[Memory] The Waves

[moralhazard]

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Beneath the Eqe Aqawe

Out of the corner of his eye, Aremu could see Tom shift to look at him, then look back at the ship. He did not turn to meet the other man’s gaze, but held himself on the Eqe Aqawe above them.

Sometimes, inside, he wondered what it would be like to never again see the ship, to never again stand on the decks. It hurt, but he held himself to it, as if preparing for that sort of pain would make it any easier, as if one could anticipate the losing of a part of oneself. Every time he stepped foot in Anaxas, there was that prickle of fear down his spine - remembered whispers from the Turtle, of imbali before him who had vanished in Anaxas or Bastia or Hesse. Gated, they called it here.

And those imbali? Had they had someone to stand behind them, someone whose voice would be heard? Aremu knew - he knew - that Uzoji would not leave him here to rot in captivity, that Uzoji would move the six kingdoms if he could, to bring him home. Would it be enough? Aremu had never left the ship in Brunnhold, the scant times they had gone; he had chosen to keep those metal walls between himself and beyond, and had scarcely ventured to see its red stone. There was bravery and there was tempting fate, and Aremu did not wish to find the line between them.

Like a dream of being free. Aremu thought of storm-tossed nights, of frantic work on a red-hot engine, the smell of burnt skin in the air. He thought of hanging above the propeller, trusting to his harness, whistling through the sky. He thought of sitting with his feet hooked through the chainmail of the balloon, watching the sun set in the distance, glorious gold and pink and red spilling over the sky, yielding to the deeper colors of the night.

Aremu was not sure what sort of answer Tom had expected; he doubted that he had given it. When the other man spoke, he surprised Aremu too - the roughness in his voice, the odd almost-tenderness of the question. Aremu turned to look at him, but Tom was tangling his fingers in that long thick dark hair of his, studying the ship.

Debts, Aremu thought, curiously. Was that what he wished to be free of? He wondered; he did not think so. Not all debts were painful to bear. Aremu would not have wiped away those that bound him to Uzoji and Niccolette, not even if he had known how. He wondered what it was that weighed Tom down, that kept him here on the ground; he wondered if it was that he had never had the chance to fly, or if he did not wish to.

Debts, Aremu thought. Obligations left behind from one’s choices. There was always a choice, wasn’t there? Go to Thul’Amat, or else to the Turtle. Break a woman’s heart now with his refusal, or else later with his failings. Take to the skies, or else keep his feet on the ground. And whatever he chose, there would be a debt, but one he had made by his own hand. One he had chosen.

Only a dream after all, Aremu thought, but no less sweet and no less bitter for it.

What debts had Tom traded away, and what debts had he incurred? A man’s life stretched out before him like an accounting ledger, debits and credits, but none that could be balanced.

Aremu knew he ought to look away, but he lingered, a moment more, and Tom glanced back at him and grinned, warm and friendly, a crowding of messy teeth glinting in the light of the dock yard, and Aremu grinned back. He did not move closer - he would not burden the man so - but he felt as if he had, even only slightly. That grin was a gift he had not expected, and he was grateful for it.

“What do you dream of?” Aremu asked, his voice low and almost soft. He thought of looking away again, of turning his gaze back to the ship to set Tom at ease, but he did not - not yet - choosing instead to let Tom decide when to do it.

[Tom Cooke]

A Shipyard • The Rose

Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716

The grin spread across Aremu’s face pleased Tom. He hadn’t expected it, but he’d wanted it, when he’d given the quiet kov his own. He felt an odd sense of satisfaction. It kindled something inside him, warmed him up against the rainy cold. Aremu had a benny smile. Still grinning, Tom finished putting up his hair, but a few dark strands escaped, brushed about by the breeze.

It was a gift, too, that Aremu spoke again – Tom hadn’t expected that in the slightest, and he couldn’t’ve anticipated the question. His smile faded, replaced by something more thoughtful. He kept on studying the other man’s face. He didn’t know how to answer, but he wanted to honor the asking.

What did he dream of?

Blood, he thought first, heaving out a sigh. He looked back up at the airship’s hull, studied the glittering scales of the balloon. Wherever you spilt it, sap was a given, if you were Hawke’s man; sap was a given, Tom’d always thought, if you were a man, one way or another. And it built up on you, all that blood. He didn’t know how, but it did. It changed your dreams, and your dreams made you a different man, somehow. It’d always scared Tom, that.

As a lad, he’d seen it more than a few times. The old beggars the boys’d cajole for stories about the lands across the sea, the way they’d laugh and laugh until they didn’t, the way they’d twitch and writhe in their sleep. He’d seen it with Marleigh, most of all. You didn’t want to be the one to wake old Daven up, and they all knew it. One moment he’d be sleeping sound, snorting pleasant dreams through his crooked nose; the next, he’d be a whirl of limbs, a rasp of breath, fists knotted in the first thing he saw. You had to be especially careful if he had his knife at his belt; sometimes, he’d slept with his hand on the pommel.

