[Mature] If I Had a Heart

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

T
he faintest brush of a chill came in with her, swept on the hems of her skirt and on her boots; her cheeks were a little red, not quite as vivid as the lightest of the silks. She was still smiling, polite and warm, when she set the silks on the table. She smoothed the topmost, and the lacquer on her nails glistened dark against the deep sea green. When she turned to look at him, his hands were still folded in his lap, and he watched the smile fall off her face like a sheaf of cotton cut from the wall.

He wasn’t sure what was underneath it.

He wasn’t sure what he expected her to do. He almost asked, then; he thought it best to get the worst of it out of the way. What do we do? What do I do? Did he come? What’s the plan? He glanced at the silk on the table, but mostly he had eyes for her.

I meant what I said, then, he thought to say. I was wrong, and I know it. She hadn’t sat down opposite him, just yet, and he found that knotted-up thing in his chest thumping hard. Make it like before, he thought he might’ve wanted to ask of her, if he hadn’t already asked too much. Sit, and I’ll – and we’ll never bring it up again –

She came closer, and he halfway wanted to move away. It was the autumn mist he smelled first, still cold in her cheeks and her hands and the rich reddish-brown of her dress; he caught a scent almost like it, floral and deep, like he’d caprised a shift he didn’t know how to read.

There was no flinch or gasp, though he’d not expected one, this time. She sat beside him, and she put her hands on his over the soft thick wool of his coat.

He glanced down at them only once. He didn’t linger long enough for it to make sense, the soft, tapering fingers not quite covering up all the freckles and veins, the cuff of his expensive shirt. He blinked up at her, flicking from one dark eye to the other. He blinked once and then twice and then a third time, and there was no pretending it was just a speck in his eye, not here.

He thought to say it, don’t apologize. The smile stopped him; it was a little lopsided, even with the perfect delicate wings of her kohl, and there were a few little lines around her eyes.

There came a hitch in his breath, quick and sharp as hers’d been slow and shuddering. His lips twitched and he blinked again. “You know it’s me,” spilled out of him, soft and hoarse. He almost smiled, but it crumbled; he felt a tear on his cheek.

He caught the taste of blue shift in the air, stronger even than the cold, strong enough to tilt the lamplight a soft, warm blue for a few moments. Gold threaded and shivered through the mona, and deep brown, and more colors than he had words for.

He wanted to smooth it indectal, but he couldn’t; he wanted to suck it in, to hide it underneath his skin, but he couldn’t do that, either.

“I’m sorry, too.” This time, when he smiled, it was stronger; there was a wry twist to it. You’d better let me say it, too. “For what I didn’t say, until I – did,” he said, “and how I… said it.”

He took one of his hands out from under hers and laid it on top, as he had before.

Her fingers were cold, crisp-cold, more solid than a caprise. “I meant what I said. As long as it took,” he said. “I wanted to know what you thought, and I still do.”

However I feel about it now, he didn’t say. Did he come? he wanted to ask; he couldn’t bring himself to it, just yet, not here. He pressed her hand gently, and some of the color and weight leaked out of his field. He didn’t look anywhere but her face, and he breathed in and out, evenly and deeply.

[Ava Weaver]

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

H
is face crumpled. You know it’s me leaked softly from his eyes; Ava nodded, and found her own smile trembling on her laps, and a heat behind her eyes as well. Perhaps she could have breathed the tears away, closed her eyes and sealed them up inside her once more. She didn’t; one, and then a second, slid slim tracks down her face, and she did not let go of him to wipe them away.

There was a weight in the air all around them, pressing down. His weight, Ava understood, for all that she didn’t know what to make of it beyond that. She knew the look on his face, though, and the trembling of his hands; he drew one out and rested it on hers, and that, too, she understood.

Ava did not think to interrupt his apology. She had forgiven him without the benefit of one, and he had forgiven her too, but they both of them needed the words regardless, the speaking and the hearing. His breathing was steady, then, and hers too, and Ava watched him as he watched her, as he repeated the request that, a month earlier, had frightened her so.

