[Memory, PM to Join] Never Close the Door

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

Aremu breathed through the silence and the cold, and he studied the distant horizon, invisible in the darkness. He held, and he felt the weight of the still-heavy clothing against him, the waistcoat squeezing him tight. There was still an awareness of where the collar had been, at his throat, lingering and tight, and the sleeves he’d rolled up seemed to throb against his arms.

He knew, if he waited, if he watched long enough, if he would see dawn break over the edges of the water. It would rise, there, somewhere in the distance, wouldn’t it? No matter how long and dark the night, if he sat and waited it out, he’d see the sun. In the Islands, he could pass sleepness nights picking out the prick of constellations against the sky; it was pleasant, sometimes, to crawl out of the window of his room, to climb the roof, and lay on his back, gazing up and naming the stars to himself. They looked the same as they had above Thul’Amat, a decade and a half ago, on those rare nights when they were clear enough to see. He knew they had official names, but he had never learned them – willfully, at this point. It would be easy enough to get a book on astronomy, but he liked the constellations he had named – he always had.

Tom said his name, and Aremu felt himself stiffen again, taut and tense. Grateful wasn’t the word he’d expected from Tom, although he couldn’t have said what he’d thought would be there instead. The way Tom said it – as if Aremu did not want to stay. He caught the breath that threatened to shudder in his throat, and he wondered.

Trust was a heavy burden to lay on him, Aremu thought, even on such a small thing, and yet oddly he felt lighter than he had. He took a deep breath, slowly. Yes, it was heavy, that trust, but strangely it felt as if he could rest upon it, rather than the other way around. Slowly, Aremu turned back, graceful and easy; he did not even hold onto the railing.

It was dark, and from even this distance Tom was all shadows – the heavy fall of his dark hair around his head, deeper around his dark eyes, lighter at the curve of his mouth – the bulk of him, interrupted by his shirt, more like an echo than anything, cast yellow by the distant streetlights. It was hard to tell, but Aremu thought he had his hands in his lap, as if he, too, needed something to hold on to. He wondered what it’d be like to touch that thick dark hair of his, and he thought of how he’d found the other man. Aremu swallowed, a little harder.

“I came because I’d like to know you better too,” Aremu said, softly. He did not apologize again; he didn’t think Tom needed it of him, and he did not wish to cheapen the one he had already offered. "I'll - come."

Slowly, no more quickly than he’d walked away, he stepped back along the narrow edge of the boards, and he stopped, close to Tom. Then, tentatively, he shifted just a little closer, and when he sat again – there was space between them, still, but less than there had been. He didn’t shy away from the gentle brush of his knee against the other man’s thigh when he sat, but he didn’t linger on it either, and even when he finished the motion, there was only a little space between them.

The only problem, Aremu thought, was the waistcoat; it was well enough for sitting at a dinner table, straight-backed and rigid, but not comfortable in the least when perched on a railing. Aremu undid the buttons with quick deft fingers; it came loose easily enough, fluttering softly in the breeze. Aremu sighed, arching his back lightly, and finding a more comfortable way to sit. He tugged at the collar of the shirt, and then gave up and undid the buttons there as well, just the first few, just enough that there was no pressure on him but his own.

“It won’t trouble me if you ask,” Aremu offered, softly, and it was his turn to be just barely audible over the lapping waves below, the creak of the wood, the distant hum of the nightlife of the Rose. No, he thought; perhaps he wasn’t done apologizing, not just yet, and if it was a lie, he thought it was a worthwhile one. “If – if there’s something I can’t… I’ll tell you,” that, he thought, was truth, and he was content to find the balance between them, as narrow as the ledge beyond the railing.

[Tom Cooke]

The Waterfront • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

The blurry shape of Aremu turned. Before he could even feel relief, Tom found himself wondering what it’d be like. It took everything he had to keep looking out toward the horizon; he wanted to trace those graceful lines with his eyes, to imagine.

Tom’d been a lad, once, a lad that could slip round underfoot in crowded Voedale, who could stick grubby little hands in pockets and purses without attracting notice. He’d grown up fast, and he’d been clumsy for awhile – at thirteen, fourteen, banging his head against too-low doorframes – and then he’d learned to be graceful again, slow, over the good part of a decade. But he couldn’t balance himself on a parapet, or climb up a rickety metal stairwell without shaking the frame. For a moment, he shut his eyes and imagined what it’d be like to feel compact, every bit of you purposeful: to weave weightless up a tangle of rigging, to see a navigable landscape in the tiniest of ledges. In complete control.

