[Mature] Just as It Was

[Tom Cooke]

Canalworks Outflow • Cat's Paw

Evening on the 27th of Yaris, 2716

I
padi was looking at Aremu all intent-like, that smile not a whit dimmer.

Tom didn’t look at Aremu. He’d looked at his hands, when he’d turned ‘em over; he’d watched the muscles flicker in his scarred forearms, followed the dark creases across his palms, the pale shapes of scars on the back of one hand – the other swathed in white. He’d a funny feeling, being honest. Somehow those hands looked like somebody else’s, even though he’d recognized those deft, careful fingers, working at the buttons of his cuffs.

He thought he might’ve recognized the smile he saw on Aremu’s face, in the corner of his eye. Wasn’t the kind of smile he’d thought Aremu’d bring here.

He’d been careful not to let it show on his face when his Brother talked, for all he didn’t know what the fuck he was on about. He’d been sucking at his tooth, still looking at Aremu’s bandaged hand.

He knew how to play his role well enough, boemo. Even if he’d rather Aremu not’ve made him play it here. Was Ipadi’s fault, he reckoned; didn’t know what he was on about, neither, asking a question he already knew the fucking answer to. He looked up slow-like, let his eyes wander round all the kov and the chip – even her, oes, with her sour face – letting them know he’d heard.

He met a few eyes, too, Mason’s and Linden’s mainly; he knew they’d look at him, and it didn’t bother him none. Should’ve bothered them more.

When Arlo spat, he looked at him; he stared at him good and hard, sucking at a tooth, ‘til the little wick talked. Then he cracked a big, crooked-tooth grin. “Better not, kov,” he said, all cheerful-like.

Arlo just kept grinning. Mason started laughing, a kind of uh huh huh huh laughing, like he didn’t know he ought to be laughing. Arlo husked a laugh, too; Tom snorted, then grunted. The laughing stopped.

Ipadi’s smile broke for a half-second. The pipe’d gone to him now. He took a drag, eyes fluttering shut as the smoke left his lips; it whirled up, billowed out, catching the paper lanterns’ blue, red, green, the oil lamp’s warm glow. He smiled again, holding the pipe, one lean wrist balanced on his knee. He watched Aremu, keen.

“All the respect in Vita,” he said. “Respect nothin’ more than an honest man who knows his qalqa.” He shrugged, passing the pipe to Úsir.

“Bhe,” the chip muttered.

Fuck it. You know him already? Tom wanted to demand. Couldn’t figure it otherwise; he was feeling a laoso prickling at the back of his neck. “Can’t agree more, Ipadi,” he said just as bright, shifting and moving to get the mant bottle of eza. The neck clacked awkwardly against the lip of his glass when he went to pour.

Ipadi was watching him. “That so?” he said, casual.

Shivery-cold. He was missing Aremu in some way he couldn’t put a name to. When he settled himself back beside him, he brought the bottle with him. Lamplight flickered over those two familiar hands; he wanted to reach for one of them, to rest a hand on his knee, to touch one of his bared forearms. He couldn’t bring himself to, like they was strangers.

“D’you take more, dove?” he asked anyway, like the word was an argument; he made himself look at Aremu as he offered the bottle, made himself look in his eyes and ask himself what was there.

He felt like maybe he’d see that smile again, like they was on the job. He couldn’t’ve said what was on his own face, neither; he felt like he’d got his qalqa all mixed up.

Úsir said something in Mugrobi, then. Wasn’t a Mugrobi much like Ipadi’s; she lilted the vowels low and long, up and down almost like a song. She was looking at Ipadi, the same frown set in her lips. Ipadi said something in Mugrobi right back, then smiled over at Tom, then smiled at Aremu, raising his brows.

“Epaemo for Úsir,” he said, shrugging. “Ent in a good mood, ye chen? Most nights she’s a field o’ flowers, adame.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris, 2716
Canalworks Outflow, Cat's Paw

Aremu saw where it was going, when Ipadi spoke again. He thought he could see it, laid out, like a plan; he thought he could feel the pneumatics, the steam hissing through the pipe as something churned forward, fell apart and came together again: coal burned to heat gas, rock split apart to remake the crystal within.

He didn’t flinch at the agreement on Tom’s lips. That was the advantage, he supposed, of seeing the plan; he’d had a moment to prepare himself. Nothing showed on the smooth hard smile on his face; he blinked behind it, evenly.