It did, still; Ava had come to understand that perhaps it always would. But fear was a part of life, and no sufficient excuse. To feel fear was human; to be driven by it was something less. They were all of them afraid, all the time; it was whether they used it or were used by it, which made all the difference.

So Ava named her fear, and understood it, and brought it out into the warm light of the small back room, amidst the silks and coverings, her two hands cupped between his.

“It frightens me,” Ava said, quietly and evenly. She didn’t hold her smile for him, but what it left behind was warm, too, in its place, and the difficult words were softened by their own speaking. “Fear is no excuse, and I don’t want to let it rule me, but I can’t help feeling it.” A pause, then, a deep breath, and for all that she wanted to take her hands away from the familiar ones which had only one held her so, she did not; she relaxed into the gesture, and did not put between them the distance which might have made the words easier.

“Pain spells don’t leave a mark,” Ava went on, in the same quiet, even tone, “and so she was very fond of them.”

She had not thought about it; she had not planned, this far and no further. She let the words spill out as they would, each one cut like a rune into her, spilling salty tears from her eyes. He wept with her, and so she could bear it, the slow and careful flaying of her skin from the bone, the peeling back of this mask, too, from her heart and all the sensitive places inside.

It was not that she wished to shock or hurt him; it was that she needed him to understand, and that that understanding meant more to him, she knew, that emerging whole. Such telling, she had always felt, helped no one. It did nothing to relieve the pain she had once felt; she had never thought of it as a pain which could be lessened in the sharing. They all suffered; they all ached. Where was the sense in dredging it up and airing it out, and making herself seen? Except that it was to be seen by him which she needed, more than she needed to emerge whole.

“I want to learn,” Ava said, quietly, when she had told him as much as either of them could bear. There was a quiet rasp at the edge of her voice, and her hands were shaking between his; there were wrinkles in the smooth folds of her dress. But she was smiling, however hard it was, between the trails of dark kohl down her cheeks.

“Ignorance is as much a weapon as fear,” Ava went on, evenly. “You were right about that.” She closed her eyes, slowly, breathing deeply in and out, and opened them to look at him once more.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

Y
ou can do anything with golly poetry, he used to think.

He thought his fingers must’ve ached on hers; maybe it was the cold, or the ache in the joints where Anatole held a pen the same way for forty years, or maybe there was a map underneath the flesh and bone where the soul still knows what it knows. He didn’t look down at his knuckles, because there was no scuffing or swelling to see, no patches of scarflesh where the soft red hair was patchy, where the skin was too thick for the veins to show up blue-blooded against the pale, freckled, slender backs of his hands.

He held hers. There were times when he couldn’t see her face; his vision smeared and slipped away with the tears, and he bent his head, not thinking how close to her he was. Not thinking a whit about how he curled his fingers around hers, tapering and straight and perfectly fine-boned, the skin soft and uncallused.

All four of their hands were warm, now, whatever else they were, nestled in the wool of his hems. A few tears pattered on them; he thought they weren’t only his.

He didn’t have to ask why; he didn’t say much at all. He listened, and he listened, and he listened.

His head filled up sometimes with memories – barely-remembered monite, stinging flesh all over, nearly swallowing his tongue with the convulsions – and sometimes with pale shadows of unfamiliar scenes. He thought of hama guiding the shape of a sapling with wires and ties, pleaching the buds careful-like so the branch would trickle in another direction – whispering to the mona, he’d explained once, to ask the tree to grow just so…

There was a time when he thought he couldn’t take much more. He’d half forgot where he was, for all he’d never let go of her hand. The hitching had died in his chest; the tears had dried on his cheeks, and he’d not wiped them away, for all the skin of his face felt sticky and raw all at once and his eyes stung.

She must’ve known, then, or else she knew how much she could bear too. She was fair good at that, he thought somewhere distant; she’d had plenty of practice.

He found her hands shaking, and he held his still and warm. He’d been looking at her for a while now, at the streams of kohl on her cheeks. He’d seen the smile come back, he wasn’t sure when; he wasn’t sure what to think of the lines it made on her face.

