[Closed, Mature] What Kind of Man

Mon Dec 23, 2019 11:01 pm

Evening, 28 Yaris 2719
Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

There was very little light in the tangle of the mangrove trees. Aremu kept the ocean waves on his side, and veered carefully away when Benea’s half-full shone too clearly on the distant ocean. What moonlight there was brushed over flowers, drifting steadily more red as the night wore on. Once, Aremu thought he saw one shiver and bloom red before his eyes, as if it that were all it took.

The breeze over the Tincta Basta drifted through the trees, and carried with it snatches of distant life: a sound like a woman singing, faint drumming, and once loud cheering drifting from the shore. Aremu put it all aside, and the gentle lapping of the waves and chirping of the crickets too.

There were other signs of life.

Behind him, Tom struggled. He had taken Aremu’s hand without a word, his field heavy and buzzing around them both, and climbed carefully over the railing. Aremu had held still and solid, and waited. Tom’s hand was warm in his, and the light glinted off of his blade.

There was no pretending, Aremu thought. There was no mistaking this hand for another which, once, he had held so tenderly. The moonlight had caught a flicker of pale skin, gleamed against a scattering of freckles, and Aremu had felt a visceral ache, somewhere deep, for scuffed, scarred knuckles and the silvery nicks of scars. He put those thoughts aside too; this was no place for them.

Tom’s shoes scraped softly, here and there, against the heavy roots. There was the soft scuffle of his balance lost and found again, more than once. Aremu could track him by the scraping of his field; when it drifted out of range, Aremu would wait, against the trunk of a tree, until it found him once more.

He said nothing, but he thought of Tom walking back from the tsug grove with aching feet, slowly, red in the heat. Do you like it, Aremu had asked, sir. The Rose.

He kept walking. There was no straight path, not for them; better, Aremu thought, to curve around through the trees and emerge far from the festival hall. The mangroves touched the shore only twice - once at the hall, and once, distant, down the beach. But it was a long walk, and his arm ached. The bleeding had slowed and begun to stop but it throbbed steadily with each step, and the weight of the prosthetic, the pressure of the straps, was beginning to become unbearable.

When Tom stopped, Aremu stopped too, and waited at the edge of his range. He crouched on the curve of a root, and glanced back once to see the other man doubled over. He said nothing; what was there to say? They would need to move again; they both knew it.

I think it’s easy to get lost in, Tom had said. Aremu’s eyes fluttered shut. Asshole, he thought, with a sudden, sharp pinch of pain. Does it amuse you? Do you like it, knowing more than other men? Or did you want to make yourself sympathetic to me, to find words you knew I would feel?

Or -

Aremu glanced up when Tom drew closer, feeling the field scrape against his skin. He had not felt kind, for all that he held still and silent and said nothing, his thoughts his own behind the smoothness of his liar’s face.

Someone’s tried to cast on me, Tom said.

Aremu rose, then, his eyes flickering from side to side. He glanced up, searching the tangles of branches overhead, what little he could see in the flickering light. He reached behind his back, and found the pistol holstered in the curve of his spine, and drew it slowly. For a moment, all was silent and flickering light, and the distant pounding of the drums.

And, then, for a moment, there was only pain.

A slim figure swung from the trees above, and two bare feet slammed firmly, unerringly, into Aremu’s wounded arm, pressing it back against his side. A burst of red flowers scattered forward, swept up from the vine and thrown through the air.

Aremu cried out and fell; the gun scattered from his hand and caught in a nest of roots, and he found himself plunging into the brackish water, more than half-caught in the roots. He jerked; he twisted - the water closed over his head.

A small, dark figure, a strange shifting quantitative field hovering in the air around him, landed neatly on the root Aremu had left behind, his footprints slick with Aremu’s blood. He turned towards Tom, and began to approach.

Niccolette breathed, evenly and steadily, feeling the world around her. At the height of her count, again, the candle flames rose up and strained towards her, a little higher and brighter than before, then shivered down once more.

Yesufu spoke as carefully as ever. It was strange, Niccolette thought, how muddied the waters of honesty could be. Once, she would have thought him sincere; once, she would not have understood the ways that a man could hide himself, in the truth. Uzoji had taught her something of that, and when the surface of his smooth water had rippled, she had thought she knew pain. Now, she knew, it had been nothing of the sort.

It should have hurt too much to feel; it should have guided her away. It burned bright in her chest, that pain; she breathed it out into the world, and let it return, and Niccolette felt herself sharpen.

Niccolette kept the rhythm of her breath. The waves lapped at the supports beneath her, and drum and voice and oud wove a song together. Niccolette never lost the count of her breath, but she wove it into their music, too, as if the drumbeat were the pounding of the blood in her veins. The oud was her breath, she thought - and the song?

The candles shivered and rose again, and Niccolette saw the shimmer of it on something behind the corner mangrove. She knew, then; she knew.

Niccolette turned back to Yesufu, and smiled. An honest Mugrobi, she thought. It concerns your husband, he had said. A trap, well-baited with honesty. Niccolette felt the distant breeze trickle through the windows, and snatch up a few strands of her heavy hair, tangling them over her neck.

No, Niccolette thought. He knew something; he must have. Not a scrap, not a trickle of useless muddy water about men seen on the island. Something real. It was better than she could have hoped for.

Niccolette put Vauquelin from her mind; she could not think of what she had done to him. Aremu was there, she told herself, and she knew what she had done to him too. Was there anything, Niccolette wondered, she would not give? She had thought to burn herself in pursuit of bloody vengeance. How much of the world would she leave alight?

Niccolette looked at Yesufu, and nothing showed on the soft smile of her face. Her breathing was steady, and even, and her field held full and bright around her.

“By the will of men, and not only by the gods,” Niccolette agreed, looking at the white-haired Mugrobi. The gods put you in place; it was your will which made it real. Her field burned bright around her, and Niccolette knew well its strength.

”You have said it well indeed,” Niccolette lowered her chin, and looked back up at Yesufu. “I would only add that the will of women, too, may be made real.”

Rolls

Tue Dec 24, 2019 8:46 pm

Festival Hall • Laus Oma

Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

I
t happened so fast, he couldn’t know what he saw. The blossoms, first, spilling red like sap from above. In the moonlight, he made out the shape of — a man’s bare feet? — and then he heard Aremu shout. The imbala fell, and there was another man in his place, a flash of the whites of eyes in the dark, the moonlight glancing off a slight, wiry frame. Tom searched for Aremu with his eyes, but he was a dark shape on the tangled-root floor behind him. Something dark glistened on the tangle of roots where he stepped. A glint: the light shot down a pistol’s barrel, caught in a snarl of roots.

There wasn’t time. The brush of indectal quantitative mona dragged his eyes back up; it dragged his heart to his throat, the thrum of it a sharp ache. All his limbs felt stiff, frozen, like a startled deer’s. Who was he?

There was a knife in Tom’s hand. He tucked it close to him, hid it flat against his trousers. He couldn’t take a step back; he couldn’t step forward. He tightened his grip on the natt’s knife, started to move –

It tore the wind out of his lungs, and he cracked back against the trunk of a nearby mangrove. He hadn’t seen the kov move, but he saw him now: he was pinned, and the distant light picked out the panes of the man’s face, just a few inches from the tip of his nose. Close enough Tom could smell him – sweat and earth and something else, something fragrant and sweet – and his teeth, white in the shadow of his beard, as his lip curled back. Then he saw the flash of a knife.

He brought one knee up fast and hard, buried it in the kov’s groin. The galdor’s face knotted, and he let out a throaty mmph; Tom felt the edge of a knife prickle wetly into his neck. But he stumbled, and Tom shoved out with all his meagre weight.

He didn’t set him off balance, but he managed to twist out from under him. He threw himself to one side, remembering the glint in the vines. His back throbbed; he must’ve pulled a muscle in his shoulder squirming out, and the place where he’d struck the mangrove trunk felt bruised. He fumbled through a low-hanging vine. His sole came down on a steep hump of a root, his ankle twisted and gave, and he lunged for something metal in the slush and curling roots.