Tom’d thought all old men woke like that, but he hadn’t been old, not even by natt standards, when it’d started for him. Hadn’t been long after the great flood. He still dreamt of drowning, and that was a mercy, ’cause he didn’t dream of cotting old Cantrell anymore.

Another sigh. Dreams, he thought. He reckoned those wasn’t the kind of dreams as Aremu meant, but he couldn’t help thinking of them. There didn’t seem to be much difference to him; he didn’t know what else to say. Maybe he’d forgot how to dream of good things. Or maybe not.

Tom smiled again. It wasn’t a grin; it was a little, secret kind of smile. “A garden,” he replied, looking back at Aremu. He looked at the passive’s face again, long and hard, and his smile got warmer. “A garden, wi’ sage an’ mint an’ junia. Dirt under the fingernails, an’ the smell of green things, an’ how the light hits the leaves in the mornin’.”

He put his hands back in his pockets, buried them deep, and shivered against another cool breeze. He stayed looking at Aremu for a moment or two longer, that warm smile on his scarred face. Then, he turned to look back at Aremu’s dream of being free, hanging still and quiet against the stars. It wasn’t so hard, this time, to keep looking.

“I reckon I dream of home,” he added, quieter.

[moralhazard]

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Beneath the Eqe Aqawe

Tom did not answer his question right away, but he did not look away either. Aremu watched his face, curious, aware of the faint gleam of moonlight off of the other man’s scars, slivers of silvery memory, of the faint change in those dark eyes, the lessening of the smile on his lips. He wondered what Tom was thinking as the other man turned back to the Eqe Aqawe with a heavy sigh, and was glad to wonder.

Aremu waited; he had turned back to the ship when Tom did, watching the deck now, guessing that Uzoji and Niccolette would not be much longer. But he kept Tom in the corner of his gaze, and when Tom spoke again, he glanced back, and turned slightly to meet Tom’s gaze once more. He was not sure what Tom was looking for in him, and he did not pretend to anything but himself, holding the taller man’s gaze unhesitatingly. He smiled, too – not just Tom’s smile, but the warmth in his voice too, as he spoke softly of a garden.

Home, Tom called it, and Aremu nodded, gently, and turned back to the ship as well. A good dream, Aremu thought, his hands sliding into his pockets, such as they were. His home swayed in the breeze above them, and Aremu was grateful for it. It had not been home, not properly, not for these long months since the end of the year before; it was not so simple as to say that home was where Uzoji was, because it was not, by any means, true. But neither had the Eqe Aqawe felt like home without Uzoji aboard.

Movement, there – dark shapes on the deck above – one figure on the rope ladder, climbing swiftly down to the platform below, waiting there, holding the rope ladder steady as a second emerged, hitching up her long skirt to begin the climb. Aremu did not take his eyes from them, but he spoke again, softly enough that he could not have said if Tom would hear him, letting the breeze lift the words from his mouth. “May His waters always guide you there.”

Uzoji watched Niccolette climb down the swaying rope ladder, moonlight glinting off her calves. He held it steady, and when she was close enough, set his hands on her waist and lifted her down, cheerfully ignoring her half-hearted remonstrations. He hesitated, aware of Aremu and Tom below – aware that they would surely be able to see them – and carefully put himself between Niccolette and them and kissed her.

Just once, but he held it a long moment, through her faint squeak and slow yielding, and she was grinning at him when he pulled away, tracing his fingers through her hair, a faint blush on her cheeks. “Darling?” Niccolette asked.

“Beloved,” Uzoji said, cheerfully. “Shall we?”

He went first on the second ladder as well, skimming down it; Niccolette started as well before he had finished, navigating the metal rungs with one hand, skirt hitched up once more. He stepped off the ladder to the ground and grinned at Aremu and Tom both. Niccolette stepped down behind him and smoothed her skirts. Out of the corner of his eye Uzoji could see her looking at Tom, her lips pursed as she studied him, and she did not bother with a greeting.

Well, Uzoji thought, he had hardly expected her to.

“Here,” Uzoji handed Aremu his holster and gun. He held the other man’s coat as Aremu thanked him and slung the holster crossbody, then handed it back to him to wear once more. Niccolette’s pistol, Uzoji knew, was safely in the pocket of the pale gray cloak she wore over her russet brown dress.

“Anything else you can tell us about what to expect, Tom?” Uzoji asked. He gestured for the other man to take the lead, walking alongside him.

“So much for your night!” Niccolette said to Aremu behind them.

