[Closed] Go Press that Dissonance

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 12 Dentis, 2719
Goretti's Boarding House, West-and-Long

A small chubby hand, slightly sticky and slightly damp, closed around Ava’s finger. She smiled, even more so when the little girl tugged up and down on the finger, properly, like a little handshake. Watching, Ava thought, and waiting; she couldn’t have said for what. Perhaps she could have answered, only a few weeks earlier; perhaps, then, she would have been more sure.

Lovely, Clark had said, twice, sounding it out, gazing down at his little daughter. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, and Ava understood better than she wished to what was in it. As she had with all the rest – as she had to – she tucked the knowledge away, carefully, smiling at the little babe. Margaret, she thought, too, with a faint twinge of unease. Margaret Cooke. Meggie might be a given name, though, or short for Megan.

Ava had never known Tom Cooke in life; she could not have said how he’d have behaved. She knew something of how he moved, when he moved like himself, cat-quiet, toe-to-heel, with a careful, intimate knowledge of the placement of every bit of him, even now. She was still smiling at Renata, and behind her she could see Clark Cooke, his shoulders drawn up, and his chin held between them, his big hands cradling his daughter; and, too, though she did not look at it, she could see the scar that ran through his face.

Renata let go of Ava’s finger when voices came from the stairs; her wide-eyed gaze went with her attention, and her small dark brows drew together. Ava turned, and smiled at the woman who came into the room, and the man behind her, taking both of them in without looking the least as if she did so.

“Mrs. Goretti,” Ava said, smiling. She swept a delicate, neat curtsy. “It’s good to meet you. I’m only glad my letter reached you, and that you knew to expect my arrival at all. Sir,” she curtsied to Orso as well, and rose back up. Even if she hadn’t known already that Mrs. Goretti was a widow, she would not have taken Orso for her husband; they were too similar in feature, and the manner between them was entirely wrong. Clark set Renata down, mumbling softly into the empty space; he went, carefully, easing himself out of the room.

“Dinner smells excellent,” Ava said, smiling. “Your attention was well spent. I’d be very grateful for some wine,” she grinned, and let something just a little sheepish, a little more friendly, crinkle the edges of her eyes. “I’m told the Arova is a gentle river, so surely the fault must lie with me.” Ava pressed a hand delicately to her stomach, and said nothing more specific on the subject.

Not unexpectedly, with the tanned, weather-beaten look of his skin, and the mingling of his accent, Orso had a good deal to say on the subject of seasickness, its cures and remedies. Ava laughed, as appropriate, although never too long or lingeringly. Claudia had handed her a glass of wine, and she had opinions of her own to share as well. Ava encouraged them, gently, teased them out; she was simply desperate, she explained, to make the journey upriver easier. Would Mrs. Goretti suggest…? The glass of wine was raised more often than she drank from it, in truth, and only the faintest hint of pale pink lip color stained the edge of the glass.

It was not easy, but neither was it hard, to find the delicate line to walk, to take the thread and weave it into conversation. Ava did not press, or push; she went nowhere that they did not wish to go. There was time, yet; she would get there, in the end.

[Clark Cooke]

Goretti’s Boarding House, West-and-Long

late afternoon on the 12th of dentis, 2719

M
aja’wa,” Clark could hear Orso pronouncing, slow and clear. “The tongue,” he could hear him saying, and he could imagine him leaning forward and jabbing one finger over his fish stew, “of a maja’wa.”

Teresa squeezed Clark’s hand, gentle-like.

“Are you all right, tesoro?” came her voice, hushed in the dark quiet of the hall. Tucked in, away from the edge of the light, where it leaked round the corner from the kitchen. Just behind the bulk of the cupboard with all old Renata’s porcelain. It was dark, because there was no lamp lit in the bedroom, and the windows’d been blocked off, and all that got through was some faint blue light from the street-lamp down the way, now that the sun had sunk.

And even that blue light was too much, sometimes. “You sure?” Clark asked instead of answering, because answering was too hard. He was looking at Teresa’s face, limned from one side by the light. There was still a loose hair wisping from her braid, though she’d put it back up all benny, when she was ready. Clark reached up and touched her cheek.

Teresa was smiling; Clark knew this. “It is not too much,” she said softly. “Not with you.”

