[PM to Join] Gains the More it Gives

[Tom Cooke]

Marlingspike • The Dives

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

H
e knows to look away.

He’s seen her do it with bochi, oes; he’s seen her do it with the odd tekaa, but mostly natt, mostly nattles. Young lovers, sometimes. He’s sat with her, smoking the long varnished pipe she only takes out sometimes but always shares – sat unassuming in the corner, among the clutter, as she shifts all of herself to shine on one face, one palm. He watches, though there is always a moment he looks away.

Now’s that moment. The kint is all drifting smoke edged with warmth, spots and pockets of color: Nkemi’s purple, orange, red; Ette’s blue; the pale hands in his lap. He looks down at them, finally, folds them together in the dark wool of his coat.

It takes all the pieces of a place, Nkemi is saying, and fits them together. He wonders first what Ette must make of it, this talk of maps. Can she guess at the details of Nkemi’s qalqa? Can she know, somehow?

He thinks of Ezre’s prodigium, watery-pink in places, weaving together Jonathan Emmett’s life – or something like him, some shadow of him – from his things. He thinks then of Ugoulo’s connection, too; if he’d known it at the time, he’d’ve recognized a curve borrowed from ada’na here, a swirl there.

It has always been hard for him to fit the pieces of a place together. He likes to get lost in the Rose, or so he says, but he can get lost anywhere. He can get lost in the halls of the Vauquelin house, if he isn’t careful. His sense of space and distance is warped; he can think of the rooms, brushed lively with smell and feel and color, like a Tivian painting – but when he tries to guide himself from one to another, the image falls apart.

It’s not what she means, he knows. But he feels sorely he’s made a mistake. He’s given Nkemi the pieces of himself, but not the connections. He knows it must trouble her. He knows he can feel the strain, between all his names. He hasn’t known which name belongs to him tonight.

He’s given her as much as he can. The edges of his hands grow hazy; his eyes prickle.

He shuts them, and he hears Nkemi say the words hama and qalqa. She stretches them: they’re different in a way he can’t describe. It’s all the more dear, strangely, ineffably, all the more macha, to hear her feel out their contours and set them in place, in the way she can.

“Ye chen yerself,” Ette is saying, finally. There’s a smile in her voice, though he still knows better than to look up, to draw back the curtain from this moment with his eyes. “Ye chen yer head” – and she pauses, and in the silence he imagines her lifting her hand to brush Nkemi’s forehead – “an’ yer hama – an’ yer qalqa.”

He wonders if Nkemi knew, a year and a half ago, where her map would land her. There’s almost no wondering; he knows, having seen her face when he speaks of bends in the river, having imagined what it’s like to stand on a rooftop and look over the Turga. Head emptying out into Hulali’s water, or maybe freezing, fixing on a single sight, a single sound. He doesn’t know what it’s like, for her, but you can’t look ahead from that.

And then, to Anaxas – given to the water, like on Maltalaan. She carries a mant weight behind that smile; she dances with the natt in Vienda, oes, bright as can be, but the way she speaks of the drums back home.

He knew so little, a year ago. He never looked ahead; the act is new to him. She can say, at least, she knows her own shape. Does he? What’s he asking of her, with all this?

“It’s them that’s connectin’ the pieces,” says Ette, gently. “Yer the roads, not the landmarks.” He opens his eyes to see Ette squeezing her hand, drawing away.

Pup stirs, as if woken from a dream. He’s shoving his nose into Nkemi’s hand, as if to say: who cares what the lines mean? It’s the smells that matter, and this hand sometimes gives me yats, which is the most important thing.

Ette laughs, creaking back in her chair. “I can give ye nothin' more but spitch an' stories,” she says. “Yer Evers are yer own, pina beata, an’ now’s all any of us know. I see the glow in ye, ada’na, brighter than any jinga. Oes, I see. Light can cut through any fog.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

There is silence between them, as soft and warm as the smoke. Nkemi sits in it, and is comfortable with the words she has spoken. They are like a weight from her; they lift up from her heart and reveal themselves in the air, and, once spoken aloud, they are not so hard to wrangle, after all. If this is all of Edhi’s gift, this careful drawing out, Nkemi thinks, it is more than enough.