He found it.

He nearly fumbled the pistol in his stiff, shaky hands. He whirled, pain lancing through him, awkwardly half-crouched, and pointed the barrel at a shape in the dark – a shape that’d been moving.

A loud pop. He heard a strangled cry in a deep voice, a string of curses, a gasp. The recoil was stronger than he’d thought it’d be, stronger than he remembered; he fumbled, and the gun went clattering back across the roots. The smell was laoso, and his ears were ringing.

“Aremu,” he gasped, turning, hauling himself up on his hands and knees. He could see the imbala nearby, caught in a tangle of roots – how long’d it been? – seconds, it felt like – he clawed himself over, the brackish wetness stinging his palms in scrapes he hadn’t known he had. Without thinking, he grabbed for Aremu’s shoulder, jostling him from the water.

“Aremu,” he said again, between thick, aching breaths. “Are you all right?” He coughed. Where had his knife gone? There was no sign of it; his hands were empty. The gun still lay where he’d dropped it, but there was no body in the brush.

Rolls

Ekeri was a godsdamn fool, thought Tsofi.

Why Ekuwowit had sent the two of them for a job that she was more than capable of handling by herself, she did not know. She thought perhaps it had something to do with the incident in Oqah-on-I’ziyiref, but that had not been her fault. She did not think it was fair that she should be punished for the incompetence of her peers by saddling her with more incompetent peers.

Ekeri’s cloak was slipshod at best, and a travesty at worst; Tsofi could have done better in her sleep, and they both, and the mona, knew it. She wondered if he had learned to bend the light in such great swathes at Qrieth; the Giorans, after all, usually could not see the lynx for the mountains until it was too late. She supposed that was also where he had learned to weep like an esi at the whiff of a pepper.

The old woman was still singing in the central hall, and outside, the festival went on. To be fair, she thought, and found herself creeping just the tiniest bit closer, she had asked for this job. When she had heard for whom Yesufu was enlisting the Ehafsú’s services, she had plead with Ekuwowit.

Tsofi studied the Bastian galdor from afar with a mix of curiosity and giddiness. It was all she could do not to risk betraying herself by taking a few careful steps further. As it was, she could see the widow’s profile, her chin raised, her slim frame draped in gold. And though she could not feel it, not at this distance, she had seen the flames flicker and bow, and she had seen the expression on Yesufu’s face. She had not yet had the privilege of feeling it, and she felt almost cheated.

She wondered if the widow had sensed Ekeri, but she could tell nothing by the strange, soft smile on her face. The Bastian spoke again, and the old man’s face was not so serene anymore, Tsofi thought. A toothy grin spread across her face.

Yesufu was silent for a few moments; it was difficult to guess what he was thinking, and Tsofi did not care. Then his face smoothed out, but he did not smile. “Naturally,” he replied, “a woman’s will is made just as real, if she chooses to exert it wisely.”

With only the faintest twitch of irritation, Yesufu took off his spectacles and began to clean the lenses on the hem of his coat. Tsofi knew the signal for what it was, but she stayed still.

Before she saw him, she heard him. The words threaded through the air, woven in Ekeri’s sharp tones. Tsofi watched with interest; Ekeri, predictably, could not hold the upkeep of his cloaking spell — he melted out of the light a few feet from the Bastian, tall and white-skinned, his head as shaved as hers (and looking rather more like an egg). He looked terribly strange, Tsofi thought, against the backdrop of the crimson flowers.

He curled the spell a second after he appeared, and – nothing happened. Tsofi could not feel the mona, but even from here, she could tell it had fizzled.

He looked helplessly about him, shooting a glance toward her – bajea – toward Yesufu, who was gone; he was already halfway to the mangrove at the back of the room, with the tiny secret entrance behind it. He froze, his pale blue eyes wide on Niccolette Ibutatu, shock written into all his long, strange features.

Well, let Ekeri get himself killed. Ekuwowit’s favor had always been misplaced, and Tsofi thought it was around time for the desema to get knocked down a few notches – or to the bottom of the Turga, preferably. For now, she stayed tucked away in plain sight, content. Still grinning like a banderwolf. She had heard from one her sisters in the Ehafsú what this woman could do; she saw no reason why she could not keep her front-row seat a little longer.

Rolls

Tue Dec 24, 2019 10:54 pm

Evening, 28 Yaris 2719
Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

For a few moments, Aremu could not think. There was only pain; it had driven everything else from him. It was like fire, sweeping up to devour him whole, and it set him ablaze, and there was nothing he could do.

His arm. His arm hurt; it hurt so badly.

He was tangled in the engine of the Eqe Aqawe, and he knew what he had done.

He was lost in fever and Niccolette was chanting monite over him, her pale face a mask in the moonlight.

He was falling - he was falling -

He was underwater, Aremu realized. He struggled; his coat was caught, lost in the tangle of the roots. He jerked, and struggled; he felt something rip at his back but he couldn’t get loose.

There were so many buttons -

Aremu reached for them as if he still had both hands. He felt the wooden fingers against his, scraping at the buttons, but he could scarcely think to pull them away, all his instincts screaming at him to hurry. His head was growing light - there was a pressure building in it, a desperate, urgent need to breathe.

The jacket was wet, it was so wet - button by button, Aremu’s left fingers worked. He could not try to do anything else; he could not even struggle. His whole world was the buttons on his coat. There was nothing but smooth slick wood beneath his fingers. He found what he thought was the last; his fingers kept slipping. His pulse was loud and throbbing in his ears -

He needed to breathe - he needed to breathe -

Aremu’s mouth opened.

The next thing he knew was the brush of something snarling and foul against him, and familiar, and the pressure of a root against his stomach, pressed in hard. He was sick; water gushed from his mouth, and Aremu gasped. He was sick properly then, groaning softly, the open jacket tangled around his arms, still caught in the roots; he couldn’t rise more than a few inches, but it was enough to breathe.

Aremu breathed, in and out, slow and steady, kneeling with half-bound arms in the brackish water. He eased his left arm out easily enough, but the prosthetic caught on the sleeve. He jerked at it, feebly, and scrabbled at it with weak fingers.

There were pale hands, then, easing the cuff around the wood, and Aremu shuddered as the jacket slipped free. He left it behind, in a tangle of fabric against the roots, and crawled up them, breathing hard. His shirtsleeves were translucent with the damp, revealing the straps that streaked up his arm, that crossed his body beneath the shirt, and the holsters beside. He crouched there on the roots, bound up small within himself.

Aremu found that Tom was beside him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and swallowed the desire to bury himself in the other man. He ached, and he wanted nothing more than to be held. Even unfamiliar hands, he thought, would be -

This was not Tom, Aremu told himself, aching and afraid, the lie easy and oddly comforting. What did Tom see? Aremu had never known; he could know even less now. If he reached for him, and Tom pushed him away - better not to know, Aremu told himself. He could breathe, again, although his arm hurt and his chest too, and he knew himself bruised. He shifted, slowly, and sat against the roots, finding a truck to rest his back against, crowned in red flowers.

There was a steady flow of blood again from his forearm, the knife wound wide and torn and wicked. The wooden hand lay on his leg, scuffed and bloodied.

“I’m all right,” Aremu lied softly, his eyes closed again. He couldn’t know how many times Tom had asked. He covered his face with his hand, aware that his whole body was shaking. He took a deep breath, and then another, and found something close enough to stillness. “What happened? Where is he?”

Two truths, Niccolette thought curiously. Strange how well she could agree with Yesufu’s words, and yet know how differently he had meant them. Wisely indeed, Niccolette thought, wryly. She breathed in evenly and steadily, and she waited; there was no more to say.

Niccolette did not hesitate, when the trap was sprung. She was not surprised by the chanting of monite, and she fixed her eyes on the blur she had seen and began to cast. She did not cast between her breaths; her field burned sharp and etheric but she cast more quickly than that, smoothly, finding a new cadence.

She saw him, then, a tall, pale-skinned Gioran, and he cast, and he sputtered into silence, and the mona too.

