[Closed] This Man in My Skin

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
The First Courtyard, Dzit'ereq

Aremu held himself still, in place, nothing different to his posture than what there had been before – except that his hand and his prosthetic were in front of him, now. He found it ached, in his shoulders, after a moment; it hurt to hold. He set the feeling aside for a moment, and didn’t yield to it. There was a tingling in his wrist; he felt the straps running along his forearm, up his arm, across his shoulder.

He didn’t always wear the full harness; he nearly hadn’t, today. The pressure of the wrist strap alone, done tightly, was enough to keep the hand on. He had, though; he didn’t quite know why. He wore it when he wanted the hand – such as it was – to be able to bear weight; he wore it when he did not know what he might be facing, and when he thought it best to be ready.

They both looked down. Jean he had expected; he didn’t know what he had thought Tom would do. But Tom looked, too, a frown creasing through his forehead. Aremu had watched him a moment, and then turned his attention, slowly, back to Jean.

Aremu bowed, deeply. “I will be there,” he said, quietly, when Jean spoke of the exhibition. “May Hulali guide you, sir,” he said, looking at the other man. He shifted, just a little, his hand and wrist meeting behind his back once more. “And your daughter.” He added, quietly.

The rain picked up; Aremu felt it in his hair, and across the skin of his face, weighing more heavily in his clothing. The wind scattered it, driving it half sideways for a moment; he closed his eyes to blink the moisture from them, and looked at Tom once more.

Tom was looking up at the airship pieces once more. Aremu didn’t know what he’d expected. The thin smile was the same as it had been, no change in the set of his lips or his eyes. Aremu shifted, looking up at the glass again, at the edge of the gasbag’s canvas and the piece of the engine prototype.

“Yes,” Aremu said, quietly. Sir tickled at his throat, and he coughed, lightly, to clear it away, shifting, and adjusting the grip of his left hand on his wrist. He glanced at Tom, once more.

“It crashed,” Aremu said, quietly, “in the northern desert, during their third test flight. It’s not known what happened but it’s believed that flaws in the engine caused it to fail. They were not far from Afiw’úle, and the people there reported seeing flames in the night; they found the wreckage in the dunes in time.” Aremu’s gaze went back up to the piece of the gasbag, studying the burnt edges.

“I used to come here as a boy,” Aremu went on, evenly. He glanced sideways at Tom, not quite smiling. I knew, he wanted to say; we knew. We always knew. But there’s knowing and knowing, isn’t there? There’s the knowledge of the mind, and the knowledge that sits along the bones and heart, the knowledge that lives inside you always. Even seeing wasn’t enough for us; even hearing, even knowing men it had happened to – it wasn’t enough for us.

I would have been up there with him, Aremu wanted to say, if not for my hand. I don’t know if I would have found the sabotage; I think it was cleverly done, and the ship was – not far out, when it went up. He thought of bits and pieces of the ship raining down, of the flaming gasbag over the Tincta Basta, plunging beneath the waves.

Aremu took a deep, long breath. He looked at Tom again; his face twitched at a smile. I’ve missed you, he wanted to say. “How have you been? Sir,” he shifted; his left hand came out as his right wrist tucked in his pocket, and his fingertips just barely rested against Tom’s arm, the tiniest hint of a touch, before his hand slid into his pocket once more.

[Tom Cooke]

The First Courtyard • Dzit'ereq

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

F
laws in the engine. He looked at it, or what was left of it, through the glass. He looked past his own face and the blur of the rainy courtyard behind, and past Aremu, closer beside him now. He could see where the belt round two gears had broken, brittle now, and where the teeth had worn with time. He wondered how big it’d been once, how much of it was here in front of him; he didn’t know enough about engines to know. He tried to picture it the way it must’ve looked in the twenty-seventh century, and he couldn’t.

They must’ve thought they’d won, he thought, looking up at the gas bag again. Three whole flights. You have just long enough to think you’re flying, before you fall. The plaque caught the rainy light at the edge of his vision; there were a few droplets on the names.