Uzoji swore he could hear Aremu shrug. He glanced back to see Niccolette patting Aremu lightly on the upper arm, and it was a struggle not to smile the way that he wanted to, a struggle to keep his gaze forward and his attention on Tom. Soon, he kept thinking; soon, they would be back in the air where they all belonged. The time between would demand all his attention, but he spared one last pleased glance back at the Eqe Aqawe, the sleek dark silhouette he had carved into the bit of black wood Niccolette had found for him just exactly as he had remembered.

[Tom Cooke]

Breckenridge Refinery • The Rose

Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716

The wind carried a few tatters of Aremu’s voice over to Tom’s ear. It took him a few seconds to put them together, but when he did, that little smile flickered on his face; he shut his eyes, drawing in a deep breath, and opened them again. Above him, the hull of the ship still filled up half the sky, the moonlight glistering on the dark curve of it. Up, up, he thought he saw a shape, now, raising itself above the gunwale: a slim, wavering shape in the gap of stars between the ship and that mant balloon above. Slow-like, the shape split into two, then moved down the ladder to the platform in the moonlight.

Tom didn’t turn his head this time, but he shot a glance in Aremu’s direction, and for the last time, a smile warmed his face. “An’ you t’ yours,” he murmured back, but he reckoned the breeze snatched it away.

Giving a man a piece of yourself was a dangerous business, cause you never knew what he’d do with it. It wasn’t that he’d trusted Aremu; he’d just met the man, after all, and he was golly-born anyway, and you never knew how a scrap’d respond to anything. But Tom liked the thoughtful set of his brow, and he liked the young-looking, old-feeling eyes underneath it, and he liked his smile fair much. He liked that Aremu Ediwo’d made him look at something different — liked his dream of being free — and he didn’t regret what he’d showed him.

It was time to put that man away, Tom reckoned, for long enough to do some bloody work. The two shadows reached the platform and tangled back into one, lingering; then, they started down to the pier. Tom got a glimpse of a skirt, rippling in the wind, and sucked at a tooth. Soon, the two gollies’d both graced the dock with the bottoms of their boots, and Uzoji was handing Aremu a gun.

Tom caught Niccolette’s look at him, and he felt her field as she came into range. Bright and sharp and strong. How could he ever forget? He felt a twinge of fear, but he pushed it down, looking her in the eyes. A couple cheeky greetings sprang into his head, but he reckoned it was best not to rock the boat too much before a job like this one. He just raised his brows, and, when Uzoji turned back to him, all business, he turned to get a move on.

Behind them, Niccolette was chatting with Aremu, almost companionable-like. He resisted the urge to sneak a backward glance; instead, he pulled his coat closer round him and led the little group on through the shipyard.

“Not much, kov, I’m afraid,” he replied. His eyes lingered one last time on the busted-up hull of that poor ship. “We’re headed to Breckenridge Refinery” – he enunciated all proper-like – “run by a Norton Collingwood, now. You ain’t the only one that’s expectin’ a shipment this week, but we ain’t heard from him. Nobody has – on our side of things, leastways.”

Tom shot a significant look at Uzoji. “I don’t know Collingwood close, but I know his right-hand man, an’ Osbourne’s loyal. We ain’t had a problem wi’ Collie before now, neither. This shit’s out of nowhere, an’ it’s a mant fuckin’ blind spot. Could’ve gone over, could be a takeover. Could be anythin’.” He let out a husky laugh. “Best be ready for anythin’, hey? This aetherium shit must be important.”

He fell silent as they neared the guard again. Kov looked like he’d rather’ve been asleep, and he just nodded them through, this time. They were back out into the streets of the Rose, then – quiet streets yet, familiar streets, but all crawling with shadows. Maybe it was just the Hamis weather, but Tom thought he felt a charge on the wet breeze, prickling through the hairs on the backs of his arms, carrying itself along his bones. The wind was picking up, and he turned his collar up against it. Above, in the space between the rooftops, the stars thinned out as they crept to the east; the clouds on the far horizon were building up laoso thick.

He was thinking now that Hullwen hadn’t been enough. The fact that he was thinking about it meant that it sure as hell hadn’t. The knot in his belly wasn’t loosening up, and the coming rain ached in his scars, and he couldn’t banish the bad feeling that was building up in him. The twin press of the Ibutatus’ fields, maybe, was getting on his nerves – alone, Uzoji’s wasn’t too bad, but Tom never liked to be around this much godsdamn woobly. Wasn’t like a wick’s field, neither.

Tom’s careful, deliberate stalk found its way through the back streets of Cantile, the chatter and light of the bars on the main street always just out of sight. If a kov having a smoke in an alleyway took note of them, just a glisten of eyes and a plume of dirty white in the dark, nobody made any noise. A party like theirs didn’t bode well for anyone.

