to his tired two.

He’d eaten like that, once – before. When was the last time? What had he eaten yesterday? It was a muddled, hazy walk from drink to drink. The clinging aftertaste of the Gioran whisky was the thump of his headache, and he realized that his hands were not just shaking because they weren’t his.

Tom had paused to watch her, and had felt himself softening, despite everything. Like letting go of a knife’s handle. His collar scratched against his bruises; the scuff at his cheekbone ached. His hands must’ve been numb when he’d come in, because the life was tingling back into them, warm and stinging.

His stomach was growling and twisting like a chrove, so he set himself wordlessly about his own vraun, and let himself feel his tiredness and his pains. And he listened.

And he looked up sharply, once, before he could stop himself. He blinked; he did well to keep his face carefully contemplative.

The town which is called Plugit! The memory was vivid, slushing through the muck. The kov’d been hiding out in a tiny shack among the reeds. Couldn’t’ve scrubbed those noises he made –

Dze. Tom pulled his head back to the bright, curious face in front of him, across the steaming pile of frybread.

Oes, he knew what it was, the gaggle of gollies that settled over that mucky backwater like a band of chipper sparrows settling on a streetlamp. Every, what was it? He wouldn’t’ve thought they convened in Thul Ka, but there were stranger things on Vita, he knew by now.

Her voice was radiant with it: wonderful to see the way a place fits together. That, he thought he might understand. It brought his eyes up again, and her smile was infectious. He could picture her, somehow, attending mapmakers’ meetings in Thul Ka.

He thought about her question for a long moment, pausing to stare down at his vraun, sucking at a tooth.

“It – fits together differently, ada’na,” he started tentatively, with a wry smile. “Old Rose is a city of humans and wicks, mostly. There are pockets of galdori, but they mingle by necessity. If you look at a map, it’s not – everything spilling out from some heart, like Uptown. It’s laid out on different lines.”

He sopped up a little of the curry round the edges of his bowl with the manriklo, thinking as he took a bite how benny the rosemary and dill mingled with all the sweet-spicy of the vraun.

He thought he caught a hint of something else, too, something sharp and tangy; he couldn’t’ve told you what it was, but it was more than just whatever blend of coarse flour and cornmeal the neighborhood kint had that week. Some kind of cheese, maybe. Whatever it was, it was delicious, and much better – richer, leastways – than what he remembered from last winter, when he’d tottered back down from Uptown for the first time, missing his old haunt.

It made him think of the uhachyeh hama’d made, maize porridge so thick you could slice it, cooked with curdled cheese and whatever herbs the season’d coaxed out of the garden.

He swallowed another bite of vraun, warmed by the spices. “If you can believe it, it’s a little more like Thul Ka than Vienda, but for different reasons. It has its own law, I suppose.”

You don’t see riots in the streets, anyway; not with my Brothers walking them, he thought with a strength and wistfulness that surprised him. He wasn’t sure what to do with it; he tried to put it away, but it wouldn’t quite go.

“The factories are on the outskirts, and not many, so you get – the wide blue Tincta Basta, and clear skies, and warm breezes off the bay. Or storms, if the season is right; you can sit on the docks and watch the lightning over the water.” His voice picked up; his own composure had been lost, now, and he’d leaned forward over his vraun, something conspiratorial and almost reverent in his smile.

“The marketplaces are always busy, and you can get just about anything imported from Mugroba and Hox and Hesse, depending on the season. Quarter Fords is the Mugrobi quarter, and in the morning, the smells of baking bread and kofi –”

A faint tingle of blue shift whispered through the clairvoyant mona, there and then gone. There was a troubled furrow to his brow, but then it relaxed, and he smiled again.

“It’s worth visiting, ada’na, if you’re in Plugit anyway,” he said, “and if you’re looking at the way it fits together… it’s fascinating.”

He paused, watching her.

“What is it about maps? What do you – get from them, ada’na?” he asked. “Maybe prefects are different, but I don’t know many Seventen who think about them more than it takes to get from one street to another. I can barely use one to do that.” He grinned.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
A Tsat Hole-in-the-Wall, Soot District

Vakelin had told her that he had lived in the Rose, once. When he spoke of it, his smile turned wry at the edges, just a little crooked. Nkemi searched his face, curiously, over the curved red peppers, bathed in the dim lamplight. She did not know how to name what she saw there, in the wrinkles at the edge of his eyes, the slight curve of his lips, the softness of his brow. Was it joy or sorrow? She did not know; she thought perhaps in the dim light they looked the same.

He described it very nicely. Nkemi held onto the words, wide-eyed, listening; he described it, she thought, like a poem. She had never been there; she did not know how it looked, but as he spoke, for a moment, she could see it – not in her mind, quite, but somewhere deeper. He went on, and Nkemi raised her eyebrows at the term own law, curious, and softened again as he went on to describe the waters.

