[PM to Join] Gains the More it Gives

[Tom Cooke]

Old Marlingspike Bridge • Over the Arova

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

F
or a time he can’t say, all is the pup’s panting and a warm tongue lashing at his face. He’s laughing, now, earnest. Nkemi’s field laps against his, gold-shift brimming; over his own deep laughter he hears a giggle like a bell. Then, almost-but-not-quite brigk: snap snap – a firm hand clasped in his.

She says something in Mugrobi. Saua, o’oja, he hears, soft as silk. The syllables all lilting and blending together.

The pup’s attention is elsewhere. In one smooth motion, he lets her pull him to his feet. Still laughing, he dusts his coat off; he’s not sure why, seeing as there’s mud all over his hems, and paw-prints marked clear on his trousers. That’ll stain, he thinks, then: good. It’s not as if he doesn’t have a wardrobe full of drab trousers and waistcoats and frocks; it’s not as if Anatole’s coat hasn’t been to the drycleaner before, and with worse than this on it.

He watches Nkemi’s gloved finger trace through the curly white hair at the pup’s flank, nodding. “You’re right,” he says, remembering the dogs in Voedale and Redwine, hounds of the Yard. Not so well-fed as the banderwolves he remembers Hawke keeping, the few times he was dubiously privileged with a trip to the Palace.

“Not an easy life,” he murmurs, reaching down to play with a velvety ear; he shifts it aside, finds the line of an old scar through the fur there. “But somebody here cares for him. A scar can mean somebody’s loved enough to be kept afloat.”

His brow furrows, but when he looks up and meets Nkemi’s eye, it’s with as warm a smile as he can put to this face.

He runs a hand over the pup’s back, then – experimentally – gives it a good, pat pat. Harder than he’s patted a cat, but the dog doesn’t seem to mind. That tail goes on wagging; so does the erse, and both hind legs. “Ah, nanabo,” he laughs, taken again by surprise.

They come up off the steps, into the sparse crowd round this side of the bridge. The gatehouse is still teeming with demand, and the air still smells sticky-sweet and warm, with its faint citrus tinge. Tom’s lost his cup of wine, he realizes, he’s not sure where; still more surprising is the realization he doesn’t much care.

More than anything, it was for the sight of the orange in Nkemi’s cup, and her first sip. The thought warms him.

Once, he was tall enough to see over all these heads, he thinks, or at least most of them; now, it’s a forest. “Searching for one lad in this would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

As they draw onto the bridge proper, flowing with the crowd, the pup trots behind; he can occasionally feel a snuffling nose butt the backs of his legs. How do you find a needle in a haystack?

“We’ve got a magnet, at least, whether we wanted one or not,” he says, with a wry grin sideways. “I’ve got a feeling that by the end of tonight, the lad may find us.”

All is color, even in dreary Ophus. Like King’s Court all year, he thinks. Strings of lanterns lining the way, a forest of tents and walkways. He feels the brush of a glamour as they pass a juggler with a fire-red beard. The sights and smells are almost overwhelming; they’re almost as thick as the mist.

Close by, he sees it – his heart clenches. He drifts closer; the dog is butting his head between them, and he buries his fingers in his rough curly hair absently, playing again with one soft ear.

A woman’s voice drifts up round a tambourine, courts the deft and skilful pump of an accordion. A loose circle of people – mostly natt; it’s a whirl of skirts and scuffed boots, of glinting eyes and laughter – turning haphazardly, looped arm-in-arm.

“One,” calls a woman’s voice, heavy-accented, “two, thrrrree!” trilling the R like a bird.

They break apart into couples; they break apart into beautiful, colorful, familiar chaos.

“Madame,” purrs a voice, stealing his attention.

He breaks into a grin. A young natt, can’t be much older than twenty – and not much taller than either of them, with a strong-boned-but-gangly look – has approached. His long, soot-dusted face has the look of a ne’er-do-well; his dark eyes glitter. They sweep over both the prefect and the incumbent, his eyebrows raising.

But he passes into their fields undeterred, and bows deeply to both of them. When he rises, he offers both hands to Nkemi. “‘Ave a dance, rosh?” he asks, grinning a challenge.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Old Marlingspike Bridge, The Dives

Nkemi thinks of scars, and she thinks too of the furrow of Anetol’s brows, over the warm smile on his face. She smiles back at him, and nods her agreement, thinking of the neat seam along the white dog’s ear, the scattered patches of skin where scars interrupt the fur, and the glossy clean curls. Anetol is growing comfortable with the dog, his pats firmer.

Nanabo, he says.

