[Closed] Where Do People like Us Float

[Tom Cooke]

The Study • Uptown

Afternoon on the 29th of Dentis, 2719

O
f course they are, he wanted to say, with a faint surge of irritation. He blinked; one eyebrow twitched. The question felt more like placation; he knew it by the set of her lips, the tickle of humor at the edges of her expression. It wasn’t his place to speak, not yet. But he could’ve spoken, oes, he could’ve given her answers, solid and real.

The man doesn’t care for the lit writ statutes anyway, he wanted to say, we’ve been over that countless times in –

He swallowed thickly.

He met her eye evenly and inclined his head. She, she said, and held still, two points of flickering light reflected in her eyes. He felt it, now – dropping like a rock through him – the twist and flip of his stomach. He couldn’t conjure her face in his eyes, but he could hear her voice; he could smell sickly-sweet cologne and cigar smoke underneath the sage he had burnt in this place every day.

His skin crawled. Ava glanced toward the grate, and he shut his eyes; he could feel it draining out into his field, and he tried to breathe it indectal again. When he opened them, she was looking at him. She was smiling, but he could feel her eyes on him, on his face; he wished, achingly, that he could take it off.

He nodded slowly instead. He thought again of the Shrike’s eyes glittering in the soft light, the jerky break of his voice. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “It may be wiser. It would be easier, with no one looking over my shoulder in the office. But the civil service would only send someone else, and I’m more inclined to the hatcher I know.”

Did he know Shrikeweed?

Would it be easier? Shrikeweed still caught him sometimes, on this or that; months’ vigorous study was no replacement for years of political and legal education.

He thought of some other man in Shrikeweed’s place. He wondered if he’d go to the Elephant, still, knowing what he’d done. He shook the thought away; it came back, like an embroidered vine. He would do the same to you, Tom told himself, lip twisting. Did it matter?

“He’ll see things – he already has – that I won’t, in the halls of congress; he’s a civil servant, and he’s access to resources neither of us have.” He spoke evenly, bluntly, without breaking eye contact. “All the same –”

He broke off, sucking at a tooth. The elepha again. He could scarce see for it, now; it filled the whole room. He looked at Ava, and he felt the frustration fill him up. His chest ached.

He’d thought when he’d spoken the word, quantitative – he hadn’t wanted to assume she didn’t know. Had he known, once? He couldn’t remember when he’d learned.

There were milestones, for most of them. Sitting here, he could remember when he’d learned to tell the difference between quantitative and clairvoyant mona in a field, or when he’d discovered that he could sense it, now, that melancholy taste in the air, and know it was blue. He couldn’t remember when he had learned that quantitative meant measurement equations and leymancy.

Some questions he couldn’t leave unanswered, no matter how they were meant. “With a targeted spell, a quantitative conversationalist might ask – what are the dimensions of this room,” he said, gesturing round, “if there’s organic matter; what’s the weight, height, density of the organic matter…”

He trailed off, continuing to study her face.

“It’s not your papers I think he’d be concerned with.” Another deep breath. “I don’t know if it’s better to have him out of the way. But I want us to be – ready.” He shifted to the edge of his seat, leaning forward slightly.

[Ava Weaver]

Afternoon, 29 Dentis, 2719
The Study, The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Ava sat straight, an easy upright figure, as always as if there were no possible other way to sit. She looked at Tom across the small space. She did not lean forward when he did. She understood; she understood what he was saying, and what he was kind enough not to say, not directly. She could see the shape whose edges he had so carefully, deliberately traced; she could fill in the gaps. She understood, with a sickening ache in the pit of her stomach, how carefully he'd chosen his words not to imply her ignorant.

A quantitative conversationalist can find the hidden spaces beneath your walls, he told her.

And so? Ava wanted to ask. And so? A perceptive conversationalist can look into my eyes and compel me to speak truth, if they know what questions to ask. A clairvoyant conversationalist can watch the world through my eyes, can wear my skin like a man's hand inside a puppet. A living conversationalist can make my world pain for as long as they like, and just like all men - like every last one - there would come a time when I would say anything, anything at all, to make it stop. If they think me worth it, not a one of them would hesitate.

Worse still, they need none of that, Ava could have told him. She felt it burning in her chest like fury; she couldn't understand why she felt he needed to be told. She sat there, on the elegant, expensive, high-backed chair, with the bright burning fire behind its grate, and the swirls of the thick Hessean rug not a foot away, looking at him over the oblong case on the table between them.

