kemi was tucking in with an enthusiasm like Tom hadn’t seen in a while. She’d looked at the tray Detta had set down on the table like it was treasure, like the curving red peppers were stuffed with priceless jewels. Thank you, ma’am, she’d said. It had lit her whole face as he had poured the tea, and he had watched her take a small, satisfied sip before squeezing in the lemon and adding a little sugar.
It felt like somebody had lit a few more candles at the table; it felt a pina manna easier to see what was in front of him. He had never had lemon in his tea, he realized. With a thoughtful frown, setting down his spoon, he squeezed a wedge into his own cup.
This vraun was sweet and tangy, just spicy enough to burn, but not enough to make his eyes water. Across the table, ada’na’s brigk’s posture had loosened, and she was bent over her bowl diligently, with a good four generous spoonfuls to his tired two.
He’d eaten like that, once – before. When was the last time? What had he eaten yesterday? It was a muddled, hazy walk from drink to drink. The clinging aftertaste of the Gioran whisky was the thump of his headache, and he realized that his hands were not just shaking because they weren’t his.
Tom had paused to watch her, and had felt himself softening, despite everything. Like letting go of a knife’s handle. His collar scratched against his bruises; the scuff at his cheekbone ached. His hands must’ve been numb when he’d come in, because the life was tingling back into them, warm and stinging.
His stomach was growling and twisting like a chrove, so he set himself wordlessly about his own vraun, and let himself feel his tiredness and his pains. And he listened.
And he looked up sharply, once, before he could stop himself. He blinked; he did well to keep his face carefully contemplative.
The town which is called Plugit! The memory was vivid, slushing through the muck. The kov’d been hiding out in a tiny shack among the reeds. Couldn’t’ve scrubbed those noises he made –
Dze. Tom pulled his head back to the bright, curious face in front of him, across the steaming pile of frybread.
Oes, he knew what it was, the gaggle of gollies that settled over that mucky backwater like a band of chipper sparrows settling on a streetlamp. Every, what was it? He wouldn’t’ve thought they convened in Thul Ka, but there were stranger things on Vita, he knew by now.
Her voice was radiant with it: wonderful to see the way a place fits together. That, he thought he might understand. It brought his eyes up again, and her smile was infectious. He could picture her, somehow, attending mapmakers’ meetings in Thul Ka.
He thought about her question for a long moment, pausing to stare down at his vraun, sucking at a tooth.
“It – fits together differently, ada’na,” he started tentatively, with a wry smile. “Old Rose is a city of humans and wicks, mostly. There are pockets of galdori, but they mingle by necessity. If you look at a map, it’s not – everything spilling out from some heart, like Uptown. It’s laid out on different lines.”
He sopped up a little of the curry round the edges of his bowl with the manriklo, thinking as he took a bite how benny the rosemary and dill mingled with all the sweet-spicy of the vraun.
He thought he caught a hint of something else, too, something sharp and tangy; he couldn’t’ve told you what it was, but it was more than just whatever blend of coarse flour and cornmeal the neighborhood kint had that week. Some kind of cheese, maybe. Whatever it was, it was delicious, and much better – richer, leastways – than what he remembered from last winter, when he’d tottered back down from Uptown for the first time, missing his old haunt.
It made him think of the uhachyeh hama’d made, maize porridge so thick you could slice it, cooked with curdled cheese and whatever herbs the season’d coaxed out of the garden.
He swallowed another bite of vraun, warmed by the spices. “If you can believe it, it’s a little more like Thul Ka than Vienda, but for different reasons. It has its own law, I suppose.”
You don’t see riots in the streets, anyway; not with my Brothers walking them, he thought with a strength and wistfulness that surprised him. He wasn’t sure what to do with it; he tried to put it away, but it wouldn’t quite go.
“The factories are on the outskirts, and not many, so you get – the wide blue Tincta Basta, and clear skies, and warm breezes off the bay. Or storms, if the season is right; you can sit on the docks and watch the lightning over the water.” His voice picked up; his own composure had been lost, now, and he’d leaned forward over his vraun, something conspiratorial and almost reverent in his smile.
“The marketplaces are always busy, and you can get just about anything imported from Mugroba and Hox and Hesse, depending on the season. Quarter Fords is the Mugrobi quarter, and in the morning, the smells of baking bread and kofi –”
A faint tingle of blue shift whispered through the clairvoyant mona, there and then gone. There was a troubled furrow to his brow, but then it relaxed, and he smiled again.
“It’s worth visiting, ada’na, if you’re in Plugit anyway,” he said, “and if you’re looking at the way it fits together… it’s fascinating.”
He paused, watching her.
“What is it about maps? What do you – get from them, ada’na?” he asked. “Maybe prefects are different, but I don’t know many Seventen who think about them more than it takes to get from one street to another. I can barely use one to do that.” He grinned.