No, Aremu thought, something clenching deep inside him, Tom didn’t know. He could see it, by now, in the look on his Brother’s face. He supposed Ipadi could see it too. He found he was still breathing, evenly, in and out; he wasn’t entirely sure how.

The moonlit room seemed a different world; it seemed a season ago that he’d stood there, looking at silvery trails down Tom’s cheeks, vanishing in the thick hair of his beard. He tried to remember how tender he’d felt then, but he seemed to be raw, instead. He didn’t know when it had changed.

“Yes, thanks,” Aremu said; he smiled at Tom, and he wasn’t sure what was in his eyes. It was all hard, but brittle, too. He held out the cup, and set it, full, against his knee. He didn’t take a sip again, not yet. Dove; Tom asked it like a question and he felt it like a blow.

“Are you going to play with them all evening, Ipadi?” Úsir asked, her face pinched sour.

“I’m not the one who’s playing, beata,” Ipadi said. He turned to Aremu and he smiled; he made Usir’s excuses for the rest of them. Arlo’s gaze flicked between them, half a frown on his face. Linden was bent over the zither now; Mason’s eyes went back and forth between them all, wide and unfocused.

“Think what you like of me,” Aremu said in Mugrobi, still smiling. His gaze went to Úsir, and then back to Ipadi, and it was Ipadi he looked at, for the most part. He smiled a little wider, as if it were all a joke, and the irony soured the lingering eza on his tongue. “Don’t make me tell him now.” He knew better than to let even the corner of his gaze shift towards Tom.

Aremu knew - he knew - he should say something in Estuan. He should play it off, as Ipadi had. His fingers knit together in his lap; he had the eza cradled between his palms, and he thought he might spill it, if he tried to move. There was a knot of tension along his spine; his shoulders were a rope which had tied.

Now, he kept thinking, now. Now, as if - as if I’ll tell him, someday. As if he’d care to know. Doesn’t he have the right? He thought of Tom saying he liked him, and an ache shot through his lower jaw, and clenched in his teeth. When do you tell an Anaxi? He didn’t know; he didn’t have the first flooding idea. The thought of explaining Thul’Amat, Dzit’ereq, even Ediwo, all of it felt thin and pale, by comparison.

Soulless, he thought to say. Honorless. There is something missing in me, which you have even without knowing, which every other man has even without knowing, however he may behave. I’m empty inside, Tom; you’re fucking a shell.

Aremu couldn’t think of a damn thing to say in Estuan. He smiled at least; he knew how a liar should look.

[Tom Cooke]

Canalworks Outflow • Cat's Paw

Evening on the 27th of Yaris, 2716

A
remu replied in Mugrobi.

Sounded like he might’ve been joking. Sounded like they was both joking; Ipadi’s smile was widening into something almost like a grin. He repeated one of the words Aremu’d said; both his brows went straight up.

Tom remembered hearing him speak Mugrobi at Sweet Waters; he’d just barely overheard it as he came up from behind, swimming through the evening crowd. Remembered him as a kov he didn’t know, a soft lilting voice he couldn’t understand, the back of a head and a pair of stiff shoulders.

Hadn’t heard Aremu speak Mugrobi since, except for what precious bits and pieces he got, what whispers of domea and suchlike he felt against his lips. Mung as he was, he’d thought about it; he’d done a lot of imagining, of wondering what he sounded like in Thul Ka, what he looked like round his countrymen, in his own city, whether the knots in his back were his or this place’d given them to him.

Tom didn’t know. He thought he sounded different, in a different tongue. Most folk did; he reckoned he’d sound different in proper Estuan like Aremu spoke, or some shit like that. He liked hearing him speak it, he thought, in some place in his head that felt distant.

Was Úsir spoke next, most he’d heard her speak all night. Her eyes were all fixed on Ipadi, dark and hard like two chips of flint. Ipadi said something; he heard the roll of his r on brunno.

Úsir cut him off with a, “Bhe. Fuck this.” It was her who’d the pipe. She passed it to Linden, lip twisting when he fumbled it, and got to her feet with a scrape of boots on stone. “It’s too fucking cold here in Anaxas,” she said with her long, loping accent, “even when it is not cold.”

“It’s all the rain, chip,” Arlo offered into the tense quiet, his voice like the stab of a riff.

“I am going to look for Nevio.” Úsir strode toward the walkway back up to the basement.