She closed her eyes, and he felt her breathing even out; he evened out his own – after she opened her eyes, he shut his, and breathed, lips moving silently with the count, one, two, three, four. His field was indectal again; he didn’t think of what had spilled into it, and he didn’t let himself linger on the shame.

He was smiling, too, when he opened his eyes; he knew because he felt the lines on his face, all the old unfamiliar marks Anatole had pressed into the silk with his careless sneers.

I want to learn, she had said, after all that.

I wanted to learn, too, he almost said; it was hard – even harder, now – not to say, no, I was wrong. No, no, please don’t. Please don’t make me.

He nodded instead, slowly. He took his hands away from hers, but he didn’t ease away any more than that.

You think I was right, and that’s good enough for me, he thought. “I want to help,” he said, “but I don’t know where to start.”

He smiled wider, warmer, a little brighter, for all he wanted to hunch over and hide his face and pull his field underneath his skin; more tears prickled and glistened at the edges of his eyes, where he’d thought he’d run out.

“It wasn’t – fast, what’s happened to me,” he said softly, “since we first met. I don’t know when I learned what I know, or how, or how to know what I know and you don’t…”

He took a deep breath. “I know you know that I am a clairvoyant sorcerer,” he offered the words again, “and that I ward. I didn’t bring my chalks with me, but I brought everything I know.” His smile flickered, though it didn’t go out; his brow knit. “If you’ve any question I can answer, right off, that seems to me – a good starting place.”

[Ava Weaver]

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

Ava’s hands ached where he had held them, and she could not have said which of them it was who had held so tightly. He eased his hands away, and Ava drew hers back, too, and curled them one over the other on her lap, although she didn’t smooth away the wrinkles left there, not just yet.

Clairvoyant sorcerer, he said, and ward, and for all that had passed between them, for all the tears streaking trails down his cheek and nestled red in the corner of her eyes, Ava fought the urge to shiver. She won; she did not let him see it, not because she thought that it would hurt him, but because she thought that it would hurt her, to yield, this time.

Ava took the question, and nodded it over, sitting and thinking in silence for a long few moments. “I’m not sure I know, either, what to ask,” Ava said, quietly. “I know the names of the conversations; I know some of what some can do, at the edges, as if seen from a very great distance.” She smoothed her skirt, now, briskly; her back had never truly bent, but she held herself a little straight, studying him.

“I would like to know what I should be afraid of,” Ava said, finally, “when it comes to secrets, from a clairvoyant sorcerer, or a perceptive sorcerer, or a quantitative one. Or all the rest, I suppose, but I imagine we’d need more time than we have, for all the rest. I should like to know what I can do about it,” she looked evenly at him, and the smile at the edge of her lips was bitter, “if anything.”

“First,” Ava went on, evenly, and her smile evened out, and warmed, “I should like to make us some tea.” She pressed her hand to his one last time, and rose.

Ava made her way up the narrow stairs behind the silk hanging, opened the trap door. There was a flash of gray fur out of the corner of her eye, and a small, wiry body which wound itself between her legs. Ava crouched, knowing he could not be put off, and stroked the head of the small gray cat until he was rumbling, satisfied, with purrs; he went and hopped up onto the bed, curling up, and watched her.

Ava set the water to boil, first; she put out the tea things for the second time that day, filled the pot and adjusted the sugar cubes. He liked his tea black, and her portion of milk she poured into a small dish. The gray cat watched, eyes flashing in the dark, and settled in to lick himself, as if it were of no accord. Ava, smiling, knew him better than that.

Ava changed her boots, first, unlacing them and setting them aside to brush clean, and put on thin gray slippers in their place. Next, she went to her small vanity, and delicately washed away the dark stripes of kohl, and sat, a moment, with a cool cloth over her face, her eyes closed beneath it. She opened her eyes, then, and breathed in deep, and rubbed a soft dollop of lotion into the skin of her face.

