[Closed] Again Tonight I Sang a Song

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Anetol was quiet, still, his face drawn and tight. Nkemi hadn’t been sure if he meant to speak; she hadn’t been sure what he would say. It was a quiet thank that emerged, instead, as Ms. Wealrite left, and then another to her after Anetol had finished a sip of his kofi.

Nkemi drank hers; her hands were trembling, and little ripples jumped through the dark liquid. She took a deep breath, and calmed them once more, leaving smudged fingerprints in chalk behind against the delicate surface of Anetol’s cup. Nkemi drank another sip of her kofi; it was hot, and she, too, felt restored by the strong taste of it, even if it had been brewed in the Anaxi-style.

When Anetol sat up again, there was warmth in his voice, as if he could breathe back out the kofi he had drank. He lit a nearby incense burner, and the warm, friendly smell of patchouli filled the air; it reminded Nkemi of holy men, thick white hair or gleaming shaved heads, soft colorful wraps that were unafraid to dangle in the dirt, and the pouring of water by strong hands.

Nkemi watched Anetol as he spoke, settling a little more. She exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and she smiled at him, although it wasn’t a very cheerful subject. But it was relief, writ large across her face, and she did not try to hide it behind a prefect’s guise. Some of the color had come back to his face; the scarf seemed to warm him, and Nkemi had been pleased that he had tucked it closer around himself, and nestled into the wool.

I was not prepared for what I would see when I looked in the mirror, Anetol had said, one thin red eyebrow quirking up with his words, something like an amused smile on his face. The cool winter light had shone in the window, catching all the lines of him, with steam from their cups of kofi drifting through it, flickered through reddish curls with licks of gray, pooled on swirls of red and purple carpet.

“I don’t know,” Nkemi said, hesitant. She took another sip of her kofi; she settled the cup down. “Perhaps?” Nkemi glanced up at Anetol again. She could not quite imagine the idea of a body which did not feel like home; it seemed terribly lonely.

“There are…” Nkemi was quiet, picking her kofi up once more, thumb sliding slowly back and forth over the delicate etchings on the side of the cups. “They are not quite lessons,” Nkemi said with a little frown, “but stories, myths, almost, of masters in the clairvoyant conversation who would lose their connection with their bodies when they cast; who would drift, away, and struggle to return. It – ”

Nkemi grinned, sheepishly, suddenly. “We discussed them mostly to scare each other,” she told Anetol, almost cheerfully, “as little children studying clairvoyant conversation. Ghost stories, men who… drifted free of their bodies, and walked the earth looking for minds to enter.” She shook her head. “All stories, I think, have a grain of truth in the center from which sprouts the rest, but - this is a lesson I would not have expected to learn.”

“I do not know what to recommend for this,” Nkemi admitted. “If it – is not disagreeable to you, may I write my mentor?” Nkemi smiled at Anetol. “Professor Ruedka pezre Etriket. I am anyway finishing up a letter which I had intended to send, and it would be easy to ask her for recommendations on spell circles to help guide a caster home, or other exercises which may be done to strengthen the bond. If she does not know, I am sure she can ask. I – she has worked with the prefects for many years,” Nkemi said, meeting Anetol’s gaze, “and she knows well the value of silence, when words are not needed.”

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

Y
es,” said Tom, a little too quickly. “N—No, I mean.”

He cleared his throat. He was sitting up in his seat, now, one hand with its fingertips perched like the legs of nervous birds on the rim of his cup. He blinked – twice. And smiled. “Not disagreeable to me,” he amended more softly, shifting in his seat. The smile crinkled round his eyes. “Professor Ruedka’s guidance would do me honor.”

He paused, picking up the wafer of shortbread. A smidge of sugar shivered off the top; there were a few crumbs on the plate, spots of tan and glittering white against a swirl of pastel flowers. He took a bite.

It’d been a relief to see the smile spread across Nkemi’s face, lighting up her eyes. He’d watched her hands shake on her cup of kofi; the guilt had dug its roots deeper, and he felt the ache of it in every part of him.

Even as he was touched – even as he felt something he had no name for, a warming in brittle-cold parts of himself. He had frozen them over a long time ago; it was too dangerous not to. He’d been taught that lesson once, and then again. Some doors were closed.

The bruises at her neck were faint in the low light, hidden in the shadows underneath her chin and the thick collar of her bright red sweater. He’d not forgot, not in waking and certainly not in his dreams, what arm it was that’d –

But he was touched, nestled in her bird-bright scarf; he hadn’t realized how cold he’d got in the spell circle. The warmth leached into him from the kofi and the heavy wool and Nkemi’s large dark eyes, and they spoke of untethered minds finding strange homes.