Clark’s hand fell and came to rest on hers. He looked down at his hands closed round Teresa’s. Her hand was so small; his were so big, and old scars glistened on them, and he felt something he was helpless to make sense of. “Not too much for me, neither.” He stroked the back of her hand, gentle-like.

They hadn’t had so many boarders in a while. Leastways, they hadn’t been at the table for dinner. It hadn’t been so hard, when Mr. Welkin had arrived; he’d been quiet – Clark reckoned he was a bookish sort, and kept to himself, though Tess seemed worried sometimes – and he hadn’t been the kind of man for looking you in the eye too much. And he was sparse for dinner, so it was mostly just Clark and the Gorettis.

It was good they was getting more boarders; it was a good season for it, and it wouldn’t be soon enough, and they’d be grateful for the extra, when it meant Clark’s work at the docks in the numb cold wasn’t the only thing keeping their heads above the water. But it wasn’t easy for Clark, ever. All them eyes.

It wasn’t easy, but Tess made it easier.

And Miss Weaver didn’t seem like the kind of boarder’d cause trouble, Clark thought, as he broke away from holding Teresa and they went in together. Clark smiled a little to see the little miss sitting at the table next to Claudia, propped up high on a couple of cushions. Claudia was spooning some broth into her mouth, but she didn’t look like she was taking it easy tonight. The eldest Goretti was completely absorbed, and Orso was ranting at Miss Weaver with unrestrained enthusiasm.

“It is excellent,” he was parrying, looking at her across the bowls and the crusty dark loaf on its cutting board. “In Manatse, the tyat, you see, they cook it with a root they call –”

Renata saw her papa, then, and her dark eyes lit up. She pushed the spoon away, spilling a little red broth on the threadbare tablecloth. Claudia clicked her teeth, but Clark was already on his way round the table, and took the spoon from her with another shy, dimpled smile.

Teresa took the seat beside him, near Miss Weaver. She smiled at the other woman, easy, but a little tired. “I hope Orso is not boring you, madam,” she said, with a sharp look in the old man’s direction. “I think all the rest of us get a word in to his ten, most nights.”

“You get one word each,” put in Orso, “except for Mr. Cooke, who contributes only stony silence.”

Clark was too busy with Renata to pay it much heed, nor the conversation that followed. He knew Claudia had got him a bowl of stew; he knew he’d broken away from Renata to cut off some bread and eat a helping, at which point Claudia had resumed her duties with a much more pliable Renata.

At some point Teresa’d refilled his bowl with a light kiss in his hair, but there were a lot of eyes, and the tightness in his chest hadn’t eased. There was something happening, he thought. Something underneath the warm taste of the herbs and spices Claudia had got at the market last week for the coming guests. He looked up, once, to see Teresa glance at Miss Weaver in her strange sharp way. Then he looked down at his stew, because the eyes were too much, and he did not want to think about it, not with the little miss just beside him.

He had noticed Miss Weaver's mostly-full glass with something like relief. His own hadn't been poured but less than halfway, and he'd not drunk much of it.

He did look up, though, at the uneven shuffle of footsteps creaking on the boards.

“I would’ve joined you earlier,” came a lisping voice, strangely thick-tongued. “I have to apologize.” Clark felt it brush his skin, funny and woobly, as a chair squeaked out from under the table on the hardwood.

“There is plenty of stew left, Mr. Welkin,” said Teresa lightly, but Clark thought he heard some kind of strain in her voice, something beyond the strain of the headache, as she pushed herself up out of her chair.

The man that dropped into the chair opposite him might’ve been a little taller than Miss Weaver; otherwise, he was the smallest at the table. By far, thought Clark, the strangest, with his mop of dark red hair and his thick glasses.

Clark didn’t know nothing about him; he didn’t ask, neither. He knew, from the few times he’d been in, that Mr. Welkin’s room was full of books, but none were grims, so far as he could tell, and that was all right. Clark didn’t have nothing against their kind, and neither did the Gorettis. He’d overheard Claudia saying something to Tess about it, and he’d overheard Tess telling her there was no reason to think he’d bring trouble in just because of what he was, and that’d been that.