Niccolette did not. Streams of energy flowed from her, rising in the air and reaching for him across the room. They poured into the Gioran’s mouth, and filled it.

The question of tongues amongst duelists was a sensitive one. There were unspoken rules about it at Brunnhold, and spoken ones too. To win a duel on the Lawn that way was considered vicious and brutal and uncouth; to win a duel in the League that way was impossible, because it was disqualifying.

Let them have their rules, Niccolette thought. She was free of that now. She had found the spells for herself, and she had honed them well these last years. The words were not just memorized but known; she had left a trail of tongues in her wake, Niccolette thought, and never known regret.

Yesufu was fleeing. The spell was building, and her opponent had not even begun to try and cast again. Niccolette wove a bridge with her words to the second spell, linking them together, the monite never pausing, flawlessly interwoven. Hazy energy spilled forth from her again, filling her field. It poured across the room towards Yesufu, sinking into him.

He was careful; he was very careful. But Niccolette had seen it the day before, the way he favored his foot just slightly; she had heard Eduxu ask if he was feeling better. Her spell found the muscles and tendons and twisted and squeezed, shooting burning pain through his calf. It was easy; it sunk in and squeezed and inflamed everything it could reach, following the paths already laid in his body.

Better, Niccolette thought, always better to find the seam of a scar or injury and follow it. The mona could follow the paths even more easily that way; it had made the dual homing effortless. She curled both spells together, and held utterly still on the walkway.

The Gioran dropped; blood was streaming from his mouth. He had collapsed to his hands and knees, and then to his side on the ground. His mouth opened and closed; it was a bloody wound, and what had been his tongue inside was a mangled, shredded mass. Blood burbled from his lips and streamed from the corner of his mouth; it closed again. Niccolette saw his throat working, frantically, reflexively, and she smiled. Idiot, she thought, and then she did not think of him again.

Niccolette turned herself towards Yesufu. “I have not finished with you, Ada’xa Yesufu,” Niccolette promised. Her eyes gleamed in the dark; her field was vicious and bright and full of life. She began to walk towards him, ignoring the Gioran behind her, her small boots clicking evenly beneath the golden hem of her dress.

Rolls

Wed Dec 25, 2019 10:58 am

Festival Hall • Laus Oma

Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

U
nthinking, he reached to help Aremu with his coat. The imbala had convulsed when he’d been pulled from the water, spitting up water and sick, and one of Tom’s hands had hovered over his back, for just a split second. Tom saw what had happened, now, but he only thought when his fingertips touched damp, smooth wood.

The wooden hand was stronger than he’d thought it’d be, held fair firm in place. He wasn't sure how he'd imagined it. It wasn’t so hard, pulling the tangled wet cloth out from underneath, sliding it over the wooden curve of a thumb, over blood-stained fingers carved into a faint, relaxed curl. His fingers brushed the back of the hand, and he felt the bones of the knuckles carved into it. He’d never thought how much effort it’d take to carve a human hand out of wood; there were so many details. You couldn’t see it from afar, or from a bulge in a trouser pocket, but it was a macha piece of work. Tom didn’t know what to do with the thought.

His knuckles grazed Aremu’s right forearm, trying to urge the wet heavy cuff gently over the wooden hand. As they wrestled the last of his coat off together, the imbala shuddered. Tom remembered himself.

But he couldn’t draw away completely, not with Aremu shivering sick on the muddy bed of roots. You could’ve drowned, he kept thinking. We need to get you to a healer for that arm.

Are you all right? he heard in a voice low and wavering.

The sour aftertaste of fear clung to his dry mouth. Both of them were scuffed and laoso with the slush at the mangroves’ roots; the air smelled like mangroves and bitter gunsmoke and fear, and fleeting sweet blooms. Tom sat nearby Aremu; he’d eased away, but he was too tired to shift out of field range.

I’m all right, the imbala said, shaking all over, his face in his hand. Tom sat watching him, framed by red flowers. His shirt was plastered to him, and even in the dark, Tom could see the long dark lines that crossed his right arm and his chest. His eyes only lingered on the empty holster; then they moved off, into the dark between the trees.

“I shot him,” he said simply, softly. He swallowed and looked down at his lap. “I know I hit him, but I don’t know if he’s dead. He limped off; I didn’t see which direction.”

He shut his eyes, frowning deep. He could feel the ache in his legs, his back, his feet. You need to go, his brain was screaming. The forest’s no cover with a quantitative tracker. The laus, then? The crowd—? How far were they? Where were they? Where were they going? Tom didn’t dare ask; he didn’t dare ask anything.

More walking. His feet throbbed; the bones felt beaten out of shape, just by themselves. The anger he felt then was easier: it curled up through him like a lick of flame. He found himself pulling his shoes off, scrabbling at the benny, useless leather with stiff chilled fingers. He wrenched off one, cursing, then the other, and left them to the water.

One of his ankles was swollen. He massaged it with his fingertips, trying not to wince at the pain. Used to be, he didn’t have to trade a run of good luck for something twisted or broken or strained. But maybe that was why he’d burned out early.

With a shuddering breath, he ran a hand through his hair and looked at the other man.

“Wasn’t quiet, I’m afraid.” He gestured with one hand, and added, very carefully, “Your pistol’s where I left it, over there.”

It was precisely as Ufe had said.

Tsofi watched with mounting excitement — there was blood bubbling from Ekeri’s pale lips — his wide blue eyes were only wider, glassier. Tsofi could imagine the deep shift of fear through his field. She could see nothing but Niccolette Ibutatu’s straight, slim back, swathed in gold, and her dark hair, but she could hear the even lilt of Monite.

To cut an opponent’s tongue! It was precisely as Ufe had told her, and even more exciting. Ekeri’s throat was moving, spilling out little choked noises, and there was nothing he could do. Except perhaps try to run, but even the oveka knew better. He was on his knees with a painful thump, then curled on his side, face buried in shaking pale hands.

The spell was not over. Tsofi held utterly still, listening to the leybridge, then more unfamiliar living words. Only when the Bastian turned fully to the retreating Yesufu did Tsofi understand what she meant. She did not recognize the spell.

Of course. You know that he knows something, ada’na; it would be unwise to let him go. You do not know how much danger you are in, Tsofi thought, still grinning, but perhaps it is worth it to you. Will you dispense of me as easily as Ekeri? I do not think so.

The tseqi’ja let out an awful noise, a strangled cry. “No,” Tsofi heard him gasp, and was surprised to hear anger as well as fear. “No!”

One of Yesufu’s legs buckled, if it had meant to do so the whole time, and now simply remembered. He tried to keep moving, stumbled on it, and slammed against the boards, sliding. The widow was moving toward him, and Tsofi crept after her, a careful eight or nine feet assay. The widow was approaching Yesufu with even, deliberate footsteps, clicking on the floor underneath her dress. Tsofi wanted to watch —

She had a job to do, she reminded herself. A job to finish, alone, and reap its rewards, alone. Ekeri did not have a tongue to speak, she thought, amused.

Tsofi let go of the upkeep the moment she began casting; there was no reason to do otherwise. Fear trickled all down her spine, cold and crisp, stirring up dragonflies in her stomach. There was no hope of evading the attention of a master living conversationalist, once she knew you were there. Tsofi knew it would be her heartbeat, the rush of her blood, the things that made her a living thing, before it would be the sight or the sound of her. There was no point, and having already sacrificed her disguise by speaking, she did not want to divide her concentration.

She was a petite figure between the Bastian and the bead curtain, dressed in a simple, loose black tunic and trousers, her head wrapped in a dark cloth, her small face raised, her large dark eyes fixed on Niccolette Ibutatu. There was still a broad smile on her lips as she began to cast.

The mona stirred to her, strong and thick, as they hadn’t Ekeri. She didn’t try to weave it from whole cloth; the physical conversation, like any other, was about using what was already there, beseeching, singing the mona into changing decisions they had made a long time ago about how things worked.

She described a bubble around the Bastian, in the first, a skin where no sound could leave, but all could enter and echo and build. Her voice lilted, rose through the leybridge: not only do this, but carry the singing, the drums, the murmur of the crowd — the old woman’s voice rose; the crowd seethed — carry it to the shield on a path of sound waves, glancing, amplifying with each movement. She raised the volume, piercing-loud.