It wasn’t far, carving round Berret Park, to the outskirts of the Rose. The buildings thinned out, and so did the lights, grown sparser and sparser by the street. The sky above them was suddenly a wash of stars, untroubled by the glow of the city; the moonlight echoed off the plumes and twists of the cloudbank to one side, moving faster, now, in a hurry to blanket the rest of the sky. Thunder rolled, distant and muffled, like the thud of feet on the floorboards upstairs.

You saw the smokestacks before you saw anything else. Ciaran’d told Tom once that it was like a little taste of the Soots in Vienda, this place, what with how the flat gray buildings huddled round the forest of towers. The air didn’t smell like salt, here, not like the docks, not even like King’s Court; it smelled like metal and rust and something heavy and greasy and bitter. Today, the sky was empty of smoke, but the ghost of it clung to everything.

Tom got a funny, creeping feeling from all of it, ’cause it was a mant manna different from the last time he’d been here, but he couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was just that it was at night, but the quiet felt different. Tense.

As they approached the old iron gates, he saw a little of the buildings beyond. Mostly dark, but lit windows, here and there. Movement.

“Who’s there?”

The voice was low and rough. Tom’s hand went to the pommel of his dagger at his belt. Squinting through the dark, he saw a bobbing light emerge from the gatehouse, the bulk of a tatty coat, the bottom half of a man’s face. On the other side of the gate, through the spindly bars, a big natt stood with a lantern, staring out at the group of them.

His face was hard to read, pitted with shadows, but there was hostility in his voice. “Ne come closer,” he rasped. “You got business?”

Not the usual welcome, but not what he’d been expecting, neither. Sounded almost like a note of fear in his voice.

[moralhazard]

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Breckenridge Refinery, Outskirts of the Rose

Breckenridge Refinery. Uzoji nodded, slowly, thoughtful. He didn’t know Norton Collingwood personally, but the Rose was small, and one did not buy a house in the wealthiest corner of Quarter Fords without garnering a few invitations to Rose society, such as it was – even, Uzoji thought, when one was quiet about one’s connections to the Brothers. Perhaps especially. The Rose was not a place for glittering balls and waltzes; it was a place for cocktail hours and laughing chatter on cool, pleasant evenings, for open air dinners with plates of fish brought out one by one, for liquor that drifted in from all along the Vein, for people who did not worry quite so much about your antecedents.

Still, he could not put a face to the name. He must have heard some man or woman mention something about Collingwood, but he could not have met him. Uzoji had rather a good memory for faces; he was certain he’d know the man, if he’d seen him. All the same, whatever drifting gossip he’d heard – it had left a good enough impression. Someone out there thought well of Collingwood; he had a vague impression of dignity. Collie, he thought, would not be a nickname the man liked very much, if Uzoji had to make his guess.

“Yes,” Uzoji said, when Tom called aetherium important. He heard a sound that he might have called a snort from anyone other than his lovely wife, somewhere behind them, and tried not to smile, because he did not want Tom to think he was laughing at him. “It is, rather.”

Uzoji knew the streets of the Rose well enough by now. It was a large city and a small one all at once. It was large, Uzoji had always felt, in dreams and scope and in intention, large by the sheer force of its will. And, of course, geographically and in population, quite small. One could have picked the Rose up and dropped it into Thul Ka three times over, and still not filled the city to its brim. But it had a charm to it, a sort of scrappy determination, that Uzoji had been fond of from the start.

Tom led them through the quiet backstreets of Cantile, past the smells that wafted from Berret Park, all the way to the outskirts of the Rose where the factories lay.

“No smoke,” Uzoji said, quietly. A late shipment, suggesting that Collingwood ought to be producing, but no smoke. He glanced back over his shoulder at Niccolette and Aremu. Niccolette shrugged, but Aremu raised his eyebrows, the slightest arch of them. Was it only that they did not keep the factories running at night? Uzoji wondered. It scarcely boded well. He made a slight gesture at Aremu, a flicker of his hand, and the imbala peeled gently off from the rest of the group, melting softly into the night, nearly invisible in his dark coat, his footsteps silent against the ground.

Niccolette edged closer to them, but she stayed behind, taking a position halfway between Tom and Uzoji, and Uzoji knew she would keep a close watch behind them, one small white hand tucked neatly into her pocket.

“Good evening,” Uzoji said, with an easy smile. He doubted Tom or Niccolette would be smiling, but that was well enough; better that the three of them draw the light of the bobbing lantern and all its associated attention, as Aremu looked for a spot to climb the fence in the silent dark. He held as asked, but as if it had been his own idea, as if there had been no spot where he would have preferred to stop.

“We’ve birds enough,” Uzoji grinned, playing a coin over his fingers, letting it catch the light of the lantern, and tucking it back casually away, out of sight. “And a thing or two to discuss with a man who knows what he’s about.” He tucked his hands into his pockets, and waited, casually, as if nothing about the situation struck him as remotely odd, as if he had not even noticed the soft glimmer of fear in the man’s voice.