A Seventen needs no writs, no permissions, to search my shop. Do you think they don't? She wanted to ask him; she wanted him not to need to be asked. Do you think it as easy as knocking on the floorboards? They could take the house apart, if they cared to, piece of wood by piece of wood; they could strip down the silk hangings and open up the walls, and they would find me inside, in time, if they cared to.

Do you think I don't know the danger? Ava wanted to ask; she wanted to fling it all in his face, the glass cut tumbler and more books than she could hope to read if she burned the candles at both end every night and morning besides, and the grimoires on the seat beside the window and the elegant writing set spread out on the desk. She wanted to snatch up a log from behind the grate and wave it like a brand, and no matter that it would burn her as badly as him.

She still felt the fear. It burned through her, sharper, hotter than she could control. It showed not in the least on her face; she kept herself smooth, and even, and a smile, still, gently curving up the corners of her mouth. She acknowledged it; she let herself feel it, the fear and panic both. She let it wash through her, and burn her out, and when it was done, when only ashes were left, she found she could set it aside, and leave the anger smoldering behind in the wreckage, manageable once more.

"Very well," Ava said, slowly, carefully, taking her time with the words. "What does it mean to you?" Ava asked. She leaned forward now, slowly; not enough to wrinkle her dress, but enough to mirror him, and the gesture he'd made. She looked at him, the smile easing off her face, draining out of her eyes. "To be ready."

[Tom Cooke]

The Study • Uptown

Afternoon on the 29th of Dentis, 2719

V
ery well.

Ava shifted forward. Just enough that a few dark curls spilled over one shoulder; the wool of her dress made no rustle, the chair didn’t creak. He watched the light flicker over her smile, the same smooth smile that’d stayed on her face through all he’d said. It faded into something more somber. She watched him, serious and practical, as if having put everything aside.

Stepping over the streak of blood, lavender-smelling kerchief pressed to her nose, basket looped under her arm.

He didn’t know what else he’d expected; he’d stepped – delicately enough, for the man he used to be – round the gasp and the downturned eyes. Anger, maybe. Not a shout or the crack of something thrown, not even like hama in a temper, all set jaw and ground-up Tek.

He knew something of it, still. A dozen jokes he’d made in the back room of the shop. I need a drink, he’d said once, midway through a lesson; her face’d barely moved, and somehow he’d known. Long seasons had passed since then. Sometimes he pushed, raised eyebrows of his own; sometimes he grinned. Sometimes he said, boemo, rosh, before he even had a chance to see her face. He thought of her standing, moments ago, walking along the shelves with familiar hard blankness on her face.

What was it he wanted? Very well. A few seconds had passed, a pause. Too long. There were a few ways he could’ve answered her question. None of them felt right. He had thought she’d had more to say on it herself, for all they were pinching their noses and stepping carefully round the mess.

What does it mean to you? He had thought he had an answer. To be ready, she had added; now, he wasn’t so sure.

What does it mean to you? he wanted to demand.

I don’t know, he wanted to protest. You were the one who took my hands and guided me to him. Why did you give me the grimoire? What did that mean to you? What did it mean, the way you looked at me when you stepped into it? Not the gasp – after the gasp. Was it anger? (It couldn’t’ve been fear.) Were you showing me what you think of me now?

His mouth opened slightly, then shut. He couldn’t say any of those things. “I thought,” he began.

You thought. What the hell did you think? He looked away, toward the fire. A twig snapped, popped, withered black into the blaze.

He thought of some of the books she’d put so carefully into the basket, in the summertime. He remembered. There had been a book on the living conversation, hadn’t there? What does it mean to you? he wanted to ask.

He thought of the way she’d lit up, speaking of Mantel, only the third time they’d met. But then it had been human to human, he supposed, even for the face he wore.

When I was a lad, he could’ve said, I ran afoul of a sorcerer; going on thirty, my fingers still ached with the rain. He thought. “It could mean a lot of things, to me. It could mean wards,” he said. “I’m no divinipotent, but I could lay one, and keep it up. To obfuscate such spells.” Just one, for one safehouse, in one neighborhood. “If I had known monite, when I was still a man – enough, maybe, to know when to make a golly brail for the chance of backlash, to know what spell was being cast…”

It shuddered across his face before he could stop it; it was shame.

Maybe some things bore saying. He looked back at her. “What does it mean to you?” he asked. His voice nearly broke; it didn’t.

[Ava Weaver]

Afternoon, 29 Dentis, 2719
The Study, The Vauquelin House, Uptown

H
e took his time in the answering. She didn’t move, watching; she didn’t speak again, either. She didn’t shift and look away to let him off the hook; she didn’t smile, encouragingly, to let him know it was all right to take his time. She knew much of waiting; she did it well.

