No Surrender

[Ava Weaver]

After Hours, 32nd Hamis, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

Ava nodded a little vaguely at Tom’s comment about the cat, looking back down, eyes fixed on the soft hands in her lap. She was glad he’d had the strength to call things off for the night, grateful for the gentle, graceful way he’d done it – it didn’t fool either of them, but the face one put on things mattered. Ava wasn’t sure she could have handled it if Tom had said what he must really be thinking: you’re losing it, and I don’t think you can take much more of this.

Was it there, between his words? What echoed in the space between plenty and enough? What else had she fit into his head tonight?

Ava groped for her anger and she couldn’t hold onto it. It ought to be there; she ought to be able to take it in her hands and feel its heat warming her through. It wasn’t gone – it was never gone – but it felt distant, a glowing coal buried somewhere in the ashes, like to find it she’d have to sift through so much pain, so much hurt, to dirty her hands all over again. She couldn’t summon up the strength for it.

Her skirt would wrinkle, sitting like this, Ava thought. If it wrinkled, she’d need to take them out – maybe herself, or maybe have someone do it. Steam was the best way; it was a delicate fabric, silk. An iron on a damp cloth would do the trick as well, but it was risky; silk burned so easily, and the creases left by the iron could be worse than whatever she had been trying to remove to begin with. Ava preferred to take care of her clothing herself; she didn’t do the heavy laundry, because she didn’t have much space for it, because the rough, inevitable chapping of one’s hands was something she couldn’t afford, but the small maintaining – ironing, steaming, cleaning spots here and there – those she did and she valued them. These things were precious to her; how could she not delight in keeping them clean?

And so – slowly, even though her body was hard to move, as if she were made of something much heavier than flesh and blood – slowly, Ava shifted her weight, smoothed out her skirt, settled her hands back into place. At least she wasn’t shaking anymore, she realized. But she didn’t look up; she settled back into the stillness and silence she’d left. It was comfortable there, and she let herself enjoy it a few more moments.

Tom took a deep breath, and Ava found she was ready to look up again, slowly, her eyes still glistening faintly. She watched him take the tear from his eye, show it to her, shining like a diamond and infinitely more precious. Ava’s eyes overflowed again, and she shook her head, ever so slightly. She had lived through it all and she was still here; the memories wouldn’t defeat her any more than her past, and she knew she was strong enough to bear their heavy weight.

Ava appreciated the space between them – that he’d sat on the other couch, calling her madam and Ms. Weaver despite her slip. She was grateful for it, for that strange sensitivity of his. She wondered how deep he could see inside her, how much she’d revealed, and was grateful he had sat at all.

What did she need?

Ava thought of the room upstairs, the place of privacy she’d carved out of the world for herself two years ago. Thought, too, of how much it had meant to her, then, to be able to be alone. To have time to cry or scream or weep or just ache, in private, where no one could know. Was that what she wanted now? To go upstairs and curl up – maybe not alone, not totally, but with the handsome gray cat who wouldn’t know what her tears meant? To sleep, if she could, as much as she could, until the next day dawned and she could put her face on again?

“Don’t go yet?” Ava asked. Her voice wasn’t quite its usual smooth self, but there was strength in it again, nothing quivering. “I don’t mean more lessons, and I don’t quite know what we should discuss, but I…” Ava pulled a little harder on the long red string hanging out of her chest, unraveling her heart a little more before him. “I don’t want to be alone.” She thought he would have understood even if she hadn’t said it – she really did think so. But perhaps the saying wasn’t for him, not really. Things said couldn’t be taken back, and this one – perhaps she wanted this one between them, laying bare on her polished table.

Ava pulled a little harder. “No,” she said, slowly. “That’s not quite it.” And it wasn’t; it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be alone. Who else’s company could she have born now? She couldn’t imagine sitting here opposite anyone else. Ava felt something like a smile on her face; she didn’t know what it looked like, and she could only hope it wasn’t horrifying. It didn’t feel like it would be; it felt natural and easy, and a little teary, perhaps, but all hers. “I want you here, Mr. Cooke, if you don’t mind,” she looked up at Tom again, blinking at the tears, using the edge of her palm to dab the last of them away. The smile felt a little stronger now.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

during the evening of the 32nd of hamis, 2719

Boemo. ’Course.” The surprise was written clear across his face.

For a second, a second he’d feel ashamed of afterward, he wondered what secret designs she had. He’d’ve liked to say he could tell the difference, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know for sure. He had expected her to say she wanted space, privacy, wanted him to take his face and remove it from her comfortable back room; that would have felt honest, at least initially. It’d struck him to the heart, when she did speak – I don’t want to be alone, then, I want you here, Mr. Cooke, then, if you don’t mind, like she was making an imposition on him. Then that tearful smile, so different from any of the smiles she’d shown him before. The way the lamplight made her tears glisten was beyond words.

That smile was strong.

Did she feel just as raw as he did, just as scared of her own face? He could still feel the tear smeared on his fingertip, where what he’d given her had marked him. He felt like it might scar.