I’d like to know you better too, he said, and Tom opened his eyes and sighed deeply. He felt the same grateful warmth he’d felt when Aremu’d taken his offer of a seat, but – a twinge of confusion, a flush of embarrassment. Tom saw him moving slowly back along the railing.

He thought about the way Aremu’d said that word, whole. Then, his brow furrowing, he thought about how he’d told him he wouldn’t hurt him; then, he thought about the slow steps he’d taken away, and the way he’d held himself apart in the shipyard a month ago, and by the door in the refinery, and in the reactor, and in – and something Tom’d taken for granted took itself apart in his head, and started to rearrange itself. It was a strangely awful realization, that maybe it’d never been about him at all.

Then Aremu sat back down a pina manna closer than he’d been before. Tom looked over at him once, as he was sitting, just as their legs brushed, and smiled warmly.

He didn’t watch, but he could see Aremu undoing his waistcoat beside him, and he felt him shift and find a more comfortable shape to sit in. Seemed to Tom there was something easier about the space between them, even small as it was; he felt himself shifting, too, loosening muscles he hadn’t even known he’d tensed, ’til he told his heart he didn’t need them wound. If the passive’d laid something heavy in the air between them, he couldn’t feel it anymore in the occasional brush of his shoulder, his arm.

What was there, then, in that small space? The salt-sea breeze, and the hoarse croak of gulls, and maybe some nerves. Tom was soft-headed with the drink; that was why he was thinking of such things. He realized he still felt antsy, and there was still a lot of not-knowing, but it didn’t bother him so much.

Aremu’s voice was fair quiet, and Tom didn’t look at him when he made his offer. He sat looking out at the ripple of lights on the water, some moving, some winking. He realized he didn’t know quite what he meant, you can ask – about It? About him? About anything? He half wanted to put him off and not ask anything, or ask something innocuous; he almost did, thinking it’d make him more comfortable. But he wondered, for the first time, if Aremu wanted him to try and understand, and he wondered if that’d be worth the uncomfortable.

Sucking at a tooth, he had to think what to ask. It wasn’t easy; he had to ask himself why he was asking, in the first, and he reckoned that was a better place to start. “I want to – treat you with respect,” he said.

There was an uncertain pause; he grappled with words.

He tucked his hair behind his ear and, having got it out of the way, looked at Aremu. “There’s a word for folk like you, in Mugrobi, ain’t there?” It felt selfish, making him explain. But passive felt like Anaxas, felt like Brunnhold and gating, and scrap was metal you didn’t know what to do with.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

What words, Aremu wondered, did Tom know? Passive? Halfsie? Scrap?

Passive. Aremu could not but hear the word gated before it, more often than not. Or, worse – he thought of Niccolette’s sharp voice, trying to be kind, as she explained to him that the Bastian police had a unit devoted to hunting down passives. Being kind, he thought; it was not an unhelpful thing to know. He wondered, sometimes, if he was the reason they had not gone to Florne; he thought not, not only, but he was not sure.

Halfsie. Scrap. He had been called both, and more than once. He did not like them – he could not like them – but how could he be angry with someone for calling him what he was? A galdor, without honor, without the mona – half was generous, was it not? He was not half a man, but rather none at all. Scrap – like leavings, and he thought of bits of metal shaved off of something larger and grander, of crumbs on the edge of a plate.

But those terms too had their associations, and it was not the meaning so much as the intent. When someone called him a scrap, it was usually because they meant to make him feel small or because they thought of him that way; no matter that he was.

Niccolette had all but ripped the head off of Willie for saying it, once, early in the Anaxi’s time on the ship – Willie had said it casually, Aremu thought, not meaning any harm, the same way he’d said passive before. Aremu had thought she’d been asleep; she’d been curled up in one of the chairs on the deck, with a book half out of her lap, and she had shot up – that field of hers had rippled out across the deck – he had heard her curse, before that, Aremu thought, but not quite so creatively.

The ship had been tense for days, and Aremu had gone to Uzoji to apologize, although Uzoji had refused him. Niccolette had not backed down. Willie, Aremu thought, had never said scrap again, at least not where any of his shipmates could hear it.

And Tom – Aremu let himself think of how it would be like to hear the word on his breathy voice. But he hadn’t said it - respect, Tom had said instead. Aremu was not sure what it meant to Tom, but to him it was a warm sort of word, and it wrapped around him – draped itself over his shoulders.

“Imbala,” Aremu said, slowly and carefully, and there had been scarcely a pause before he answered, and no reluctance about it. He met Tom’s gaze, and smiled, shining a little of that warmth back at him, letting it grow in the space between them. “For one,” he lifted his hand to his chest, and his fingers shifted against the fabric of the shirt, before he lowered it again, back to rest against his legs. “Imbali, for many.”

