[Closed] Am I Down in the Riverbed

[Tom Cooke]

A Carriage • Uptown

Pre-Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

A
da’na,” he started, then hesitated.

It was colder even than last week. Achtus was whispering its cold breath against the back of Vienda’s neck, and Tom could feel it in every bone.

Winter in Vienda, untempered by the salt-sea breeze, by the call of the gulls. He had come to know it, the creeping chill not quite driven off by the hearth; the damp, clinging phlegm of it. The stuffy, almost-too-hot tomb of Stainthorpe, holding in its breath while councilmen and their staff bustled round inside, red-nosed and sniffling over their papers.

The chill breeze that wisped round inside a carriage. His second winter as Vauquelin. So much’d changed since last Achtus, it made his head spin. If he thought too hard on it, it’d eat him alive. Back then, the thought of taking a private carriage anywhere would’ve baffled him; now, it’d become commonplace.

He’d dared to brush the drapes aside and peer out, just to see the last of Uptown rattling by. To the tiny dock in Jeddering Gate, then up the tributary that ran through Uptown, to the river. To the Dives by the Arova, this time, quiet and wreathed in mist.

The street-lamps were still on, and would be for some time, spilling cold light; the rolling fog was edged with their phosphor blue. You could barely see the other side of the street, a row of dark shopfronts, brightly-painted awnings and shutters and signs leached of color by the rolling fog.

They were all closed, this early, this far Uptown. They hadn’t passed any other carriages on the broad-paved streets, and pedestrians were few. Just a handful of chimney-sweeps, little shapes darting to and fro.

A lone rider, once, bundled up on a tawny moa, headed in the direction of Ro Hill with bulging panniers. He’d caught his eye, inclining his head and tipping his dark hat.

Something about it had troubled Tom. He’d kept searching the quiet streets, just for a few more moments. The chill prickled in his cheeks, numbed his nose; he could feel it even through the thick black leather and fleece lining of his gloves. His hands ached.

He had let the drapes fall back into place, settling back against the cushions.

His second winter in Vienda; subprefect Nkemi pezre Nkese’s first winter, he thought, in Anaxas. He wondered what she’d make of the winter cold, when it finally hit, with the gutters frozen solid. He wondered what she’d made of ice on the river; he didn’t think the Turga ever froze.

He kept his eyes on the stirring drapes, but he could see her in the corner of his eye, sitting bundled in the seat across.

He itched to reach up and touch his throat, through his thick wool scarf, through his gloves. It still ached, but not so much as it had.

A week ago, he’d’ve searched the shadows underneath the rider’s hat for the glitter of his eyes; he’d’ve asked himself tirelessly where he was going, and why he had looked, and why he had tipped his hat, chasing the tail of it round and round. He’d’ve searched his waistcoat for his watch, felt the empty flat pocket like a knife slid between his ribs. He’d’ve demanded to know everything that’d happened in the prefect’s stakeout, turning over each word in her soft fluid accent like a stone he was terrified to see the underside of.

He could plant his feet, now, and the rocks were not so slippery. He could let the past slide away. He’s headed toward the courts, he could think, or Addington Hall, and let go of it; let it slide away, a dark shape disappearing into the mist.

And if the watch slid away into the mist, with it – he wouldn’t stop looking, but that would sink to the riverbed, too.

He’d been quiet since the empty street corner in Bellington where Nkemi had joined him. His caprise had been warm; it was warm even now, belike and unlike mona mingling, curious and free.

He felt free and warm; he felt closed and cold. He felt the prickle of dread, making all his hairs stand on end.

I want to understand, she’d said, and he had given her poetry. It was all an honest man could’ve given: the truth of his heart, he supposed.

“If a man,” he went on, then hesitated.

He still remembered her thanks, even for all he could not give her. For one thing, at least, she had never asked, though she had slid quietly away from sir and into a place that had been comfortable for him – comfortably ambiguous, and faceless – and a little sad.

“If a man wishes to be honest.” His low voice was soft, much smoother than it’d been last week. “If his name doesn’t feel like his, anymore.” If none of them do, he thought wistfully. “If he asks someone else to call him by it, even though it surprises him to hear it – is this – honorable?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Pre-Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
Various Streets, Uptown

It was a cold, crisp morning; Nkemi’s breaths had made little clouds in the air, puffing out in front of her face as she had waited for Vakelin. She had made the walk with the dark brown scarf wrapped around her neck pulled up to cover her nose and mouth. Once close to the corner she had tugged it down, and watched the way her own warmth met the cold air, and puffed into steam, tinged blue by the phosphor lights.

Vakelin’s breath did the same, the little clouds of it a bit higher than hers. He looked as cold as she felt, but his caprise had been warm and friendly, as if no time at all had passed since they sat together, Vakelin perched on the arm of his chair with his glasses on his nose, one shaky finger tracing a line of poetry. Nkemi had felt very glad to see his slight, bundled figure emerge from the mists, slowly shading dark gray and brown in the pale blue-tinged gray. She had smiled, bright and wide, and seen it glow over his face.

The silence in the carriage was not uncomfortable. There was too much warmth in it for that. Vakelin watched out the window, and Nkemi watched him. A frown twitched over his face, and smoothed out; his hand trembled, but only a little, as he let the curtain go. It wavered back into place, and he turned away.

