[Closed] This Man in My Skin

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
Tsila's Bar, Slowwater

Aremu inclined his head at the offer of kofi. “I would be glad of it,” he said, easily, and what he thought was truthfully enough. He would not have been surprised if the offer had excluded him, for all the masked imbala at the doorway, for all he knew of the Ehafsu and their sisters, for all the kofi had come from his own hands. He knew what he was; he knew what he lacked.

There were many ways of dealing with it, when one who sat at the table could neither give nor receive the pledge of honesty. The best was to leave, politely, as the dented bowl came forth, for one such as he could spit and spit and yet never wash the evil from his mouth, and the facsimile of the effort made a mockery of those for whom it had meaning, and to return later, as if wandering back in, called by the smell of the kofi as it was poured. This he had done, in years past, as Uzoji welcomed new shipmates to the Eqe Aqawe, or other visitors to Dzum; sometimes he had returned, and other times he had not.

When one could not leave –

Aremu stilled his mind from chasing down the possibilities. It is not, he told himself, helpful to think so. It is Tsila who has the guarding of her honor, and not you; you know already what you lack. Nothing which passes in that room can change that; nothing which passes in this room can worsen the ache of it.

Aremu sat on one of the low soft chairs; his back was straight. He did not hide his right wrist, here; he thought they were past that, just now. His left hand and right prosthetic both rested on his lap, gently, and he could feel the difference in pressure on his left thigh and his right, his shoulders loose and relaxed in readiness.

He had not taken Tsofi’s answer as a no, nor a relief; he knew well that honesty and openness were not one and the same. Her continuation was not a surprise; Aremu did not lose his smooth smile, nor tense even the slightest bit. “Perhaps you will,” he agreed, knowing his speaking made a lie of the words.

Your leg seems well, Aremu might have said. The one who brought you there will be glad to know it, I think, from how she spoke of you.

“It is said,” Aremu said instead, smiling, “that the opportunities which greet one during the day of yellow and the day of red, and especially their joining, follow one through the year. I have heard also that the dzutaw uses the rest of its time in rest, first, and then in replenishing, for the year to come.”

He had not asked to challenge her; he had not asked to make her afraid. He was not Niccolette, and he was afraid, in the deep animal part of him which felt at all times the scraping of the three fields against all his senses, with nothing to push back against them, and nowhere to hide.

They are true, he wanted to say, to Tom, both of them; at least, I have heard both said. The first is old superstition, the sort of thing Ahura says; it was she who said it, although she, like any Mugrobi, said only that she had heard it said. It was drifting blossoms he thought of, then, beneath the bright moonlight on the beach, driftwood beneath him and Tom’s face close to his; he knew nothing of those thoughts showed on his face, but some of the fear receded.

The second, he might have said, if he’d had the time, a biologist told us the year before last, at the same festival, at the same festival hall, as we all stood – Uzoji too – admiring the tree in the entryway. That night pinched at him, and ached, and it, too, settled his resolve. Aremu smiled still at Tsofi, and then at Tsila, as well, sitting straight and upright on the soft chair.

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

T
sila measured out the beans and began to roast them. She had strong hands; they moved with a matter-of-fact sort of intent, as if this were a process she’d gone through many times before. The beans husked and crackled. The smell of kofi spilled out, subtle at first, into the room, mingling with the smells of incense and perfume and qinnab.

It was quiet in here, except for Tsofi’s laughter when Aremu replied.

He didn’t look down or over, though he was conscious of both Aremu’s hands in his lap. In the corner of his eye, he could see it. The curl of the fingers was stiff; the color was right, but the wood gleamed faintly.

His smile almost relaxed into something softer; he felt the ache of it.

“The dzutaw is wise, then,” Tsofi said, just as bright and easy. “One must rest, if one wants to seize those opportunities to their fullest.” Her dark eyes were glittering with red. “When the time comes.” She crossed one slender leg over the other, shifting her long, riotously colorful skirt over her lap.

He glanced down, but only briefly. Was this really–? His head still felt foggy. He could’ve lost himself in Tsila’s field, even just lapping at the edges of his; and Tsofi’s was still ramscott-bold, but mobile – like a rattlesnake that kept rattling, like the kov in the corner you didn’t want to take your eyes off of.