He did not want to tell Tom that imbala came from a Mugrobi word meaning unable. He thought that the difference between meaning and intention would be hard to convey aloud; he didn’t want to fumble over it, or to leave Tom uncertain about what Aremu wanted. It was as true as they all were, and it was kinder than the rest. Imbala was what he was, and unable was what he was too, but the words had diverged, somewhere along the way, and the meanings weren’t so simple, not for either.

Aremu could have said more, but he held quiet instead; he was not sure whether there was more than Tom wished to ask, that he wanted to work his way up to. He did want to force him, if he would rather not know, but – waiting again, Aremu thought. This time, he wasn’t so sure that it would be better if Tom let him go. Selfishly, he did not want him to. Aremu didn’t look away, either, although the smile hadn’t lasted; he thought he could face it, whatever might or might not be, with the warmth of that respect still holding him close.

[Tom Cooke]

The Waterfront • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

Imbala,” repeated Tom, careful. Im-baah-lah, it came out, and he couldn’t half wrangle in the looseness of that vowel, or temper how his tongue didn’t quite want to let the last consonant go. “Imbali,” he repeated after a moment, smoother. Wasn’t that the way it sounded in his voice frustrated him, exactly — but there was an intent, almost troubled look to his face, a crooked line between his eyebrows. Like a lad that’s suddenly fair serious about learning his letters.

Aremu’s voice did something different with the word; he was conscious of it, though he never could’ve told you how or why. He did something different with every word, even Tom’s name; there was something softer about the consonants, something as lilted, almost, in the vowels. But this was his word, and he’d said it slow, though not like Tom was a mung — just slow, so he could know it better.

Imbala for one, he’d said; imbali for many. “Are there… many?” Tom asked after a short pause. Aremu was looking at him, now, and he was looking at Aremu back, his dark eyes intent.

It wasn’t the question Tom meant to ask, not really. There were never many passives, he knew, not anywhere; everybody knew that, even Clark. That was why it worked, sending them all to Brunnhold and the one in Bastia, and the one in Hox. Mostly they didn’t bother rounding them up in the Rose, far as Tom could tell, though the Seventen here didn’t much bother with anything, and the King only cared insofar as it furthered his interests.

If they didn’t gate them, though? In Mugroba? There’d be more of them, Tom thought. He’d heard tell of passive galdori merchants and the like; somebody’d told him they was treated just like other gollies, or at least, in every way you could be a jent without poetry. Plenty of galdori didn’t use voo every day, or even fair often at all. He reckoned you had to be able to get all sorts of learning at those schools, not just magic; he reckoned they taught you your accounts, at least, thinking of the old kov that owned the flats where Meggie lived. But even Mr. Bergamaschi had a field, which meant he must’ve cast sometimes.

He’d never questioned it, but now he thought about it. Imbali. Imbala, imbalance. Distractedly, he thought of Aremu, walking one foot in front of the other, silent, back along the railing. He wondered, not for the first time, what happened, when he — and he tried to put it out of his head.

Tom felt disturbed, though he couldn’t’ve said why. It was like he’d made a connection in his heart between two things he couldn’t see, but he could see Aremu in front of him. He could follow the line of his cheekbone, caught by a wash of pale yellow light; he could see the shadows of his eyelashes when he blinked. He was conscious that he was studying that face now, unabashed, with great interest, and he hoped Aremu didn’t mind; he felt like he’d given him permission with that brief smile, but he still hoped he didn’t mind.

He worried those thoughtful eyes could see through to the heart of him, and he didn’t know he wanted it seen. He knew the imbala knew him to be ignorant, and he reckoned Aremu knew the sorts of things that filled up the gaps when real knowing wouldn’t do.

He was conscious, suddenly, too, of his big hands folded demurely in his lap.

It wasn’t a long pause between his questions; they were tangled together, after all. “Are you from Thul Ka?” The you felt harsh in his mouth, personal, but he pushed on. “What’s it like — for you? Wi’ your dream of bein’ free,” he said gently, and smiled just a little soft, sad smile; and he knew what kind of smile it was, ‘cause he felt a prickle of anxiety, and he had to resist the urge to glance back at the street behind them.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

Tom repeated it back to him, as carefully as Aremu had offered it up, slow and broad. It was not a word he heard often without a Mugrobi accent, imbala, and never before with one like Tom’s. He could not have said why he smiled at the sound if it, but he knew the answer in his chest.

“Yes,” Aremu said, softly, in response to Tom’s question. What was many? How many passives would Tom have seen, in all his life? How many men? Aremu didn’t need the answers to those questions to know the truth, and he could not bring himself to reassure the other man with a lie. By any standard in the Six Kingdoms, Mugroba had many imbali.

