[Closed, Mature] A Soul That’s Born in Cold and Rain

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 34 Bethas, 2720
The Heart of Dkanat

Nkemi turns at the sound; her sandals scrape against the floor of the kitchen, and she flings herself back out through the door. Lights are coming on in the pause, in the windows that line the main street. Nkemi follows the direction of it, turning, all straight, charging down the trees.

“Jeela!” Ojala cries, leaning out her window. In the darkness behind her, Nkemi catches a glimpse of Peya’s face, her mouth twisted, her cheeks slick and damp; she turns away.

“Jeela,” Nkemi’s eyes are wide. She comes to a stop, breathing hard. She feels the brush of Anetol’s field behind her, and Jeela stops short, staring at him over her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Nkemi asks in soft, rapid Mugrobi; she is kneeling, meeting the little girl’s gaze. Jeela’s face is damp with tears; at the question, more well up in her eyes. Her dress is torn; Nkemi, something aching in her chest, glances her over, but she sees nothing like bloodstains – only dirt on her side, where perhaps she fell, and scraps and scuffs on her knees and palm.

Aafu is there then, and Nkemi eases back, her lips trembling. Jeela presses herself into her father.

“Jeela,” Njeri says, her voice shaking. “Mother of life, guide us in your hands.”

Nkemi is still crouched in the dusty ground. She breathes in and out, evenly; she draws back.

“You saw him,” Nkemi agrees, softly. Aafu says he believes her; Jeela is sobbing now.

Nkemi glances up; Anetol is behind her, Emeka too. There are faces in every window. She looks back; it does not matter now. She cannot let it matter, not just now.

“You were playing, Jeela?” Nkemi asks.

“I,” Jeela’s eyes flicker to Aafu; her lip trembles.

Nkemi nods intently, looking at her. “Sometimes the truth is very hard,” she says, gently. “We wish to speak, but we don’t know if we will be in trouble if we do.”

Jeela sniffles. Aafu is looking at Nkemi as well; she feels the prickle of eyes all around.

“Sometimes we will,” Nkemi says, evenly, looking at the girl. “This is what makes us brave. It is very easy to speak truth, like walking in the desert at night,” she wipes the dust from her hand, and brushes, gently, tears from Jeela’s cheeks. Jeela’s hands are tight in Aafu’s shirt. “It is a brave girl who can do so even when the sun is very bright."

Jeela sniffles. “I was playing,” she said in a rush. “I did mean to go so far! I was with Osferon and Efedhe, and we were playing, and then I remembered that I left my ball not very far yesterday. But it was further than I remembered,” her lips tremble, “only I had promised to bring it for us to play, so I had to go and find it.”

“You had made a promise,” Nkemi says, solemnly.

Jeela’s head nods; her lips tremble.

“Oh, Jeela,” Aafu lets out a little sigh.

“Where had you left your ball?” Nkemi asks.

“By the canyon,” Jeela goes on, “by the Acacia tree which looks over the edge of the canyon. That is where I saw him!” Her shoulders begin to shake again. “He was coming up the side like – like a ghost!” She begins to cry once more. “I hid so that he would not find me,” Jeela sobs. “I hid for a long time, and then I ran all the way back.”

“You were very brave,” Nkemi says, solemnly.

Aafu holds her close; Nkemi comes away, and rises up to her feet. Njeri is kneeling too, her hand stroking Jeela’s hair.

“Coming out of the canyon,” Nkemi says, her face tight. "A secret path, perhaps." She shakes her head, and she looks back at Emeka once more. She feels all the eyes still; she cannot turn to meet them.

Osferon – the troublemaker – is standing in the shadows; his gaze is fixed on Anetol, his eyes wide, and there is a little smirk on his lips. Nkemi turns, and she looks at him, solemn-faced and her back prefect straight. She meets his gaze, and she holds it.

Osferon looks at her; his small chest heaves. There are bruises on his skinny arm, and a healing welt on the other side.

After a moment, deliberate, Nkemi smiles at him; it is not a bright smile, but a soft one, small and understanding.

Osferon’s gaze snaps down; he glances away, and he eases back into the shadows of the building.

“Ape’on,” Aafu is murmuring, softly.

[Tom Cooke]

Emeka's Home • Dkanat

Morning on the 34th of Bethas, 2720

N
kemi’s kneeling and brushing the tears from the lass’ eyes.

