he window is open, whisking in the smells of the desert night. It’s quiet, but it’s not the sort of quiet that lays thick like a blanket; where the laughter from downstairs has gone, it’s been filled by the wind whipping over the scrubland and canyon, between the buildings of Dkanat, tangling through the wooden chimes. They have a warm, sad way of singing at night.
There’s also the sound of his voice rasping quietly. It comes in fits and starts, like the wind. Sometimes his lips move and there’s only breath; sometimes he murmurs a piece of a phrase, half a sentence in Estuan, feels his way around an unfamiliar Mugrobi word. His pen scratches the paper. The books are spread out before him, but beside his page is his own notebook filled with his own hand and somebody else’s words.
Fragment 3
Tsiha pezre Iwayiq, “Detection and Exposure,” foreword
Dzeros pez Uqurezem (? look into) postulates that most super-natural investigations have sought to coax spirits out of some pseudo-spiritual “hiding” place, as has been the accepted method (where there has been any accepted method).
…
If what the layman calls a “ghost” exists as a monic resonance, then see this spell as a dye: like any detection ward, it seeks to translate subtle monic activity into physical stimulus. The discerning and sensitive investigator does not wish to harass monic remnants into showing themselves to the naked eye; this cannot accord with the noble uses. Such investigations are dangerous and frankly rude …
His back aches. He’s been holding his head up for what feels like hours, and he wonders that his fingertips haven’t bruised his cheek. The bridge of his nose feels pinched and harassed by his glasses; his eyes struggle to focus on his cramped writing through the lenses.
He thinks he is beginning to understand why ib’vuqem has the reputation it has.
There isn’t much monite in what remains. Fragments of spells, mostly, just like the fragments of articles. You can’t do much with a fragment. One – the most complete – he has written out over and over again, checking and double-checking his writing from the Cultural Center earlier to make sure he’s copied all the runes correctly. One word already he can’t make out in the invocation; he had squinted at the faded ink for hours in special collections, trying to guess whether the tiniest squiggle on the side of a line meant that the rune was different, once.
And anyway, it’s only a fragment itself – a fragment which stands by itself, useless but easy to cast, but a fragment. There is a leybridge which crumbles and falls into the dark: he’s more intrigued by the implication of what follows, but that, he supposes, he will never know.
The streets are empty at this hour; the last of the bochi has long gone to bed, and only the faintest smell of dinner clings about the air. Louder to him is the smell of sweet, cool wine from the cup a little ways from his notebook, brimming and untouched.
Jinasa had brought it up to him earlier; she’d had keen curious eyes for his books and all the papers spread out in front of him, though she’d not lingered long enough on his scratchy, half-legible handwriting to ask about They Are Heard.
She was more interested in the other books. Crossed and Colorful Streams: The History of Serkaih lay open on the desk beside him. “Ah, I see,” she had said, setting the cup down and offering him a rare smile. “I was never one for history, but with him it is never dull.”
He wanders, now. A People’s Account of Dkanat is spread out over top of his notebooks, as if there’s any chance of him returning to them tonight. He runs his hands over the well-kept leather bindings, turning the pages carefully. He’s almost smiling, reading a passage; something about it is familiar.
His back aches. He breathes in the dry, chilly desert breeze, the smell of the oil lamp, and the sweet tang of wine. His eyes wander toward the window again, blurring; he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
A small, familiar figure moves through the street.
He watches, wondering. It’s only when she’s out of sight that he catches a blur, dark-on-dark, in the shadows; it follows.
His throat is dry when he steps out into the night; he’s barely sure what he’s doing, only that a headache has started up at the back of his neck and in the tension of his shoulders, and if he doesn’t move quick, he’ll lose both of them. He doesn’t know what he’s thinking, only the wind that scrapes dry against him is cold, but the pit in his stomach is colder.
His head is full of remembered lanternlight, of fingers curled round his arm just before the edge of the canyon; it’s full of the shape of a man leading him back through the streets, slow and careful, leaving him at Emeka’s door. But all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and raw, frayed laughter is ringing through his mind – and the smell of blood, and…
Vita’s dark; the sky is full of light, except for the gap where Benea used to be.
He doesn’t stumble, though his legs ache. His canteen is in his satchel; he takes a sip of water now and then against the dryness in his throat. He’s been along this path before now, alone, back and forth from the Cultural Center. He’s lost both of them now, but he still follows, because he doesn’t know what else to do.
He finds her under the first lanterns, as the path begins to dip into the valley. They spark off her headwrap, and the wind tugs at her hems. He looks around sharply, but his poor eyes can’t see much of the shadows.
“Nkemi,” he calls softly, tugging his amel’iwe closer about him.