He still couldn’t seem to do much with his face. He realized, with a strange sort of pang, he didn’t know exactly how to smile for him. Once, it’d seemed second nature; now, he felt as if he should do – this with the muscles round his eyes, this with his lips, this with his cheeks, as if he could find it again through trial and error with each little piece. He looked sidelong at Aremu, and everything he felt wasn’t enough to know what to do with all the little pieces.

I lost my face, some awful part of him wanted to say. You help me find it every time, or something like it, but I lost it, and I don’t know how long I can hold onto the ghost.

It was an awful, foolish thing to think just here and now.

I used to come here as a boy, Aremu said, catching his eye for a second. The set of his lips was easier than it had been; Aremu, at least, had found something, or maybe never lost it in the first place.

He took a deep breath, lifting his eyes to the gas bag. “It reminds me of a poem by ada’na Tsadi,” he said, then paused, then, “ada’xa.” He shifted, clasping his hands behind his back again. “I am a free city bird following His river, which knows no walls or borders – but one day I will fly under the sun…”

The second time he caught his eye, Aremu was smiling. It was a twitch of a thing, lovely and lopsided, like a glimpse of sunlight between heavy clouds.

He felt the brush of warm skin against his wrist, and through the fabric of his sleeve hem. It was like an updraft he should’ve known how to catch.

He drew in a deep breath. He paused before he spoke, thinking; Aremu’d never been less than honest in this. “Well, ada’xa,” he said. He thought of the part of Ire’dzosat he’d never seen before yesterday, of Ur’dzuxas, of his bastly excitement and cognomancy and dueling; he thought of the wind leaping in his heart that morning. I’ll tell you more, he wanted to say, soon. Very soon. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” he dared quietly, looking over. “How have you been?”

He tried to smile, for just a moment. Their backs were to the courtyard; no one was watching. He felt – something – work its way out of the grooves of his face, like dragging a wheel off the track; he was afraid it looked more like a grimace. He was afraid it looked monstrous. He was afraid if he kept it up, pieces would start flying off; he was afraid it’d fall right out of the sky.

“Did you dream of it then?” he asked after a moment, when he had looked back at what was left of the night hawk. There was nothing at all in his voice; there was nothing but a thin smile, once again, on his face.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
The First Courtyard, Dzit'ereq

The poetry itself didn’t mean much to him on its own. The sun shines on the river, Aremu wanted to city, and on the city. If you’re following, he wanted to say, are you flying or floating? No walls or borders, Aremu thought, thinking of the walls of the Turtle, the walls that edged around Thul Ka, the bridge that went over the places where the Turga, the Duna and the Yug joined the edges of the city. We have walls, though; we always have walls. They’re what keep us from flying.

It meant something to him between them. Aremu thought of the words he’d flung at Tom beneath the mangroves, his bitter condemnation of the other reciting poetry at him beneath the stars; he thought of carrying the Tsadi book Tom had been reading back to the house, wedged between his chest and his arm as he pulled loose two stiches with his arms around the other man.

He found it easy to smile, listening now, all his uncertainty eased aside.

What does it mean to you? That was what he wanted to ask Tom; he couldn’t, not here, the words oddly thick on his tongue, slipping away as he tried to reach for them. What of this reminds you of it? What, he wanted to ask, do you think she meant, Tsadi, when she wrote those words?

What are they meant to mean to me?

Well, Tom said; Aremu smiled at him again. There was something like a smile on the other man’s face, a twist at the edge of his lips, though his eyes were still heavy beneath his furrowed brow. “As have I,” Aremu promised, softly. He looked back up at the engine, for all that the courtyard was empty – for all that he wanted to take Tom’s hand in his, and stand there, side-by-side, looking up at the display.

“Well enough,” Aremu said. Missing you, he wanted to say; for once, he didn’t think he needed to. He thought Tom knew; he hoped Tom knew.

He remembered – when they’d discussed seeing the pendulum – Tom’s bitter hurt that they wouldn’t be able to talk about it, there and then, to hold one another. Aremu had told him it would be enough; he’d meant it, then, and he meant it now. All the same, the harsh reality of it tasted bitter on his lips and tongue, the careful sideways looks and smiles strange.