He can’t know what they said. He recognized words. Úwe, hiding – he’s learned that one from bochi in Thul Ka, and the Fords before it. Atúun, truth, its vowels long and gentle on Nkemi’s tongue. Dzawaka isn’t quite the verb to promise; Anaxi don’t say promise with such a weight behind it. It drops from Jeela’s quivering lips first, and then Nkemi repeats it, even and solemn.

He looks at the little fist balled in Aafu’s shirt, and at the wide dark eyes. A door has opened and slammed on its hinges behind, and there’s the brush of a woman by him, through their fields without a word or a glance. “Ah, Jeela,” he hears, though the woman stops short.

When Nkemi rises, Aafu and Njeri both have her wrapped in their arms. She’s sobbing again, and they’re murmuring softly.

A secret path? He knows nothing of secret paths. His head’s still a whirl. If he goes now, he thinks – but it isn’t as if they’re camped just outside town, not anymore. How would he find them? And would they believe him? Do they know already? He can’t know about Aya’wo, but the coincidence with Kafo is too much. Why are they still here? If they’d found the lass, would –

Emeka’s already in motion, stiff wiry limbs and a set expression. “Or’it,” he says, and Jinasa’s field brushes past. “Ready Tsogeq’a. Tsarero needs to know.”

Jinasa looks as if she wants to protest; she doesn’t, in the end. “And Ale’ala?” she asks, half-turning.

Emeka frowns, then shakes his head sharply once.

He sees the lad when Nkemi does; he follows her eye and meets his. He glances from Jeela to the boy, frowning deeper. It’s Nkemi he looks at finally, and when he slips back between the buildings, it’s with a downcast expression.

Nkemi goes to Emeka, who’s speaking with Jioma in hushed tones. “Get Dhafed,” he says, “and – Taye. And see there’s somebody to make sure the stew doesn’t burn.” Emeka turns to Nkemi, and there’s a rush of quiet Mugrobi; the old man glances down the narrow alleyway beside the guesthouse, where the lad went. “Yar’aka,” he bites off, shaking his head, and nobody says a word about it this time.

“I’ll help, ada’xa Emeka.” Njeri has risen and come over. “Ada’na Jioma,” she says, smiling, and inclines her head.

Another field brushes by, thick with worry. “Ada’xa Aafu,” says a slim, small man with a shaved head, coming closer. “The cry woke Efreta and the girls. Please, is there anything we can do to help?”

Jioma, Njeri, and another woman go down the alley; Njeri calls out, “Osferon!” and the other two split off quietly in opposite directions. Nimble enough, he thinks, to catch a lad.

“Nkemi,” Emeka’s saying now in Estuan. Jinasa’s leading a donkey round, hooves clipping in the dirt; Dhafed’s come back with Jioma, and another young man, a little shorter but just as broad. “Tsarero will have Serkaih full of tsochyusem searching the canyonside by midnight.” The look in his eyes says there’s no chance he’ll be made a liar. “When Ale’ala wakes, she’ll want to hear your findings. I’d rather –“

“Jara,” says Jioma, breathless, “Awiti found Osferon.”

He nods. “I’d rather have a prefect everywhere,” he says, “but when a prefect cannot be everywhere, I would have her with Ale’ala.” He turns to where Jinasa’s saddled the donkey. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises. The smell of burnt onions wafts from the kitchen. “Yar’aka,” he mutters.

When Nkemi turns, he meets her eye for a long moment.

There’s more quiet Mugrobi from outside, before the donkey clops off down the path.

The stew is only a little burnt on the bottom, and the carrots are still very firm. In the kitchen alone, he stirs the potatoes and carrots and cabbage; if there are dark bits, there aren’t many. He breathes in the warm scent, shutting his eyes. He keeps them shut, the flat wooden spoon warm in his hands. His ears are ringing.

The door shuts.

He opens his eyes. “Nkemi,” he says. “Are you all right?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 34 Bethas, 2720
The Heart of Dkanat

Nkemi’s voice is quiet and intent. “I think he‘ll follow,” she tells Emeka. “His mother?”

Emeka shakes his head. “Worse then she was.” His voice is quiet too. “Do you think he knows more?”

“I think he watches and listens,” Nkemi says, “and is a bright lad. Such children often do.”

