[Closed] For Every Shadow a Source of Light

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

T
he lad bit the tally, then screwed his soot-smeared face up like an old fruit. Tom frowned down at him, one eyebrow sharply raised. “Well?”

“What else, toffin?”

Tom stared at him a few seconds longer, then snorted, looking away. He looked down the street, but he didn’t look too hard; he forced himself not to linger on the glassy, dusty dark mirrors of the windows, or the mouths of tiny alleyways. He looked down the street as if he expected to see nothing, and he saw nothing.

Holbeck was a tributary of Marshwick, one of Caldwell’s many little tributaries. Not quite an alley, but not comfortably wide enough for a cab. The street was narrow and poorly-paved, flanked by leaning stacks of apartments. They disappeared up into the mist, zig-zagged with empty laundrylines; they were hung with the occasional unfortunate shoe, stirring lonely in the chill damp breeze.

Tom knew streets like this well enough. Granted, he’d lived on Walleye, down on the other side of the river – close enough to the abbatoir you got used to the reek, and everybody at the mill knew where you lived, for all it clung. That laoso potpourri was absent, and thank all the Circle for it. But all the same, he knew the sour, burnt smell in the heavy air, mingled with stagnant water and cheap tobacco.

Soon as dawn started to trickle down between the rooftops, it’d be packed with the changing of shifts, and in the evening, too. The smell of frying oil and sweet, spicy vraun would trickle down from Marshwick and Cuttle, where the stands were already setting up.

Now, in the lingering dark, Holbeck was deserted. A single weak phosphor light stood at the corner of Marshwick, peering through the smog like a flickering blue eye.

“You’re holdin’ out,” the lad said, once he’d stuck the tally in his trouser pocket.

“Listen, lad,” growled Tom, “that’s up-front. Understand?” He crossed his arms, shivering into his old patchy, oversized coat. “When you come back, if I like what I hear, there’s two shills in it for you.”

The boch seemed to consider it. He shifted from foot to foot, bit his lip with a crooked tooth, squinted his eyes. He’d a good enough Rooks face, thought Tom; he’d expected talk of shills to get more than a wo chet out of him. “Ne,” he said after a moment.

“Fuck do you mean, ne?”

“One shill up front,” said the lad. He spat on the ground. “What’re you gonna do, put a golly spell on me? I ain’t scared. Old Brint says you lot’re more bark –”

“I’ll try my luck, then,” snapped Tom, swaddling his coat tighter round him; he started to turn away, then paused when there was no protest.

Hissing between his teeth, he turned back. The lad’s hand was already outstretched. “You toft. All right.” He fumbled in the pocket of his coat with a shaky hand, then pressed a shill in the lad’s grubby palm, cursing under his breath.

“Smart kov,” chirped the boch, flashing him a grin. “Ain’t in no rush to get your neck wrung again, eh?”

Tom tugged his collar up, wincing as his fingers brushed the bruising. “Fuck you. Off with you, lad,” he added, fluttering a thin hand, “and don’t get caught, or the deal’s off.”

Soon enough, he found himself alone on Holbeck again. He took a deep breath, picking up the pieces of himself, trying to figure out which way they fit together. He dared to shut his eyes; he dared to slump, for just a moment, against the wall, running a hand through his hair, pressing both hands against his face.

His nose and cheeks were numb from the chill air. The back of his neck prickled, and little shivers went down his spine. He forced himself to breathe, in and out.

It was still new, this. Like a splash of cold water in the face. No hiding behind a ragged coat; no one mistook him for a tsat, not anymore. The Dives was a strange, dark mirror, and he no longer knew what he saw reflected there.

Sniffing, he pushed himself up off the wall, adjusted his collar against his bruised throat again. He glanced round the street once, casual-like; he saw nobody, not even the boch.

But he knew there were two shadows in the dark, and one had been following him since Caldwell. Gritting his teeth, he set off toward Cuttle in the stirring dawn, following the vague punch-drunk shape of his memory. Pressing on through his aching head; putting everything else out of it. “Floats,” he murmured, “and he drowns.”

He was a little ways down Cuttle, past the ragged pile of a sleeping beggar woman, past the suspicious glances of a couple of tyat setting up a stall, when the boch caught up with him again.

“Well?” he muttered through his teeth, not slowing his pace.

Beside him, in the corner of his eye, the urchin shrugged. “Too hungry to remember. Hey!” he yelped, catching a bony elbow.

“Keep it down,” hissed Tom.

“Boemo, boemo. There’s somebody, I’ll tell you that. But it’s hard to tell, under all them scarves,” came the boch’s voice, barely a whisper.

“It’s Vortas. Do better.”

“Little kov,” said the lad after a moment, “if it’s a kov.” Tom shot him a sharp glance, and saw him screw up his nose.

“Hells, a boch?”

“Ne chen. Didn’t get close enough to feel, but he might’ve been a golly,” said the lad, uncertainly. “Didn’t seem like a boch to me.”

Tom forced himself to swallow a lump; it didn’t ease the pounding of his heart. “Anything else?”

“He’s a Mug,” the boch replied, after a moment. “I think.”

