[Memory] The Waves

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Anaxas' main trade port; it is also the nation's criminal headquarters, home to the Bad Brothers and Silas Hawke, King of the Underworld. The small town of Plugit is nearby.

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moralhazard
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Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:29 pm

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Sweet Waters, King’s Court
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T
he night air smelled like the tang of the Tincta Basta, sharp rainy season winds whisking the sea brine up through the streets of the Rose. Uzoji breathed in it all in, let it fill his lungs, and grinned at the rasp of it. He held on the edges of Quarter Fords, hands in the pocket of his coat, and nudged Aremu with his elbow.

“Hulali’s balls, what a city,” Uzoji said, cheerfully.

“The Rose?” Aremu glanced around. Uzoji knew what he saw - a heap of garbage on the edge of the sidewalk, the beggars coughing in the damp, dingy gray and tan laundry flapping on a line from a window above. “You have been on the ground too long.”

Uzoji laughed, sliding his hands from his pockets, and slapped his oldest friend on the back. “Ahhh, it’s no Thul Ka, I know it.” He said, smiling, breathing in deep the faint distant reek of fish, the sharp sour scent of ale, the subtle earthy smell of sea-warped wood, mingling together in a strange perfume. “But the Rose has a certain charm all her own. All the same, I look forward to seeing her from above again.”

Aremu grinned at that. “The Eqe Aqawe has missed you,” he said, cheerfully. “We all have.”

“Ah, well,” Uzoji said. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you in the Islands, poa’na.”

Aremu shook his head. “I did what I could,” he said. “I am hardly the man to -“

“No one better,” Uzoji said, turning to the imbala fully now. He could not let Aremu get through the sentence; he could not hear the lie on his friend’s lips. He reached out, and clasped Aremu’s forearm with his hand, scarred skin glittering in the lamplight. “There is no man in the world I trust more.” Uzoji said, firmly.

Aremu held still a long moment, and nodded. He clasped Uzoji’s arm in return, and grinned, and said nothing more.

They chased the edges of lilting conversation through the streets of the Rose, laughter mingling with more serious talk, the last details that needed doing before the next day’s flight. Uzoji was as glad of them as he was of this last night out, this send-off - whether for himself or the Rose, he was not so sure. He had never doubted he would fly again, not from the very moment he knew he had not drowned in his own blood at the end of the last year, but the long months of cramped confinement and recovery had felt interminable. He had pushed his limits - slow and steady, stretching them as far as they would go, always stopping just shy of the point where they would snap. Slowly, slowly, he had rebuilt himself, with hard and patient effort. Slowly, slowly, he would continue to do the work that needed doing; he would not begrudge himself any of it.

But by the Circle, it was flooding good to be ready to fly again! He felt it - Niccolette felt it - Aremu felt it, and Chibugo and Willie too, both of the other pilots and his wife even now aboard the Eqe Aqawe, making her ready. And in the morning, Uzoji would grasp the smooth wood of the wheel, would speak the monite to light the gas, and would soar through the sky once more. He could not but grin to think of it, his heart already light in his chest.

“Here,” Uzoji said, draping his arm across Aremu’s shoulders and steering him towards the warped wooden door. He held it open for the other Mugrobi, and followed after him, the two slender dark men winding easily through the crowd whose low murmurs filled the air, making their way to the bar.

“Two shots of wildfire,” Uzoji leaned across the bar and grinned, coins clinking against the wood.

Aremu glanced around the crowded bar, shoulders tense beneath the sharp cut of his jacket.

“Don’t worry,” Uzoji said, quietly, switching to Mugrobi, low-voice and easy. “Those who can know won’t mind.” He nodded at the barkeeper as the man slid two small glasses of gleaming orange liquid across the bar.

“I would not choose Anaxas,” Aremu responded in the same language, adjusting his sleeves and turning back to Uzoji.

Uzoji grinned, and shrugged. “May His waters not run too smooth,” he said, lifting his shot glass.