It was very cold. Nkemi wore all of the warmest things she owned, and still she had felt the cold slicing through her. She had been afraid, that morning; she did not know what lay before her. How much colder could it possibly become? How did they face it, every day, in this odd, gray city? Even the rich warm red wool of the scarf wrapped around her head had not lifted her spirits as she had hoped.

Nkemi had looked away when Vakelin settled back, politely. She turned to him again when he spoke, and she smiled at him. He came slowly to his question; Nkemi listened, very intently, a small frown creasing her forehead. A man wishes to be called his name which does not feel like his own. It sounded like the strange riddles which had been popular among her fourth form class; there had always been a trick to them, some clever catch in the wordplay which revealed the answer.

Is this honorable? Vakelin asked. His gaze was fixed on her; the weight of the question and what it meant to him was in every sound of his voice, smoother than it had been. Nkemi almost touched her own throat in reflex, where the mottled bruises had faded to yellow and green, only just visible against her skin.

”I think so,” Nkemi said solemnly; her voice too was soft and smooth again, much higher pitches than his. She had not been very good at riddles in fourth form, for all that they had been fun. Honor mattered to her, greatly, but she knew not to think herself a philosopher. She could not leave him in silence, for all that she did not know why the question ached.

”It seems to me that a name is...” Nkemi’s eyes searched Vakelin’s face. She did know where he was going, she thought, even if she did not know the answer to his question. People made sense to her; academic tangles of language did not, not until she worked very hard at them for a long time.

”It is an exchange, I think,” Nkemi said with a little smile. ”If being called by any name has meaning to you, even if this meaning is not the expected one, then it is honorable.”

Incumbent Anetol Vakelin. It was a heavy name, Nkemi thought. There were those Mugrobi who left behind the names of their mother or father for those of their own devising. She turned her own name over too, in her mind. Nkemi pezre Nkese. Perhaps all names were made heavy with the weight of their ancestry. Nkemi was proud to bear her mother’s name; she wore it draped around her like a cloak, and soaked it warm into her skin. She looked at Vakelin still, and she wondered.

”It seems to me,” Nkemi added, smiling again, or maybe still, ”that the intent of the asking matters most.”

The carriage rattled beneath them. It shifted, turning, and Nkemi felt it begin to slow to a stop. The wharf outside was busier than the street had been, but only just. There was a man pouring cups of hot spiced tea from a kettle heated over a brazier, wisps of pale steam curling up into the air over the street; when he moved, Nkemi could see the faintest flash of a tattoo peeking out from the cuff of his coat, a curve like the tentacle of an octopus.

Nkemi grinned at the tea seller, crouching to take two cups, and leaving a coin behind. He stared at her a long moment, and his face twitched at half a smile. She went back to Vakelin with the two bits of chipped clay, and offered him one. Down at the docks, a man was shifting cargo around on a barge; he whistled, once, sharply, and the two humans standing at the top of the long wet dock steps behind hauling down the next crate.

”A few minutes, sir,” Nkemi said. She cradled her cup in gloved hands and took a little sip. She never looked for lemon and sugar when there was none to be found; the warmth was more than enough.

[Tom Cooke]

A Dock • Uptown

Pre-Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

T
he street lamp and the gloaming turned her scarf a sort of mauve, glinted cool colors in her dark eyes. He looked at her sidelong on the wharf.

It took him the walk from the carriage to chew through all she’d said, silent but grateful. He turned the words over like river-stones, looked at them from all the angles he thought he could.

Down below, muddy waters lapped at the stones; heavyset men wrangled a crate down slippery stairs. A hook glinted in a clenched fist. Two were wearing coats; one was in his shirt, sweat gleaming on his forehead. Tom watched them for a moment, feeling something that wasn’t quite sadness, wasn’t quite envy.

He turned to watch Nkemi at the tea stall, a bundle of wool among bundles of wool and drifting steam. The tea seller’s hem slipped up as he ladled out more cups; Tom caught a breath of allspice and cardamom, saw a brief flash of ink curling out over the kov’s wrist.

Little pieces of the familiar. The intent of the asking, he thought, exhaling finally. He wasn’t sure if it was what he’d wanted to hear. He didn’t know if it was easy, that answer. It felt too easy; it felt horribly difficult. Who was making it difficult?

There weren’t too many looks for them, not Uptown; he caught the tea seller’s eye and raised an eyebrow, but he reckoned that had more to do with the prefect and the glinting tally in his hand than it did the incumbent. It was busier than the streets, and Tom caught the brush of a glamour here or there – respectable-dressed tsat, shivering in their coats – but it was quiet.

That was why he’d wanted to take the tributary down, join the Arova from Uptown. He’d left his patch-elbowed coat in the closet, with its pockets full of cheap cigarettes and fraying hairties. He wasn’t dressed for a ballroom, but he wore Anatole’s slim dark coat and leather gloves, and he was clean-shaven and trimmed, his hard edges smoothed out from the week back at Stainthorpe. There was no flask in his pocket.

He had wanted to mirror more than the bruises, and so he’d picked a scarf in deep rich purple, thinking of her socks from a week ago. It poked out of the collar of his coat, tucked snug against his throat, covering up what was still visible of the fading bruises.