He had been careful with his face. He had watched her, a small frown creasing it, as she had spoken of men drifting free of their bodies, men looking for other minds to call home. He had nodded silently; most lessons were unexpected, these days. He’d been aware of a wince flickering across his face at strengthen the bond, but he had known since his meditation with Ezre what he would need to do.

Now, he sat smiling at Nkemi. He took a sip of kofi to wash down the shortbread. It was a risk, but he didn’t think Nkemi would lie when she said this Ruedka could hold her tongue. “These stories…”

He hesitated, setting his cup and saucer on the table.

“I’ve heard – similar – myself,” he said, leaning on the arm. “We all heard ghost stories as children, of course, and I never – I take them more seriously, of late. The grain of truth… seems to me to be in the intent of the telling,” he offered, after a moment. “What it can tell us about the soul and the mind and the body. I’ve heard tell of wandering souls brought back by the lanterns in Serkaih.”

Another pause, another blink. Serkaih.

He glanced up at Nkemi, then, sharpening. “The place,” he started, “the feeling of a place. I felt all the colors, looking down into the canyon, and there were – I felt lanterns. And it all felt familiar. It was beautiful, Nkemi, but – why?”

She knew more of Serkaih, he remembered, than ib’vuqem. Now, it was hard to hold that place in his head; he couldn’t picture the colors, couldn’t picture the rocks, or the plants clinging to the edges of the canyon. All he could hold was an impression – the memory of color – and a strange wisp of a feeling, like nostalgia, like the remembrance of a mother’s arms.

“You don’t have to answer,” he said hastily, brow furrowing. He paused, another sip of kofi halfway to his lips. He thought of the shaking in her hands.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Nkemi smiled, brighter and easier. She was not ashamed of wishing to lay her worries at Ruedka’s feet. She had not missed, before, Anetol’s implication that she was a good teacher, the careful not-quite compliment which he had delicately couched in a hypothetical. Nkemi was grateful for it, but she could not acknowledge it; it was not quite dishonest, but it was, perhaps, disingenuous. She did not feel like a good teacher; she had invaded his mind, once, all unknowing but still, and now their first experiment had nearly untethered him.

First, Nkemi thought, glancing up at Anetol, and then back down. Only? She was unsure.

But he had jumped gratefully on the idea of asking Ruedka for help, and Nkemi was glad of it. She was too old to think Ruedka could solve her problems for her, but she knew the clarity that laying them out could bring, and she knew, too, something of the wealth of knowledge and resources that Ruedka had access to at Thul’Amat, resources practically unavailable to Nkemi, here in Vienda.

“Thank you,” Nkemi said. “I am honored by your trust.” It was not only in this that he had trusted her; it was an odd, buoyant weight, Anetol’s friendship. She had never thought him dishonest, but she understood now how truly he had spoken; he was not an easy man to know.

Carefully, Nkemi took a piece of the shortbread. She nibbled at it, curious; little crumbs tumbled free and caught in the fabric of her sweater. It was a little sweet, but not so much as she had expected; mostly, it was very buttery. Nkemi liked it, although she missed the strong flavors of home; she thought longingly of tamarind candies, and their mouth-puckering sour-sweet taste, or of the rich, mouth-filling sweetness of dzutan.

Ghost stories, Anetol called them. Nkemi shifted a little on the stool, wide-eyed, thinking of a stone-faced Hoxian student with bright smiles and a warmth to his voice even when he meant to hide it – of dark crypts, and strange shifting childhood memories, as bright as the gleam of lantern light on pale white bone.

The intent of the telling, Anetol called it, and Nkemi nodded, seriously. She grinned at the name Serkaih, eyes widening and eyebrows lifting slightly. She would have told him, but he went on and she thought perhaps he had guessed. Why, he asked.

“Oh,” Nkemi said. “No, it is no secret. I do not mind.” She smiled up at Anetol and took another sip of her kofi. The fire crackled and popped; the room was bathed in flickering yellow light, and all the shadows stretched long an wavered at the edges. A breeze rattled distant branches outside, sounding cold and lonely, but inside they were warm and safe.

It was not a big stool, but Nkemi tucked her feet up beneath her knees, sitting cross-legged on it. She had sat straight, before, in her worry; now her posture eased, and her shoulders relaxed too, and she looked nothing so much as comfortable, curled up so.