Aremu clinked his against it. “May His currents always guide you well,” he said, and the two men drank. Uzoji laughed aloud, shaking his head against the burn of it, and grinned, wild and fierce.

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Tom Cooke
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Tue Oct 15, 2019 11:23 am

Sweet Waters King's Court
Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716
Tom’d never particularly liked being the bearer of bad news.

It’d been a hell of a couple of days, and he still felt like he was coming off the tail end of the dream. It’d felt like his head was full of cotton, and now it was empty, scrubbed clean. The familiar shapes of the docks, the forest of masts, the glow of the lighthouses through the fog – all the lights dotting the dark waters like stars, and the city stretching out above – it was all the same as it’d been before, but the waves of mid-Hamis were curling and licking themselves into new shapes, and he felt like he was smelling the salt sea breeze for the first time.

He’d needed it, he reckoned, ’cause he always hated being the black cloud, but it went with the job, and today was no different than a hundred days before it. The nine of last week’d been no different than the nine of the week before it. Just an excuse to spend the night in with hama, with hama’s nimble fingers, with the notes of his oud curling out in the salvia smoke. Just a reminder how gone was gone, and the important things were the ones that you could touch, right now, right here.

Seemed like every year, you had to put more and more things out of your head. Sharp lines; you had to draw sharp lines.

Tonight, he had a job to do, and a man to find. Another year in the Rose, another job, another salt sea breeze tugging at the hem of his coat; more rain to make all his scars ache. But tonight, he had a man to find, ’cause a bird’d told him that man was about to slip off into the sky, and there was work to be done before he joined the birds.

And so it was that Tom tucked himself into Sweet Waters, tucked himself through the creaking door, ducking his head underneath the warped wooden frame. So it was his straining eyes adjusted to the lamplit dark, the blur of moving bodies, and he pushed his way carefully through the familiar, busy space. Skimmed the tops of heads with his eyes. It wasn’t too hard to find a man in a crowded taproom, when you were a head above everybody else, and the man you were looking for – wasn’t.

He found it quick enough, the sheen of the low, warm light on that close-shaved head. Uzoji Ibutatu was leaned over the bar, and he wasn’t alone; alongside his slender, dark figure was another, just a little taller. Two galdori. Mugrobi, but still galdori. As he wound his way toward the bar, he moved with just a little more caution.

Uzoji’s field wasn’t a surprise, this time; the surprise was that there was only one. Two galdori, Tom thought, but only one woobly, far as he could tell. Fair flooding interesting. Sucking at a tooth thoughtfully, he tucked the thought away in the back of his head, ’case he needed it. More out of habit than anything, but you never knew what kind of work Silas’d call you to. The set of his slim frame looked tense underneath its jacket.

He heard Uzoji’s voice: something soft, lilting. Mugrobi. His friend responded in kind, said some word sounded like Anaxas, still glancing round him like he thought maybe –

Tom tucked it away.

The bartender set two shot glasses in front of the kov, and they toasted, and Uzoji threw his head back with laughter. Now, Tom thought, putting an easy, cavalier lilt in his own motions.

“Well, flood me, look who it is,” he growled, sidling in beside the Mugrobi. Leaning on the bar a moment, he looked at Uzoji with one dark eyebrow raised, eyes glittering. He grinned. “Ain’t seen you in such a benny shape for months. What’s it to be, then? Back in the air soon, wi’ that rosh o’ yours?”

He whistled softly, shaking his head. Then, he turned and raised a hand to the bartender, like that’d been his design all along, like he hadn’t been drinking through the day already, like he’d come here for that purpose and no other. “Hullwen,” he said, “neat,” before pulling out a stool and settling himself in it, oddly careful. It still creaked and popped underneath him.

This time, when he turned back to the two, he let his eyes wander to Uzoji’s friend. Casual-like, like he’d just noticed him. He let his eyes wander over his fine, dark features, let his grin fade to a thoughtful smile, before he shot another brief glance at Uzoji.

