[Closed] Am I Down in the Riverbed

[Tom Cooke]

A Kofi House • Uptown

Morning on the 40th of Vortas, 2719

H
e did not think he’d ever seen Nkemi pezre Nkese in light so bright. The closest was that day in the study, after the ley channel had gone sideways and the mona had left them both with stinging reprimand. Her smile had been bright, then, above the folds of her thick brown scarf, if sleepy; he remembered her head nestled against the wing of his chair. He remembered the gentle, cloud-spun robin’s-egg blue of the sky out the great window, softening everything, even their quiet voices under the crackle of the hearth.

There was nothing soft about this light. It did not shaft; it illuminated. Nkemi was squinting a little as she turned her head to look out toward the street. It nestled in every fold and swath of her headcloth, brought out sparks of swirling light-purple and deep rich red, deeper than the carpet underneath them.

Everything glowed, for the first time in weeks. For the first time in months. Yaris did not glow; Yaris was merciless with its heat, maybe, but Yaris did not glow, not like the lush green spill of Roalis, the after-rain glow in Vyrdag season. Yaris was withered browns and yellows, soft hot haze.

This was the sort of lovely winter sun Tom remembered from the Harbor. It made smiling just a pina easier, and when Nkemi looked back at him, she grinned, too. The light caught her teeth white.

Little could be hidden in light like this. She looked much better than she had in Fly-Ash; her eyes weren’t so uncharacteristically hollow, and there was nothing pinched or sagging about her bright young face. But her caprise was as polite as his, and he thought something solemn haunted her expression, some echo of the prefect on duty.

At her thanks, he returned her smile with a warmth – if not brightness – of his own. “Thank you for joining me, Nkemi,” he said. “You’ve given me honor.”

Ada’na Ota came back, then, with a broad rattling tray full of small lacquer bowls and saucers. She set them down and inclined her head, still smiling, then left.

There were a few slices of some sweet, dense bread on one platter, each full of bits of something dark; a small bowl was full of puffed barley. Another nearby had some tangy, milky whip, dotted through with herbs, and circled with crisp-fried batter.

Tom glanced toward the window again, squinting himself against the aching brightness. Behind, he could hear the hiss-shuffle-pop, right alongside someone else grinding roasted beans somewhere in the back; he caught strong whiffs of kofi with every breeze that stirred the hangings. He nestled his chin deeper into his scarf, smiled.

The glass seemed to amplify the light. “The Mahogany Bay nearly froze over, once, I remember,” he said honestly. “Something like – twenty-seven… fifteen.” Was it a lie, if he couldn’t remember? In the corner of his eye, he saw Nkemi’s small face, her large dark eyes. The truth of the heart, he remembered, with her.

“The sun came out while the ice was still on the water.” He looked back at Nkemi and shook his head. “A day like today, and the whole bay was slick and still. A mirror caught on fire by the sun. You could’ve scried in it, if your eyes could bear to look.”

He could’ve said more, but ada’na Ota was back, then. With a friendly caprise to both of them, she set the tray with its kofi pot and two small cups and bowls of spices down. Quicker again, he thought wistfully, than kofi har’aq; they didn’t have so long before the blessing, not in a bustling place so near to the old gate.

But ada’na knew something of what they were here for, and she poured kofi into each cup slowly, first his and then Nkemi’s. That, at least, was not a lie – he thought, anyway. He was at least a little older than her. He watched as the steaming dark liquid trickled out of the spout.

The sunlight caught patterns on the bulb of the pot, traced over it almost like the lines of a plot. There were similar lines on each small cup, varnished as dark as the table was pale.

“Thank you, ada’na,” murmured Tom, inclining his head toward Ota. He took nothing in his own kofi, though it was offered. Then their host was gone in a swish of skirts.

Across the hall, a handful of voices rose in laughter. The smile on Tom’s face fell; he studied Nkemi’s face through the steam, cradling the warm cup in his cold hands.