Tom blinked. Up ahead, Cuttle split into Goodwine and Briggs; his glance flicked back and forth between them, all wreathed in smog and morning mist. He racked his brain, but he couldn’t remember. He’d’ve bet a bird he remembered Cuttle from the night before last, and Briggs was in the direction of Soliloquy, so he chose Briggs.

It was his turn, then, to feel a bony elbow in his arm. Grunting a curse, he pressed another shill into the lad’s palm. He heard a click as the lad bit it. “Benny doin’ business wi’ you,” he said after he’d tucked it away.

“Fotamos,” Tom drawled, scowling, and when the lad didn’t fall out of step with him, he pressed another tally into his hand. Then, the lad was gone.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, and it wasn’t just the cold. But the gears in his head were turning, as the warm smell of curry and fried rice started drifting out into the morning air. Something clicked into place; he didn’t slow his pace, but his lip curled, and he muttered a curse into the collar of his coat. He glanced around and, as if it’d just occurred to him, turned his steps toward a tiny dark alleyway wedged between two derelict shopfronts.

It came to a dead end, with nothing but a dumpster and a tangle of moldy pipes. Halfway down, he stopped, leaning himself up against the wall.

He fumbled in his pocket and found his last pack of cheap cigarettes from last Achtus, still nestled safe and sound in his old coat. There was something achingly familiar about the motion of lighting one with Anatole’s shaky hands in the damp, dark morning.

Without looking up or down the alley, he took his first drag and coughed on it, waving away the smoke. Flooding awful. “I know you’re there, ada’na,” he said after he’d cleared his throat, raising his voice.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
An Alley, Soot District

Nkemi had woken early; it was the sort of early that still felt like night, with the soft snores of Seventen all around, clustered close on the narrowed cots. She had dressed silently in the dark, her breath clouding the air; she had worn the heavy coat over her thickest brown sweater, and a soft brown cap she had borrowed from Riginuld the night before. She could not go without a scarf, but she chose a tan one and wrapped it around her neck and chin. She laced up her boots sitting on the edge of the little cot, pulled the blanket smooth and swept it off with her hand, tucking her trunk back beneath the cot. Last, she hug her baton at her belt, tucked beneath the coat, the sturdiness of it comforting against her side.

It was not hard to wake oneself early. There was a trick to it; Nkemi had learned it long ago. There was a way of setting oneself to sleep, an urgency that one could lay into their bones. Wake, Nkemi had whispered to herself, before she slept, before she shut her eyes and drifted into distant colorful dreams.

Nkemi left the compound into the pre-dawn; faint distant light glowed gray through the city, not even yet blue at the edges, a soft suggestion of sunrise to come. She turned the collar of her coat up over the scarf, shivering, and made her way through the streets, walking quickly.

Nkemi did not begrudge the walking or the day she saw before her. This was her day off, and it was hers to choose how to spend. There was every chance it would not matter, what she did here; there was every chance it would be a waste of a morning and the day to come. Perhaps it would be useful regardless, in its way; she was still learning the contours of Vienda, and though of course it was not Thul Ka, she did not dislike the city. It had a quaint charm of its own - if only it was not so cold!

Nkemi had found the Seventen maps the night before, after dinner; she had found the area around Soliloquy, and she had found Barton and Caldwell, and set one finger on the intersection, dark against the yellowed paper. She had turned the pages, back to the river and the bridges, and found the path which would lead her there.

Now, in the pre-dawn, Nkemi walked it from memory, turning here and there. She found the intersection, and tucked herself into the shade there, leaning against a heavy brick wall. She waited, there, a little while; the light grew slowly, steadily, going blue at the edges, shading the streets as they began to wake, the whole world blurred dark with fog.

This was a very different Vienda, Nkemi thought, from the shaded well-lit streets of Uptown and Willow Avenue. This Vienda was cramped and narrow; quiet, she thought, only in the morning, only because the city had not yet stirred.

At this hour, Nkemi thought, swallowing an ache through her throat, Windward Market would already be alive. The vendors would have arrived; shops would not be open yet, nor stalls, but the vendors had a life all their own. Early morning kofi sellers would be wandering the narrow lanes; the smell of warm bread and eggs and fritters and yogurt would rise up through the air, carried on trays and rolled on stalls; wholesellers, some, would be picking their ways through colorful wares. All this would be busy and bustling before the sun crept hot over the horizon and shone its light across the city; all this, Nkemi thought achingly, would be alive.

Nkemi watched, quietly, as a boy carrying a hard brush longer than he was tall scurried across the cobblestones, vanishing into the darkness across the way. A woman tucked into a dark gray cloak walked past, fast, head down, without looking at anyone. Nkemi tucked herself a little more solidly against the wall, the sole of one foot resting against the bricks, and turned her attention back to the street.

It was not only before she saw him. He was wearing an old worn coat, his chin tucked and his shoulders hunched against the cold, his red curls tousled on his head. He came to the intersection, and stopped, looking around; Vakelin stood, a little while, and then began to walk.

Nkemi waited, a few moments, and then she eased herself away from the wall, and followed.

