f there was nothing wrong?
We will wait, Ahura had said; he will come back. Soon as he’d given Niccolette the steaming cup of mint tea, the glass of water he’d filled for Aremu, he retreated to a seat just out of field range. He had a hunch she’d want to cast again, and he was right.
Monite wove through the air again, and Tom listened to it. Quantitative again. He picked out words, here and there, he knew from quantitative clauses he’d heard Ezre speak. Mostly prepositions, conjunctions; Niccolette was asking, he thought wryly, fair different questions, and Tom’s quantitative vocabulary was a pina metaphysical at best. This time, he felt the spell come off again, but she sighed into her tea as if it’d done nothing for her.
If there was nothing wrong? Tom kept himself from wringing his hands as Niccolette launched into what must’ve been a repair spell. He’d been too distracted to make himself anything, and now he was regretting it, if only because he wanted something to hold onto.
He will come back, Tom thought grimly, the sluggish wheels in his head turning. He looked over at Ahura, though he didn’t catch her eye; she was watching Aremu, concerned, the older imbala’s hand on her shoulder. Husband, he thought idly. He didn’t let his gaze linger.
He thought of how disoriented Aremu’d been when he’d woken for the first time. He remembered holding the imbala close in a haze of incense, his face in his hands. Holding him until he stopped trembling. If, Tom thought.
He wasn’t sure when Ahura and her husband had left the room, but now there were smells, warmer smells, wafting out of the kitchen. His stomach ached; he should’ve been hungry, but he was frightened to hope.
When the imbala stirred on the couch, he stiffened in his seat, shifting to its edge despite himself. It was a long moment, tsuter long, with Niccolette suddenly kneeling by his side, with Aremu’s voice thick and groggy – awful, he said, honestly, and Tom couldn’t help the faintest flicker of a smile – with Niccolette helping him take a few labored sips of water.
Aremu’s gaze traveled round the room, met his eye, then – jolted away abruptly.
Embarrassed, maybe. Tom followed suit, casual as he could; he hoped he hadn’t been staring fit to make the imbala uncomfortable. They’d been laoso, those moments on the cliff. It was kind of him, at least, to say nothing of how it must’ve startled him, waking up with the mona wild and scattered and unsettled all around him. If he even remembered. Tom wished there’d been another way.
“No, ada’xa,” he put in quietly, meeting Aremu’s brief glance. “Just glad to see you up again.” He realized he’d been twisting his hands again in his lap; he forced them apart, rigid, flexed the fingers.
He half-winced when Niccolette pressed on. If, he thought, if, if – and at Aremu’s reply, he looked down at the floor, frowning slightly. You don’t remember climbing the cliff-face? Or did the waves pull you in and spit you all the way back up? If. He tried to remember if there was any water, anything slick, reflective, around Aremu; there’d only been sun-baked rock. That would explain it, he thought grimly. And he’d stumbled in afterward, Anaxi of Anaxi, and – he thought of the engine room, of Aremu’s low pleading voice. He thought of Aremu’s voice as he scrambled back against the cliff’s edge: no, no, no.
The shame returned, after all, sinking through him, leaving no room for the worry or the anger or the care. He felt only deflated. Sorry, sir. The care had nowhere to go; he stuffed it back under his heart, where it hurt, and he knew in time it’d hurt less. Emotional memories, Tom heard, in Ezre’s voice.
Regardless of what had happened, he didn’t think him and his red hair were making Aremu any more comfortable, and after that vodundun, he didn’t think there was a single chance he’d get comfortable with Their Anaxi Majesties’ councilman in the room. He remembered the shadow of a smile Ahura’d given him and looked toward the kitchen, but then he remembered her husband’s wary look, and didn’t think on it for long.
“I’ll – let the two of you be,” he said gently, rising with a creak. “Unless you need anything else. I think I’ll go upstairs awhile longer; I didn’t sleep so well.” It was as good an excuse as any, and it was honest.