Tom hesitated. There was one place he wanted to be more than here. As he stared across at her, he realized how much he needed to stay. “Ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said finally, nodding. “I want to be here, too.”

When was the last time he’d done this? Just sat and talked with somebody, easy, friendly-like. Wasn’t something a kov did. There was a reason, Tom’d always said, you got drinks with people: the drink drew out the laughter, the stories. Made people quick to fight, maybe, but made them quick to make up, too, long as it didn’t come to sharps. Half the time, what you said or did when you were drunk didn’t matter, not the way it did when you were sober. If you said something you regretted, you either had it out right then or just avoided the kov ’til everybody’d forgot. Or ’til somebody died. Or forever, in the case of such things as declarations of feeling.

It was hard, now, this. There was no word for it other than friendship, and Tom hadn’t had one of those in a damned long time. No more lessons, she’d said, like there was half a chance in hell either of them’d still be up for them. No work, but no drink, either. He had to relax, had to think of words to say, without a drop of whisky in his belly. With his head all tight and clear, with every shape and light and sensation sharp as the edge of a knife, he had to figure out how to entertain her, how to make her laugh, or…

Or maybe he didn’t.

The thought settled across him, new and strange. Tentatively, his posture shifted. Like he had last time, he drew his legs up into the seat with him, wincing a little as he crossed them underneath him. Leaned back into the cushions behind him, propping his elbow up on the plush arm. Let out a long exhale.

Last time, ’course, her eyes had been shut, and now they weren’t, and relaxing in her line of sight felt funny: he didn’t think he ever had. He owed her this much, though, he thought. He wanted to look like he was comfortable being seen by her, even like this; wanted to look like the body he was in’d just slipped his mind.

Blinking, peering across at her, he smiled faintly. Opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, then shut it, then laughed. “You know how long it’s been since I talked to somebody? Being me, I mean, with somebody who knows. All those Uptown soirees, madam” – there was a mocking edge to his voice – “you got no clue. Or maybe you do. I got so much practice being someone else, I don’t remember how to –”

He broke off, sighing. The look on his face grew wistful.

“What d’you want to talk about?” he asked. “Maybe you can help me remember.” Suddenly, the crooked, wry smile came back. “I open the floor: questions, concerns about policy? Ne, ne. Nothing political, hey?”

[Ava Weaver]

After Hours, 32nd Hamis, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

Oh, yes, Ava wanted to say. I understand. Talking to them - it’s not like talking to you.

Something like that. A bit subtler, perhaps; Tom didn’t need her to spell it out so clearly. Not to you; the sentence needed an us, a we, something to bring them together, to make him think of -

No.

Oh, politics, Ava wanted to say. You would have to explain all of it to me anyway, let’s talk about something fun. Tell me about the latest show you’ve gone to. Tell me about the music and the singers.

It wasn’t quite right.What would Tom have noticed at a show? Music and singers were Anatole things. She didn’t think they would interest Tom. Who would? The people he had gone with? Provoking contempt was all right; as long as it was directed at them out there and not at her in here. That was a way to bring them closer. Her and Tom versus those awful gollies -

Tom had settled onto the couch with a fierce determination, as though by putting himself in a comfortable position he would be comfortable. There had been a moment, after he accepted, when Ava thought it was only to be polite. That was all right; if it was kindness that kept him here, Ava would accept it and be grateful. Was it hesitation, on his face? A secret longing to be elsewhere? Did he want to be alone?

But he had said otherwise, and Ava decided to do him the courtesy of believing it.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” Ava said quietly. She sat back herself, slowly - not too far, not enough to wrinkle the silk, but a faint mimicking of his posture. She couldn’t seem to help it. “I’m not sure I remember either. Nothing political, I can at least offer that.”

Was it easier or harder for him, to have that core of Tom inside Anatole? Ava wasn’t Nellie, not anymore; there was no Nellie left inside her, hiding and waiting to come out. She had been Nellie, once, but Nellie had suffused slowly into her, spread out and dissipated and gone. There was no finding Nellie again, no accent she could put on to recapture her.

And, in time, would Tom...? Was she pushing it forward faster even now, by teaching him to use Anatole’s voice?

Ava glanced around her room, at all the hanging silks and fabrics, thought of the panels behind them. She didn’t want to go upstairs for the time it would take to make tea; she didn’t feel the need to take herself out of Tom’s sight, and she worried that being a little alone would make this feel even harder than it already did.

“Would you like some water?” Ava asked. She rose and made her way across the room, slipping behind the hanging next to the stairs. A graceful silhouette bent and brushed one small hand over the awkward bump at the base of the waterfall, provoking a sharp lashing flash of a tail that made a stark curving line against the fabric and a little grumbling meow. A second pet, a third, and then there was a low but audible rumble that seeped through the fabric out into the room. A smaller lump attached to the large one tilted, arching between the hand and the silk. On its own time, the lump shifted and vanished.