Tsofi laughed again. “Slowwater’s a good place to rest, ada’xa, sir. No better place than home, isn’t it so? A blossom might be pressed and make its way to Thul Ka or Caroult or Frecks, but you can only find dzutaw’s gifts on the isles. So it is with us.”

Tsila’d taken the pan from the hearth. He got a glimpse of the beans, mottled lovely rich dark, as she took it away through the whirl of steam. As she set it aside, she went to the side table.

Tsila’s kofi service was copper, and luminous in the red light. He dragged his eyes away from Tsofi to watch her, curious, a little furrow working its way into his brow. The bowl with its familiar dent she took off the tray. She did the same with a ewer embossed with fish, setting them both aside on a folded, crisp white cloth with something in Mugrobi embroidered along the edge.

The rest she took over to the low table, smiling at them each in turn as she set it down. The eschana was copper and clay, and had a dizzying swirl of waves and reeds and fish etched across it, curling up to the spout. She took it back over to the side table, then took a mortar and pestle from a niche behind where the copperware had been.

She ground the kofi beans methodically, with the soft, rhythmic clack-and-crunch of the pestle.

“Is it so, Mr. Vauquelin?” Tsofi asked cheerfully. “Dzum’ulusa last year was eventful. Even an Anaxi vine must return to its tree to replenish itself.”

He inclined his head. He tried to keep his field smooth and indectal, letting it mingle still with Tsila’s and Tsofi’s both in the small room. He wished – with a surge of guilt – that there was another field to lean on against these two, then put it out of his head. He wondered how much Aremu could feel of them, of Tsila’s terrifying softness; he felt strangely alone.

“I have had much time to rest, thank you, ada’na,” he said politely, “and I have found that the Dzum’ulusa’s opportunities have afforded me many precious gifts this year.” He didn’t look over at Aremu; his smile didn’t change.

Tsofi grinned back at Aremu. “And you, ada’xa?” Her eyes wandered down, as if idly, to Aremu’s arm; they flicked back up. “Have the mangroves replenished your vine? This year poses – unique challenges, or so I am told.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
Tsila's Bar, Slowwater

The even rhythm of the mortar and pestle ground beneath the conversation, Tsila’s hands moving steadily with the ease of long practice. Aremu saw them only out of the corner of his eye, just as he saw the service without its dented bowl or water pitcher.

Nor did Aremu’s gaze chase Tsofi’s down as it wandered to his hand; he looked steadily, evenly, at the assassin’s face, and was smiling still when her gaze rose back to his. He had not – could not – look over at Tom as the other man spoke, not even for a flicker of a moment, not with Tsofi smiling at the both of them, not with Tsila there shifting the ground kofi into the kofi har pot, water beginning to bubble softly on the hearth. She, Aremu thought, saw everything; she, Aremu thought, saw all the more for not looking.

Many precious gifts, Aremu let himself think, just once, and let himself feel the barest hint of the warmth of it. Tsila carried the kofi har pot with her; there was a soft whoosh from the stove as she poured the boiling water into it.

“Like the dzutaw, I have had my time in sea and air,” Aremu said, smiling. Unique challenges, he thought, turning the words over in his mind. Unique challenges, or so I am told. More unique than the first Vyrdag in Thul Ka in my lifetime or yours? More unique than the rising tension between the Bad Brothers and the Drain? More unique than the tension between Gior and Anaxas in particular, and Gior and all the rest of the world in general?

Or – unique, Aremu thought, for us in particular? He did not look at Tom, at first, and then he did, the barest sliver of a barest glance, for he thought two men who did not know each other so well might look so.

“The dzutaw could be said to have many advantages over us,” Aremu went on, smiling. “One could say that it has underneath the stability of the mangrove; one could say that it leans on the tree in the case of storm or heavy waves, and so must know all it has to do is hold on. How can the dzutaw doubt its home, with such blessings?”

Tsila carried the pot back to the table; the rich, deepening smell of kofi drifted up into the room. Elegantly, the ehafsu lifted the top off of a small bowl of menda, and set it next to a smaller bowl of sugar, resting a delicate copper spoon into each.