Nkemi follows Anetol deeper into this place he has wished to show her, unafraid. She feels the nudge of a warm heavy body and occasionally the thwack of a tail against her calves, and sometimes she reaches down her hand, and a nose thrusts against the palm of her gloves.

Searching for one lad, Anetol says, thoughtful, and Nkemi looks up at him in surprise, and then down at the dog. She does not tell him that dogs have a knack of finding their way home; that they, like many animals, are much better at that than people. She thinks instead of a worried little boy who has cared enough to weave matching bracelets for himself and the dog, who surely could eat whatever scraps he manages to set aside or spend his meager earnings elsewhere.

“That is true,” Nkemi agrees, cheerfully, when Anetol calls the dog a magnet. She giggles. “There are not very many so handsome,” she tells the dog. He wags his tail all the harder, and it wriggles through the whole of him.

The crowds are busy, packed tight between glowing bobbing lanterns of more colors than Nkemi can name. They cast a dizzying patchwork of light on the patchwork tents; bits of fabric stretched and sewn together, every one different, and each color in the tapestry given its own shade by the light of one, two, or even three lanterns, all pooling together on the fabric surface. Nkemi drinks it in, and the raised voices and all the laughter, and even though their breath clouds the air, it is not cold, not in the midst of this crowd.

Anetol turns; he turns, as if someone has reached out and grabbed hold of him and dragged him along. Nkemi follows, wide-eyed, and they near the drifting music. The men and women step together – break apart, and come together again, flashes of whirling color beneath the lantern lights, skirts swirling wide. They are all moving as one; they are, each couple, moving along. It is brilliant, and chaotic, and reminds Nkemi of Thul Ka as nothing else in Vienda has.

Nkemi looks up in wide-eyed surprise at the man that calls her madam. She giggles, and grins at him, and it doesn’t fade when he comes close enough to realize, and his eyebrows lift. He bows, and Nkemi bows as well, politely. She grins at Anetol, and settles her hands in the human’s, utterly unafraid. "Yes," Nkemi says, cheerfully. Rosh; she knows this word, by now. "Thank you!"

They leap forward into the dancers. Nkemi is laughing; the steps are not too difficult. Their hands go up, and come down; she turns to the side, when he does, and sets her hands in those of the man next to them, another human, clean-shaven; Nkemi comes to the height of his chest. There is a moment of blankness on his face, but Nkemi lifts her hands as the others are doing, and he startles, and does so as well, and then the human who offered her to dance is there once more, taking her hands, and they wind deeper into the crowd.

Nkemi is breathless with the joy of it. She has forgotten; she has very nearly forgotten. The dance steps team with life all around her.

The music changes; the dance changes, too, like life drifting through the day, like the markets growing slower and sleepier in the late afternoon, but still lively. The human is laughing too; Nkemi wonders if they all are, although she can’t hear much of it over the sound of the music.

They are making a chain; all the dancers are drawing in more and more people from the crowd, making a big wide circle which goes in, and out, and in, and out. He swings her out, and in, and out again, but Nkemi has dragged him over, just enough, and her hand settles, quite firmly, against Anetol’s. She grins at him, and tugs him back into the crush of dancers with her, and they are snugly against one another and against all the humans around, and they all come together – they all lift up –

And then they swing back out again, as one, and drift apart once more, a little lighter for the doing.

[Tom Cooke]

Old Marlingspike Bridge • Over the Arova

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

T
he toft is grinning, and so is Nkemi, when they whisk back off into the dance. He watches them join the colorful whirl with a grin of his own – if it’s pinched with worry, it’s easing off. There are startled glances, dancers who skitter their partners away, picking up skirts and stumbling in flashes of lacy pale.

But there are more startled smiles, more incredulous laughs. It’s a spectacle like any other, this night. Galdori milling about, watching – oes, sometimes. But joining the dance? The lad has made a good move, bringing the brigk into the fray: they’ll speak of it for years, the Mugrobi galdor with the beaming smile and the baton at her waist, throwing up her arms with the nattle.

Nkemi has disappeared into the whirl, though he thinks he can sometimes see the flash of a familiar scarf, lit violet by all the lamps.

There was a time, once, he’d’ve joined them. The lasses all wanted to dance with him, once. He remembers, running his hands through pup’s curly crown.

A lady’s dark hand in his, swallowed up by his – when he was young, before there were so many scars. Her red curve of a smile, her seafoam-green eyes. He learned something that night, but it was not a bad sort of learning, for all it was bittersweet. He thinks of it, watching a tall gangly natt stick his feet of clay in the rhythm, a towheaded lass laughing with both her hands in his.