“If you wish,” he said carefully, sitting straight on the pillow, “I’d like to share with you – something of what happened a day ago, in Fly-Ash. Of what it meant to me. I can only imagine how it must’ve looked.” He sucked at a tooth, then looked down into the cup. “You said you wanted to understand; I’ve owed you more than I’ve told you for some time now.

“But if I’m to help, I need to know what you already know of – my – condition. I can’t show you the landmarks if I don’t know the map.” A shadow of a smile.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 40 Vortas, 2719
Dzechy’úqi Kofi House, Uptown

Nkemi admired the food spread out before them, smiling and nodding back up at Ota, and looked hungrily down at it. She shifted, just a little. On prefect business, it was not done to eat. She thought wistfully of the pale green vraun that she had eaten only a week ago, and the gleaming brilliant red pepper, curved like a horn, stuffed with rice and overflowing with spices, and the warmth of the small strange space, the distant tek-filled chatter of the wicks and Anetol's slow and tentative smiles.

Nkemi’s eyes lowered back to the fritters, fried-gleaming, pale yellow corn and wheat mixed together and cooked to a puffed golden brown. She could see bits of dark mixed through them, spices and what might be bits of peppers, and the cool thick yogurt swirled inside. It smelled lovely, all of it, against the low rich backdrop of kofi in all it steps.

Nkemi’s hands stayed nestled in her lap; she lifted one and took a small sip of water, and looked at Anetol instead. They went a little wide at his story; she knew the maps of Anaxas, the way the Arova rode wild through the flatlands and sloped down to the Tincta Basta and greeted it the broad wide mouth of the Mahogany. She had not yet seen it, but she knew the size from the maps.

Nkemi tried to imagine ice spilling over all of it, so much water gone slick and white, and the sun gleaming brilliant against it. She could not, really, picture it, but she tried to let Anetol’s words be her guide, and to picture a large brilliant mirror, sprawling out from the edge of the town, edges crackling and shattering where the water met it, slowly.

“Domea domea,” Nkemi said, smiling, as Ota brought the kofi. The smell of it wafted up towards her, rich and strong. Ota’s tray had peppercorns and cardamom and nutmeg strewn across it, to tell her what was in the grind; Nkemi took a small spoonful of the menda and stirred it into her coffee with slow, even strokes, setting the small spoon down on its tray.

Nkemi picked up the cup of kofi, and looked at Anetol evenly across the table. I can only imagine how it must have looked, Anetol said, frowning; his mouth twisted, and he looked down at the smooth dark surface of his kofi. Nkemi was silent, watching him; her brows lifted, slowly.

What you already know, he said.

Nkemi shifted on her cushion, looking at him, frowning faintly. She had not tried the kofi yet; her hands were both wrapped around the small, delicately carved cup. “No,” the prefect said, very softly. She set the cup down, carefully; she nestled her hands together back in her lap and looked at Anetol, sitting straight-backed.

Nkemi knew something of questions disguised as answers. She had known the straightforward way of asking as a girl, and had learned how to temper it, carefully, with patience and care. The angled ways, the twisted, tilted, backward ways, she had come to know as a prefect; asking without asking, asking wrapped around in itself to look like something very different indeed.

“I am very glad you have your watch,” Nkemi said. She looked down again; not very far away, a couple was getting up from their table, and their steps on the ground sent little ripples through the dark liquid. She could have answered the question; she could have told him what she had learned in the quiet briefing given her and Truart before her first visit to the Vakelin house, and the rest of what she had gleaned, carefully, from the spaces between Truart’s words.

“I do not think…” Nkemi frowned, faintly, a little more. Her jaw tightened, and then relaxed, and she lifted her gaze and her shoulders, and looked squarely at Anetol once more. “I do not think it falls upon me to begin.” Nkemi said, simply. “More than that, I... do not wish it to."

[Tom Cooke]

A Kofi House • Uptown

Morning on the 40th of Vortas, 2719

T
he prefect’s jaw was set. No, she said. She sat with her hands cupping the kofi, steam whirling between them.