Now it was joy on his face; now it was a bright, and boyish smile, bright and obvious even in the gleam of the lamplight. Nkemi leaned forward too, wide-eyed, as if he had cast a perceptive spell; she could not look away. She listened, intent, remembering: Quarter Fords. The thought of smelling kofi in the morning rose up like a lump in her throat; Nkemi blinked through the wetness in her eyes, and caught the faintest blueshift in the air around Vakelin. He frowned, and sat back.

“I will visit,” Nkemi promised, smiling at Vakelin. "I look forward to it." She sat back, just a little; she swallowed the last of the lump. She felt it in her chest still, but she did not feel alone with it – not in this quiet, warm place, with the distant hum of unfamiliar Tek and the fragrant smell of spices. Not, she thought, curiously, with Incumbent Vakelin sitting across the table from her, looking at her with happy-sad eyes.

Nkemi giggled. “Oh,” she said, happy as always to talk about maps. She looked down at the food; she took one of the big beautiful red peppers, carefully, and settled it on her plate. She did not cut it yet; she would be sorry to, she thought, with how lovely it was. She took another bite of the vraun, and chewed, and then set her spoon down; she settled her hands around her cup, and sat a little more upright.

“I have always liked maps,” Nkemi said, her smile a little sheepish, although no less bright. It was not hard to think of the first map she had ever seen. She had been in the library at Thul’Amat, more than a little homesick and more than a little lost. She had found a shelf which contained all the atlases of Mugroba, and she had found all the books of Central Erg, and looked through them one by one until she found Serkaih – and the tiny dot of Dkanat. She had sat amidst the pile in the library, touching it with her fingers, and tried not to get any tears on the page.

“It is not only the knowing of how the place fits together," Nkemi admitted, cheerfully, “"but, too, seeing where I fit in."

She had marveled, too, Nkemi remembered, at the shapes of all the canyons, and tried to trace them all herself; she had brought grubby copies of her maps home, and carried them to the canyons, and fitted the shapes before her onto the page.

“As a prefect,” Nkemi’s gaze lowered for a moment; something serious twitched over it, like a cloud. It took the edges of her smile, and dimmed them. She held the cup of tea still, cupped in her hands.

Nkemi looked down at the beautiful red pepper on the plate before her, then back up at Vakelin. For the first time, she wondered, with an odd ache in her chest, if he knew. He was an incumbent; if he wished to know, she thought, he would. There were many in Thul Ka who did, and some, too, at the Seventen. It would make sense, she thought, for Vakelin to have asked who it was that would be at his home. Her smile faded a little more; Nkemi swallowed, hard.

“Do you already know, sir?” Nkemi asked, quietly, looking back up at Vakelin. She ran one small finger around the rim of the cup, and set it down, looking down again. She was conscious of a strange feeling, of being a girl who has made a mistake in front of a professor. She felt it all through her, in the gentle slump of her shoulders, in the heat prickling behind her eyes. She took a deep breath, and bore up beneath it, lifting her gaze back to the incumbent across the table, and holding there, this time. She didn’t know why she thought he would be honest with her. She knew it was not their way, here in Anaxas; she thought he would be, all the same.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

J
ust an interest, then? He supposed it wasn’t strange. Maps could help you find your way, but so could poetry; so could a lot of things.

Where did she fit in here? Her accent was soft underneath the creaking old Tek voices in the far corner. The old men burst out laughing, rough smoky wheezes, and Tom sat looking at Nkemi in the soft light, her small frame swaddled in Anaxi wool. She looked cheerful enough now, but he’d thought he’d seen something in her eyes at his talk of the Rose.

He was still smiling. The tea was cooling, and he set his own yats aside for it. The sight of her cradling it in her hands reminded him how cold his hands were, even inside. The warm wood was like a salve.

When he took a sip, he found the bitter black balanced by the sour sweet twist of lemon. He’d thought just a squeeze of lemon wouldn’t do much, and he was surprised by how it tilted the whole flavor on its side, in its subtle way.

He shouldn’t’ve let go so much of his guard, he knew, but it was easy to drift, for just a while. He was thankful for the company, and thankful to have something else to think about.

The beggars of the Dives were said to have their own map, one no Seventen could read. It had all the drop spots, all the places you could hope for shelter. It had strange names for familiar streets, names that denoted whether they were safe. Old Man’s Luck; the Wardens; the Tomb.

There were old maps that did not call the Soot District the Soot District, because once, there had been no soot, before the humans had been put to work in the factories. There were recent maps that were still out of date, because Lewes had been bought by Reeve and Company, or some such. Some maps were round, he thought wryly, and turned, and that changed a whole lot of things.

He wondered what map a prefect might make of Vienda – in her mind, or wherever people kept the roads they followed and the places they knew. Ayeluweright, he thought, setting the tea back on the table. He met ada’na’s eye with a curious glint in his.

The smile drained from his face as it did hers. His brow furrowed, at first. He followed her downcast eye to her cup, and he watched her trace her fingertip round the rim.

He stared into his cup and saw a vague image, a strange old man’s face reflected hazily in a dark eye. He could taste the bitter disappointment.

