[Mature] If I Had a Heart

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

S
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?”

[Ava Weaver]

Early Evening, 33 Vortas, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

Ava listened, intently, her face still and watching. Words to tip you off, he said, and he spoke of duelists.

She was not cruel enough to say that he spoke of dueling, sometimes; not the way he spoke of opera, or of himself, but with a certain fondness. She did not think he had thought she understood - she had not, for their dueling was even more foreign than the rest of it. All the same, scraps of words like parchment floated through her.

She did not help him through the gap. He almost broke again; he drank a sip of tea, black, and he went on. Ava listened, silent, or perhaps it was Ava who was silent and Silk who listened, and perhaps it was Risha who spoke, for all that she had never intended to name him.

Plenty of perceptive books, he said, and quantitative too.

Ava thought, and she weighed it. A good deal of work, and perhaps there was nothing to be gained by it. Perhaps there was everything. Monite was not the whole of it; their arcane abilities were not the whole of it. The Seventen or the High Judge could destroy her with purely secular methods; Ava was well aware of it.

Would she turn aside even the tiniest scrap of a weapon, in such a fight? Ava knew the answer, now; perhaps she always had. She wondered if that was what had scared her, as much as anything, a month ago.

He let her linger in silence; he went on.

Ava looked at him, and turned the conversation back, gently. “I’d rather do it with your help,” she said, and she smiled at him. It was a bit lop-sided, and perhaps it ached; it stung, too, or something did, but she smiled, and she held, and she reached across the distance between them with it.

I’ve had enough of reading alone, she might have said; I think you have too. She still warmed to think of their conversation last Hamis; she thought he did too, however far he had come since. She didn’t think it meant less, just because he so far outpaced her now. For all she thought he must talk of books with them, he remembered the Rose as she did, or as close as she could hope for.

“He didn’t cast that I heard,” Ava said. “He was alone in here, briefly, while I went to make tea; I don’t know what he could have done in that time.” She picked up the tea cup once more, and she took a sip.

“He came thinking I was like him,” Ava went on, smoothly, “an agent for a little bird, someone dispatched to sell jewelry and send messages.” She smiled, but it wasn’t quite unfond. She set the cup back down, silent and noiseless. Perhaps it should have hurt to recount; it did not. The drained, emptiness was gone; she felt every inch herself once more, as if he by his presence could make her more so.

“I told him the truth,” Ava said, evenly, looking across the small room. “I told him a good deal about her. I told him that I care for you, whether he could understand it or not.” The smile warmed, now, soft, and Ava exhaled, slowly and evenly.

“It seemed best not to lie,” Ava said, steadily, “and he never pushed me to where I should have to.”

“He asked about you and the Rose,” Ava said, quietly, “and whether you might have lived a different life.” Her face softened, now, and she looked at him. “Be careful with him,” Ava said, softly. “I don’t think he means to hurt you, at least not the sake of it. I’ve given him threads to follow, details enough to verify. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t know about this visit by tomorrow, though I can’t be sure.”

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

H
e nodded. His smile wobbled, and he swallowed a lump. His eyes were too sore for more tears, at least.

He’d been ashamed to want it; he was still ashamed. It wasn’t just for defense, and that was what made it so wrong. It was selfish – more, now, with what he knew – but he’d wanted to share it with her. He’d wanted to do it together, to untie the knot together and see how it looked, for better or worse. There was no one else who could see to the heart of this, he thought, for better or worse.

There was something tugging at one side of her lips, and something tight around her eyes.

He nodded again, hands twitching and folding in his lap; his smile crumbled to something softer, and he breathed in deep.

She went on, then, and he listened, just as rapt as she’d listened to him. He was smiling at first, then his eyes went wide.

Wasn’t any point in interrupting, still. He blinked; his brow furrowed, and he studied her face. At told him a good deal about her, a little understanding crept into his face. Then he nodded again, taking his teacup and saucer back from the table.

He took a sip, and then, when she fell silent, he nodded. He’d’ve found no little bird, he didn’t need to say, and if he’d gone looking too deeply for any qalqa of yours – he let out a deep breath, porcelain clicking. “I’d bet you five concords,” he said slowly, “he’ll know about this visit before tomorrow.”

His eyes flicked over her face again. What did you think of him? he thought about asking. He’d not been sure what to make of the smile on her face. He left it unasked.

I don’t know what he could have done, she’d said. “He’s not the sort to look for secrets hidden underneath silk,” he said carefully, glancing at the hangings behind, “yet, I think. But he… he augments his senses, maybe, in collecting – facial expressions, movements. The color shifts in my field.” He frowned, glancing down and back up. “Filling in what hasn’t been said using what has. He’s pushed me in the past; I don’t know if I can lie to him outright. He always seems to know, once he has the – caprise of me.

“It’s a good thing I don’t have to,” he said, smiling again, admiring and a little wicked.

A little sheepish, underneath that; there was no need to say he’d shown Shrikeweed, without meaning to, just how much he cared.