Edhi is smiling; her fingers brush lightly over the palm of Nkemi’s hand once more. They drift up like smoke through the air and settle, light as a feather, on her forehead beneath the place where her headwrap crosses itself; those fingers drift down along the line of her, and settle once more to wrap around the hand she has read, and the lines that cross its palm.

Edhi speaks.

Nkemi smiles, and she feels it glimmer in the corner of her eyes, straight from the place in her chest where it has squeezed. The roads, Edhi says, not the landmarks, and there is a firm, warm press against her hands, two callused, slightly gnarled hands cupping hers once more.

For a moment, Nkemi thinks she can see it too. Ink, spilling from her fingertips; smoke, wreathing from her mouth; water, rippling beneath her; stone, carving itself into new strange shapes. She is etched upon them all; she eddies and flows like the lines of a plot, like ink dropped into water, curling back and forth on herself, where she has been and where she is going all at once. She is smoke rising from a fire, ever present and gone at all once; she is a stone, unyielding, whatever happens upon the surface of her. She feels it in the air around her; she can almost taste it, and she thinks if she closes her eyes and opens them once more, it will be written around her like runes.

Nkemi blinks, and it is gone on the bright low rasp of Edhi’s laughter and the sudden cold nose thrust into her bare palm. Through the blurring between her eyelids, the light seeping in through the tent strings and the glow of the coals set the smoke aflame; she blinks, and Edhi swarms back into focus, sitting back in her chair. For all her easy words, the smile on her face is soft in her eyes and at the corners of her lips, and Nkemi does not doubt but that she sees.

Nkemi giggles. Her hand rubs the pup’s muzzle, wanders over the top of his head with a scratch, and buries itself comfortably back in the ruff. His tail wags in short, sharp bursts, and then quicker and steadier, and he wriggles himself competently deeper into the petting, and the tip of his tongue lolles just so from the edge of his mouth.

“Thank you very much,” Nkemi says, and she finds she is smiling with her whole self, all the landmarks and the roads too. All the glimmers are gone now; her smile widens, and brightens, and the lines in Edhi’s face stir to match it. She sees Anetol look up in the corner of her gaze, and it is only now that she realizes he has given her what he can of privacy these last minutes. Given them, Nkemi thinks, understanding a little more. He sits comfortably enough on his chair, his hands folded together in his lap; there is something, for a moment, not quite a smile on his face, and the light glints in his gray eyes.

Nkemi turns to smile at Anetol too, bright. The dog has shifted, and his tail is steadily thumping against Anetol’s leg with each enthusiastic wag. She giggles again, and rubs his back all the harder.

“I would,” Nkemi says, looking back at Edhi with a bright, cheeky grin, “be very grateful to hear your stories, madam.”

[Tom Cooke]

Marlingspike • The Dives

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

T
hwack, thwack, thwack – pup’s tail is flipping mad against his leg, paws skitter-scratching on the stone and threadbare carpet, pup’s whole erse end wobbling with excitement. It’s Nkemi’s broad smile in his direction that yanks him from his thoughts. She’s asked for stories, and Ette is creaking out laughter, rasping with warm waves of it.

“Oes, I see, I see,” she says, “ye come here t’ yach me, too.”

Whatever spell Ette’s readings cast, it always breaks, and the air is always a little warmer. He breathes in deep, and the incense clings to his lungs: he’s full, body and soul, of patchouli, of vetiver, of a cornucopia of sweet musky ghosts. He grins through them. “Ent yach, gitgka,” he puts in, feeling the Tek roll out of him as he’d forgot it could. “I was telling Nkemi earlier how finely you spin them.”

Ette only laughs more. He’s suddenly occupied in the tending of a snuffly nose, in petting white curls and avoiding slobbery sharp jaws. In the corner of his eye, he can see Ette shift, hear the creak of her chair.

“Only from the fiber Roa give me.” There’s a pause; he can feel those milk-pale eyes fixed on him. “An’ yerself, Auntie? Before I wear out spinnin’,” she says slowly, “what of yer lines?”

He looks up, finally, still rustling his hands in pup’s ears. He glances from Ette to Nkemi; he can’t read either face in this soft dark, but he catches the glint of Nkemi’s eye.