“There are many ways to create a vestibule,” Nkemi said, cheerfully. “What matters most is that the space is one you can hold to, particularly in exercises of exploration. One way to anchor is to hold a familiar place in mind – it can be an image, if you like, or something richer. A memory of a place is said to work quite well, so long as it is a place which you know, in your heart, which you can hold all the details of and hold them close.” She thought perhaps Anetol would know this already, but she was not sure; she thought it best to explain before she went deeper.

“You were right – it was Serkaih,” Nkemi said, grinning up at Anetol. “I am Nkemi pezre Nkese, Junior Subprefect of the Windward Market District of Thul Ka, but I am also Nkemi pezre Nkese of Dkanat, a small town which is only a dot on the map of Mugroba. It sits on the surface of the desert above the canyon of Serkaih,” Nkemi smiled at Anetol.

“What you felt was the canyon path which leads down from Dkanat to Serkaih,” Nkemi explained. “Or, at least – the path as I remembered it, when I first made this vestibule as a girl.” She paused, curious; she knew Anetol had not been to Mugroba, and she wondered what about it had felt familiar. Wandering souls, she thought, curiously, brought back by the lanterns of Serkaih. “Have you read much of Serkaih?” Nkemi asked, a little tentative. It was her turn to grin, now, friendly and easy. She did not tell him he did not need to answer, but she knew he knew.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

C
reating a vestibule had always been difficult for Tom. It’d always been the greatest hurdle he’d yet to leap, though he’d pushed at it, off and on, and found ways around it, and managed to climb over it with splinters and torn trousers to show. It was hard to slice up a mind like a cake: to say, this part is reserved for this; all the rest is tucked away. A life, oes, maybe. But a mind?

He’d thought perhaps there was something of it in Anatole. He didn’t much like to think about it, but he’d forced himself to, off and on – to try and find that place, to study the shape of it. But it wasn’t a conscious severing; it wasn’t a place with borders. He might’ve made a vestibule out of an opera house or the office at Stainthorpe, but he was no more or less Anatole in those places than in Ava’s back room. It was a doing, not a being.

He wondered for a moment if the same principle might be used to strengthen a tether. A body was a space; if you could hold it in your head, that well-worn feeling – unfamiliar-familiar hands. You needed a vestibule to initiate as well as to receive, he supposed; everything that had leaked out between him and Ezre had taught him that. But he’d never thought of it this way.

So he listened to Nkemi with some of that same hunger in his eyes, watching as she drew her legs up into the seat with her, nibbled thoughtfully at shortbread.

Some of the tension in him relaxed; her broad, bright smile lifted his soul, and he found his own smile warming. He took another biscuit, dusting a few little crumbs of shortbread off his own sweater, heedless.

“Dkanat,” he repeated, finding his way round the word carefully. He thought her accent might’ve been broader when she said it; he had a little trouble with it, with the softness of the K. He bit off the T a little too much.

That was it, he thought, with a flicker of a grin. Not quite Thul’amat Estuan after all. A desert lass.

It was even further from his imagination than Thul Ka. He wasn’t a good hand at picturing places; Thul Ka still lurked in the shadows of his mind, some more colorful Rose, some bigger, sprawling Laus Oma. An imbala selling oranges on a river whose wideness he couldn’t quite picture.

But the desert?

He tried to place Nkemi there, swaddled as she was in her sweaters and scarves. He tried to picture her without them, and found he couldn’t; a Nkemi pezre Nkese in Vienda, a small dark face shivering in piles of wool, was all he could imagine. And that little glimpse he’d got from her vestibule was already fading; he thought he could taste a color like sandstone, feel the pressure of a vastness just out of reach.

But it was gone.

“Yes,” he offered, still leaning on the arm. He shifted, crossed his legs, tapped his chin with a thin finger. “Yes and no.”

He’d seen etchings. Black and white, ’course. A diplomat at a party during the Vyrdag had described it to him, but he’d been on the tail end of a few glasses, and Tom reckoned it was hard enough to describe such a thing sober.

But – “There’s a poem, by Dzúziq pezre Dziroh.” His smile softened. His glance skittered down to where the light glanced off the silver pot; his expression grew a little vacant. “And when His waters are distant, I will fix my soul on the lights; I will keep my shape, though the sands wear me smooth, and the dunes will not sing me to sleep…”

He glanced back up. “I’ve heard it called an oruchy canyon – the kind with tall, narrow walls, that was shaped by water a long time ago. I’ve never been to Gior, and I’ve heard Serkaih’s different from the kind of rock you get down there. Ada’na Dzúziq goes on to describe the swirls of rock, like – wrinkled silk, in vibrant colors.”