“As well, one might say the dzutaw knows,” Aremu added, smiling at Tsofi and Tsila both, feeling the heavy lightness of Tsofi’s field dancing over him, and the soft depths of Tsila’s always underneath; he knew not where to place his feet, but they were here, and he had to go on, “what it will be called upon to do; such knowledge often escapes many of us.”

Tsila began to pour in the silence that fell after his words; none of them spoke over the sound of the kofi streaming down the long spout. She filled four elegant copper cups with the dark kofi, one each smoothly and then the next; steam whirled through the air, catching on the elegant wave-like etchings in the side of each cup, as if they stirred with the pull of the tides.

Aremu inclined his head in a nod when Tsila offered him the menda; she stirred a pinch in, and handed him the cup. He took it in his left hand, fingertips resting on the brim, and waited.

“Let us drink truth along with kofi,” Tsila said, low-voiced, and Aremu thought for a moment it reverberated through the room, “and return it as we are able.”

Aremu’s smile never faltered; he kept his gaze on Tsila, Tsofi and Tom, and did not dare to look down at the dark cup of kofi in his hand. They were old words; he had never heard them in Estuan before. They were the words, he thought, something tight in his chest, spoken during exile, when those who felt it necessary and wise had taken kofi with imbala, there and again.

“So may it be,” Aremu said, evenly, ritually, beneath the sounds of Tsofi repeating Tsila’s blessing, and lifted the cup to his lips.

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e glanced over at Aremu, when Aremu glanced at him. Even through the haze of the qinnab and all the rest, he felt every little motion needle-sharp; he felt every little motion of his was being watched too, needle-sharp, and so he looked away almost soon as he’d looked over. Of the look he’d managed to catch before it went, he didn’t know what to think.

Aremu knew better how to speak here than he did. Maybe Tsofi was counting on it, whyever she’d brought them here. She might’ve known an Anaxi toff was helpless – tongueless – and that was even worse, in a place like this, than being truthless.

And why’d you bring me here, he wondered, most of all – why not just Aremu? A small Mugrobi with a physical ramscott; oes, he remembered. And if it’d been part of Their endeavour (and he knew it was a They now, even if it’d only been conjecture in the warehouse, with the smell of blood and Niccolette’s sharp Bastian voice in the dark), why bring him here now? Why serve him kofi, if they meant to kill him on Yesufu pez Edun’s behalf? No, this must not’ve been their qalqa, the killing of him. But then why bring him here, why not insist on speaking with Aremu, Aremu-the-Brother, alone?

The red lights brought out all the warm colors in the menda. The smell whisked up as Tsila took off the lid, red-lacquered fingernails gleaming.

“It is so, ada’xa Aremu,” Tsofi was saying. “Do we not also have mangroves of our own? Our sisters and our brothers we can hold onto like vines to the trunk. But then, maybe that’s our advantage over others – others without sisters and brothers.”

Aremu went on. A smile tickled at the edges of Tsila’s lips, and at the edges of her terribly kind eyes. She was pouring the kofi now, and after Aremu’s words came a silence like Tsila’s field, enveloping and full of expectation all at once. Full of the stream of kofi into the cups, full of the smell. Tsofi looked like she might’ve had something more she wanted to say, but nobody was breaking this silence.

He knew the smell of Ibutatu kofi. Godsdamn, but he did. If he shut his eyes he thought he might’ve smelled the tsug mingling with it. Drifting up through the window on the sounds of two voices, familiar and unfamiliar, on the ruffling of the drapes. And then later, with his hands still smelling like the chutney he’d put together, when he was still finding the delicate balance of meeting a man’s eyes and knowing he was seen.

It was a smell he could steady himself on, one that reminded him of the balance – even the bitter balance of that first morning on the isles – he knew well, and of what he could bear. He nodded to the menda, to Tsila’s smile; he thought it might do well to remember this blend.

Tsila’s low, resonant voice on the first sip caught him. He couldn’t help the slight widening of his eyes – though he didn’t think any foreigner could – but he smoothed himself over. He’d seen her leave out the bowl, but he hadn’t thought there’d be –

“So may it be,” he repeated in a voice a little deeper than Tsila’s, taking a sip.