Ava moved to the next hanging, pressed the panel to open the secret spot where she kept her medicine bag, and emerged with a covered pitcher of water and two sturdy looking mugs already chipped - not the delicate porcelain tea cups of before, but something one could drink from with trembling hands and never fear.

If Tom wanted water, Ava would pour a cup of each of them and settle back onto the couch, both hands curled around her mug. She took a small sip, set it down, and wondered when she’d last eaten.

There were so many things it felt like she couldn’t talk about. Ava had heard plenty about his life back in the Rose; she wouldn’t mind hearing more, but in truth she didn’t want to press on the things that interested her. Tell me about Ishma, she didn’t dare want to say. Tell me about Hawke.

So, the present, or the just before it. What was it like waking up in that body? How did you get by working in the Mill? Did you ever try to go home? What’s it like - with Diana? Yes, that would all be much better, wouldn’t it.

“The other day, I met a man I had known in the Rose,” Ava said. “He didn’t recognize me,” a small, private smile - half-sad, half-pleased. “I suppose he was more of a boy than a man then, but it wasn’t how he seemed to me.” She took another sip of water.

“Like a collision, isn’t it?” Ava asked softly. “There was one of those books of his - something ridiculous about the overlaps of perceptive and clairvoyant conversation. The author had a lovely turn of phrase, when he wasn’t being pedantic, and he wrote about sharp borders made soft by knowledge.” Ava set the cup down, tried settling back again. It felt a little more natural this time, a little more comfortable.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

during the evening of the 32nd of hamis, 2719

Tom nodded, then watched Ava stand up and move away. Once she’d gone round behind him, through that shivering silk hanging, he settled back again, determined not to pry – being who he was, he knew better even than to dwell on it. He stared down at his hands while he waited, clasped in his lap. A soft, feline mrrp, and the muffled rumble of a purr, brought another flickering smile to his face.

The heavy old mug came as a pleasant surprise. He took it with a grateful nod, a little mujo ma, taking a sip almost immediately. He hadn’t realized he was thirsty; he hoped the cool water’d do something for his headache, though he knew it wasn’t that kind of headache.

Then, nursing the mug in his lap, he listened.

One of those books of his – the kov from the Rose? Tom felt like he’d missed something she’d said, and he wouldn’t’ve put it past his mung head. As she went on, he couldn’t help it: the whole left side of his face twitched, that eyelid fluttering, fluttering.

He knew what she meant. In more ways than one. His mouth felt dry, suddenly, and he took another long sip of water. Impulse told him to cram himself back into the Old Rose accent; it’d be comfortable, said his head, for both of them. Comfortable and inoffensive. He could respond to the heart of her words instead of the face of them, toss out some nanabo little aside about his lack of knowledge, something-something you think I ever read a book something-something barely literate, somethin’ that’d make her laugh, hey? remind her it wasn’t him sitting there, an’ then –

No.

Tom spoke carefully; he enunciated well enough. “The Softer Discipline: A Conversation Between Perception and Clairvoyance,” he said, his eyes troubled. “It’s above my qalqa, but I read a little. For clairvoyance.” He cleared his throat, glancing down. “He’s not well-liked, is he? Hell, at Brunnhold, they just go deeper in their separate wells. But my hama, he could draw water from the air, or knit flesh back together. He whispered to his plants to make them grow better. Knowledge sang inside him, and he knew it was all the same. I didn’t understand, then.”

He looked away, then, to one side, across the room. His eyes caught on a curl of paisley, and he focused on it. A draft – some movement, somewhere – stirred the fabric, sent ripples through the paisley like a pond thick and vibrant with fish. One fingertip traced the lip of his mug, finding a tiny chip.

The way she’d said he didn’t recognize me, a little proud, maybe, a little sad. It was hard to tell how she felt about it, but he knew that for him, that feeling was a complicated one.

“The same thing happened to me. Old friend. I thought of him like an older brother. We grew apart back in the Rose, and he left; I didn’t see him for the rest of my life. Now, he’s in Vienda. He came to… me as a journalist, wanting a contact on the Vyrdag. He’s so tall, now,” he breathed, and for a moment, he sounded full of wonder, “and so young. And he acts so different around – me. Have I ever seen anything clearly?”

Now, he looked back at Ava, eyes soft. Plenty enough times he’d wondered if she’d been back to the Rose, like he had. If she had, how did it look to her now? If she hadn’t, did she wonder what it might look like through Ava Weaver’s eyes, instead of the eyes of – whoever that mischievous lass’d been?

Did she see the world through Ava Weaver’s eyes? It occurred to him, just then: he didn’t know how she thought of herself. In his head, Tom’d only once called himself Anatole, and it’d felt odd. The name felt like it’d gone with the hands, with the voice, and it’d been nice to think, for just one moment, that maybe what people called him was his name. Even still, he’d known it wasn’t him, and it hadn’t stuck. Was there another name that Ava used in the privacy of her soul? Was the woman sitting across from him somebody other than Ava, in the same way he wasn’t Anatole?