No, not disappointment, not in ada’na, though he wanted it to be. Not even anger, though he ached to feel it. Embarrassment. He was afraid to swallow it, for all he knew it would sink inside him and build up like tar. The hairs on the backs of his arms prickled.

He glanced back up and found the prefect looking at him again, and not looking away.

“I’m afraid not, ada’na.” He looked at her steadily across the table. Whatever it is, he thought. Whoever. Whyever.

She looked – admonished, he thought. The candles, burning low enough to gutter.

His brow was still furrowed; he was frowning deeply, confused.

Why, was all he wanted to ask. He couldn’t think why she would tell him now. There’d been no lies: she had kept her cards close to her vest, tucked under her coat like her baton. There had been no reason to tell him; he wouldn’t’ve asked, and put her between giving herself up and lying.

She had ruined it for herself, freely. Out of pity, perhaps, after that humiliating ramble about cloud lightning.

But this hurt somewhere deeper even than that.

“Whatever it is, I won’t ask you to tell me,” he said, and a soft, confused smile broke through. Because I know you won’t lie, he thought, and knew then why it hurt so much.

He looked down at the remaining pepper and, with quiet deliberation in his shaky hands, shuffled it over onto his plate. “But nothing much,” he added, still smiling, “surprises me, these days.”

He looked back up and met ada’na’s eye. He pulsed his field gently against hers again.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
A Tsat Hole-in-the-Wall, Soot District

No, Vakelin said. Nkemi swallowed, quietly, sitting in silence. Into it he said he would not ask; into it, he said he did not think it would surprise him, whatever it was. Into it he pulsed his field, offering a gentle comfort.

Nkemi smiled a little. She had had many older friends; such attitudes were not uncommon, and were not unhelpful either. This, she wanted to argue, this is different. She heard herself at sixteen weeping over a boy; she heard herself at twenty two, before she had understood that Nkese and Ifran would support her no matter what, even if she did not come home. She believed him, Nkemi thought; and she believed too that he would not say such a thing lightly.

Nkemi picked up the cup again; she did not sip from it, but she held it. It was funny how distance was so like time, Nkemi thought. Thul Ka was like a country all its own, and yet everyone seemed to have heard - everyone seemed to know. Here in Anaxas, even some of the Seventen had never even heard of him.

Nkemi took a tiny little sip of her tea, tasting the bitter and the sour and the sweet all together.

“In my studies,” Nkemi said, “I designed a spell,” she glanced up at Vakelin with a little smile. She was still proud of it, whatever else she felt; she thought perhaps that was right. She did not know why she felt this ache so strongly here, when it had not been hard to cast at Brunnhold. But, then, Brunnhold had not reminded her of home.

“It is a clairvoyant spell which expresses itself through static conversation,” Nkemi explained. “It is meant to demonstrate proof of concept, to demonstrate a means of making more exact the interpretation of that which is received from the witness.” Nkemi’s finger wound around the rim of the cup once more; she took another little sip of tea.

“To show it in practice I made a case study,” Nkemi explained. “A pairing of a clairvoyant request for a witness’s location with a static spell which translates that information to a map.” She grinned, now, not quite able to help it; it broke over her face, and lightened something in her chest, and she lowered the cup of tea to her lap, still warming her hands against the battered wood.

“I wrote of how practical it was, then,” Nkemi said. “But we are taught to use many tools.” She looked down at the table, at the beautiful oven-burnt red of the pepper, at the rough grain of the low wood, at the bits of gleaming green curry and the darkly spotted bread.

She looked back up then, at Vakelin sitting opposite across the table. The light shimmered on the threads of white in his hair; his face was soft with confusion, the mouth still a little slack as he listened. Nkemi did not know what else she saw in his eyes, other than the reflected gleam of the lamplight.

“There was a man I needed to find,” Nkemi said. “A criminal, who had violated our most sacred laws and taken the lives of many, who had eluded us for months. But it was not my brief to do so, anymore.” Small hands tightened around the cup, and relaxed; these words were sharp, still, sharper than she wished them to be. Perhaps the shame was all the more bitter because it was not paired with regret.

“I used the spell and a map of Thul Ka, and I found him.” Nkemi said, looking over the table at Vakelin. Wetness glinted in her eyes. “I chased him. He ended in the Turga,” she swallowed, hard, thinking of a roof and a drifting breeze, white linen flapping against blue skies and green plants. “Now I am here,” Nkemi said, small-voiced.

Even if you did not know, she thought, I am not free if it. Even here where, perhaps, almost no one knows, I am not free of it. Now I am here, Nkemi thought, placing herself upon the map. She set the cup down; she sniffled, and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief from inside her coat. She tucked it away again, and looked evenly across the table at Vakelin.

“Thank you for not asking,” Nkemi said, and bowed her head, looking down at the small cup of tea before her.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

I
t was brilliant.

He hadn’t been sure she’d say anything at all, when she’d looked back up at his pulse with a smile. He was glad, leastways, to’ve reached an understanding. Soft, he jabbed at himself – getting soft. He didn’t think he could’ve borne demanding the truth from the young prefect, least of all after she’d admitted her intentions to him.