“An’ who’s this gentleman?” The scar at his lip tugged his smile crooked, wicked.
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moralhazard
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Tue Oct 15, 2019 1:54 pm

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Sweet Waters, King’s Court
The Estuan addressed to him was unexpected, and it didn’t do much for the faint tension in Aremu’s shoulders; Uzoji followed his friend’s gaze to Tom Cooke – damn quiet for his size, as ever – and grinned. “Tom!” He said, surprised and, tentatively, a little pleased. Uzoji grinned wider at the man’s questions, and answered the second – or, rather, the third – first.

“This is Aremu Ediwo, our brother,” Uzoji said, smiling; it wasn’t that the smile didn’t reach his eyes, but there was something hard in the look of them, a warning, and there was the faintest sense of pressure in the air around them, weight and heat both – just a moment, and then it was as gone as if it had never been, and Uzoji’s smile never wavered. “Aremu, this is Tom Cooke.”

Aremu shifted against the bar. “Sana’hulali, Tom Cooke,” He said, politely, his accent a little stronger than Uzoji’s, a little more of a flowing lilt to his words. Uzoji knew the name was familiar to him, but there was no particular sign of it on Aremu’s face.

“And yes,” Uzoji said. “It’s good to be – ah – benny, again,” Uzoji grinned wider. He pronounced the Tek a little carefully, a little deliberately, the delivery made even stranger in his golly Mugrobi accent.

Aremu cleared his throat, a noise that Uzoji knew to be him suppressing a laugh. His eyes darted past them, a faint flicker as if he couldn’t help himself, and settled back on Uzoji and Tom – held Tom’s dark eyes for just a moment, Uzoji noticed.

“Niccolette has been teaching me Tek,” Uzoji said, glancing back at Aremu. “Something of a project while we’ve been cooped up. She says,” Uzoji grinned all the wider to think of it, “my accent’s so bad, she’s surprised I can speak at all.”

For a moment, he hadn’t been sure it would work – but he’d caught Aremu off guard, just enough. The imbala snorted a laugh and eased a little against the bar.

“Another?” The barkeep jerked his chin at the empty shotglasses, setting Tom’s Hullwen down on the bar.

“Two ales,” Uzoji said, a faint tinge of regret to his voice. “Kierden?” He asked, hopefully.

The barkeep nodded and took the coins Uzoji offered. He produced a dirty rag from somewhere, and cleaned two glasses as he went, and Uzoji rather thought they had looked better before. All the same, he was quite sure Niccolette had told him alcohol sterilized, and surely ale counted? Better not to know too well.

Better, too, not to say too much, Uzoji thought. Tom was a Brother, of course, but the business of the Eqe Aqawe – even something as simple as when they planned to leave the Rose – wasn’t something Uzoji would discuss in the middle of a bar, even one tucked into King’s Court. One never quite knew who was listening, what else they knew – what else they might be able to put together.

And what, Uzoji wondered, was Tom Cooke doing here? It was pleasant to think the man had seen him across the bar and wanted to come and say hello. The last time he’d seen him was – yes, Uzoji thought, Intas, when he’d left with Niccolette to hunt the brother of the man responsible for Uzoji’s injury. Niccolette had come back alone, late at night, with the smell of blood lingering in her hair, and a fierce, satisfied grin on her face – she’d woken him up from the couch, and together they’d gone to bed, walking slowly arm in arm down the hall.

Pleasant, but, Uzoji thought, a little unlikely. He was a Mugrobi galdor, after all, and Tom an Anaxi human. Brotherhood changed things – they had drank together, more than once, and they had fought together, and Uzoji was thoroughly grateful to Tom for the fact that he was able to sit upright at a bar and drink with him again – but not everything.

The bartender brought the two beers, and Uzoji clinked the edge lightly against Aremu’s, then turned to do the same to Tom. To his surprise, Aremu leaned forward, and extended his glass as well, nudging it against Tom’s with a faint clink.

“Cheers,” Aremu said, and Uzoji echoed him with a grin, and drank.

“And how have you been?” Uzoji asked Tom as he set the bitter ale back down. “Your nose seems much improved.”