Tom had pledged his honor to Hulali. Your watch, she said, and a little wince flickered across his face. I am glad, too, he thought to say, and couldn’t. Not honestly. But she spoke again, and looked him in the eye again. She had pledged her honor to Hulali, too.

His own jaw tightened, but he couldn’t disagree with her, not and be honest. It was him who had offered this. She had not had to agree. He was still not sure she should have.

She hadn’t touched the food, but she had taken a spoon of menda and stirred into her kofi.

The truth, then.

He thought he could manage it, looking across and meeting Nkemi’s dark eyes. To yield now would’ve put a bitter taste in his mouth. It was true he’d pledged his honor to Hulali, not his life; and it wouldn’t violate that pledge in the least, he thought, to refuse her now, to get up and leave. He liked Nkemi, and she had called him friend, once. He knew she hadn’t lied; he would be very sorry to lose this, whatever it was.

But Greta Marks had called him something else, and she hadn’t lied, either.

A flurry of skirts, spittle and tangled black hair, pale terrified face. Shaking hands ushering the boch toward the stair. He tried to imagine it from a different angle. He tried to place himself in the image. The incumbent standing on the rooftop. The human woman, fear and hatred; the son, fear and confusion, and Mister Thomas.

He wondered if Nkemi could leave it. He thought of justice on her tongue. He kept looking in her eyes; he didn’t break. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Did he deserve for her to leave it?

Did she deserve to chase the tail of that sordid case? When she started looking in Anatole Vauquelin’s closets, what skeletons might she find?

He frowned, glancing down at his kofi finally.

The truth. No excuses, no bending; just the truth. “The woman on the rooftop was Greta Marks,” he said, lowering his voice. “She and her son live on the fifth floor of that tenement; they both worked at Norwood Mill, when the place was still open. I don’t know where they work, now. Probably at one of the other mills.

“She is not a liar,” he went on with a brittle smile, looking up. “She and her son are good people. I don’t tell you any of this to undermine – I will not call her a liar.”

A few skirts brushed by their table; ripples shivered through the kofi. He paused until he could no longer taste the light gold shift of their fields.

“A year ago, I woke up,” he said carefully, not breaking eye-contact, “in an unfamiliar house. A servant came in and called me sir, and when I asked who I was, I was told that I was an incumbent. Not what I was expecting to hear. And I was not prepared for what I would see when I looked in the mirror.” One eyebrow quirked up.

The smile twitched; it was no less brittle, but there was wry humor in it. He took a deep breath of the steam, of the scent of kofi. Funny, how back then, his field was nothing but static. Funny how now he struggled to keep it even. He had to; no shifts, he promised himself. Just the spoken truth, with no spin. It was taut from the effort; it had to draw itself in.

“I ran away,” he said, suspecting she might already know. “I went to the Dives, and I found work at Norwood. Rented a flat on the fifth floor of that building. Mrs. Marks and her son were kind to me. Too kind,” he added. “I was the only – arcane – nobody trusted me, but when his hand got caught, he came to me, because he thought I could –”

No spin; no emotions. The words stuck in his throat. Now let ev’ry man drink off ’is full bumper, an’ let ev’ry man drink off ’is full glass; we’ll drink an’ be jolly, an’ drown melancholy…

His hand was shaking; he jerked it back from the cup, pressed both together white-knuckled in his lap, out of sight. “They were kind to me,” he said evenly, looking up, “and the last they saw of me was Mister Thomas down the hall, until he disappeared. Not until I risked Greta’s life over a trinket, and they saw me as I truly am.”

His eyes skittered away, down to the platters and bowls, the steaming cups of kofi. They skittered to the window.

“The watch was not worth what she paid,” he said, “but the past is a river.” His jaw set. “Ep’ama. Your care saved her life.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 40 Vortas, 2719
Dzechy’úqi Kofi House, Uptown

Nkemi looked across the table at Anetol, through the silence, and she said nothing else. She had made her offer, such as it was; she understood that he would take it or else he would leave.