As if, Uzoji thought, all of this didn’t set the hairs on his arms pricking straight up beneath his coat.

[Tom Cooke]

Breckenridge Refinery • The Rose

Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716

Like a charge in the air. Tom breathed it in, damp and dark and full of dread. The back of his neck just kept on prickling. He didn’t let it show; he kept his face slack and grim, heavy-jawed and heavy-browed, the face of a man who wouldn’t hesitate to kill if that was what his betters told him to do. He kept his feet planted apart, kept his eyes straight ahead, fixed on the bobbing light across the gate. When he caught a flicker of pale movement, felt a shift in the woobliness around them – Niccolette, he reckoned, moving just a pina manna closer – he didn’t so much as twitch, though a shiver threatened to crawl its way up his back. When Uzoji spoke, he didn’t turn to look at him.

He didn’t let his eyes wander, neither, when he saw another sort of movement in the corners of them. This one was dark on dark, with no heavy galdor field to herald its passage.

He ground his teeth, feeling his headache start up again, a dull throb between his temples. His hand was clammy on the hilt of Ish’s knife. He knew now for a fact the Hullwen hadn’t been enough.

At the glint of gold in Uzoji’s hand, the natt had raised his lantern and leaned in a little. The light painted a face out of the pooling shadow, for just a few moments. It was a long, thin face, glittering with grey-white stubble, with a crooked nose to rival Tom’s; a pair of dark eyes peered out of it, glistening. The twist of his lips, the deep hollows in his cheeks – it was all fair hard to read. Those dark eyes flicked up to Uzoji’s face as the coin disappeared; the craggy brow knotted.

There was another long silence. Tom heard a husky crunch, like the shifting of heavy boots in gravel. The wind picked up, cutting-cold and wet, ruffling his collar. He thought he felt a raindrop on his cheek, then on his nose. A soft boom sounded, far-off enough it could’ve been over the Mahogany; he thought he saw a flicker of something in the mass of dark clouds on his periphery. At the noise, the man blinked, lowering his lantern, and most of his face fell upward out of sight.

“I don’t know you.” Louder than before, this time. “An’ I ain’t been told t’ let you in, so I ain’t lettin’ you in. Ye chen?” Tom thought he heard something like panic wavering its way through that last bit, cracking hoarsely through the Tek. He sucked at a tooth.

He was sure, leastways, the kov hadn’t seen Aremu. He was itching to turn his head, to move his eyes, to look for the shape of him in the dark. Where was he? What was he doing? Tom doubted he could’ve spot him, even if he had. But his skin was crawling, and the press of the field beside him – and, worse, the bright swell of the one behind – made a flock of birds flap their wings in his gut. He swallowed dryly.

“Keep your fuckin’ birds,” the natt spat, finally. He started to turn away from the gate. The shadows of the bars stretched and leaned on the ground.

[moralhazard]

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Breckenridge Refinery, Outskirts of the Rose

Aremu slipped away into the dark, and made himself at home. He eased his way along the edges of the fence, and looked for the right sort of place - far enough that Uzoji’s voice was scarcely an echo, far enough that the gleam of the lantern was distant.

He grasped hold of the metal, and began to climb; hand over hand, he pulled himself up the metal, booted toes keeping him stable against the edge of it. It was strength and strength alone to see him through; the sort of momentum that might hurl him over it would make too much noise.

At the top, then, pressed close to the heavy spikes that crowned it, and Aremu did not hesitate, but eased himself over and through - slid down, hands cooled loosely around the posts; he let go without shifting his weight against it, and landed in a low, loose crouch. He held still and silent, ducked against the ground, waiting through one - two - three beats of his heart, in silence still.

No alarms, no cries split the night.

Aremu rose and eased away from the fence - and made his way back towards the others, back through the dark.

Uzoji waited, smiling just slightly, his eyes fixed on the guard as the man watched him, no more than dimly lit against the dark. He didn’t look sideways, didn’t even think to make the faintest check - just stood and waited, aware of the faint shuffle of Tom’s old coat, of the sharpness of Niccolette’s field mingling with his own.

The guard began to turn away, refusing to let them in; he spat to keep their birds, lantern casting a shadow against the ground.

“Wait,” Uzoji said, a little loudly. “Surely we can come to some kind of agreement?” He tapped the coin against the bars this time, still smiling; a second joined it, and they clanked softly together.

“I told you,” the guard said, turning back with a scowl etched into his face. “Don’t make no difference if it’s one or two, ye chen? Keep yer fuckin’ -“

Aremu was there, then, the hard planes of his face glinting as he glanced out from behind the human’s back. From the way the man stiffened, Uzoji could guess Aremu had something against his back, whether a gun or a knife.

“I’ll keep them then,” Uzoji said, and grinned. “I think he’s saying to let us in.”

