[Closed] Am I Down in the Riverbed

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

N
kemi’s baton was out before Tom half knew what she was doing. The door thunked on it and then wrenched open again, because the scrap was moving too fast to care. The deadbolt chain strained taut, rattling.

The air went light and wild, warming as it thinned. Etheric. The first verses of poetry dropped from the prefect’s lips. He glanced at her sharply; he could parse the prepositions, some of the noun endings – the vocative callings-on strung through every spell, calm and respectful, repetitive – everything that tied-together, everything in-between anything of substance. He recognized no clairvoyant invocation.

It was static mona stirring round them; unlike, rather than belike. Feeling tingled back into his cheeks, and he realized he was sweating under his coat. The air was warmer than you’d expect, even sigiled.

Frost glittered on the chain. He saw got a glimpse of it in the chill morning light before the thing shattered.

He was wide-eyed, something like a smile on his lips, when she turned to him solemn and brusque. Raising a red eyebrow, he nodded once – sharply – and stood only a moment as Nkemi shouldered through, cat-quiet grace transformed; there was a sour taste in his mouth as he took it in, thud thud thud. The baton gripped in her small hand, her field warm and organized around her, steel-toed spinewolf brigk.

There wasn’t time. He shook it away, half-turning. He caught a glimpse over his shoulder of the recluse’s room, of piles on piles of books. Of a cot with dirty sheets neatly tucked in, like a crimp might do.

Tom pushed it for all it was worth, which wasn’t much. He didn’t worry about sound; there was no worrying. Halfway up the sixth flight, he cursed vividly through clenched teeth and spittle, stopping with one hand braced against the wall. He made a fist of it and slammed it against the wood, biting back angry tears.

He was panting and blowing, and had stumbled twice, when he finally got to the top. His shin still stung where he’d tripped and banged it on the jutting edge of a stair. The tenements were poorly-heated, but the chill outside still hit him in a blast, the wind prickling at his eyes and ruffling his hair, tugging at the hem of his coat.

Sickly-sweet Morley-Ogden again. He breathed it in deep, steadied himself. The rendering house ahead, a bulky shape with stacks – not so impossibly high, anymore – spilling darkening smoke.

The morning drew on; you could hear calls, now, from the river. Shapes of cranes, great bent spider-legs; other, more distant buildings, jutting up smokestacks against the lightening sky. You could see the sun up here – pale, watery – banishing the smog like the river banished wastewater. Close enough to the edge, Tom could see her, stretching out and carving a grey path through the grey city. It shimmered silvery like a ribbon.

He’d never been up to the roof. He didn’t have much of a chance to look at the flat grey expanse of it, broken up with bulky crumbling chimneys, racks where natt still hung drying sheets, clinging to the last of the warmth before Achtus and Ophus would freeze them solid. They billowed and snapped in the breeze.

Light sparked off a head of tangled red hair, a small heavyset man with his arms full. The tatty dark shawl draped round his shoulders fluttered as he stumbled over the rooftop.

Another shape, darker, bulkier with a coat on, darted after him.

Tom filled his lungs with the cutting-cold air, coughed. Gritting his teeth, he threw himself into motion again, staggering after the prefect. He could not catch up; there was no point trying, but he tried anyway. A tingling dark pressed at his vision. The world was a blur, and all he could hear was the huff of his breath.

“I don’t want any trouble, brigk!” He heard a thin voice call, half-swallowed by wheezing and the wind.

A woman’s shriek, cut off abruptly.

It wasn’t Nkemi’s, but it was strangely familiar. Tom’s eyes snapped wide; he was slumped sideways against a crumbled chimney, catching his breath. Swallowing dryly, he forced his eyes to focus against the sharp light.

It was the bookseller. Vellum, they called him, he remembered.

Tom couldn’t know what he was looking at, at first. Nkemi was nearby, still – the scrap was near the gap between one building and the next – there was movement, and he thought there was something tangled in the scrap’s arms, held down with surprising strength.

He saw a flash of wide dark eyes, a pale face. The wind rippled through mottled skirts, tangled loose a few strands of curly dark hair. A clay pot lay on its side nearby, spilling out dark water. The scrap’s hand was clamped over her mouth.

“Mum!” Came a small voice from behind. Then: “Mister Brooke?”

Tom threw a wide-eyed look over his shoulder, the breath still in his lungs. Reggie Marks, he remembered. Greta Marks’ son. The lad stood at the entrance to the stairwell, frozen in place. A year older, Tom thought, oddly disconnected. A little taller. Was he ten by now?

The lad was staring at his mum and Vellum. When he finally tore his eyes away, it was to look at Nkemi, ashen-pale and terrified; then he locked eyes with Tom. “Mister Thomas?”

He took a step out. No, Tom wanted to say, shit, no – he held out a leather-gloved hand – the lad came close enough to feel the brush of his field and froze, all the blood draining from his face.

Tom’s lips moved, but nothing came out.

“I don’t know who you are, madam brigk,” pronounced the scrap, “but another step and we’re both going off.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Just Barely Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
A Nameless Tenement, Fly-Ash, The Dives

The wind cut a chill line through the morning air. It was cold; it was bitter cold, sharp and snapping. There was no sun, or little enough; it was only the first beginnings of sun, now, creeping up over the gray buildings which filled the horizon. The winding river below was gray and narrow, tucked into its canals; the sheets were snapped in the breeze were dingy gray, and it all smelled sickly-sweet, like blood.

