omething about it made the warm tea in his lap slip away, the tea things on the table, the soft cushions, the shadowy lamplit shop outside the door – all tumbling away at the edges – everything but the words and the mona in the air and the woman across from him, watching him intently, her fingers settled delicately on the porcelain.
He’d almost forgotten about his own cup of tea, until all the words had finally left him.
He had a strange sense of having peeled back his skin; he hadn’t been sure what to expect, and still wasn’t.
It wasn’t the way she had looked at him in the study at first. He’d known the look in her eyes just then, long and unblinking, with its hard edge. He’d known to bear up under it, like a wave crashing against a cliffside; he’d met it many times before, and for all the weight of all of it this time, it warmed something in his heart.
He was too relieved to push down the ache of it, to push down what it meant to him. He had missed the back room, and the tea, and the small gray cat, oes; most of all, he’d missed the flint in her eyes, for all the soft set of her face. The way her glance flicked down and she took a delicate sip of tea, just like she’d done when she’d admitted she was about to have him scragged.
He took a sip at last when she replied. He raised his brows, meeting her eye. The porcelain clicked softly again when he set the cup down; he shifted in his seat, cupping the warmth of it with his hands. He watched her fingertips edge around the rim of her cup, and he thought of
He listened, and he followed her. Pulling at the knot for the loosest threads, taking it apart, smoothing it out.
“She did,” he said after a moment, reaching in and teasing out another thread. “They do – ten years, and a lifetime.” They, he thought. They.
They.
He smiled; his own didn’t reach his eyes, either, not quite. “Monite is a sprawling language,” he said. “You can… imagine, I’m sure. The grammar’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and there’s no end to the vocabulary. You’re right; it would be more useful if… If you got words you could use to tip you off, help you figure out the thrust of a spell, even if you don’t know the whole thing. Duelists –”
He broke off, clearing his throat. They, he thought again. He thought again of her silence, and the sharp steel in her eyes. Why couldn’t you? he knew better than to ask. Instead, maybe: do you think I am so different from you, now?
No; that was the anger and the hurt. Instead: is it worth it to you to know, if you can? If you can’t?
Is it worth it to me? To know, in the end, that even my mind is different than it was?
I already know that, he thought.
Is it more different than it was when we met? Did it change all at once, with the body, or is it still changing? Are they changing me?
If I brushed your mind, if you felt me, what would you feel?
“Duelists come at it similarly, when facing an opponent of a different conversation.” He paused; his voice broke over the word conversation, and he had to clear his throat. He took another sip of tea. “You’re right, too. Perceptive seems the most useful, to me. You’ll need the structure and the basics – and the alphabet – and beyond that, I don’t know how much good I’ll be for anything other than clairvoyance. I’ve plenty of perceptive books, all the same.”
He leaned to set the teacup and saucer on the table momentarily, then paused before he leaned back. “Quantitative, too,” he said carefully.
When I was a man. It came burbling back up; the back of his neck prickled, but he didn’t linger on the memory, and he didn’t let it touch his face. He looked across at her evenly, frowning.
“Did he –” There were other memories, more recent, he couldn’t push aside. “When he came to see you,” he asked, “did he cast?”