But she did speak, and his face had gone slack with confusion. Brilliant, oes, but why? He knew she was coming to it, of course, he just didn’t know how.

The witness – me? He frowned slightly. It wasn’t easy to cast on a raen; if she’d done it once – all the Evers in hell, if it’d been her had led the kov to him – but that didn’t make any sense. Unless whoever she worked for had been betrayed, and the kov had made off with the seerstone and neglected to finish the job.

His throat tightened. Why, then? Why comfort him, why tell him about a Thul Ka he’d never see? She flashed him a grin, and he tried to see cruelty in it. He couldn’t.

She looked down, and up, and down. Her hands tightened round her cup, and she went on. The words made no sense to him for a long time; he did not understand until she had nearly finished. Then, all at once, he understood. He blinked, feeling it wash through him like cold water, prickling every inch of his skin. He shivered, even underneath his coat.

He’d thought last night, jokingly, what a prefect would have to do to end up in Anaxas. He ended in the Turga. The past is a river, he remembered.

He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. There was no water, only bitter tea.

He was surprised by a flare of anger.

Flooder’s gone, isn’t he? Tom knew it wasn’t the right thing to say, but he thought it, taking another sip of tea. Kov hadn’t killed anybody else since he took a fall, he’d’ve bet. If keeping folk safe was her qalqa, she’d done well enough. It’s how they’d’ve done it in the Rose. No red tape, no rubbish; just find him and get rid of him.

It went down easier, this time. He’d got used to the tea Uptown, and he’d forgot just how bitter he liked it.

He set down the cup carefully, without a clatter. Nkemi was setting hers down, too, and he heard a sniff. He glanced up and caught a glint in her eyes. He looked away quickly, studying the glass swell of the oil lamp, as she took a kerchief out of her coat.

He felt a familiar tightness in his own chest, and he took a deep breath of the steam and all the warm smells. He wasn’t sure he knew how to do it; it was a strange feeling. But he reached out through the mona, like reaching through water, and let his field mingle a little deeper in hers. Like sage under your fingertips, Tom remembered, and he hoped it was soft.

He could still feel the static mona, but he thought he could place them better now. He thought he knew how it fit together, the warm mingling of static and clairvoyant he’d found so baffling before. Static and physical, oes; clairvoyant and quantitative; but – now it took shape and texture, and the clairvoyant and static mona did not feel so separate. Like a map underneath your fingertips, soft parchment overlaid with thin lines of ink.

A caprise was like reaching out with your eyes closed and feeling something, Tom thought, but not knowing what it was. You reached deeper, you felt more; given context, you could just start to understand what you felt.

Thank you for not asking, she said, and he looked back and studied her bowed head. It was not my brief to do so, he heard again. “Thank you for helping me,” he replied, instead.

He didn’t think he’d said so a single time; he’d been brusque and cavalier, and he didn’t think he’d’ve meant it, before now.

“I don’t know very much of scrying, beyond making a basic ley channel,” he admitted, looking down. “I took an interest in clairvoyance – after. Not long ago. It was like a blank page, then,” he went on softly, running the pad of his thumb over the rough wooden rim of the cup. “I’ve drawn a few lines on it, but I don’t know where they all lead. It was warding that drew me, and I’ve cast more than a few wards in the last few months. But I’ve only made one or two ley channels, and never as the invoker.”

From behind, distant and muffled through the doorway with its hangings, he heard a clattering of pots and pans and a cascade of exasperated Tek from Detta. In the dark surface of the tea, he could see light catching a red eyebrow, a forehead pitted deeply with shadows. The edge of one eyelid, a hazy brush of dark lashes before the sharp-limned line of a cheekbone.

He looked up at ada’na, raising an eyebrow. “Not just more exact,” he said, watching her face. He remembered the grin that had lit it up, peeking out of the clouds. “From what I’ve read, no form of scrying – none, as far as I know – is permanent. Like reflections in water, or tea. The face changes; the reflection is different.” He smiled; there was a sad twist to it, but it was a smile. “Bruises fade. But you could use this, ada’na, to annotate a map, and then hand it off, and they could trace and copy it into a dozen maps.”

He tore off another piece of frybread and paused. You sure you want to be working for the brigk? he thought. Hawke would’ve appreciated her a hell of a lot more, at least. He thought how useful it would’ve been if, instead of telling him to find some dobber squirreled away in some shithole in Voedale, or worse, they’d just handed him a map. Dobbers, plural; or –

“And you could keep them,” he said, “and put them together, and – what patterns could you find? About somebody’s movements, or multiple somebodies’, or what happens in which places.”

His smile softened. “Have you cast it since then?” he asked.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
A Tsat Hole-in-the-Wall, Soot District

Nkemi had not been sure what to make of Vakelin’s reaction. He had watched her carefully as she spoke, as if he were reserving judgment until he knew it all. She did not know how he had known to listen, at the start; she still wasn’t sure she entirely understood what he was listening for. But he had listened, and intently, and there had not been disgust or horror on his face when she finished. Nkemi had not encountered much disgust or horror; it was more pity, and perhaps sorrow, she thought, swallowing against the memory of it. Sometimes there was sympathy; not among Prefects, but sometimes there was gladness.