It was not a hot, sunny day; the sun did not beat down on cool red clay tiles. There was no winding rush of the Turga below, wide and brilliant blue; there was no smell of drifting curry on the air, no distant rush of the Pipeworks. Nkemi ducked past chimneys and strange sad plants, not flat covered water bowls and sheets of drying lentils.

Nkemi tangled to a stop, clattering half into one of the chimneys; her shin barked against it, and her shoulder too, but she stopped, breathing a little hard. The baton tumbled from her hand; the strap caught on her wrist, and the heavy wood smacked down against her elbow.

The passive was a heavy dark shape, bulkier than she had expected; a shawl wrapped over his shoulders shuddered in the breeze. Nkemi’s eyes searched his watery blue ones, and dropped to the tangle of dark hair beneath his arm. He was pressed back, almost at the edge of the roof; a cold blue hand covered the woman’s mouth, but it did not hide the panic in her wide, fear-stricken eyes, the faint tears that pricked in the corners of them and caught the light.

Nkemi’s head snapped to the side; there was a little boy standing just at the edge of the staircase, watching. Mister Thomas, he called Anetol; Nkemi glanced at the incumbent’s red, panting face and then back at the passive. She didn’t know what was in his face; she couldn’t read it. Her breath was coming unevenly too, sharp in her chest; the bitter cold stung at her throat through the scarf, breathed in deep on the run. The smoke and the smell seemed to scrape at her lungs, and she knew she had swallowed it down, all of it, that it tangled all together in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m not coming closer,” Nkemi said, calm and even. Whatever she felt, her voice did not flutter; there was no color in the even spread of her field around her. She drew herself up; she took a deep breath, in, slow and even, and out. Her hands lifted, flat and steady, fingers spread wide, the baton dangling down her arm. She held against the chimney, looking steadily at the passive.

“Mum!” The boy was staring, horrified, wide-eyed at Anetol; he jerked away, and came closer, just a few steps behind Nkemi now.

“Stay there, please,” Nkemi said, gently, turning to the little boy; her voice was soft, but firm through the politeness. “Stay there. The best thing you can do is to stay there,” she promised.

She could see the winding gray ribbon behind and beneath them. A long way down, Nkemi knew; a long, long way. The water would be no kinder than the stone, at such a height; the - her stomach churned, and she put these thoughts aside, because to do otherwise would be to drown.

“I’m not a Seventen,” Nkemi continued, carefully, looking at the passive on the rooftop, at the back and forth darting of his wild blue eyes. “I do not mean you any harm.” She met his gaze, as best as she could; the thin strands of light were brushing over the red of his hair, catching the tangled, sweat-dampened strands of curls.

“I’m here on behalf of a friend,” Nkemi said, gently, “nothing more. I’m looking for a pocketwatch, one I think you know something about.” She took a deep breath, careful and even, and let it out slow and steady, making a demonstration of it; she did it again, loud and deliberate, her gaze fixed on the passive.

“Come forward,” Nkemi said, gently, beckoning him with one hand. The boy jerked behind her; her other arm reached out and crossed the space between them, holding his back. They were nearly of a size; he was small and tough and wiry, but Nkemi’s fingers wrapped into the scratchy fabric of his sweater and held, firmly, making a fist.

“There is no need for this,” Nkemi’s voice cracked, then, once, shuddered at the edge. She took another deep breath, smooth and even. “There is no need for this,” she said again, soothingly, as if even now her hands were finding the edges of the hoof, teasing it slowly from the hole beneath the desert grass.

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

Y
our friend,” snapped the scrap. Spittle glinted in the crisp morning sunlight. His eyes shot to Tom, his lip twisting and twitching. Tom saw him pull in a shuddering breath, with effort. “You’re not above the agreements I make with all my clients, Incumbent.”

For a splitsecond, both the scrap and Greta were staring at Tom, wide-eyed. The scrap, with something deeper than anger, like a spinewolf cornered; Greta, shock and terror.

Standing there, very still, it was her eyes he met. He couldn’t but. He remembered her; there was a birthmark on her face, a faint splash of red up one cheek. Her skin was waxpaper-pale underneath it, except for the vivid flush in her cheeks.

Nkemi was speaking. Tom heard her voice, and so knew she was, but he couldn’t make sense of the words. Come forward, he heard. There is no need for this.

A Monite phrase swam up in his head. The invocation of a ward. He remembered the grate of his field against his skin, once, like a sleeping limb coming to life, new and uncomfortable. He remembered tipping his head back and shutting his eyes and breathing the change clause – come near; hold – the moment of uncertainty, his nerves at a deafening pitch. The mona reared like hungry hatchers, deciding.

The scrap was looking at Nkemi, deciding. Tom did not think this spell would work, no matter how much the caster loved her honor.

Her voice cracked, but she didn’t brail. There was still backlash. There was a porven in Vellum’s eyes. “I can get you the watch,” he said hoarsely. “It’s not on me, but I know where it is.” He looked to Tom, then. “What is it worth to you, Incumbent?”

Slowly, Tom raised both his hands. Greta flinched. She was staring at Nkemi now, and the boch, who’d gone to her by the chimney like you could go safe to brigk. Young, he thought, so young.