It was a crumpled handful of one of Uzoji’s handkerchiefs that they shoved into the man’s mouth, tied behind his head to hold it in place. Aremu knelt professionally on his back and tied his hands while Uzoji did his ankles; Niccolette watched silently, arms crossed over her chest, fingers tapping lightly against her upper arm. They left him curled on his side like a bug in the shadow of the little hut that served for a guard tower.

Uzoji shut the gate firmly behind them, and locked it, sliding the key into his pocket. He turned to the looming factory then, studying it through the dark night.

Niccolette knelt and murmured something in the guard’s ear, pulsing her field once. She smiled, then rose and followed after them.

“Taking precautions?” Uzoji asked, lightly, his voice soft.

Niccolette just grinned, revealing white teeth behind her painted-red lips.

It was wonderful, Uzoji thought, to be back on his feet again, to be with his wife in her element once more. Just then, he could not think of anywhere he would rather be.

They set off again, Uzoji and Tom in the lead once more, with Niccolette and Aremu behind.

[Tom Cooke]

Breckenridge Refinery • The Rose

Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716

It happened in what felt like an instant. Aremu was fast and quiet, a shadow in the dark, and the air round him, Tom thought, was empty as a natt’s – an advantage galdori didn’t have. He’d stood still when Uzoji’d approached the gate, the coins glinting in his long, dark fingers, tap-tap against the iron; he’d stood still, ne stiffening, ne even taking his eyes off the old man’s half-lit face, when he froze, when Aremu Ediwo’s handsome face appeared in the darkness behind him. Tom stood still, and he didn’t say a word, except he smiled just a little, a wicked, mischievous sort of smile, and he cast a wink at Aremu.

Soon enough, they were all of them inside the gates, and the poor kov was curled up on his side like some sort of laoso bug. Tom watched, his heavy face impassive, as Niccolette knelt and filled up his space with her bright, sharp field and whispered something in his ear. He was still impassive when she got to her feet and turned, that smile playing out on her lips.

Uzoji grinned back at her like there was nothing he’d rather see in Vita. Tom scratched the back of his neck, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, feeling the warm, woobly wash of those two fields against him. He reckoned he’d rather be with them than against them, but this wasn’t half how he’d wanted his night to go. Godsdamn voo.

He glanced over, caught the glisten of the kov’s eyes in the dark before they left him. Letting out a silent sigh through his teeth, Tom raised his brows and shrugged, as if to say, epaemo. Your bad luck, bein’ on the other side of that gate, an’ bein’ too much of a damn fool to let us in.

Then, with a quick nod at the gollies and the passive, he kicked himself into motion.

They continued moving through the dark. There wasn’t much sound but the low crunch of gravel underneath boots, and even that, muted by their soft footfalls – and otherwise, the ruffle of the wind in their jackets and coats like the sea-breeze in the canvas of sails, and then the soft patter of misting rain. Tom could feel it, soft against his face; he could feel the chill of it aching through the twist of each scar, and he could feel the icy tickle of little droplets in his eyelashes, in his hair. Thunder, again, a distant boom, a spark across the sky. The wind driving sideways, then curling into nothing.

Looking up, he expected to see smoke carried on it, spread out above Breckenridge like a black flag. He remembered coming here when he was young, when the place was still new. He remembered the blanket of it over the cracked, scattered streets at the edge of the Rose, the way the workers would shoo the lads away from the gates. No smog, now.

No smog, but the dark columns of the smokestacks loomed larger, now. The pack of them stalking through the sprawl of the refinery yard. Now and then, the crack of lightning, the watery moonlight through the clouds, would catch on brass lettering, over the doors of dark, empty warehouses – Storage A, B, C… – over the gates to the plant, long, half-legible words Tom didn’t know. Light glinting on big metal tanks, crawling snares of piping, crooked, rusted fences.

Most of the buildings were just dark shapes against the horizon, some so dark you could barely see them against the clouds. But then he spotted the faint dot of a light, high up ahead, on the second or third storey of the big building he knew was the main refinery floor. Some kind of office? He didn’t know. He shot a glance backward, a troubled look at Uzoji, Aremu, Niccolette. The wind picked up, and he thought he heard a strange echo of noise, like voices.

Wasn’t just on the upper floor, he realized as they got closer, approaching the small side door. Between the cracks, he glimpsed a soft, warm glow, like a little lanternlight cast out over a great, dark space. They drew nearer and nearer, almost to the side of the building, and the noises got louder; they took shapes, soft and dim as the light, low voices echoing under high ceilings, wide, empty floors. Furtive voices.

“Merlo’ll have sent ’em away by now –”

“An’ what if they ain’t goin’ away? You think of that?”

“Well, what the fuck d’you suggest we do?”

“We got to get help –”

“We’ll handle it,” croaked the first voice, raising in pitch and volume.