Tom was studying him, his face, closely now, without hesitation. Aremu could not but wonder what he saw in it. There were many things that men might see in him; there were many types of looks he was used to.

He thought - by Mugrobi standards, he was not displeasing, the curve of his cheekbone and the fullness of his lip. It would have been nice to think - an Anaxi -

But Aremu had spent more time than he cared to remember studying his own face, and it was not the symmetry of himself he had looked for. He had searched it for some sign, some way to tell that he was... did Tom want to find that, now? Aremu was sure that it was not there, but he wondered if Tom knew that.

These thoughts took him away from himself, and dampened that warmth a little more. He wondered again if he had been right to bring all this up, if it had not been better left to stay beneath the surface. He thought again of Tom, of the careful way he had said imbala.

There had been heartbeats between his answer and Tom’s words, but he could not have said how many. He was abruptly aware that he was studying Tom just as intently as the other man had been studying him, and he turned the question around on himself. What was he looking for? What did he think he could find, beneath the traces of silvery scars, the heavy brow? And there, the dark eyes that seemed to lift and crinkle at the corner, in a smile so tender Aremu felt heat rising on his neck once more.

“I’m from Thul Ka,” Aremu wanted to look away more than he could bear; he did not. He wanted to reach out and touch Tom’s hand with his; he did not do that either. This was Anaxas, he reminded himself. As if he could forget, with the gleam of Tom’s tanned skin in the pale yellow light, the curve of his hair, fluttering soft and thick in the breeze.

It was a startlingly intimate question, for how broad it was. What’s it like for you, Tom had asked. To be an imbala? To be - a scrap, a leaving, the shavings-off of a galdor? No, Aremu thought, no. To live in Thul Ka?

“I did not know, always,” Aremu was not sure if the clarification needed to be made, here, but it felt important. “For my first ten years, I thought...” there was nothing tender in this smile, and he lowered his gaze slightly, gazing down at Tom’s hands, rather than his own.

Aremu licked his lips against the sudden feeling of dryness, and cleared his throat, softly. He was careful to keep himself a little apart from Tom, not to close the scant inches of space between them, as if it still mattered.

“Thul Ka is the largest city in the world,” Aremu said, and it wasn’t hard to smile again, or to look back up at Tom. “You could fit the Rose into it four times over, at least. There’s so much life there, amidst sandstorms and flooding, and heat that tries to cook you alive. Humans, wicks, galdori, and - yes, imbali too. Anything you want to buy or sell, anything at all, you can find it there and more than once, and you can fight with a merchant over the cost.”

“Except...” Aremu shrugged, lightly, and some of the warmth in his voice faded. “Except being free, I suppose. Maybe it’s because one can’t put a price on it,” he trailed off, then, into silence. He was not sure if he had answered the question, in the end. He was still not sure, for all his words, what the question had been.

“And you?” Aremu asked, softly. Tom had not offered, no, but Aremu - pushed, gently, tentatively, and he felt a little frisson run through him. He smiled, soft, and found himself searching Tom’s face again. “Are you from the Rose?”

[Tom Cooke]

The Waterfront • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

I didn’t know, he wanted to say, inexplicably.

Wasn’t all true he hadn’t known; he might’ve guessed, not that he’d ever cared to. But he’d never thought, not for a minute in his life, where scraps – where passives came from. He knew golly lads and lasses didn’t have fields, not ’til ten or so, and you almost never saw a teenaged galdor. Tom knew they sent them off to school when they got to be old enough to cast, and that was when they got woobly, one way or another.

So then: you spent your first ten years a golly, all cushy and toffin, and then – when you spoke your first verse of poetry, then it all went to hell, and – Tom swallowed tightly. He was glad when Aremu turned that brittle smile away from him; he felt the imbala’s eyes on his hands, and one of them twitched in his lap. He heard Aremu clear his throat, soft.

But he found he could smile again when Aremu did, and it wasn’t hard to let his soft, lilting voice carry him back away.

He’d’ve been grateful for any answer he got; that’d been the point of the question – to see how Aremu’d answer, to see what he’d focus on and what he’d avoid – as much as what he’d actually say. A portrait of Thul Ka, the hands of the Vein (if the Rose was its heart), was an unexpected gift; and oes, Tom was damned grateful.

He was drifting on the Low Tide, now, warm against the chill breeze coming off the bay; he could let the salt-slick street and the night and its distant clamor, now so tsuter unwelcome, melt away. Sandstorms, flooding, heat that tries to cook you alive. Tom couldn’t imagine a sandstorm. He tried, but he couldn’t. Hama’d told him about them, once, just a vague memory from when he was a lad following the Turga from Manatse; he’d tried to picture it then, the air choking-thick with it, windswept like rain. A flood he could imagine, but not so often.