Nkemi handed him a cup of chipped clay, and he smiled back at her. Just a few minutes, sir. His smile went a little crooked; he almost laughed.

The shape of him was vague to him, in the chill and the mists, vaguer than the shape of her with her broad bright smile. He just knew the warm clay through his gloves, and the feel of a smile on his face. The breeze that rippled the murky waters ruffling through the hair that curled out from under his hat.

“Thank you. You can call me Anatole,” he said finally.

His smile didn’t falter; it wasn’t so hard, now he came to it. It was an exchange, and he didn’t think he’d expect it, whatever he got back. Aylwright, Fly-Ash, Irvalo, Anatole. He found himself wondering how it might sound.

The morning chill felt the same against his face. No part of him felt different, from head to toe. No ghosts crawled up from the cracks in the stones, or descended from the sky. No hatchers in this fog. “If it’s comfortable for you,” he added with a wry smile, and took a sip of tea.

Hot – too hot – just hot enough to sting; it washed down through him and lit the street lamp of his soul. It was spicy and dark, mingling with floral dried-orange-peel sweetness.

He stepped to the edge of the wharf, breathing in deep the petrichor stink of the Arova. Up here, more earthy than chemical, though the tang still worked its way into the grooves of all Vienda. The natt were hauling down the last of the crates, the slim man at the head of the barge resting briefly against a pallet, puffing white breath against muddled grey.

Tom held onto the post, the fraying rope railing swinging gently in the breeze. He cast a glance back at Nkemi, then took another drink of warm tea, sighing out more cloudy breath.

“Is intent what matters?” he said. “I didn’t understand what you meant, when you said – truth of the heart – a week ago. I know someone who’d say the truth is so hard to know that a man who cares for his honor can scarce speak.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Pre-Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
Millbury Dock, Uptown

Anetol,” Nkemi sounded out, carefully. He had not said it the way she had in her head, from reading the name written down. She was not sure if she could make the adjustment; she had tried, but she did not know how to do anything other than breathe gently through the n. She came down on the t, biting at it a little bit, and grinned hopefully at him. “I am honored to,” Nkemi said. “But only if you will call me Nkemi, please.”

Nkemi took another sip of her tea. The smell of it curled up in her nose, all unfamiliar bitter dark tea mixed with hints of scents she recognized: orange peel, cardamom, cinnamon. They lingered beneath the surface; she couldn’t pick them apart on her tongue but she knew the smells, at least, and she knew they were there somewhere beneath the surface.

The river lapped at the wharf below them. Nkemi could find the Arova through Vienda in her mind; this was a tributary which wove off through Uptown. They would ride it down to the main trunk of the river, and following the winding path of that into the heart of the Dives, to the area known as Fly’Ash.

Nkemi was thinking it over, carefully. They would need to go up from the river, along one of the narrow wooden staircases which creaked against the walls of the river, and from there –

Anetol spoke again. Nkemi turned to look at him, wide-eyed, half-way through another sip of tea. She puzzled his words over, carefully, and turned to look back at the river. Blue-gray-brown water rushed and flowed past the dock, brushed faintly with white. A raft drifted past them, a lantern bobbing at the edge of it, swaying back and forth on a pole.

“I think so, yes,” Nkemi shifted. One gloved hand rested lightly on a damp post of wood. There was a distant yell and a rough scrape of wood against the dock, the heavy thunk of a distant crate coming to rest in its place.

“There is a story,” Nkemi said, smiling up at Vakelin, “which I was told as a little girl. There were two brothers, Okwe and Ikwe, who herded goats in the desert. One day there was a terrible sandstorm; they took the goats and sheltered for cover in a cave, and when they came out the world they left behind had changed.” Nkemi took another small sip of her tea. “All the trees they knew were gone, and stripped bare; all the distant mountains were masked still by the storm. Even the shape of the earth had changed, stripped bare by the winds and sand and built again.”

“They walked for a long time,” Nkemi said, “with the goats, and they grew very thirsty. Brother, Okwe said, I see an oasis ahead. They ran to the horizon, but it was only the glimmer of the sun against the sand, and the want in his heart that Okwe had seen. They walked again; they grew ever more tired. Brother, Okwe said again, I see an oasis ahead. Once more they ran to the horizon; once more it was only the sands and the wanting. Liar, Ikwe called Okwe, and fell upon him. The two brothers fought, then, until their eyes were so swollen with the sand and the fighting that they could neither of them see.”

Nkemi smiled once more. “It is a long story,” she said. “I will not tell it all, but just say that it was Ikwe, in the end, who realized that they should follow the goats, for the goats knew the truth of their hearts without being deceived by their minds.” She cradled the cup in her hands. “And so the brothers laid their hands each upon the head of the goats, and followed them through the desert.”

“When the story was told to me,” Nkemi said, “the one who told it to me cautioned me that intent alone could not serve, and to know truth was to know caution as well.” Nkemi drank the last of her tea. “I have always wondered if it was Okwe or Ikwe who was the liar,” Nkemi admitted with a little grin.

“You have finished?” Nkemi asked. She took Anetol’s cup when he drank the last of his tea, and returned both of them to the tea seller. She came back, and hooked her arm gently through the incumbent’s, beginning to lead him down the fog- and spray-slicked gray steps, towards the barge below.

