he external foci lead one to the internal. He’s not so sure what to make of it; there’s a lull, after, and the last flight of stairs has him turning it over in his mind, thinking of what he knows now of the gardens and of meditation. He doesn’t understand, at first, until he thinks – it’s like the opposite of being drunk. The thought slips away.
Though he’s winded and quiet, he notices what ada’xa Natete asks, and what answers Nkemi gives. There’s no break in the cheer; there’s something wistful – no, not wistful; homesick, maybe – at the talk of goats. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise him that Nkemi’s kin to a painter. He looks over at her again, in her bright head-wrap and all these colors that shouldn’t go together but do, and catches another smile.
He caught the grin, too – your lovely suit – and grinned back, through the odd prickling in his stomach. He resisted the urge, then, to look down at himself, and he has still managed not to, though he has been staring at his slim dark Anaxi shoes to keep his footing on the steps. The professor is wearing clean, crisp white, with lovely embroidery at the neck and the hems; Nkemi’s skirt swishes round her waist. They spoke easily. He feels trussed up in expensive threads, red-faced like the sort of jent he used to laugh at.
Still, the thought of his slacks bedraggled and covered in curly white baby-goat fur is nanabo enough he doesn’t think on it too long.
Back in the lower hall, then – and through a door he spied on the way up, and wondered about. The whiff of kofi’s strong; he follows Natete in, and looks about him at the pale calypt tables with their carvings, the small but cheery-glowing hearth shedding warmth and soft warm light at the other end. The brush of another field and he turns.
This exchange is comfortable. His smile brightens – no less shy; maybe more – at I’ll do it myself. He’s never taken part in kofi har’aq proper.
It tilts crooked at the rest, and he looks sidelong at Nkemi, raising just one red eyebrow. She’s stifling giggles behind her hand.
He hasn’t had dzutan often, but he’s had it once, before. A job’d had him looking after a baker that’d got in deep with some kov that wasn’t the King, and he’d paid half in birds and half in pastry. Was one of those things they’d let slide to keep things running smoothly; he was up to his ears in debt anyway.
It wasn’t the sort of thing hama’d’ve made, but it was a benny taste of something else. He doesn’t know he could tell one man’s dzutan from another’s – he doesn’t know he cares, so long as he can eat it – but he thinks the professor knows what he’s talking about.
They settle at a low table. The hearth is close, and he can feel its warmth licking over his face. The water, still, is cool, when he takes a draught of it from his hands; he spits out what of his evil he can, and he will ask the Circle’s forgiveness for what of it he can’t. “I pledge my honor to Hulali; I speak truth here,” he says. He’ll swear himself back to Roa here, too.
There’s a comfort to this, a belonging, if he searches for it. Nkemi looks achingly comfortable; Natete, too, even as he examines the beans with a special intensity in his dark eyes. The dry rasp and shuffle of them against the pan settles something inside him.
At the question, a little excitement prickles in his stomach, not unlike butterflies. “This last house is my first in Thul Ka; I landed at nine-thirty.”
He pauses, thinking on the other question. Overwhelming, he remembers Natete saying, with good cheer. Light, he thinks, conversational – but honest.
“There’s much to take in,” he says slowly. “We took a coach through Nutmeg Hill – I saw windows full of bright, fine fabric. We met a couple of lasses on the cable cars headed to Thul’amat, and Nkemi helped them find their way. I’ve gotten some stares” – he grins – “but I’ve been met with a great deal of hospitality.”
In the corner of his eye, he can see Ndulue approaching again with a platter. “And where does this dzutan come from?” he asks, still grinning, thinking that it must be worth two hours’ argument.