She cared enough about names to call him by his. To call a stray cat nothing at all.

It felt like something he needed to know. It was the same as the difference between learning to see Tom in the mirror and learning to be Anatole inside, if there was a difference. This was something she’d already gone through, in her way, wasn’t it? But he couldn’t think of a way to ask, and he didn’t think he had the right to know.

“Somebody said a rose is a rose by any other name. Don’t know who,” he said, sucking at a tooth. His frown deepened. “I think that’s chroveshit. There’s raen who’ve lived more lives than you can count on two hands. Over a century old. What would everything look like, you think? To someone like that?”

He had to resist the urge to play it off with a laugh, some mung crack at himself, and meet Ava’s eyes with mirth in his own. Would’ve been easy. He didn’t know, not really, if the question would touch her like it did him. There was something embarrassing about that, and he wanted to turn it into a joke.

Instead, Tom stayed quiet and serious.

[Ava Weaver]

After Hours, 32nd Hamis, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

T
here was a light that bloomed in Ava’s eyes when Tom gave the name of the book; she lost her carefully cultivated relaxation, sitting a little more upright - leaned forward, instead, then caught herself and straightened again. She couldn’t manage to sit back.

“Yes,” Ava agreed to Tom’s statement that the author wasn’t well-liked. “I think so, if Desvergiones is anything to go by, at least. As far as I could tell, he is much more - establishment.” Ava swallowed. She felt hungry - starving, suddenly. She had never, she realized, spoken about the books with anyone. With herself, of course. She had turned them over a thousand times in her mind, puzzled at them this way and that, read them again and again, knowing they might be taken away at any moment, knowing she could say nothing - nothing - if she lost one, no matter how precious or interesting she found it.

Ava took a deep breath, pared back her enthusiasm, let Tom speak - listened, curious and attentive. Some corner of her mind added to the details she had on Ishma: green eyes, wick, gardener.

Ava grinned at Tom’s comments on his old friend, shaking her head. “Mine seemed shorter,” she said, ruefully. “But - “ She didn’t pursue the rest of the similarities that thrummed there. “I know what you mean,” Ava agreed, quietly. He acts so differently around me. Tom could have been speaking about Oisin Ocasta, his desperate fumbling when he had seen her across the room, his insistence that he hadn’t been flirting. She smiled a little wryly; it didn’t surprise her, though. She supposed she knew the contours and the effects of her changed body better than Tom knew his; she had had hers longer.

The question hit - hard. Harder than Ava had expected, and for a moment she couldn’t quite have said why. She rubbed her chest with one hand, caught herself, lowered her hand smoothly back to her lap. “I wonder,” Ava said, thinking as she did that for Tom the question wasn’t purely academic.

A century. Well - galdori lived that long, it wasn’t so hard to imagine, but - more lives than you could count on both hands. Ava shivered a little. She looked at Tom, wondering. When they had first parted she had teased him that he would come back even if Caina had gotten to him. She hadn’t, Ava realized uneasily, known it might actually be true. He had spoken about being out of a body, about - before this is over.

For the first time, a few more pieces fit together, slowly; like reading a book over and over until a new word finally made sense, even without the context of the monite. Ava could have asked a thousand questions.

Instead, she focused on the one Tom had asked of her. What would things look like? Familiar, maybe. Ava thought of conversations she had had a hundred times, practiced and smoothed over until even the differences began to feel the same. Some she enjoyed - the delight on someone’s face when they saw that fabric, the one that was more than the cloth - and some she didn’t. The telling of the history she had created to herself came to mind.

But that wasn’t the heart of his question, was it? What was in a name? What did it mean to name something, and to be named? What did it mean to Tom to be called Anatole Vauquelin - she knew it wasn’t easy for him. What did it mean to her to be called Ava Weaver?

“I don’t know,” Ava said, slowly. “...” she hesitated. Not academic, she reminded herself. Not for Tom. Not for her, either, in truth.

“I didn’t choose Ava,” Ava said, looking at Tom. “I have tried to make it mine,” she kept her hands together in her lap, and turned from that path. She didn’t regret sharing that, but neither did she feel as if she could tell him more, not just now.

“It would be easy to become bored, I think,” Ava said, as if she could draw back from the personal in this. “To see the similarities instead of the differences. To think of yourself as the only one changing.”

“I...” Ava felt oddly exposed, as if the green silk had turned translucent. It didn’t hurt as badly as she might have expected. “I don’t know how having different bodies would matter,” A quick flick of her gaze up, a check that she had understood correctly. “To see from all those perspectives - it sounds wonderful to be able to understand so much, and terribly painful. I imagine you would want to dwell on the things that do surprise you, and... the feelings. Happiness, felt or seen, is never the same twice, is it? Even when familiar.”

“What do you think?” Ava asked, looking at Tom.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

during the evening of the 32nd of hamis, 2719

Madam, to me, nobody seems shorter now.”