When she curled the spell, she grinned.

Rolls

Wed Dec 25, 2019 10:14 pm

Evening, 28 Yaris 2719
Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

There was no comfort to be found with the scrape of Tom’s field against his skin. Whenever Aremu began to ease he felt it again, prickling against him. How was it that he had borne it so easily just a few days ago? How was it that he had ever felt the scrape of it and not known it for what it was? There was a wrongness to it, a horror, and it had become inescapable.

I feel it, Tom had said. It hurts. A reminder.

Aremu nodded when Tom explained. He lowered his hand to his lap, slowly, and looked down at them - the one of flesh and the one of wood, both bloody and scraped at the edges of his wet white shirt. He curled the fingers of his left hand to match the right, slowly, then flexed them loose once more. He looked at the sleeve, and thought of the sharp white beneath the moonlight.

Aremu lifted his hand to the buttons of his shirt. The first one came loose easily enough but the second one was more than he could manage; his fingers were shaking and wet, and he could not keep them still on the button. His breath came faster, shallow and harsh in his throat, and he felt panic closing like water over his head. Aremu lowered his hand again, closing his eyes, and left the shirt on, clinging and damp and bright against his skin. His arm hurt; it was the sort of pain almost beyond bearing, and he could not look at it too closely. He sat, and kept his eyes shut, and did as little else as he could manage.

It was only when Tom spoke again that Aremu opened his eyes once more. He nodded, slowly, feeling the soft brush of the petals against his head. He hurt; his arm, his lungs, his ribs; he was a mass of hurts with names. They were so easy to bear, compared to the ones without.

Aremu was too tired to think any more of it. ”Keep it,” he said, quietly. He felt stretched thin; there were too many fronts on which to fight. He could not bear this one; he would have to yield. If Tom took what he gave and shot Aremu with his own pistol, then so be it.

So be it. He had nothing left with which to fight.

Aremu buried his face in his shaking hand, and took a deep breath. They could not stay here, and yet he knew he could not yet stand. “We have few choices,” he said, quietly. Tom had taken his shoes off; his feet were soft and pale and scraped raw at the heels. One ankle looked swollen. “We can walk to where the mangroves touch the shore once more. We can go back to the festival hall. We can swim the Tincta Basta from the grove to the shore.”

Aremu reached down to his shoes. He slid them off carefully, one then the other, and tucked them in the roots of the mangrove. He could not have said why; he thought he would prefer to face it barefoot. These shoes - these clothing - they were not him. He wished he could have taken the shirt off. He thought of sitting on the wharf with Tom, slowly undoing the bits of his finery, finding himself beneath them. He thought of laughing together on the deck of the Eqe Aqawe.

“There is an abandoned tsug warehouse,” Aremu continued, softly, “in the wharf in Laus Oma. Niccolette will be there, when she can. The first ferry back to Dzem leaves at sunrise.”

Aremu looked at Tom now, even and steady. He felt oddly calm; he thought he would face it like a man. He thought if he closed his eyes again he would be able to feel Tom’s hands around his throat, squeezing tight. Or a bullet, perhaps, tearing sharp and hot through him; not now, but unexpected, some time as they walked, with Tom at his back. It didn’t scare him as it had. Was it a lie, not to be afraid?

”Does it hurt?” Aremu asked, softly. He looked at Tom, and he was not afraid. The other man’s monstrous field scraped against him, buzzed across all his nerves. He wondered what it would be like. “When you die?”

Yesufu’s leg buckled; he tried to drag it behind himself, stumbled and fell. Niccolette could hear the anger in his voice. She was not angry; she could not be. She was calm, utterly still inside; there could be no anger, with the mona, no fear, no hate. Not as she cast. There was only conquest, and it thrummed hot through her veins, and lit her from within.

Then there was a voice from behind her.

Niccolette turned. She thought of the Gioran’s frantic glances; she realized, too late, what he had been looking for. There was a small dark figure standing between Niccolette and the door, and she was already well into her spell, chanting steadily, her gaze fixed on the Bastian.

She felt it. It was in the singing first, rising louder, and the drumming too, thrumming and throbbing through her. The crowd was breathing; she could hear it, the swell of breath through them, the rise and fall. She could hear the whisper of feet, the gentle shift of fabric. She could hear it all, and it was growing louder.

Niccolette felt it aching in her ears, and began to cast the moment she realized what would happen. There had been too much of this, these last months; she understood what another rupture might mean. Her voice echoed too and twisted and tangled in on itself and built - there was pain rising to a fever pitch in her ears and she could not surrender to it, she did not. Her voice was strong and even and steady and there were tears streaking down her cheeks through the mascara.

Niccolette curled the spell and the noise cut off. She held the upkeep of the dampening in her mind, a single bright pulse; she could still feel the sound waves thrumming powerfully through her, and she could feel the vibration in her chest. She could hear nothing, nothing at all, but her eardrums were safe, if throbbing again.

Niccolette could feel her own deep breaths, in and out, calm and steady. She fixed her gaze on the Mugrobi, held the upkeep of her spell in her mind, and began to cast once more. She knew the words in her mind; she could not hear them, but she did not need to, not for this spell.

Hazy energy streamed from her and flowed into the Mugrobi. Niccolette knew better than to try anything complicated or subtle; she knew better than to bear down full strength when she could not hear there pronunciation of each syllable, could not adapt to the faintest mistake, with sound waves still battering against her body.

A bristle spell, then; not pain, because some casters could hold through pain, and she needed to disrupt Mugrobi’s upkeep so she could relax her own. But bristle, a sudden, sharp shock of adrenaline, jarring, to set her heart pounding and her hands shaking. It was an easy spell; it was a spell taught to children. Niccolette could have cast it without hearing a word - and so she did.

Better to achieve this; better not to overreact herself to the mona. Better to cast a simple spell to disrupt the Mugrobi’s upkeep; the noise was building all around her, and Niccolette knew she did not have much time before - perhaps - her words would be inaudible to the mona.

Niccolette’s gaze was fixed on the Mugrobi; she did not know whether the woman could hear a word. She hoped she could not; she hoped the sudden shock of it would make the effect even greater. She stepped forward, and pulsed her field through the cast, feeling it wash over the physical conversationalist, and caprising her with her full strength as she curled the spell.

Niccolette smiled.

Rolls

Thu Dec 26, 2019 4:49 pm

Festival Hall • Laus Oma

Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

K
eep it. Tom couldn’t help the animal relief that flooded through him. Aremu had given him his hand, given him the natt’s knife, but that didn’t mean anything. He could read nothing in the imbala’s face. He was tempted to move for the gun quick-like, quick as his twisted ankle could take him across the roots. He didn’t know if Aremu might change his mind, if, given the chance, given the gun in his hand and the grotesquery in front of him, he might not be able to help himself. But Aremu was tired, now; he had seen the fingers of his hand struggle with the slippery button of his shirt, had seen him give up and sag against the tree. Now was the time, if any – his heart pounded –

It ached. He stayed put, bowing his head. He knew he couldn’t have fired on Aremu Ediwo even if the imbala had a blade to his throat. He wished he could’ve taken the lump out of his throat; he kept swallowing it, but it still burned behind his eyes. He was too tired for the fear, and all it left behind was a guilt he could’ve drowned in.

But there wasn’t time to drown, and he found himself floating, somehow, on Aremu’s soft, even voice. He found himself nodding. He didn’t think there was much point in silence; a quantitative tracker could find them, noise or no, if he was alive. Aremu was pulling off his own shoes, now. He’d left his shirt just one button undone. Tom looked again at the wooden hand in his lap; there was so much he wanted to ask, so much he couldn’t.

Sunrise. “It’s going to be a long night,” murmured Tom, pushing himself up with a sigh. “I can’t see the sense in going back to the Hall, and I wouldn’t make it, swimming.”