That Tom couldn’t do it – couldn’t smile – left a deep, aching tenderness in Aremu’s chest. He didn’t doubt; he thought perhaps he should have, but he didn’t. It ached; he ached, but he ached for Tom, and not himself. I know, Aremu wanted to say, something of masks. I know, Tom –

“Yes,” Aremu said, looking back up at the engine. “Always. We came here as boys, and I dreamt of it. We came here when we were prep school students, and I dreamt of it.” He swallowed. “We came here when we studied at Thul’Amat, and I dreamt of it.”

“There’s a part of me that still does,” Aremu went on, quietly, “but now I know it’s only a dream; sometimes it’s a nightmare.” He didn’t look at Tom, his gaze fixed on the engine once more; a frown worked its way into his forehead, into all the lines of his face, aching and taut.

Do you still dream of the garden? Aremu wanted to ask, suddenly. He couldn’t; it was too cruel. Tom hadn’t asked, though he had answered all the same. He thought of it, of the soft brush of sage beneath his fingertips, of curling green mint and the shade of Tom’s hama’s trees, of the cold floor of the house with no books, and the tempermental stove. He thought of Tom with the wind blowing through his thick hair, smiling up at the Eqe Aqawe.

The rain picked it; a group of students entering the courtyard shrieked and yelped and set off at a run, laughing, for the sheltering sandstone.

“Come on,” Aremu said with a little smile. “There’s a way around the back. The pendulum’s in the seventh courtyard; we’ll come at it from the side.”

He took Tom to the edges, to the place where columns lined the edge of the building, and an overhang stretched just over to cover them, out of sight; the rain picked up again, streaming just off the edge, and the two of them only barely shy of it.

[Tom Cooke]

Among the Courtyards • Dzit'ereq

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

I
missed you too, he wished he could’ve said.

I don’t know if there’s anything underneath it, he wanted to say sometimes, when Aremu looked at him. I don’t know if there’s anything underneath my face, anymore; whatever it is, I think it’d drift away in the breeze, like I’m artevium and this body – either of the ones I’ve had – is the chainmail on an airship balloon.

He didn’t, and he didn’t have to say anything else; they were both looking back at the display, and he settled into Aremu’s lilting voice. He wondered a moment if he’d been cruel with the asking. He thought he could picture Aremu as a lad, and then as a young man, and then as a man, standing in this very spot. Flights before the crash, he thought, and regretted thinking it. There was a deep frown on his face, working in those familiar lines. He thought of holding him through his gasping more than a week ago. He wondered if he ought to’ve looked at the hand; it was tucked back in Aremu’s pocket now.

Is it only a dream? he wanted to ask, though he knew better than to do it here. Is Dzum a kind of freedom? Or is it – he didn’t know why he thought of it; he thought of tsug and kofi – a garden?

He nodded finally, following Aremu; he couldn’t match that little smile, but he was warmly grateful for it. He tossed a glance over his shoulder at Edú’tsúrus’ – soul, maybe, or what was left of it, behind the glass. You lose things, he thought. You lose things every time.

There was a glisten of rain in Aremu’s hair and his eyelashes. Water streamed over the side of the colonnade; it rippled the greenery on the other side, and he felt the cool spray of it on his face now and then. “I had a dream about it once,” he said, his eyes sweeping past Aremu, over his shoulders. “I wouldn’t say I dreamt of it.”

Ada’xa, he thought to add, but it was quiet here in the shade, and there was nobody much around. And there was nothing strange in what he was saying, not really; no stranger than the fact that they were there together to begin with.

“Being a crewman on one,” he said, glancing over and a little up at Aremu’s face. “As much as I hate having nothing underfoot. Sometimes they were nightmares, but sometimes… It would’ve been a different life. I knew men who went to work aboard them.”

There was no leading him through hand in hand. It wasn’t the strange in-between of Three Flowers. It wasn’t so distant, either. The walkway turned; it wound into nooks. Once, they went down a covered outdoor hall bordered by walls on both sides, with nothing but shaded windows.