Nkemi had learned to tail a suspect in Thul Ka. She knew well that it could not be done, properly, by one woman alone; she knew, too, that it was hard with nowhere to stop and linger, nothing to look at. But she kept to shadows, and ones not too close to Vakelin; she let him drift away, once, and again, and then followed anew. She stopped, where she could, once to admire a soft bunch of pale pink flowers, long thin stems of them with bunches of little flowers clustered along the line. The girl setting them up peered, suspiciously, up at her.

Nkemi grinned at her from behind the scarf, glancing up the street. Vakelin was studying an alley; he turned, and kept going, and so did she. Something warm and fragrant drifted through the air; Nkemi's stomach churned, and she sighed to herself, wishing she had thought to get something to eat.

Nkemi nearly lost him only once, briefly; she caught a flash of his coat going around a corner at the last moment. She came to the corner herself, peering carefully around it; she went into the narrow alley, crouching carefully behind a half-rotted pallet, silent. Was this it? Nkemi wondered, peering through the wooden slats at the incumbent. He was lighting what looked like a cigarette; the tip glowed cherry red against the pale morning mists.

He spoke, then, and Nkemi’s eyes went wide.

Sheepishly, the subprefect came out from behind the crates; she took a few tentative steps down the alley, looking wide-eyed at the man in the worn coat.

Nkemi bowed, then, politely, and straightened up, a bundle of cloth wrapped in a bundle of cloth, only the gleam of her eyes visible in the darkness of her face. She tugged politely at the hem of her scarf, revealing the rest of it. “Good morning, sir,” Nkemi said, pleasantly. She glanced around, and then looked back at him, and shifted a little closer. “Is this the place?” Nkemi asked, solemnly.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

T
he alley’d been full of dark shapes. The faint light from the streetlamp round the corner, and the lightening sky overhead, made the cobbles glisten; puddles that’d never quite dry up stood like shards of glass in the potholes, little streams from the-day-before-yesterday’s rain in the cracks and grooves, still dripping from the gutters. It was a good place for old wood and burlap and gods knew what else to pile up and rot, to cast shadows that hid and obfuscated.

If you tried to pay attention to all of them, you’d inevitably miss the one that hid whatever you were looking for. And so when Tom heard the faint noise, turned his head toward the mouth of the alleyway to look – every muscle in his back was clenched, his heavy coat like an anchor round his shoulders, his heart hammering up in his throat.

If he were wrong?

He watched one shadow melt from another, limned watery-blue; he watched folds of cloth take shape. He saw the glisten of eyes between a plain hat and a thick scarf. Then his watcher bowed like a galdor, and when she rose back up, she pulled the scarf down round her chin.

It was still too dark – for him, anyway – to make out much. But for all they were vague, the round, delicate features were familiar, and the wide dark eyes, and the polite, accented voice most of all.

He stood very still as she came closer, putting the cheap cigarette back to his lips, taking a shorter draw, this time. He didn’t hold it long, but his lips still twisted on the inhale, and he soured trying to think when he’d got used to smoother than this. Jean and his fucking cigars.

He was quiet and tense for a long moment, watching the prefect-in-plainclothes through the drifting smoke.

“You look chipper for the hour,” was all he said at first, pushing himself up from the wall and taking a step closer himself. There, he felt the familiar brush of belike mona; he didn’t caprise any further.

He scratched his forehead, then frowned, glancing round the alley. “No.” He sucked at a tooth. “I don’t think so, at any rate. It’s like trying to remember a dream – I felt like I was drunker than a kenser in Hullwen, when I woke up – but it doesn’t look familiar. And it’d be closer to Soliloquy, I suspect.”

He looked back up at the Mugrobi, then, his brow furrowing. He thought he knew why the pickpocket would’ve guessed galdor, without knowing one way or another from feel; the coat underneath the scarf was as drably-colored as everything else, and a little too big for her, he thought, but the wool was thick and heavy. He glanced down at her boots: he remembered them from the night before, the way her trousers were tucked neatly into them.

“Truart didn’t seem keen on wasting the Seventen on an old fool’s watch,” he said a little sharply. He took another drag; wisps of dusty white drifted in the cold air between them. “Have they sent you to see what sort of embarrassing rubbish an incumbent gets up to on his off days, ada’na?”

Tom could taste the bitterness of his words, as dark as the clinging taste of the smoke on his tongue. They didn’t seem to align with the wide eyes in front of him, the soft clairvoyant field at the edges of his.

But what of it? He remembered the offended twitch of the constable inspector’s mustache. Perhaps he’d gone too far in the asking, or showed too much. The brigk might not’ve been able to spare any men or women in green to mind the moony incumbent, but a bright young prefect with Ideas? He’d not a clue what’d found her so far from home, either.

When were you going to reveal yourself? he wanted to snap, though he stayed himself. Were you? Or were you just going to watch?

His head ached, and his hands ached in the cold. The mark at his cheekbone still stung, and the ache in his throat’d dulled to a throb, with whispers of sharpness whenever his collar chafed. The shame stung worse, ever-present.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
An Alley, Soot District

Drunker than a kenser in hole'when. Nkemi’s brow knotted in a faint frown, and her lips moved through the phrase as she tried to puzzle it out. She understood the gist of it without needing to know the specifics; the incumbent was saying he had felt very drunk, when he awoke. She wondered – she had wondered, when she saw him that morning – how much of his whiskey he had drank the night before, how many times his shaky hand had tipped the decanter against the tumblr. But she did not know what hole'when was, whether it was a place or a liquor or some special thing which kensers favored.