He reached for another shortbread biscuit. He’d thought he’d be sick if he had to look at Anatole’s hands again, but he found his stomach settling. He found himself feeling the first tickles of hunger. It was getting easier to set aside; it was hard to feel that kind of animosity, piled up in colorful wool and smelling kofi. Anatole’s voice didn’t seem so strange tackling Mugrobi.

“I’ve heard there’s a phasmonia there, but it’s – hard for me to picture. Ours are grey, and we don’t – tend to them very well.” A little frown. He bent to get his kofi cup. “You saw it often, as a girl?” he offered, a little more cautious.

He watched Nkemi’s face from under his brows. She had sounded a little tentative, asking him. Dipping a toe in strange waters, he thought. That it was mutual made it strangely exciting.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Wrinkled silk,” Nkemi repeated, bright-eyed and pleased. She thought of tables at Windward Market, piled high with silks, of the bright colors spilling over one another, with thin lines of darkness between them – of those silks at the end of the day, with edges brushed with dust and softened by the wind, so they lapped together here and there, though never quite mingled. “Yes,” Nkemi agreed, a little note of delight in her voice. “That is very much what it is like.”

Nkemi had set her little biscuit down on the side of her plate, but she picked it up again and took another bite. It was a more familiar taste the second time, when she knew what to expect.

“The valley itself is a phasmonia,” Nkemi explained. She smiled at Anetol. “It is very tall and thin, as you said. I have never been to Gior; I do not know what their rocks are like, but it is said that the canyon was shaped by Hulali’s patience, the slow wearing down of Bash’s stubborn stone with His kindness.” Nkemi set the biscuit down again and picked her kofi back up, breathing in the steam.

“We call it the valley of ghosts,” Nkemi explained. “It is a historical name. When our tribes still walked the desert, and slept on the sands beneath the stars, it was their place of ending. After the celebrations of death had ended, a couple members of the tribe would take something precious of the one who had died – a fingerbone, if he was a man of his hands, or a lock of hair, if he was a man of beauty. Something precious she had made, perhaps, with loving heart, which was not too precious to be foregone. They would carry it with them on a journey through the desert, through the storms and sand, and bring it to Serkaih.”

There were stories; there were many stories, of such journeys. There had not, Nkemi had been told, been rules about who was to travel; and not every death merited such a journey, but only the dead for whom someone was willing to take on the burden. Sometimes a man or woman never returned; sometimes the tribe would not know until the next death, and the next journey, whether the dead had reached their place of rest.

Sometimes a man or woman who went never found their tribe again; sometimes they found only bleached bones in the aftermath of a sandstorm, or simply nothing, as if the sand and dunes themselves had swallowed them whole. These stories and more Nkemi had heard as a child; she looked at Vakelin, with the brightening of color in his cheeks, the curious, warming smile in his eyes, and remembered what she had learned, so far, of Anaxi sensibilities.

All the same, Nkemi was comfortable on the subject; she explained not with the authority of a teacher, but with the familiar ease of one unafraid. “My ancestors would leave this piece of the one who had returned to the cycle, and carve a memory home – a tsan’ehew – for them. Today is it a place of memory, of study and worship rather than burial, and neither gray nor poorly tended.”

Nkemi studied Anetol. “I spent much time there,” she said. “It is not even an hour’s walk from Dkanat. When he is well enough,” she said, carefully, “my father works tending the phasmonia. I went with him, sometimes,” Nkemi grinned, “or ran errands for visiting scholars doing their work there.” She took another little sip of her kofi; she set it back down. It was cool, now, but when she sipped it and disturbed the surface, a little whiff of steam drifted off and blew, gently, into the air.

“There are those who find it disconcerting, I think, to be surrounded by the memory of the dead,” Nkemi said, quietly. “I did not come to know of such until I went to Thul’Amat.” She thought of comments made by her cousins; she had not understood them as a girl, but later, slowly, they had sharpened into clarity. “I never knew to be frightened,” Nkemis said with a grin, burgeoning bright across her face, “and so I never was.”

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

H
e listened eagerly. He sat still in his big soft chair, his head propped up, his eyes faintly wide. He drank in every word, holding his kofi in his lap, too absorbed to drink; he turned them over in his head, though he could not quite hold the picture they painted.

Wisps of images: colorful silk, like ada’na Dzúziq had said, like the reams of cloth in the window at Woven Delights, like the shivering landscape in the quiet back room.

When Tom thought of silk, he thought of secrets. He couldn’t picture a canyon made of rippling silk without thinking of all the secrets behind each sheaf. As Nkemi went on – when our tribes still walked the desert – he thought it must’ve been; he thought of all the things hidden there, old things, things eroded by wind and time.