He went quiet there. Two old arati in crisp white clothes, arguing with sharp hand-gestures, came up opposite. It was more graceful now, edging past; the two men barely looked up, and he tasted – and felt – the crackle of slight red-shift in their fields. A voice was raised in Mugrobi behind, and then promptly hushed by a snapped word.

They broke out of the hall and walked along the building again, low voices echoing across the greenery.

Through plants, over low sandstone walls and under the archways of taller ones, he got glimpses. Another courtyard had a great statue in the middle; he saw it from one side. A robed arata, his profile long and angular and strangely familiar, one of his hands on a child’s head and the other on a rough-carved likeness of an engine.

Students were huddled at his feet, just barely shaded from the rain, laughing.

“You spent a lot of time here,” he said quietly, when that courtyard disappeared behind another wall. He wanted to take Aremu’s hand, but walking beside him – he’d said, back then, this would be enough. He found that it was; there was a bitterness to it, but there was a bitterness to all things that weren’t dreams, and even most of those.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Seventh Courtyard, Dzit'ereq

I dreamt of asking you once, Aremu couldn’t quite say. For all they had spoken of, these last weeks, he couldn’t quite manage it. He knew he had thought of saying it before, of telling Tom; he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t. I began to love you then, he’d told Tom; he didn’t think it was lingering shame at the intensity of it that held him back. He thought maybe it was cruel to speak of it; he didn’t know.

It was hard to know how Tom would feel, knowing of an opportunity long past. He wouldn’t have accepted, Aremu thought; maybe he thought that was where it was, the ache that he worried about. Maybe he thought Tom would feel bad telling him he would not have accepted, then. Maybe, Aremu thought, with an ache. He knew it wasn’t so; he knew what he feared was that the knowledge that a possibility which had been open then was closed now, even if part of that closing was the Eqe Aqawe gone, and his hand, too.

Aremu frowned. It hurt him, he thought, that he could not offer anymore. And Tom – he thought, with a twinge of unease, at the other man telling him that he would take – another. By then, Aremu thought, by the time that – he couldn’t quite find a way to think about it. It didn’t matter, really; there was no more ship.

Some dead things, Aremu thought, were better left buried.

Two men came past, arguing vigorously about the correct procedure for teaching engine design, their voices raised. They were a sharp reminder of a lack of privacy; Aremu knew he was hardly the only one to take these paths. He had always been careful with them; being caught on one of them, he knew, would have been worse than running into a group of unfriendly classmates in the courtyards themselves. He’d tried not to make them a routine, to vary the days and times he took them; he’d held off, often, walking with his books in hand through the courtyards, alone past groups of arati students, until he could bear it no longer and went along the paths once more.

“Yes,” Aremu glanced over to Tom, half a smile on his face. They went right where the building turned. “My classes were here. I studied mostly in Idisufi, or at my dorm. On the other side of the building is the Dzit’ereq hanger – no sandstone there – where I worked my last years, to pay for some of my tuition.”

It was a good place to work, Aremu half-thought of saying. One of the professors vouched for me, they paid me well enough, and they did their double-checking where I didn’t have to watch, for which I was always grateful. They were too honest not to tell me about it, or perhaps they thought it would make me less of a liar. I was very grateful for the opportunity, he half-thought of saying, and he didn’t quite know why he couldn’t.

“Here,” Aremu said, his hand settling for a moment on Tom’s sleeve.

He led him through a gap in the buildings, along a line of tiles. They turned, through a row of columns, to a high roofed sandstone building, open along the sides, with a sort of gap between the walls and the roof. It was not entirely dry inside, particularly not along the edges, but it was much drier than outside, even with the wind blowing.

The pendulum was there. It was taller than the one they’d seen in Brunnhold, and the base was all sand. The heavy tip stroked perfect lines through it, slowly tracing around; looking down, they could see the echoes of lines past, the deepest one always the most recent. Aremu knew he should look at it; he turned, instead, and watched Tom, his eyes soft and his lips set in a smile he knew no one but the other man could ever see.