[Tom Cooke]

A Barge on the Arova

Pre-Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

H
onored to, Nkemi.” He pronounced it carefully, or tried to; he thought he got the softness of the en, but he wrangled with the K. Still, he smiled sidelong, then took a sip of warm tea. It was cooling fast in the chill.

AhhneToll, he’d heard her say, careful, behind him. The N eroded by the rushing of the vowels, flowing easily one to the next, ’til they tumbled into the T and down. It wasn’t much like Yesufu’s Anatole, tempered by all the different shades of Estuan you got on the Isles and in the city. He didn’t think he’d heard any other Mugrobi say the name.

A breath, and then tol, simple and firm. It was funny how it almost sounded like –

Tom was still smiling, watching the bleary figures on the barge get the crates settled. He listened as Nkemi went on, and the smile went thoughtful; he sucked at his tooth.

It was just a boch’s story, he knew. Some troubled something knitted its way into his brow. The tea was cold, and it didn’t give him much comfort. He was thinking what it must be like to wander blind in the desert, with the charge of a herd of animals – and another man – wandering blind, with the charge of a brother. He watched one of the dockers haul the last pallet up the gangway, muscles taut, broad chest heaving.

Calling your brother a liar, oes, and beating him blind. The things men got up to. The mind often got in the way, where listening to the heart was concerned. But even the most honest of goats would’ve gone moony at the brush of his porven; the heart and mind both knew what to do with raen, usually. He thought of Aremu scrambling back on the cliffs.

It was Nkemi’s voice tugged him back out of the clouds, back into himself; the wet chill stung his cheeks, and he sniffed. He blinked over and smiled at her. He’d finished his tea for a few moments now.

“Thank you.” He paused before he handed her the cup, turning the misshapen little clay thing over in his hand, feeling its sandpaper-roughness scratch through the thick leather. “If you’ve got to be cautious, then I suppose that goes for calling another man a liar,” he added, and his smile warmed, and he gave her the cup. “Or you’ll blind yourself, and him too.”

It was with her arm hooked through his they left Millbury Dock behind. The prefect was small but sturdy; she felt sturdier than the railing at one side. His hand was stiff in this cold, and his feet might’ve slipped once or twice. He couldn’t feel it through her thick coat, but he knew – knew better than to ask – about the baton.

He felt a twinge of shame, but the beast abated. More, he turned Okwe and Ikwe over in his head.

It was some time before he spoke again. The barge did not take long to find the Arova, once it’d shaken free of its moorings. The two galdori were small among the hulking crates. The man at the head was a tsat; Tom felt the unassuming brush of his glamour as the tallies changed hands. He sat near the wheel, smoking, his thin face a skull in the lanternlight.

The way was quiet, except for the lapping of the water. Once, maybe some halfway round the bend at Flywater, they passed under a very low bridge. Tom felt the shadow of it on his soul; he watched the light shift over Nkemi’s face, her wide dark eyes glittering.

It was less quiet on the Arova, the city peering down at them from tall stone cliffs, broken up by docks and stretches of sad gray beach. Narrow wooden walkways and stairs, shapes flitting among them, thin legs swinging high over the water; drifting cigarette smoke. Over the shoulder, the mist making shapes of distant Uptown – more mirage than oasis – you couldn’t see the tallest spires of the Palace anymore.

When they came out, he heard Nkemi say, the world they left behind had changed. Sitting on the edge of the barge, Tom shut his eyes; he let the chill wind sweep over his face. It carried the smell of fish and muck, but not of the Mahogany.

All the trees they knew were gone; all the distant mountains were masked still by the storm. He opened his eyes and took a deep breath. The breeze rippled the water like wrinkles in dark silk. The way was fair broad, and they passed a wherry. Tom heard a shout in Tek, then another.

He found himself looking up, now, at the bank on one side. Familiar shapes loomed. The sky was brightening behind them, and he thought he could see a crisp, pale blue somewhere, tentative and weak. A smokestack belched black.

Even the shape of the earth had changed.

Tom glanced away, running a hand along his jaw. His gloves were too thick to feel much, and his face was tingling numb; he was oddly grateful.

There was a familiar smell in the air, mingling with the fish and smog and dirty water. A sweet smell, almost, raw and sweet like wine gone bad.

He reached in his pockets, one then the other, but he hadn’t brought any cigarettes. No flask, either. He bit back a curse; he turned, and his eyes found the prefect’s again, and he found a smile, though he couldn’t know if it was a good one. “Is the Turga much like this, Nkemi?”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Pre-Dawn, 38 Vortas 2719
A Barge on the Arova, Uptown to the Dives

The Arova rushed past beneath them, gray-brown-blue streaming clear against the surface, rippling and coursing. Nkemi sat cross-legged at the edge of the barge, with her back against a large gray crate, and watched the river. The wind dipped down to brush her face, crisp and cold; it skimmed the surface of the water, and made dancing patterns all its own. Paddles and boats and poles made waves all their own, an interlocking series of patterns even with the river quiet in the blue-gray pre-dawn glow.

The sky was dark and gray overhead; there was just barely enough light, now, to make out the edges of gray-white clouds from the darker glow of the sky. The stars had gone, already, the few brave ones which had peaked through the light of the city chased away by the morning. Black smoke trickled from one smokestack nearby; across the river, another whooshed heavy gusts of white steam into the air. Something dark trailed into the river from a grate at the edge, swirling and washing away.