Emeka skewers her with a gaze; his eyebrows snap together. Grudgingly he nods his head. She can picture him, a small dark shape sliding after them through the desert, dropping down into the canyon or waiting in the dark. There are more than uliam to worry about tonight.

Nkemi bows and does not argue with Emeka. It is strange still. She asked him for this, she knows, earlier today; she has asked him for this every time she has held up straight beneath his gaze and met his caprise with her own. Never before has he granted it; perhaps never before has there been a need.

There is little time to think of it. Nkemi looks up to see Anetol, small, white and purple clad, standing in the gleam of a lantern. He meets her eye; he is frowning. He holds the gaze, a moment longer. Nkemi has the sense of words forming in his throat, unspoken; she does not know what they are, and cannot guess.

“Should he come with us?” Emeka asks, turning back to Nkemi.

It is a moment before she understands, lost as she is in a different lack of comprehension. Nkemi glances towards the hill, and the house settled up on the top of it, the lantern gleaming on the porch. She thinks of him at the sink, washing the dishes, steadily; she thinks of the small goat which is now tucked in her pocket.

“He is one of the tsochyusem,” Nkemi says, evenly. “If there is the need, he will come.”

Emeka grimaces. “I’ll leave it to Tsarero,” he says; he does not quite meet Nkemi’s eyes.

Aafu has swept Jeela up into his arms. Her cheek is curled against his shoulder, and though her eyes are not quite closed, she watches it all through them half-lidded and glimmering with tears. A small dirty thumb lingers close to the edge of her mouth, as if she is thinking of it; she does not yield to the impulse, if indeed she is.

Nkemi waits in the street until they have gone, until they are little more than lingering dust in the dark night. Lanterns are switching back off, slowly, though not all; there are still voices drifting in from the windows all around. The light which is left is little, pale and yellow and gleaming; the stars overhead are still made invisible by it, for all it is not much.

Nkemi turns and goes back into Emeka’s, into the kitchen.

Anetol is standing at the counter. His face is clean-shaved, and though the lines of it ache with some weight, he does not look so bruised as he did, nor pinched and pale.

Nkemi crouches on the edge of a chair; she eased her sandals off, and crosses her legs, tucking them up onto the seat of it. The smell of burnt onions wafts into the air, mingled the carrot and spices and cabbage and ghee. She fishes out the goat from her pocket, and runs her fingers over the smooth wood; it is not sanded, yet. She finds she likes it this way, though the texture pricks a little at her fingertips.

“We must all of us swim, when the currents are unfamiliar,” Nkemi says, quietly; she tucks the flat away once more. “I can keep my head above water a little longer.”

She looks at him again; she frowns, a soft little motion of her forehead.

Nkemi comes to her bare feet, and makes her way across the kitchen. She leans against the countertop by the stove, her gaze searching his face, the tense set of his lips and the way his eyes drop back to the pale yellow and orange in the pot, dark-speckled but not too badly. “And you?” Nkemi asks, gently. She does not reach to take the wooden spoon from him, not if he does not offer it.

[Tom Cooke]

Emeka's Home • Dkanat

Morning on the 34th of Bethas, 2720

T
here’s still a little noise in the street, the calling of one voice or another, Mugrobi, softer. A street – a neighborhood – a village doesn’t fall back asleep, after a thing like this. He remembers as a boy the raids on streets in Voedale, rarely Sharkswell, before the King came and put the families to order; he remembers how the quiet settles, though in the Rose in those days it was a quiet of futility. Dkanat settles, it seems to him, like the breath after a promise.

The bubbling of the stew is all he can hear for a little while after Nkemi comes in. Her caprise is like an arm settled and looped through his; the static and clairvoyant mona mingle, warm and worried, and the air in the kitchen shifts with it.

His caprise is as deep as hers. He knows it would be wrong to pull away now, to hold himself distant, just because of what he feels. Does he? He thinks it would be wrong; he can’t pull them apart, can’t tease the knot loose, what he wants and what is right. Nkemi’s field is comforting, after so long. He wonders – hurts to think – the mingling of his might be comforting to her.

She’s in the corner of his eye, pulling off her sandals and pulling her legs up into the chair with her. He sees her hands moving, blurry on his periphery; there’s something in them, but he doesn’t turn to look. I can keep my head above water a little longer, she says, and he nods slowly, looking down into the stew. A bubble breaks in the sauce. He stirs, and one of the black specks dissipates, falls apart in a tangle of cabbage.