He knows, now, that Ette thinks he is ready.

He thinks how the evening has gone, full of dancing and skewers and the twining melodies of fiddles. The light shivering even now through the threads of the tent, blue and gold and red, and none of it brighter than Nkemi’s smile.

He thinks how he will feel about these hands after the lines have been traced. It’s like a mant field, with sharp-jawed traps hidden in the tall grasses. He wants this evening to end well; he doesn’t want to totter off by himself, weighed down with thoughts. He wanted this to be about sharing, about them, not him. “Not tonight, Ette,” he says, smiling. “I am honored. Just a little longer, ye chen?”

“Not too long, Auntie.” His smile tilts crooked, sad; he can hear it in her voice, the age.

“Not too long,” he promises. “But for now, pup and Nkemi and I would be grateful to hear you speak of the old things.”

And then, again: the laughter, wisping out on the smoke. “I am an old thing, Auntie,” she rasps, “but you ent so green yerself. Now – ada’na Nkemi, these old bones’ll be thankin’ ye for maw if ye’d reach t’ me m’ pipe – there, ye chen, on the table, close by the burner… epaemo epaemo, this laoso mess...”

He doesn’t know how long they pass in the little kint. He knows that the lights dim; he knows that they’ve passed the pipe among themselves with its fragrant, bitter tobacco, Ette and him and, if she accepts it, Nkemi.

He knows that Ette starts with her oldest story – a spoke lass named Blue, and how she came to drift – and then begins weaving her silk from fresher, less abstract fibers. She gathers them together: some of them are the color of the Hessean grassland; some of them are coarse and pale, full of sandstorms and difficult journeys; she speaks of herself sparingly, and more of the people she’s gone among, the kints that have given her hospitality and their vibrant stories.

At some point, Ette turns the question on Nkemi: story for story, ye chen? And he knows she weaves them well enough herself, as anyone who loves them so does – there are goats in Dkanat he knows the names of – and he grins, just as rapt, even for what he’s heard before, and more so for what he hasn’t.

When the question is turned on him, he finds – to his surprise – that he has more than a few in himself, as well. Of visiting sailors to the Harbor and the stories they told; of the Gioran priest who told him, as a lad, of the hunter who tried to catch the moons.

When they leave, at last, letting the tent flap shiver to behind them, the night seems especially cold and wet. Somewhere in the middle, he’d taken off his coat; now he puts it back on, turns his collar up, shivers into it.

There are fewer lanterns, but it’s still brighter than inside – brighter, and the air clearer. Everything crisp and solid. He looks over at Nkemi, her scarves bright, a pale blue streetlamp echoing purple in her skin.

Even with the chill air steadily filtering out the lingering incense, he feels full of spirits. He doesn’t know which name belongs to him, now, but he feels a belonging. He doesn’t know if he can take Ette’s words for Nkemi and hold them close to himself; he doesn’t know if he should’ve heard them. But, tenuously, he thinks he can bridge some gaps with his words, with the presence of him, whoever he is. It’s him that Nkemi has called adame, not any of the pieces alone.

As they start down the street, away from the tent, the pup follows at their heels. He hears the familiar curling note of an oud; nearby, at the edge of the cluster of kints, a dark-haired man sits beside a post. The song he plays is familiar; so are the movements of his long fingers, though the brush of his glamour is foreign. He looks up at the two galdori with gold eyes as they pass.

It’s a strange, sad melody. He remembers it having words. The oud’s case is open, and there’s a little ging glittering in the lining, but not enough. He finds what he has left in the pocket of his coat and tosses it in.

He smiles at Nkemi. “Thank you,” he says quietly. “For letting me share this with you.”

The tail flickers at his leg; the dog trots off ahead, suddenly, a white streak against the glistening dark stones.

Still remembering, he smiles warmer, looping his arm through Nkemi’s. “I think pup’s caught a scent. Shall we follow him?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

The night air outside is crisp and clear; the world is dark, but the light from the braziers and the drifting echoes of laughter have settled deep into Nkemi’s skin, and warm her from the inside out. She breathes in deep, and turns to look at Anetol with bright smile. The yellow wool scarf wrapped around his throat glows green in the blue light; she thinks it will smell, now, of patchouli and lavender and tobacco. So, too, will hers.