Nkemi glanced around at the alley with Vakelin, and then looked back at him. He’d come a little closer; he was smoking a cigarette which smelled very bad, in Nkemi’s admittedly inexpert opinion. He was frowning too, and he had not bowed, although Nkemi had not quite expected him to. It was she who had owed him a bow, not the other way around.

Nkemi raised her eyebrows at the incumbent’s words, and at his tone most of all. “No, sir,” Nkemi said, firmly, still unrepentantly cheerful despite the hour. She glanced around the alley once more, and then back at Vakelin. She looked at him; she thought of his careful words the night before. She had not worn any green, either, not today. She thought, too, of the use of ada’na, and his lack of hesitation in using her name, and not her mother’s. “The Seventen do not know about it. It is my off day too, you see,” Nkemi explained.

There was a pause, and then a big, bright grin lit her small face. “I have decided to spend it exploring a new part of Vienda,” Nkemi said, with the faintest hint of self-satisfied smugness. The grin was more of a smile now, something offered; Nkemi stepped a little closer, and her field caprised his, curious but still polite, the clairvoyant mona mingling, and the static mona too, a little warmth against the chilly morning.

“I find I have a particular interest in some of the alleyways close to Soliloquy," Nkemi continued. “I understand you take walks in such places, sir. Might I request you to show me around?”

Incumbent Vakelin was not wrong. Truart was not, as he had said, keen on wasting the Seventen on an old fool’s watch. He had treated Nkemi to a very uncomfortable silence – or so she supposed it was meant to be – for a long time, and then a brief lecture on following the lead of a superior officer, and then a longer grumble about moony old men who thought being an incumbent meant the Seventen was at their beck and call, who felt the need to take long rambles at night through the most dangerous parts of the city, who needed guidance for their own safety. This had ended, thankfully, with their return to the station.

Nkemi had listened, following the lead of a superior officer, as Luix’erman reported in on the meeting, contributing only a bow and her agreement that he reported correctly that which was said. She had not been asked about what else she might have seen or understood, and so she had seen no reason to offer it; nor had she been asked to share her opinion on Luix’erman’s own interpretations, so neither had she offered that.

Luix’erman, as he had promised, had sent a description of the watch to the part of the Patrol Division which watched for stolen goods. And then, so far as Nkemi could tell, he had gone to do things which he felt more important. Naturally, then, so had she, and this was where they had brought her, in the end.

Now, standing in the alleyway, Nkemi stood upright and watched the Incumbent, waiting, wide-eyed and a little hopeful. The early morning light cast his face oddly blue; it was lovely, if a bit unsettling. Nkemi did not like to think too closely on what he resembled, made pale and cold-looking. She could see the shadow of the bruises at his throat all the more clearly, strange dark shapes pricked out against the shadow of his coat and chin. It was in his gray eyes that Nkemi looked though, solidly, having offered her honesty and her assistance; she hoped he would accept.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

H
e raised his eyebrows. The cigarette was halfway to his lips; it hung there between two limp fingers, and he bit his lip instead, crossing his arms. He watched Nkemi carefully, and listened carefully, too. His headache could not force her cheerful, matter-of-fact words out of his ears. And if he’d hoped with his sharpness to scratch the veneer, he was realizing it’d take sharper by far – or, perhaps more disturbingly, that it wasn’t a veneer at all.

Nkemi was moving toward him through the foul-smelling smoke. The clairvoyant mona in her field tangled at the edge of his – and static, too, warm in a way he couldn’t feel with his skin or his aching bones. He shivered, his fingers curling in the fabric of his sleeve at his elbow.

He felt it again, politely curious. Without quite meaning to, he returned the caprise; it was strangely instinctive. He edged round the waters, feeling – through the mona – something of the depths of them. He reached out a little further this time, still polite but more curious.

He couldn’t’ve described what he felt, but it was reflected, somehow, in the wide bright grin on ada’na’s face.

“All right,” he murmured, reluctantly. “Though I would not have taken you for the sort of young lady,” he enunciated as if he were in Stainthorpe Hall, with his most distinguished frown, “who spends her leisure time in the slums.”

A tiny smile tugged at the lines around his mouth; it couldn’t’ve been helped. A noise that might’ve been a scoff – not that he was fooling anybody – and a pause, and then he bowed, gesturing with his cigarette toward the mouth of the alleyway.

As he edged out into the faint sooty light of Briggs Street, he looked over at the prefect. “What do you know of the Dives, ada’na?”

I hope you’re armed, he might’ve added. He wouldn’t insult her by saying as much. He’d had a knife made on his return from the Isles, and he could feel its comforting weight against his hip, underneath his coat, even now; but being honest, it wasn’t too comforting.

The accompaniment of a prefect shouldn’t’ve been comforting, for all it was. He didn’t think she’d lie, and she’d told him outright the green weren’t in on this; but that truth didn’t preclude other, more complicated ones.

The streets were still sparse; it was a good quarter of an hour ‘til five, when the shifts’d change at Guillory & Stanton, and more ‘til the first rotation at Travers Mill. But Tom caught whiffs of hot oil and batter underneath the chemical funk of the Soots, and the chimneysweeps and beggars were joined by early risers of other stripes.