He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth; he scrambled in the dark for words. “I’ve no intention of following you,” he said.

It was careful, still. I don’t know about my friend, he didn’t say. I’m not a Seventen, she’d said; a careful enough truth. Mugrobi as she was, he wasn’t sure Vellum believed it. He turned his head slowly to look at her; he saw her face in profile, unreadable. The prefect’s breath was a steady rise and fall. Reggie Marks was behind her; her fingers were knotted in his sweater.

The baton hung limp from its strap round her wrist. She had spoken so gently. Tom looked between the baton and the boch, the baton and the boch. Get away from her, he half-wanted to warn. They ain’t your friends.

These pieces did not fit together.

Reggie was staring at Tom. Tom met his eye. He’d no field to read, but he didn’t need one; the lad looked mortified.

Greta jerked. The scrap’s stiff blue fingers slipped from her mouth. “Reg!” she shouted, before his hand clamped back. He wrangled her back.

The motion sent the two of them staggering; the scrap teetered, caught himself. Both his eyelids fluttered. His breath was heavy and uneven, and smoked white in the air. He moved like a tired man, a man with numb feet.

Not even the watch, he wanted to beg, his heart in his throat. She was the only one at the mill. Reggie first; he sat with me, after shifts – I’d tell him tales – she’d let him sit with me while I smoked. Every bit of it’s worth the watch, he wanted to say. Flood the watch. She brought me bread, when Norwood laid us off.

And who’d believe that?

Tom’s hands were trembling in the air. His chest ached. “We’ve come for the watch; that’s it,” he said, swallowing thickly. “I promise that it is – important enough to me – to leave you well enough alone. I promise that I don’t care where you go, or what you do.”

“Who do you work for, brigk?” The scrap was already snapping over Tom; his voice had gone thin and shrill, looking at Nkemi. “How do I know – how do I know you won’t report me? I’m not going back. I’m not clocking going back there.”

Tears glinted in Greta’s eyes. Tom saw Nkemi in the corner of his eye; please, he thought, please. But he couldn’t look away from Greta. She was looking at him again. The look on her face wasn’t confusion anymore, but he couldn’t’ve said what it was.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
A Nameless Tenement, Fly-Ash, The Dives

Nkemi felt the boy twist in her grasp, a little jerk, testing her. She held on to him, grimly tight; she could see the way the passive wobbled on his feet, the spittle like threads holding his lips together, the frantic darting of his eyes. His arm shook and settled, and his fingers pressed hard into the sides of the woman’s mouth, digging in.

At me, Nkemi wanted to say. Look at me.

She had thought about it; she had tried to understand it. A blackmarket bookseller who meets a client, and then sends a man after him in the dark, to choke him out and take – something. He could not have seen the watch, she had decided; it was possible he’d seen a chain, possible he’d known Anetol had something like a watch for the taking. A passive, a recluse who hides in a filthy building and is too afraid to join other men for a meal – what does he want more than safety? For what is he willing to risk himself?

She thought she could read it on that pale, mottled face, between the freckles and beneath the tangled red curls, when he looked at Anetol. When he looked at her, too, Nkemi knew, as strange and foreign as she must have been.

The woman yelled for her boy – Rej.

"Mum!" He sobbed. Nkemi gripped tighter against his sweater.

The passive pulled the woman back and for a moment – Nkemi’s eyes fluttered along with his, and when they opened the passive and the woman were still standing, there at the edge. He was wobbling a little more now, tired, but his eyes were sharp; he licked his lips, looking at her, bits of spittle still clinging to them.

Nkemi met his gaze.

Anetol was talking behind her, low and even, but Nkemi had gotten her wish, and the passive was looking at her again, shrill and angry, frightened.

“I am Junior Subprefect Nkemi pezre Nkese of Windward Market District of Thul Ka,” Nkemi said, even, smooth through every word of the long title. Her posture had been straight already, her back long and her shoulders squared, but somehow she seemed to draw up a little more as she said it. She did not let go of Rej’s sweater, and the baton still dangled from her other hand. She did not move, either; she held close to the chimney stack, still, and her eyes were fixed on the passive.

“I will not report you,” Nkemi promised, watching the growing light spill along the edge of the rooftop, creeping against the sheets and the plants and through all the gray.

She had not known; she had not known. She understood now that she would not have reported him, even if he had not made this threat; she understood how the fear must have weighed on him, that he cooped himself up afraid in that small, miserable little room, with dirty sheets and a sliver of light through the clouded window, that he ate alone in silence every day, that no man nearby called him friend. Better the tiniest sliver of freedom than a life behind those walls.

Nkemi did not think he was bluffing.

She did not think, either, that he would believe her.

The woman was looking at her, too; Nkemi didn’t know what was in her face. Not comfort, she thought; not reassurance, either. Fear, and maybe anger too, and maybe other things Nkemi could not begin to understand. She ached with them, the weight of them all.

Don’t, Nkemi had said, once. Don’t – no! – and a different face, dark, had looked back at her and laughed.

The passive was laughing too, half-hysterical, a shrill, thin edge to it; a gasping, shuddering, scraping noise with nothing like mirth in it.

The past Is a current, Nkemi told herself. She felt it wash over her; she felt it rush through her, battering at her, tugging her here and there. She stood with her feet planted in the stream, and she gasped for breath in the moments between the waves, chin thrust up, eyes squeezed shut against the sting of it, hands open and helpless, searching for something to hold.