I thought, he said, and trailed off into nothing.

There was a little more silence between them; she did not try to fill in the gaps herself, not this time; she could not know, she thought, whether he had thought too little, or instead too well. Instead, slowly, the silence stretched thin. lengthened out, and dangled between them like a thread through the warm, lamplit air. It grew taut, slowly; it quivered, and glinted in the light. Ava held herself utterly still and silent, frozen on that moment of quiet anticipation, letting him spin it out.

Wards, Tom said, cutting through it.

Ava’s breath came in sharply through her nose before she could catch it; she eased it back out, calm and steady, and didn’t let herself slip again. She didn’t know what to picture, not quite, when he said wards. She understood them to be made of monite; she imagined it, those meaningless, awful chicken scratch-scrawled symbols, chalked onto the floor beneath her rugs, or onto the walls behind the silk hangings. Her skin crawled; she thought she could feel them creeping up over her, as if any moment, if she looked down, she would see them on the floor beneath her feet, crawling slowly up her legs. She held, very still; she didn’t dare move, and she didn’t dare look.

If I had known monite, Tom said, fumbling through it; even he looked ashamed. She hadn’t known that, once, on his face; she knew it now.

What does it mean to you? He asked; his deep, familiar voice held notes she had never heard, in life.

Ava took a deep breath, slow and careful. She eased herself back, away from him; she sat neat and upright. “When I was still a man,” she said, instead, carefully. She didn’t imitate his voice; she could have. She could have said it back as he had offered it, the same tone and intonation; she could have let him hear his words, as she had heard them. She said them instead carefully neutral, like a blank slate on which he could write. She knew it was cruel; she said it anyway.

Ava let it rest between them, a beat; she went on. “It means,” she said, carefully, “sending word where I can that a place is no longer safe. It means living my life as if I am being watched, all the time, in every secret quiet moment, even in my dreams. It means putting Silk aside, for a while, in favor of other fabrics. It means waiting,” something twitched in her lips; she smoothed them out, “as long as I have to.”

It means being prepared to give my life, Ava thought, but I gave it long ago, whatever was left of it. The thought steadied her; it calmed her. It soothed her against the ache of having to shut doors once held open, against the horror of the thought of the quiet place of solace she had fought to carve for herself disrupted. It would, she knew, carry her through this; she knew, after all, much of waiting. Silk would be there, again, when she was ready; this was no mask that she could remove, and neither was Ava Weaver. They were both her; they were woven together, and to tear one out would be to rip her apart.

Ava took a deep breath, slow and steady; she let it back out. “I do not think it will be long.” She said, simply; she held the gaze of flat gray eyes with her own, and let nothing show in them. "I'd like to meet your Mr. Shrikeweed," she put a faint, careful emphasis on the your, like a soft whisper of warning, "before I decide further."

[Tom Cooke]

The Study • Uptown

Afternoon on the 29th of Dentis, 2719

W
hen I was still a man,” he replied evenly, holding her gaze.

It hadn’t been a question, the way she’d put it to him; he wasn’t that much of a fool. He knew it was meant to be cruel. But he spoke as if it had been a question, anyway: when you were still a man? When I was still a man. Matter-of-fact. Some muscle flickered in his jaw; he sat straighter, instead of slumping.

When she’d spoken, his head had been a cacophony. She had been quiet and even, every muscle in her face controlled, her back as straight as she had taught him to hold himself. He had lost this one, he knew. If there was a stalemate, he had lost it. He had felt the heat creeping into his face, the flush of blue and mottled yellow and pale, stale red creeping out into the clairvoyant mona.

All that, he knew – he told himself – boemo, fine! Who d’you think I am, rosh? When there’s been a dobber, voo or not, you don’t need poetry to take care of it; a good knife will do, and a clearing-out. But –

But, he wanted to protest, like a fumbling boch. What if you could know – for certain – if you were being watched? He knew that to be a fool’s hope, but it wanted to spill out of him anyway. What if you could cast them out of your dreams? Not just you, he wanted to plead. If it were just you, just me, it’d mean nothing. That was what you gave me.

It was somewhere round the twitch of her lip, and the word waiting, that the questions quieted.

He’d had the feeling of having grasped in the dark, and touched something he’d never touched before.

He’d quieted, then, though he’d never looked away.

Not until he spoke, and then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath of his own. He nodded once. “Of course,” he said, opening his eyes. “Nor do I.”