Slowly, a smile dawned on his face – and it wasn’t the forced smile of a joke he didn’t feel. Wasn’t a smile for her benefit at all, though he didn’t try to hide it; even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t, any more than she’d seemed to be able to help sitting up in her seat at the mention of that book. Without meaning to, he leaned forward a little and to the side, propping his head up on a fist. He watched her, rapt. There was a light in his eyes, and it grew. While she spoke, he seemed utterly transported.

At first, he thought of Lreya. He thought how many generations she must’ve seen up in Kzecka, how many squalling babies delivered, how many last breaths wheezed out into the mountain air. He’d never understood why the Hexxos would shelter the raen, murderers that they were; the thought of asking somebody like Ezre to give up his life and his body for somebody like Tom had seemed like the actions of a monster. When he was young and strong and full of potential, and Tom and Lreya and the rest of them were – dead, and dead, and dead.

Ava’s words unwound themselves in his head, and he wondered, and wondered again. Happiness, felt or seen, is never the same twice. Maybe there was a reason why the Hexxos thought the raen were worth preserving.

When she asked him what he thought, he blinked owlishly. “I don’t know,” he replied, finally straightening up. “I like that better than anything I’d’ve come up with. It’s easy to think how – sad it feels. How different you feel. Maybe you understand that, too.” He turned the mug in his hands, running his thumb over the rim, and gazed down into the water. All he could see was a hazy reflection. He spread out a hand, studying it. “There’s a – shock, a horror to this. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, and I’ve had dreams, and I’ve forgotten, and then I see –”

She doesn’t want to hear about that, you ersehat.

“…but when every morning’s new,” he said after a pause, glancing back up, “and different… maybe you do start collecting feelings. Maybe you get wise, when you’ve collected lifetimes’ worth. I wouldn’t know.” That wry, flickering smile. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how even familiar things can surprise you?”

For a few moments, he went quiet.

So Ava’d had her first name taken from her. Tom hadn’t known that, but he did now, and it shook him to his bones. He suspected he was wrong, but he wanted to keep picturing Genevria Trevisani as an old crone with gnarled, grasping fingers, plucking the names from souls like hearts from bodies. But she was making Ava Weaver her name, she said, or she had tried to.

Suddenly, he thought of something. “Wasn’t it Desvergiones who said perceptive’s both a sense and a state conversation in the first place?” He unfolded his legs, sitting up even further, suddenly alert; he couldn’t seem to stay leaned back, either. “But they get hung up there, because they know the brain’s different from the mind, but they don’t know how, or why. And I don’t think they take Saqqaf seriously, do they? The Softer Discipline. Soft borders. Soft things are never taken seriously. I hear he’s one of the most divinipotent sorcerers in Thul’amat right now, but –”

Tom broke off again, the words sticking in his throat. He’d started to sound genuinely frustrated. The word divinipotent’d just rolled off his tongue, rolled off it like the Vyrdag and Hessean diplomats. But it’d been Ava who’d brought up Desvergiones, Ava whose eyes’d lit up, bastly like a galdor’s field. Tom was tired of playing mung. He did it around galdori, he’d always done it around other humans, and he didn’t want to do it around Ava Weaver. He didn’t know if she’d start seeing Anatole again, but this type of talk seemed to make her happy, and he wanted to trust. Her, himself, anything. He just wanted to trust.

“Not even Desvergiones or Mantel – you read her? – want to talk about how true names really work,” he said after a moment. “Is it in the soul? Does it change with you, or is it always the same, forever?”

By now, he was perched on the edge of his seat, staring intently across at her.

Shifting uncomfortably, he gestured toward the rumpled shape of his coat on the sofa beside her. “May I come closer? I want to show you some notes. See what you think.”

[Ava Weaver]

After Hours, 32nd Hamis, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

While Tom spoke, Ava looked at him like there wasn’t anyone else in the world. When she wanted to, she could do it on command; she could summon the sort of focus that made whomever she was talking to feel as if nothing was so interesting to her as whatever it as they were saying. It wasn’t enough to just look at them, or to lean forward slightly; there was something that had to echo in your eyes, for it to believable. The trick was summoning that up even when the conversation wasn’t really that interesting. It wasn’t enough to just bug your eyes out a little or even just to stare; it was easiest to have a memory of something that really had interested you.

Ava thought she could have used this moment for that cue forever more. She had grinned at Tom’s joke - not laughed. Somehow what was between them felt too fragile for laughter, as if the sound might rip apart the thin gossamer web of comfort that hung between them. She hung on his every word, not wanting to interrupt.

Those dreams fade, Ava thought, softly even to herself, in response to Tom’s comments about his dreams. She wanted to tell him to hold onto them - that it would be worse when they were gone - but she didn’t know how to say it, and she didn’t want to interrupt the flow of words from him either. And she didn’t know, not really, if it would be the same. She agreed with his last sentence, letting a smile and a nod do the talking for her.