He wasn’t sure, on reflection, this was such a good plan. He’d come up with it the night before, and he’d still been riding the warm updraft of a morning nip when he’d headed for the Dives in the dark hours. Now, as he glanced round at the little rivers and streams that fed Briggs – all with names like Shriving Well and Pikesleigh, and once, Harmon’s Little Finger – he found none of them particularly familiar.

He was conscious of a building feeling of – it was like a crawling in his skin, with every shape that darted in the corner of his eyes. The scar at his side, from Yaris, seemed to ache, as if he expected the ghost of a knife to slide through his coat.

A tall woman with a soot-stained apron passed by a bit more closely on his side, and he jumped before he could stop himself.

“Thank you,” he added, after he’d taken another, longer drag, trying to settle his nerves on the bitter smoke. It was full of strange memories, and the prefect at his side was a stranger presence still. “I can’t say I know why you’re doing this, but you don’t have to. I don’t know where this search will take me.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
Various Streets and Alleys, Soot District

Nkemi felt the incumbent’s deeper caprise with something like relief. She could not have said she felt the yes in the curious polite reach, but it did not surprise her either that it followed.

The joke did surprise her. Nkemi’s eyes had widened as he spoke and at the frown that spread across his face, tugging all the deep lines down. She broke before he did; Nkemi giggled, delightedly, and saw Vakelin’s face twitch at a little self-satisfied smile, heard the clearing of his throat he did not quite seem to be able to suppress.

Nkemi, true to her word, let Vakelin lead the way back into the street. She found the side where the smell of the cigarette was less, and kept close to him. She walked with an awareness of her space; she was small, but spaces in Windward Market were smaller still, and Nkemi knew every contour of her elbows and head, though the bulk of the coat and sweater made it a little more difficult.

“The Dives are the name of a group of neighborhoods in Vienda,” Nkemi recited, word perfect, as if she had read a book or perhaps a travel account of the city. “They are inhabited mostly by the human and writ-holding wick populations of the city, and contain as well the bulk of Vienda’s industrial operations.”

Nkemi paused there, looking around; she glanced back at Vakelin as well. “I think they are a place of struggling,” Nkemi said, thoughtfully, “and that any place of struggling may be dangerous. I think they are a place of small streets and narrow alleys, and unexpected colors. I think that I do not know very much of them, yet; I think it is preferred that I keep myself Uptown.” Nkemi scrunched up her nose at the idea, and smiled at Vakelin. She thought he would understand.

None of it feels like home, Nkemi thought, not quite. The smell of the factories was thick all around then, burnt-acrid and bitter through the air; beneath it was a growing smell which Nkemi could not have placed, but which her stomach knew without any need for her mind. The light was growing, slowly, blue edges giving way to gray; it was too thick for pink, except at the very edges of the fog, trickling through the gaps between the buildings, as if refusing to let the city win.

The crowd was growing too; there was a little girl clinging to the hands of a man and a woman, small enough that she could skip occasionally, lift herself entirely off the ground and be carried, as if weightless, for a moment or two. Her messy blonde hair was woven into a long braid; once it caught the light and glowed almost pink.

Nkemi glanced back to see Vakelin flinch when a woman with bags beneath her eyes and a soot-stained apron came too close. She said nothing, and she let there be nothing in her field, too, though it was hard to contain.

When Vakelin spoke again it was to thank her, to offer her a release from their journey together, and to caution her. Nkemi was somewhat impressed he had managed it all together. She glanced a few inches up at him, at all the sharp angles of his face and the tight pinch of his mouth, even with the cigarette.

“I hope we shall find that place together,” Nkemi said, politely, and turned her gaze back towards the streets.

There were many alleys between the one where Vakelin had caught her and wherever - Soliloquy? - he intended to end his search. Some had no names; all the rest had names which Nkemi could not begin to pronounce, although once or twice she made an effort.

“Ah-ye-luh-we-right” Nkemi pronounced, carefully, attempting the sound out each consonant in the Anaxi style. She peered in at the small narrow alley. The light was enough to see the contours of it, and the lines of ragged laundry overhead, where Nkemi doubted very much they had proper sun. They fluttered in the wood of the breeze. She glanced up at the sign again to check her pronunciation: Aylwright. It did not, Nkemi felt, have nearly enough vowels.

It was not one that Nkemi remembered from the map. They were not all named, and she was almost sure that there were some names which had not appeared in the careful chronicles of the Seventen. It went through to the other side, this one; Nkemi tried to guess which street it would link to, but it was rather hard.

She eased back, and turned her face back to Vakelin. “Is it the one?” Nkemi asked, as hopefully as she had at the last dozen where Vakelin had not given an immediate no; all the disappointments in the Dives did not seem to be able to shake her enthusiasm.

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

P
ositively flooding inscrutable, still. He thought there was something admirable about it. Threw him off his guard, leastways, but not unpleasantly, not like a corded forearm caught under his jaw. Together, he thought, looking up through the thick haze, where the dusty dark was beginning to lighten to a bleak grey.