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Tom Cooke
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Wed Oct 16, 2019 11:24 pm

Sweet Waters King's Court
Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716
Something about the woobly in Uzoji’s field’d got wooblier – had warmed, maybe, like they was sitting just a pina closer to the hearth than they’d been sitting, had got tighter and stronger. Tom’d been around plenty of the gollies, so he had practice ignoring the prickle in all the hairs on the backs of his arms. But it was the look in Uzoji’s eyes, flickering through his smile: a quiet warning. They were both Brothers, and they were both men looking out for their own. Tom knew what that look meant, and he respected it, and he really did hope Uzoji’d never have to make good on that promise.

So he just grinned his crooked-toothed grin at Uzoji and then at this Aremu kov, friendly-like enough. Our brother, he thought. Our. Huh, he thought.

“Sana’hulali,” he murmured back, “Aremu Ediwo.” He didn’t exactly struggle with the Mugrobi, but he crashed through it like a natt from Sharkswell – broadening each syllable, tangling himself up in the consonants. He took his glass off the bar, swirling his whisky round as he looked back at Uzoji. His hand just about dwarfed the tumbler.

The word benny in Uzoji’s accent wasn’t enough to make Tom laugh, but his lip twitched. He didn’t miss Aremu’s little cough, and he met his eye for just a moment, arcing one heavy, dark eyebrow in an oddly delicate motion.

Uzoji spoke again, then, and the thought of a golly teaching another golly Tek – and Niccolette, no less; Niccolette clocking Ibutatu, telling Uzoji how shit his Tek was – was enough that Tom couldn’t help a loud snort. To his surprise, Aremu snorted, too.

Tom was remembering, ’course, why he’d always halfway-liked Uzoji, and that wasn’t helping nothing. The galdor called for another round, Fen Kierden ale this time, and that wasn’t helping nothing, neither. When the bartender brought them, he clinked his glass against Tom’s, and then Aremu followed suit. “Cheers,” Tom shot back, pleasantly surprised.

Pausing to breathe in that oaky Hullwen scent, Tom took a long first drink. This Aremu kov’s macha accent, Tom thought, the pleasant burn of it still in his throat, also wasn’t helping.

Shifting in his seat with another couple of creaks, he turned back to Uzoji. “Oes,” he laughed, “‘f this is what you call improved. Tom indicated his nose. Bruising’d cleared up benny, but it seemed like with every year, with every handful of jobs, it got a little crookeder. He reckoned that was fine, except hama’d started quarreling with him about the snoring. “What don’t kill you makes you handsomer, hey? Ain’t that the way, lads?”

Tom grinned again at Uzoji, threw a little wink at Aremu, and then turned back to his whisky for a few moments, thoughtful.

He hadn’t needed an answer to his second question, being honest; he knew exactly when the Ibutatus’d be off the ground. That was the whole flooding problem. Now, he kept thinking, or later, and he paused to take another drink of whisky, his smile faltering just a pina.

“Well, kov,” he said after a moment, still looking down into his Hullwen, “you want the bad news?” Yet another drink, and Tom’d drained it near to the dregs. He straightened up, rolling his broad shoulders, and heaved a sigh. “Best get it over with now, or wait ’til you’re done wi’ this round?”

Tilting his head, he met Uzoji’s eye, then glanced toward the door meaningfully, through the thicket of people. His voice was cheerful enough, but there was something hard in his eyes.
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moralhazard
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Thu Oct 17, 2019 2:09 pm

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Sweet Waters, King’s Court
Uzoji chuckled at Tom’s joke, and took another sip of the Fen Kierden ale, another small one, and set the glass back down. Aremu had left his on the counter and taken his hand from the glass, bur he was a little lighter, a little easier than he’d been.

It marks you one way or another, doesn’t it?” Uzoji said, smiling. “Maybe scars are the least of it.” He thought of Niccolette then – he thought of her side, of the place where he could fit his hand to the burns, still, a perfect fit, now that it didn’t hurt anymore.