Aremu’d not drunk any of the eza he'd poured. He was still smiling that smile. Down in his lap, he was cradling his glass – could’ve been easy-like, except for the faint paleness round the joints of his fingers, all knitted together like a knot pulled taut. Was he laughing, too? Was the joke on him, too? Tom was starting to feel the eza; wasn’t a good kind of buzz starting up, but slushy, slurry in his head, making it hard to make sense of anything.

Ipadi kept fucking looking at him, like whatever joke was between the lot of ‘em wasn’t enough. Like it was all the funnier he knew they was taking the piss.

Tom’d gone to put the bottle back down, but Mason’d reached for it, so he’d passed it back to the towhead. ‘Cause he couldn’t stand to meet Ipadi’s eyes, he took a long draught of eza himself, grateful leastways he’d something to drink. He was holding an empty glass, then, and he grabbed for the bottle back from Mason and poured more.

Ipadi went on in Mugrobi.

Tom looked up after another drink, up and over at Aremu, sitting cross-legged and barefoot. Close enough their knees brushed. Was he laughing, too? His eyes flicked over the set of his shoulders.

Wasn’t out of hope, or want – he didn’t know. He tried some kind of smile, reaching out to run a big scarred hand over his shoulder, his back. Tense enough the imbala could’ve been made of wood. He just smiled; he couldn’t say nothing.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris, 2716
Canalworks Outflow, Cat's Paw

Ipadi’s eyebrows lifted. “Now?” He asked, almost grinning.

Aremu didn’t say anything. His throat was tight; he found himself swallowing, carefully, through the lump which seemed to be in the very center of it. Smoke drifted up from the pipe, pale, brushed blue, red, green, and the warm yellow of the oil lamp. It didn’t do much to obscure anything; when it blew away, they were still, all of them, sitting on the thick rug on the stone arch of the bridge, Linden plucking a new chord on the zither, smooth and even.

Úsir came into the silence. “Does it matter when he tells him? If he tells him? Leave it alone.” There was no mistaking it for a joke on her face. She did not speak to him, and Aremu did not speak to her, either. He thought he was smiling, still, if it could have been called a smile; his hands were still tight on the glass of eza in his lap.

“Can you call a man your brother if you don’t know what he is?” Ipadi asked. There was a smile playing on his lips; Úsir was looking at him, but he was looking at Aremu, still.

Aremu swallowed; his throat worked again, silently. He lost the edges of the smile; his jaw clenched, just a little, at the end, and he smoothed himself out once more, finding the liar’s smile. He was aware of Tom just next to him – just apart, still, without even their hands held between them. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look, but he thought he knew the frown he’d see on Tom’s face, thickset into his beard. He thought Ipadi saw it, with the way his eyes kept shifting to Tom. Úsir went; Aremu didn't watch her go.

There was the soft glug of liquid. Aremu glanced down at the glass in his hands, thinking about taking a sip. He didn’t; he felt pricklingly aware, the pleasant buzz of the glass he’d drank half of before and the puff of smoke all but gone already. He was still smiling when he looked back up, or smiling again; he couldn’t keep track.

“How much does he know?” Ipadi asked, quietly, looking at him across the echoing chamber.

Linden was blowing another mouthful of smoke out from the pipe; he stretched it out. Aremu set the eza down, by the edge of his knee, the one on the opposite side of Tom. He reached out his hands, remembering how to use them, and took the pipe. The zither started back up as he inhaled, and exhaled once more. Tom’s hand was on his back; Aremu wished he wouldn’t touch him, not just now.

All the same, he handed the pipe to Tom; his hand didn’t come all the way back to his lap. It settled, instead, on Tom’s thigh, on the leg close enough that Aremu could almost – almost – feel the brush of Tom’s knee against his. His thumb shifted, swept once back and forth, and he held still, fingers softly curled.

“How can a man know another man’s mind?” Aremu asked, in Mugrobi. He was still smiling. “No man in this cold place thinks I speak truth.” His thumb moved again, like a question, and he didn’t know what he was asking.

“Of the rest – ” His shoulders shifted, a short, sharp shrug. Tom’s hand came off his back, and Aremu was sorrier than he’d been when Tom touched him. The smoke burned in his throat. He took the eza, took a sip at it – only enough to wet his mouth, only enough to taste – and set it back down. It didn’t help; it lingered, sharp, like a reminder. His fingers curled, loosely holding together, and he smoothed them out on his leg once more.