[Tom Cooke]

The Pendulum • Dzit'ereq

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e remembered Yesufu’s praise in a vague sort of way, through more tsenid than he’d’ve drunk if he’d known Aremu had seen him drinking it. (He remembered all that evening so; of the half-hour he’d spent rambling about his field in Aremu’s room, he remembered even less.) He remembered a sense of wonder at seeing it – almost, almost unsoured by the thick wall between him and Aremu.

It was wonder at seeing another side of him, the side that was the man who’d got his learning at one of them golly schools. The side he’d always been terrified of, in life. The side he’d thought was laughing at him, always, in some way or another.

He wasn’t sure how much he’d expected him to say. I know now it wasn’t easy, he wanted to say. Wasn’t easy’s a damned understatement. He hadn’t back then. He had thought there wasn’t any way a man with learning could feel like less than a man without.

Sometimes he still did. It was as if he was hiding – not in this body, but in what was underneath it, too. As if all his fine and fancy words were made of smoke, and that smoke hid nothing but a lumbering mung, shaking and terrified in an educated man’s skin.

Aremu was smiling; there was nothing labored to his words. He nodded, looking at the smooth sandstone as if he could imagine the great metal hangars where the airships lived. Edu’tsurus’ children, he thought, and then felt silly for it.

You worked to pay your tuition, he wanted to say, even sillier. In Anaxas, it was a birthright; but he’d worked for it. He’d never known that, either.

They were moving a little faster now, and he wasn’t sure when to expect it; he breathed in the crisp scent of the rain, and the wind leapt in his heart. Pale tiles slid by on either side, and the sound of the rain was for a few moments nothing but an echo down the corridor. Then it opened up again, and his eyes traced down the columns and up to the high sandstone roof, and down.

Here, Aremu said, and he felt the warm brush of fingertips through his sleeve.

The light that shafted in through the gap caught a sliver of the cord like gossamer. He traced it down to the great brass teardrop, sweeping silent lines through the sand.

He looked over at Aremu once. There was a soft smile on his face and in his eyes, one he didn’t have to read between the lines of. He didn’t have to think what was on his own, either; there was no room for it. He could feel Aremu’s eyes on him as he turned and moved toward the railing, setting his hands on the cool metal, watching the bob catch the light as it swung.

He didn’t turn or say anything, for a while. He felt Aremu move in beside him by the railing. A hundred little lines radiated outward, fanning out deeper on either side of the bob’s arc.

He glanced down at the plaque.

Dzeru ipap’tsa
úriqet’eqaq
aqi Dzegachyuf

One of six moving parallel
toward restoration.

There was more in Estuan and Mugrobi about the precision of its construction. How they’d had to make it just right, because any stray angle – any bad set up – could cause it to veer. He read it for a while, sucking at his tooth, thinking about the lining-up of precarious things.

“I’m glad it was you,” he said very quietly, “who told me.” There was no one much around. I’m sorry, he wanted to say, for a whole damn lot of things, but I’m not sorry for the man you are or the man I am, or the differences between those men. “I’m glad I found out from you.”

He smiled over, and he didn’t much care whose smile it was. The orange weighed heavy in his satchel, but – not yet, he thought, not yet. For the moment, he smiled at Aremu; he looked back at the pendulum and breathed in deep, leaning on the railing.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Seventh Courtyard, Dzit'ereq

The room was built around the pendulum; Aremu wasn’t sure what had been there before, if anything had been, but it was the pendulum’s room now. The sandstone wall curled smooth around the edges of the sand pit, aligned such that even the widest swing never brought the brass teardrop close to brushing it. Each slow, smooth swing, just the same as the one before it, traced a line, infinitesimally different as Vita turned beneath it.

The walls were lined with long low sandstone benches; the railing went across the front. Aremu remembered in his preparatory school days all of them filing around the edges of the railing, sitting pressed in close to one another on the bench, watching the arc as their instructor lectured them about the shape of it, the history and the science behind it.

He and Uzoji had snuck back in the next time they had come to Dzit’ereq. Perhaps it had not been forbidden to them, Aremu thought, but they had felt brave and daring, boys of twelve creeping through the dark halls towards the dark corner of the pendulum. He had not known Dzit’ereq then as he did now, and it had been a journey to find it, the two of them arguing in the dark over which way to go.