He had, once, covered it with his hand and asked her if she wanted it gone; he had meant to offer to find a way, even to go to Mestigia if necessary. He didn’t mind it – he had tried to make that clear – but he had worried, even after all this time, that she did, that she would be sorry he had marked her so.

And she had laughed at him, so that he had not even been able to finish the question, and she had set her hand on top of his – drawn him closer – Uzoji grinned a little wider.

"Depends on the scar," Aremu said.

They traded a few more words between them, talking of nothing much at all, until silence crept up again. Tom’s words dropped into that silence and shattered it like glass. Uzoji still had half his ale left; Aremu had barely done more than tasted his. Neither hesitated in the least, leaving the thick glass behind on the counter without so much as a second glance.

So, Uzoji thought, this was why Tom had come. He would not have called himself disappointed, and he wasn’t – not quite, not about either the pleasant night he had hoped for with Aremu, nor at the confirmation that it was not his presence Tom was interested in. He had thought them on one river, and Hulali had found for them a bend; he would not begrudge it to him. There was no point in fighting the tides.

“Hulali floats, and he drowns,” Aremu said, shrugging.

It was, Uzoji thought, more or less the only answer worth giving. He slid off the bar stool and headed towards the narrow back door of the bar, slipping easily through the crowd, aware of Aremu close behind and Tom not much further back. The Mugrobi tried the door, and the warped wood came open with just a little bit of force, and just like that they were back out into the night.

Uzoji glanced up and down the alley, and his gaze settled on a bundle of rags humped against the wall. He grimaced, and crossed over to it, leaving Aremu and Tom behind.

Aremu’s hands found his pockets, and he watched Uzoji, his face set and serious. Once, and only once, his gaze flickered to Tom, and then back and away again.

Uzoji knelt, a coin glittering in his fingers in the dim yellow light. “It’s time to go,” he said, and pressed it into the beggar’s hand, his field weighing heavily down in the air around them. He was not smiling, not just then; the beggar bit the coin with scraggly, misshapen teeth, and stared wide-eyed at the galdor. Then he was up on his feet, surprisingly fast if more than a little shaky, and was gone out of the alley even faster, shuffling away before Uzoji could think to take the coin back.

Uzoji rose and crossed the narrow alley back to Tom and Aremu. “Well, Tom,” He said, smiling again. “What’s it to be?”

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Tom Cooke
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Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:35 pm

Sweet Waters King's Court
Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716
Hulali floats, and he drowns.

It was something Tom’d heard Ish say plenty of times, and he’d never had it in him to disagree. This Aremu seemed to him a quiet kov, but every time he opened his mouth, something benny came out; Tom liked him more, maybe, than he wanted to. He cast another brief, thoughtful glance over him, wondering what kind of scars he had experience with.

Uzoji stood and started for the back door, and Aremu followed, the two of them weaving easily back into the throng. Tom lingered a few seconds, glance flicking from glass to glass to glass. He looked at the rings of foam on the two Kierden ales, one half higher than the other; he looked at his tumbler, empty, dusty glass with a skin of amber liquid at the bottom. He sucked at a tooth, rustled in his coat to leave a few quart’pennies on the bar, then turned away to follow the two Mugrobi.

The burble of the crowd turned to the quiet muffle of the back hall, then the fresh, humid chill of the alleyway, the taste of rain and rubbish and rot on the breeze. Tom had to duck his head and shoulders to get through the door, this time, and when he raised up outside, he rolled his shoulders.

He stood near Aremu, watching Uzoji’s slim shadow slip through the misty alleyway and toward the pile of rags. It wasn’t a long exchange; whatever Uzoji’d given him, glinting between their hands, poor sod looked in a hurry to leave with it. Still, Tom could feel Aremu’s eyes on him once, quick-like. For the first time, he felt a little antsy. He hadn’t been around a lot of scraps; he found himself wondering, for just a moment, what one of those – whatever they called it – those voo attacks were like. He’d heard tell, and he didn’t like the stories.