To the yach of struggle and danger, he’d had nothing to say; it was strange, to hear it spilling out from the school-book perfect description. He’d expected the latter, in her soft, lilting accent, in her precise pronunciations. The former had caught him off his guard as much as any of her strange transparency; as much as the warmth he’d felt settling in him, reluctant and strange, since her giggle.

There was struggling, and there was danger, oes, and brigk enforced them, both of them. Most often without thinking too hard about what they were doing.

But he’d had a smile, crooked and genuine, for her scrunched-up nose. He thought he understood well enough what a lass from Thul Ka must’ve been feeling, cooped Uptown and paired with kov like Louis-Armand Truart.

He didn’t think Truart could’ve tailed him like that. He reckoned Nkemi could out-brigk Truart any day.

For what it was worth, he thought.

“No,” he murmured through a plume of smoke, peering down another laoso alleyway. “That one’s…”

This time, he stopped just briefly, ada’na beside him; he didn’t always – hadn’t, for the last two or three, even slowed his step – but this time he paused. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch. I’d know it if I saw it, he wanted to protest, feeling moony. Wouldn’t I?

He turned back to the prefect, then, and found himself looking down at her. “Too short,” he was already saying, as it dawned on him; he paused and raised an eyebrow, then cleared his throat and kicked himself into motion once again.

He’d flinched once or twice more. Glanced over his shoulder at this or that spot of movement, or stirring of breeze in his hair. Like water about to come to boil, the Soots were waking up; Tom caught more and more drawn, unshaven faces, ill-fitting uniforms, sharp glances from red-rimmed eyes.

Tom relaxed a little, after a while. It might’ve been the smoke had settled his nerves. It might’ve been the prefect at his elbow. She didn’t move like a brigk, he thought, all puffed-up, long military strides; there was a familiar quiet grace to her step, more like some of the men he’d known in the King’s qalqa. A purpose, a thrift, of motion.

It was easy to walk close beside her, to keep the pace in the chill morning despite the aching of his hip. And it was comfortable, despite his misgivings.

He did not think ada’na Nkemi was a liar. Whatever else she was, he did not think she was a liar.

She had told him that she wanted to help him – so, she wanted to help him. She had told him that she was here on her off day, and that the Seventen knew nothing; she was here, he didn’t doubt, on her off day, and she had no intentions of reporting back to the green.

So who was she working for? He didn’t know much about the prefects of Thul Ka, though he’d racked his brain on the long walk. They were pure Thul Ka, that much he knew, and not much like uncles; he’d known natt sellswords from Mugroba who’d worked for one company or another, who’d served in neighborhood watches and guarded merchants’ houses, and he knew prefects were something different.

What interest would a prefect have in him? To whom might he owe a favor, he thought, the back of his neck prickling, when all this was said and done?

Ayelawerite. The voice tore him from his thoughts. Tom blinked and glanced sharply over at Nkemi, coming to a stop as she did; she was peering into a narrow dark twist of a street, face as serious as ever. His brow furrowed.

He caught sight of the sign, then, with its worn brass letters, and raised his brows. “Aylwright,” he said softly, then wondered if he ought to’ve. He didn’t smile; he was worried what one of Anatole’s smiles might look like.

Like a wheelwright, but – ale? He stared at the letters and turned the prefect’s attempt at them over in his head. He supposed Mugrobi made more sense than Anaxi Estuan, though he still had to remember to spell ada’sa with an x.

He remembered, strangely enough, learning to read, Caina sitting him down with her books full of blurry, smeared ink, and how he had strained his eyes to make one letter at a time come into focus. Nkemi spoke again, and he shook away the memory.

He glanced up, to a string of bobbing laundrylines, where the wind tangled through a pair of wet hose like locks of a lady’s hair. Wordlessly, he took a few steps into the alley, his shoulders drawn up against the prickling at the back of his neck.

It wasn’t just gooseflesh; the skin was crawling. The soles of his shoes squelched in something wet, and he cursed under his breath. “I don’t think so, ada’na,” he said, “but it feels damned familiar.”

On the other side – a strip of narrow, grey street, much narrower than Briggs. Almost an alley in its own right. Between the two dark walls, he saw a slice of the building opposite. Grey concrete; a dark window, spilling out a mottled stain. A metal pipe, going up and up. Two worn steps and a narrow door without a knob.

He stepped to the edge of the alley. “Very close,” he said through the tightness in his throat. He didn’t look back at Nkemi; he was afraid of what his face might show. Around the corner, the narrow street ended in a dead end, three walls and a dumpster and some blackened scrap that might’ve been a fire.

It went on to curve around – to join some bigger street, like Briggs or Caldwell or Cuttle – but just past the building opposite was another small alleyway. Tom froze, staring at it; he couldn’t quite make himself move.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
Various Streets and Alleys, Soot District

The pronunciation that Vakelin had offered did not bear much resemblance to the sign. Nkemi was not surprised at the correction, nor offended. Even if she had not grown used to such things from her cousins and at Thul’Amat, the last nearly two months in Anaxas would have been enough to become accustomed.

“Ale’right,” Nkemi repeated, obediently, and did her best to fix this new strange pronunciation in mind. She did not understand where the y or the w had gone, or what the purpose was of the w if it was not even to be hushed, but swallowed entirely, but she did not doubt Vakelin’s pronunciation. Even if he had laughed, still she would have excepted the correction.