Hulali’s waters wash away the past, Nkemi remembered the wise man saying, and guide us to the future. He had had a kind face, and thick curly white hair which sprung out all over his head like a cloud. She had knelt with her mother on the packed earth floor; Nkese had held her hand so hard it had hurt, but Nkemi had not minded. Her father had knelt before them, his head bowed, his hands tight on the white linen of his pants. The wise man had chanted prayers to Hulali as Nkemi’s father poured the haras’turga over his head and let it stream over him onto the dirt below.

Hulali’s waters wash away the past, Nkemi thought now, watching the swirl of darkness until it was gone, and guide us to the future. All water belongs to Hulali; all water is His kindness and His mercy. She took a deep breath it, and let it back out, and lifted her gaze to the rough graystone walls which came between the river and the city.

Hooves clopped across a high bridge over their heads; it rattled with the passage of carriage wheels. There was a distant shout in Tek from the bank above, a loud two-fingered whistle and a wave; someone on another barge waved back, laughing, revealing a glint of yellow-white teeth in the midst of a red beard.

“Yes,” Nkemi said with a smile for Anetol, stronger than the hesitant, uncertain one which quirked his lips and caught, tentatively, at the edges of his eyes. “And, too, no.” Her boots were tucked under her knees, and her hands rested on them. She had not undone the buttons of her coat, even though it was bulged up against her front; her chin was tucked comfortably into her scarf. “It is wider, in most parts. Brighter, too, I think,” Nkemi said, smiling. “The water flows very fast, in the Turga, during the flood season and also the rest of the year. There are stretches where the rivers are as a part of the city, not separate.”

Nkemi took her gloves off, one and then the other; she tucked them away in a pocket of the heavy coat. She reached over the side of the barge, her small hand like a cup; she lifted up a bit of the cold, sharp water, and let it stream over the side of her palm and through her tightly clasped fingers. The wind rippled cold over her hand, and Nkemi shivered and tucked her fingers back into her lap.

She offered Anetol a little grin. “It feels the same,” Nkemi said, cheerfully. “Just colder.” She was quiet, looking around the river; her gaze settled on a not-too-distant dock up ahead, a thin strip of gray stone at the edge of the river, with a winding narrow wooden staircase which rose up from it.

“There is a wise man I met,” Nkemi said, looking back at the water which flowed around the barge. There was so much uncertainty; she did not know what lay ahead this next hour, let alone beyond that; she did not know when she would see the Turga again, with its wide broad streams of water. “He says that in every river there is Hulali’s guidance, flowing through the water.” She looked down at the damp fingers in her lap; she curled and uncurled them, tucking her hand into her pocket to warm it.

The barge was turning, slowly, from the middle of the Arova towards the narrow stretch of dock. Nkemi watched it, and looked back at Anetol again. “We steer as we can,” she said with a little smile; she reached out and took his leather glove in her hand, squeezing gently. The barge bumped up against the dock; a man in the back grunted, his pole clattering against the stone.

Nkemi rose to her feet, still holding Anetol’s hand; she offered him the other as well, and helped him balance as they transferred from the rough wood to the slick stone. The barge pulled away; within moments it was drifting distant through the morning fog, with only ripples of water left behind in its wake.

[Tom Cooke]

A Neighborhood in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

P
art of the city,” grunted Tom. He wasn’t thinking long enough for there to be shame; he took her hands firm, firm as when she’d helped him up from the plot, and he let her help him over onto the stones. Prideful he might’ve been, but no fool. Anatole, even in Nkemi’s soft accent, was no Tom Cooke, and it was with his shaky legs and shivering frame he found his balance on the dock.

His shoe slipped once, and he was grateful for the prefect. His heart leapt, turned over, fluttered away. He blinked and swallowed dryly, sorely; he was holding onto Nkemi’s shoulder, now, and he let her take some of his weight.

When he steadied himself, he patted her arm and looped his through it loosely. Paused to catch his breath. His cheeks were red, and a few more breaths came heavy. He took his hat off, running a hand through his hair, then put it back on.

There were steps yet. He eyed them reluctantly, then cast a glance over his shoulder, at the river.

You don’t want to touch that, ada’na, he’d thought rightaway, when she’d sifted the water through her hands. Seeing her take off her gloves, he couldn’t’ve imagined what she was about to do; nobody in Vienda would’ve done it, anyway, less they had to. Wasn’t like the Rose, where even the benniest bochi grew up with the salt-scent and the cool shifting waters round their ankles, sand and shoal squelching between the toes. Clean and wild.

It feels the same, she had said, cheerfully.

“It’s separate, here,” he mused, looking out over the misty water. “We keep ourselves up, away. Maybe we wouldn’t, if we saw Hulali in it.” The barge was already gone. A wherry drifted down now on a cushion of ripples, small sail ruffled and taut, and it went past this quiet dock without a pause.

His eyes wandered over, down the wharf, where a great pipe jutted and gaped darkness over the water. A little moss tickled down from its mouth, mottled black and stirring with the passage of vessels, with the breeze.