The pup, plopping down on its haunches at his calf, lets out a low whistle of a wine and licks its chops.

He stretches to pat the curly flank again. “Boemo, lad,” he says, “boemo,” and watches the pup fidget, tail flipping madly.

When he looks up, the pup slips his grasp and plunges into the whirl. They’ve made a line, then a circle, swelling outward. Pup darts between a lady’s clogs; he hears, ooh! sees her stumble and pick up her hems, the chain broken.

He doesn’t remember this part of the dance. He wonders if it’s all Vienda. That’s the macha of it, maybe, the patchwork quilt; it’s not Bastian or Anaxi or Mugrobi, it’s not a gkacha. The bombing was in Hamis, Serro’s long dead, the green bolder and bolder, natt disappearing right and left – and here we are, coming up with new ways to dance.

He stands at the edges, his eyes full of mist and lights. He’s outside the cycle; he has no thought of joining it. But then, the chain shifts, and he sees the flash of familiar eyes, and a glove settles into his –

And pulls him into the crush. They move in, and out. Nkemi’s on his right, the lad from earlier on hers; he feels a small, gloveless hand in his left, and the stirring of skirts at the hem of his coat. He looks over once and meets the towhead lass’ cornflower-blue eyes; they’re wide, at first, but then she smiles and laughs. Her face is flushed. She giggle-snorts.

Being plastered, he suspects, helps.

This is the tail end of the dance, though there’ll be another soon. They lull; they break apart, drift. He finds both his hands in Nkemi’s. They’re warm through the gloves.

He’s still aloft on it. Lifted up above the crowd; floating, not like a ghost but like a cloud. Not seeking warmth – warm. Warm, buoyant-warm, spreading warmth, radiating warmth. Not grasping after life; full of it, from the very insides.

“Mujo ma, beata,” he laughs, breathless.

He can hardly hear that voice of his over the rush of his pulse in his ears. He’s half dizzy; all is a glow. He remembers something, faint and distant – not with his mind, but with his feet, with his hands. Firm-playful as she brought him into the fray, he raises an arm and twirls her.

“Are there dances like this in Thul Ka?” Again, he feels a wiry, furry little body weave between their legs. He breaks one hand away, reaches for a palmful of snuffling nose.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

Nkemi feels Anetol’s field twine with hers, bastly. They are almost all humans in the dance; this, she has noticed, although mostly she has given herself over to the rush of the music and the steps. She has let the current sweep her along, dunked her head beneath the water and emerged to the soft mist of pale, yellow light, streaming over her.

The circle swings back out and breaks apart. Nkemi is giggling, half-breathless; the human bows lightly to her and goes, and she does not think to look for him. She turns to Anetol to see him smiling, bright and breathless, radiant, as she has never seen him. There is an impression left in her mind, of a garden full of colors, the tinkling chimes of glass, and the sound of warm laughter drifting through humid air, but it is no more than a flash.

Nkemi takes Anetol’s other hand in hers; she drifts them to the edge of the crowd. Everyone is milling about, now; the musicians are laughing, somewhere distant, the woman who was singing is laughing, with the faintest hoarse edge to it, and accepts a cup from someone with a broad, red-lined smile.

Anetol lifts his arm; Nkemi spins with her motion of his hand, and falls into giggles again. He says something that looks like domea, but – she knows it for mujo ma, a bit of Tek she remembers, easily, because of the way the words could almost be the same on the lips. Beata, he says, too, an unfamiliar word.

The man with the big pump has let it settle down against his lap, but he is still tapping a tambourine against his leg, a slow rattle-shake of chimes that sets the whole crowd to dancing. Nkemi sways with it; she is warm and comfortable inside the wrapping up of her coat, as she cannot remember having been for a long time.

“Not too different,” Nkemi says happily. The little dog is tired of being left out; he twines comfortably between their legs, steps on her boot with one damp paw. Nkemi giggles, and rubs her free hand over his rump. A vibrant tail starts up, thwapping between their legs, and not remotely in time with the tambourine.

“There are dances in the streets, sometimes, at night,” Nkemi says, smiling. She thinks of a festival in Slowwater she saw once, of enormous crowds jostling and dancing in brightly painted costumes; she thinks of the dances and parties which emerge sometimes as if on their own at the edges of Windward Market, at the end of the day when the desert has cooled off, when the heat still lingers on packed dirt streets.