Nkemi had seen the tense set of Vakelin’s shoulders beneath his big, worn coat ease, slowly, as they walked, even though the streets had grown more crowded around them. They drew up now, suddenly; the ramrod posture that seemed natural to him hunched.

Nkemi’s eyes widened when Vakelin said it was familiar. She had not thought to find the place; she did not think it would be of use if they did. It was true that a hair could lead a skilled clairvoyant caster to the attacker, but Nkemi did not think it possible to find such a hair, and she knew better than to be sure of her own capabilities with such a thin thread.

Vakelin went forward as if something pulled him. Nkemi followed close behind, glancing at a small patch of slimy green-gray moss. The next street was dark and cramped and wreathed in fog; the light had not reached it yet, for all its waking strength. Vakelin was drawn across it too, to another narrow entrance, a long winding pipe with a small clay pot tucked close to the top of it, the fond hint of the edge of something colorful over the edge of it, where surely later in the day it would see some sun.

Very close, Vakelin said. His voice had lost some of the tension to it, but now that was back as well, choked and tight. Nkemi hewed close to him, following his line with small, precise steps, watching him, now, and not the scenery around him. At the other end of the alley he stopped abruptly, quivering. Nkemi had stopped as well, with time enough not to brush against him. All of him was pointed towards a narrow sliver of darkness across the way.

It is a thing which happened, Nkemi thought, understanding. It cannot be forgotten and it cannot be undone. You cannot separate that for which you were to blame for that for which you were not, you cannot take apart all the small reasons and attribute them here and there: this one to me, this one to another, this one to another still.

The mind remembers, Nkemi knew. It associates; it clings to the strong things which it feels. Places have scents and sounds and sights; these mingle which that which you felt. Many times, even to smell some same thing in another place can prompt this pain. To come back to the place -

Nkemi eased forward with small steps to stand beside him. They had been close together for the walk; there was an ease, now, in the light mingling of their fields. She reached deeper into his, delicately; it was nothing like an enveloping, but it was deeper than she had gone before. Calm washed out from her like a wave; she sent it to him, and beneath it a steady current of determination.

Nkemi’s small hand settled around Vakelin’s arm, just above his elbow, holding onto his coat and something of the arm beneath, as much as she could. She did not ask; there was no need.

What had Ruedka said? When it had only been the two of them in the quiet emptiness of the apartment? She had followed Nkemi back, and sat with her in the stillness a long time. Nkemi owed much to her mentor; she did not think Ruedka would mind the borrowing of yet a few more of her words.

“The past flows like a river,” Nkemi said, quiet and solemn. “Its currents link where we have been and where we must yet go.” Her hand squeezed Vakelin’s arm, briefly, and her grip loosened again, although she did not let go. “But standing in the waters of the now, we must take care not to let it sweep us away.”

There was a quiet pause then, and Nkemi continued. “These are my mentor’s words, and now mine. I hope they may offer you some peace, as they have me.”

[Tom Cooke]

Soot District • The Dives

Early Morning on the 29th of Vortas, 2719

A
ylwright.

He could hear it in his head, over and over again, the prefect’s soft, accented echo. It seemed to fill up everything. He stared into the empty, mildew-smelling dark, and all he could think…

It was so – different. He thought that there was something distinctive about her accent, but he had no frame of reference; he had only the islands and a handful of Thul’Amat Mugrobi, all different, in their way. He knew only that softening of consonants that made Mugrobi sound, to Anaxi, sometimes, like there were no consonants at all.

Tom thought he could’ve heard the swing from the A to the Y on his own tongue, ayyyyle, the curl of wright – cartwright, wheelwright – wright, wrought, wreak, wreck –

He wondered what monite might sound like on Nkemi’s tongue. His mind rambled on. He wondered if pronouncing a word differently changed its meaning, in some pina little way. Like a place glimpsed from a different angle. The same soul; a different body. A different soul?

He felt her field reach into his, and soothing as it should’ve been, it felt strangely like an invasion. All his muscles tensed. A soft hand rested on his arm, just above his elbow, through his baggy sleeve. He felt the cold air stinging his cheeks, and his heart hammering. He jumped; he hadn’t been ready to come back to his body yet. Not this one. Not here.

The words drifted into his mind like the calm of the clairvoyant and static mona. He couldn’t make sense of them, at first. He felt a spur of anger.

If you knew who I am, he thought, who I really am underneath this, if you saw me when you looked at me, if you saw me, you’d know I’m not this weak. His fist was still clenched tight in his pocket; his other, traitor, trembled, barely able to hold the cigarette.

He could almost picture it, the prefect thoughtful and solemn beside a great ragged scar of a man, her small, thin hand laid on his wide bicep, through his patchy old coat. No field to tangle with hers.

It was ridiculous. You wouldn’t waste your time placating that man, he wanted to say; you’d know I’m not the kind of man who needs those words – or wants them – or deserves them –

It was all knotted up in his head. He didn’t know why he was angry; he just knew he was, bitterly angry, in every tensed muscle along his thin frame. It was hard to hold onto slippery river-stones with numb toes.