That done, she went and stood by the window, out of sight of the street, and looked and nothing and everything at once: the blue phosphor lights gleaming down the road; her own hazy dark reflection in the glass, the gleam of eyes and hair; the distant lights gleaming beneath the heavy smog; the far more distant faint stars, half-glimpsed through the screen.

The water boiled; Ava poured it. The gray cat was lapping at his milk now; he glanced up as she passed, rough pink tongue running circles around his mouth. Ava sat the vanity once more, and painted the kohl back around her eyes, steady and even. She tucked a second damp cloth onto the tray, folding it lightly. Only then did she go back to the steeping tea, to carry the heavy tray back down the stairs, not as silently as she might have, soft, even steps just audible. She brushed aside the curtain at the bottom, and set the tray down on the table, and took her seat opposite.

“It needs a few minutes still,” Ava said, smiling at him. Carefully, she took the still warm cloth, and reached it across the space to him, not flinching as she felt the brush of his field wash over her.

“Mr. Shrikeweed came today,” Ava added, quietly, looking at him. “We should talk about that, too, when we’re ready.”

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

I
f anything.

What to be afraid of, and what to do about it – if anything.

He’d sat still and listened when she spoke, straight-backed and even, cutting carefully through the words as if cutting silk. He’d’ve eaten his boots before speaking over her, just then; and when he’d thought she’d finished, he still couldn’t think what to say. There’d been something in her smile he knew very well, but he hadn’t looked away from it.

Still, he’d felt some tension go out of him when she’d offered to make tea. He’d nodded his thanks; she’d passed out of the range of his field – he might’ve felt it, he thought, for all he knew he hadn’t – and slipped behind the sheaf of silk, and he’d just barely heard the creak of steps on the stairs.

The back of his neck still prickled at the thought of speaking more on it. But it was as if a spell’d broken; he found he could stand, now, as he might’ve once, and stretch. He unwound his scarf from his neck and took off his coat and folded them in a soft pile on the arm of the couch. He adjusted his collar; with its fine silk necktie, it covered up the bruising, he thought, and he wasn’t sure why the thought of her seeing it so troubled him.

When he sat, this time, he eased back against the cushions. He took a few more deep breaths and tried to think how to think about it.

Gagging. It’d always been gagging, as far as he could remember; he’d always been told – you keep a golly from opening his mouth, ‘cause once he does, you’ve got no idea what’s going to happen. And since he’d become this, whenever he’d gotten into trouble, they’d always –

Humans, he corrected himself. He shut his eyes; his lips pressed thin. Humans, he thought. The word prickled all along his skin. A human had choked him out. Humans had gagged him. Him, a – sorcerer.

He couldn’t bring himself to the other word; he’d a feeling, before the tea grew cold, he might have to.

He thought of explaining what it was like, or trying to. Intent, backlash. He thought again of what he’d been told as a lad, what he knew humans spoke of sometimes. It shivered through his field; he felt them whispering somewhere in him, somewhere he’d no name for. Drives ‘em all moony, he’d heard, every single one. Wicks’re fine, but the golly stuff – it goes to their heads, and they don’t even know it. ‘S’what makes ‘em all selfish and mean, slow, over time.

His mind was drifting again, and he righted it. He opened his eyes; they traced the patterns of flowers. That wasn’t what she’d asked. He thought, again, how to think.

He heard her footsteps on the stairs; he smiled tiredly when she brushed aside the hanging and carried in the rattling, steaming tray. The smell of tea, warm and bitter, wafted out into the room, with its faint floral tinge.

He nodded and reached to take the damp cloth, swallowing a lump and fighting another prickling in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said as she settled in opposite him. Her face was smooth and clear again, her kohl even on both sides.

The cloth was warm against his skin as he wiped his face off, glad to be rid of the clinging stickiness. He wiped the clamminess and grit off his hands, too.

He didn’t flinch at the name; he’d expected it, and he knew well enough. He inclined his head, breathed in deep. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, looking across at her.

Did he ask – did he cast – It rippled through his field, prickled all along his skin; it ached in his nerves, the remembered iron-bitter taste of ink and paper.