The pale winter light slanted through the window, and caught him all through. It limned the pale red hairs on the back of his hands, and made dark the freckles; it traced the worried lines that pinched his face, old familiar frowns that seemed to settle on him more easily than the smiles she had so painstakingly coaxed out. It caught his hair, too, the licks of gray at the temples and the brilliant red of the messy curls, as if he had run his fingers through it more than once.

Anetol had not touched his kofi either, Nkemi noticed.

Mister Tomas, Rej had called him, wide-eyed and confused. He had flinched away when he drew too close. Monster, the woman had called him, and she had flinched away too, when she said it, as if she had not meant to say it aloud, and the tear tracks on her cheeks had glittered in the dawn light.

Anetol’s face pulled down in a deeper frown, solemn. Nkemi had not had the time to study him, the day before; she had given everything she had to Mr. Burok, because she had understood the cost of failure. She could not say what she remembered; he had shaken his head, more than once. He had been, she thought, unable to keep silent, to let her – he had been afraid. Afraid of what?

Gareta Marex, Anetol named her. Nkemi listened, solemn, and studied his face. Not a liar, he said, with a smile that did not reach his eyes, a sad, tight smile. He did not look away from her, and Nkemi did not look away either, watching the play of light over his sad gray eyes.

With this, she remembered, as a pale red eyebrow quirked up. Her brow knotted in the tiniest of frowns, and eased back out. She did not ask. His field pulled back from hers, slowly; it retreated away.

What do you know of Incumbent Vakelin, Nkemi remembered, Inspector Simonu had asked True’art. Collapsed outside the Opera House last summer; unconscious for some weeks, some sort of a stroke, reportedly. Disappeared shortly after his recovery; wife feared him dead. Turned back up and went back to work, but by all accounts he’s been a bit odd ever since.

They saw me as I truly am, Anetol said. Nkemi’s lips pressed together, taut, and she looked down; she could not hold his gaze. The truth of her heart, she thought, taking a deep breath, and – of his? Gareta Marex is not a liar, Anetol had said, sharply.

“I am sorry too,” Nkemi said, very quietly. She had been angry with him, when some of the numbness had worn off and she had been able to feel anything; it had come over her some time after the boat ride, after the walk up the long damp steps and the quiet parting, some time during the long walk Nkemi had took back to the station. She had been angry that he had kept her in ignorance; she had been angry that he had brought her there for a watch – a watch! however expensive the seerstone inside – and because of it a woman had almost died. She had been angry with him until she had understood that he was not to blame for her mistakes.

Nkemi’s lips twitched; they pressed together, sharply. She took a deep breath; she closed her eyes, and exhaled out the rising feeling of tears. They glinted in her eyes all the same, in the pale sunlight; she looked away out at the window, and carefully wiped clean the one which spilled down her cheek.

“You offered me your trust,” Nkemi said, quietly, looking back up at Anetol, if he would meet her eyes, “and because of my carelessness, Ms. Marex nearly,” Nkemi’s eyes fluttered shut. She had not thought she would offer him an apology; she had not understood, until now, how much he had cared. She took another deep breath, smooth and even; she let it out, slowly. “The past is a river,” Nkemi agreed, quietly. She sniffled a little; she patted her eyes dry once more on the sleeve of her sweater.

“You are well, now?” Nkemi asked, very softly. She looked across the table at Anetol, and asked the question which she had wondered from the beginning. She had probed; she had asked, and nudged, and prodded. If he was in the grip of a delusion now, she did not see it. Such things could come and go; the mind had tricks that the body could not fight. There was nothing to be done in some cases, but to yield, and no man in the grip of such a moment could see himself thus. Nkemi did not expect miracles from Anetol, but she wanted to know, all the same, what he would say to such a question.

Carefully, Nkemi’s hands curled around the cup of kofi once more. It was still warm, although not as hot as it had been; a little steam curled and drifted from the dark rich brown.