Nkemi still did not quite know what it was on Vakelin’s face, but she felt the softness of his caprise. His field was all clairvoyant, as far as she could tell; she was even more sure, as it mingled deeper with hers. It was sparse, but organized; there was no hesitation, no constraint, nothing that was uncomfortable as he deepened the caprise. Nkemi let him, and reciprocated too; it was not quite calm, she thought, that he sent, but something like belonging. She was not content with that name for it, but she was not certain either it needed a name. She was glad enough to sit in it, and feel it wrapped soft around her.

When he spoke again, Nkemi looked back up with a little smile. She picked her cup of tea back up, and took another little sip of the mingled blend, watching Vakelin trace his finger over the rim of his cup now. Nkemi could have guessed it was recent. After, he said, and she thought of how carefully he had left space for such afters the night before, a delicate implication of the line that ran through his line. Was it the line itself that Truart had disdained so? The man after? Whatever it was he saw, Nkemi could not see it; whatever it was he knew, Nkemi could not know it.

Nkemi’s face brightened a little more as he went on; some of the worry that had weighed her down seemed to slip away. Vakelin ripped a piece from the bread, and Nkemi remembered that she was hungry, still – very hungry. She reached for the frybread as well, and ripped off a piece, clinging still to the warmth of the oven, just as soft as it had been before. She nibbled at it, and grinned at Vakelin, and brightened even more as he kept going, into the implications.

There had been a sadness at the edge of his smile; she thought he saw it twist when he said bruises, and she could not keep the flicker of her gaze from his throat, before it lifted back to his face, and the smile as soft as the brush of his field.

“Yes,” Nkemi said, firmly. “As a demonstration,” she dragged the frybread through the remaining vraun, sopping up the tasty, sour-sweet-spicy green sauce left behind, and eating with a brighter smile. “I intend to keep casting it,” Nkemi said, glancing down at the table and then back up at Vakelin. She still sat cross-legged, but her posture straightened a little again – not self-consciously upright as she had been before, but somewhere between comfortable and confident.

“But it requires a very good, very precise map,” Nkemi said, reluctantly, “to be of use. And… it requires also that one can make a connection to the recipient.” She looked back up at Vakelin, and offered him a shy little smile, wanting him to understand what it was she could not do.

Nkemi took a fork and knife, and, carefully, cut into the curved red pepper; rice spilled out, fragrant steam rising into the air. The skin clung to the oven-soft inside of the pepper. Nkemi scooped rice and pepper both onto her fork, and ate it, eagerly, her face lighting up. She took another bite, slower this time, savoring the taste.

“This is the problem with your – watch,” Nkemi said, carefully. She frowned; she set her fork down, running her tongue over the rice in her teeth, and picked up her cup again, taking another sip of her tea. “If you had seen the assailant, if we had a hair or something of his.” Nkemi made a little face. “If we had something he had left behind – ”

The Mugrobi froze, her tea stopping halfway to her lips. She set it down; it clattered on the table. She looked at Vakelin, wide-eyed; she lowered her gaze, slowly, to the vivid, colorful bruising on his neck, only a day old. Her lips parted slightly; she jerked her gaze back up to his eyes again, biting her lip. She did not see understanding on his face; she did not know if he yet understood.

“Bruises fade,” Nkemi said, tentatively. “… but until then, they remain on us, marks and reminders.” She shifted, hesitant, and nudged it a little further forward. “Until then, perhaps – they are a link between us and the past.” Her eyes were very wide now, and she waited, not quite daring to go all the way.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

I
should hope you do,” Tom replied quietly, his smile spreading into a grin to match ada’na’s.

He was glad to’ve drawn it out again, that smile alight with pride. It had been a chance, and now, seeing her sit straighter as she finished off her vraun, he knew it had been worth it. He hadn’t thought Nkemi the sort to brail, anyway, when there was a clause left to be curled; and he thought there was plenty of poetry left where the river flowed, whether it was the Turga or the Arova.

Looking down, he was surprised to find only one or two bites left in his own bowl.

It’d been some time since he’d eaten this well; he was full, just from the bread and the vraun. Watching the fragrant rice spill out of the pepper under Nkemi’s fork, he grinned again, before tucking into his own.

He’d forgot how much he missed this, after Uptown with all its roasts and heavy wine gravies; one bite and he remembered. There was dill in the rice, too, and more besides.

Detta’s stuffed peppers were always a work of art, though the rice was a little overdone; she probably had that dagka Eton in the back today. Her son had gone off to the tyat last winter.

It was always different, wherever you went, Tekaa cooking. Different from the day to day. River fish instead of ocean fish; a different blend of flour and cornmeal in the porridges and frybread; spicier or sweeter, more savory, more sour, with whatever herbs grew where the kint had landed. Tom thought you could’ve dumped Ishma in Kzecka, and he’d’ve boiled uhachyeh with whatever herbs grew on those remote mountainsides, whatever cheeses those goats were good for making.