When we’re ready, she had said. “Yes,” he breathed, easing back. A little more time. He smiled, hesitant, folding up the wet cloth in his lap. He crossed his legs, slow and stiff, for all his back was still straight. “And how is he?” he asked, lifting a red eyebrow, glancing over at the silk hanging; he’d’ve sworn he’d caught a dusting of grey on her pointed hem, almost but not quite blending into the reddish-brown. “Still prowling about the night?”

[Ava Weaver]

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

T
he worst of the ache had drained out; it had not left her empty in its wake. Rather, Ava thought, it was as if it had filled her, expanded inside her and left room for nothing else beneath her skin, and as it shrank back down, slowly, it was she who came in to fill the space once more inside her.

If it was a strange process, it was not quite an unpleasant one, guided along with the gentle repetition of routine, the covering up of that which she had disarranged. There was no forgetting; there was never forgetting, for all that she had never in her life spoken such words aloud. She had wondered if the speaking would change anything, would lighten or make heavier the load; she found it was not so. This was not some hurt which airing out could heal, but neither did she feel plunged back into those.

All the same, Ava knew, or was as certain as one could be of such things, that sleep would not come easily tonight.

He looked tired, when she came back down; it was in all the lines of his face, and the new gray strands gleaming in his hair, somewhere in the set of his shoulders, for all that he held his back straight. He took the wash cloth and wiped away some of it from his face and hands.

He had cried in this room before, Ava knew; there had been a few tears, here and there, for both of them, and more, once, half-hidden, the first night they had met here. She had looked away from those tears; at the time, his dignity had mattered more than the soothing of them. These tears, she knew – he knew – did not touch that part of him. They were her grief and their friendship made real, and Ava could not imagine he felt any shame in her having seen them, no more than she did in him having seen hers.

His glance went over to the silk against the wall.

Ava smiled at the question, a soft, easy warmth flickering over her face. She almost thought to ask – how is it, now, with them – but it seemed as if it would drag them back towards a place they had, without speaking of it, decided to leave aside just a little longer.

“Well,” Ava said, gently, “at least, so far as I can tell. He comes when he wants to, and he seems to most want to when it rains or snow,” she grimaced, but smiled too at the memory of damp spots on her bedspread and fur fluffed out to dry, the small sleek creature almost ungainly with it. She did not mention the cold nights she had slept with the window open, in case a small creature found himself in need of a warm place; she did not mention, either, the nights she had slept with it closed to hold in the meager warmth, and awoken to the sound of a paw on glass and a quiet, grumpy meow, and tiptoed over cold floors to open the window, and let him go.

“He has a great passion for smoked fish,” Ava went on, a little smile playing about her lips. “But he does not seem to expect it; he accepts the milk I offer, even having had a taste of finer things.”

She found herself glad he was there tonight; she hoped he still would be, when this time too had passed, and she went up to find what solace she could in sleep. As strange as it was, she felt it helped her to have him there, and it was a little easier to look to the night ahead knowing he might be with her. All the same, she had never thought to close the window and trap him inside; she never would.

There was no putting it off forever; Ava did not glance at the teapot, but she was aware of the steeping, the slow passing of time. The room was filling with the warm bohea scent, and she would not let it overstep. Another minute or two, Ava gauged; she did not intend to let it oversteep.

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

S
moked fish,” he repeated, his eyebrow lifting a half-centimeter higher. The smile dropped off his face, replaced by a contemplative frown; he nodded as if to say he’d keep it in mind.

The serious look didn’t last long. He’d laughed once at her soft grimace, thinking of the wiry thing tangling up to her window soaking wet and tracking mud in. He couldn’t quite picture it, her upstairs bedroom, the floors or the stove or the bath or the books she must’ve kept, wherever she kept them; or the bed, Ava patting raggedy fur dry with a towel, the cat lapping at a saucer with milk in his whiskers.

It wasn’t that it seemed a hundred miles away, or even that it was lurking outside the door – in the shop, maybe, or behind a sheaf of silk – no, it still lay on the table between them, for all she’d fixed her kohl and he’d wiped the grit from his face.