He couldn’t imagine wandering galdori, galdori braving long journeys full of storms and drought, galdori saving up food and water, galdori worn deep with age and callused on their hands. But then, it’d been hard to imagine the Hexxos, too. There was so much new, so much vivid and new in this strange life, that he felt he’d be untethered and swept into the current of it; he thought he’d be whisked away into all the color, until he forgot who he was.

He wondered what they’d’ve taken of his. A knucklebone, perhaps – the thought brought a little smile to his lips. A battered knucklebone. A lock of hair, though he’d been no great beauty. An empty Low Tide. He didn’t think he’d’ve been the sort of dead anybody would’ve cared to mourn; there was something comforting about that, too.

He caught her grin with a smile of his own.

There was something sad in it, all the same. Tom wasn’t sure if he’d rather she knew to be frightened of what sat so near to her now, nestled among all the comforts of Uptown, among the smells of kofi and incense.

He was grateful, all the same, that she didn’t. “Disconcerting,” he repeated. “Maybe overwhelming. But not frightening,” he said slowly, “no. All those stories piled up all around you, like cities built on top of each other, century after century. That’s what the Cycle is, though; life after life, death after death.”

His smile softened. “It’s a fine thing, to work at remembering the dead, to let them have their place in a world that’s so full of the living.” He glanced away, then took a sip of his kofi.

It was cooling, but he didn’t much mind; there was still some warmth in it, and the benny dark richness was just as good to brace against the chill. It was the company, anyway, that mattered.

He supposed. It was still Anaxi kofi, and Dzechy’úqi and the Elephant had him spoiled.

When he is well enough, he remembered her saying, careful-like. He hadn’t thought to wonder what Nkemi’s father did; he hadn’t thought – he’d assumed, maybe, the worst. He felt a little curious, a little guilty for his curiosity, all the same.

He’d known, in Sharkswell – dze. Nkemi had been right, in her hesitant observation. He wasn’t sure how things were in Mugroba, but Anaxas’ reputation, he was coming to realize, was hard-earned.

There was a delicate clatter of porcelain as he lowered his cup. “Adopu called Serkaih the greatest city in the Six Kingdoms. I won’t try to puzzle through everything he meant by that,” he said, with a wry twist to his smile. He tilted his head. “Thul’amat must’ve been – something, growing up in the desert.”

A caoja, he’d almost said. It was strange to’ve forgotten, with the mingling of their fields, among all his books. But he was perched in a chair, and her cross-legged on a stool, and it smelled halfway like the house in the Fords; and it gave him a funny sort of ache to walk this line of comfort and truth. Not always a bad ache, but an ache still.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

There had been a little change in Anetol’s smile as she spoke, Nkemi saw; something soft and sad at the edges of it as she talked of the dead, and what was carried through the desert to remember them by. A memory, she thought, perhaps; there was some meaning in her words for him, though she could not have said which words or why. Not for the first time, she wondered why a man wished so badly to know so much of the dead; not for the first time, she wondered what brought a man to that in the fullness of his years.

“I would like to have met Adopu,” Nkemi said, seriously. “But I cannot pretend to make sense of his words in the absence of the man.” She was quiet. “I am sure,” Nkemi said, carefully, “he meant many things. What I have always wondered is why,” she grinned up at Anetol. Adopu was a source of great befuddlement for most students, arati and imbali alike; Nkemi knew well she was not alone, although her worst marks had always been in literature.

Thul’amat must have been something, Anetol said, and tilted his head to the side.

Nkemi’s head tilted too, and her eyebrows lifted, just for a brief moment, although she never lost her smile. She thought of teasing voices imitating her accent to her face, and how laughing with them had not made them stop, not for a long time. She thought of the strange loneliness of a dorm filled with other girls, but no one to tell her a story when she could not sleep. She thought of the busyness of it - the noise! At all hours of the day and night, and the lights too, and the sheer absence of absence.

“Dkanat?” She could hear it in a thousand voices, and see the tilts of a thousand heads; she could hear curiosity, gentle amusement, scorn, even pity. She could feel the weight of unspoken expectations, laid heavy upon her.

Something, Anetol had said, careful and curious, with the little tilting of his head.

Nkemi held just long enough to let him know she understood the implications - all the implications - and then she chose to grin at him, bright and wide, and take another little sip of her kofi. “Yes,” Nkemi said, cheerfully.

“It is a journey of three or four days,” Nkemi said, “if the weather is good and the gods are kind. There are many routes, but none shorter than that. First the desert - two to three days, depending on the stage, in a wagon or a coach, watching the clouds in the horizon and wondering which will brew into a storm.”