He was smiling up at her, as she set the bowl of stew down in front of him. “As delectable as always, Mrs. Goretti, Mrs. Cooke.” He took a bite with relish.

Clark didn’t see his face; Clark was putting a chunk of fish in his mouth and staring down at his bowl.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, Miss – Miss Weaver, was it? Barnabas Welkin,” Clark heard the tsat say, warmly. “Quite a pleasure. Is that – Vienda I detect, in your speech?”

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 12 Dentis, 2719
Goretti's Boarding House, West-and-Long

Good lady,” Ava said, eyes faintly wide. “It must have been a terribly difficult Roalis at sea.”

“No, no,” Orso said, shaking his head. “Not the biggest storm I have seen on the Tincta Basta – not by a wide margin.”

“Still,” Claudia said, Clark spooning red broth into Renata’s mouth at her side, “the wind was remarkable; one of the trees down the street came down. I’m sure Yaris must have been simply terrible, in Vienda,” there was a faint, careful pause, “with the heat,” Claudia added.

Ava smiled at her, and blinked. She understood; she could not but understand. She felt Clark’s presence at the table like a looming weight. Renata Margaret Cooke, she thought.

“Not as bad as last year,” Ava said, shaking her head. She was aware of a sharp glance from Teresa; she did not meet it, but delicately tore another piece from her bread, and nibbled at it, as if the conversation had no meaning but what was on the surface. Claudia was watching her too, carefully.

The conversation drifted on, wrapped and wove. She could not be sure; knowledge she should not have had beat beneath her breast, and warned her. She had a lifetime of knowledge she should not have; she could not set it aside. If it was a trap, it was a warm and friendly one, comfortable and easy; if it was a trap, it would have closed around her by now, but for a this tiny scrap of suspicion – like a bit of cloth, Ava thought, closed in the edge of a secret door; like books which did not belong.

Ava hovered above the surface of it, balanced carefully, and did not commit herself.

Mr. Welkin came in with a strange, shuffling stride; he enunciated, carefully and precisely, through his heavy lisp. He sat, and Ava smiled politely at him, setting her spoon down gently into the bowl of warm, red stew. The tablecloth beneath her bowl was unmarred by even a drop, although the rim of soup close to the top of the bowl showed where she had made an effort, and less than half of the thick piece of bread she had begun with was left behind.

“A pleasure, Mr. Welkin,” Ava said, smiling, with a faint dip of her chin in a way that implied she might well have curtsied if she had been standing. Ava had heard the faint strain in Teresa’s voice, although she couldn’t have said, really, whether she was simply growing more tired as the meal went on. “Yes, Vienda - quite right.“

“I feel I know very little about the Rose, in fact,” Ava said, smiling at Mr. Welkin, and then over at the Gorettis and the Cookes. Her eyes did not linger on Clark, or his intent gaze down at the bowl of soup on the table, but her smile did widen just a tiny fraction at Renata, and the little trick of red broth down her chin. She turned back to Mr. Welkin, and held the smile.

“It has been a gracious welcome so far,” Ava said. “The Rose has such a difficult reputation in Vienda,” her gaze lowered, eyes flickering downwards ever so slightly, and lifting again. “I’ve been rather anxious about making the trip.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Orso said with a warm smile; he looked, Ava thought, as if he would very much like to pat her hand, comfortingly and perhaps lingeringly. She was glad that he was still firmly ensconced across the table, although she was not in the least afraid. “The Rose is a lovely city – the jewel of Anaxas, the heart of the Vein!”

“And… quite safe?” Ava asked, with the faint, self-conscious smile of a woman expecting to be told she is behaving foolishly, and worried about nothing. There was the faintest softening of her voice; there had been, slowly, ever since the first sip of wine. Her eyes, wide and dark and revealing nothing, went from Barnabas to Orso, to Claudia and Clark and Teresa; she did not pick up her spoon again, although one hand rested delicately next to it on the table, as if at any moment it would lift, and she would eat once more.

“One hears,” Ava said, her gaze lowering once more, carefully worried about her own ignorance, “dreadful things about that Mr. Hawke.”