Nkemi cannot imagine what these streets look like during the day. As the firepit burnt down, the festival has drifted; it has reached the ebb of the night, Nkemi thinks, the quietest part. In Thul Ka, no one sleeps; sleeping now is nearly a guarantee that you will not wake for the dawn. But it is a time for the finding of a quiet place, for togetherness, to sit and talk softly on rooftops with friends, to drink just a little more tsenid and to listen to drifting strands of music. There are not performances, at this hour, but there is quiet laughter and soft easy teasing when someone drifts off to sleep, and the tender comfort of helping one another rise.

This little corner was always quieter than the rest. Here, too, the quiet has spread, and Nkemi wanders alongside Anetol back over quiet streets. There are quiet voices in the shadows, and lanterns glint over tired, smiling faces; distantly, she smells drifting frayed food-smoke, a bitter drift of burnt oil for frying. Their fields are mingled together, warm and comfortable and friendly, and Nkemi finds, to her surprise, she misses the faint brush of Edhi's glamour at the edges of them.

Anetol smiles at her, and Nkemi smiles back at him. She takes his hand in hers, comfortable and easy, gloved fingers twined together, and squeezes it.

The little white dog darts through the night, a sharp blur of motion against gray-brown stones. He stops, once, at a corner, and glances back; he barks.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, settling comfortable against Anetol. “Let’s!”

They wander; the pup sniffs occasionally, but he tracks as if trained to it. They go down one alley, and through the next; they cross a wide thoroughfare, where smoke drifts through the cold night and twines with wine-thick laughter. They cross out of the edge of the lanterns, and then, suddenly, in a matter of steps they come out of the narrow channel of an alley onto a wide street, next to a thin, stone bridge arching up and over the Arova.

The pup is halfway up the street already; there is a small, distant figure jumping in the distance. The pup meets him in a tangle of arms and white fur and a furiously wagging tail; there is a distant, joyous bark. The figure kneels, and two arms wrap around the pup, and the light glints off a bracelet of orange twine around a thin, dirty wrist.

Nkemi’s arms tightens a little around Anetol’s, and she smiles.

“This way,” The Mugrobi says; she tugs Anetol away, because she can see the boy’s shoulders trembling, even from this distance, and there is a choked noise which is not quite laughter. She takes him, instead, out onto the narrow bridge; they can walk side-by-side, although only just, up the soft slope of it.

The Arova rushes smooth and deep below them; it whooshes softly through the night. Then – suddenly – lanterns, drifting along it, on little boats; there is laughter from down below, and they can see a stream of people like a flood, following the lanterns on either side of the Arova, clinging to the narrow walkways which run beneath the bridges. The lanterns are multicolored; they scatter thin fragile light across the surface in a mingled riot, each indistinguishable from the next.

Nkemi holds her breath as they pass beneath the bridge, trembling. One or two catch, here and there, on a line in the river – on a nook in the walls – and they are scattered behind, leaving a lingering trail, glowing in the wake of it. The parade passes beneath them, and on the two sides of the bridge as well, and Nkemi turns to watch them flow through.

In time, only the few lanterns remain; the rest are a dim, distant glow, following the Arova wherever Hulali leads.

“Anetol,” Nkemi says, quiet and serious. Her arm is still through his, but she untucks it, carefully. She turns to face him, and takes both his hands in hers, and looks up at him, standing still in the midst of the bridge. There are no lights, here, none but what shines from the sky above and whatever drifts from the city on either side, but she can see the glint of his gray eyes well.

“I would like to invite you to visit Serkaih with me.” Nkemi says, and her gaze searches his face, but she already knows what she sees. “Will you do me the honor of accepting?” She lets go of his hands, then; she steps back, and she bows, and rises back up to look at him.

[Tom Cooke]

Marlingspike • The Dives

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

P
up is a white blur across dark rainslick stone and shadow. There’s another shape up the narrow street, and they meet like the lines on a hand. He watches, his arm looped through Nkemi’s, for just long enough. He can’t make out the figure, but he knows the shape of a chimneysweep lad. He doesn’t have to make out the bracelet to know. He can make out the tail flipping wilder than he thought it could, the whole scruffy white body shaking with it, with all of it.