He didn’t have long to think about it, ’cause Uzoji was back, then.

Tom met Uzoji’s smile with a grin of his own, but there wasn’t much mirth to it. Putting his hands in the pockets of his coat, he leaned back against the clammy brick. “It’s to be a delay,” he said, holding Uzoji’s eyes, “or a damn caoja, I’m afraid.”

His glance flicked between the galdor and the passive; he studied Aremu’s expression for a moment, wondering, before he looked back at Uzoji.

“A bird” – he put weight on the word, as always – “tells me you been waitin’ for a shipment of, uh – hyper-oscillators,” he sounded out, shifting from foot to foot, a little uncomfortable. “A shipment you was supposed to get tonight. I ain’t got to say it ain’t comin’. King’s kov for aetherium’s decided to be – difficult.” He enunciated each syllable in the word, delicate-like, almost. Taking his hands out of his pockets, he crossed his arms across his chest. “He’s got another kov, but I reckon it’s goin’ to take a week, at the least, to get your shit to you.”

The grin’d drained steadily from his face; now, he frowned deeply. He scratched his beard, pausing before he went on. He reckoned he already knew what Uzoji’s answer’d be, and he didn’t know whether it was the one he wanted to hear.

He didn’t know much about this aetherium shit, neither. Tom’d never ridden in an airship, but he knew you couldn’t run it with all natt. The hyper – whatever – he reckoned (he’d been told) they were for the circles gollies used to cast, sometimes; Tom didn’t understand how that’d help keep one of those ships aloft, and he didn’t want to understand. It just put him in mind of circles of candles, and then of the smell of burning flesh, and it was too godsdamn soon. Still too soon, after months.

He raised his brows at Uzoji. “Unless you want to pay this kov a visit yourself. You ain’t got to, but he ain’t goin’ to cott you for, uh, solvin’ the problem personal, neither. That’s what I’m here for – other than bein’ a pretty face to soften the blow.” Another twitch of a grin. His expression went serious just as fast. “But it’s a hell of a job. Clocker’s a golly, an’ he’s got resources.”
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Sat Oct 19, 2019 3:19 am

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
King’s Court to a Bad Brothers Shipyard
Uzoji raised his eyebrows lightly when Tom first spoke. A delay, or else? He did not interrupt, giving Tom the time to make his explanations.

Tom wasn’t wrong; they did need the hyper-oscillators. In the studying she had done for her monic reconciliation, Niccolette had come across a few new suggestions for the plot in their casting room – suggestions that required hyper-oscillators. She was at the Eqe Aqawe now, preparing the room for the shipment they had been meant to receive – the last thing they needed to get out of the Rose. Uzoji hadn’t asked Niccolette for all the details; he didn’t need to. If she said this would work better, it’d work better; backlash on an airship could doom them all, if the scope was wide enough.

And without the aetherium, without the hyperoscillators? Niccolette could restore their old plots, but that’d take days as well – and Uzoji had plans, plans he did not wish to delay. Uzoji rubbed his scarred hand over his face, thinking. A day or two – yes. A week?

No. By the Circle – no. They stood at a fork – were they simply to let the river sweep then along and choose their path for them? Or should they take the paddles in hand? Uzoji had long ago chosen the second, and he would not renege now. They were Hulali's waters, yes, but there was always more than one way.

“Well,” Uzoji said, and he grinned. “He wouldn’t’ve dared thumb his nose at the King otherwise,” Uzoji slid his hands back into his pockets, and glanced sideways at Aremu.

Aremu nodded, and Uzoji knew it was not just the statement he had agreed to.

“Very well,” Uzoji said. “Chibugo?” He raised an eyebrow at Aremu.

“Out,” Aremu said.

Uzoji nodded. “We’ll leave him to it, then.” They’d discussed earlier that Uzoji would be taking the first flight shift in the morning, and Chibugo liked his liquor; he doubted the Mugrobi would have held back, and a drunk caster was worse than no caster at all.