[Tom Cooke]

A Kofi House • Uptown

Morning on the 40th of Vortas, 2719

N
o, he wanted to say, right away. He shifted, and one hand came up to rest on the table. Don’t apologize, he wanted to say. The familiarity of the words gave him pause; it was like the jerk of a muscle. It wasn’t, he thought, true. It wasn’t something that a man who had sworn himself to Hulali might say.

He hadn’t expected it – or wanted it, maybe. This softening, the way the sharp morning light caught on the glittering dewdrops of tears.

But they had both pledged their honor to Hulali, and she spoke the truth of her heart as much as he’d spoken the truth of his. It was a bitter brew to swallow; he swallowed it, anyway. He settled back, and he looked her in the eye, after she’d wiped away the tears.

He wanted to say something; he thought what he might say instead. He thought what a man who was looking for the truth, just the same as she was, might say. Both of us have a qalqa.

“I offered you my trust, but not enough,” he said. I should’ve told you what I knew, he could’ve said, anything that could’ve been of aid – the past is a river, he thought, and left it to rest.

His smile flickered at the question.

For a few seconds, he wasn’t sure what to say. His brow furrowed; he frowned deeply.

Well. What in the hells did that mean? Well was a word for sniffles or consumption, not the way a man behaved.

Not unless he was moony. It’s not wellness, Nkemi, he wanted to protest; don’t treat me like I’m a well-meaning moony. It’s what I am, not my mind; I told you Greta wasn’t –

What’s it to you? He thought suddenly. The furrow of his brow eased. He studied her. There was a redness at the edges of her eyes, still. She looked very earnest.

Tom shut his eyes, steadied himself on a deep breath of kofi smells. Even behind his eyelids, it was bright.

The brightness flickered, and a bell jingled. “Sana’hulali,” he heard Ota’s voice say, hushed and warm with a smile. Another soft voice replied in lilting Mugrobi.

When Tom opened his eyes, Nkemi was still watching him. Her small hands were curled round the kofi cup, still steaming. He found a smile somewhere inside him, and because his own hands were tingling, joints aching from the cold, he cupped his own kofi. He breathed in the scent of menda and popped barley.

Friend, Nkemi had called him.

She’d left him a wide-open door, he thought, finally. It was an easy question to dismiss and still tell the truth. He thought of the earnest look in her eyes, of her I want to understand in his study. He thought what questions nestled into that question.

It was not easy. He took a deep breath. “Yes and no.” His smile went a little crooked.

This was part of the explanation he owed her, he reckoned.

“I told you I felt my name wasn’t mine. That goes for everything else, too,” he said. “The incumbent of a year ago is not me.” Steam drifted between them.

He was a fool for how his heart felt lighter; he was a fool to think this was anything like the truth. But it was easier, now, to look into the prefect’s dark eyes.

“I’m still – adjusting – to what I am now. To what people call me, what people see when they look at me. I’ve more bad habits than the average man, and you know already I’m not the wisest. Nkemi, I’m not an easy man to know,” he offered, feeling a warm prickle at the edges of his own eyes.

He swallowed thickly, glancing down. It was bright, cold-bright, and he could see every sharp angle of the face in the kofi. He ran his thumb around the rim, and then looked back up.

“But my mind is clear,” he said, “and the ground – the ground’s even. The ice won’t crack.” His smile went crooked, welling up a few more tears. “You’ve offered me your friendship; I just want you to know what comes with mine.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Morning, 40 Vortas, 2719
Dzechy’úqi Kofi House, Uptown

Nkemi felt Anetol jerk when she offered her apology; it was mostly the sudden, sharp motion of him, across the table, but there was a tiny ripple through the wood as well, when he set his hand on it. He had leaned forward, just a little, too, and Nkemi had seen movement in his jaw, behind closed lips, as if he meant to speak.