They had found it; they had found it, and crouched along the sides, watching the moonlight pour in through the gap between the walls and the ceiling, and stream along the sands, shifting cool. They had neither of them wanted to leave, even when it was cold and late and coming close to curfew, and they ran raced back through Thul’Amat, running all out and shrieking with laughter along the tangled paths, both of them panting and windswept and delighted by the time they reached back to their dorms.

There, Aremu remembered, they had gone their separate ways; even at a school where imbali and arati studied together, they could never have shared a room.

Tom spoke, and Aremu shifted, looking back at him once more. His face twitched at a smile; all those memories, good and bad, drained away. He did not need to look to know no one was there; he knew, already.

He shifted closer to Tom; his hand came out, and rested softly atop the other man’s, curling over it and holding for just a moment. His palm covered the other man’s, settled in full over his knuckles; his fingers curled down over Tom’s fingers, covering the soft pale red hair, the bony knuckles, the thin veins which stood out beneath the skin.

I’m glad, Tom had said, and Aremu smiled back at him, conscious of the heavy weight upon him, remembering sitting on the arm of Tom’s chair, an orange in the other man’s hand, swinging a dinner knife slowly back and forth over it. Better, he wanted to say, than my demonstration, but he couldn’t bring himself to it.

He squeezed Tom’s hand, lightly, and drew away, not just his hand but all of him, so that a little of the dim gray rainy light shone between them. I’m glad too, he couldn’t quite say either; it wasn’t what he wanted to say. I was glad to have told you, he thought, weighing it, but that didn’t fit. He didn’t know; I’m glad you’re glad, he thought to say.

There was noise from behind him then, two students laughing; they stopped at the doorway, voices lowering, and then went to one of the benches against the wall, talking intently. For all that they were entirely wrapped up in each other, Aremu said nothing; the moment had gone.

He took a chance anyway; their backs were to the two boys, after all. He looked at Tom, and he smiled, all the tenderness of it written on his lips and through his eyes, everything he couldn’t say aloud or with even a touch, just now. As if, Aremu thought, aching, Tom might understand. He knew himself a fool; he couldn’t bring himself to care.

[Tom Cooke]

The Courtyards • Dzit'ereq

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu was smiling at him, and he thought he must’ve got it right. He wasn’t sure whose smile it was, or whether it was as warm as it’d once been, or whether Aremu could see any of the man he’d once been in it; it was a smile, and Aremu reflected it back at him.

His eyes widened slightly when Aremu’s hand settled warm on his.

The moment was gone half before it’d started; he’d squeezed his hand and drawn away – that smile still on his face – when the laughter came trickling in from behind. It was strangely loud at first, echoes batted back and forth between the columns. The two lads crammed their voices down to a hush, moving round to one of the seats about the outside. He stood looking at Aremu; the thought of looking over his shoulder, furtive like a criminal, was too sour.

Aremu’s smile deepened. It was warmer and softer and more sure than any of the words. He didn’t need words, not with the heavy whoosh of the pendulum bob over the sand, turning the line one hair’s breadth at a time.

A thing he thought he’d never see; a thing he’d never known to want to see, once. So many things, he thought, the pendulum swinging in the corner of his eye, he’d never known to want. He thought of precise construction and precarious balance, and of Aremu walking along the edge of the wharf. He looked in the other man’s eyes, and for once, he knew exactly what was reflected in them.

He looked back out toward the pendulum for a long moment. He couldn’t’ve said how long it was, the two of them standing there a little apart on the railing. He drank in the sight and drank it in well. He was no man to remember such things, but he tried to etch the swinging of that brass teardrop and the angle of the line in the sand into his mind.

He shifted against the railing, brushing his fingers idly over the back of his hand where Aremu had touched.

Sudden and unexpected, like a gust of rain, a little grin cracked across his face. He stifled it, pressing it down underneath Anatole’s thin smile.