[Clark Cooke]

Goretti's Boarding House, West-and-Long

late afternoon on the 12th of dentis, 2719

H
e didn’t know why she had to bring it up. The Vein, Orso had said, like it was something to be proud of, and Clark reckoned it’d been inevitable. Clark felt something he couldn’t explain; it was somewhere between a twist and a sinking. It wasn’t anger, never anger. It was older than anger, a dusty old feeling, a feeling covered in cobwebs. It was a feeling as ached like old bruises. Twinged and smarted. An old feeling.

Hawke’s man, he heard another voice say, a long time ago. Hawke’s man.

Mr. Hawke. There was something funny and soft about Miss Weaver’s voice; it struck Clark in a way he didn’t much like. He didn’t think he’d touch his glass again.

He’d liked Miss Weaver, liked the way she talked to Renata. He’d liked her.

“Quite safe, Ms. Weaver.” Claudia cut straight through the uncomfortable pause, and had opened her mouth to say more.

Before she could, Mr. Welkin cut across her. “Dreadful things, indeed?” Clark didn’t have to look up from his stew to know that he was smiling; his lisp broadened. “They do rather have a reputation,” he said, taking a sip of wine, bemused, “his bunch.”

“There is blood in the Vein,” chortled Orso through a bite of stew, “to carry those jewels, eh?”

Claudia rolled her eyes. “Do not be crude. We are at the table, Orso. Not on one of your ships. Or in one of your dreadful novels,” she added, “to speak of dreadful things.” She threw an embarrassed smile in Miss Weaver’s direction.

“But I can’t imagine what in Vita they would want with a fine young lady like yourself,” added Mr. Welkin, finally.

Clark was grinding his teeth. He had to remind himself to take a bite. He didn’t like Mr. Welkin’s tone. How he talked to Miss Weaver. He didn’t like it one bit. If the lady was worried about the Brothers, she had every right to be. Every right. He didn’t much like how Orso or Mr. Welkin was talking to Miss Weaver, except it was more in the how than the what, the way they was coloring their voices, and Clark was too mung to know what to say.

He swallowed a big lump, leaving his spoon in the bowl with more of a clatter than he’d meant to. He looked up and over, where Renata was.

She was watching Mr. Welkin with big dark eyes. Clark felt fire underneath his heart, suddenly. She don’t need to know about none of that, he wanted to say. None of that!

But he wasn’t an angry man. Never. He smoothed himself out, like you’d smooth out a sock to know where you could darn. Claudia wasn’t feeding Renata, no more. She was looking at Mr. Welkin, looking pinched.

Gentle-like, Clark took up the cloth beside Renata’s bowl and dabbed her lips with it, wiped away the dribble of broth on her chin. “There, little miss,” he murmured, very soft. Then he took a spoonful of broth and raised it to her lips.

“It is true,” Teresa was saying, carefully, “that Old Rose Harbor is – somewhat different from the capital. Perhaps more vibrant,” and Clark heard a smile warming up her voice, “but with its dangers, yes. One exercises caution. But – ah –”

“A wise woman must exercise caution everywhere,” Claudia said quietly, “even in the capital, I would imagine.”

Past Renata, Clark could see Orso draining his glass. How much had Claudia poured? “Miss Weaver strikes me as a wise woman,” he said, his voice full of warmth, as he set his glass back down on the table and dabbed his lips. “A most capable woman.”

Mr. Welkin was quietly tucking into his stew, again. For such a little wick, he had a surprising appetite.

“It must be hard, for a businesswoman in Vienda, with all the recent troubles. And then to travel all the way to the Rose! And all alone. How do you manage?” asked Orso. Clark thought his voice was full of something else, something he knew but didn’t know the word for. Looking-down disguised as looking-up.

[Ava Weaver]

Evening, 12 Dentis, 2719
Goretti's Boarding House, West-and-Long

Ava had turned her attention to Claudia, when the other woman began to answer. There was the beginning of a reassurance, she thought, there, trying to gauge it. Quite safe, Claudia had begun, firmly, as if she had meant to go on. Was she trying too hard? Nothing on Ava’s face showed anything more than polite, faintly worried interest; the worry was not hard to summon up, nor the interest. The trick was in not showing it too strongly – but Ava knew something of her face, and something of keeping things inside.