He took a deep breath after with what was almost relief. A strange, bitter sort. There was no spitting out his own evil, either; this seemed a more manageable oath.

Tsila’s menda was more sweet and floral than hot; it was almost delicate. Cinnamon and coriander, nutmeg, rose, cardamom. Hibiscus, maybe. It balanced strangely against the familiar Ibutatu kofi. If this was truth, he swallowed it through the lump in his throat. Maybe it didn’t agree with him very well.

Tsila was silent after the first sip, a few moments; everyone was. She set the cup down carefully, deliberately, smiling with her accustomed grace. “Is it not true,” she said, as if there had been no pause, “that though the dzutaw knows what it will be called upon to do, it can never know when? Does the knife not come as suddenly for the dzutaw as any of us?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
Tsila's Bar, Slowwater

What happens, Aremu had wanted to ask, when the tree falls? When you’re dzutaw, wrapped around the trunk of the mangrove, when you’ve woven yourself through each of the branches, up and down the trunk to brush against the roots. What happens to you a storm comes, then, unexpected, and the mangrove isn’t strong enough to hold?

It was not the sort of conversation for such a question; it could not, Aremu knew, be taken as any less than a threat. They were not here to discuss the philosophy of the dzutaw, not really; every phrase had a layer of meaning, more than one level on which to consider and reconsider.

Perhaps the qinnab had been stronger than he thought, strong enough that some of the smoke had seeped into it. Aremu felt it, he thought, tingling somewhere in the depths of his nose, tickling his throat, leaving a feeling like fuzz through his body and mind. He couldn’t help it, all the same; he didn’t know, he thought, whether he’d been a dzutaw to Uzoji’s mangrove, but he could see it, just then, all the same.

He knew that in the village near the Ibutatu plantation, there were those who knew the knack of transferring the vines – that they said it could be done, if one wished to do it, with gentle hands and careful prodding –

The smell of the kofi rose into the air; Aremu breathed it in, deep and grateful. The menda was a different blend than he’d used before, and he savored the taste of it, letting it rest on his tongue. You’re not alone, Aremu told himself, and he did not look sideways at Tom; and you’re not wrapped around anyone else, either.

The kofi, he might have said, another time – another place – is grown intercropped with tsug; I have been told that others, too, can taste a hint of tsug in the blend. It was, he thought, aching, good kofi; he could not watch Tom drink it, not here. The first sip of kofi, he thought; this is this year’s crop, he wanted to tell Tom; you haven’t had it before. Is it different? I think the flavor’s deeper, but it’s been so many cups I’m not sure anymore; they blur together, just a little.

Aremu lowered his cup as well, after the first sip, back to the table; his hands returned to his lap, and he looked at Tsofi, and then at Tsila. His gaze fixed evenly on her as she spoke, and he smiled, listening, his face smooth and even still. He felt the faint ache in the center of his forehead which told him he had not entirely tamed his frown. It had been a long time, Aremu thought, since he had done such; for all Uzoji had liked to speak on his own behalf, there had been times when a liar’s words were useful.

He didn’t know – perhaps he did – why the words stung so badly, just then, even inside him. That old pain, he thought, bitterly; he was a fool. He set it aside, as if he could carve it out of himself – the pain, not the knowing, for the knowing would never leave him.

Aremu took the kofi again, taking another small sip, measured and deliberate.

“One can think of the dzutaw as serving two purposes,” Aremu offered, lowering the small copper cup delicately to the table once more. “It flowers in beauty, and it succumbs to the knife, as all must. The first, surely, it knows,” his eyebrows lifted, just a little; he sat back, his hand and wrist resting lightly against his thighs, “if not by the changing of the season, then by the changing of itself.”

“As for the second,” Aremu said, looking at Tsofi, and then back at Tsila, “were it to be warned, would it make a difference for the vine, or for the sap which must be spilt?”