And Thul Ka – he’d thought the Rose was big and swarmed with people; he’d thought you could get anything you wanted here. Every time he tried to picture Thul Ka, he found he could only picture Quarter Fords, but bigger. Bigger, somehow, impossibly bigger and stranger.

Maybe it was enough that he tried. The more Aremu talked, the more Tom found he was content to study the lovely curl of his lips in that smile; he liked those lips, he decided just then, and with a surprising amount of feeling. It wasn’t just, Tom thought, he had a macha face. It was expressive, and now he felt like he could, Tom liked paying attention to all its little motions, fine as the movements of his hands, the balance of his body as he climbed.

Some of the warmth went out of the smile. Tom wanted to ask what kind of freedom he’d’ve wanted, but he didn’t know how; there were still more things he didn’t know than things he did about the life of an imbala in Thul Ka. He reckoned it best not to press, though, remembering the way he’d cleared his throat and looked away. He thought Aremu was right, that you couldn’t put a price on freedom, but that never stopped you from wondering what it was worth.

Then, Aremu surprised him with a question of his own.

“Aye,” he replied, so quiet the lapping waves just about swallowed it up. Something bitter came into his smile; he looked away, down toward the water. “’S’the jewel of Anaxas, hey? Pina manna grubby jewel, I reckon. I was born here, an’ I ain’t never left, not in close thirty maw — except once to Hullwen, to find a dobber.” A flash of that crooked-toothed grin, short-lived. “So I ain’t got much to compare it to, see. But it’s home, an’ I’m proud of it. Wouldn’t want to go to Vienda, that’s for floodin’ sure. I don’t know about freedom, but you got some kind of choice, here, an’ you can buy it wi’ your fists.”

There was a pause; he shifted in his seat, drew one leg underneath him. If the motion put him just a hair’s breadth closer to the imbala, he wasn’t going to protest.

He turned his head to look at Aremu, and there was a ghost of that old grin on his face. “How long you been comin’ to the Rose? You like it, dockside?” There was something mischievous in his eyes. “Ain’t cott a kov for bein’ honest.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

Aremu wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He wondered how he’d’ve answered the question, once, before he had ever left Thul Ka; he wondered if he was more tender towards it now that he lived away from it, from its heat and stench and painful memories. But he’d asked because he wanted to know, and he listened, careful and attentive, doing his best to fill in the meaning of the words he didn’t know, and without anything like intention he returned the brief flash of Tom’s grin.

Aremu nodded, and he thought he understood what Tom meant. Not freedom, but choice; it was the sort of careful, thoughtful distinction Tom had drawn all throughout their conversation, and he was grateful for it. It made him the sort of man Aremu – could speak to, and not just admire, although Aremu thought that by now, Tom must be aware that Aremu was admiring him.

Tom shifted a little closer, just a little, and – carefully, and without looking down – Aremu shifted too, so that the edge of his knee just barely rested against Tom’s leg. He didn’t pull away from it; it was the barest sort of pressure, but it went through him like the lightning they’d never seen on the horizon, and for a moment it was hard to be aware of anything but that faint tingling sensation against his kneecap. He didn’t look down, didn’t draw any attention to it, but he left it there, like a question.

Tom was grinning at him, faintly, and there was a look in his dark eyes that made Aremu grin too. He hadn’t expected that sort of response, but he supposed he deserved it.

“Three years or so,” Aremu dawdled, answering the easier part of it first, grinning, feeling a hint of sheepishness creep up on him. It was fine, he thought, for Tom to know how long they’d been Brothers, more or less; it was the sort of information a man could find easily enough, if he asked around. He thought Tom was well aware of the sort of thoughts he might have, but Aremu couldn’t manage not to play into his hands.

Honest, Tom had said. The word could have stung, but it didn’t. Aremu didn’t want to lie, anyway, not really; he didn’t mind it, but he was always aware of it. He thought he was a good liar; he had to be, sometimes, for all their sakes, because Uzoji would not lie and could not always dance around the truth, and Niccolette, whatever she felt in her heart, did not lie in front of Uzoji, at least not that Aremu had seen. Chibugo, never; all of them, their honesty a precious burden. Aremu had none, and so –

But it built a wall, every time, he thought, still studying Tom’s face. To lie to a man, one you admired, built a wall between you, and sometimes it was worth it – sometimes it was a wall you could step over, easily enough, or it was a wall that built up something important. And the rest of the time, it was only a wall, and it kept you apart. And Aremu was, in that moment, very much aware that he did not want to be – apart.