He feels her eyes on him. He feels it in the stirring of her field, first, when she moves. She comes to lean on the counter, and he can see her eyes, now, large and dark, reflecting the light from the lantern and the stove and the drifting steam.

He looks over at her when she asks him, finally; he meets her eyes, and studies her face as closely as she’s studying his.

There are familiar little lines at her brow. The shadows underneath her eyes aren’t as deep as they were when the two of them came in that morning, shocked and tired from the casting, too. “I’m worried,” he says honestly; he can’t think of any other way to say it, just now. “That must’ve been – hells – oh, Jeela…”

He looks down at the stew, stirring again. He shifts a potato over a bit of carrot; he swallows tightly. He realizes for the first time how dry his mouth is.

Unfamiliar waters, he thinks. He shuts his eyes, and the spoon pauses in the stew for just a moment. He breathes the smell in deep, then looks back at Nkemi, continuing to stir.

“I’m worried, too,” he says, “because I know something that might help, or it might not, and I don’t know if the telling will do more harm than good.”

You knew I knew something, he thinks; he remembers her watchful brigk’s eye in the parlor. Something, but not what. Gods, not what.

He imagines pouring more and more unfamiliar waters in, until no current is familiar, until there’s no space to push your head up above the skin of it. No air to breathe but strangeness.

Their fields are still mingling. “I don’t know what ada’xa Dhe’fere found and wrote in his journals,” he says, “but I think I know something of what Dzevizawa wants, based on what I know of Kafo pez Alef.” He swallows thickly. “Honor seems to me like – like Úvew, now. I don’t know what will hold it.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 34 Bethas, 2720
The Heart of Dkanat

Nkemi watches his face. The lines in his forehead are carved in, like shadows in the gleaming lantern light of the kitchen. The ones around his mouth are softer, stranger, where his lips hold together at the edges. Little lines like spiderwebs trace out from the edges of his eyes, soft but deeper than in the morning. The light makes all of it stronger and stronger; specks on the glass gleam like freckles in the dark, and shift when he moves.

Jeela, he says. Nkemi shifts; she frowns. She cannot think what was said in Mugrobi or Estuan; she cannot think how much he would have understood. His daughter, she remembers him saying around the dinner table, his face tight and soft at once.

“She is frightened,” Nkemi says gently, “but not harmed. I do not know if they meant to harm her; it was the fear of the rest as much as anything which she found hard to bear.”

She cannot - will not - picture it. Jeela is home, safe in her father’s arms; a prefect who cannot put such things far enough away will not stay a prefect long.

Nkemi does not know that Anetol has put such things aside. He breathes in deeply; his hand trembles on the wooden spoon as he shifts it, re-arranging the lumps without reaching deep enough to stir the pot. When he looks at her again, there is a small shift of drifting steam between them, and it makes his eyes strange and deep.

I know something, Anetol says, into the quiet warmth of the kitchen.

Nkemi shifts; her hand settles gently against the counter. Their fields are intermingled, soft and warm. Her forehead draws into a tighter frown.

I saw him again, Anetol said, earlier, of Kafo. Here in Serkaih for personal reasons – a gentle man. She tries to imagine it, trapped together beneath the earth, almost buried. She remembers Anetol when they drew him out, drained and shaking but vivid; she remembers the bright, bastly brush of his field against her own, and the touch of his hand through the tent cloth. She remembers Kafo, his breath shaky and uneven in his chest, whimpering at the brush of the light, twisting away from it.

She thinks, too, of Anfe. She has thought of him, today, at times; she does not know whether he stayed also, when Tseq’ule left.

She cannot imagine conversation in that closed dark place, with the walls of sand pressing down on them. He liked the lights, Anetol said, too; she tries to imagine the two of them on the cracked scrubland planes, beneath the stars. She looks at Anetol once more, frowning, the light gleaming in his bright red hair. Something uneasy twists in her stomach, and the smell of the stew turns inside her.