He found footholds in the roots easier with his bare feet, scuffed though they were. A little hurt had never stopped him. Favoring his right leg, holding onto a low tangle of branches with his scuffed hand, he heaved himself halfway up and reached for Aremu’s revolver, where he’d left it. His fingers shook as he checked the cylinder.

At his back, Aremu’s voice – a question like a bullet. Tom crouched, frozen, the pistol in his hands. He could read nothing in the imbala’s voice, nothing. Had he meant it to hurt him? What was the point of this, telling him where they were to go, helping him over the railing, giving him his gun – if only to – Tom understood nothing. Now Aremu knew, what’d he mean to do? Taunt him? And then, finally? When would it come? Bowing his head, he found a place, gingerly, at the foot of a nearby mangrove, where he could sit just out of range. He held the pistol in his lap.

Does it hurt? he had asked, not, Did it hurt? or, What was it like? Tom frowned deeply. Because it was Aremu, he thought about it for a few moments, intently.

“I only did it the once.” He rested his head back against the trunk. “I wasn’t...” He shut his eyes and he felt it building behind them, and he couldn’t dam it. He felt something wet on one cheek.

Because it was Aremu, and because Aremu knew who he was and hated him for it, he was afraid he’d said too much; because it was Aremu, he couldn’t leave it. He drew in a sharp breath through his nose, opening his eyes and palming the tear away roughly.

He made himself look up, and he met the imbala’s eye with a tired smile. It was the best he could muster. “I respect the dead too much to speak for them, Aremu. When the waters know where to carry you, I don’t think it hurts; I don’t think you’d know to hurt. I hope most men find peace and rebirth.” Neither of us is going to die tonight, he wanted to say, gruffly, or I’ll be damned. He didn’t want to make the imbala listen to the lie. He blurred in front of him, blurred into the swaying blossoms; and Tom blinked again, but he didn’t look away. “It hurt, for me.”

Too much, he thought, shutting his eyes. He swallowed; his throat was dry. The taste of palm wine still clung to the roof of his mouth, and his teeth ached. He took a deep breath.

“Ep’ama,” he said, in a lower voice. He blinked, and his eyes still prickled. “Do you want to know? I wouldn’t hurt you with it. With the knowing.”

Niccolette Ibutatu turned, and Tsofi saw the smudged mascara at her eyes, and the faint watery lines down her pale cheeks. She knew that her spell had struck true; she studied the widow closely, carefully, the smile gone from her face, replaced by a look of intense concentration.

Upkeep was the business of a physical conversationalist. To bend the laws of physics, and keep them bent – every spell had upkeep clauses; every spell defined parameters, defined the give and take of forces, the from and the to, in specific terms, and one had to hold all of this in one’s mind. A strong man might strain his muscles lifting a heavy box; a physical conversationalist could strain worse.

The widow must have known this. She was still casting from within the sound-wall, and Tsofi had known from the start that the price of the thing’s effectiveness was that she was deaf to her opponent’s spellwork. So be it, she thought. She stared at Niccolette, met her green eyes through the empty air between them.

Tsofi’s upkeep broke immediately. Her heartbeat spiked; she gasped, and shuddered, and nearly stumbled. Her hands were shaking. The air was no more or less empty than it had been before, but the soundwaves were no longer warped and misdirected. Tsofi was sweating, and her chest hurt.

A flooding bristle! It did not last too terribly long; the widow must have cast it alongside the upkeep of whatever had protected her from the wall.

She was recovering herself. “Bajea,” breathed Tsofi. “So, this is it! Ma’ralio, ada’na!” She could scarcely hear her voice, over the rush of her pulse in her ears, and the vivid presence of the mona all around her, like the tips of a hundred knives poised. Slowly, her face spread into a broad grin, and she looked at the widow with wide eyes. Her field was strong and organized, but it breathed with so much life –

Tsofi regained her poise; she pushed back and pulsed her own field against it, giving into the caprise, letting the mona mingle. Her field wasn’t quite as strong as Niccolette’s, but it was a ramscott in its own right – light, instead of bright, or heavy, or soft, or sharp; the mona were nimble, mobile, like a dancer’s feet, charged with energy, and she flexed her field with the heavy grace of a fighter.

Niccolette Ibutatu was smiling, too, she saw, through her tears. Behind her, there was no Yesufu; there were only the trunks and the hanging branches and the roots of the mangroves, and the shadows.

She let her field spread outward, so that she could maintain the caprise even as she stepped back, one step, then two. She was raising her hands; they had steadied fast, and now they moved, twisted and danced through the air, as nimble as her field. Her lips were already moving, though they were still stretched with a smile, and her smile colored all of the Monite, and her field was bastly gold.

It was a simple spell, but she thought that it would buy her time to cast again, without interruption. Simple, then, and fast, with no upkeep to interrupt. Her high, clear voice trilled through it, almost sing-song, and her hands wove patterns through the air, and she was a composer, directing where the channels of sound were to go at the final moment. Within seconds, she curled the spell, flicking both hands in the widow’s direction. She expected to feel the vibration through her bones, the stirring of her sleeve; she expected to feel her ears pop, and the air grow brittle and cool.

She felt nothing.

She felt fear.

But there was no backlash. Her breath caught in her throat; she began casting again, her hands flying through the motions, her smile fading. She held her focus, but there was no time; she could not build the spell as she had wanted to, and she was afraid it would not be fast enough.

Rolls

Thu Dec 26, 2019 11:22 pm

Evening, 28 Yaris 2719
Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

Something went through Tom, a sharp jerk. Aremu watched him, silent, waiting. He wondered how the answer would come - if it would be with words, or if Tom would turn and answer him another way.

It would not be such a bad last sight, Aremu thought. He wished he could watch the vines - the flowers - the moonlight streaming in through the mangroves. Instead, he kept his eyes on Tom, his small red-haired figure trembling against the trees. He knew he needed to face it.

Tom settled a little more distant, the pistol in his lap. Aremu’s gaze flicked down to it - he could not help himself - then squarely up to the pale face, the gray eyes.

Tom spoke, and Aremu jerked. He shuddered; he hadn’t thought - tears glistened on Tom’s face in the moonlight, silvery, leaving tracks down his cheeks. There was no beard for them to vanish into, nothing but smooth thin cheeks for them to slip down.

Aremu felt his breath tight in his chest. He blinked, once, and then again, and he watched him.

This - he thought - there was no way to mistake him for Tom. Eyes open or closed, even out of the range of his field, it didn’t matter; his voice was so different, his cadence, his accent - but -

Aremu knew him, then, by the thoughtfulness of it, by how seriously, how deeply he took the question. His breath was hitching in his chest; he couldn’t blink the tears away anymore. They spilled down his cheeks, and he shuddered, and buried his hand in his pants, squeezing tight. He couldn’t catch his breath; he wasn’t sobbing, but it hitched in his throat.

It hurt for me, Tom said. He asked if Aremu wanted to know more.

Aremu wiped the tears from his face. He was ashamed, frightened, again; it burned through him. He took a deep, shaky breath, and wiped away a new hot flood from his eyes.

I wouldn’t hurt you with it, Tom said. The knowing.

Aremu couldn’t have said what he felt. Be thought of sitting curled in Tom’s bed, shuddering into his legs. He thought of a hand on his back, of arms wrapped around them - of Tom, careful of him afterwards but still loving, still tender. He broke, then, further - he shuddered in a tight and painful sob, one that forced its way from his chest. He already knew too much, Aremu thought. He could not carry this also.

“No,” Aremu whispered. He sniffled, although he had not wanted to. He supposed he was beyond that now. He rested his head back against the tree again, closed his eyes, aching all throughout.

The fear had burned out; the worst of the pain too, and his eyes were drying. Aremu took a deep breath. “No,” he said again, quietly, eyes still closed. He opened himself, spilt it into the air, as painful as the cut on his arm. “I am sorry, Tom. I cannot bear to know.” No matter how briefly, he did not say. It was perverse for him to worry about it, but Aremu supposed he had grown used to it.