“We prefer drums,” Nkemi says with a little grin up at him. “You will never see any dancing in Mugroba but with drums! On the equinox, of course. And there is the festival of Maltalaan, at the beginning of Bethas, which is a celebration of Hulali and His waters, a time of gift-giving and festivals before the rainy season. It is not – in Dkanat, it is a small thing, but we would have a feast, and – ”

Nkemi grins, suddenly, losing the faint moroseness which had clouded her face, sun-bright instead, “we do not have a proper river, in Dkanat,” she tells Anetol, giggling again, “so we use barrels of water instead, for the offerings, and drop in food and stones. At night, there is dancing, but it is to drumming, to heavy rhythms like the crashing of the water through a river in the rainy season.” Nkemi’s eyes flutter shut, remembering, and open again.

“Once, when I was a girl, we spent Maltalaan in Thul Ka,” Nkemi adds, quiet and a little dreamy. “I had never – ” she is smiling, still, but there are little tears prickling in the edges of her eyes. She squeezes Anetol’s hand with hers; she glances around, at the humans still drifting through, at the edges of laughter and the sharp smell of spiced wine.

“Thank you,” Nkemi adds, quietly. “This was very precious to me.”

[Tom Cooke]

Old Marlingspike Bridge • Over the Arova

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

T
here’s a rhythm, still, with the tambourine. Nkemi is swaying; the light glances off the gold in her scarf, glitters in her eyes. He feels it in himself, despite the frenetic thump of the tail, the tongue lapping out every chance it gets. He’s swaying, too; not so high as he was, not soaring, but hovering a little above the crowd, their smoking breath wreathed with lanternlight gold, gold in his lungs.

Even in the lull, it’s hard to hear. They drift further, the dog trotting along beside them. He bends his head closer to hers, his face losing some of its glowing mirth; he listens and watches, rapt.

Just as much of it, he thinks, in all the things that cross her face – wordless – than in the words themselves. Dances in the streets, she says: she doesn’t describe them, not in full, but there’s something passes across her eyes, passes over her smile like a cloud. He thinks she must be seeing colors, in her mind’s eye. He feels something, too, briefly, prickling at the corners of his mind: dozens of them, swirling brilliant just out of sight, over the edge of the canyon.

And drums. He brightens when she does. That strange ipi’wu feeling is gone.

He thinks he knows something of this, at least, living in the Fords for a decade. Pina Maltalaan, Ishma used to call it. Wasn’t quite derision in his voice; he heard more the echo of wanting and missing. He still remembers it, different from the Bastian dances he grew up with, the drums shaking the stones all the way down to the Mahogany.

He never understood the why of it, before, throwing benny things in the water. Trade never stops in the Harbor, though, and now he knows more of Mugroba, he understands.

Nkemi’s face shines with it.

It falters, speaking of Dkanat, but brightens, quick enough. Barrels of water for the offerings; drums for the crashing of the river. Making dances with what you have, the patchwork quilt. Even among galdori.

He remembers the way she lifted her eyebrows at, it must have been something; he’s conscious – he holds that breath – but she speaks of Thul Ka as a girl now with a smile gone misty, with a glittering in her eyes. He’s no longer floating, but he’s suffused with this.

She squeezes his hand. He squeezes hers back. Gently, remembering how quick and warm she’d looped her arm through his, he disentangles their fingers; he walks closer, with an arm around her and that hand just brushing her shoulder.

“Precious to me to share it, Nkemi,” he says warmly. He sees her looking round them; he looks up, too, and his eyes skim all the natt and nattle, bright-dyed cotton and rough wool, glowing smiles on tired faces.

He doesn’t wonder, for once, what she sees. He thinks he knows; he thinks, at least, it’s not too far from what he sees – at least, in the ways that matter – and he’s ready to be content with that, tonight.

A tear prickles in his eye. He laughs through it, wiping it away with a gloved finger. “I spend so much time Uptown, I forget how much I miss it,” he says softly. “The balls there – the champagne’s good, but I’m no hand at waltzing, not really. I’ve had tutors, these past few months; dance and singing. None of it means so much to me as this, the kind of dancing you can feel. It’s the closest thing here to home.”

It surprises him, how close to the truth he's come. It does not disturb him.

Without realizing it, he’s felt a flank press warm against his side some time now. Now, he sees the pup on her side, tail still wagging, tongue still lolling.

“Thank you,” he says again, more softly. “Maltalaan is celebrated in Vienda, too, though I’ve never seen it, with the convention at Brunnhold in early Bethas. Ada’na Ota, the dzotun at Dzechy’úqi, is one of the organizers,” he offers. “But they’re always looking for extra hands.”