But his hands had relaxed on the cloth in his lap, and he’d given himself over to it for a little while, whatever the two of them were in their strangeness. Some part of him had never thought he’d be back here; some part of him had thought she’d invite him back, and everything would be unchanged, his offer tucked unanswered somewhere on a shelf of silks.

He laughed again, and called the gray cat a tallyboy who knew better than to turn his nose up at milk. They wound on, and neither of them looked at the teapot or the tray, for all the smell was wafting through the room as warm as a bastly shift.

He knew it by the way she shifted on the couch, her dress smooth, and reached for the teapot with an elegant motion of her hands.

He took a deep breath; the tea would’ve got bitter, left any longer. He had turned it over in his mind enough. Any more, and he’d’ve lost the thread in all the mess, or lost the nerve to start. There was no freezing up on her now, not after what she’d given him.

“You read Mantel,” he said after a moment; he might’ve known all along where he wanted to start. “And Desvergiones. And Ammantier,” he added, making a face, remembering what she’d said of him. He smiled, then, hesitant. “I can tell you – first – about clairvoyance, because that’s what I know.”

He’d thought to start with quantitative; it would’ve been easy enough, with Shrikeweed on the table already, lurking among the tea things. Or maybe perceptive, for everything else they’d spoken of.

But he’d’ve felt a coward either way. “When you scry, what you’re doing is looking through a witness’ eyes. You need a – a medium, to do that, like a bowl of water, or smoke, or even a cup of tea. You know that, though. But – a clairvoyantist is connecting with your mind, and it’s a one-way connection; all they can do is see out of your eyes. They can do it over a long distance, but they can’t read your mind, and a perceptivist has to be closer, to do that.”

He realized he’d sat up straighter, uncrossed his legs; he was leaning forward a little, gesturing. “All you’d have to do is cover your eyes, or look someplace else,” he said. “If you knew you were being watched. You might be able to push a clairvoyantist out of your head, if you – knew one was there. If you knew what it felt like.”

His hand slowed mid-air; it paused and fell, and he swallowed thickly. He hadn’t blinked once or looked away from Ava, but he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“There’s a great deal you can do,” he said, more quietly, but firmly. “For that and more. There are ways to fight back, even when the spell is cast. If you know what’s being cast, and – how.”

[Ava Weaver]

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

In time, and not too long, Ava leaned forward and poured the tea, gently, two streaming lines of dark, first into his cup, and then into hers. The smell wafted up stronger from them, now; she set his on his saucer, and set it before him, without milk or sugar. In hers she dropped a single sugar cube – her milk well-spent – and stirred with soft gentle motions of her wrist, the spoon never touching the side of the glass. She turned it as she lifted, so not a droplet of tea fell onto the table, and she set it gently aside on the tray of tea things.

She sat back, then, and took the cup of tea with her, and waited for it to cool. The steam drifted up from both cups, winding through the thin light; it made his face hazy, for a moment, almost uncertain, a drift of bright red hair and dark gray eyes beneath, thin lines all around them.

Ava inclined her head, and smiled, a little, when he mentioned Ammantier. She thought that when he had first woken up like this, he must, then, have understood what it was to know a corner, and know that corner well, desperately well, every wrinkle and fold of it familiar beneath your fingertips, and yet to know nothing of what it connected to – of where it led, of how it had come to be there, of trying to guess at the angle of its lines, as if from there one could suppose the number of corners yet to find.

Ava leaned forward too, watching him, listening, her eyes intent on his. It was a habit to listen, to snatch at every word, to covet them and stretch them out, as if to ask further would betray her interest and mean that they would be taken away.

“If you knew,” Ava said, quietly, repeating it into the space he’d left. He swallowed, thickly, watching her; his hand came down, and his face was solemn.