“I don’t...” It twisted and came apart in his mouth, like so much smoke. The bitter chemical tang clung to his tongue; he thought his breath must’ve smelled like it. He thought, with the clarity of a dreamer, that that was what shame tasted like. Cheap, piss-poor cigarettes.

The kind you didn’t smoke unless you didn’t have anything better, or unless you wanted to feel like somebody who didn’t have anything better.

Something prickled in his eyes. The smog. He shut them tightly against the stinging air. “The river’s very fast,” he murmured, hoarse, “and very cold.”

His field was nearly sigiled. He didn’t realize what the strange thinness in the air was, until it eased. Like letting go the hilt of a knife, he loosened, and he let her caprise in. The mona in her field imposed nothing on the mona in his; there was nothing forceful about her will. He let the calm creep through it, and he tasted the color of the shift in the air, warm and sonorous.

He had been afraid that in letting go, he’d fall apart, but he felt the tide of tears wash back, too.

When he opened his eyes, ada’na Nkemi was there, calm and serious. “Your mentor is wise, and so are you,” he said softly. “I am honored by the truth of your words.”

It was the first time he had looked at her, and the first time he’d thought where those words might’ve come from. He thought he saw sympathy in her face. He thought he felt it, in the mona. Why? She looked so young, he thought, aching.

“It’s a seerstone,” he said. “The watch.” The sort of rare thing, he did not say, that might disappear into a desk or a green coat, that might become a bribe. “It was given to me not so long ago. After – a bend in the river, that took me where I was not prepared to go.”

He swallowed thickly and looked away, at what he knew was an empty alley. He dropped the cigarette, then; he ground it out carefully with the heel of his boot, then looked at the prefect and tried to smile.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Early Morning, 29 Vortas, 2719
Leeson Alley, Soot District

Nkemi felt Vakelin push back against her field with his own. It went tense and hot against hers; it was unexpected, in a man of his age, to show his anger so directly. At first she thought he was truly angry; she thought to back away, for she had not wished to offend him. But he was trembling a little, and Nkemi was not certain it was she he was angry with, not really. The look on his face was sour and twisted; Nkemi could not quite have said what she saw there.

He trembled; he shut his eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse, but he had accepted the metaphor. Nkemi nodded, faintly, although she knew he could not see it. She lowered her eyes. His field eased in the air around them, and Nkemi was grateful he had not pulled away. Her calm washed through his field, gentle and warm. She did not want to force it upon him; she did not think he should be calm, not quite. It was only that she wished to remind him that there was calmness present, around him, if he cared to feel it.

Her face was set and serious still when he opened his eyes. Nkemi dropped her gaze and the touch of her hand at his words; she bowed her head, solemn, and accepted the compliment, for all that she was not sure if she deserved it. She was glad, then, that she had told him they were Ruedka’s words; speaking them aloud made them hers, too, Nkemi knew, but they were Ruedka’s, first and foremost.

When Nkemi lifted her gaze again, Vakelin was looking at her, very seriously. Nkemi met his eyes; her own were a little wide, still, and they went wider still when he spoke. A seerstone. She thought, rapidly. He would not have taken it out, then, to check the time. Was it only a lucky thief? Or had someone known what the prize was, before they took it? A seerstone was worth much more than a watch. Nkemi understood, too, Vakelin’s silence. He had not lied, she thought, and she could not have said why the thought pleased her.

Vakelin swallowed and looked away, across the street to the alley.

Nkemi thought of the new chain, the small antler which had felt cool in the center of her palm, and Vakelin's longing look as she had held them. A bend in the river, she thought, that took me where I was not prepared to go. These words she felt aching in her chest. She swallowed hard through them, and shifted a little next to Vakelin, taking a deep quiet breath.

“Thank you for telling me,” Nkemi said, solemnly; she thought she understood the weight of the words. A seerstone; she frowned, faintly. A seerstone could be tracked, potentially, through another which had been used to communicate with it. She glanced at Vakelin. He must have known that, Nkemi thought. Perhaps then the giver was far away; perhaps, then, it was someone he did not wish to reveal. She did not think it worth mentioning, not yet, not at least, while he still believed there were other avenues to explore. Not when, of course, perhaps there yet were; Nkemi had objected to the calling of it impossible the night before, and she could do no less now.

But there was a little twitch to Vakelin’s lips as he if he meant to smile. Nkemi looked at them, and then she did smile, looking up at him. She turned herself to look at the empty dark alleyway across the street, full now only of memories and currents, then back up at Vakelin. She did not ask him to hurry; it had to be done in his own time.

It was not the apartment Nkemi thought of, then, but the rooftop over the river. She remembered it. She had gone back; she had sat on the edge, her legs dangling, and looked down at the water below through the pounding in her heart and the smeared wetness in her eyes. She had not gone quickly; when she thought back on it, it was not the lingering at the staircase beneath or the edge of the roof which she remembered, though, in both places, she had lingered. It was not the slow hesitant walk through the washing which had been laid out, nor the plants growing in the sun; it was not even the beginning of the approach to the edge. It was the ending of it, the final place where she had sat, and looked down, and wondered what was meant by acceptance.

Nkemi’s hand settled back on Vakelin’s arm once more, comfortably wrapped around the place above his elbow.