He took another sip of tea, then looked down into the cup. The dregs were a soft amber, like always. Through them, he could see the grainy dark swirl of tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.

He met her eye. I don’t care what happens to me, he thought, if he sniffs out what she’s got buried; I don’t think you do, either, not as much as you care about seeing her fall. But when he finishes with her, his attentions will turn. He will push you. He will go looking for secret places, someday.

There was a lull. About the ward, he thought to say. He could taste it on the tip of his tongue. He’d dared it once, tonight.

I’ve changed my mind. Ever since, I’ve botched almost every spell; I’ve seen horrible, laoso things done with voo. About the ward, he thought to say, I don’t know if I’ve changed my mind; I don’t even know if this thing I’m becoming, if it’s a liability, a risk…

“We can start whenever you like,” he said instead, smiling and setting his cup and saucer down. “With the alphabet. Today, if you want; we have everything we need, I think, between the two of us.” He shifted to the edge of his seat, reaching hesitantly. “May I pour you another cup?”

[Ava Weaver]

Early Evening, 33 Vortas, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

Ava listened, intently, to the description of Shrikeweed’s sensory augmentation, inclining her head. Filling in what hasn’t been said yet, he added, and her eyebrows lifted gently. The caprise of me, he called it. A delicate frown wrinkled Ava’s forehead for a moment, and smoothed out.

How precise were they? Shrikeweed focused his skills on interrogating other galdori – something in her tightened at the phrase – on interrogating those with fields, Ava thought, and was not sure why the distinction should matter, with what they were fast approaching here tonight. Was it the case, then, that Shrikeweed might be harder-pressed to read her than him?

Ava put the thought aside; there would be very little likelihood of knowing without asking, and they had passed the point – if ever there had been one – when such questions could be asked innocuously. It was always better, she knew, to give others the benefit of the doubt in such regards.

And if she could know? Something of the enormity of what they were discussing rippled through her; not the blasphemy, or the something deep inside her which flinched away from the idea, small and frightened, but the potential of it. For all that she would not pin her hopes too dearly on it, for all that she felt the worst of the challenges still to come, she could see it.

Ava glanced up again when he smiled, and she smiled back, soft-faced; his appreciation meant a great deal, she was startled to find. She could not think of anyone else who understood so well.

It’s a stopgap, she wanted to tell him; all I hoped to do was to make her more interesting, for the time being, than either of us. I know this is not the end of it; I know there may be a reckoning, in time. I know I am still watched, although there’s a reprieve in the knowing, in the certainty of it. He understood, she thought, without words.

Whenever you like; today.

Ava looked at him. “Yes, thank you,” she let him pour the tea; steam wafted up once more between them, the hot liquid filling their cups once more, hers and then his.

“Today, I think, would be best,” Ava smiled at him. To put it off, Ava felt, would be to increase the horror of it, and there was already enough of that for her taste. For all she had some skill at not thinking, the mind had a way of summoning of visions of that which one least wished to see; the reality, she felt, would likely be less painful than her imaginings. If not, then it was still better to know now.

She went to find one of the notebooks she had not given to Grais; as she went, she thought of where to hide it, and how it might be kept. Secret but not distant was familiar to her, though she was not so bold as to keep this one in plain view. Ledgers and notebooks were popular among the Seventen; to leave one out was almost to guarantee it would be flipped through, at some point, as if she were foolish enough to write down such evidence.

Well, Ava thought, amused, tonight she was. She could see no way around it; if he brought the notebook with him and then took it away, it should be very hard indeed for her to study in his absence, and they neither of them wanted the risk that too regular visits would invite.

She came back to the steaming cup and laid the notebook down on the table between them, along with a pen. “When you’re ready,” Ava said, smiling as she could at him; it wasn’t so strained as it had been earlier, and she thought they would need it, the both of them, to get through this. She stirred another lump of sugar into her tea, and took a small sip, slow and steady.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

O
ne, two, three, four.

There was no point in coming to anything with doubt, monic or otherwise. He took deep breaths, in and out through his nose, swelling up his stolen diaphragm. He took the handle of the teapot in one of his hands, perched two fingers delicately on the lid with his other. The fingers shook a little, though not enough to rattle the porcelain.

He had watched her, and he had poured tea for others – for many others – since that strange afternoon in Loshis. He had poured more liquor, he thought, but it was the same principle; at first, he hadn’t minded spilling brandy all over the table with his shaky hands, alone as he’d been, or giving up and drinking out of the bottle. This was something different; it had been different, the first time he’d poured twemlaugh smoothly into a snifter for Incumbent Proulx, smiling as if he were Anatole and as if he had never been anybody else.

He was no stranger to the sound of a spout or the neck of a bottle clattering against a cup. It was a mistake he’d often made, thinking that by resting the spout against the rim, he could control where the tea came out.