“Just the watch,” Nkemi said. She tasted it on her tongue, the unfairness of it; she could understand something of how it must have sounded to the woman, teetering on the edge. How much does it matter to you, Anetol? Is it worth it, now? Is it worth – if she closed her eyes she could see them stumbling backwards. It wouldn’t take much; he was leaning back, just a little straining, and Nkemi thought – if he slipped –

“It’s worth a great deal to him,” Nkemi tried, her eyes fixed on the passive. She had nothing of Anetol's coin to barter with; they had not discussed any price. I do not want revenge, he had said. Hadn't she promised justice? “What is it worth to you?”

“Come forward, towards me,” Nkemi urged, again, soft and gentle. “Come forward, and we’ll talk it over.”

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

J
unior Subprefect Nkemi pezre Nkese of Windward Market District of Thul Ka said, calm and even, that she was not going to report the passive; and Tom believed her.

It was that finally tore his eyes away from Greta. He saw her straight-backed and limned with morning light, one hand high, showing the scrap the palm of her free hand – the baton that dangled from her wrist, weapon unused. The lad beside her, not much smaller. Wriggling in her iron grip, thin cheeks slick with tears, safe among warm clairvoyant and static mona.

Tom shut his eyes for a moment, breathing in a great lungful of crisp air. On the exhale, he emptied; he was a husk, a ghost in the breeze.

Just the watch, Nkemi said. There was a hot pressure behind his eyelids, but the air was too dry and cold for weeping. It is worth a great deal to him; what is it worth to you?

Tom opened his eyes again, darted a glance from Nkemi to the scrap. Kov wasn’t laughing anymore. His thin pale lips were twisted in the mess of his beard. When she’d said Thul Ka, something’d sparked in his eyes. They’d lost some of their wildness; they’d found some balance, settled on some purpose.

Greta Marks wasn’t struggling anymore; she wasn’t looking at him, either, or even at the prefect. She was looking at her son, with something like desperation in her eyes.

Her son was looking at her. He’d stopped struggling with Nkemi. One of his small hands found the hem of her thick brown coat and held it tight.

The passive shifted. Tom’s heart was in his throat; he thought he could taste sap. Don’t, he thought, staring at Greta, don’t, don’t. But she didn’t, and the kov took a step away from the edge, Greta’s worn boots staggering haphazardly with him.

“Whatever you want,” said Tom, trying to keep his voice even. Even now, it came out in Uptown tones; whenever he spoke, he felt two pairs of wide dark eyes on him, briefly. “Perhaps a prefect and an incumbent might be of assistance.”

His hip ached sharply. He shifted his weight, unthinking. The scrap froze. “No closer,” he hissed. “No fucking closer. A word of Monite from either of you…”

“It’s worth – it’s worth – a great deal to me,” said Tom, again, thinking of warm dark bread that tasted a little too much of yeast.

“Prefect,” said the scrap, sharply. “Ada’na Nkemi.” The Mugrobi was carefully-pronounced. There was something like a smile on his face, strange and bitter.

He took another step closer; Greta’s shaking legs followed. The wind plucked at her skirts.

“I know something of the Turtle. This man” – he jerked his head toward Tom – “will have me gated within a house of seeing his precious fucking watch. But you…”

“I will not,” he murmured.

The scrap barked a laugh and spat. Greta startled.

Tom shut his eyes. The buzzing in his head was worse than the flies. He thought there was plenty of care in Nkemi’s eyes, looking at the lad; he thought what she did was not for the watch, not even for him.

If he silenced everything else, he could hear it. One voice, low and unfamiliar, singing a bawdy chanty off-tune. Another, smaller voice, laughing, coaxed to singing along, playing at mimicking an Old Rose brogue. Wrapping a bandage round a small bloodied hand, carefully as shaky hands could manage.

“Maybe this works out better,” rasped the scrap. “I need assurance.” He pronounced every syllable over the whipping wind. “I’d never get out of this cesspit alone, not with the way things are – but maybe – maybe you – I need to get out of Anaxas.”

“Whatever you need,” murmured Tom. Mrs. Marks doesn’t have to be involved, he wanted to say, please, but – even if the scrap believed him – if he knew how important she was to him –

He stayed silent, swallowing thickly.

“You won’t lie.” The bookseller hadn’t looked away from Nkemi. “What’s it worth to you? Making sure he doesn’t turn me over.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
A Nameless Tenement, Fly-Ash, The Dives

Rej’s hand was holding her, too, Nkemi realized; he’d made a fist in the farbric of her brown coat, clenching it. She knew better than to let go; her fingers had long since cramped, but she held him firm against her.

One step, slowly, away from the steep sharp edge and the drop to the gray below. Nkemi watched the passive come towards her, the woman still clutched beneath his arm, half-walking and half-dragged along with him, her face damp with the trails of tears. He jerked; he shuddered, and stopped, staring at some sight behind her. Nkemi did not look; she kept her gaze fixed solidly on him, as if she could coax him forward with it.

“No closer,” Nkemi agreed, her voice low and soothing. She was half in the shade of the chimney; the early morning sun streaked its shadow long over the rooftop, the edges blurred and indistinct, gray lapping on top of gray. It resolved itself, slowly, growing clearer as the sun began to rise above the edges of the mist and smog, glowing red-orange at the horizon.