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

This is a place full of color and light; even as they drift further from the dancing, and the colorful skirts swirling all around, the way the dancers twined together, everyone following their own path and yet together as a whole. Anetol’s arm wraps around her shoulder, and his hand settles just against her, and Nkemi leans gratefully into him, just a little, as they make their way onward.

Behind them, the tambourine shakes more vigorously; behind them, there is a swell of words and laughter into the air, and the shift-stomp of feet.

The kind of dancing you can feel, Anetol calls it. The closest thing here to home. Nkemi knows, now, even if she cannot remember, what home means to Anetol, just as he knows, now, whatever he may remember, what home means to her. If she does not understand it, that is all right; perhaps it does not need understanding.

Nkemi has seen waltzing; she is not sure what she thinks of it. The Anaxi balls do not feel much like parties to her; she thinks of two straightbacked people clasped together, spinning in a slow circle, glittering beneath the lights. The kind of dancing you can feel; Nkemi is not sure she understands, but she feels, all the same, something of what he means.

“Oh,” Nkemi says, wide-eyed, like a little gasp. Anetol has understood too. She smiles; she smiles so brightly that the tears she had not let herself feel glitter in the edges of her eyes. They do not fall; they do not quite need to. But they are like a release, and they spill out of her, and the ache she had not known she felt spills out too, and Nkemi wraps her arm around Anetol’s side, comfortable and easy, and feels the warm brush of an enthusiastic little white dog against her legs.

“Thank you,” Nkemi says again, firmly, and there is no more lump in her throat. “I will speak with Ada’na Ota,” she remembers her well from Dzechy’úqi; she cannot quite imagine a Viendan maltalaan, but she understands now that she does not need to, not alone.

They are making their way down another little narrow alley, pinched close together by the draping of arms and by the crowd all around. They are not the only ones walking so; there are many others, some who are swaying back and forth to a breeze only they feel, others who touch only hands but do so with a careful intensity more intimate than any fuller contact.

There are smells drifting from the colorful booths down this alley; they have found a place where food is served, Nkemi realizes. There are small hot-looking dough bits; a boy nearby bites, greedily, into one, and Nkemi can see something dark inside, like meat. There are skewers sizzling, hot meat and vegetables strung one next to the other on a stick; there is a small white dog who whines, softly, at Nkemi’s ankles.

Nkemi giggles. She slips Anetol’s arm; she goes and comes back with a skewer the length of her forearm, having exchanged it for a coin with the help of a bright smile. Nkemi pulls off a chunk of a soft white vegetable with a curved green skin; she blows on it, and eats it. She pulls off another chunk, some dark meat, blows on it, and drops it from her fingertips; it is gone before it hits the ground, snatched up in a hungry mouth.

“Would you like some?” Nkemi offers Anetol the skewer as well; she is steering them towards the edge of the crush, towards a quieter spot on the edge of a stoop, where it will be easier to manage the skewer. It is not quite dark, there, nor quite quiet, but it could almost be; it is at the edge of a lapping pool of pale yellow light, and in it Anetol’s red hair is brightly orange. She crouches comfortably on the step; the dog rests his chin on her leg and gazes longingly at the skewer, and Nkemi eats a piece of bright red capsicum for herself, and sets another bit of meat down for the dog.

“Beyata,” Nkemi says, remembering, smiling at him. “What does it mean, Anetol?”

[Tom Cooke]

Old Marlingspike Bridge • Over the Arova

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

N
kemi’s arm is warm around him. They’re looped together, wiry galdori piled up in warm wool, breath steaming on the air. He’s grateful for that bright smile edged with glittering; he’d been afraid it was a presuming, to speak of ada’na Ota and the atú’dzeki council’s endeavors to somebody who might’ve already known of them. He’s grateful to have shared it, stranger to stranger in a strange place.

Strange, how weeks ago she found him in an alley not unlike this one; strange how it’s teeming now with murmurs, laughter, close quiet smiles and the hiss-sizzle of frying things. Not as many lamps, here, and the light’s mostly what drifts out of the stalls. It limns the steam, the shapes of people intertwined.

Smells drift out, with the light and the steam. Pup’s whinging.

As Nkemi disentangles herself from him, giggling, he watches a cook with more scars than a Brother dance from place to place. The whole of him speaking a language cobbled together from years of this qalqa – a slight flourish, as he sweeps out like lightning with a tray full of of browned, sticky, sugar-dusted somethings – and then back again.

Nearby, a tyat-looking lass with a sprawl of tattoos feeds one to a blushing nattle. Smiling, he glances away, finds the purple scarf bobbing at a distance. With pup at her feet, she’s just turning away with a great skewer stuffed with colors; when she rejoins him, pup craning upward with hungry eyes, he grins. Pup inhales the tidbits she drops, and he finds his stomach’s growling, too.