He looked down the river, to where Morley-Ogden sat. The flat, unforgiving face of the rendering house loomed some way up the river. Three or four stories up, the old brick was painted with thick white letters, huddled round the narrow black windows – Nibley & Hazelton Packers – the paint running and mingled with stains.

The smokestack was belching white against the dark sky. When the sky lightened, the smoke would darken. Funny, that.

He followed the tracery of gutters down to the water, darkened by its shadow.

He held fast to Nkemi as they started up the narrow wooden steps. There was a familiar tightness in his chest at the creak of them underfoot. He held close. “We steer as we can,” he added more softly, thinking of how the prefect had squeezed his hand.

Once, they had to stand aside, press themselves fair flat against the railing to let a big natt in a heavy dark coat trundle by. Another barge thumped at the dock, water lapping, as they cleared the wharf; he heard a shout, behind.

With another pat, Tom disentangled his arm from Nkemi’s, rolling his aching shoulders.

These streets were narrower, wetter. Darker. They passed a couple of kov smoking in dark-stained aprons, once, with shiny-slick boots; they fell silent just out of field range, and Tom could feel their eyes on them. Everyone they passed, here, was human.

He was starting to regret his choice of shoe; his feet were aching, and some of the laoso wet had got through to his socks. He had thought – he wasn’t sure what he’d thought – he might use it, use Anatole, to put pressure on the scrap. As it was, he stepped over a puddle, picking up the hem of his coat so it didn’t drag.

The abattoir was further up the river, the stockyards huddled behind it. They went in the opposite direction, a maze of crumbling apartments overlooking the Arova. The smell wasn’t any less bad here. He reached into his pocket again for a smoke, and cursed when there was none. Something, anything – his throat ached – we steer as we can…

He swallowed; he shut his eyes, then opened them. He held onto what he had imagined. “I think they love the river more, where it meets the sea,” he said. He glanced sidelong at Nkemi. “Even Anaxi talk of Hulali, in the Rose.” He managed a little smile.

The tenements pressed close on either side. Closer, piled-up junk, empty broken chairs, in the shadows underneath sagging porticoes. Between shifts, again; not many folk out, but you saw the occasional nattle standing and looking over, blowing out smoke. A thicket of laundrylines empty overhead.

Tom watched the windows, some empty, some dust-caked; the shapes of moth-eaten curtains – pretty lace – other nameless clutter. Flashes of color, sometimes.

Some of the windows he’d’ve sworn were familiar, like from a strange, dark dream. He let Nkemi guide him, here; he did not know where to go, not exactly. It struck him she’d been here more recently than he had. He didn’t think he could feel any hesitation in her step, though he knew she was ready. But what must she think of this? With his poor eyes, it was too dark for him to make out her expression; he couldn’t know.

His hands were shaking. He searched his pockets for a cigarette again, found none. He cast furtive glances upward, to where rickety stairs zig-zagged down from the windows.

He had lived on the fifth floor of one of these. He couldn’t remember which. His eyes skipped from window to window, thinking: was it this one?

This one?

This –

They had stopped, turned, slipped into the shadow of a portico. “Is this the one?” he asked quietly. He tried to keep the anxiety out of his voice; it was rough and clipped. He scowled, as was his wont, squinting about the cluttered colonnade.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

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

Nkemi felt the shift of Anetol’s weight against the spray-dampened stone, felt the moment when the soles of his boots did not catch the rock and he came down hard against her shoulder, clinging to her with one gloved hand. She held very still and patient; she planted herself firm against the slippery stone, and did not move until she felt his hand shift, until she felt him pat her arm. His breath was rough, just a little, a startled sort of worry in it, as if his heart were still racing.

They went up the narrow wooden stairs, twining over the city. The stairs creaked lightly beneath them; they were louder and heavier beneath the human who had passed them. Nkemi glanced over her shoulder more than once, at the drifting of the mist and fog over the water below, the barges and other boats which swam in and out of the distance, and cut their way up or down through the currents, tracing paths of their own design with Hulali’s guidance – whether, she thought, they saw it or not.

At the top of the stairs, Nkemi could still hear Anetol catching his breath. They moved to the side, away from the first steps sharply down from the road, the spot where – coming upon it from the other side – Nkemi had thought it like taking the first steps down a cliff, like pitching forward with little more than the hope that the path would hold.

Nkemi offered Anetol one last smile, encouraging, and they set off. She knew the way from here; she had spent enough time here in Fly’Ash, these last few days. She knew the odd sweet-rotten smell of its slaughterhouse, and the heavy fat flies which she supposed must have given the place its name; they were plentiful enough, certainly. They did no trouble you as you walked, but the moment you stopped they settled upon your skin, crawling slowly, smelling, as if curious why you should be different.

“I have seen the sea only from above,” Nkemi said, smiling at Anetol; she could not but smile, looking at him, and thinking of the brilliant expanse of white-capped blue beneath the ship. She had thought the one before would be her last, but there was a pinched look on Anetol’s face; Nkemi did not know what to call it but frightened, although she knew there was something at the edges of it which frightened did not quite describe. She thought of how he had spoken of the Rose, and it was easy to offer him a little more. “I look forward to meeting it.”