“Oes, ’cause yer fuckin’ handlin’ it jus’ fine!” chimed in a third voice, thin and nasally, with a twinge of a spoke’s accent. “What in th’ hells is goin’ to make the lot of ye mung natt realize yer on borrowed time?”

Those last words cut out a long pause. Finally, the first voice grumbled, barely-audible, “Collie’ll be back on his feet in no time…”

Lingering by the door, hunched in his heavy coat, Tom half-turned, raising an eyebrow at Uzoji. ‘We goin’ in?’ he mouthed, silent, glittering dark eyes moving from Uzoji to Aremu to Niccolette. The silence inside was becoming conspicuous; the hairs on the back of his arms were beginning to prickle.

[moralhazard]

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Breckenridge Refinery, Outskirts of the Rose

Uzoji held just a little distant from the door. He held, and he listened intently, his head cocked lightly to the side. He dampened his field, deliberately; brought the flow of the mona in closer to himself, letting them swirl around him, and he listened. He glanced at the side door, lightly shut, light spilling out through its cracks – up, at the side of the building, where a staircase wound its way up to a door on what looked like a second story.

Uzoji glanced back to Niccolette, and tapped his fingers to his ear, lightly.

Niccolette eased backwards – one, two, three steps. Uzoji could just barely feel the brush of her field against his, and her voice was so low he could barely hear her as she began to cast. He felt a faint etheric tug in the air – and then it guttered out, and Niccolette grimaced. Too low, Uzoji thought, his eyes locked on his wife. Backlash…? He waited for a moment, but he could still feel the brush of her field against his, as sharp and strong as ever, the living mona shifting in the air around her.

She was, Uzoji realized abruptly, not the only one who was worried. He knew she was; he had seen it in her eyes in the ship, in the sharpness of her voice as she yelled at him for interrupting her. She was worried. And he was too – not for himself, but for her. The moment he recognized the feeling, he could master it; he took the knowledge of it into himself, and he acknowledged the fairness of it. It was not nothing they had been through, and recovery was not only physical in nature. He accepted his fears, and he did not let them rule him.

Niccolette lifted her head to him, and grimaced, green eyes meeting his. But she was unbowed, undaunted, and before he could breathe a word she was casting again, just a little bit louder this time, still not more than just the vague sense of monite even from where he stood. This time, the hazy energy that streamed from her sank into his ears; Uzoji held still through the sharp shock of pain as his hearing adjusted, and turned his focus to the building before him, listening intently to the sounds of breathing drifting through the door, the sounds of shuffling feet coming from within.

He extended a hand, and held his fingers out one by one – four, he thought, or maybe five, and he lifted his pinky and wriggled it slightly. Five, if he had to guess – but the spell was already fading, and Uzoji lowered his hand back down.

He gestured to the staircase with his chin, catching Niccolette’s eye first, and then Aremu’s. He could see the hesitation on the imbala’s face in a flicker of moonlight, but Aremu didn’t do more than look at him, and he was already turning to the stairs, Niccolette following after him. Neither wasted time, climbing the metal stairs as quickly as they could without making noise, Aremu more than a little faster than Niccolette.

Uzoji turned his gaze back to the door – met Tom’s eyes, once, with a faint nod. He grinned, then, and strode forward, opening the door and walking straight into the factory, as confident as if he had been invited in.

There were five men sitting inside – no fields to any of them, even the one with the slender, lean look of a spoke. A parse, then, if Uzoji had to guess, with red hair tangled into dreadlocks. Four humans alongside him, all men; none, Uzoji thought with distinct pleasure, quite so large as Tom, but none either that Uzoji would quite want to meet in a fistfight.

Light spilled from a lantern by the door, illuminating the little circle of them; distantly, overhead, a walkway tucked against the wall gleamed in the dark. No more than shapes gleamed out of the darkness beyond, faint glimmering echoes of enormous, silent machines. There was a slightly uneasy feeling to the mona in the air, some faint lingering echo of discomfort.

“Good evening,” Uzoji said, with a smile and the faintest indication of a bow; he didn’t actually bend forward, but something in his shoulders, in the tuck of his waist, made it very nearly appear as if he had. He carefully did not listen for the click of the door opening above, did not look to see if Niccolette and Aremu had made it up the stairs – were, even now, advancing into position on the walkway. “How’s Collingwood?” He asked, raising his eyebrows, giving every indication that he had a perfect right to know, glancing between the men. “Is he feeling any better?”

Rolls

Hearing spell attempt 1: SidekickBOTToday at 3:43 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (1) = 1
Backlash (1-3) or failure (4-6) and severity: SidekickBOTToday at 3:43 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (4) = 4
Hearing spell attempt 2: SidekickBOTToday at 3:43 PM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (2) = 2

[Tom Cooke]

Breckenridge Refinery • The Rose

Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716

Tom hadn’t expected casting; he hadn’t even heard the sound of Niccolette’s voice. It was the tug in the air he felt first, that funny flattening, a weight on his skin like a film of grease. He looked between Uzoji and Niccolette, waiting. The weight dispersed from the air, not half having got to the kind of woobly a proper spell made, and Niccolette frowned. Tom kept his face blank, careful-like. He tried to ignore the tightening in his jaw.