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e could now almost feel the prickling of the knife at his throat. He remembered it crisply as always: the smell of the kov’s hand, tangy sweat, the taste of the wine still in his mouth, the sudden fear dropping through him like the sight of land dropping below outside an airship window. He remembered, too, the way the skin’d broken at his teeth like a peach’s, and the sudden taste of blood, and the sharp yell behind. And then the shadow through the dark, and then –

A man dead on the boards, and another man calling his name. Months it’d been; felt like godsdamn years. Not so far away now, sipping kofi with Ehafsu. He named them, because he couldn’t not now, not with Tsila speaking of sudden knives, not with Tsofi grinning and grinning across. Nor with Aremu sipping his – Uzoji’s, he supposed – kofi, careful in the long and graceful fingers of his one hand, almost soundless as he set his copper cup down on the table.

Two sips. It wasn’t that he’d been keeping count, but it felt like sand out of an hourglass. Or like the beat of a drum. He took his own second sip, thinking what he’d heard once about how each sip of kofi was unique.

He might’ve asked Aremu about it, if he could’ve. There’d be time later, he told himself; he had to tell himself that, else he’d break apart on the cliffs of those two fields.

Is this the úrowoxo? he wondered. This year’s yield? He should’ve been able to tell more about it, even underneath the floral menda. He might’ve, in some other place. Now, the flavor was mixed with a strange coppery taste, and the sticky dryness of his mouth.

Fear might well’ve been a menda, he thought.

Vines wrapped round trees. The thought might’ve pleased him on the isles, watching the blossoms drift in Aremu’s arms. Now all he could think was the disentangling of his own vines from his tree; he thought of the sap pulsing through his veins, and to whom he owed it. If his veins were pried up, could they find another tree? Aremu’s couldn’t, not like his; and he didn’t know on whose behalf that sap might’ve been taken. He felt almost sick with it, as he had once watching Aremu – all of him, finite and irreplaceable – disappear into the engines of the Uccello, and nearly not come out.

Aremu spoke, smooth and even as any of the poets down on the stage at Ixup’igup. He didn’t look over, but he saw the straight line of him ease back in the chair, two hands – flesh and wood – still resting Brother-easy on his lap.

Tsofi Tsetoun laughed again. It was becoming a damnably familiar sound. “Does it know when it flowers?” Tsila was looking over at her with mild surprise; she was holding her kofi in her lap with two small hands, eager. “To think it feels itself flowering without knowing why, only that it has to bloom and change color, po’ana.”

“It is most apt, poa’na,” Tsila murmured, inclining her head.

“Does it flower to prepare itself for the knife?” Tsofi was grinning even more broadly. “If so, then no, I think warning would change nothing. If its purpose is the knife, who are we to deny it that? Or to deny the wielder of the knife its sap.” Her eyes wandered to – and lingered on – him, and the back of his neck crawled.

“Unless it may have purpose yet.” Tsila took a sip of kofi. “The dzutaw’s sap, they say, is stronger with time.”

He hesitated. He didn’t know how to phrase it. If Aremu spoke –

No; this was his to give. “What, ah…” Tongueless, he thought; tongueless and tongue-tied. “What might you tell the dzutaw, to – preserve it – so that you might – seize the opportunities it yields later?”

Tsila smiled. “There are no knives in Slowwater,” she said, raising her brows, “for an island vine or an Anaxi, nor even for a Bastian vine, just now. But there are men who are wise in the seizing of opportunities, and Thul’amat’s flowering is a great wealth of opportunities.”

He glanced over and just barely caught Aremu’s eye.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
Tsila's Bar, Slowwater

Does it know when it flowers?

It was Tsila’s look that caught Aremu’s attention as much as Tsofi’s quick, eager reply. He did not think her foolish enough to give away more than she meant to, no matter how excited. She teased the metaphor apart, opening the lid of it and rummaging around inside, pulled the parts apart with, Aremu thought, no diagram at all.

If they had been discussing the philosophy of plants, he might have said there was a belief that eyo’pili could not be harvested from a new vine, that the dzutaw needed to flower at least once before it could be cut. If he had been the sort of man who wished, here, to make a point – if he had been, Aremu thought, naming it, less reckless – he might have said that only a fool cut too deeply when extracting eyo’pili, that it was a shame to – he marked that; he swallowed it for now, knowing better than to interrupt.