But this was not the time and the place for smiles. Nkemi’s face smoothed out; she found the look she had fitted to it, the one she had learned alongside investigation and law and the use of the baton hanging even now at her waist, beneath the heavy coat. It was a solemn look, intent and careful, and she wore it as she led Anetol through the twisting narrow streets, past the long tall gray buildings with scatterings of windows and more empty holes where windows should have been, with bits of peeping pale green in distant boxes and odd damp brownish moss which slimed along drainpipes, with thin twisting staircases, creaking grayish wood or rusted-red metal.

Nkemi came to a stop at the proper building. She nodded at the question. “The third floor,” Nkemi said, glancing up. There was a glass window, there, faintly streaked; a smudge on it seemed to gleam in glow of the streetlamps. Whatever light they had seen on the river was swallowed up here by the looming buildings; the scant scattered lights still dominated, and the figures which passed were quiet and bundled. They could hear the sounds of the city waking around them, but it was slow and tentative still, eyes just cracking open and bodies only beginning to stir.

Some of the buildings had watchmen. This one did; Nkemi nodded to him and a small dark hand touched his. He glanced away, clearing his throat, and the coin vanished into a pocket. He shifted on his stool, and didn’t look back as they went inside.

The narrow staircase inside was not much sturdier than the one against the outside; Nkemi followed it up step-by-step, trusting Anetol to follow in her footsteps. She stretched a long step over the creaky third stair, and another around the half-rotted spot on the sixth, and in this way there was something for silence. She held on the last landing, glancing around.

“One more up,” Nkemi said, very softly, looking at Anetol. She searched his face for readiness in the dimly lit corridor; what little light filtered in from outside was not enough to see by. She did not know what she saw. “His is the second door on the left. You are ready?” She asked aloud; she didn’t shy from the question. There was a little smile in the warmth of her voice, but it did not show on her face, not even so much as a twitch at the edges of her eyes.

[Tom Cooke]

A Neighborhood in Fly-Ash

Dawn on the 38th of Vortas, 2719

I
t smelled of woodrot and must and things that grew from nothing good. He could hear the low buzzing of flies. There had been a pile of something rotted at the foot of the first staircase; their passage had disturbed a cloud of them, but now they were settling back.

Quiet, almost. Squeezed into the muffled stair, every footfall seemed loud to Tom, every creak, every breath. He could hear his pulse in his ears, rushing like a river. We steer as we can, he thought. Picking up the hem of his coat, he skipped the third step; he had seen Nkemi do the same, he told himself, and tiptoe round the rotted boards on up.

He knew how it would’ve sounded, if his shoe had come down on that step. He remembered the creak. He’d frozen like a deer at the point of an arrow, a knot around his heart. He’d stared about himself at the narrow dark walls, wide-eyed, unable to see.

Alone. Thump, thump, thump, thump, creak, somewhere above. A low voice, a woman’s, turned garbled by the walls and the whistling wind. Somebody coughing, below; the watchman, maybe. A bottle smashing against the floor, filling his mouth with the coppery taste of fear.

He had stood pressing his violent-trembling hands still. He had fumbled in his patchy pockets for the battered box of cigarettes –

He felt round in his pockets again, but there were no cigarettes, no flask; there hadn’t been, all morning. All morning. He looked up, to where the gloomy light was broken up by the bundled figure a few steps up.

His fingertips were brushing the wall at one side for balance. The wood was rough; he could feel splinters through the thick leather. He shut his eyes, pausing to catch his breath. At intervals, his field was scattered with sour tangs of fear, mottled yellow-shift. He tried to steady himself on the prefect’s caprise.

They did not stop on the first landing; if they had, he didn’t know he’d’ve been able to climb further. Some light trickled in from above, through a crack in the boards. It limned her face, danced in her dark eyes. Concentration was painted on every pane of her small face; her mouth was set.

She moved forward with a cat’s grace, quiet and whipcord even in her heavy coat. She forged on up the second flight, then the third.

Setting his jaw and pressing his lips thin, he followed. His feet ached in his wet socks, his Uptown shoes. His head ached. He did not waste any more time looking for cigarettes or whisky, when there were none to be found.

On the last landing, she turned to him. There wasn’t enough light here to see by, but there was some, he thought, warming her voice. The question raised his hackles, prickled hot shame in his cheeks, for all he knew that to say ‘yes’ would be a lie.

“We steer as we can, Nkemi,” he replied, with a grim twist of a smile he knew she couldn’t see. He nodded once, brusquely, then kicked himself into motion.

The third floor corridor was as quiet as the staircase. He saw it rightaway, the second door. It was the glint in the dark – just a tiny bead of light – a peephole affixed to the door, where the rest had none. As Nkemi approached, he glanced uneasily at the dirty boards, searching the shadows for a tray.

There was none; it was early yet. But when would it come? He hadn’t thought to ask Nkemi what she’d seen.

Tom held a ways behind and to the side, squinting through the dark. He could barely see Nkemi’s fist raise to the door, a shadow flitting in the shadows. He heard it, the tap, tap, brief and soft.

He was aware of a smell – an unwashed fug, sour sweat – creeping from nowhere in particular, from any one of the dark doors that crouched down the hall. From all of them, maybe, or from the air itself, remembering the passage of bodies. It was familiar; he breathed it, in and out, and tried to settle himself in it.

He did not settle. The smell troubled him; that it troubled him disturbed him. It felt like all the grime of this place had settled on his skin like a film of sweat, and he shivered in it and breathed into his scarf. He was itching for a bath, he realized, when he got back Uptown.