“I haven’t liked it, much,” Aremu admitted, looking up at Tom with a wry little grin of his own. He shifted his leg away, then, the faintest twitch of a motion. “It feels like an easy city to be lost in, despite its size.” Aremu wasn’t sure if he meant it as a compliment or not. He didn’t look anywhere but Tom’s face – not back at the wharf behind them, not at the bottle of Low Tide on the railing, not out at the dark horizon with the bobbing lights of ships of the sea and sky, and its distant drifting clouds.

“I’m usually on the ship anyway,” Aremu said, and it felt like as much of an admission as what he’d said before. He thought he sounded shy, and that was much more embarrassing than the words themselves. He shrugged, his hands coming together in his lap, and hesitated, turning the words over in his mind, still looking up at Tom. He kept them inside, then, and tried another grin instead, still sheepish, warmth prickling over the back of his neck once more.

[Tom Cooke]

The Waterfront • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

As he shifted closer, he felt the other man move, brushing a knee against his thigh and letting it linger. Tom didn’t look like he’d given it half a thought, same as Aremu; for all the world knew, it belonged there, or else somebody’d left it there by accident. A kov could leave his knee against another kov’s thigh by accident; it happened plenty.

But Tom warmed with the touch. Now, he couldn’t’ve scrubbed the grin off his face, even if he’d tried. Bold, he kept thinking, and let the pleasant surprise of it fill him up – mingled with satisfaction, thinking of the way Aremu’d looked at him in the bar those nights ago, like part of him was telling himself, I told you so. And he wondered, of course, what else he might discover about Aremu Ediwo.

Tom didn’t know what he’d expected from tonight, but it wasn’t this. Not when he’d dragged himself away from Quarter Fords, where he’d made himself intolerable for a week and a half; not when he’d taken himself down to the docks, when he’d picked up a bottle of Low Tide and set himself to watching the sea for lightning that’d never come. He hadn’t thought himself good company; he still didn’t, being honest.

But, he thought, watching how Aremu watched him, he didn’t think the imbala cared. And how he was watching him, listening, rapt as he talked. All attentive dark eyes, flickers of grins; Tom hadn’t known how precious they were, how benny it was, oes, when Aremu smiled, ’cause it’d seemed like he did it so little, like he saved them up careful. And how it was taking just about everything Tom had, not to reach up and brush that cheekbone with his hand.

He knew just how he’d’ve done it, if they’d been someplace else. He could almost feel the imbala’s skin against the backs of his fingers, the pad of his thumb, gentle-like. Was there the faintest mark, there? An old burn? Tom couldn’t tell. And he’d’ve leaned closer, ’cause there wasn’t any need for all that space in-between them, and – with the lights, and the murmur, and the sparse shadows of passersby flickering in and out of his periphery, he couldn’t.

It surprised him, just a little, that the imbala answered the first part of his question. It wasn’t too important, not tonight, but he filed it away, just in case. There was a pause, and Tom wondered if there was something going on behind those eyes he couldn’t see. In his head, he went back over what he’d said; he thought, something, must’ve been, that –

But then he gave him another one of those grins, and spoke. His knee, incidentally, had decided to abandon its perch; consequently, Tom eased away from him, all raised brows and facetious pout. A pause of his own. “Boemo” – slowly – “it ain’t Thul Ka, I reckon, but it’s – big enough to get lost in.”

Tom wasn’t surprised Aremu spent most of his time here on the ship; there was more he could’ve said, he thought, more serious, but he wasn’t a fool. He remembered the tense set of his shoulders at Sweet Waters, and wondered, not for the first time, if anyplace in Anaxas felt safe. But he was surprised at that sheepish grin, suddenly all shy and coy, and the way he put his hands together in his lap. Something about it made him grin all the wider.

Aremu wasn’t looking away, and neither was Tom. But, slow and casual, like he wasn’t thinking about it, he ran a hand through his hair, shifted the thick dark tangle of it over one shoulder and tucked a lock behind his ear. Casual-like, he found the familiar shape of a braid. Caught and parted a few messy bands, wound them round, criss-crossed them quick and delicate underneath his calloused fingertips. The wind plucked flyaways from him, but he didn’t seem to care.

His glittering dark eyes hadn’t moved from Aremu’s. “Still, I wonder,” he remarked, pronouncing the words deliberate, knowing the risks he was taking, “what she looks like from up on an airship.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

There was a moment of synchronicity between them – of silent understanding, Aremu thought, between his gaze and Tom’s. He could see it through the little pout Tom had painted across his lips, interrupted by that jagged scar. He could hear it in the other man’s words, or if not the words themselves, then the spaces between them, the gentle lingering of Tom’s voice. There’d been something tentative about Tom’s grin, and now it was sure, and growing steadily, wide and suddenly handsome.