Ava nodded, slowly.“Can I know?” she asked; she hadn’t looked away, either. “Is it even possible?” That seemed to her the first question. If you knew one was there, he had said. Could she? Could she ever know? The idea of it was thrilling, almost; if you knew – if you could know – the things you could do. It tingled and rushed through her, as she tried to think about it. To know you were being watched – when and how – it gave you power. Closing your eyes, Ava thought, was the least of it; choosing what you looked at, being prepared, was far more powerful.

If you know what’s being cast, and how. Ava understood, but she thought perhaps the words needed to be spoken. “You mean learning monite,” Ava said, evenly. She felt it shudder through her, but she spoke it, looking at him. She thought of the sections of the grimoires and books she had, where suddenly the text shifted into strange, horrible lines of letters, scrawled and scratched onto the page, almost horrifying in their foreignness.

“Is it just an alphabet?” Ava asked. She thought of the work she had done for Grais, the careful copying out of letters and learning how they translated to words. This, she thought – for all they had done and spoken of in this room – this was by far the furthest they had gone. Ava felt the fear, and she knew that that was all it was, fear; that whatever barriers there were, here, she had put up herself; she had accepted them to be made, and had never questioned, because she had never had the chance.

Or so it seemed, for a moment, looking at him over the table, with steam wafting up between them. He had learned it; that was obvious all around him. Was it the soul mattered, or the body? Ava did not worry about blasphemy, about the laws of the universe; they seemed to her unknowably distant, and as unfair as the laws of the land.

“That too…” Ava asked, quietly, her eyes searching him. “Can I learn it?”

[Tom Cooke]

Woven Delights • The Painted Ladies

Early Evening on the 33rd of Vortas, 2719

T
wo very separate questions.

For a moment, the second swallowed up the first – or maybe they blended together, tangled up with each other and knotted, and he couldn’t pry them apart.

He thought she must’ve seen it, flickering across his face; he wasn’t sure what this face did with it, tilted it into sadness or pulled it into anger. If he had to put a name to it, it would’ve been hurt. He couldn’t’ve said at first why he felt it, why it stuck in him like a sharp bit of porcelain.

Can I learn it? she asked, watching him closely. For a strange and painful moment, he’d thought she was asking his permission.

The feeling dissolved; it steeped, spread itself out into a different kind of understanding and a different kind of sadness. Can a human learn monite? she was asking, instead.

He frowned, thinking, looking down at the tea tray. She’d left his cup there some time ago; he remembered watching her pour it, but the soft gurgle of the tea into the cups had disappeared underneath all the words that’d flooded out of him. Is it possible for a human to know she’s a witness, Ava had asked, and then: can a human learn monite?

Two very separate questions, he thought, taking his teacup and saucer with careful hands.

He took a deep breath and looked back up. He wasn’t sure how long he had thought – or what he saw in her intent dark eyes – but he knew he hadn’t wanted to answer any of those questions hastily. “Monite,” he started, “yes. It’s an alphabet and a language – just like Mugrobi or Riverword. It’s taught like any other language, with…”

Exceptions. He ran a fingertip round the rim of the teacup, taking a deep breath.

“Each spell is a conversation, between you and the mona,” he went on. “But it’s more like an asking. You speak to them in the only language they understand, and you – feel them,” he only barely hesitated, “inside, moving with you. Responding to your words, and to your – will.”

The porcelain just barely clinked and rattled. He settled back as she had, and looked down into the teacup – and when he realized, a sad little smile twitched at his lips, and he traced the shapes of a familiar ring of flowers around the rim of the cup.

Not much chance of him dropping it, this time. “The will is important, but so are the words. Every spell asks the mona to do something, whether it’s one word, whether it’s just, push” – he half whispered it, a breath – “or a spell with leybridges and change clauses, a – a perceptivist asking the mona to compel you to speak the truth, only he has to use very specific phrasing, or it’ll backlash, or do something different than what he wants.”

Or do exactly what he thinks he wants, he thought, his lip twisting wryly. They have a sense of humor, he thought to say; they have minds – a mind, one mant mind – they can be amused or angry, you can have a good relationship with them or a bad one.