He feels, first, the absence of the tail whacking his legs, the paws dirtying his trousers. Galdori don’t keep dogs, Uptown; it’s a natt practice. Not a lot of chances to get curly white fur and muddy prints all over your trousers, not for a man like him.

Whatever absence he feels is cut right through: the misty breeze snatches up a choked noise, half a word in a small voice. Scatters. His heart thuds in his chest, and he can’t look away, for all he’s so good at looking away.

This way, comes a soft Mugrobi voice.

He lets the arm guide him; he follows, and he looks away. She’s bringing him up to a thin bridge over the rushing Arova, with all the lights of Uptown across it. From here, he can see the tallest spire of the castle in Ro Hill; he can see some of the other buildings, too, silhouettes against the night sky, dark on dark. Important places. They work their way around his heart like fingers and squeeze.

Up on the bridge, the way’s only just wide enough for the both of them, huddled together in their coats. Halfway, she stops – he doesn’t understand – his head is full of the even-paved streets, the congress buildings, the great empty bed ahead; the beggar-boy behind.

Then, he does. They start one, two, three, dotted here and there on the dark water like stars. Or like lights in the Rose, because they’re moving, stirring with the currents. He holds onto the stone railing with his free hand, suddenly hushed. The cold air aches in his lungs, but he keeps breathing it in, mouth open. Watching.

There are more and more of them. Some phosphor, distinctive for those too-vivid three colors: crimson-red, bright sky-blue, the occasional spot of gold like a real star. Some, he imagines, real lanterns, colored paper and cloth.

He remembers, from last year. Vividly. Not on this bridge; closer to the water, further down the Arova. They come up to Fly-Ash; they come all the way down the river.

Some are caught, some allowed to drift. Some fall apart. He wonders if any make it to the ocean.

He’s caught still like a lantern in a niche. He thinks, next year, I’ll make one of these. Next year, I’ll set one loose.

Maybe the lad is watching, too, skinny soot-dusted arm wrapped round pup. He can imagine it, just as vivid. Somewhere close to the water. Legs dangling off the edge, pup’s expressive dark eyes full of moving lights.

Maybe he fishes one out, if it drifts too close. He hopes so; it seems a night for keja things. He tucks the thought away for a colder day.

The bulk of the lanterns drifts under the river. He looks over, for that brief moment. Nkemi is rapt; she’s holding her breath, he thinks. He finds he’s holding his, and he looks again at the parade of lights shuffling by. Of colors. They turn together to watch them go down the river, disappear into the dark.

Nkemi says, Anatole, in her way. He thinks of lights spiraling upward into the sky, but he can’t hold onto the image, and he doesn’t know where it came from.

He looks again; those wide dark eyes meet his. It’s hard to see, but he can make out the serious set of her face. They’re disentangled, and both of her hands are holding his, like in the dance. She makes her offer, looking him in the face long and hard.

He can’t say what’s on his face. He’s afraid he looks eager. He’s afraid, too, he might look afraid – might look like a guilty man. Do me the honor, she says. Does the name feel like yours? Aremu asked, once.

His hands are empty, then, and cold. Nkemi is bowing, at arm’s length. He realizes he never put his gloves back on; it was warm enough with Nkemi’s arm looped through his, with her hand squeezing his.

“Yes, Nkemi,” he replies softly, bowing deeply himself. When he rises, he still isn’t smiling; he looks at her gravely. “I can think of no better guide, and –”

To ask her if she is sure would be an insult to her honor. But still: to guide an Anaxi incumbent through the desert. It can't be that difficult of a journey - she takes it often enough - but there's still risk, accountability.

And it still doesn’t feel like an even exchange. But there’s no place he can offer her, if she visits the Rose; there’s no more Meggie, and Meggie was never much for hospitality, anyway. What can he show her, of his own bochhood? A scrappy lad watching lights on the water? A dance?

He thinks how she melted into the dance. He remembers glimpses of her, fleeting, here and there among the whirling skirts of nattles and the lumbering confusion of the natt: a shining dark face, a snippet of purple and gold. He remembers being pulled into the current, and following all the lights upward, upward, upward.

He smiles, finally. “I’m honored for you to share it with me,” he says, pausing on the you.