But he lifted it up, ‘til the tea came out in a thin stream, pouring delicately into Ava’s cup. He’d gotten to his feet and moved a little around the table to reach it; she might’ve felt the edges of his field, for all he wasn’t thinking about it – wasn’t troubled by the thought of it.

The only sound was the tea gurgling softly into the cups. When she spoke, he nodded. “Very well,” he said softly. Boemo, he could’ve said; he didn’t think there was a need, these days. The teapot made a muffled noise as he lowered it carefully back to the tray.

He smiled at her, wordless, and resumed his seat.

She wasn’t gone for long. Not long enough for doubt to creep in, for all he thought – in that moment – he could have waited a century, and this, at least, he wouldn’t’ve let doubt touch with so much as its fingertips.

They were halfway through the spell, the two of them together; neither could brail. He looked down at the delicate teacup, at his vague reflection in the dark tea. He smiled, and he watched it tug at the hazy lines. He ran his fingertip over the flowers again, felt the soft blooming texture of the paint.

He shut his eyes, breathing in the steam, and went over his favorite clause in his mind. Come closer, he exhorted the mona, see me; see us, see us. Whatever we are, she and I, we do not doubt.

He wasn’t listening for footsteps on the stairs. He was midway through a sip of tea, blinking and wincing at a burn on his tongue, when the silk shivered aside and Ava came back in. He hadn’t moved from the edge of his seat, so when she set the notebook down on the table, he set down his cup and saucer nearby, and took the pen.

Whenever you’re ready. He smiled back.

Now, he thought, would be best.

It was almost reflexive. He was surprised at how easy it came. It was almost hard not to draw it quickly, for all it was muscle memory; still, he worked slow, pulling and pushing the lines with a steady hand, breathing with the motion.

He didn’t look at Ava once, though he could feel her eyes on him. Not until he turned the notebook around and pushed it gently toward her. “This,” he said, “is the first letter in the alphabet.”

He pronounced it. It was a vowel, not one of the strange, harsh consonants he remembered thinking of monite before he’d learned it.

He pronounced it once, then again, in a clear, deep voice.

“It’s also the first letter in the word for push,” he said. “I’d like to leave you knowing how to write it, today, and listen for it.” Speak it, he’d almost said; he wasn’t sure he should. “It’s as good a starting place as any, and it was… mine. It’s the starting place for most – sorcerers.”

[Ava Weaver]

Early Evening, 33 Vortas, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies

H
e smiled back at her. Ava lowered her gaze to the page, sitting back straight, the fabric of her dress still unwrinkled across her lap and down her legs. She watched, one hand on top of the other in her lap – not only for the shape of the letter, but too for the way he formed it, how his hand went through the shape of the pen.

His gaze was fixed down on the page; hers was fixed on his hand. Only when he finished it did Ava look at the letter itself, the sharp lines of it.

It was not as if she had not seen monite before; she had grimoires, now, the ones she had carried in a basket from Binder, taken back through the streets of Vienda tucked beneath her shopping with her head held high, never looking down at them. She had read them all, though not in the last month, and where there was monite in the text, she had read before and after.

Sometimes she had skipped it entirely, not wishing even to look at the strange, scratching letters, as if they would crawl off the page on to her. Other times, when the text had been vague, she had studied them, and wondered.

Did it look different now? Was it different to see his hand shaping the letter, holding the pen with uncallused slender fingers, a dusting of red hair across the knuckles and the backs of it, freckles scattered all around, the veins on the back and the curves of the fingers more familiar than her own? Was it different to see it written down for her, on her paper, with her pen, in the small, softly lit back room draped in fabric, wreathed in secrets?

For a moment, it seemed to her only a letter, like any other, and the sound it made not so dissimilar from those of Estuan. Ava breathed in, deep, and she listened to him say it, once and then again, and, as she had done so often with that deep, clear voice, fixed the precise echo of it in her mind. Ava inclined her head; she reached out, and took the pen from him. She turned the paper, slowly, and set her hand to the page.

For most sorcerers, Ava thought, looking at it directly and unafraid. And for me.

She went slowly, and evenly; she traced the lines as he had, pushing and pulling the pen around the turns, drawing back over the same line he had, and ending with the last straight line. She lowered the pen, slowly, setting it down on the page once more. She had seen Grais’s work; she had seen the pages upon pages of shakily carved letters, a trembling hand grown steadier over time. This writing was not enough, not to know it, but it was enough to show him he meant it.

Ava sat back, and looked at him. When he had risen to pour the tea, when he had leaned forward to watch her, she had felt the brushing of his field against her once more; she did not flinch from it, even though the new range of it caught her, still, unawares. She thought of it, though, her gaze squarely on his face.

There can be no boundaries, here, Ava wanted to say. And so she did.

Ava repeated the letter back to him. Her voice was soft and even; she found the intonation he had offered, and mimicked it precisely, holding his gaze as she did so. She said it, as she had written it, once and not again, and never looked away. She did not ask him whether it was correct; she knew it was.