“Yes,” Ava breathed into the silence that fell when Tom’s words stuttered to a stop. ”Saqqaf understands better. His discussion of the division between the vestibule and latibule reveals that. I couldn’t tell if the parallels were deliberately meant, but I almost hoped they weren’t. They were almost too lovely to be intentional.”

“I read Mantel,” Ava said, lips pressing together firmly. “Dreadful, isn’t it, how Ammantier takes her words and pretends they’re his? A whole book re-explaining her! As if her words didn’t truly exist until he breathed life into them, as if she doesn’t understand herself and needs him to translate her. But you’re right - even she shies away from true names. They all seem to. Desvergiones addresses it most directly, but not deeply. What is it Mantel says? I think it goes to your point: ‘The truest impediments are the barriers between one’s beliefs and the places beneath and beyond.’ Ammantier misinterprets it - he claims she’s talking about casting, but I think -“

This time it was Ava who sheered off, her breath catching somewhere inside her, hearing herself. She sat back, slowly, feeling the tension in her chest, and lowered her eyes back to her lap. I think, she had said. It was one thing, she thought, for her to tell Tom about her own experiences, however obliquely, and that presumptuous enough, although that he seemed interested. But to speak of these books as if her fumbling attempts at understanding meant anything, as if her thoughts could stack up - galdori they might have been, but in that moment Ava hated them for their learning most of all.

Tom’s words dropped into the silence that had fallen over her heart, and Ava looked up, wide-eyed. She held, utterly still, not trusting herself to move or speak. The silence was dragging on too long, and Ava tried to nod - just to nod - but it was more than she could bear and tears spilled from her eyes again. She stifled a sob with one hand and nodded, a happy little laugh echoing from her in its place.

“No one’s - no one’s ever - I’ve never -“ Ava tried to explain, fumbling with the words. She patted at her eyes with her hands, sniffling softly. “Please,” she nodded again, looking at Tom with that same light shining from somewhere deep inside. “Yes,” she shifted over to make space for him, touching the cushion next to her.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

during the evening of the 32nd of hamis, 2719

Seemed to Tom something’d come crashing down. He heard a cacophony in his head, and he swallowed a lump. His hand hung there in the air for a second; when it returned to his lap, he wrung it with his other, watching her face. Watching those dark eyes get all wide, watching the edges start to glisten. He couldn’t hide his dawning distress; it was plain on his face in the way his brow furrowed, in the way he bit his bottom lip, in the way his eye twitched, even though he tried to keep still. All the while, he stared at her face, as if his gaze could wring some signal out of it, some cue for what he ought to do next.

He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He went over what he’d said in his head, and then went over what she’d said. When she spoke, he was still rapt as he’d been. There was nobody else he could’ve talked to about this, nobody who would’ve talked about it the way she did. She slid those golly names and clairvoyant terms into her speech just like he’d’ve, without a second thought, but she didn’t talk about the books like a golly would. He was following her, understanding what she meant. And she’d said I think like she respected his opinion, like he was allowed to disagree with her with a think of his own.

It was like Mantel, he thought. He hadn’t read Ammantier, so he didn’t know. But even to Tom’s poorly-read, restless eye, Mantel wrote like she wanted to be sure of something before she said it. Never talked out of her erse, never went for the easy, simple way of figuring things out.

And he’d ruined it. Godsdamn, but he should’ve known, should’ve known by the way the words spilled out of her and then stopped, like she’d dammed them, like he’d said something – what’d he said? She knew more about all this than he did. Was it he’d seemed mung? She think he wouldn’t understand, so there wasn’t any point in going on?

A sob slipped out of her, then a laugh, clear as a burbling brook. The sound tore a choked laugh from him, though he didn’t know why. “You – huh?” His voice was so soft it was barely audible; his grin was confused, tentative. Dawned on him, then, and he felt like all the breath’d been let out of him. Like he’d been a cage of birds somebody’d opened up. He could feel the tears at the edges of his own eyes, and he reached up to palm them away, sniffing, letting out another crackling laugh.

“Oh, don’t you fuckin’ start, Tom Cooke,” he muttered, voice husky. He sniffed again, nodded. Louder: “Uh – comin’ over, then.”

Tom’d mostly got himself under control by the time he’d woven his way round the table. He was in such a tizzy he forgot his water, but that didn’t matter. He paused when he came within feet of her – ’case she needed to adjust to that porven – then, with a tired sigh, seated himself next to her. They were about as close as they’d been when she’d fixed his hand the first time, but he tried not to think about that. Instead, he turned to the bundle of his coat on his other side, rustling through it in search of what he needed.

He found the deepest pocket without much trouble; its weight was familiar. He disentangled the little leatherbound journal, setting it in his lap, and then went fishing again, this time in the inside pockets. He came up with a pair of reading glasses, first; with an embarrassed mutter, not particularly intelligible, he perched them on his thin nose. Then he fetched Anatole’s fountain pen.

Turning back to Ava, he opened up the journal and started flipping through.