Tsofi shifted to look at Tom, then; she saw Anatole, he thought, when she looked at him. He didn’t know what she saw; thinking too deeply in it made him uneasy. He did not know whether it was only his connection with Aremu himself, with Niccolette, with the job she’d failed at last Roalis – at least, Aremu thought, uneasily, so he thought she had – that made Tom interesting here, or whether there was something in particular about him. About Anatole, Aremu thought, unsure where to draw the line, unsure how to face it directly.

The silence from Tom had become almost deafening. When he spoke, his low voice was hoarse despite the kofi; Aremu lifted his cup, taking another small sip, and tuned his politely smiling gaze on Tom, listening.

Tsila smiled; it was not firm enough to be a promise, Aremu thought, but it was something, at least. There was honesty, he knew, and honesty; such words could be honest and yet knives might come the next day, and yet knives might be waiting for them now in Cinnamon Hill, in Nutmeg Hill, in Vienda or Brunnhold or Old Rose Harbor, where ever Niccolette was now. The ehafsu might come with daggers, or guns, or scimitars, and not knives.

Tom’s large gray eyes caught his, at the edge. Aremu did not turn towards him, but he blinked, once, not sure in the least what he meant to convey by it. I see you, he wanted to say; we both see, I think, where you are headed.

Thul’Amat, he thought, intently, then. Thul’Amat, specifically. Something planned during the exhibition?

Will you find me? He wanted to ask, suddenly; he wanted to turn to Tom and ask. Will you find me? If you have to start again – if you have to wear another face, and he felt the prickling of his skin at the thinking of it – do you know I want you to? I do, Tom; I want you to find me, however strange, however –

His smile did not move; he knew that there was a frown in the set of his brow, but he could do nothing for it.

“It is a wise harvester,” Aremu said, politely, “and one of great skill, who knows not to cut too deep; in this way the dzutaw may yield opportunities time and again.” He took another small sip of the kofi; he set the copper cup back down almost silently.

He did not leave it there; they had begun to shed the metaphor, slowly and carefully, and he did not wish to backslide, but rather to make it clear that he meant to emerge. Slowly, Aremu thought, slowly; carefully, here. We won’t, he thought, trick them; but perhaps they would tell us more, if – if –

He missed Uzoji, then, with a sharp, tangible ache; he missed Niccolette, too, and he thought she would be jealous if they spoke of this. He did not know how he would explain Tom’s presence here; he thought he might have to, all the same.

“There are not so many dzutawi on the islands,” Aremu added, smiling, “though the Ibutatu plantation is rich in them. One who wishes to see the flowering must know where to be, and when. Is it so, also, with Thul’Amat?” He lifted his gaze again to Tsila and Tsofi both, looking between them; it was as close as he had come to a direct question. He knew it on the verge of overstepping, if not over it; he asked, anyway, this time.

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
here was a line just writ into Aremu’s forehead, when he looked over. It wasn’t deep; there was still a smile on his face, not so much unlike the doorman’s mask.

For you, or for me? he thought, sitting very straight still, taking a sip of kofi to hide the twitch of his lip. He held the cup in his lap delicately, smiling across at Tsila and nobody else. For you, Aremu, or for me? And if not for me, then why am I here?

Tsofi was smiling at him broadly, her legs still crossed and her ankle still jiggling. There wasn’t a line of pain in it. He knew Niccolette’d spoken true – she’d never done otherwise – but Tsofi was sapling-fresh, draped across the chair. She took a sip of kofi as he watched, breathing in the scent with a fluttering-shut of her eyes, as if this were nothing but a tasting. And maybe it was; maybe it was.

A strange sort. He could still taste fear, stronger than anything else.

Aremu went on. His breath might’ve caught at the boldness of it, if it weren’t for the imbala’s calm, even tone. He was achingly grateful for the other man even now; he was achingly grateful for his mask and the winding-round of his words, when he’d stumbled awkwardly over the roots and snagged himself on the tearing branches just moments ago. He was, strangely, grateful for all that empty in the air, for he thought he could hold out well enough against the two fields across from him after all, and he thought he needed nothing more than a man who could hold out with his words.

For me, he thought in the spaces between Aremu’s words, watching Tsila’s eyes glitter underneath their unpainted, heavy lids. The smile on her lips was still fair kind.