“Can a liar not feel shame?” He asked, quietly, looking out at the water, at the distant gleam on the moon on the waves; he did not look at Ipadi, not then. He looked back, a moment later; he smiled, and raised his eyebrows, as if it were all a joke.

[Tom Cooke]

Canalworks Outflow • Cat's Paw

Evening on the 27th of Yaris, 2716

A
remu took the pipe. Still felt like he was touching something made out of wood, or maybe stone – like somebody’d turned Aremu into a statue, some last pina warmth clinging to the marble underneath his light linen shirt. He shifted when he took it from Linden, and the muscles underneath his hand tensed and pulled, and so he reckoned they was still flesh and blood. Funny thought, that; all sorts of funny thoughts tonight. Smoke drifted from his lips.

Didn’t know whether to take his hand away, neither. Aremu wasn’t leaning in, wasn’t doing nothing, and he felt like maybe – he didn’t know. He didn’t want to think about it. Made him feel like he did when he put his hand on a kov’s shoulder to put the fear of the King in him.

Tom set his glass aside to take the pipe. This one was near-empty, too; he didn’t look at it, just took a long drag to make up for the one he’d skipped.

The touch of a hand on his thigh might’ve made him jump, if he’d not been so deep in his cups. He looked down; he was surprised, somehow, seeing that hand, dark against his trousers, long fingers curled gentle-like. Aremu stroked his thigh with his thumb, once, and he raised his head up, glancing between him and Ipadi as he spoke again.

A flicker went across his face when Aremu shrugged. His hand dropped; he shifted, not sure where to put it. He thought to lay it on Aremu’s hand, then thought better and let it rest on the rough rug beside him.

He was fair quiet, in the end. Didn’t sound to Tom much like a joke, leastways – he didn’t know, not looking at his easy smile, the lift of his brows like enough to Ipadi’s. Ipadi’s eyes’d gone down once, catching on the hand on Tom’s thigh, and then they’d gone up. And then he’d laughed all mant and deep, like they’d got to the punchline. He shrugged his shoulders, showing off a rare grin.

Tom realized he’d been holding the pipe for a pina manna more than he ought to’ve, if the way Mason’s dull blue eyes was looking at him was any tell. Kov’d inched closer, noncommittal, like he was ready to take it if Tom was ready to give it.

Just fucking ask, Tom wanted to snarl. Like a banderwolf’s sleeping on your fucking trousers, ain’t it? Not going to bite your hand off. Or maybe I want to, now.

“Epaemo, kov,” he said instead, grinning all nice and pretty. Ipadi was just about through laughing. So Tom leaned to pass Mason the pipe, and didn’t pay much heed to whether he was displacing Aremu’s hand.

Ipadi’d eased back against the stone, lamplight glinting on the gold in his eyes. He said one more thing in Mugrobi, and this – Tom thought, settling back, uneasy – this didn’t sound much like a joke.

“Aren’t we a full kint tonight?”

“Well, shit, Nevio,” said Arlo, “thought they’d sent ye up the river.” There was a grin on his face again.

Tom half-twisted, looking over Aremu’s shoulder. Nevio came first, making his way quiet-like down to the canal; the lamplight glinted off his shaved head, and his cleft lip was twisted in a funny sort of smile. Usir came behind him, not sparing him nor Aremu a glance. There was something like a smile on her face now, too.

Nevio stepped round them, right past Aremu without a word or a flinch. “Give me that,” he said, and Mason handed him the pipe.

“Shithead,” wheezed Arlo.

“What’d I miss?” Smoke drifted from Nevio’s lips; the Brother had keen dark eyes, settling on each man in turn.

“Jus’ takin’ the piss, I reckon,” Tom said brightly.

Nevio smiled. “If it isn’t Cooke,” he said, “drunk as a kenser in Brayde as usual, I suspect?”

Tom took his eza and drank the last sip of it, ‘cause he didn’t give a shit. His lip twisted when he set it back down; he wasn’t smiling, not really. “When ain’t I,” he said, without the tilt of a question.

Tom half-remembered the shape of Aremu’s last words; he remembered more the cast of his eyes out toward the bay, and Tom looked there, now, but all he could see was the lights on the waves, and Nevio was talking again.