“I, uh – you might remember a little aside in Mantel about some… less than legal uses for scrying,” he started. The journal, or what glimpses she’d’ve caught of the pages he skimmed through with shaky fingers, was a bizarre mess. Sometimes, there were pages of a cramped, small hand, lines crammed together so they almost overlapped, margins overflowing. Sometimes, there was space. Sometimes, the chickenscratch of crude but faithfully-copied Monite stood out in bubbles of doodled patterns – circles, and circles, and more circles, circles with tails and swirls, circles with dots, curling vines and flowers. Whole circles and broken circles.

“I was down in Brunnhold for all that political shit that goes on in Bethas – gods know you probably know about that, too. It’s a long story, but I met a kov who knew what I was. He’s interested in communicating with the dead, which’d mean – see, Mantel had a little to say about souls, about how sense conversation’s different from state. This kov tried to open up a ley channel with my mind as the recipient, and he almost succeeded.”

Finally, he turned to a page with a scrawl of Monite. He leaned a bit closer to let her see it, tracing a line with a thin finger. Though he tried to hide it, the tremor in his hand was clear. “I copied this; I’m trying to learn,” he said. “This part” – his finger wobbled as it followed the writing – “is the invocation of the clairvoyant spell, right before the espial. But then this happened.” He tapped a paragraph of Estuan below the Monite. “Before the shit hit the fan, he said he felt me. The real me.

“What does that mean, madam? That there’s a you that’s outside of you, that’s apart from you? That we might all be connected somehow? Mantel knew there existed things beyond and despite her belief, like you said. Whatever Ammantier thought, I think you read her right.”

He shifted in his seat. Fidgeted, almost.

Now, peering up at her over the rims of his glasses, it was Tom’s turn to ask, “What do you think?” He studied her face, then offered her the journal. If she took it, he’d turn and – with an effort – lean across the table to fetch his mug of water; after taking a long drink, he’d sit back down beside her, glance flicking from her face to the pages and back.

He was still full up with that nervous energy, though he tried to hide it, tried to act casual-like. He couldn’t help it. The water was half-gone, and he swirled the rest of it in his cup like you’d swirl brandy, just out of habit.

[Ava Weaver]

After Hours, 32nd Hamis, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

Ava was more than a little aware that Tom had been staring at her, horrified, as she tried to stop crying and tell him she was happy he’d asked. Even though he couldn’t have understood, he laughed in a little echo of hers, and Ava felt a little lighter. He cried with her too – not much, just the faintest glistening of tears at the edges of his eyes, a soft sniffle, a hoarseness in the edge of his voice as he said his name. Ava was smiling now, fully, through the tears, and not for the first time she thought to herself how terribly, terribly dangerous all this was.

Tom fumbled his way across the room, pausing a little midway through, and sat as if it were an apology. Ava held herself as still as she could manage at the sudden proximity of him – closer than when she’d sat on the couch before, his field still no less of a painful, physical shock – that was why he had hesitated, she realized; he had done it when she first felt the field, to give her time to adjust – closer than any time before, except maybe when she’d forced herself to touch him, to take his hand on her lap and tease out the little bit of porcelain –

Ava was glad she’d thought to bring out the heavier mugs this time.

Ava held herself as still as she could. There were inches of space between them, mere inches, but she tried to behave as if they were feet, as if she couldn’t feel the brush of air against her when Tom put his glasses on or flipped through the pages of his journal.

Tom leaned in a bit closer, and Ava found that she had drawn forward as well, so close that the thick mass of her hair had nearly brushed him. She eased back, slowly, as if she were trying not to startle the little gray cat, and – carefully – lifted her hands, pulling her hair back from her face. She twisted the heavy curling mass of it around, and eased it over her shoulder. A few strands escaped, dangling free around her face, but most of the thick dark hair stayed where she had put it, tumbling down the green silk like a waterfall, leaving the side of her head and the small ear closest to Tom utterly exposed.

Carefully – carefully, still, as always, listening with her whole self, Ava leaned back in.

Communicating with the dead? Ava held back a faint shudder. She didn’t like it, and she couldn’t have said why. It seemed wrong – obscene – and yet, Ava realized slowly – it wasn’t all that different from what she was doing here. One dead man in another one’s body. Something entirely different ran through her, and for the first time Ava felt a sense of the enormous wrongness of it all, something almost like panic –

And she bit it back, and swallowed it down, and let it seep away. No, Ava told herself, firmly, and refused to feel it. No.

“The real you,” Ava repeated the words, softly. She almost couldn’t help but shiver this time, so close to Tom that if her hair had been down, still, it might well have brushed him. She looked up at him, and took the journal, slowly, drawing it onto her lap, pulling back a little. Her hands smoothed the pages, and she read the paragraph below the faithful, clumsy Monite.