“Thank you,” he says brightly.

They come to a seat in the quiet, in light that turns pup’s curls to a silvery ghost’s. She’s offered him the stick. Lowering himself to the edge of the stoop beside her with a grunt, taking off his gloves, he pulls off a charred bit of steak.

The head in Nkemi’s lap shifts, craning itself over a little more. A pair of eyes is looking up at him. Underneath its curly white fur, it raises its eyebrows. As if to say, I don’t know about you, kov, but I don’t think it’d hurt, do you?

Something about it reminds him so much of a person he snorts.

He’s pulling apart the tender, red-tinged meat with his fingers. With another laugh, he gives a strip to pup, then another – then, sighing, the whole thing.

He grins at Nkemi. Wiping his fingers off on the hem of his coat, he takes a piece of deep green bell pepper from the skewer instead.

At her question, he glances up. Beata, she pronounces, hanging carefully between the e and the a. Handling his name just as carefully. His name? He smiles, pleasantly surprised. His mouth is full of pepper; it takes him some time to chew, swallow, ruminate on the thought.

“Beata,” he pronounces back, smile gone crooked. “It means, ah – sister.” He raises his brows.

Like – he glances off, down the alley, where the light from the thoroughfare leaks through slowly-moving silhouettes. Like… He can’t think of the word in Mugrobi; it surprises him, for how much time he’s spent around Mugrobi, now.

But it’s not a language used round Anaxi, at least not by diplomats, and when humans speak it, the words come so fast and fluid he can barely pick out one or another.

“I don’t know of a word like it in Estuan,” he goes on, reaching to pet pup’s head. “It’s a term of endearment.”

Pup yawns, showing a red mouth and sharp teeth glinting white. His chops snap shut; he licks his lips, then settles his head back on Nkemi’s knees.

His eyes drift shut, though his little tail is wagging his erse back and forth, still. As if pretending to sleep all casual-like’ll net him another bit of steak. He runs his hand through the messy white curls again, scratching behind the ears.

He’s grateful for her open-eyed, open-faced curiosity about his Tek; he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. “Have you known many spokes, Nkemi?” he asks.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

Anetol is no better at resisting the pup’s wiles than Nkemi is. She is rubbing a soft flank of fur; the pup gobbles up greedily another bit of meat, and lets out a pleased sort of huff, licking his lips. His tail still wags, but it is a lazy sort of thumping now, steady, no longer quite so urgent.

Nkemi eases of another bit off something – aubergine, this one, she realizes. She knows it by the texture; it is soft and smoky and tries to come apart in her fingers. She eats it, savoring the half-charred flavor, the pale the pale white flesh tries to fall off the skin.

“Beatah,” Nkemi tries again, carefully, smiling at Anetol. She is busy with the pronunciation, and it takes a moment for the meaning to catch up with her. Her eyes widen a little, when it does, and she offers Anetol a bright smile, and the line of the skewer once more. “Poa’na,” Nkemi offers. “Or poa’xa, for your brother. We say it only for someone who is a true treasure of your heart. I am sure you know adame, by now?”

Nkemi is not sure where on this line beata falls; she wishes to know a little more. The word has warmed through her; she has never heard him speak like this before. She has never heard any Anaxi galdor speak like this before, but she does not ask; she understands well enough not to need to.

Anetol’s hand is busy in her lap; he is scratching the dog behind the ears, and the dog’s long white tail has picked up its pace with delight, enough that his hindquarters are wriggling against Nkemi. He is not fooling either of them with those shut eyes, Nkemi thinks, and the next piece of meat she sets down is snapped up as quickly as the first.

He has learned the knack of it, Nkemi thinks, the way a dog likes to be pet. She thinks he came at it like someone who has not pet many dogs; she wonders if he has pet other animals. Cats like a softer, gentler stroke; cats like to decide the strength of it. Goats are more like dogs, but Nkemi has found a brushing motion works best, and scratches, sometimes, as well. There are no firm rules, not really; each dog and cat and goat knows what he likes best.

Nkemi wriggles off a bit of lighter-colored meat; it is chicken, she thinks, from the smell. She is chewing busily at it when Anetol asks his question, and she smiles at him around the mouthful, offering him the skewer once more.

“Some, yes, in Dkanat,” Nkemi says, cheerfully. “There are desert tribes who wander, still; there are some caravans which are wick-run, who trace the journey from Dkanat to the river. There are some who come to the edges of Thul Ka, although my work does not take me to the outermost markets very often. I know mostly tsat.”