“Who’s this fine jent?” Something like a purr in his voice, something coy. His eyes’d settled on Aremu, interested; he shifted, starting to unlace his own boots. “Never seen you here before, kov,” he said. “Good to meet you. The name’s Nevio Faenza.” Passing the pipe to Arlo, he leaned across, offering his hand - firm and callused, but oddly shapely - natt-proper to the imbala.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris, 2716
Canalworks Outflow, Cat's Paw

Tom shifted away to reach for the pipe; Aremu could have gone with him, he knew, and kept his hand on the other man’s thigh. He didn’t move, instead, and it slid off, just barely, so his fingertips came to rest on the worn rug between them, in the place where Tom’s hand had been before, and where it was not, now. Ephemeral truth, he thought, dully.

“Should a lover?” Ipadi asked, when he’d finished laughing.

Funny, Aremu thought, funny. But Ipadi wasn’t laughing now, and Aremu had never laughed; he didn’t think he could have. Yes, he thought, I know it’s funny, the thought of one like me feeling shame. Maybe I shouldn’t; maybe what feels to me like shame, you’d call a different name. Maybe that, too, was supposed to be left behind; maybe you think it is. It’s not. Whatever lack of honor there is in me, whatever it is I’m missing: there is plenty of shame.

He didn’t say anything. It felt too much of a lie to claim the title lover. Whatever it was between him and Tom, Aremu thought, he wouldn’t go that far. Even in the hypothetical – even if it was the sort of honesty which men told, all the time, and women too, honesty with intent to deceive – he did not want to answer that question.

Love without shame, Aremu thought. He only had to look around to know it was possible; maybe if he’d been born whole. Maybe if he’d been born one thing or the other; maybe if he hadn’t been born in between.

Footsteps on the stone brought him out of it. He wasn’t smiling anymore, Aremu thought, uneasily. He didn’t quite dare to look at Tom. There was a burble of conversation, and Aremu was content to be a little lost in it, and to let it flow around him. Brayde he thought he knew; something about hops, he thought, and farmlands. Úsir had not sat; she was leaning against one of the stone pillars against the bridge, half-draping herself against it, her face turned so the tattoos glinted in the light as she gazed off in the distance.

“Aremu,” Aremu said to Nevio when the man introduced himself. He reached out and took Nevio’s hand, and shook it; he’d worked with enough Anaxi brothers to know the knack of handshakes, by now. He didn’t much feel like Ediwo, just now.

Nevio’s hand lingered against his; his fingertips just barely brushed Aremu’s palm, gently enough that Aremu could have thought he’d imagined it; he knew he hadn't. There was a lingering smile in the other man’s eyes. Aremu smiled back, or something like it, and Nevio’s eyebrows lifted.

Aremu was glad to sit back; he felt stiff, aching and tight. There was still space between him and Tom, though they were close enough that Aremu could feel his warmth, just as he could feel the coolness of the wall behind him. I told you, he wanted to say; I warned you. You said fuck them; you said you weren’t going anywhere tonight, not without me. Who’s the liar now?

"Ent half fair," Mason was saying, looking intently at Nevio, his voice soft and whining, as dazed as his look. "So I says - and you can ask any one of 'em - "

Aremu took another sip of the eza, rolling it in his mouth and swallowing it. He felt an absurd urge to down it, to tip his head back and drain the rest of his glass – to reach for the bottle. He set the cup down, clear liquid still sloshing gently in it, settling it soft into the rug.

The pipe went around again, from Arlo to Úsir, and then down to Ipadi, who blew a heavy mouthful of smoke into the midst of them all, the last in the pipe. Linden set the zither down, took the pipe and wandered away, out of the circle of the light, footsteps as soft on the stone.

[Tom Cooke]

Canalworks Outflow • Cat's Paw

Evening on the 27th of Yaris, 2716

E
nt,” Mason was saying, pounding one fleshy fist against his knee, “jus’ – jus’ ent, see. Ent like that. Ent – ent like that. So I says, I ent goin’ to do it.”

Nevio was looking at Aremu, dark eyes keen as they’d ever been; he shot a glance at Tom, raised an eyebrow, then looked back at Mason. “Hells,” he said, “if I was in your position. You know – it’s not fair. Reminds me of when I was back at Cluny’s, working in the…”

Nevio Faenza was a locksmith on the up and up; Tom’d wondered if the name’d mean anything to Aremu, but he reckoned a notorious picklock dockside wouldn’t’ve meant a whole lot to a pirate ship’s mechanic, much less one as didn’t spend a mant manna time in the Rose proper. Himself, he’d rarely had the occasion to work with him – housebreaking’d never much been his qalqa, though he’d been fair useful to the King when they’d found that trunk in the swamp near Plugit with one of them Heshath locks.