He had not spoken, in the end; faint tendrils of kofi steam drifted up, wavering along the edges of his face, and he sat back. He offered up his own responsibility; Nkemi said nothing. She did not wish to parcel out blame; she did not believe it could be done. She understood, now, as she had not before, that they both felt the rushing deep currents, cold and aching, tugging – she thought it was, perhaps, selfish, but she did not feel quite as alone as she had before.

Anetol’s answer to her question was silence, first, and a deep frown which pulled together all the lines of his solemn face. Nkemi watched him through it; it eased, abruptly, unexpectedly, and his eyes closed. He breathed deep.

“Welcome,” Ota said, soft, in Mugrobi.

“The smell drifts me home,” Said a soft voice.

Nkemi’s eyes prickled against with tears; she did not turn to look. Her gaze was on Anetol still, and her hands wrapped around the warmth of the kofi. He took his cup too, slowly, as his eyes opened again. He was watching her across the table, as much as she was him; Nkemi did not know what he saw, nor what considerations he was weighing. She only waited, and wondered.


Nkemi listened, quiet and attentive, her gaze fixed solidly on Anetol. She lifted her cup as he spoke, and took a tiny little sip of kofi, tasting it bitter and warm. There was a prickle of tears at the edge of his eyes; the light glinted off them. He looked down, and then back up, slowly; he was still smiling, but there was an ache in it, in the way it went lopsided and strange, and threatened to spill tears down his cheeks.

Nkemi’s breath caught in her throat, and she knew there were tears in her eyes as well; she blinked them away, and looked to the side. The taste of kofi lingered on her tongue.

“My father,” Nkemi said, very softly. She paused; she swallowed, hard, and took a deep, even breath. Her hands were wrapped around the small cup, still. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she breathed deep once more, easing away the tears, because she did not wish for Anetol to think Ifran the reason she cried. She breathed in and out until she was settled; she took another sip of the kofi, slowly, tasting the menda mixed in with the fragrant richness, the pop of the pepper, the citrusy-sweetness of the cardamom, and the deeper sweet-nuttiness of the nutmeg.

Nkemi set the cup back down, her hands still curled around it. She was quiet; she glanced up at Anetol, and then down once more, her small face set in a little frown. “I am not ashamed of him,” Nkemi said, quiet and frank. She looked squarely at Anetol across the small table. “If I am hesitant to speak, it is because there is much misunderstanding in Mugroba, and I am – I am learning that such prejudices exist here, too, in Anaxas, and perhaps even worse. I… wish to offer this to you because…” a tiny frown wrinkled her forehead; Nkemi wrestled with her words, carefully, and met Anetol’s gray eyes once more, unsure what she saw in them beyond the wrinkle of a frown in his forehead: careful listening or concern, she could not be sure. “because it is a part of me, too,” Nkemi said, carefully, “a current which shapes me, and I do not wish to escape it.”

Nkemi was quiet, tracing her thumb over the pattern etched into the side of the small dark cup, following the lines one by one with the tip of her finger. “My father has not taken kofi har’aq in more than thirty years,” Nkemi said. “He will not; he does not trust himself to speak truth. Sometimes he can see clearly; often he cannot. He knows he cannot tell, and so he would rather abstain than to be made a liar.”

Carefully, Nkemi uncurled one hand from her cup; she set it, palm up, on the table between them, like the hand Anetol had offered her before they had begun to cast. “The word I used to describe you has not changed,” Nkemi offered, carefully, looking at Anetol across the table. “I would like to be your friend, Anetol.”

[Tom Cooke]

A Kofi House • Uptown

Morning on the 40th of Vortas, 2719

M
y father, Nkemi said.

Tom’s expression flickered; his eyes widened a hair’s breadth before he could stop himself. In it he heard the echo of another voice. You are one of them. As is my mother. We call your kind raen. He hung still, quiet as a temple-mouse on silk. A dewdrop glittered in Nkemi’s eye; as he watched, she blinked it away and shut her eyes, and there were no more.

She knew more of Serkaih, he remembered, than ib’vuqem. In Mugroba, they have priests devoted to keeping candles lit in the desert near Serkaih, in order to make sure the departed don't get lost in the colorful sands. A gathering place over the centuries for those who exist in between.