Another step closer. The wind whisked dark gray skirts around the woman’s legs, tangled them against the passive’s worn, ratty pants. A gust caught the smell of them, the reek of sour fear, sweat dried stale in the crisp wind. Two steps away from the edge, Nkemi thought. She took another deep breath, inhaled in all the reek of the desperation and the slaughterhouse too, and exhaled it back out. Ada’na, the passive said.

Nkemi’s gaze flicked sideways to Anetol when he argued; back to the passive, then, where it held. She could not make out what was on Anetol’s face; she could not see what he saw, or even begin to imagine it. There was no hint of a smile on her face, nothing light; the passive’s laugh jolted through her and ached, squeezing deep inside.

He had laughed, too – as he fell – the wind had snatched it and drifted it up to her. Nkemi could hear it, sometimes; she couldn’t remember it consciously, but sometimes she woke and it was there in her ear, tangled amidst the banging of a pipe and the snap of the wind.

There were not many flies on the roof, not this high up; not with the cold chill wind whistling through the five of them, tugging vicious on hems and hair. One fat buzzing thing drifted past Nkemi; she heard it stop somewhere over her head. She did not reach up to brush it away; it kept going, in its own time, born away by some distant wind current and the buzzing of its wings.

You won’t lie, the passive said. Ada’na, he had offered, careful and deliberate.

Nkemi let out a tiny little fraction of an exhale. She nodded, faintly. She held his gaze with her own still, solemn and even.

“Let the woman leave,” Nkemi said, “and we can discuss it. I will stay here, where I am.” Her gaze flickered sideways at Anetol. “On my honor,” Nkemi said, carefully, aware of the cold bite of the wind cutting through her, sharp and vicious, her hands half-numb, every bit of her fighting not to shake, to stay calm and even, “the Incumbent will stay where he is too and neither of us shall cast, until we three have found a way forward.”

Nkemi took a deep breath, in and out, encouraging. She never looked away from the passive. “This my offer,” she said, meeting watery blue eyes with her own dark ones, aching fingers dug still into the scratchy fabric of a warm sweater. She could feel Rej’s warmth at her side, the pressure of his fingers pulling her heavy coat a little taut against her shoulder; she could hear his wet, snuffling breaths, the way they choked in his throat. “Not one word more, until you let her go.”

[Tom Cooke]

A Rooftop in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

L
et the woman go, was the first thing Nkemi said. Relief flooded through Tom. It was all he could see, all he could feel. He thought he might’ve crumpled with it, or that the wind might’ve blown him away, so paper-thin and fraying he was. His face was carefully blank, and his eyes were prickling dry. He pushed down the tightness in his chest.

The Incumbent, again, and Greta’s eyes flicked sharply to Tom. Underneath the passive’s hand, he could see the muscles of her throat flicker in a swallow. The passive’s hand tightened.

The moment might’ve lasted a house. It took the scrap a while to consider; he looked at Nkemi, then Tom, then Nkemi again. His lips were bluing, and his face was stiff – impossible for Tom to read. His eyes lingered on him; Tom tried to meet them even, tried to put everything he was in that look, but when they flicked away he was none the wiser.

“I believe you, ada’na,” the scrap rasped. It was still a few seconds before he let go, as if the cold had frozen both his joints and his resolve stiff.

Rigid, Tom thought. Rigid honor. He wasn’t sure why it sprang into his mind; it filled him, like every breath of cold and sickly-sweet meat and smog. More of Greta’s curls fluttered free in the wind. His stomach churning, his eyes moved past the scrap, over the edge of the tenement, where the rendering house thrust its smokestacks up into the sky.

He let go. Greta teetered on unsteady legs, tangled in her skirt. “Reggie, love,” she said, taking a step, two, opening her arms. Her voice shook.

Reggie stumbled away from Nkemi, paused; he skittered a wide path around Tom. But Greta met him in the middle, caught him in her arms. She was half-kneeling between the three of them, mother and son tangled in an embrace, breathing hard.

The scrap took another step forward, stiff cold hands fumbling to pull his shawl tighter around him. The tatty fringe of it fluttered in a strong breeze. Greta threw a glance over her shoulder; with a white-knuckled grip on Reggie, she got to her feet and took a couple of steps back toward the stair. She glanced between the two galdori.

“Thank you, Miss En-keh-seh,” stammered Reggie, breathless. He was looking at the prefect wide-eyed. He looked at Tom, then.

There was a horrible tightness in Tom’s chest. On my honor, Nkemi had said, the Incumbent will stay where he is. He could not move. He opened his mouth. He thought – a dozen thoughts were tangling in his head, fighting each other, each trying to scream louder than the last – make amends, the most foolish of them was saying, do something to –

“Monster,” gasped Greta.

Tom froze.

As if realizing what she’d done, Greta froze, too; a look of terror washed over her face. “Let’s go, Reg,” she whispered rapidly, “it’s all right, lad, all right, ‘s’all right,” ushering the boch ahead of her. Reggie cast one glance back before they disappeared into the stairs; Greta did not even offer them that.

Tom was very pale. He turned back to the passive. He could not look at Nkemi; he did not.

He saw the shape of her in the corner of his eye. He remembered the break of her voice. He thought for the first time of her man in the Turga. He thought of the bitter cold.