I’d rather take it, he wanted to say to Aremu. Not anybody else; if he could’ve made them all vanish for a moment alone with Aremu, he might’ve. I’d rather take it myself, he wanted to say – for you know what I am –

Tsofi giggled, cutting through the silence after Aremu’s words. Her eyes flashed, widening, as if surprised indeed by the question. “Flowering isn’t so rare in Thul’amat,” she shot back, grinning sharply. “Rarer than in Slowwater – Slowwater has the most flowers and knives of anywhere in Thul Ka, isn’t it so, poa’na?”

For the first time, Tsila looked impatient; she inclined her head anyway. “It is, poa’na.”

“But what’s the Anaxi phrase… Finding the right blossoming in Thul’amat is like finding a, ah – a strand of hay in a stack of… A needle in a stack of hay,” she finished, and then took a sip of kofi, smiling mockingly at him now. “Even if we were to warn you, it would not do so much good. A man, they say, who is looking over his shoulder all the time – he can see very little of what’s in front of him. We have no desire to distract you with shadows, sir, ada’xa.”

“But it is so, ada’xa Aremu, that a wise and skilled harvester knows not to cut too deep. And, too, such a harvester might save the dzutaw from – less skilled hands, so she might drink of the eyo’pili herself in sweeter times.” Tsila took a deep breath. “Mr. Vauquelin, we might at least tell you to look for the knife’s target close to the vines on your tree. And held by a familiar hand.”

“One less skilled than ours.” Tsofi raised her brows.

“It is also so, is it not, that a sister may offer a helping hand to her brothers, when their vines are threatened by unskilled hands?” Tsila smiled. “I believe, ada’xa Aremu, it has been more than pleasure which has brought you to Slowwater in the past?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
Tsila's Bar, Slowwater

A man, Aremu wanted to say, who knows when the knife will strike, can do a good deal to prepare himself. A man who knows where the ambush will fall –

He thought, absurdly, of the long ago story of Uzoji, Niccolette and Tom’s first meeting. He had coaxed from Uzoji the whole of it, that he had seen the assassin before the meeting had begun, and that she had still nearly stabbed him in the back before the fight had begun. That had not been the knife which had nearly taken him several years before the ship did.

Had knowing helped them? He’d never asked Tom about it, not then and not since. He didn’t know whether he ever would. It wasn’t the sort of thing they spoke of, then; it had been easier that way, Aremu told himself. How many things, he wondered now, uneasily, could that be said of? How many times in his life had he told himself it was easier not to speak of it?

Tsila spoke. It was no surprise, by now, that it was Tom she warned – or Vauquelin, Aremu thought, a little uncertainly, not entirely sure about the distinction here. He knew little enough about Anaxi politics; he knew little enough about Mugrobi politics, little more than that which affected him directly, and even then only incompletely. Something had brought Tom to Yesufu pez Erfuan, last Yaris, and something had brought Yesufu to hire non-Ehafsu assassins to kill him. Aremu didn’t know whether it had been something which had held over, or something which Tom himself had done; he didn’t know, either, whether it mattered just now.

A familiar hand, Aremu thought, was as close as Tsila could come. It had to be Yesufu – didn’t it? He put that question aside, too.

Aremu smiled back at Tsila. “I suspect, ada’na Tsila, you know already the answer to this question,” he said, politely. “I have seen knives and flowers both, in Slowwater.”

It has always been a pleasure, Uzoji might have said then; he could nearly imagine it, if he let himself. He could remember the feeling of his best friend’s field, that particular blend of heat and weight which bore little enough resemblance to the quick motions of Tsofi’s. Uzoji would have said it so, and grinned, with a twinkle in his eye; he had always liked Slowwater.

“I hope it is so,” Aremu went on. “Brothers and sisters may be sometimes at odds; yet when circumstances do not demand that it be so, there is much which they may do for one another.” Close to the vines on your tree, he thought, carefully, turning Tsila’s words over in his mind; he hoped that Tom knew to fix precisely what she had said into his thoughts, to hold onto it. If she had meant that the knife would come for Tom, would she have said so? He could not be sure – but she had not, not quite, and he could not help but mark it.