He’d never known Nevio to be nothing but a balach, leastways in the way a King’s man could be a balach. Son of a bitch, but not much a tsuter, not ‘less he had to be, not ‘less you wanted him to be.

“... ‘s’what my rosh said, but I,” started Mason, eyes all glazey, blowing out his cheeks and looking into the glass lantern case.

“Clarey’s a sensible woman,” Nevio was saying, his hand not so much resting on Mason’s shoulder, though you could’ve mistaken it for such from afar; his thumb was massaging the muscles there firm-like but gentle. “I’d listen to her, if I was you.”

“But the Quiet Sea? What the hell’s there?”

Aremu was still beside him; the light caught on his glass as he set it down, and Tom’s eyes followed it, briefly, followed his long fingers. Their knees wasn’t quite brushing anymore; seemed like everybody’d drawn apart, like everybody’d drifted back from the light, even if they was all sitting together. Tom picked up his eza to take a drink, and he found it empty.

The lights glowed and blurred. The pipe was gone someplace, and so was Linden, with nothing but his zither propped up nearby to show for him. Ipadi and Usir were chatting, and Arlo was listening, gold eyes keen. One of his arms’d tangled itself up in Ipadi’s; he leaned close and whispered something, and Ipadi smiled back at him.

Was like, Tom thought, everybody’d just forgot.

He didn’t think Aremu had. He looked out toward the waves, toward where the dark sea met the dark sky, so far away he thought it looked like a painting – if a mant breeze hadn’t whisked in, stirring his hair, making him shiver. His shoulder brushed Aremu’s, when he did; he looked back, and he thought the other man’s posture was still fair tensed.

What was that about? He didn’t think he could ask; the time when he’d thought he could felt a maw away. One of Aremu’s hands was on the carpet, in the shadows between them.

“Well,” breathed Nevio, “I’ve been rude enough, tonight.” He was behind Mason now, whose head was fair lolling; he’d both his hands on Mason’s shoulders, massaging with his picklock hands, grinning casual-like at Aremu. “Reckon you’re a friend of Cooke’s.” He didn’t say of mine, or brother; there was a coy sort of curiosity in his eyes. “Usually we have our little get-togethers in some shitty rathole,” he said, drawling like he was talking about King’s Court, “but this place was my idea.”

Tom was smiling faintly. Thought maybe – hoped – he looked at Nevio, then Aremu, then back at Nevio again. “That so?” He eased back, too; one of his hands rested on the floor beside Aremu’s, just – not quite – brushing.

“Used to be a hideout,” shrugged Nevio. Mason was slumping. “Smugglers. Goes back to the twenty-fourth century. I like to know a place’s history.” His eyes glinted; he was smiling at Aremu. “What d’you think of the locale, Aremu?”

Something about the way he drawled the name. Tom grinned. Somewhere in his mind he tried to remember if Aremu’d given his last name, too; he couldn’t. He didn’t know why it troubled him, just now.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris, 2716
Canalworks Outflow, Cat's Paw

There wasn’t enough space at the edge of the outflow to see the sky; that, Aremu thought, or there was too much light from the city, bleeding out from the edges of the Rose. If he watched – if he sat, careful, and watched, and ignored the dancing light on the waves – he thought he could pick out one or two gleaming stars, just barely visible above the horizon. The wind would whisk through, then, and set the lights dancing, and the waves would churn, and he’d lose sight of them.

Maybe, Aremu thought, they had been airships all along. He saw one; he was sure of that, gleaming lights from a broad front window lighting the sky. Some captains liked to take off lit, even at night; Uzoji had never been one of them, not unless there was a storm. Once you got out of the lights of the Rose or Vienda or Thul Ka, the sky was quiet, clear and calm – easy enough to see out of the thick glass windows that curved around the front of the ship by the light of the moon and stars, once you rose high enough.

Maybe that was always how it worked, Aremu thought; maybe it was always about getting high enough. Was it the height or the distance that mattered?

Tom was quiet, next to him. Aremu didn’t quite want to look at him; he didn’t take another sip of his own eza, either, his hands resting together in his lap. He felt the cloudiness of the qinnab well enough. Most of his memories of qinnab were from Thul’Amat or Deja, where he’d first tried it; it was popular enough, among the students. He had never quite smoked much, but he’d passed time enough in a pleasant haze of smoke, his last year especially, baking in the hot sun or wrapped up in blankets and rugs on a rooftop in the nighttime.