“Body, mind and soul – what of you is – is in -” Ava faltered, but pressed onwards. “Are ley lines what connect them, if they are separate? How did this – kov,” she managed something like a grin for Tom, quite sure that he must have been a professor or a student, certainly a galdor, “know… where… to find you? When you were coming apart at the seams, what was the thread? There must be pathways, there – there must – ”

“I don’t even know what questions to ask – I don’t know – it’s beyond me, I – ” Ava shut the journal, abruptly, but she didn’t shut it hard, and she let the fingers of one hand linger on the page, bookmarking it inside the cover. She looked up at Tom, at those familiar-unfamiliar gray eyes, and searched them for something she couldn’t name. The eyes were windows into the soul, she thought, and had to swallow a hysterical giggle.

Maybe she found it; Ava wasn’t sure. She only knew that she didn’t want to give up, and so she opened the journal again and stared down at the words on the page, reading them again, and then again, waiting for something to make sense in her mind.

“I don’t know,” Ava said again, but the tone had changed. She was thoughtful, now, not so afraid, and she looked up at Tom, calmer once more. “I am not apart from me,” Ava said, quietly, “but – you are apart from you, aren’t you?” Her hand lifted, as if to take his, then lowered itself back to the journal. “Our bodies change, as we live, but we don’t think that makes us not ourselves. Names have meaning, but they’re only words, and they don’t define us; we are not lost when they are. And we speak of the mind as a tool, too, sometimes, don’t we? When we talk of sharpening it – so it can change as well. So what is it that is the same, within me? What me am I speaking of?” This time, Ava settled the same fidgeting hand on her chest.

“Do you think that’s what they find, when they find their true names?” Ava asked, soft. “Do you think Mantel meant beliefs to be the mind, and that there’s something more that makes us… that what they call their true name might be their soul?”

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

during the evening of the 32nd of hamis, 2719

He’d never forgotten, but maybe it’d slid to the back of his mind, for just a little while. He’d sat down next to her all careful-like, but then he’d got occupied in rustling through his coat, and then finding the right page in the journal, and then fumbling to explain what he wanted her to understand. He’d even forgot that itch, ever-present, for a drink; his hands hadn’t, and he kept on swirling that water like he could summon whisky to the glass, but he wasn’t thinking about it by name. He wasn’t thinking about anything but the words that wove between them, back and forth, so much like a thread holding together a tear in cotton. Or a wound.

Like him, she leaned in closer, and there must’ve been just inches between them. The way he’d forgot himself, forgot everything, he had the surreal sense that they were children, heads together as they unwrapped some treasure that’d drifted into Sherry’s on the tide. The faint tickle of her hair just a half-centimeter away from his cheekbone.

So it’d been something about the way she took her hair in her hands and sifted it over her shoulder. The motion made him raise his eyes, and he saw the graceful line of her neck, the dark hair spilling around it on the other side, tumbling down green silk. The back of his neck prickled, and he felt unsettled. He’d forgotten, and now he remembered.

Tom got the sense she was unsettled, too, but not just from their closeness. It was hard to tell from that still, smooth control. Ghastly shit, ain’t it? He didn’t want to acknowledge it; he wanted to give her time to adjust. He was grateful when she took the book, grateful when she put just a few more inches of space between them. “That’s what I want to know,” he replied, lowering the mug to his lap. “With raen, there’s something that holds on, some imprint of the mind. We had to be using – these ley lines, didn’t we? But it was me he found. You’re right; there must be a thread to follow. I must be in here somewhere.”

When she broke off, she shut the book gently and looked up at him, meeting his eyes. He felt like she was searching them, or trying to see through them; he didn’t know which, if not both. What did she see there? Could she see him in them, somewhere? He wondered. Looking into hers, he wasn’t sure what of her he could see.

For a second, her hand had drifted away from the page, like it was going to – he made an effort not to pull away, to keep still — but it didn’t. Had he wanted it to? His lay across the top of his mug; he picked at that chip in the clay with his thumb. He realized he wanted to be seen so badly it hurt. No, not seen, he realized, thinking of Ezre – not seen, but felt. Whoever he was, whatever that could possibly mean.

It seemed to him a terrible weakness. There was an awful peril to being witnessed. There was a reason why knowing someone’s true name gave you power over them.

“If you’re saying that what constitutes you, madam, isn’t even your mind, then the true name would have to correspond with the soul, wouldn’t it? The eternal soul. I can’t see anything else Mantel could’ve meant. If the Cycle works the way we think it does, you were somebody before you were Ms. Weaver” – he couldn’t quite bring himself to say Ava – “plenty of somebodies. You could’ve been anyone. I was somebody before I was Tom Cooke. In your next life, you’ll be somebody completely different. A fisherman in Plugit, a – an imbali bookseller in Thul Ka. Anybody. With any luck, that is.” His smile was wistful.

He took off his reading glasses, setting them to one side and blinking.

“When he said ‘the real you’, it was like proof of something,” he said more softly, and took another long drink of water. He folded his hands over the mug in his lap, looking up at her. “Do you understand why that would be so important to me? And terrifying, just the same.” The word terrifying tasted strange in his mouth, like something he shouldn’t’ve said, shouldn’t’ve given.