This time, he watched her lips move, and from what he felt in the air, the spell must’ve come off all right. Tom loosened up, but not by much. He tried to keep his face impassive, but he felt himself grimace at every finger of Uzoji’s that uncurled in the air. At four, they’d’ve been matched; he didn’t like five at all. He tried to remind himself they had one and a half gollies more than the kov in there – he reckoned a wick counted for half a golly, usually – but he didn’t know for sure, having known such as Murko.

Hadn’t been enough, that Hullwen, he thought, watching the swift, silent shapes of Aremu and then Niccolette climb the steps. Hadn’t been enough. Too sober.

So be it, he thought, replacing all his thoughts with the mantra. Uzoji made to push through the door, and Tom rolled his shoulders. Not enough time to prepare, neither, but then, there never was. That was for the best, probably. You didn’t have time to think about what you might be on the edge of losing.

Tom’s eyes adjusted to the soft light inside fair quick, and he studied the five men as he stepped to Uzoji’s side. At first, he didn’t understand; he saw a wick leaned up against the wall, not a natt, lanky, a tangle of red dreads, a scattering of freckles, but he didn’t feel a glamour. Then, he knew – parse – and he didn’t let the relief tickle his expression.

One, the biggest, he found his eyes lingering on, a big, mousy-headed young man on a low crate he’d repurposed as a chair. He wasn’t big as Tom, not by far, but he had a stocky, heavy look about him. There was something funny about the fresh, baby-faced head sitting atop those broad, well-muscled shoulders; there wasn’t a single scar on his face. His head jerked up as Uzoji and Tom strolled in, and those baby-blue eyes went wide.

Tom didn’t mirror the galdor’s bow, and he didn’t say a damn thing; he stood beside and a little behind him, and, locking eyes with baby-face for a moment, crossed his big arms.

“Evenin’,” scraped a hostile voice, and Tom recognized it from earlier. One of the natt stood up, the shortest of them, a grey-headed old man with a sour twist of a face. He moved with a sort of careless, cavalier walk to stand across from Uzoji. His lip curled back from yellowed teeth. “None o’ your fuckin’ business, as a matter of fact.”

Baby-face looked at him. “Rowland,” he said in a high, smooth voice.

For a moment, Rowland stared hard at him. “What’s that, Aiden, lad? You goin’ to let this toffin an’ his pet come in here an’ jus’ –”

“Dze!” The wick croaked with laughter, shrugging his skinny shoulders.

“Shut your fuckin’ face,” snapped Rowland. He turned his dark eyes back on Uzoji – and, to Tom’s surprise, took another step forward. Close enough he must’ve felt the edges of Uzoji’s field against his skin. He didn’t back down; he squared his shoulders sharper, and he raised his head, and he set his jaw.

The two other natt were standing, now, one having got up after the other, though neither of them’d looked as if they was in a hurry to. One of them was a little older than Aiden, and a fair bit smaller; he had a head of mousy, messy hair, and he was on the scrawny side. The other was middle-aged, and he was looking about himself occasionally, furtive and secret-like, looking into the dark expanse of the refinery building behind him as if he was planning on slipping off and disappearing himself among the big, cluttered shadows. Neither of them spoke.

And overhead, Tom knew – ‘course, he knew better than to look, but he could picture the vague shapes of them on the walkway. Even if he had looked, he didn’t think he’d’ve seen them. He thought of Niccolette Ibutatu’s field up there in the shadows, bright in a way that had nothing to do with light, and he hoped for the sake of these poor men that this little caoja didn’t get violent.

Rowland was still staring at Uzoji. “Collie’s one o’ ours,” he spat finally. “Ours. You got that? An’ he ain’t leavin’ here without us, an’ you ain’t gettin’ to him without goin’ through me.” He jabbed at his chest with a gnarled thumb. “You got that? You with me, lad?” he shot sideways.

Baby-face looked more than a little reluctant, but with a creak of the crate, he stood and brought himself up to his full height, which was a handful of inches below Tom’s. Still, he cleared his throat, and he repeated in that high voice, “You ain’t gettin’ to Collie without goin’ through us.”

The parse laughed so hard he fell to a gurgling cough. “Fuck,” he wheezed.

A jingle sounded somewhere in the dark, barely-audible at first. After a moment, a mottled, furry shape could be seen edging round the lantern-light, a brass bell glinting at its throat. A tortoiseshell cat with long, tangly fur crouched at some distance. It watched the gathering of men, its pupils large and dark in the dimness.