Nkemi shifts; she looks up at Anetol, and she offers him a gift. “When I was a girl,” Nkemi says, fishing a piece of a vegetable she does not know from the skewer, and studying it, “a tribe of spokes would appear, sometimes, as if from nowhere. One day there would be nothing; the next day, like a half-city a stone’s throw from Dkanat, all camel-hair tents and strange songs and smells.” Nkemi smiles at the memory, but it flickers; it fades.

“Some tribes are welcome,” Nkemi says, glancing up at Anetol. “Some are not.” She is rubbing the dog’s flanks once more; he shifts, and groans, panting softly, and lifts his chin pleading once more, eyes lingering on the stick.

“To us they would speak Mugrobi,” Nkemi continues, “and to each other Tek.” She pops the vegetable into her mouth; she is still not sure what it is, but she likes it nonetheless.

Nkemi is not sure he understands, still, what life is like in a place like Dkanat. She does not blame him. None of the friends she has made in Thul Ka understand either; there are some she has met from other distant, farflung places, and sometimes – between them – there are brief flickers of moments, of shared understanding. She does not try very often to explain, anymore; she has learned too well that it only leads to more confusion, to strange ideas which do not seem to her to bear any resemblance to what she has said.

It must have been something, she remembers Anetol saying.

She has offered him this gift anyway, orange-tinged, watching the drifting smoke and steam from the food tents. The light streams through them in wavy, fragmented colors; they are close enough that talk and laughter is a steady backdrop to their conversation, rising and falling like the ocean waves.

The pup has lost succumbed to his own playacting; he lets out a little snore from her knee, shifts and settles more. Nkemi smiles down at him, and at Anetol. Beatah, she thinks, and wishes to remember the word.

[Tom Cooke]

Old Marlingspike Bridge • Over the Arova

Evening on the 10th of Ophus, 2719

A
dame,” he repeats. “Poa’na, poa’xa” – he tries each word carefully, shutting his eyes to feel out the syllables, to give them the fullness of his mind; he’s smiling softly when he opens them – “I’ve heard these words, but I didn’t know their meanings. Or – how they were used.”

I know star, he thinks, I know lightning, but I never knew brother, sister – friend. He grasps at something, a memory; he puzzles through it a little more, but Nkemi is offering him the skewer, and he pulls off a plump, glistening bit of mushroom gladly.

And listens. Her voice is cheerful enough, but there’s something in it, something in the hints of elsewhere in her fluid, sonorous accent.

Desert tribes. Hama tried to show him, knowing that seeing was never much his qalqa – to show him through the patchwork of tastes and smells, dzitú and goat stew, songs remembered from when he was a lad. Wick-run caravans, she mentions again, and again, he swallows a lump. He’s glad she isn’t looking at him, for that moment; he’s not sure what haunts this face.

He has a smile for her when she looks back up from the skewer, however briefly. When I was a girl settles in his chest; the bastly has softened in his field, the gold tilting warm like an afternoon, and he feels a pulse of gratitude.

The pale yellow light sparks orange in the gold threaded through her headcloth; it glints in her eyes.

Now, Nkemi’s studying a wedge of seared, mustard-smelling parsnip in her fingers through a fringe of lashes. He watches her profile, illuminated softly with yellow light.

Some are welcome; some are not. He catches her glance. He thinks he understands what she means, in this at least. There are always unwelcome tribes.

It still tickles at his mind, the thought; he wonders how you make yourself unwelcome in a place like Dkanat. Maybe it’s the signs – everyone knows what an inked hand at the wrist or the ankle means, even the most hospitable – or maybe it’s something else. That glance is heavy.

More memories: the library on Isla Dzum, behind its heavy black curtains; the words, arata settlements, from one of the lawbooks about dura land rights, spring to his mind. He thinks of Serkaih, of its tending, of ancient desert arati. By arati, for arati. He thinks of some tribes' anger.

He is not sure he should ask.

Still, he’s busy picturing the dizzying sprawl of tents at the outskirts of a desert town. The chattering of broad, unfamiliar accents, unfamiliar smells, everything but unfamiliar colors, because Serkaih has all of those.

Something, he almost says, full up with memories of his own, but he knows better. “Hearing the cant on a spoke’s tongue for the first time,” he says instead, careful, “is a memory I relish.”

A strange noise. He almost starts. A snore from the pup; he’s wriggled himself half up on the stoop, his head like an anchor in Nkemi’s lap, one muddy paw still on her knee. He isn’t sure when pup fell asleep, but he’s long in his dreams now: the whiskers at his eyebrows twitch occasionally. Chasing springtime.