A house might’ve passed in her pause. He forced himself patient. He studied her face with a brow faintly furrowed, with a thoughtful frown on his face. You could never call Tom Cooke’s field indectal, and he didn’t think you’d ever be able to; but where it brushed the edges of hers, still polite-distant, there was no shift.

Nothing but uncertainty.

The prefect looked at him again, then, square in the face. He didn’t look away. Strange to be so close to ghosts and lanterns in this place, flooded with light, surrounded by the smells of kofi and more spices than he could name.

Strange, until her words wound back around to kofi har’aq. My father, she said again, and the river bent. An ache swelled up in his chest; he listened, still.

No, no, he wanted to say, no, Nkemi. He had seen her take a small sip of her kofi, but he still felt frozen, unable to take his. He felt like a ghost. He felt like a pale shadow, and he didn’t know such a thing could eat or drink. Maybe that was why you had to pledge your honor to Hulali, before taking kofi har’aq. Maybe such things as him couldn’t.

Prejudices, she said. He knew, at the center of his heart, he didn’t deserve what she was giving him. Even so, he struggled to sew together the pieces.

How many times had he called himself a moony old man? It jolted through him like the backlash after a dozen careless casts. His mind was stuck on that word – moony.

He didn’t know how to feel.

He needed something to steady himself. He took a sip of kofi himself, then. He had half expected it to burn him; some superstitious part of him had expected Hulali to drown him in it. It was warm, still pleasantly hot, dark and thick and bitter.

Some of the ache had receded, when he set the small cup back down on the table. He opened his eyes and found Nkemi looking at him again. His eyes moved down, to where the prefect’s hand lay on the table between the two cups, among the pastries and the small bowls.

Her palm was paler than the back of her hand; in the light, the lines that traced it were very bold. Hama had been able to read the lines on a man’s palm, he remembered.

Like a small map, carefully-offered.

But Tom didn’t know what to make of them; he wasn’t even sure he was reading it right side up. And when he laid his hand atop hers – and he did, slowly, as carefully as she had offered it – there was another map hiding it, pale, traced and dotted in blue and red. Only slightly larger; it was strange to think that once, his hand would have dwarfed hers. Like it had –

His caprise was warm, now, warm as it’d been the other day, if more tentative.

More honest. She had given him something that meant something to him, even though he couldn’t say what; she had seen something of him, and he didn’t know if he could say whether what she saw was false. Could any man?

If this kofi har’aq could be a little sliver of truth in a city of lies – among kofi smells, soft lilting Mugrobi voices – this was what he had wanted to offer Nkemi, and he had not lied, not really.

He had nothing to say to Nkemi’s father’s truth; he still wasn’t entirely sure he understood, and he didn’t know what he could ask. But he squeezed Nkemi’s hand gently, shutting his eyes against her expectant gaze, and he finally knew what to name the ache in his chest.

“My daughter…” He paused, looking down at the reflection in the kofi, sucking at a tooth. “I’ve changed – more than a little – in the last year,” he said, looking back up, “and I think it must be hard for her to know it’s still me, in here. I see clear enough, but – every day’s fresh and new, like the world from a different angle. There’s much I don’t know.”

When he opened his eyes, he was smiling. It was a soft smile, for all it was edged with embarrassment. The bell jingled again, and Ada’na Ota passed their table without a glance; still, he felt the brush of her field, and he was conscious of the rawness in his eyes.

“I’ve never been here before, madam,” a man’s voice was saying in an Uptown drawl. “I’m not sure I…”

His smile widened; it crinkled around his eyes. “I don’t want to turn away from these currents, either. Thank you for the truth you’ve shared with me,” he said. “I’d be honored to call you a friend, Nkemi.”

Outside, it was getting brighter; the great windows threw even more light over the quiet kofi har'aq. Nkemi's smile was a smaller brightness than the winter sun, but he felt it warm him through.