Your Mr. Shrikeweed. He could’ve protested, if he’d had the heart to joke: that man is nobody’s, least of all mine. Funny, he thought, the night before still swimming about his head. My shrike, my little bird.

His mouth opened slightly again; it clamped shut.

He’d seen it more than he’d heard it. The flare of her nostrils, the sharp intake of breath. No more shame pulsed through his field, mottled yellow, but he felt it like a stone underneath his heart anyway. The fire still puffed and roared and crackled in the grate; whatever anger he’d felt had withered up.

He still wanted to ask, What does this mean to you? as if such questions could be asked and answered without feeling. He would’ve answered differently, once; but if his fingers ached now, it was just the cold. He shied away from the thought.

There was no shying away from her, sitting opposite him in his comfortable chair, straighter than she’d been all morning. He looked at her, across the case, then looked down at the case.

Two yards of each, he’d thought to say, and four of the red satin. It would’ve been his way to leave the door open just a crack, even though, now, it was only a formality; even though notes could be sent. It felt strangely insulting, now, as though his tongue might betray him.

The chair creaked; he pushed himself up out of it. He started to speak; he couldn’t think what to call her, Ava or Ms. Weaver or Silk. Thank you, madam, he thought to say, and called himself a godsdamned coward.

He looked at her instead. “I’d like to know,” he said finally, voice rough. “What you think. When you’ve thought about it. Shrikeweed or not, voo or not, however long it takes. I’d like to know what you think, Ava Weaver.”

[Ava Weaver]

Afternoon, 29 Dentis, 2719
The Study, The Vauquelin House, Uptown

T
he seat creaked beneath him as Tom rose, his answer to everything she had said written on the tightness of his lips. Ava rose as well, slowly and evenly, so that they stood at nearly the same time. She looked at him across the small space. When he spoke his voice caught and trembled.

There was a part of her which wanted to – Ava could not quite name it. She wanted to close the gap between them. She thought of taking his hands, but she did not think she could bear the thought of touching them. She thought of offering to think about the ward, but her mind shied away from the word. She knew better than to attempt it, if she could not finish, and she did not wish to grit her teeth through the sentence – through the sentiment – just now.

Instead, Ava inclined her head, the faintest trace of a nod. “All right,” Ava said, quietly. She did not name him, not Tom Cooke, not Risha, and not anything else either. The name burned on her tongue; she thought she could have said it. She wanted to say it, then; she wanted to give it to him. She thought of a sideburned, floral-waistcoated man peering through her eyes, watching Tom through them, watching Anatole’s mobile, sharp-featured face aching with pain. And, too – she did not know if she could do it, to say it with the warmth she wanted; she did not know if she could say Tom Cooke, and let him know that she saw him, still – through the field, through her anger, through his frustration.

Ava reached for the case; she took the handle in her hands, and lifted it off the table. She carried it to the door; he held it open, and Ava passed, again, through the thickness of his field. She hesitated, once, just at the threshold; she glanced sideways at him. Her throat moved; her lips did not, and for once, Ava could not have said what was in her eyes.

Ava turned; she went down the stairs, and left him there; alone, Ava thought, bitterly, swimming in the mona, standing on the Hessean rug, surrounded by books and lamps and bathed in the warmth of his fire. She went down the stairs, and let a little pinch come between her brows, and did not try to mask the slight downward turn of her lips, though her back was still very straight.

“Difficult time, miss?” The maid asked, smiling warmly as she brought back the cloak.

Ava smiled at her, polite and a little stiff. “I couldn’t offer anything he wanted, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the maid said, sympathetic, her eyes soft. “I’m sure you brought lovely fabric, but he’s proper odd, that one.”

Ava glanced around the small area; the maid had kept her voice, very low. When Ava responded, it was with a sudden warm smile, and her own voice just as low. “Aren’t they all?”

The maid giggled, and hushed the sound, half-swallowing it. Her eyes darted sideways, too; seeing no one, she relaxed, and smiled a little wider.

Ava pulled up the hood of her cloak, and lifted the heavy oblong case once more. The snow had picked up, flurries swirling through the darkness of the late afternoon; the air had an odd, grayish quality to it, as if the light was not quite sure how to reach through. She made her way out of the warmth of the house, onto the drive, snowy gravel crunching beneath her boots, into the cold; Ava did not look back to see if she could find the warm light gleaming in the distant study, not even at the gate; she made her way out onto the street, shoulders set and back straight, the case held in both hands, and went her own way.