He was grateful not to have to think too hard on it. The door jerked open a crack, deadbolt rattling. A bar of light leaked out into the corridor, illuminating drifting motes of dust.

A pale face in the crack, pale and scattered with freckles. Haggard, hollow cheeks and pale lips. A familiar face. One blue iris caught icy pale from the side. A dusting of red hair.

He didn’t say anything, for that splitsecond. Tom watched as his the eye fixed on Nkemi, then flicked down, somewhere round her belt.

And widened.

The door slammed on its hinges, shaking the frame. Tom stepped up beside Nkemi; he could hear quick footsteps creaking on the other side. A shuffle of something like books, a crackle of papers, and a cascade of wheezes.

Then a heavy hoarse scrape.

Tom started, because he knew that sound. He knew the feel of the splintering wood underneath his shaking hands. Pushing the window open for a breath of fresh cold air, a smoke – some refuge from the close stinking air even in Achtus. There was a distinctive clatter where these windows came up unevenly, the wood having shrunk with the cold.

“He’s going out – up –” Tom broke off, darting a glance down the hall, back to Nkemi. “He’ll be headed for the roof,” he breathed; “there’s nowhere else he can go.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

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

Nkemi could feel the faint tingles of fear of through Anetol’s field, just at the edges of her range; in the dim indoor light the yellow-shift of the air around them was barely visible, a fleeting glimpse at the corner of her eye there and gone on his breath. She felt it in her caprise, tangling with the warm soft mona of her field. She did not push it out and away; she let it wash through her field and out, accepting it and letting it flow away, rather than tensing against it.

The last staircase was quiet; there was one board which creaked and that one, too, Nkemi avoided; Anetol followed her around the far edges of it, on the narrow bits of more solid wood. Nkemi eased apart the buttons of her coat; she flexed her hands, cupping them at her mouth and exhaling her warmth onto them. She flexed her fingers again, against the stiffness of the cold.

Slowly, Nkemi stepped up to the doorway and knocked, soft and easy.

The door opened; a pale shaft of light tumbled through, catching Nkemi’s face. She felt it in one eye, pale and soft, not sharp enough to hurt. She shifted; one thumb hooked in her waistband. “Good morning, sir,” Nkemi said, politely.

The face that looked out at her was sharp and pale, with the same sour-yellow-fear feeling. A bloodshot blue eye flicked over her, flicked down –

“I have come regarding – ” Nkemi continued, her voice low and soothing and even, not so different from how she might have coaxed a scared goat’s hoof from a hole -

The eye widened –

It was just enough warning. Nkemi’s hand was on the baton, then; she jerked the edge of it out at waist-height, jamming the slim wood into the opening. The door slammed shut against it, hard enough to rattle the frame, and jerked open again, caught at the edge of the chain. The door was made of sturdy, heavy wood, with its little peephole, too heavy to move. Through the sliver of an opening she could see the edges of a rough wooden table, scattered yellow papers across it, a sturdy-enough chair pushed half-back.

Nkemi inhaled, deeply; the static mona in her field warmed through as she began to cast, softly, her gaze fixed on the small chain. She inclined her head once at Anetol’s comment and did not break the rhythm of her cast; her hand slipped the baton out of her belt, and wrapped the leather thong at the end of it around her wrist, settling it in place.

The mona responded quickly and eagerly; the chain holding the door shut shuddered. The edges of it crackled and spun silver; frost formed. The air around her and Anetol warmed, all the heat that the mona had pulled out shivering out into the air, a brief flicker of warmth.

The chain shattered.

“Take the inside stairs up,” Nkemi told Anetol; she did not bother with a sir or a polite deference, but she flashed a quick glance at him, a tiny little nod. The prefect jammed her shoulder against the door and thrust through it; she was running, then, boots thudding against the wooden floor. There was the flash of a pants hem and a bare foot at the top of the rusted metal stairs out the window. Nkemi ducked through it and climbed out onto the twisted bare metal.

The opposite wall was close enough to touch with the edge of her baton, if she reached out; the staircase was already creaking and groaning beneath the weight of the bookseller as he clattered above her. She could hear his breath barely audibly over her own, his panting and gasping as heavy steps shook the metal frame.

Nkemi’s own were not so heavy. She raced up the thin narrow metal stairs, quick and even, avoiding the jagged scrapes of rusted-through metal, baton in hand. She was gaining on him, on the tangled red curls half-caught by the growing light; it was still dark down below, but the dawn glow was catching on the rooftop, all through gray with a tinge shading blue to pink before their eyes.

He was stumbling by the end; Nkemi caught side of a shaky thin hand blue with cold, gripping the edge of the roof as he threw himself over.

“Stop!” Nkemi called. She was on the last of the steps too, and then she was over them, and on to the roof as well, the large flat space of it. Gray sheets whipped side to side in the wind. Nkemi froze, just a moment, her breath catching, shuddering still at the edge of it, and then she was running again, following him through sheets and potted plants with scraggly gray-green leaves, around brick chimneys and pots for rainwater.

“Stop!” Nkemi called, again, more forcefully this time.

Rolls

Freezing the door chain: SidekickBOTToday at 10:52 AM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (6) = 6