“A testament to Dzit’ereq’s innovation,” he mused, easing off the railing; he breathed in deep, looking at it one last time. “And to the kingdoms’ unity, ada’xa.” He looked at Aremu, inclining his head and shoulders and smiling politely.

Behind them, there was another echo of conversation, this time louder. “Oh, Ik’úpe,” laughed an older woman’s voice, with long, loping desert syllables, “I have never seen such a thing!” He half-turned; a Thul’amat student a little younger than Cerise was grinning, an older woman on her arm.

“It is a Foucault pendulum,” came the lass’ careful pronunciation. “The one which I wrote to you of –” They lapsed into laughing Mugrobi.

There was one last gust of rain, and it had lightened by the time they stepped back out into the courtyards. Aremu led them round the other way, and it was a while before they spoke again. They found themselves walking along the edge of a quadrangle scattered with tables and dim phosphor lights, covered against the rain. A handful of students sat or worked or ate there; in the middle was another statue, this one more abstract, of some sort of engine.

“I was hoping you might accompany me the rest of the way to Idisúfi, ada’xa.” He glanced over Aremu’s shoulder, and then up at Aremu, smiling his thin pleasant smile. “I’ve reserved a private study room for the afternoon, but I’m afraid I don’t know if I can find my way from Dzit’ereq.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Fourth (or Students') Courtyard, Dzit'ereq

Aremu’s smile brightened, and smoothed. He inclined his hand and shoulders in a bow, his hand clasped against his wrist behind his back. “Well said, sir,” he said, as smoothly as Tom had, settling comfortably into the role once more. “It is my privilege to share it with you.”

They went through the courtyard; they went past the statue of Magister Dzeuko, cast in metal with a gleaming spot on the edge of the wrench he held.

“Dzeuko was founder of Dzit’ereq,” Aremu explained as they went along. “In 2300, when the colleges split, there was originally no school specifically for engineering. At that time, what we now call structural engineering was a part of Dziya’úhi, and students interested in what we would now call chemical engineering attended Ivuq’way. If there was a home for mechanical engineering, it was Ared’ur, but the subject in its entirety was not truly taught at Thul’Amat.”

“Dzeuko was a graduate of Ire’dzosat in the mid-2400s,” Aremu went on, “a staticmancer who went on to do a teaching fellowship in Bastia. He was impressed by the innovations he saw there, and he returned to Thul’Amat and convinced the Ubuq’tsiqir that if Thul’Amat did not specialize in such subjects, Mugrobi would be left behind. I understand, sir, that Brunnhold founded their own engineering department roughly a decade later.”

They went into what was known as the student courtyard next, or the fourth courtyard; it was a quadrangle, covered, and scattered with tables and phosphor lights. Pale yellow gleamed onto different surfaces, overlapping lights bright enough to read by; the roof was all sandstone, to prevent noise and the baking of those inside by the sun, but the walls were lined with high windows, to let in light without heat when the weather was good.

“The building was made piecemeal over centuries since our founding,” Aremu said, smiling. “Dzit’ereq students, graduates and professors were involved in the construction of every part. The tenth and final courtyard was added only in the mid-2600s.”

They lapsed into silence, then, walking along the edge of the courtyard. Aremu inclined his head at the request, and smiled. “It would be my pleasure, sir,” he said, evenly.

“Ada’xa Aremu!” There was a sudden sound of scrambling from one of the tables, a rustling of books and fabric, and then the sharp slap of sandals against a sandstone floor.

Aremu turned, looking over his shoulder. “Iquwi,” he said, surprised, inclining his head.

“Ada’xa,” Iquwi said, his eyes bright. He came into field range and froze, briefly, the merest flicker of it, and then he was bowing, deeply. “I, I apologize, sir,” he said, glancing up at Tom, and then back at Aremu with the tiniest frown in his forehead.

Aremu shook his head, lightly. Iquwi was a third year student at Dzit’ereq, one of the two who had been working with Aremu on the demonstration of Dzit’ereq’s latest improvement on the Bellini-cycle engine. He – and Axuewa, a fifth year student – would both be joining Aremu in its presentation.