“Then the Turga,” Nkemi said with a smile, “the heart of Hulali’s blessing, for a day or two, so long as it is not flood season. Then the waterways of Thul Ka, which are a journey of their own, and last the gates of Thul’Amat.”

Nkemi had not gone alone; they would never have taken her. Nkanzi has gone with her, and Nkemi had curled close into her side and held her aunt’s hand at night beneath the stars, all the treasures of childhood she could fit packed into her heavy chest. Up the river, then, with Nkanzi telling cheerful stories of her own studies; Nkemi had learned only years later that her aunt had never finished her degree.

Nkemi still sat comfortable and easy on the stool, cross-legged; she set the kofi down only to take another curious little bite of the butter-biscuit, with its flowery smell. She breathed in the deep rich smell of the incense, looking curiously at Anetol’s little brazier, and then back at the incumbent, curled up comfortably in his chair, looking very much at home.

“I found it disconcerting,” Nkemi said, with a cheeky little grin, “maybe overwhelming. But not frightening. A city has stories too – layers upon layers of them, built up on top of one another, and overlapping, without the careful borders that the Alioe draws between Bash’s layers.”

“Were you always here in Vienda?” Nkemi asked, gently curious. “You spoke of the Rose, before.” She took her kofi again, curling her hands around the lukewarm cup. Dzechy’úqi had been a gift, unexpected, but the kofi she had taken here with Anetol a week and a half ago had been more precious by far. They had not sworn to Hulali tonight; it meant, Nkemi supposed, that Anetol was sworn, carefully, still, to Roa. Truth and life, Nkemi thought, smiling, were a combination to be blessed.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

D
uly noted, he thought wryly, though he wasn’t quite sure what he was meant to note. But she mirrored him, just like a sweeping line in chalk; she tilted her head and quirked one eyebrow, and there was a tilt to her smile.

It was clear enough, in some ways. The greatest city in the Six Kingdoms, Adopu had called it, cheeky as ever in his awu’tsúye. Tom hadn’t meant –

Well, he had meant. He just hadn’t thought.

He thought he knew it well enough, on the other side of the coin. Something about Drezda, drunk off her erse in the snow, giggling about humans and wicks. Ethyal Aghaueuli’a, pale and tall, saying through a few drinks of champagne at least Vienda wasn’t the Rose; it must be like a, how do you say, a deah dayee, where animals are kept.

Of course, nobody knew who was living in Anatole’s skin. Everybody must’ve known, at Thul’amat. Not, he thought, an easy thing, for all he’d laughed at Ezre’s discomfort in Brunnhold dozens of times. He hadn’t been laughing when Ezre was in Vienda, but he hadn’t thought, either.

He felt a little abashed, but not enough that her grin didn’t bring up a grin of his own.

So he listened, sipping his kofi. He drew one leg and then the other up into the chair with him; he settled into the comfort of her words drifting out between them, in their soft, not-quite-Thul Ka accent.

He couldn’t imagine this, either: rattling across that vastness as a lad or a lass, to get your schooling in the city where the rivers crossed. The impression of it still lingered in his soul, the big sky, like a memory of vertigo.

And what would a storm look like on the horizon? Bigger than anything he’d ever seen. He’d still never seen a storm from the deck of an airship, though he’d had nightmares about it. Aremu and his lightning. He could feel the tightening in his chest even now, thinking of an endless plain, of something sweeping itself into shape in the distant sky, bigger than –

He frowned a little as she mentioned the flood season; the lines round his eyes grew pinched. No traveling there during the Vyrdag, he thought, if travel there was a possibility at all, without a guide. Well – he imagined there were kov for hire in Thul Ka, if you had the means. Without a trustworthy guide, he amended.

He wondered what troubles Nkemi had seen on the river, in the desert. He thought it was a trip not to be taken lightly, for all she’d taken it many a time. He wondered if a little girl, even a galdor, might be frightened. Hell of a lot more intimidating than a half-day’s airship from Vienda to Brunnhold, or even from the Isles to Thul’amat.

Her grin – her talk of cities and stories; those words, spun into a different shape and given back to him – brought another smile to his face, though it was sad, this time, just as sad as it’d been before. The careful borders that Alioe draws between Bash’s layers.

At her question, his smile flickered; his throat tightened.

He tried again, another smile, tentative, stitched together out of whatever he could find in his heart. “Yes,” he said softly, at first, “I did.”