Nkemi went on, and Tom nodded quietly, his smile fading – sad, perhaps, but not disappointed. He hadn’t expected her spell to be of use in the finding of his seerstone, but he hadn’t expected any spell to be of use; and the more minutes, hours, as went by, the less he thought anything would be of use. He knew a handful of kov with whom he could put in a word, and he knew where to keep his eyes, but for all her understanding, Tom thought Nkemi knew it was a fool’s errand, too.

Then again, it wouldn’t be her first, and it wouldn’t be the first she’d run to completion, whatever the cost. Troubled, he’d just put a forkful of red pepper and warm rice into his mouth when he saw her freeze out of the corner of his eye.

The back of his neck prickled. The bruises ached. He could see her holding her cup halfway up to her mouth. He thought, if I turn – if –

Slowly, he put the fork back down; slowly, he chewed, and forced himself to look up at Nkemi. She was staring at him, not past him, biting her lip. The back of his neck still prickled.

One of the old tsat snorted, and somewhere upstairs, a door creaked and slammed. It was barely audible, but he jumped, his eye giving a twitch.

Marks, she was saying. Reminders. “A link between us and the past,” he repeated, his brow furrowing. Her eyes were still wide. “Like scars,” he added, his mind wandering. “I don’t know what you’re…”

Tom sat up straighter, fork clattering against his plate. “Shit,” he enunciated, clearly.

The movement of his throat chafed. He set the fork down to reach up to his collar, brushing his fingers over the loose necktie. The edges of the bruises still peeped over, blooming up to the underside of his jaw. He let his fingertips graze them, prickling with a day’s stubble.

His hand dropped, back to the handle of his fork. He remembered the corded muscle pressed against his jaw; he’d thought it might wrench it out of place, when the kov had yanked him back.

“I’m the lentils,” he breathed without thinking, and smiled. “Ada’na, you – that’s right.”

Clearing his throat, he scooped up more rice, the fork a little shaky in his hand. Was it right? But the mona had long memories, and so did bodies; he knew that well enough. He knew at least that you could use the living conversation to split open old scars.

“I might,” he started through a mouthful, then paused to swallow it, “I might be able to requisition some space for us. Not to say it won’t raise eyebrows.” He raised one himself, then glanced down to the pepper as he cut through the delicate skin of it again with his fork. “Detta’s fine with me, but these tsat – they won’t take very kindly to galdori casting around them.”

Another contemplative bite. He looked back up at Nkemi. “What do you think we’ll need? How…” He gestured with his fork to his throat. “Are you sure this can be done? The bruises are mine, not his – not the assailant’s.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
A Tsat Hole-in-the-Wall, Soot District

Nkemi did not push further. She had put the words forward; she could see Vakelin furrowing his brow as he sifted through them. He dropped his fork when he realized; the last of the tension her sudden movement had settled into his shoulders seemed to dissipate.

Vakelin called himself the lentils, and Nkemi could not but giggle. Vakelin smiled too, and she thought he looked a little brighter, a little less gray. Perhaps it was only the growing daylight outside, and whatever cracks it seemed in to; perhaps it was some trick of the lamplight. But Nkemi thought she saw brightness in him, glowing in his cheeks and even his hair.

Nkemi took another forkful of her pepper, eating. To do it here? Her eyebrows raised; she glanced at the old men, still talking in their strange, too-foreign accent, and she nodded. “If Ms. Detta does not mind,” Nkemi said. She was not sure whether there was some other more proper form to address an Anaxi wick, but she was pleased that at least she had not said ada’na; it was a hard habit to break. She thought that Vakelin was right, that they would make the old men uncomfortable; she did not, herself, think it would be dangerous - not for them.

“I believe it is possible,” Nkemi said. She took another forkful of rice and pepper; it did not steam when cut anymore, but it was warm all through, with many pleasing flavors blended together. Nkemi was not sure if she preferred this or the vraun; she was very glad to have tried both.

“But I am not sure,” Nkemi said, thinking it over. “It would be better to have something of his. And yet,” she frowned. “If we had something - clay or food or a toy - made of his hands, then, yes, I would say we could find the hands and mind which held the memory of its making. And so,” Nkemi’s gaze lifted back to the bruise once more.

One of the many things to think about when casting an information gathering spells was the way in which one tried to link minds to the information. It was easier to ask the mona to find the mind attached to hair or blood; it was harder, but possible, to find the mind attached to hands which had made something, especially if the mind had been involved. It was hardest of all to search out pure information, to describe the request and search for any minds which fit; Nkemi knew better than to expect anything useful from attempting such a spell herself.

“There could be many approaches,” Nkemi said, thoughtful. “But I think this is the one I would try - to temper a scrying spell to find the maker of something which can be shown to the mona, spells such as can be cast for the finding of a missing man or woman. Aquamancy is the typical medium. How does this sound to you?” Nkemi lifted her gaze to Vakelin, taking in his thoughts with another warm, flavorful bite of pepper and rice. There was a peppercorn in this one, a bright hard pop of flavor, and Nkemi grinned with delight.