“Humans here, in the Dives and in the Rose, speak a city man’s Tek. It’s become” – our; my – “their Estuan.” He frowns. “The tribes here will speak it with us, but they won’t… share it, exactly.”

Most lines are drawn more sharply in Anaxas; this is one, he thinks, that must be thick and bold in the desert.

He thinks of desert spokes finding Mugrobi words to use with arati in Dkanat. He remembers what he was thinking earlier. “Beata and brunno,” he pronounces, rolling the R same as with brigk, “aren’t – it’s not adame, but it’s not poa’na, either. There’s no word in Tek like adame. Perhaps that’s because you’re either fami or jent, and anyone who’s not dear to you is no friend. There seems little need for the word, among those who know the cant. A beata or brunno can be quickly-made, but the word always comes from the heart.”

I've been called brunno a few times, he wants to say, but only by drunk tsat. Hama, only once.

He smiles up at Nkemi, then pulls another bit of steak from the skewer. The pup shifts on her knee; he freezes, but another snore slips out, and he thinks it’s safe enough to eat this sort of yats, now. He blows on it.

“What did you make of them, as a girl?” he asks.

[Nkemi pezre Nkese]

Evening, 10 Ophus, 2719
Marlingspike, The Dives

Anetol traces a careful line between meaning and use, and Nkemi nods, understanding. This has puzzled her here, in Anaxas, how sometimes the same words as she would use at home seen to have a different meaning. She is aware the concept, intellectually – dialects, her professors at Thul’Amat called it – but it is one thing to have studied something and another to live it.

There are small words to which this applies – biscuit, Nkemi has learned, is one of them; aubergine is another – and larger words, too, like honor and truth and justice, and there sometimes the difference is not made very clear.

“Poa’xa,” Nkemi says again with a smile for Anetol. She has learned the x is hard for Anaxi; she herself has to remember that it is Anakshi, when it is said, and not Anaxi, not really. He is already better than most, sounding it out soft, but she offers the correction because she thinks it does matter, in the end, these distinctions, and because poasa is an entirely different word, one she does not think he means.

A memory I relish, Anetol offers, and Nkemi looks up at him, studying the lines of his sharp face with dark eyes. Her free hand is still buried in the pup’s ruff, scratching steadily; he huffs out another sigh, and sinks a little deeper against her, and Nkemi is smiling, comfortable with the warm weight of his trust.

Nkemi listens, wondering. In the dark play of distant drifting light and smoke, in the shadows upon shadows limned with pale lantern glows, she has to imagine much of what is on Anetol’s face. She sees him in glimpses, when he moves; a faint slash of an arched red brow, the downturned tuck of a lip echoed in familiar wrinkles, a glint of lamplight in wide gray eyes, the faintest hint of white teeth as his lips draw back. She looks, and she listens, too; she hears the purring rumble of an r, the way he says fami and jent. There’s no word in Tek like adame, he says, with the confidence of a man who knows.

Nkemi grins at him, and lets him have the steak, and eases off a bit of mushroom below, glistening-soft. Her fingers taste of the skewer now; each piece, now, they must slide up along the long, glistening charred wood of what has come before, and there are not so many left. Nkemi lingers; she does not eat the mushroom yet.

“I spent a good deal of time alone as a girl,” Nkemi says, glancing over at Anetol. She suspects he may have understood this already; she does not wish to go any further along such lines, and she does not think it necessary regardless. The words are presented without criticism; there is no self-pity in her voice, no longing for what could have been, only an easy statement of fact. She chooses to smile about this, as she chooses to smile about so much else.

“When I was very small,” Nkemi says, quiet, and honest, “once, we were all children who wished to play. I cannot tell you when I understood the lines that lines were drawn between our sands." She glances up, out at the tents, at the figures drifting through the smoke, wandering in and out of the light. “But,” Nkemi says, “I know that at some point I did.”

“And so did they,” Nkemi adds, then, quiet. She eats the mushroom; her other hand is still buried gently in the dog’s ruff, and her fingers are scratching softly at him. He rumbles a snore beneath her hand, and she smiles again, and she smiles too, at Anetol. “But it was never entirely separate. There were always times and places where – with some tribes – we would share a campfire. If there had been negotiations with the town, sometimes they would conclude with a feast,” Nkemi grins, thinking of campfires and glistening legs of meat. She wonders what Anetol would make of camel meat, or pudding made with camel milk, arrowroot and dates.

“Sometimes,” Nkemi adds, cheerfully, “there was even dancing. To drumbeats, of course.”