“Sir,” Aremu said, turning to Tom, “this is Iquwi, one of Dzit’ereq’s promising young students. Iquwi, this is Incumbent Anatole Vauquelin, who has kindly joined me for a tour of Dzit’ereq.”

“Sir,” Iquwi bowed again, easing a half-step back. The young imbala glanced between them, his gaze flickering up to Tom’s face, and then squarely back down at his sandaled feet, beneath the hem of tan pants and a bright orange shirt.

Aremu kept his face smooth and even. In their development of the demonstration and the practice they’d done, he thought, Iquwi had been eager and excited; the boy was from the Turtle, and bubbling over with enthusiasm for every bit of mechanical engineering. He’d talked non-stop for half an hour straight, until Axuewa had threatened to hit him with a spanner.

“Iquwi will be joining me in the demonstration I spoke of to you, sir, on the engine improvements,” Aremu said, glancing at the young boy with a slight frown on his forehead.

[Tom Cooke]

The Courtyards • Dzit'ereq

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

P
iecemeal. It was as much getting lost in the soft lilt of Aremu’s voice as anything else; but he looked about him still at everything they passed, thinking. Dziya’uhi and Ared’ur and Ivuq’way, and even Ire’dzosat. The statue of Dzeudo was gone, but he thought of the long, grim face and the hand on the boch’s head. He wondered what the magister would think of Dzit’ereq now.

“Brunnhold has much to learn from Thul’amat,” he had said politely, smiling over. “Interdisciplinary efforts,” he’d added after a moment, though he’d known he hadn’t had to, “are rather neglected, I’m afraid.”

By the student courtyard, he met Aremu’s eye. The other man was smiling smoothly; he said nothing, but he inclined his head. He drew in breath to speak, but a bright voice cut across him, and he turned at the clack of sandals and a flash of brilliant orange in the corner of his eye.

The lad must’ve been – he wasn’t sure – fifteen, sixteen, maybe; there was a gangly softness of youth still clung about him, and a brightness in his eyes at the sight of Aremu. He knew well to keep the polite smile smooth on his face, but it was everything he had not to look at Aremu with curiosity.

The lad came into range, and whatever’d been bastly in his wide dark eyes dampened. He hit the edge of his field like a wall.

He inclined his head when Aremu spoke, half-understanding. He realized he’d known the lad was imbali before he’d even come into range; he glanced up and down him, and then over at Aremu, and in the corner of his eye he saw the crisp white cloth of his sleeve as he adjusted his amel’iwe. It tugged at the edge of his mind, but he didn’t have long to think on it.

“Ah,” he said smiling, “pleased to meet you, ada’xa Iquwi.” He bowed low when Iquwi stepped back.

He got the funny – if grim – impression it would’ve been less tense if he’d been standing a foot and a half over Aremu’s shoulder, frowning into his beard with his arms crossed.

Not that that man would’ve been allowed on the premises, anyway. As it was, the lad’s eyes went up to his face; he wasn’t sure there was anything much he could do, so he held his thin smile, and the eyes flicked back down.

He thought to say nothing and let Aremu handle it. The last thing he wanted to do was drive an Anaxi-shaped wedge into the middle of whatever it was the lad’d been excited to tell him. But he supposed he already had, regardless of what he said or didn’t say.

He glanced over at Aremu, who was looking at Iquwi with a slight frown. He studied the other man’s face for just a moment. His eyes wandered back to the lad, and he raised his brows.

“I was telling ada’xa Aremu I was looking forward to seeing it on the sixth,” he offered, pleasant and even. No, he thought, not quite right. “He, ah – he explained a little to me about the – about an improvement to the Bellini-cycle engine? A change in the crankshaft design,” he hazarded, glancing at Aremu. He didn’t even think of laughing, this time.

He reached up and ran a hand along his jaw, scratching it. “Ah, I wouldn’t dare take you away from your studies, but if you’d – I’d love to know more, ada’xa.” His smile went a little lopsided; he shifted, awkward, raising an eyebrow at Iquwi. With another glance at Aremu, he gestured hesitantly along the walk. “If ada’xa Aremu wouldn’t mind, that is?”