Aremu’s eyes opened, more slowly than they had shut. He found he wanted to stand again, as if to find something like dignity. He had wept; it was not the fear or pain, but there could be no knowing that for anyone but him. Well enough, Aremu thought, aching and empty. The truth was worse; he would have lied, if asked.

Aremu looked up; he found a handhold in the trees, between the branches; he levered himself to his feet with a tight, pained gasp. His right arm hung limp at his side, the prosthetic dangling against his leg. His left curled around the branch, fingers holding tight as Aremu tried to find his feet. Lightness rushed through his head, and Aremu swayed, and groaned. No, he thought - no -

Aremu’s foot slipped on the root, and his fingers were too weak to hold. He went sideways and dropped back into the water with a splash. He was not beneath the surface, this time, but he couldn’t get up either. He did not cry, not from this, but he lay trembling in the brackish water, a tangled mess of limbs.

Slowly - slowly - Aremu found a root with his hand, and struggled to ease himself upright. Now, he thought, now - if Tom wished to - it hurt to know it would be Tom pulling the trigger. It hurt; it hurt so much.

Niccolette exhaled her upkeep out as the pressure lifted. The Mugrobi was shuddering beneath the pressure of her field, and then -

Ma’ralio, ada’na, the assassin said, breathless and wide-eyed and smiling. Niccolette raised an eyebrow. The field mingling with hers in the air was light and graceful; it was a ramscott, and it was the ramscott of a physical conversationalist, and it was beautiful as it began to shift etheric.

Ma’ralio, Niccolette thought, but she was already casting, her eyes fixed on the other woman, her voice and hands woven together. There was a spell being built in the air before her, and she wove one of her own, chanting steadily, the monite finding its own rhythm in the gentle room. She could hear the music outside as it was meant to be once more, flowing; the beat of the drums thrummed beneath their feet.

Niccolette wove a spell of control; to take the assassin’s voice, and her hands too, to seal her inside the prison of her body. She did not rush; she did not hurry. Every word was deliberate; every word honored the mona, as did the two etheric fields still tangled in the air. She bore down; she flexed through the cast - whatever it was that has been building opposite seemed to disperse, and then began again.

Niccolette kept casting. The assassin was moving faster now; she was not smiling this time.

Niccolette curled her spell - a moment - two - she felt it catch her, a push like nothing else she had ever felt, as her spell took hold. Niccolette was clung backwards; she cracked, hard, into one of the mangroves, the branches scraping against her side, catching her hair and the golden fabric of her dress. A bloom of red flowers burst into the air.

Niccolette held her upkeep through it all.

She pushed herself back off of the tree, leaving a bloody smear against the vine, leaving hair and gold cloth behind also. Nothing broken, the living conversationalist thought, breathing deep through a twinge of pain. She held onto the upkeep, stepping back into the boards of the small room.

The assassin lay in a limp, huddled mass on the ground; Niccolette could see wide dark eyes facing towards her, the fire glinting off of them.

“Ma’ralio, ada’na,” Niccolette walked back towards her. She knelt, looking at the woman on the floor before her.

Niccolette inhaled, then, and began to cast once more. It was weaker than she would have liked, through the upkeep of the control spell; the mona swirled bright and sharp around her, but they were a little slow, a little sluggish. It was not hesitation; Niccolette felt none.

Hazy energy streamed from her, and sank into the assassin’s leg, and Niccolette heard the sharp crack as it broke. A clean, simple break, she thought; she doubted she had managed anything more. She reached down, and took the woman’s thigh lightly in her left hand, and squeezed, gently, the gold ring on her finger glinting in the light.

She could not scream, of course; Niccolette still held the control spell.

“It should heal well,” Niccolette said, casually, smiling. “I think you are strong.”

“Look at me. Blink twice for yes,” Niccolette said, patting the assassin’s leg with a gentle hand. “Once for no. Did Yesufu hire you himself?”

Rolls

Fri Dec 27, 2019 6:02 pm

Festival Hall • Laus Oma

Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

T
om had never known the imbala to weep.

Aremu’s breath hitched again. Every inch of him tingled with the memory, like the half-second before lightning. He thought it might carry him back in time, in one deafening stroke, before – everything. He looked at the imbala once; tears glistened against his dark skin. He thought he could’ve crept closer, through the dark – and reached out to run a hand over his back, a hand calloused and scuffed from less gentle work. Aremu wasn’t a man who wept often, not from the pain of a wound.

He looked down at his lap. His thin, shaky hands, and the gun, and the sickly smell of blood in the air – the field that hung about him, never quiet – they whispered no, no.

Ep’ama, he wanted to say, through the sound of Aremu weeping. Aremu said, softly, I am sorry, Tom, and the sound of his name was worse than any knife from the dark. He understood, oes, why the horror of it’d drive a man to tears, even a man like Aremu. But: I am sorry, Tom. Tom’s breath spasmed; he squeezed his eyes shut.

Why are you apologizing to me? I am sorry, Tom; you know what I may have to do to you, before the night is over. I am sorry, Tom – I may even feel for you – but I know what must be done.

Tom reached to wipe away more tears. The weight of the revolver in his lap was reassuring, but his fingertips trembled, slick, on the grip.

He took one shuddering breath, then two. He didn’t think Aremu was looking at him; he didn’t think the imbala would’ve seen him, even if he had been. That thought, more than anything, steadied him. He brought his shoulders back against the damp bark, drew in a third breath, a fourth. He tried to count the seconds between them, like he was meditating in a plot. He traced its contours in his head, mapped a prodigium between himself and Aremu on the forest floor, as if he could brush aside the tangled roots and find clear, clean lines underneath.

That, if anything, steadied him. He wasn’t sure when, but Aremu’s breath had evened out, too. He heard a sniffle, and then nothing, though he didn’t dare look. He waited another moment.

“Of course,” Tom said softly, and found his tired smile again. He looked at Aremu briefly, as long as he could. His vision blurred, and he couldn’t stop it, this time. He felt more tears on his cheeks; he tasted them as he looked down and away, sharp and salty.

Despite himself, he was relieved Aremu hadn’t asked that of him. Not here, not now — not in the night, among all the tangled branches and tangled roots and blood-red blossoms, all picked out in hazy, ghostly moonlight. Not with both of them soaked through their shirts, shivering, and not when there was a gun to hand. That wasn’t how he wanted to remember Aremu looking at him.

What could he have said, if Aremu had asked? Does it hurt? It shouldn’t’ve hurt, because there weren’t nerves to hurt; I didn’t have a body, Aremu, but it hurt anyway. The wrongness sank through him, sank into all his bones, his stolen flesh and bones. What would he have seen in Aremu’s eyes?

It was a conversation for quiet libraries, for classrooms, for sitting rooms with books. Books – you could swaddle it in dry monic theory, draw back the curtain by making a science experiment of yourself; I’m not a monster, you could say, I’m just a byproduct. There are theories. Or you could read Deftung poetry, or talk of what the Circle meant for you; there’s a place where there are more like me, and we aren’t Things, not there. We make beautiful art; we’re wise. We’re –

A soft rustle. Tom could finally look at him, rising to his feet among the low-hanging branches. Rising to his feet and turning away, wordless. He looked shaky, but Tom reckoned that was the best either of them’d do, tonight. He set his jaw, pressed his lips together thin, and tried to muster up what was left of himself to follow suit. He levered his way to his feet with his free hand, the fingers of his other feeling out the trunk of the tree, the barrel of the revolver brushing the bark. He cursed, fumbling against the mangrove, nearly dropping the gun, but recovered himself.

Aremu was the ghostly white blur of a shirt in the corner of his eye. The blur lurched, and there was a splash. Aremu was crumpled to the roots underneath him, a tangle of limbs in the brackish mess. Tom started toward him, then stopped, knowing the imbala was just outside his field. His throat tightened, but he moved into range anyway. Aremu was pushing himself up, now, slow and weak.

His fingertips just grazed Aremu’s shoulder before his hand came back, as if burned. He hesitated. Then, he shifted his weight to his right foot, bracing himself on a root. He bent to offer his hand to the imbala, steadying it as much as he could.