Disconcerting – overwhelming – but not frightening. He didn’t think he could say the same. He had been very frightened, this past year. What could he say? She had asked Anatole; it was Tom who wanted, desperately, to speak. Honesty asked for honesty. He didn’t have to swear himself to Hulali to want; he did not have to be bound, to want.

There were still a few biscuits left. He took one, took a bite; thought. “I can’t speak to what I don’t know, Nkemi,” he said carefully, thinking of a childhood in Brunnhold, thinking of the portrait of Constance Vauquelin that used to hang over the mantle. Naulas, now, antlers gleaming, flowers dying at His hoof. “Despite the lines that Alioe has drawn on me,” he added, mustering up some cheekiness himself, “the borders aren’t so clear as they used to be.”

He dusted a little sugar off on his trousers, took another thoughtful sip of kofi.

“I lived in Old Rose for a time, and I remember all of it clearly.” He caught her look at his incense burner; he looked at it himself, and found the tightness in his throat easing. Oes, Hulali had found him a current. “In Quarter Fords, not too far from the water, in a house with a garden. Old Rose is full of stories, too, overwhelming – the ships in, the ships out, the bustling markets, the bars spilling out light at all hours – a place you could lose yourself in. But I was always comfortable enough, getting lost in all that life.”

He looked back up at Nkemi. “Vienda, now – Vienda does frighten me sometimes.” A crooked smile. “I’m not sure I’d’ve made it another year with the Vyrdag here. Though I’d say flood season in Thul Ka will be - something - for an Anaxi.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Nighttime, 5 Achtus, 2719
Tom's Study, Vauquelin House

Anetol listened, quiet and intent. Sometimes he frowned; other times he smiled. Nkemi could not always quite trace the thoughts behind his soft gray eyes, but she saw him frown, softly, when she spoke of the difficulties of traveling on the Turga during the flood season, and she wondered; but he did not ask, and so neither did she.

Nkemi had spoken, smooth and soft and even, like the weaving of a tale. It was true, but, then, so were many tales. She would not have minded if Anetol had interrupted to ask a question, but he did not, and when the story of the journey and what she had found on the other end wound down, it was Nkemi’s turn to ask, and Anetol’s turn to tell.

It caught his smile and flickered it out like the pinching of a candle; his throat tightened like a wisp of smoke trailing away. There was a pause between them, and Nkemi did not use it to withdraw; she waited, instead, through it, and let him take time to answer; she ate the last bite of her little biscuit, and dusted her fingers off unthinking on her pants, smearing crumbs amidst the chalk. There were other bits caught between the folds of her sweater; Nkemi glanced down, and brushed lightly at them, sending them tumbling to the floor.

When Anetol began again, it was with a careful, quiet solemnity; it lasted a moment, and then gave way to a cheekiness all his own. Nkemi grinned at him, bright, friendly and encouraging, and settled back into place, comfortable once more, breathing in the drifting scent of the kofi and the incense and listening. Anetol’s voice was comfortable and easy once more, low, with no trace left of the damage scratchiness of his injury, nor the odd, unexpected tightness that had thickened it after they had cast together.

Nkemi listened, and watched; there was a warmth to Anetol’s voice as he spoke of the Rose, and a little smile which crept all through him, which rolled, comfortably, through the set of his shoulders and the way he sat himself against the cushions. Quarter Fords, Nkemi remembered, marking the name, and tried to imagine the man before her in a garden. His hands – she would not have thought it, from the look of his hands, and the soft feel of them against hers; the calluses where he had held a pen, but none anywhere else. She wondered if he had worn gloves; she could not quite imagine it.

Nkemi’s eyes widened a little at the sudden crookedness of his smile as they came back to Vienda, the Vyrdag. I have changed, Nkemi remembered him saying, in the last year, and she thought again of the intensity that had flickered over his face at the discussion of mourning rituals.

“I think it will be,” Nkemi said with a little grin. “But I think you will like it better than you would the sandstorms,” She giggled, but there was a weight to it, a little crease at the corner of her eyes. It was not the job of a Prefect to turn blind eyes to the destruction such things could wreak on a city; it was not the job of a Prefect to ignore the opportunities a swirling flood of water or sand represented for those who meant to do harm.

Nkemi shifted a little; she settled her kofi into her lap, still cradling it. “What are the customs of Anaxas?” Nkemi asked, curiously. “When someone returns to the cycle.” She looked at Anetol, curious and even. She did not tell him there was no need to speak, if it was a sensitive subject; she was not sure if she had begun to put the pieces together correctly, in any case. She supposed everyone knew death, by his age; there was no man who had not felt the touch of Naulas in his life, by such a time. But there were those for whom it was the brush of his fingers, and those for whom it was his grasping hand, sharp and vicious.