“But your first question… I don’t know,” he said, because he couldn’t avoid it any longer. “I can feel it, now that I know what I’m looking for. I feel it in my field and in the mona, but I feel it in my mind, too. Like a weight. If I can feel that – why couldn’t you?”

It was thoughtless; he half-regretted it, laying it out so, ripping back the sheet. Because, he imagined her saying, in the same cruel blank-slate way she had said when I was a man, because you are a –

“Galdori can be taught to push back with their minds, and it doesn’t involve the recipient casting.” He held his jaw firm, and his back straight. “As for monite, I have plenty of books – not grimoires, but books that teach the language. If…”

He almost trailed off; he shook it off. “I could help you learn. Or you could teach yourself. Or however you think you’d learn best, if you wanted to learn.”

[Ava Weaver]

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

Something went over his face, pulled at the familiar lines, now more deeply set, in unfamiliar ways. Ava didn’t know what to name it; she had gone back over her words, then, and tried again to learn how to ask.

He paused at the end of the questions, and Ava felt a faint prickle of uncertainty. But his eyes were moving, slightly, and the frown on his face was thoughtful, if anything. Ava picked up her small cup of tea; she took a noiseless sip. It was cool enough to drink, now, though not too cool.

Just like any other alphabet, he said, with… he trailed off. Ava listened again, drinking it in, her gaze fixed on him; there was no need to feign anything, because he had every bit of attention she had to offer. There was something like soft pride tucked inside it: to your words, he said, and to your will.

His words, Ava understood, and his will. She understood, she thought, what was between the sentences, what came in the midst of the hard-won understanding. He had fought for this; he had studied, and learned, and found his own will. She thought of Grais’s excitement when she first began to understand the way the ledger worked, and the pride her young shop assistant took in knowing how to use it. She didn’t know that she wished to see that on his face, just now, but she did, and what she wished did not come much into it.

Very specific phrasing, he said. Ava nodded, slowly, her hands curling around the cup, and listened.

He came back to it, then, what she had first asked. My field, he said, and the mona, and my mind. Why couldn’t you?

Ava met his gaze, evenly, looking at him across the room. She said nothing; she didn’t think she need to. He bore up beneath it all the same. She nodded, slowly; she took another sip of tea, and set the cup delicately back down on the saucer. Books that teach the language; he offered to help her, like a tutor. She tried to imagine sitting here in this quiet, safe place, as he read monite to her aloud; everything in her crawled and fled from it. She could bear it, if there were reason to; she had born worse.

“I’m not sure I understand the possibilities,” Ava said, slowly, glancing at him. “Of… learning the language, I mean. The spells are precise; I’ve understood that, and that the wording matters enormously, from some of what I’ve read. That sort of precision implies specificity, or so I’d suppose.” She was quiet, turning the cup, slowly, two delicate fingertips on the handle; she thought of Shrikeweed, turning the same cups back and forth, and sat back once more, her hands in her lap.

“If distance doesn’t matter for a clairvoyant conversationalist,” Ava said, evenly, looking back at him once more, “then learning their vocabulary does not help much. Perceptive seems, I think, the most…” her gaze lowered once more, her face set softly in thought. He had gone the same way, she thought.

“It’s one thing to learn an alphabet, and another entirely to learn every word in a language, and become fluent,” Ava went on, slowly, finding her footing once more. “They study for ten years, don’t they? For just one conversation? Mantel, I think, studied a lifetime,” Something like a smile twitched over her lips, and didn’t reach her eyes.

As for the other, Ava wanted to say; you understand, don’t you, that there is only way to know. She didn’t say; she knew she did not have to. She read it in the tightness around his mouth, the way he struggled to look at her, at how long he had taken to come to the question. He knew – they both knew – what it would really mean.

And if it could succeed? And at what cost? Would he sit, himself, casting on each of them until they could do it? If she could learn, could she describe it well enough to others? How sure could they be – could they ever be? But… if she could learn, if Wisp could learn, if a handful of others who knew more than was good for them, could learn…

She had never balked, Ava thought, at offering all she had to the cause. This too, she knew, she could refuse.