“Ep’ama,” he said softly, burning with shame. “Here. Please.” His voice broke over the please; he sucked in a hoarse breath and cleared his throat.

The physical conversation was about the meeting of variables: time, the space between objects, the speed at which a body or – trickier – a sound was moving; the mona breathed these variables, and they could be seen and felt in everything, if one knew where to look, if one knew how to feel – like muscle memory, like remembering a song one has sung over, and over, and over. The world had a rhythm; the mona had a rhythm; casters had rhythms.

The widow had been casting for awhile. If Tsofi’s first spell had not fizzled, she might have interrupted the widow’s; as it was, her spell built, and built, and Tsofi was on her second, and a weaker one at that. She did not know what the Bastian was building to.

The singing, the stirring of the crowd, the distant drumbeat – all were muffled, in the side room. The only sound was two voices, one fast, the other patient and deliberate. If Tsofi had been a first form at Thul’amat, still shy and uncertain, her hands might have begun to shake by now; she knew, Sister that she was, to keep them steady and sharp, and to keep her breath even through the fear. Juela Tsiha had taught her to focus through the fear, long after she had left the tender care of Thul’amat; she had taught her the faster way, the harder way. Tsofi held her upkeep.

The Bastian curled her spell the moment that Tsofi curled her own. Tsofi was upright long enough to see the great soundwave fling Niccolette backwards, against the trunk of a mangrove – she heard the creak, the rustle, the tear of cloth, though her ears tingled – and she felt a prickle of pleasure, of excitement, like a kitten who has gotten the upper hand playing with a cat. She smiled, for a splitsecond, and started to laugh.

Then, she was on the floor. Her voice was petrified in her throat, and she could do nothing with her face. One arm was stretched in front of her eyes, where she had been gesturing; the other was underneath her, angled awkwardly, the forearm pressed painfully into her ribcage. She felt the blooming of a bruise.

She could do nothing but watch as the widow picked herself up from the mangrove, stepping slowly through the sweep of blossoms the impact had dislodged. Their movements, too, could be measured. As could the shifting of each fold in the widow’s gold dress, and the wisping of the stray dark hairs around her face.

Tsofi was too frightened to feel as the widow brought herself and her sharp, bright field to her side. Ma’ralio, ada’na, she said, and any delight Tsofi might have felt had cooled to terror. Then, she began to cast. Tsofi could barely move her eyes to look up into her face, but she could see the movements of her lips.

She heard the crack before she felt it, and then she felt it, white-hot and furious. If she could have screamed, she would have; there was no shame in it, not now. She lay still, pinned like a dying dragonfly, and there was no place for the pain to go but deep inside. Her breath came quicker. She snorted, once. Her chest was too tight to cough.

She could not understand the soft, high voice, with its Bastian accent. I think you are strong, was the next thing she heard. She was squeezing her thigh with a hand.

Then, she was asking her a question. Tsofi’s eyes came into focus on her lips again. Through the pain, she picked apart the words until she could understand them. Juela Tsiha had taught her this, too: there was no pain too great, if you were strong.

Niccolette Ibutatu must have thought her the sort of individual who, when faced with a simple choice — a choice between relief and more pain, and even death — would make a simple decision. There was a word, Tsofi knew, for such a person: dzud’ira, coward, crawler. Through the pain, she could feel Ekeri’s field at the edges of hers and the widow’s, dampened, soiled with yellow-shift shame. But the widow’s field was sharp and bright, and her own still danced around her, mingling willingly with Niccolette’s.

Desema, was the word she’d have used. Regardless of what you called a betrayer, the Ehafsú did not train or tolerate them. And the Ehafsú did not favor liars, either.

Had Yesufu hired her himself? That was debatable, Tsofi thought; it depended upon what one meant by hiring, and what one meant by doing something oneself. Niccolette Ibutatu, she thought, would need to be more specific.

The breath came sharp and strangled through Tsofi’s nose. She was aware of every inch of herself, as if the pain from her leg stretched from her head to her toes. She felt the widow’s hand on her leg, like a promise.

The muscles in her face could not serve her. She strained, but they were slack and petrified. She looked up at the widow and shut her eyes; she kept them shut.

Sat Dec 28, 2019 1:08 am

Evening, 28 Yaris 2719
Laus Oma, Mere Tauthua

Aremu felt his field first. He was still struggling to rise; he couldn’t seem to find where to put his arms and legs. The water was cold; it lapped at him, and the rocks beneath his hand were slippery; he couldn’t find where to rest himself. He was tired, so tired; he wanted to stand and face it.

He couldn’t.

Better, Aremu thought, not to struggle; he went still. He found he was afraid; the cold clarity had gone, and he was afraid. No matter. It might not hurt, Tom had said. Aremu braced himself for it regardless, kneeling in the brackish water, forced himself to relax. His heart was pounding, furiously. He would hear it, he thought; he was straining himself, listening -

There was a distant, quiet crack, and the soft brush of fingers on his shoulder. Aremu stifled some noise in his throat, held it in. He looked down at the water, at the red petals floating on the surface of it, the moonlight tracing over them. Yes, he thought; it was enough time keep his eyes open. He didn’t have to see.

Ep’ama, Tom said, and Aremu thought he would have preferred Estuan. He knew it for a foolish thought; he wished -

Here, Tom said, and please. There were thin fingers trembling before Aremu’s eyes. Aremu was breathing unsteadily; he took a deep breath. He couldn’t name what was surging through him; relief, he thought, and anger too. Just do it, he wanted to say, and then in the next moment - no, no, let me have every last second. Let me breathe in the air a little longer, let me see the moonlight on the waves. Let me see the flowers.

Aremu took Tom’s hand in his. The other man pulled, and it was enough. He rose to his feet, and if he was unsteady, they stayed beneath him. He knew he should have let go; his fingers were tangled in Tom’s, and he was breathing hard. Not here, Aremu told himself. Not here. There is no comfort for you here. He burned with the shame of it.

Slowly, Aremu pulled away. His eyes were closed, but he was upright, standing shin deep in the water, his bare feet finding roots and dirt beneath. He dug his toes in, flexed them against gritty ground, and took a deep breath of briny air. His eyes opened, and he looked around. Moonlight filtered hazy through the air; the trees were shivering red all around them, blossoms blowing in the breeze. He could still hear the faint, distant rhythm of the drums.

Aremu sighed, softly, and turned to Tom. In the moonlight, his face was ghostly white, thin and pinched. He could read nothing into those flat gray eyes, and the other man had his gun. Aremu had given it to him, he reminded himself.

Aremu adjusted the set of the prosthetic with his left hand, casually, easing his fingers beneath the straps to resettle it after his fall. The motion made pain blur through the deep cut on his arm; he did not like to think about the mud smeared across it, the gaping ache. The pain never quite went away, but he had found how to put it aside again.

There was another quiet distant crack. Aremu went still; then he frowned. He looked away, and back at Tom, and knew he did not need to gesture him to be silent. Aremu wrapped his hand around a branch, and eased himself in silence onto the roots, crouching.

How many had Yesufu sent? There could be no way of knowing.

Aremu inhaled, deeply. He glanced at Tom. He knew what to do; he couldn’t know if the other man would understand. Aremu undid the buttons on his shirt, one by one, careful and steady, and the right cuff too. He eased the shirt off, and pressed it into a hole in the roots. He was dark, now, all through; the black pants soaking wet, his skin gleaming in the moonlight, scraped and wet. There were straps all up his arm, across his shoulder, but they were only a few shades lighter than his skin.

Silently, Aremu pressed himself to the tree. He found a branch with his hand, and pulled himself up; bare feet pressed silently into the branches, toes digging in. He climbed, and he eased himself out onto a branch. Only then did Aremu draw the knife slowly from his back; he held, silent and waiting, crouched in the branches, hidden by the darkness and the flowers.

The man appeared between the trees. He was human, large, and he grinned broadly at the sight of Tom, a knife in his hand. He approached steadily, then, giving up the attempt of silence; his feet crunched against the roots, and he moved swift and strong and sure.

He did not look up.