Uzoji turned back to Tom. “Solving the problem personal it is. Tom, if you’d join us shipside first?” Uzoji asked. “We’d better ask Niccolette to come along,” he grinned, a little wider – a little more vicious.

“You can do the asking,” Aremu said, and he grinned, suddenly, his whole face alight, glancing from Uzoji to Tom, and raising an eyebrow.

Uzoji grinned back at Aremu, more than aware of Niccolette’s grudging opinion of Tom, and how his beloved wife might react to the disruption of her plotting. It was a risk he was glad to take; he thought it much safer than the alternative of leaving her behind. He would trust Tom’s judgment on this galdor’s strength, and he believed Niccolette would trust his judgment on the necessity of interrupting her and of bringing Tom along.

Eventually.

From King’s Court, it was not a long walk to the Bad Brother airship dockyard where the Eqe Aqawe was tied up; Uzoji led the two of them through the busy streets at an easy pace – not strolling casually, but not rushing either, walking purposefully somewhere in the middle, as if even time was his to command. Uzoji chatted for a moment with the guard at the entrance, and then they were inside, winding through the yard. Airships gleamed overhead, tied to their moorings, most pristine.

One looked half-destroyed, the hull a ravaged mess of fire, and Aremu shook his head at the sight of it. “Bhe,” he muttered.

Uzoji stepped them at a short pier with an sleek black curved shape overhead, glimmering between them and the light of the night sky; a hanging rope ladder connected the deck to the platform below, waving gently in the wind, back and forth, visibly several feet from the dock.

Uzoji frowned at it. There was strength in testing the edges of one's limits - in finding the bounds of what one could do and pushing them further. But there was no strength at all in pushing them senselessly, in spending oneself for the sake of pride. He glanced sideways at Aremu.

Aremu was already shrugging off his coat, and he handed it to Uzoji. Uzoji took it and folded it over his arm; he wasn't sure whether he was grateful that Aremu hadn't made him ask, or a little sorry that his brother knew him so well. Grateful, he decided; grateful.

Aremu scaled the ladder up the mooring at a rapid pace, stood on the platform a moment, then leapt off the edge of the platform into the air, grabbing hold of the ladder well above the ground. He scampered up it, drew it after him, and dropped down from the ship’s deck to the platform below, secured the ladder, and came back down the mooring even faster than he’d climbed it, a tight, controlled fall that he made look effortless.

Aremu landed in an easy crouch and rose back up, breathing a little harder than he had, but otherwise unaffected. “Now the hard part,” he told Uzoji, taking his coat back.

Uzoji laughed, clasped Aremu tightly on the shoulder, and set off, making his own way up the mooring, leaving Tom and Aremu behind on the ground below.

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Ladder retrieval: SidekickBOTToday at 10:11 AM
@moralhazard: 1d6 = (6) = 6
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Tom Cooke
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Sat Oct 19, 2019 2:14 pm

A Shipyard The Rose
Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716
Tom followed the two Mugrobi through King’s Court at their easy, purposeful pace. He didn’t make anything of it – there was nothing to be made, ’course, nothing to be seen; no questions to be asked, and that was that – but it still felt funny, the two of them and then him, behind like a big hulking shadow. He hadn’t been pleased at the idea they fetch Niccolette, but he tried not to give it much more thought. What’d come would come. Hulali floats, Aremu’d said, and he drowns, and Tom’d been given a job.

Through the streets, then. Tom took pleasure in it, like he did every walk before a job. The whisky was settling on him, warming him up against the chill. He’d just about got sober before he’d come to Sweet Waters, and now, he was loosening up again, feeling the tension in his gut unwind. What’d come would come, and there was nothing more to think about.

After a brief chat with the guard, they were in the shipyard.

Tom looked about him; he wasn’t smiling anymore, but he was alight with interest. He studied each of the great shapes they passed, watched how the moonlight glinted off the scales on the balloons. Like great clocking silverfish, he thought, all rolled up. He squinted at the shapes underneath them, dark-on-dark. One after the other, swaying in place, cut into the landscape of stars overhead. The way they were tied to their moorings, they reminded him of kites, too.