The passive took another step closer, just close enough to be at the edge of the prefect’s field range. “You said you wouldn’t report me.” Bloodshot blue eyes flicked from the prefect to the incumbent.

Tom passed a shaking hand over his brow.

The leather was cold. “On my honor,” he breathed, his voice cracking. “Seerstone or not, Mr. Brooke.”

The scrap’s pale red eyebrows drew together; his mouth furrowed in his beard. He stared at Tom for a moment more with mistrust, then looked to Nkemi. “It’s cold,” he said hoarsely. Tom noticed, now, that his hands were shaking, too. He was pale. “We can agree this is best discussed inside, at least.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
A Nameless Tenement, Fly-Ash, The Dives

Nkemi kept her word; she said nothing more. She watched the passive, standing straight and tall, cold fingers knotted in Rej’s coat, and only breathed, steadily, in and out. He took his time; his gaze darted, rabbit-quick, from Nkemi to Anetol and back again. Nkemi said nothing, not one more word.

He let go.

Nkemi let go too, her fingers unclenching slowly, stiff; Rej sprang free and half-collided with his mother in the center of the triangle the three of them made. Nkemi swallowed through the prickle of tears in her eyes, fluttered them closed and did not open them again until she was sure they were dry.

The passive came a little further away from the edge.

The little boy thanked her. Nkemi could not accept the thanks; it churned through her. But she offered him something else instead, the sudden blooming of a brilliant smile; it pushed a few more tears up at the edges of her eyes. She did not mind the wearing of her mother’s name, not here and now; it was a warm comfort, wrapped around her against the cold, as if she, too, were kneeling and tangled in her mother’s arms.

They were both of them, then, looking at Anetol. Mister Thomas, Nkemi remembered, and he had not denied the name; not then, not now, not at any point. She tried to make sense of what she had seen in the Anaxi’s face; worry, Nkemi thought, but she didn’t understand why. Guilt, maybe, yes; Nkemi felt that too, keen, like the edge of a blade. The smile had gone; the prefect’s still face had replaced it once more.

The wind whipped through the three of them, now; it rustled the edge of Anetol’s sharp coat, Nkemi’s bright scarf, the passive’s tattered shawl. The passive came a little closer. Nkemi held, still, where she was, looking evenly at him. She had lowered her hands at some point; they hung limp at her side, one flat and loose and the other with its fingers still a little curled together, with the memory of how they had clenched.

It was not warmer, inside, not really, but the wind did not bite through the narrow walls and the thin pane of glass. Time stretched on; it tumbled like droplets of water from the icicles Nkemi had seen the month before. Each moment melted slowly, dragging down – down – then falling and splattering to the ground below, making little pools of water even as the next one began to grow and grow.

Nkemi sat stiff and upright on the chair the passive had offered her; he sat too, on the edge of his cot. Anetol stood, even though Nkemi could see from the way he shifted his weight that it must have hurt his hip; he had not wanted the chair. She thought perhaps it was for the best, anyway. He was the one with something to offer, but it was Nkemi the passive’s eyes flicked to, again and again, a pale blue searching.

Anetol had the seerstone, when they left. Nkemi let him lead the way; she waited until he was gone, and then, carefully, she set a coin and then another on the passive’s small table. “For the chain, Mr. Burok,” Nkemi said, politely. She understood that he would not stay long, here, in this place of cramped and quiet desperation; that was not why it mattered.

Nkemi rose, then, and followed Anetol from the room. Her legs ached; the muscles were cold and cramped and knotted, as if she had run for hours. Anetol clung to the railing as he went down the stairs before her; Nkemi clung to it too, behind him, her fingers clutching the wood tight. She did not, this time, bother to avoid the steps which creaked.

Her breath was tight in her chest when they reached the bottom. It was well morning now; the smog and gloom still scattered at the edges of the street, but if the light was watery it was bright too; Nkemi blinked away the ache of it, the stinging at the edges of her eyes, as they went out onto the street. It hummed with life; humans went back and forth, bundled up against the cold in whatever they could afford. They did not look one another in the eye, here in Fly’Ash, and still the great black flies buzzed all about, and settled on anything which stood still too long.

One landed on Nkemi’s forehead; she brushed it aside with shaking fingers. She found she could not look at Anetol; she looked away, instead, at a man pushing a wheelbarrow across the street, shriveled green apples bouncing with each roll of wooden wheels across the uneven ground. Nkemi took a deep breath, and then another, and pulled herself straight upright, and let the wind lay its cool hands upon her face.

[Tom Cooke]

A Kofi House • Uptown

Morning on the 40th of Vortas, 2719

T
here was money to be got in order. This was what he could think about. This was all he thought about. If Brooke didn’t dash that night, if he took them – both of them – at their word. Tom had to believe that he would, because there was money to be got in order; there were things to think about. Real things, right-now things. Things a man who cared about his honor, who followed through on his intentions, would think about.

He did not stop on the fifth landing. He did not look down the dingy hall through the doorway, into the shadows. He kept his head down, his jaw banderwolf-set.

He hadn’t sat since – since the barge, he thought. He felt it in every joint in his body; he’d torn something running up the stairs, because a muscle in his left leg was on fire. It burned each time he stretched it to tackle another step. The pain in his hip he could feel with every shift of weight, now shooting downward, now aching like a point wedged between the bones.

He hadn’t looked Nkemi in the face, head-on, since before the rooftop.