Aremu threw himself off the branches in a flutter of red petals and dropped, knife flashing through the air. He landed on the man’s back; his right arm locked around his shoulders, the heavy prosthetic holding him in place, and he thrust the knife down, and down again.

There was a roar of sound; there were two bodies, crumpled in the water, and blood was swirling through the clearing on the waves. Aremu pulled his knife from the other man’s back, and cut his throat, then, to be sure. He rose, slowly, leaving the heavy body behind, and he looked up at Tom.

Niccolette held the upkeep of her spell. It had become a part of her; it was as natural as breathing. She held it, reaching out to the mona, her strength intertwined with theirs, and they knew her, and they held too.

The assassin shut her eyes.

Niccolette smiled. Her hand still rested on the woman’s leg. There were three fields in the air around her; her own, still etheric with the upkeep; the assassin’s, lively and beautiful; the Gioran’s, sour and yellow-stained. She had not left the woman any words, but they did not need words to speak. She felt strength in the woman’s field; it did not draw away from her own but mingled deeper with it.

She knew the woman to be afraid, of course. It was in the lines of her face, the way they had frozen as the spell took hold. But there was fear and there was fear, and Niccolette could know the difference.

Niccolette patted the assassin’s leg again, lightly, and began to cast. Her field flexed through the assassin’s, and she wove a spell of anesthesia. It wrapped around her; not like a blanket, warm and comfortable, but like a vicious undertow, dragging her beneath the surface. It was insistent; it was possible to fight, but it would only tire you, would only make it easier for the water to claim you as its own.

She was a beautiful thing, Niccolette thought, idly. There was no reason to take her apart; she would not enjoy it for its own sake, and she doubted the assassin had much to tell. It was clear Yesufu had given the signal; it was clear there two were trained and expensive. On his own behalf or on the behalf of another? That was a question for Yesufu in the end, not the girl. She let go of her leg, and patted her cheek, gently, lightly, as she might a friend.

Niccolette curled the spell, and released the upkeep of the other. The assassin slept; she could not but sleep. Niccolette rose, and glanced down at the Gioran. She made a face, grimacing, and then turned and walked away.

First, Niccolette thought, brushing her hair back and adjusting it to cover the bloody scrape at her shoulder; first, she would find Aremu and Vauquelin. Then, Niccolette promised herself, then, she would find Yesufu.

Rolls

Sat Dec 28, 2019 8:05 am

Festival Hall • Laus Oma

Evening on the 28th of Yaris, 2719

T
om could still feel the ghost of Aremu’s hand in his. Familiar and unfamiliar. He could feel the callouses, some he knew and some he didn’t: the faint, raised places where a man’d hold a pen to write with, where his hand had shaped itself to the task, day after day. A landscape of scars he knew, eroded and changed by time. The lines at the palm, the fingers — the same, he knew, though he couldn’t trace them.

His own hand, thinner, older, fit differently into the imbala’s than it had, once. He could feel the press of Anatole’s wedding ring on Aremu’s fingers.

His strength been enough to regain the imbala his feet, though his touch had lingered as he steadied himself. He tried to find his even breaths again; he tried to ground himself, but there was nothing at his feet but brackish slush and the curls of roots, and the scuffs on their soles ached and stung in the saltwater.

Aremu had turned to him. Tom looked up at him, but couldn’t read his face; then, in the quiet, he heard the snap, the sound of something shifting. His eyes skittered out, between the branches and the trunks and the blossoms, but he saw nothing but darkness. Aremu was unbuttoning his shirt, now, his hand steadier.

Tom didn’t crouch; he didn’t move. There wasn’t much point. Aremu was easing himself away, soundless through the water. Tom saw him, pressed up against the tree, a lean dark shape in the shadows. He saw more movement, and then he could no longer find anything in the shade of the mangrove, save swaying blossoms.

Because it was Aremu, he thought he knew. He felt a brief pulse of something like hope.

When the natt came through the trees, Tom straightened up and looked him in the eye; he didn’t look anywhere but his face, didn’t look up. A wicked-looking knife glinted in the moonlight, and then a man’s teeth, a spread of yellowish white. Big kov with a sharp, some part of him thought, wryly. His chest had tightened to still the breath in his lungs, but he met the natt’s grin with his chin raised.

Then, in a scatter of moonlit petals, an abrupt impact — Tom flinched, but he didn’t stumble back. He saw it in glimpses: the bloodstained fingers of his wooden hand, the lean muscles of his forearm corded round the natt’s neck, traced by leather straps.

The knife came down hard, but graceful-deliberate. Clean. Twice. Tom heard it, and then the choked intake of breath.

Tom found himself watching tendrils of blood like smoke through the water, leaking round the roots and petals. The natt’d fallen, a bulky heap in a stew of tangled wood and water. Atop him, Aremu, drawing his knife just as cleanly across his throat. The blade was painted: it glistened black in the moonlight as Aremu got to his feet.

Quiet, then. Except for the crickets, the rustling of leaf and flower, the creak of the swaying branches. The gurgle of the water. But no other men, except the two of them. Or Aremu, Tom thought, and two dead men.

Tom brought his eyes up from the corpse, up to the imbala’s face. He was looking at him, now, silent. Nothing glistening on his cheeks; the moonlight picked out his brow, the elegant line of his cheekbones, but cast his eyes into shadow. Tom thought he could see the shape of an eyelid, with a fringe of thick lashes. The familiar set of his lips. He didn’t know what to read in them, and he didn’t think there was a point. I am sorry, Tom, he heard again; he knew there was no point.

He’s killing two birds with one stone, Tom thought suddenly, belatedly. I’m a fool.

He shut his eyes. It was hard to focus to draw in breath, but he made himself. One breath, then two, then three. When it didn’t come, his brow furrowed.

“A moment,” he said softly. He bent, with a wince, to set the pistol at his feet, then rose. His trembling fingers struggled to get purchase on Anatole’s wedding band; his nails scrabbled uselessly at the gold. He pulled it off, finally, and closed his fist around it before he could fumble it. He put it in his pocket.

Finally, he looked at the imbala. “I won’t fight you. I want to go with some dignity.” Raising his chin, he took a deep breath. He shifted his weight to his good ankle and pulled himself up to his full height. He was still shaking; he reckoned it couldn’t be helped. I missed you, he wanted to say. He mustered up his tired smile.

She had never known when it would come.

She lay still; the widow’s upkeep was strong enough to hold her, like a kitten that has been scruffed. She kept her eyes shut.

The pain filled her, now, as if the whole of her body had become the one broken leg. She could feel the arm folded underneath her, and it hurt there; she could feel Niccolette Ibutatu’s hand on her leg, and she could feel the cool sharpness of her ring through the fabric, and it hurt there especially. The lines of tension that her face had been petrified into — they ached, deep as if she were an old woman with the weight of Vita on her back.

She did not know why, in truth. She could be of little use to the widow, in the end; she knew a little something of the late Ibutatu’s death, but she was only a poa’na, and if her juela in the Ehafsú knew more, she had not been told. It had been a simple job, this one. A single galdor to keep track of.

What concentration she did not owe to keeping her eyes shut was spent reaching out through the mona. The Bastian’s field was vivid against hers, and their caprise was the only thing that did not hurt. Tsofi felt the sweat beading on her brow, but she still pushed out, curious, exploring the edges of her ramscott. It was an opportunity, even if brief; tonight was about opportunity. She had taken this job for this opportunity, and she intended to see it through.

There was something wonderful, even through all the pain, about the mingling of their fields.

The widow began to cast again. Tsofi did not know if she hoped the old man had gotten away by now. She did not know what to hope for.

When it took her, she was afraid; there was no shame in fear, Tsiha had taught her, so long as you did not permit it to stay your hand. She was afraid, but it swept over her like a gush of ice water, numbing everything to the bones. She should have been happy for the relief of pain; this was worse. It reminded her of death, and with the pain addling her mind, she thought it might be. She struggled to open her eyes; she had always wanted to meet death with her eyes open.

But she did not have long to think of it.

An Unexpected Victorian Fantasy

[Closed, Mature] What Kind of Man

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