There is no need, Nkemi could almost say. They told Dhe’fere the truth of it; it is their own madness, which must strike like lightning and make glass of it all. Two deaths, thirty years apart – there is no need to –

Nkemi thinks, too, of Jeela, sobbing in her father’s arms. She thinks of what she has read, today: any man or any woman, Dhe’fere wrote, they might believe –

Nkemi cannot understand what knowing of Kafo might help, all the same. She cannot, and further not can she begin to imagine how to speak of such a thing would threaten Anetol’s honor. But promises can be made, between men; Nkemi imagines quiet confessions in the dark, or beneath the stars, though she cannot imagine what. Nkemi – all Mugroba – knows that Naulas does not wipe such promises away. She breathes in, slowly, and out.

A prefect does not come to an investigation with the map already outlined, Nkemi reminds herself. She must collect the pieces, and only then try to understand how they fit together. To do otherwise is to make a lie of the truth itself. There are no magistrates here, but she is a prefect all the same.

Nkemi breathes in, slowly, and out, again. She does not know what he understood of her gentle words to Jeela on the street, of truth and its risks; she has no thought of repeating them. Her field pulses, softly, warmly, against his own.

“I will hear,” Nkemi says, quietly, looking at him, “whatever you wish to tell me.”

[Tom Cooke]

Emeka's Home • Dkanat

Morning on the 34th of Bethas, 2720

I
do not wish to tell you, he thinks. I do not. I do not.

Does he?

There’s a soft hiss; he looks down at the stew and stirs it again, picks up the bottom layer of potatoes and carrots and shifts them over, stirs it proper. The carrots are softening. Frightened, but not harmed, he thinks. The fear as much as anything, he thinks. His heart tightens.

The window’s open, but the street’s empty, and their voices are too soft to carry over the brush of the wind and the bubbling of the stew. For a few strange, wild seconds, he entertains the thought – the news spreading – a dead thing, a rotten thing, among you; a wretched thing’s touched your hands, caprised your field. It’s only a few seconds. If there’s even a sliver of a chance of them being overheard, nobody will believe him.

Will she? The strain, he imagines her saying, as he lays one more heavy thing on her prefect-squared shoulders. He imagines her slipping her hand over his, warm and gentle, sliding her arm through his and helping him upstairs. The strain, he imagines her saying, and he’ll know not to confess again, to leave it at the strain of that evening and forget it in the morning, because he knows what she knows of madness.

Is he doing it, he wants to ask Roa, to relieve the pit in his stomach? To show himself it won’t matter if he says it or if he doesn’t?

He thinks of the boch again, tear-streaked face pressed against Aafu’s shirt. I do not know, Nkemi had said, if they mean to harm her. And what if they do? Does he really think whatever the hell he has to say will change a damn thing? Does he even know that’s what Dzevizawa was on about – does he even know it wasn’t a coincidence, that this isn’t only meant to frighten the arati of Dkanat and Serkaih, mutilation and strange shapes in blood, get off our land – does he know anything?

And what if they were looking for Jeela? Or Osferon? Whatever it is, what if it’s not precise? And what if they kill him? The thought sends a ripple of shock through him; he hasn’t thought. They’ll know only that Dzevizawa killed him; the prefect will have to see –

Beside him, he sees Nkemi’s chest rise and fall, deep but steady.

He breathes in and out himself; her field pulses warmly against his, and he finds – his pulses back, gentle. “Kafo asked me not to tell Anfe,” he starts, shifting a few soft carrots over into a curl of cabbage. “Kafo asked that Anfe not know,” he amends.

“I saw the spell circles around Kafo. When we – found him.” He breathes in and out. “When we spoke of our – experiences, before you reached out. I told you I’d seen worse things than possession. This is the truth of my heart,” he goes on. “My truth is that sometimes when a body dies, a soul slips the cycle instead of being reborn, and – has to – take another’s life.”

His hand tightens on the spoon; he almost closes his eyes, almost.

But then he turns and looks her in the eye, because whatever is right, he knows it’s wrong to say a thing like that and look away. “Kafo told me what he was. He told me because he recognized that I was like him,” he says, “and I’ve long known what I am. We are – not very many, and we have to hide. I don’t wish to insult Kafo; when I say –”

His mouth is open for a moment; he’s forgotten to stir. There’s a soft hiss, and he shifts more potatoes off the bottom of the pot, though he doesn’t look away from her. He doesn’t know what expression is on his face; this isn’t how he meant the words to come out.

“I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasn’t certain, certain to the point of arcane proof,” he says, finally. “I wouldn’t tell you this if I believed my judgment to be – impaired.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 34 Bethas, 2720
The Heart of Dkanat

Pieces chase one another in the pale lantern light.