Mr. Welkin interrupted, talking over the older woman. Ava turned to him, blinking faintly, giving no sign that she understood anything of the broad smile that spread across his face. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled beneath the long, smooth curls; she felt it all the way down her arms, as well, beneath the wool of the dress.

There was an ease to the smile Ava returned to Claudia, although she felt nothing of the sort; there was the faintest hint of gratitude towards Mr. Welkin for the compliment and the reassurance – although not too much, not to a wick; however Ava felt about such things inside, she understood perfectly well how it might look, and she knew better – even here. Especially here, Ava thought, grateful for the long, warm wool sleeves of her dress. She knew it was not cold over the table, not with all of them sitting close, and the faint, odd pressure of Mr. Welkin’s atrophied glamour, and the tension prickling through her.

Caution, Claudia said. Ava was already looking at her, following the flow of conversation; caution, she thought. She looked no more sharply than she had before; the smile on her face was not one iota more or less warm.

Ava was, abruptly, fiercely grateful for Orso. She thought perhaps it should have grated, the condescension; on the contrary, it was unexpectedly reassuring. Unless he was a truly magnificent actor, she knew precisely where she stood, with Orso Casimiro Goretti. She smiled at him, as she had smiled at dozens of men and women, these last two and a half years; she let a tinge of something wistful – but not inviting, not quite – creep into her voice.

“It has been,” Ava said, modestly, “quite difficult. Even in Vienda, of course, one feels rather unsafe, at times.” She was careful; she was always careful. Ava let her gaze flick up to Claudia, and over to Teresa; she smiled, delicately. “One has to be very sure of one’s friends,” she said, and looked back at Orso as if she had meant nothing by it. Still, she smiled. “And, I think, cautious.”

There was a beat of silence at the table. Ava lifted her spoon once more, and took a small, noiseless sip of the soup, as though nothing about the conversation perturbed her; as though it had been only talk, after all, and there was nothing more to dwell upon.

“Well said,” Orso said, warmly. “That reminds me, in fact, of a trip to the Muluku Islands – beautiful places, bright red dirt – ”

The conversation drifted on, Claudia putting in an occasional sharp word, Orso with his amalgamated accents and stories, Mr. Welkin lisping in gently, once or twice, never quite losing his knowing smile. Ava kept her attention on all of it; nothing changed in her. She was conscious most of all of Clark Cooke’s heavy silence; his gaze was focused only on his daughter, and Ava did not – could not – know what to make of it. She knew, painfully – uncomfortably – that she could not like it.

When the food and conversation had run down, quietly, Ava mentioned her ironing to Mrs. Goretti; she brought a board upstairs, and lay it out in the center of the small room, the door open to the side of it, an iron too, with hot coals in it from the stove, and a small pitcher of water. She left the door open, carefully, deliberately; for the smell, she might have said, wide-eyed had anyone asked.

Ava went to the closet, then; she took out the first of the dresses which needed a more thorough pressing. Silk; Ava did not take out her pressing cloth, not for this dress, but turned it inside out with careful hands. She settled it around the board, and took the top of the iron, and smoothed it slowly along the fabric, with careful, steady hands. Silk did not wrinkle easily; when it did, they needed to be coaxed out, slow and gentle. She did not look up, but she waited; she thought she knew what to expect, and she did not know whether to be glad or afraid.

[Clark Cooke]

Goretti's Boarding House, West-and-Long

late afternoon on the 12th of dentis, 2719

T
hat silence was none of Clark’s business, and the better for it.

No reason to turn it over in his head; you never got nothing good, turning it over in your head. Just bad, always bad. You didn’t ask questions of silences like that, for yourself or for anybody else. You let them lay, careful-like. You looked away from them; you tip-toed away, careful-like, while the dog fell asleep, careful not to bump anything, careful not to break anything.

And then, when you got far enough away, and you heard the beast snoring through its jowls – then, you left it there behind you. You didn’t think what else could’ve happened. You didn’t ask what would’ve happened if you’d woken it, and you didn’t try to picture its teeth. It was easy to do that, sometimes, but Clark knew that was the business of a man who wanted to get bit.

He hadn’t said another word, all through dinner. It was easy enough to shine all his heart on the little miss, and nobody ever expected him to speak, anyway. He reckoned Claudia was happy to be relieved of her duties, and if Renata’d picked up anything of all that no-good talk, she was all smiles when her da attended her.