And Tom’s fingers tangled in his hair, weaving it into a braid, and Aremu held his hands in his lap, because he longed for nothing more than to comb his fingers through and undo it, to see that soft thick hair around the other man’s face once more, to make a mess of it with his hands – because he thought Tom would let him, but not here, not while their silhouettes were still painted pale yellow by the lights of the wharf, trapped between the clouds and the crowds, in-between.

And Tom spoke again, careful and deliberate, never looking away, with the words Aremu hadn’t quite dared to ask. Aremu felt the heat curling through him, coating his cheeks. He felt as transparent as he had before, as if Tom could see into him – see through him, all the way to the distant horizon. It didn’t ache, this time; he was glad for it, because at least for the moment, and maybe for the night, he thought Tom liked what he saw. It was reflected back at him in the other man’s dark eyes, the quirk of his grin. As if he saw something underneath the smoothly tailored jacket and the cravat shoved in his pocket, down to the burn scars on his skin and the nicks on his hands, and maybe even beneath that and – tonight, Aremu knew, this was the man he wanted to be.

Aremu didn’t answer quickly though. He raised his eyebrows, as if he were thinking about it, as if he needed to take his time and deliberate on the answer. He knew once he began to speak, it’d be hard to stop, hard to find any words but the yes filling all the space in his mouth – but silence he could manage, and he could drag it out just a little longer, making Tom wait, even if he thought the other man already knew where they’d both end up.

Yes, Aremu wanted to say, even though Tom hadn’t asked him a question. Yes. But he waited, because the fun of it was as much in the searching together as the finding, and because every moment, no matter how perfect, would be over too soon.

“I know a place,” Aremu said, and he grinned, then, and knew he hadn’t fooled Tom for a moment. It raced through him, that grin, the thrill as vibrant as the climbing of some unknown height. He shifted himself off the railing, away from the water this time, and took a few easy steps backward, looking at the other man, and he hesitated then, one last time, looking at the other man, his lips parting softly, his breath coming a little too quickly.

“If – ” Aremu faltered there, ever so slightly, hesitated, the terrain just a little more unfamiliar than he'd bargained for. His hands found his pockets, tucking themselves in amidst all the bits of clothing he’d discarded, everything he’d wanted off his skin. He frowned, just a little, the wind tugging at the open line of his jacket and waistcoat, rippling over them. “If you’d like?” He knew what he was asking; they both did. He knew what he wanted the answer to be, and he thought he knew too what Tom would say – the shape of it, if not the words. But he needed to hear it, all the same, because he could not see through Tom, and he was desperately, terribly glad of that, and just a little sorry.

It wasn’t the walk he’d begun from Collingwood’s house, when Aremu joined the crowds along the wharf once more, this time with Tom. He walked like a man who knew where he was going, and like one who wasn’t too unbearably eager to get there; he walked as if he wasn’t aware with every last hair on his body of the man alongside him. And, as always, his eyes flickered over passer-bys, and there was a slow ache that built in his shoulders from keeping them tense.

And then, too soon and not soon enough, they were at the shipyard. Aremu paid the guard at the gate, the soft flash of a coin, and carefully didn’t glance over his shoulder back at Tom. He wove his way through with careful familiarity and no shortage of purpose, and stopped at the familiar shape of the Eqe Aqawe, silhouette cutting a path through the stars. And Aremu smiled, and he sighed, just a little, and he felt all the tension drain from his shoulders.

He glanced back at Tom, then, and offered the man another little grin. And then Aremu grasped the ladder, and began to climb, quickly and easily, making his way up off the ground, up to the platform above, to the rope ladder secured to the line that held the ship in place. If Tom followed, by the time he reached, Aremu would have it loose and climbable, and he was securing the bottom rung to the platform, tying it in place.

“Better if you go first,” Aremu said, looking up from where he’d crouched. He rose, slowly, as comfortable and easy on the high platform as he was on the ground below, and eased a little back from Tom, leaving him space, just a little longer.

[Tom Cooke]

The Waterfront • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

Tom liked that Aremu took his time. He liked it more, knowing it was put on, knowing how this dance worked and what it was for, and knowing it was a dance he loved and had danced many times before. He could feel the the ghost of Aremu’s leg against his like the static before lightning, and every second the imbala made him spend sitting, watching him, hanging on his silence, only made the wanting worth more. When he said I know a place, he was up from the railing like he’d never thought of doing different.