[Tom Cooke]

Tom’s Study • Uptown

Nighttime on the 5th of Achtus, 2719

H
e hadn’t known the joke would land; he felt another little glow of warmth in his chest at Nkemi’s grin, warmer than the kofi, the hearth, warmer than the scarf round his neck. He’d’ve felt laoso, just a pina, if she’d taken it in poor taste. Just a pina.

He thought he heard some weight in her voice, though he couldn’t place it. He wondered, for the first time – he’d told her of the flood of ‘05, and she’d listened, wide-eyed and respectful; but she’d told him something of the floods they got along the Turga, too. Not enough for him to grasp it by half. He supposed he’d see some of it firsthand, come next year.

As it was, he thought what flooding like that every year would do to a city. Maybe not so bad, some years; worse, others. He didn’t doubt the truth of her heart, but he still didn’t much believe that struggle was the exception instead of the rule. Still, looking at her curiously, he thought she knew something of shoring up against what the water could do – of long, sticky days that smelled of fish and mold, of roads cut off, of buildings condemned.

He wondered what kind of work that might make for a prefect. He knew how it’d made his work with the Brothers. He knew, and remembered, and his mind skittered away from old raw places not quite healed.

He wondered, suddenly, what flooded streets might do to his mind during the Vyrdag. It was not a familiar, or a comfortable, wondering.

He smiled back, enough to crinkle round his eyes, but not quite warm. “I’ll reserve judgment, Nkemi. I can’t quite picture either.” There was warmth enough in his voice to supplement; he took a sip of kofi, and it warmed him through, and gave him some of what he lacked.

This question of hers didn’t throw him off his track; nor did the curiosity in her eyes. Wide, thoughtful – not quite tentative. There was a trust, there, and it warmed him, too.

He had finished one small cup of kofi. He glanced at the window, flat with dark. There was the wind, still, whistle and scratch. A little frost caked the window, now, whitening each square at the edges.

He thought about her question as he bent to pour himself another cup. He raised his brows at Nkemi; if she offered – if she didn’t object – he’d pour her another cup. Where their cups had cooled, the kofi in the pot was still warm enough to send up tendrils of steam.

He knew more, he thought, of human burial than galdori. More then of wick. He could’ve told her – he thought, watching the kofi burble into the cup – could’ve told her of the burials at sea in the Rose; that was a thing for Brothers, of course, borrowed from Mugrobi spoke practices, or so hama’d said.

Hama had always thought he’d go first. He’d told Tom in no uncertain terms how he wanted to be dealt with; on bad nights, they’d spoken of it at length. He’d known to burn the sage, to send him off with his oud. With the caveat, Tom had insisted, that he got to keep the pick – to make a little shrine, in the Anaxi way, in the phasmonia.

He realized with a pang that he didn’t know how his body’d been dealt with. He’d never told Ish, never told anyone how he’d wanted it; he’d never thought. It’d been – somebody else’s problem. Always somebody else’s.

His hand jolted; a little coffee slipped the edge of his cup, though the saucer caught it. “Forgive me,” he murmured. When he set the pot back down, he had a bright smile for Nkemi.

“It’s different – in different places, among different people. But not so different,” he said, cradling his hot kofi in his lap. “We bury our dead, mostly; Anaxi galdori and humans, both. Or inter them.”

He frowned, shivering underneath his scarf. Being surrounded by all that stone.

He didn’t much want to talk about that part of it; he thought on. “It’s –” He frowned, sucking at a tooth. “It’s different from Mugroba,” he said carefully. “We don’t have paid mourners, like they do in Bastia; there’s a certain – well – we Anaxi like our stiff upper lip. You mourn, but not too much; but you’re not allowed to celebrate the passing of life, either.”

He paused, looking up at Nkemi. Half-limned by the light from the fire, it was hard to read anything but curiosity – thoughtful listening; understanding, he thought, but what of, and how much? how much might he be giving? – in it.

“It’s not my intent to be grim. I just think,” he said, “I’d rather my life be toasted, than my death mourned. I’d always rather laugh, Nkemi.” He smiled. “Have you ever been to an Anaxi phasmonia? Rookwren, the old Ghost Town at Brunnhold…? We keep shrines there, like your ancestors kept at Serkaih, but – they tend to gather dust. They’re not colorful places; we don’t like to think about them.”

Unless you’re Grumble, he thought, or any of the other folk heroes. It was something natt did, that – half the human phasmonias in Anaxas claimed to have the left pinky-bone of Kasshar the Courageous, or a splinter from his shield, or a scrap of his wineskin.