The wind whisked through over the arch of the bridge. Aremu exhaled, shifting. Tom’s shoulder brushed his; Aremu held, for just a moment, but the other man didn’t come closer, and neither did he. He kept his gaze on the curve of the bridge, the stone gleaming in the lantern light. He thought he felt Tom’s gaze on him, a flicker of it, but he wasn’t sure.

Nevio and Mason’s conversation had poured into the emptiness; Ipadi and Usir were quiet lilting voices beneath theirs, Usir’s desert accent almost as long in Estuan as it was in Mugrobi. Aremu did not look at either group.

When Nevio raised his voice, Aremu glanced over, a slow, even movement of his head. It was easier, now; he wasn’t as worried that he’d hear himself creak, sudden and loud amidst the stillness.

There were quiet footsteps in the distance, boots on the stone; Linden ducked back into the light, pale smoke trailing from his nostrils. He grinned, and it whiffed out among his teeth, catching the light. He settled himself back down, and leaned forward with the pipe; Aremu took it in his hands. Linden’s hands settled on the zither once more; his fingers swayed lightly over the strings, just barely brushing them, too quiet to make a sound.

Aremu didn’t take a breath of smoke, this time; he handed the pipe to Tom, half-glancing at him, his throat moving in a swallow. His gaze settled back on Nevio, who was smiling at him once more, looking at him over Mason’s shoulders. Mason let out a low grunt from somewhere deep in his throat, a rasping sort of noise.

Aremu glanced around. He shifted; he didn’t quite smile, the faintest of frowns etched somewhere in to the center of his forehead. “I wonder what you’d find beneath the stones,” he said, quietly, turning his head a little more to glance at the line of them, the places where they were set in with and without mortar. His shoulders shifted in a faint shrug; he smiled, slowly. “Or what they’ve seen.”

[Tom Cooke]

Canalworks Outflow • Cat's Paw

Evening on the 27th of Yaris, 2716

A
passed the pipe to him. He hadn’t smoked, leastways not that Tom’d seen; he couldn’t read his expression. Their hands brushed on the stem of it, his own lingering, and Tom looked at him, for all he didn’t know what was on his own face. A smile, maybe, or something like it.

He took a grateful drag. Seemed to loosen him up some, and he eased back against the stone. Linden was grinning at Nevio, at first, but then his eyes were back down on his fingers – tracing the shape of a melody without plucking, lips moving in his beard like he was trying to find familiar verses. Tom’d wondered if he’d flinch again, when he came back; he hadn’t, all the same.

Aremu was looking at the stones, the thoughts turning behind his dark eyes. Tom looked at them, too, dry in some places and damp in others, glistening with the colors from the lamps. They’d been set in with mortar, some of them; others, he didn’t know how they stayed together, thin black lines between them where they was pressed in tight.

Some of them were squareish, some circles, some jagged and some smooth; none resembled any other, he thought. They all fit into each other, enough there wasn’t a single gap.

“I wonder if a man might ask the stones what they’ve seen,” he said.

Mason’s lips were parted slightly. He’d Nevio’s full attention for a few seconds, as those hands wound down and further down his back. Some kind of wince twitched across Mason’s lips, and a hiss came out between his teeth; his broad chest swelled up with a deep breath and then let out, and he slumped a little more. Nevio grinned cheeky-like, easing back away, brushing the big kov’s chin with his thumb and forefinger.

All empty glass and shut eyes and ruffled towhead leaned up against the stone pillar, there wasn’t ne point in passing the pipe to Mason, so Tom reached across to Nevio. He took it; he blew a curling tendril of smoke out with relish.

“Who knows what you’d find underneath,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at the stones; he was studying Aremu’s face intently.

“Few hundred birds’ worth of drake’s tongue, dependin’ on the stone you’re turnin’,” Tom put in, more contemplative than laughing. “Somethin’ some laoso hid away and spilt too much sap to come back for.” He was strangely aware of Aremu in the corner of his eye, of the echo of lamplight in his dark skin, of the smile he could – this time – almost read.

Nevio laughed. “Relics from the last war with Hesse,” he said, “if the talk can be believed. Maybe even a dead general; rumors’re a bit fuzzy on which, though.”