Anetol’s hand shifts on the spoon; small bits of carrot slide softening against the edge of yellow-dyed cabbage. Another piece of carrot bobs up from deeper within the stew; it turns, revealing a charred black edge, bits of orange gleaming through the gaps. Small white bits of potato mingle through them, though it is only because Nkemi knows that they were once white that she can see it still.

Nkemi listens, her gaze on him, her small face set. Whatever little there was of a smile has faded; she listens prefect straight, no longer leaning against the counter. Her eyes are on him, settled on his face, even before he turns to look at her and meet them. His thin, freckle-spotted hand trembles on the spoon, and settles; it tightens, and loosens again, and he goes on stirring.

A soul slips the cycle.

Lost, wandering spirits which take, endlessly, of one life and then the next.

Nkemi thinks of the spell circles, the sweeping lines of them, the bleached bones at the intersections, the runs carved in the knife.

Nkemi breathes, evenly, in and out, looking at Anetol, at all the hard soft lines on his face. The wooden spoon scrapes the bottom of the pan; more black rises to the surface of the stew. It is not the stirring which has brought it up; the potatoes were there, all along, clinging to the base of the pot. It is only now that they see them.

I was like him.

Any man or woman I meet might be such a spirit, that at any time, with no warning or way to resist…

You are tired, Nkemi thinks to say. Those who are not well do not believe their judgment to be impaired. Nkemi knows better than to believe that merely questioning does not make it so. Those who have lost touch may still question, may still doubt. She would that it were so. She does not doubt him. She has thought before many times that he has not lied to her; she cannot sit in questioning but she still believes it so. This is the truth of his heart, and she does not think it a lie. She does not think him unwell, after what else she has seen today, not in this way.

“Yes,” Nkemi says, quietly, looking at him across the short distance. His hand is still on the pot; it is the same as it was, freckled and thin, with veins lining it. Their fields are still mingled deeply together; she draws back, gently, from the caprise.

“From what my grandfather wrote,” Nkemi goes on, “the Dzevizawa know something of this.” She breathes, evenly, in and out; her face is prefect straight. She thinks of Jeela, who by now she thinks will be asleep; she does not think Aafu will have been able to set her down yet. She can imagine the little girl, her legs dangling over her father’s hip, small callused bare feet not touching the floor, sleeping with her cheek against his shoulder, and Aafu’s hand resting against her back.

“Your illness,” Nkemi goes on, evenly, through the silence. She is looking at him; her forehead wrinkles once more in a frown. “You told me once you were not prepared for what you would see what you looked in the mirror, afterward.” Her gaze holds on his face, on his eyes.

She has not asked. She asked him once, only, that he tell her; she asked him afterwards if he was well. The past is a river, she told him. It is still true. She found her balance on the shifting stones of the riverbed, and she never tried to turn them over and find whether it was a soft ground beneath, or sucking mud. It is not asking, that which she does now, for all that - as it was then - it is an invitation.

Nkemi has not looked away; she does not look away, now. She does not caprise him, either.

[Tom Cooke]

Emeka's Home • Dkanat

Morning on the 34th of Bethas, 2720

Y
es, she says. He doesn’t look away from her eyes, not even back down at the stew. He’s not sure when she stopped leaning on the counter. She stands very straight now, the sort of straight she sat at Dzechy’úqi, across from him; the sort of straight she sat around the campfire with Tseq’ule, when Ipiwo sat with them. He doesn’t know what he had prepared himself for, but it wasn’t this. This is not a woman who thinks him mad.

Her caprise draws back, gently but completely. Their fields sit separate in the small kitchen, a hair’s breadth between the edges of the mona.

She speaks of her grandfather’s writing. The knot tightens; it’s a painful sort of certainty. It’s the sort of solid feeling you can cut yourself on the edges of, where they’ve sharpened to glass.

He doesn’t hesitate before he speaks. She’s asked him nothing; it doesn’t fall on her to do so. He hasn’t looked away from her eyes once, since she started talking. Nor has she looked away from his. There are still shadows in the skin around her eyes, still lines in her forehead. Some of the lines seem like ghosts of Nkese’s; her eyes, though, are her father’s, large and watchful.

“Yes,” he says. “I wasn’t prepared..”

