he chill doesn’t sting him so badly anymore, but the air is heavier. It smells: not of the crisp breezes blowing snow off the mountain, not of frozen things and old stone, but of pavement and kenser-sweat and people. Even underneath the delicious spill of frying things, the not-too-distant acrid tang the factories’re coughing up, the wafting smells of tea and incense – people, teeming.
Tom grew up with that smell; he’s seldom been without it. If not on the airship, then in the Rose, in Vienda, in Brunnhold. The Isles were one thing, and he misses the mild breezes; Kzecka was another.
There’s so flooding much here, was all he could say, and you can’t see the stars. Not properly. You can see one or two; some nights, you can see a whole spread of them. But you can’t see the swirls of color, like dyes curling through dark water. Not like you can in the mountains, where the air’s thin, and it’s just you and the old stone and the big colorful sky.
The long, broad bridge into Thripping Bite is lined with stalls and packed with people. The Arova rushes, mysterious and dark, somewhere far underneath.
The sky’s darkening just enough you can see the faces of a few stars, peeping out beneath the great velvety blanket. It’s cloudy, so there aren’t many; cloudy and drizzly. It’s warm enough there’s a fog in the air, just enough the lanterns – some bobbing, some still; some red, some blue, and occasionally gold – all shed blurry haloes. Like moondogs; like glamours, drifting and mingling.
He can’t know what it’s like to see a city for the first time; he knows, now, a little something of being away and settling back into the bustle. He wonders if it’s a tenth of what Nkemi felt the first time she went to Thul Ka.
It’s been since Achtus he’s seen Nkemi pezre Nkese. He remembers the last meeting fondly as he’s remembered all the others; he finds himself missing his cheerful meditation partner, the sight of a bright patterned scarf and wide dark eyes crinkling at the edges with a grin.
Ophus is a busy enough time for the brigk, he knows, with the drunken trouble folk sometimes get into on Dally Day, with the unrest that builds from the Remembrance and spills out to Clock’s Eve. It’s a time for celebrations and unease. Uptown, too; there’ve been more parties, more whispers about the changing of the Symvoul, than he remembers from any other time in the year. He remembers Clock’s Eve last year, and dreads what’s to come at Pendulum.
But Anatole Vauquelin is more himself than ever, they say, aside from that strange clairvoyant field, aside from the threads of white drifting through the red and grey. His policies are bolder; he’s coming into his own, in his age. He’s even, they whisper, taken up singing again.
He has deepened the lines he does not wish to claim.
Since he’s come back from Kzecka, he’s been busy. He suspects the prefect’s been busy, too, for what it’s worth.
He thought about inviting her over for tea, for meditation. It’s the stories of Dkanat and strange-eyed goats and the big desert sky he misses; he could drink them up for hours. The tender acknowledgment in her eyes, too, of something he feels, though he still thinks he has been a liar to earn it.
But it’s not fair, to call her when his soul needs stories of Serkaih, and he’s afraid it won’t bring him back to himself this time anyway. Afraid he’s lost some of the man Nkemi called a friend. That face looks even thinner in the mirror, the sneers even easier, the eyes even colder. He wants to find that friend of Nkemi’s and give her a little of him.
There’s a party Uptown, at the Vauquelin house. Anatole is not at it.
They’re near enough Fly-Ash this bridge is mostly natt – most pale from the winter, worn rough, dark-eyed and dark-haired. Some Mugrobi, chatting fluently in their mother tongue. The Soots is mostly grey, but on the equinox, it’s a whirl of color and laughter, flashing teeth – crooked, missing – but smiling – warm smells. It’s almost like the festivals in the Rose.
He’s smiling, too, looking up through the mist, waiting for her in a niche at the Soots end of the bridge.
He catches a whiff of cinnamon and cardamom. Nearby, the shell of a crumbling gatehouse has been filled with steam and lights. A wiry old natt in a stained apron, a halo of grey round his head, ladles mulled wine into clay cups out of a mant vat.
A lass of twelve or thirteen stands at the table. Along with the dark plum liquid, Tom sees a flash of orange plop into her cup. When she turns, she’s beaming through the steam.
He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes.
When he opens them, he sees a familiar bright scarf in the crowd round the gatehouse. He hesitates, for a moment; he feels some spark of anxiety all through him, a pit of something like sadness.
Then, setting himself, he steps into the crowd, catching a look of alarm as a big natt close by feels the brush of a second field. He ignores it; something about being a head below the canopy in this thicket irks him, anyway.
“Nkemi,” he says instead, with a tentative smile. Without thinking, his field mingles warmly with hers. “May She keep you through the long night.” The requisite words. “Thank you for ada’xa Ediqa’s book. I’ve tried one of the meditations — Amel’s Bond — it’s been more than helpful.”