Behind him, he could hear her. These were not the careful, quiet footsteps of that morning. Her boots came down hard on each step, creaking and popping. He didn’t bother to skip the third step on the second flight; he was slumped hard on the railing, sweat prickling at the back of his neck underneath the collar of his coat.

Exchanging one fine set of smells for another. They emerged onto the street, in the shadow of the rotting portico.

From the rooftops, all these natt must’ve been like ants. Uptown, Tom thought, they were invisible. But they bustled; Fly-Ash had become like a river, the squatting tenements like stones breaking up the little burbling streams.

Wasn’t like Clatterings, this place. Every other natt going by wore heavy burlap cover-alls underneath his coat, and kept his head down, though ladies clustered and smoked on the second and third floor landings, looking out over the streets. No frying batter. Folk knew better, here, though never more than when the hot summer cut swathes through them – or so he’d heard, and thanked the Circle he’d gone back to Willow before then.

Even now, it itched at the back of his head. He felt a tickle underneath his right eye; he waved a hand, and a great fat fly went buzzing off into the air, disappearing into the crowd. Even now, he wanted a bath.

After so long gone, the seerstone was a familiar weight in the pocket of his waistcoat. His coat was buttoned over it, drawn tight around him.

He had barely looked at it when Brooke had put it in his hand. He had been conscious of Nkemi sitting across from the passive. He hadn’t known if her eyes were on him. The silver was cold in his hand, as cold as flesh was warm. What light trickled in from the window caught on inlaid antlers; they were a blur as he tucked it into his waistcoat, patted it, and then did up his overcoat again.

Nkemi had stayed back with the passive. He hadn’t known for what; he didn’t see it was right to ask. He thought it was fitting that he should leave first.

Outside, he took a deep breath. The prefect was in the corner of his eye, her back straight. His was too; he did not sag when he was tired, not anymore. His back was a straight line, and his jaw was set squarely. He could not banish these things. It would not have been honest, even if he could, and he was too tired to lie.

It was hard to look at Nkemi, but he owed it to her. She wasn’t looking at him. In profile, her face was hard to read. He knew the dark shadows around her eyes, the faint cast to her dark skin. There was not so much color in her as usual.

He thought of the bright, broad smile she’d given the boch, edged with tears.

Monster, he heard Greta breathe. Everything that flooded into his mind to say was selfish. Excuses. He shut his eyes and turned away. There was no fresh air to settle himself on here; no incense or books.

“Thank you, Nkemi,” he heard himself saying, “for – handling...” He swallowed tightly. “For handling that,” he said quietly, “in the way you did.” For giving a damn. He thought of her hand, knotted tightly in Reggie’s sweater. The lad had chosen well.

Another fly buzzed close. He felt a tickle in his hair; he resisted the urge to swat it away. He watched it drift off, took a deep breath.

“You should rest. We both should.” He turned again to look at Nkemi. “If you wish – I’ll be in touch. I owe a friend an explanation, and I’d be grateful to share kofi again.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of her nod. The pit sat still at the bottom of his stomach, even on the barge, even on the slow, faltering way back up the steps. He did not ask for support; he did not need it.

There were things as needed to be done.

There were many things missing, here, but they’d brought out the small dented bowl when he’d asked, and the cups of water. It was his turn, first; he spat his lies, and his evil – that of it he could – into the bowl.

“I pledge my honor to Hulali,” he recited softly. “I speak truth here.”

It was strange, this small Anaxi kofi har’aq. Folk Uptown asked for the bowl sometimes, as far as Tom knew, but usually not folk that looked like him. Despite the hearth at the back, there could be no real gathering of the beans, none of the things he’d heard were done in the kofi rooms of great houses in Thul Ka.

But it bore saying anyway, even if it felt like the thin shadow of something sacred. And he’d pledge himself back to Roa, all the same, at the end, even in front of Nkemi.

Ada’na Ota – pezre Utúla; their host, this morning – inclined her head and took the bowl, when they’d finished. There were fine lines around her eyes and mouth when she smiled, and she had kind eyes and a warm perceptive field. She smiled at the prefect and the incumbent and left them, wordless.

Dzechy’úqi was along the broad way that cut through to the Old Gate, just down from Ro Hill with the courts and the palace. It was small and cozy, but it was everything Detta’s little kint wasn’t; it was full of light, the floors carpeted with rich swirls of deep red and brown and green, the walls covered in hangings. It smelled strongly of kofi har menda.

Great, wide glass windows gave out on the busy street. The sun’d come out proper for the first time in weeks; there was scarce a cloud in the sky, and so vivid was the blue it dizzied you. The stones were luminous, and every carriage that rattled by broke up the light, sending shadows flitting across the long narrow room.

People passed on foot, too, most slow and leisurely. Ladies in high-collared dresses and long embroidered coats, asymmetric-cut; some with parasols casting strange lace shadows over their faces. Sometimes the bell jingled, letting in another field that would brush quietly by their table, a brief taste of quantitative or perceptive or static.

The light shivered over the waves carved into the table between them. The seating was low, little more than cushions on the meticulously-clean floor. A number of the tables were full, but the talk was low; louder was the faint hiss of frying rice crisps, the warm shuffle of coffee being roasted in a pan.

Nothing but the water had come out yet. A day later and he still ached; when he reached to take another sip, his hand trembled. But the bruises at his throat were healing, and, it seemed, so were Nkemi’s.