He takes a deep breath in through his nose, thinking where to start. There’s nowhere very good. “I was sick for a long time,” he goes on, “after. It’s – taxing. To the body and the soul. What happened before felt like a nightmare, and when I was well enough to think, I looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. I looked down and saw – hands I didn’t know.”

He pauses; his eyes don’t go to them, immediately. But a bubble pops and the stew grumbles, and he looks back down eventually, stirring.

He didn’t know it was burned this badly on the bottom. A great flaky bit of charring comes off, sits on top of the sauce; he nudges it to the side of the pot with the spoon. There’s plenty enough stew to eat on top, in the middle, enough for Emeka’s family and guests. He shouldn’t’ve stirred from the bottom. It’s best to eat what you can of what’s not burned, and leave the dark layer untouched.

He has the presence of mind to take the pot off the stove; he doesn’t know why in hell he does, but he does, because he doesn’t want it to burn any worse. He sets it aside gently, careful not to brush Nkemi’s field with his own, careful to stay distant, but not too distant. He knows the way of it, with brigk; no sudden moves. But he doesn’t want the stew to burn any worse.

He eases back and straightens. “Kafo was very old. Lifetimes,” he says, turning back to her. “I don’t know how many. Hundreds of years, at least.” Again, he doesn’t look away. “I am – not. A year and a half ago, I,” he breathes in, and out, “died, in my first life. The one I was born in. I thought I was the only one, for months. I learned that I wasn’t, but there aren’t many of us. There are wards that bind us – like the one I use to meditate – but they’re very old, and there aren’t many on Vita who would believe me if I tried to tell them this.”

He stands looking at her, still. One of his hands is resting on the counter, but he doesn’t lean. He doesn’t get closer, and he doesn’t move back.

“I could tell you more,” he says softly. “Much more. But if I’m right, if Dzevizawa have a way of knowing my kind – without doubt – and I think they must; they found Kafo…” His fingers curl against the counter. “Then they don’t want to harm anyone else in Dkanat or Serkaih. They may be – trying, in their way – to protect you.” His mouth tilts; he blinks, but he steels himself, and his eyes are dry.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 34 Bethas, 2720
The Heart of Dkanat

He speaks of it.

Nkemi listens, quiet and intent, and still she does not look away. Hands I didn’t know, he says. She looks at him, then, and when he looks down, at the thin veined hands on the spoon, Nkemi looks down as well, at her own hands, her small strong fingers, all the familiar calluses she has built up with hours – years – of writing letters and reports, of practicing with her baton, of drawing plots on wood and sand and stone.

He moves away when he goes to take the pot off the heat. He moves steadily but slowly, cautiously, as if he is not sure of her. Nkemi knows this way of moving, and it turns something over inside of her. She does not make to follow him, and nor does she put more space between them.

Hundreds of years, he says, and Nkemi feels it through her like a shudder. Lifetimes, he calls them, and her faces creases into a small frown.

Nkemi’s head inclines in a tiny nod, when he speaks of Dzevizawa. Her mouth is a small flat line, as flat as his. He is holding himself up straight, and so he is, and they watch each other across the small, pale-lit space of the kitchen.

“That is helpful to know,” Nkemi says, evenly. She tries to think now, turning it over in her head; she thinks of Jeela’s fear, and Aafu’s arms wrapped tightly around her, and of Emeka leading the rest to Serkaih, of Tsarero’s plans to search the walls. She thinks of a wick wandering clad in bones, and wonders if they rattle when she moves.

She closes her eyes, a moment, and opens them again, looking at him.

She wonders if she chose this; if so, she wonders when. Was it when they first met, when she looked at him and tried to understand why True’Art and the rest thought him mad? Was it the next day, when he caught her tailing him through the streets of the Soot District, when they sat together and she reached into his mind unknowing? Was it after that, when she sat opposite him at Dzechy’úqi, and listened to his half-truths, and asked for nothing beyond them?

Was it when she held his hands on a bridge above the floating lanterns, and invited him to Serkaih? She knew, then, that there was much she did not know.

Nkemi’s breath is even and steady. There is no clawing her way back upstream; the currents rush past. The currents are dark, she remembers him saying, once, and cold. She shivers, just once, in Emeka’s small kitchen; the warmth of the stove and the stew’s steam cannot chase away the cold of the desert night. Outside, she hears a voice raised in laughter or fear; from a distance, she does not know which.