“You have not cast many information gathering spells,” Nkemi said, looking at Vakelin once more. She was not certain; he had as much as told her he was a beginning in the clairvoyant conversation. But Nkemi could feel his field for herself, and gauge it; she did not have any fear of his casting. “Would you cast in chorus with me? I believe it could only help our chances.” The mona in her field drifted and tangled a little deeper with his; some of the warmth in her chest deeper into Nkemi’s field, and she offered it to Tom with a smile.

“I have chalk for a prodigium,” Nkemi added. It was habit in Thul Ka not to be caught without it; she was glad she had thought to tuck the small case into an inside pocket of her coat.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

T
he prefect’s explanation was as heartening as it was disturbing. Clay, he thought. He hadn’t known you could find a man by his handiwork. It was strange to think whom you might’ve found with all of his scars, back then – and he wondered how far back the mona remembered the touch of a man’s hand, and what sort of touches it remembered. Some did not leave bruises, but left a deeper mark.

“I've heard of such spells, ada’na. It makes sense,” he replied, nodding slowly, running a hand over his jaw. He took another sip of tea, cooled enough that the lemon shone through bright and sour, almost – but not quite – overpowering.

Aquamancy, he wanted to reply wryly, sounds splendid. Just don’t make me try any of that cognomancy vodundun. He knew he couldn’t, for all it was a relief to talk to another clairvoyant conversationalist; there were so many questions he might’ve asked, if he could’ve found the words, if they hadn’t all been rushing up at once.

He wondered, too, what of her murderer ada’na Nkemi had used to make her map in Thul Ka. He looked up at her as she spoke, studying the bright grin that still lingered on her face. He wondered if it’d been blood or hair, or bruises, or if she had known her man well enough to find him anyway.

Clairvoyant and static mona mingled deeper in his field, bringing with them a rich, confident warmth Tom thought he could feel shivering through the air around him, through him.

He bit back his warnings. She had felt his field, and he had been honest with her about all he could. “I would be honored to cast in chorus with you,” he replied, “and I doubt Ms. Yrvalo will mind.”

There wasn’t a whit of a lie about it, he thought. Not with ada’na Nkemi calling her Ms., like a proper lady. Besides, they were straggling between off hours; the only folk around were old tsat. If the sound of Detta’s laughter trickling through from the front room was any indicator, they weren’t too busy for a strange but harmless request.

It was smart, to keep chalk on hand, he had to admit. He thought somebody who warded as often as he did might ought to take a page from the prefects' book. Granted, you could make a plot with a whole hell of a lot of substances, but chalk was at least painless.

He turned himself back to what was left of his food with a renewed vigor. His plate was a beautiful mess; small mounds of rice speckled with herbs and peppercorn, bursts of torn, glistening pepper-skin, blooming here and there like the petals of a vivid red flower.

He wasn’t full after all. Maybe it was ada’na’s caprise, like just a few more lamps had been lit in the dingy, shadowy place. Maybe it was the thin shred of hope he knew better than to hold onto. Maybe it was all of those things.

But all the flavors seemed brighter, and he found himself relaxing into familiar motions with unfamiliar hands – tilting the old wooden plate better to square a generous bit of rice and pepper, tearing off more frybread, finishing one cup and then two of tea. It wasn’t long before they’d packed away all the food and drained most of the pot of tea, and Tom was radiantly full.

When Detta came back out, she seemed impressed; when he stopped her, and showed her his most deferential smile, less so. As they rose and left the little room, she was all thin-pressed lips and narrow glances. But Tom’d guessed being called respectfully would soften her.

“Best be gone in half a house,” she’d said sharply, looking from one galdor to the other, “sir, ma’am. Respect where it’s due, but I got a business to run.”

While Detta showed the prefect to the storage room off the kitchen, Tom slipped out and down the narrow alleyway to the pump, shivering in the brisk chill. Long as y’ent drinkin’ it, Detta’d said with a rough laugh; Tom could still hear it as he pulled the water, wrinkling his nose at the smell. All the damned rain.

By the time he had a full bucket, his hands were numb, the joints aching. He found the familiar cramped back door to the storage room and ersed it open.

“Our medium,” he grunted, setting the bucket down near the door. “I’d’ve gotten nicum, but funny enough, there was none in the well.”

The wash of warm air was a relief. His eyes took some time to adjust; there was just one oil lamp, perched on a barrel, and the light from the kitchen was filtered through what smoke leaked out of places where many things were being fried. Still, he didn’t need his eyes to know this place; he’d slept on the floor here, once, listening to the cooks play cards.

Odetta Yrvalo, he had wanted to tell Nkemi, is a rosh. There was no way to put it; there was nothing he could say, except that he trusted her.