His field was still warm, his caprise polite, if no longer so familiar. He looked across at the prefect.

He did not play at anything. He sat straight as Anatole, and spoke as came natural; he did not try to smile where he could not find one, though his eyes were soft. The creases at his brow were a little deeper than they might’ve been.

He knew at least that kofi har’aq eased in, during the roasting; he meant to try and match it as closely as he could, in spirit if not in practice. How have you been? He did not know that question could be termed easing in, in this instance.

“The sun is out, finally,” he said instead. “I suspect you haven’t seen many days this blue in Vienda, Nkemi.” Finally, a small smile.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

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

Nkemi cupped her hands into the water and lifted them up from the surface; cool water trickled over the edges of her palms and dripped between her fingers, but the Mugrobi knew how to keep her hands together. She lifted the water to her mouth, swished it around, and spat into the dented bowl.

“I pledge my honor to Hulali,” Nkemi said, solemnly, looking at Anetol across the table. “I speak truth here.”

Nkemi smiled brightly up at Ota as she took the bowl and left, the hem of her long, asymmetric burnt orange skirt just barely brushing the ground on one side; the other side, lifted, revealed a hint of boots with a little rim of brown fur at the top edges of them.

Nkemi took a deep breath, looking down at the square table before her. She ran her fingertips of the waves thinly patterned into the wood; the light caught the edge of the wide glass windows, and sparked over them, the pale calypt wood catching the light, a stretch of warm red carpet beneath glowing as well. Nkemi looked up and out at the vivid blue sy. She smiled, a little more, and took another deep breath, settling into place on the cushion, her legs crossed and her feet tucked beneath her knees.

It was warm in the kofi har’aq, warm enough that Nkemi had left her coat the entryway without fear. She wore her thickest brown sweater, with a vivid orange scarf still wrapped again and again around her neck. On her head, she wore her newest favorite, a brilliant dark purple cloth, with threads of bright magenta and dark crimson tracing paisley patterns all through, swirls of color curving this way and that, capped with wriggles and circles. Wrapped around and tucked into itself, the array was almost – although not quite – dizzying, and it caught the warm indoor lamplight and distant glimpses of sun, too, and sparkled.

Anetol’s field drifted through hers, the soft brush of his clairvoyant mona a little more tentative than it had been. He looked tired, still, Nkemi thought; not as gray as he had the day before, when Fly’Ash and all it had offered them had seemed to leech all the color from his skin, and leave it sallow and dark at the wrinkles. Anetol, too, had a scarf well-wrapped around his throat; Nkemi could imagine what the bruises beneath looked like, although she did not wish to.

Nkemi had not expected this place; she had not known such a place existed, here in Vienda. She had been to some of the smaller Mugrobi cafes; these were places with a room or two for kofi har’aq at the back and a busy, bustling trade in food at the front. These, Nkemi had understood, were places for Mugrobi. This – she had been surprised, coming inside, at how many Anaxi she had seen in the room. There were Mugrobi too, of course, and a wash of familiarly accented vowels had flowed over her, familiar and comforting. It was not like Thul Ka; it could not be, and yet it was familiar, and comforting.

Nkemi had not known this side of kofi har’aq until she had joined the prefects. As a girl, kofi har’aq had been sitting on her mother’s lap, running eager across the kitchen to fetch the beans, standing on a chair to help take the frying bits of corn and dough from the hissing, spitting oil, her aunt’s delighted laugh at the sight of her and comments about how big she was getting – the feeling of loving, warm fields wrapped around her, unalike but glowing with the strength of it, whenever Nkanzi returned.

At Thul'Amat, she had taken kofi har'aq with her professors; Ruedka had offered it to her, when she became Nkemi's advisor, and they had sat in the open quarters of the other woman's office, the sounds of the courtyard below drifting through the open window, and drank kofi roasted on the hearth in her alcove, and pledged truth together.

As a prefect - as a prefect, for the first time, she had seen kofi har'aq as it was done in Thul Ka, as the host and the guest both. She had taken in across Thul Ka, in the bustling, busy, warm rooms of Windward Market, in the elegant, curtained privacy of Aratra, in a smoky, incense-filled temple in the heart of Nutmeg Hill.

Anetol offered Nkemi a small, tentative smile. He was watching her, across the table; it was worry, Nkemi thought, which pinched his brow, and maybe left his large gray eyes so soft. “No,” Nkemi said, and she grinned at him, turning to look at the window. She found she was squinting a little with the brightness of the light, even filtered through the thick, smooth glass.

“Not very many,” Nkemi agreed. It had been a surprise, when she awoke; she had not slept until very late. Sleep had eluded her, after an afternoon doze that had left her shaking and sick; she had been tired, very tired, but her mind had spun, busily, and offered her many threats about what the windows behind her mind might show her, if she slept.

She had gone to the practice courts, then, and pushed through her aching legs and tired limbs, until, at last, a little bruised but much more content, she had been able to crawl into bed and sleep soundly. She did not remember any dreams, and she had awoken feeling refreshed and clean; she had not known why, not until she saw the shafts of brilliant sunlight spilling in through the barracks windows.

“Thank you for bringing me here, Anetol,” Nkemi said, a little solemn still. But her smile warmed at the edges, and brightened, and she offered it to Anetol.