Nkemi thinks it all over. She thinks – begins to think – of how she may shape this truth into clay, how to make a cup of it from which Emeka and Ale’ala may drink. This she must do slowly, and she is sorry there is not more time. She looks at him, and she thinks of what he has not asked, either. He stands very straight still, as if she is the magistrate; he has argued his own case, she thinks, against as much as for, and waits for her to pass sentence.

Nkemi exhales, softly and steadily. She is no magistrate; she thinks perhaps she knows nothing of justice, after all. She asks, all the same; she cannot but ask. She has asked nothing else; she does not know if she will ask any more. This question, though, burns at the heart of her, and she cannot let it go.

“And what,” Nkemi asks, quietly, “of Anatole Vauquelin?” She says his name slowly and carefully; she feels her way through the vowels and consonants, finding as close as she can to the Anaxi pronunciation. It matters, she thinks, that it be said, more than that it be said correctly; all the same, she tries.

[Tom Cooke]

Emeka's Home • Dkanat

Morning on the 34th of Bethas, 2720

H
e shuts his eyes, breathing in deep, nodding. He sets the lid on the pot with a soft clatter to hold in the heat. He thinks it’s not too long ‘til Ale’ala will be awake; he thinks it’s not too long – hours – until Emeka will be back, and they’ll let the stew warm again. Emeka’s stew smells good, even interrupted and mishandled. The rest of it’s not overcooked, at least. The carrots seem just right.

It’s not light, her saying that. The pit in his stomach doesn’t grow any lighter, but it’s not meant to. He thinks, hopes, he’s done right by the fact that it doesn’t; he hopes that’s not why he told her. Perhaps it’s different, now, but no lighter.

Helpful.

He can’t hear her breathe, but when he looks over at her, her chest is rising and falling evenly. Her back’s still prefect-straight, and so’s her face, her mouth a straight line. It’s not quite the look she had at Dzechy’úqi, though that’s perhaps the closest he has to compare. It’s not the look she had on the rooftop of the tenements, either, when the book dealer had Mrs. Marx ready to go over.

He doesn’t think it’s the look of a judge with a gavel – but then, he never expected that – only he never knew what to expect. Disbelief, maybe. Beyond that, nothing.

The question catches him by surprise; it’s not the one he expects. Her voice is quiet, underneath the wind outside and the wooden song of the chimes upstairs.

She says his name Ah-na-tol Vo-qu-lin, dances over the q, pronounces the n in its soft Anaxi way, so different from lilting Mugrobi consonants. It reminds him a little of the way Emeka says it, though not quite; maybe somewhere between Emeka and – he can’t think it for all the aching memories it would unwrap.

When she says it, it’s not his name anymore. Anetol Vakelin dissipates into the night breeze, it seems to him, and Anatole stands in the room, or the shape of where he used to be.

She’s looking at him now; her prefect’s eyes have uncovered the body.

“Not here,” he says at first; it’s the most honest – the most bare – thing he can say.

He takes his hand from off the counter; he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with it. He smooths the length of his amel’iwe over his shoulder.

A body can only hold one soul, he could explain. Try to add another, and one falls out. That’s not quite right. A body’s like a raft, he could explain. He doesn’t have to say any of it; he knows that, too. He’s dead, gone – that’s enough. That’s what she asked. What of Anatole Vauquelin? He died; he was made dead. He was killed. His body was taken.

“I,” he says instead, softly, “took this from him. I was like a drowning man; I barely remember it, but I did it.” It’s not even a thing I wanted, he can’t say. They both know it, and that wasn’t what she asked, anyway, not even in the folds of the question.

He’s quiet a moment. What of Anatole Vauquelin? “I don’t know where his soul goes; Roa willing, he’s in another life. Anatole Vauquelin is in the fifty-five years behind me, in his work, in his – children. In the life he built.” There are things he could say about Anatole Vauquelin; this isn’t the place for them.

He blinks; he blinks again, blinks away a little moisture.

He doesn’t reach up to palm them away, though his eyelashes are damp. They’re shameful to begin with, here, and he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to it than he has to. He doesn’t let a whit of it into his field; even apart from hers, it’s indectal and smooth. “But the soul that used to be him is not here,” he says, resting his hand back on the counter. “It hasn’t been for a year and a half.”