He had lingered with a careful emphasis on the word brothers, on the plural meaning of it. He had never asked Tom, precisely, why Hawke had asked Niccolette to look after him – or else to look after Vauquelin, Aremu thought, uncertain. That brief had passed in Yaris, so far as he knew, and yet there had been a moment when Hawke had cared, at least enough to send Niccolette alongside Tom.

A connected politician? Or… Aremu didn’t glance sideways at Tom. He hadn’t asked; he didn’t think he would. His own thoughts from just a few moments ago seemed to mock him; one more time, Aremu thought, suddenly feeling thoroughly tired, he would tell himself it was easier this way.

Either way, he thought the emphasis was true, or at least true enough; he was an imbala, after all, and he knew himself a liar, with nothing inside him to stain.

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

C
lose to the vines, he thought, breathing in deep, on my tree.

Aremu wound on through. He tried to picture it; he’d often tried to picture it before, though he’d not the tools – though he’d nothing to picture it with – and now, he could picture it a little better. Tsila was smiling, her eyes lit with the red phosphor lamps as if from behind. She only inclined her head, as if to say, You already know I know, but this is the qalqa. The Aremu he’d known back then, between visits to the Harbor, even, two hands and a knife he’d never seen him use, moving swift through the echo of drums and the muffled songs of the parade. Ducking among the teeth of a maja’wa.

He felt a tightening in his chest. He didn’t look over st Aremu, weaving now the yarn with his one nimble hand. What do I say? he thought, What do I ask? Did Aremu expect him to speak, or would that smooth, even smile have been happier with him out of the way, to handle it on his own?

It was him, he knew now, and still he didn’t know what words to use. This was never my qalqa, he wanted to protest: I was never the kov who spoke. As if Before was enough, just because Aremu sat beside him; as if he was the ghost of that man – he was, wasn’t he, to Aremu? He remembered the Pendulum in Dentis through something like a fog. That had been Anatole’s world, and it had been effortless; there had been no claiming it, just walking through it, swept on the path of least resistance.

Close to my vine, he thought. Do they know about us, somehow? The thought squeezed him. No, he thought, they couldn’t have. Diana? Or her? All the way back in Anaxas?

Surely not, but then – who?

There was a crawling in the skin at the back of his neck suddenly; his mouth went very dry, and he couldn’t’ve spoken even if he’d tried.

Tsofi was grinning. Her eyes sparked at Aremu’s mention of brothers, and glanced back and forth between the two of them, catching finally on him. Amused.

“When,” Tsila said simply, setting her kofi cup delicately back on the table, “there is something for each, the brother and the sister both, to gain from it. A sister does not call a man poa’xa if he does not call her poa’na, as the old song goes.”

“And a sweet song it is, because everyone benefits,” said Tsofi, with a shrug.

There was a pause. His fingertips were perched on the edge of the cup, and his heart hammered in his ears. He could feel sweat gathering in the small of his back.

Aremu had opened the door for him. They’d never spoken of it, his qalqa for the King now. He hadn’t thought they ever would; he was a damned fool for thinking they’d never have to look at it head-on. He was a damned fool, he thought, thinking of slowly unbuckling Aremu’s knife a week ago, knowing he wore it even now.

“And I–“ He nearly stumbled, but he caught himself; he smoothed out, smiling. “Should be glad to call you my sisters. So that, when the time comes, we may help each other.”

“A wise man cuts not too deeply,” and Tsofi was grinning, grinning broadly, “but drinks deeply of the vine.”

“So it is.” For the first time, there was something less than kind in Tsila’s eyes.

They went through another cup of kofi; Tsila had not brewed much. The conversation wound through – there was little more to speak of – and less he understood, though he hung onto every word as if it might have some hidden meaning. The back of his neck prickled. He looked at Aremu sometimes, politely, but only because it would’ve been stranger if he hadn’t.

In the end, it was Tsila who rose, inclining her head and shoulders. “If I may discuss with you further, ada’xa Aremu, supplying kofi to my pico,” she said, beginning to collect the copper ware with graceful motions, “I should be grateful. How may I contact you?”