The small room was busy with shapes. Crates and barrels loomed like furniture, throwing bulky shadows; bundles of herbs hung from the low ceiling, cascades of thyme and sage and dill like soft green hair, strings of garlic. All limned warmly and stirring a little in the breeze through the cracks.

He grinned up at Nkemi. “It’s like a phasmonia for smells.”

He took his coat off for the first time, bundling it and laying it atop a barrel, and started to roll up his sleeves. His neck’d started prickling out in the alley, but the unease was almost forgotten, here. Strange to say, he’d missed the brush of Nkemi’s field, too.

There was already a mant wooden bowl set on a crate, ready for the laoso water. But Tom was looking down at the hardwood floors, scratched and uneven, dusted with flour and scattered with spices. “Will this do for the prodigium?” he asked, looking back up. “What can I do to help?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
A Tsat Hole-in-the-Wall, Soot District

Ms. Yervelo. The name was a gift, and Nkemi’s face lit up when Vakelin offered it to her. She grinned at him. Perhaps it was not such a surprise, not after seeing how easy and comfortable he was in this place, not after the conversation they had had. All the same, Nkemi took the knowing Vakelin offered with gratitude, the deeper knowing of both Deta Yervalo and Anatol Vakelin.

They both fell back to eating, then. Nkemi was as hungry as if she had not devoured the bowl full of the lovely green vraun; she cut the pepper apart, and scooped every morsel of it off her plate, every bit of smoky bright red, even the littlest curling bits of the skin. She was not so fastidious with the rice and the bits of green and brown which dotted it, but she made a credible effort all the same, leaving mostly a glistening wooden plate. Nkemi poured the tea this time, first for Vakelin and then for herself. The kettle was worn, but it had kept the thickly steeped liquid hot, and Nkemi cradled the cup and breathed in the steam a little while, before slowly sipping the cup.

“Thank you for the food, Ms. Yervelo,” Nkemi said, reverentially, when the wick lady came in. She bowed; it did not trouble her to bow to a wick, nor to a human, not if they deserved it. She knew some prefects who thought otherwise, but – then – they were not prefects of Windward Market.

Nkemi knew that there was a need of hurrying. She had stood in the little storeroom instead, still, looking with wide eyes over hanging strings of garlic, gleaming crackly white, whispering together. She drifted past them, reaching up overhead and running her fingertips over dill. In the light that fought to bring its warm glow to them, no two greens were alike; the shapes gave the herbs as much color as anything else.

It was warm, too, Nkemi thought, closing her eyes. She breathed in deep, again. It reminded her of home, she thought, understanding. There should have been goats, outside, and that goat-hair smell which never left, and maybe some cheese in the midst of churning. It rose up in her chest like a wave; Nkemi softened again it, and let it take her.

She was smiling when Vakelin returned, her own coat removed and draped carefully over one of the crates. She was scarcely less bundled up without it; her sweater was thick and bulky, and there was still a scarf wrapped tight around her neck, although she had given up the hat, at least. Nkemi had found two bowls, in the end, dented and battered things. She unstacked them and set them one next to the other; she fished a handkerchief from the pocket of her coat and set it beside them.

Nkemi glanced up at the incumbent, a little tentative. He had asked, she told herself. Nkemi grinned at him. “Wipe the bowls clean, please, and fill them with the water.” She told Vakelin.

Nkemi herself went to the broom, a long handle with stiff, lashed together grasses in a large, lumpy shape. She applied it industriously to the floor, without the slightest hesitation, whisking bits of spices and flour and even a solitary leaf out of the center of the room. Several of the crates could be moved; Nkemi did so as well and was no less vigorous in sweeping the places where they had been. She did not worry that she would be unable to put them back where they belonged; it was another prefect who had taught her the art of searching a room without being discovered, then or later.

At the end, they had a large sweep of space in which Nkemi thought two people sitting inside and oval would fit. She paced it out, fishing a case out of her coat and taking two pieces of chalk from it. She smiled at Vakelin and retreated back away from the place where the prodigium would be.

“For aquamancy,” Nkemi explained, “a mirroring prodigium.” She knelt and sketched on the ground; she drew an even oval with the ease of practice, her wrist pushing and pulling the chalk gracefully to the curves. “We start here,” Nkemi explained to Vakelin, drawing a line through the center and settling her chalk on an inside corner, “and work around the outsides,” she made little marks, explaining them as she went “together, mirror one another. It does not have to be perfect, but the intent must be there.”

The prefect rubbed her nose, leaving behind a smear of chalk. She grinned at Vakelin. “Once we have drawn the symbols, we sit here and here,” she made two little xs in the diagram, with circular dots of chalk before them, “facing each other with our bowls before us. We cast, together.” Nkemi said, solemnly, looking up at Vakelin from where she knelt on the ground. She grinned, then, unable to maintain the seriousness too long; she rose, dusting her hand off on the leg of her pants. She knew she would have to teach him the spell first, or what she could of it; half a house was not long. Nkemi thought perhaps she should have been afraid, but she was not. She did not know if it would work; she did not know if it could work. She knew, though, that it was worth the trying; she knew she could not but try.