He was smiling himself, though not grinning; he looked up, at the arc of the stone far overhead, almost too dark to make sense of. “I’d be scared to move any of ‘em – never know which ones’re holdin’ the whole thin’ together.”

“One wouldn’t bring the whole thing down,” Nevio drawled, passing the pipe to Arlo, who was pressing a kiss to Ipadi’s jaw; he disentangled himself just long enough to take it. Nevio smiled at Aremu and Tom, tilting his head. “Could you stop at one?”

Tom was drunk enough to be easing into it. He kept looking up at the stones, where the watery light was shifting over them; the bay was shifting in the corner of his eye, the shadows shifting across Aremu’s face beside him, the edges of all the lamplit things soft and luminous.

“Ne,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. He looked over at Aremu, brought himself to look in his face; his eyes stayed there, intent, the smile drifting off his face as if whirling up with the smoke. “What would you ask ‘em?” he asked, shifting a little closer. “The stones.”

Nevio’d stood; his shadow shifted through the lamplight. He came over, padding silent on callused feet, and knelt not too far from them, on Aremu’s side. It was the bottle of eza he reached for, his glass in his other hand, but his eyes hadn’t moved from the imbala’s face. There was a tug of a smile on his lips when he glanced – briefly – at Tom, a slight raise of one brow; then he looked back at Aremu.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 27 Yaris, 2716
Canalworks Outflow, Cat's Paw

There were many stones; the arch of the bridge was all stone, and the canal too, the round tunnel which stretched up high overhead, off of which the faint plucking notes of the zither rang, softly, through the damp, wind-brushed air. Aremu, who knew to look for such things, saw ties, here and there, along the walls, bits of metal half-rusted through where a man could harness a boat or himself, could climb the walls in search of a loose stone.

It would be hard, he thought, idly, but not impossible. Barefoot – one always wanted to be barefoot for such climbs, to let the toes grip in the cracks between. It would be a cool, slippery climb; there would be stones which would not bear his weight pulled too far down. It would be a challenging climb, with the water rushing below, spraying damp against the slick stones, with the smooth back bending arch of the walls.

Aremu glanced over at Tom when he spoke; he glanced up, just a little, too, and his smile didn’t fade. He liked the idea of it, Tom leaning against the stones and whispering, softly, coaxing secrets from them with his fingers and his tongue. It softened something he had held tight. He glanced back up to see Nevio’s long, dexterous fingers sweeping over Mason’s chin.

They wound on, the two of them, Tom and Nevio. Aremu’s smile didn’t fade, curling soft around the edge of his chin. Tom looked up, and Aremu let himself look over, to admire the soft fall of thick hair around his collar, the smooth, strong column of his neck. He was too stiff, still, to lean over and kiss the tanned skin beneath the edges of the beard, but he let himself think of it, and it didn’t hurt.

Tom came back down and looked at him; there’d been something unexpected in the motion. Maybe for the first time, Aremu thought, since – since – Tom’s gaze lingered on his face, lingered and held. He came a little closer, and if the smile on Aremu’s face was a little crooked, it was beginning to straighten out.

Arlo was breathing smoke into Ipadi’s mouth; it twined in the air between the two of them. Usir was shaking her head, a smile on her face, as if the rest of them didn’t exist. Linden’s playing, when it came, was slow and soft; they weren’t drifting chords and notes this time, but a melody. He was crooning, soft and even, a lyric about a lady and the moon on her face.

Nevio’s shadow drifted over the two of them, his footsteps silent on the heavy rug. Aremu glanced over; he shifted, the motion closing a little of the space between him and Tom, so his hip just barely rested against the other man. He reached out, careful, long fingertips steadying the edge of the eza bottle for Nevio – not quite holding on, but providing something like support.

“If they’re happy looking on,” Aremu said, quietly. He glanced back over his shoulder at Tom; he looked at him, really looked, in the hum of the lantern light, and he watched the breeze run its fingers through Tom’s hair. He smiled a little more. “Or maybe I'd ask if they mind all this weight, resting on them, and if their silence makes it easier to bear.”

Nevio lifted the bottle the rest of the way from his fingertips; Aremu eased back, just a little, and it brought him against Tom’s side. He didn’t quite rest there either, but he held, so the warmth of Tom ran down the line of his arm, from his shoulder to his elbow. He picked up the eza in his hand, and drank the last of it in a swallow; he held out the empty cup to Nevio, his eyebrows just barely lifting.