Tom didn’t get up rightaway; he swung his legs over the railing, rolled his shoulders. The imbala eased a back a few steps toward the street, and Tom watched him, with all the harbor spread out and up behind him, a ramshackle hive of lights and walkways and distant half-lit windows. He was limned in gold from the streetlamp, dancing in his close-cropped hair, but the moonlight over the bay picked out his features. Tom saw something shift, and his own grin faded.

Pushing himself up off the railing, he took a few steps closer to Aremu. He was hesitant; his dark eyes flicked over the jacket, the silky glint of his rolled-up shirtsleeve against his dark, scarred forearm. Aremu’s hand was twitching over his open waistcoat, and Tom followed it, taking in the sharp rise and fall of his breath underneath his shirt. He glanced behind, at the street, for just a breath.

“Aye,” he replied firmly, looking him in the eye. Before they set off, he closed the distance between them, and repeated, more softly, “If you’d like,” with a ghost of that playful grin. With something a little more tender in it, this time, appreciative, and not half so impatient.

The bottle of Low Tide still sat on the railing, mostly empty, keeping its lonely vigil for lightning over the Mahogany.

It wasn’t a long walk to the shipyard, but it felt like all the years since the War of the Book. Away from the wharf, the breeze was warmer. He followed Aremu past the guard, his face set grim, just like last time. He was, he thought, on business – on his own sort of business. They wound their way past all the ships, suspended strangely by their rolled-up silverfish balloons.

It wasn’t for itself that Tom recognized Uzoji’s ship. It was Aremu. He’d thought the imbala tense, but no more than usual, on the walk. Wasn’t ’til he saw him relax he realized just how tight the poor kov’d been; and it wasn’t ’til then he knew – began to know – looking up at the sleek dark curve of the hull, that a dream of being free could be as good a home as any. He grinned back at Aremu, and he couldn’t quite say what he was feeling as he watched the other man climb up to the platform.

He started after him. He was halfway up the ladder when the dread sank into his bones, and the realization started to creep through him. He pulled himself up onto it, and by then, Aremu was already fixing the bottom of it in place. Standing there, Tom stared at the back of the imbala’s head, and then let his eyes trail up the ladder. He licked his lips. He was still watching it swing when Aremu stood up and cleared the way.

Ah, shit. He was going to do this.

Hoping he looked heedless as he wanted to feel, he tossed Aremu a grin. The brief pause – just a hiccup of a moment, where he stared up at that dangling-scrap-of-rope ladder with that grin frozen on his face – might’ve given him away, but then he managed to kick himself back to moving again. One step, then two, reminding himself he’d done plenty worse before; he’d been in plenty worse situations than climbing a rope ladder up to a benny evening with a macha kov. He’d got himself into worse fixes in similar pursuits.

He didn’t like it, though. When he’d got proper hold of it, when he’d pulled himself up onto it, he felt it shift with his weight. His heavy boots dragged down the rungs; every fistful of rope felt like grabbing at something that’d slip out of reach at any moment. He kept his eyes up, up, on the balloon, on the sleek black swell of the hull. Halfway up, he reckoned, and he bid himself to look anywhere but down.

Once, only once, he stopped. He felt it, then – he hadn’t felt it before then, cause he’d been too busy keeping track of himself, the way his bulk swung the ladder. But when he stopped, he felt the wind brush it underneath him, to one side, then the other. He heard the creak of the hull, like an old man stretching. The dark braid stirred against his back.

Quick-like, quick as he could, he scrambled the rest of the way up. When he saw stars and rigging over the lip of the gunwale, the relief was dizzying. He sighed as he clambered over. The solid metal railing underneath his hand was even more of a relief, though by now, that hand was clammy and cold with sweat.

Tom’d thought, fool he was, the solid wood of the deck underneath his feet’d be a relief; he wasn’t fool enough to think it’d be like the solid earth, but maybe, at least, like the less-solid boards of a pier. He’d never been aboard a ship, on the sea or in the air – once, he’d made the mistake of standing up in a pina fishing boat, and that’d been the end of his maritime aspirations. He got his feet underneath him on the deck of Uzoji’s airship, and at first, he found it solid enough; then, curious, he squinted round him in the dark –

And discovered that everything was moving. “Sh-Shit!” he gasped. The deck tilted gently underneath his feet, and it wasn’t hard to imagine it tilting further, further, and with the stirring of the rigging, he couldn’t tell if it was him moving or the ship or the stars or that blasted balloon.

“Floodin’ hell,” he muttered, “Hulali’s tits,” and kept muttering, and found himself braced against the railing, his heart hammering. Suddenly, he wasn’t so interested in turning round and seeing for himself what the Rose looked like from the deck of an airship – if he ever had been. He couldn't even bring himself to look over and see if Aremu'd made his way up yet; his head was empty.