Mr. Welkin’d opened his mouth once or twice, but if he’d had anything else to say about Them, he’d kept it to himself. Orso was happy enough to fill the gaps with colorful stories about the isles, about some festival he’d gone to once in the dry season. No shortage of friends, he’d said, among the islander dura. He found them a refreshing people – you always knew where you stood…

Miss Weaver put in a word or a question now and then, politely surprised or fondly aghast at something-or-other Orso said he’d done or eaten. Clark couldn’t’ve said why it bothered him, for all it was the talk that any other boarder’d bring to the table. He didn’t much like it, the way her words’d got all soft at the edges; it always made him uncomfortable, especially if he liked somebody. Without meaning to, he kept an eye on her wine glass, and he wasn’t sure what to make of what he saw.

He couldn’t’ve said why any of it bothered him. Maybe it was just all the people in the kitchen, making it seem cramped. All them eyes. Clark wasn’t good with people. He was better, with Teresa around – and Teresa’d been quiet, after that. After Miss Weaver’s talk of knowing who your friends were.

It was the headache, Clark reckoned.

It was Claudia brought Miss Weaver upstairs, in the end, two pairs of light feet creaking up the shadowy staircase. A flurry of motion from the hall and the kitchen, the sound of Teresa and Claudia together bringing up coals from the stove, tackling the board upstairs.

Clark sat finishing with the holes in his sock, the little miss dozing in his arms. He could’ve – should’ve, maybe – asked if he could help. Not because he thought the womenfolk couldn’t handle it, but the ironing board was unwieldy; wouldn’t’ve been nothing for him to help it upstairs.

He thought he knew what Teresa would’ve said. You rest your back, love, he could hear, her voice sharp in his head. You have a shift tomorrow.

Sometimes. There was a pattern, maybe. There was always a boarder, now and then, who came with silences like holes in a quilt. There were always things, then, the womenfolk didn’t need his help with.

The needle was all slippery in Clark’s hand. He poked himself in the thumb, and the wince woke up Renata, but not for long. Quick enough, she was settling back against him, little breaths even and deep. Her little hand was curled round a fistful of his sweater, and her cheek was against his chest.

It was quiet, and the oil lamp was burning low. Clark hadn’t noticed it, but he’d been squinting his eyes. The kitchen window was dark; he could just see a sliver of it from the sitting room. Renata was fast asleep on his shoulder, and he thought it might be time for bed. He didn’t know what was keeping him up, working at his darning, even though the needle kept slipping.

He’d told Teresa he might be a while; he was enjoying the quiet, he’d said, and Teresa’d believed him, because if there was one thing everybody knew about Clark, it was how much he enjoyed the quiet. So she went to bed herself – early, on account of the headache. He thought she looked better than she had earlier.

He was sitting in the dying light, listening to the quiet, when he heard the creak of footsteps on the stairs.

He hadn’t expected Teresa to be in the bed, not really. He took Renata to her crib and got her all situated, thinking how she was due to outgrow it – he knew she’d be walking soon; she was already trying to balance herself – and he didn’t know what to do, then.

He’d done it before, climbing in the empty bed; he didn’t much like making Teresa explain herself. He didn’t much like thinking how she thought he was mung enough to believe her, every single time.

He wasn’t sure why he did it, in the end. Climbing up the stairs, quiet-like, real quiet. Following the shadows he saw flitting at the top of the stairs, the low glow he knew meant somebody’s door was ajar and lamplight was leaking out of it. He didn’t quite clear the stairs; he hung a few steps from the top, his shoulders hunched, holding onto a beam with one hand.

He could see Teresa standing in the doorway he knew was Miss Weaver’s. He caught a glimpse of her face in profile, before he looked down – the light washed over it in full, and there was something sharp in all its lines, something not so much tired as grim, worried. A sharpness in her dark eyes. It wasn’t hard to look at Teresa’s face, usually, but he looked down and away anyway; he watched her shadow stretch down the hall, and stared at the reflections of light on the boards.

“Ms. Weaver,” Teresa said, “if I might disturb you for a moment.”

Teresa’s voice was soft, but Clark was a good listener.