Imagine, he thought, lifting a score of men up into the air on a plank tied to a kite, and trusting your voo to keep the wind and the birds and all the other shit you might find up there from tearing you to bits. No wonder the gollies were so flooding religious. He hid a shiver well underneath his old coat, eyes lingering on one of the ones they passed. It looked all blackened and misshapen, and he couldn’t make sense of it, ’til he figured out it was ’cause so much of the hull was missing. Tom couldn’t help feeling like something big’d taken a bunch of bites out of it.

He was still thinking of it when they got to the right pier. Squinting, he could make out a ladder, but it wasn’t much more than a few strips of rope swaying a few feet from the dock. Uneasy, he glanced from Uzoji to Aremu, hands deep in his pockets.

It was Aremu volunteered himself, finally, taking off his coat. Mouth set in a grim line in his beard, Tom watched him – the lithe shape of him, all lean muscle underneath his shirt, ruffled by the wind. Graceful, how he tangled up the mooring and then back down.

Tom wouldn’t’ve wanted to try that. He reckoned he had a few stone on either of them, at the very least, and he was a man who liked to have both his feet on the solid ground. No ships for him, in the air or on the water.

Wasn’t much time at all ’til Uzoji was headed up himself, leaving Tom alone on the pier with the scrap. Well, with the salty breeze, too – with all the stars, with the faint creaking overhead, a low, funny hiss, like breath – and the skin and scales of the balloon, not at all like the wind in canvas sails. Tom stood real still with his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot, and it was awhile before he said anything.

He still wasn’t sure about Aremu. There’d been something put him at ease about how Uzoji’d clasped his shoulder, ’course, and he wondered a lot of things. They trusted him; they had to, up on a ship like that. Maybe it was different for Mugrobi passives, and that was why they didn’t gate them. Maybe they didn’t go off as often, or something. He stole a brief glance at him, the dim light picking out the panes of his face, his fine, youthful features, his macha dark eyes. He felt a pang; he didn’t look like a bomb that was about to go off. But then, he reckoned none of them ever did, and that was the problem.

Tom watched the moonlight ripple over the silverfish-skin of the balloon, and a smile tugged at his face. Looking at that thing up in the air, the moving shape of the hull, he felt some kind of butterflies flapping in his belly. He almost couldn’t stand to keep looking up.

Instead, he grinned, glancing down and over at Aremu. “I never been on one of ’em,” he said suddenly, soft and rough, his dark eyes glittering. He couldn’t quite help himself. “What’s it like, up there? Wi’ nothin’ but the wind underneath you, an’ all the stars an’ shit.”
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moralhazard
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Sat Oct 19, 2019 10:51 pm

Evening, Hamis 21, 2716
Beneath the Eqe Aqawe
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Aremu watched the sleek shape of the Eqe Aqawe above them, the way the darkness of the ship carved out its space against the stars above - the faint glitter of light against the chainmail of the balloon, when it shifted in the air. He knew it for folly, but he thought the ship looked a little more complete when Uzoji’s silhouette vanished over the edge of the deck. It was as if until now it had been lacking, as if it wasn’t just the engines and the propellers and the ballonets that made the ship whole, but Uzoji too.

Sometimes Aremu thought of the ship as an extension of Uzoji’s will. When he had first seen it, he had thought that it was as if Uzoji had brought it into existence by the sheer force of his wanting it so. He had felt it again two days ago, when he and Chibugo had docked and he had come out from the bridge to see Uzoji already waiting below, every inch of him straining to come aboard, Niccolette beside him with her hair twisting in the wind, and the both of them grinning so widely Aremu had been able to see it from the deck.

Uzoji had clasped his hand as they had come onboard, but Aremu had seen the way his gaze went to the door, as if Uzoji could see through to the helm. Niccolette had touched his arm, gently, and Uzoji had grinned, suddenly, and gone. Niccolette had smiled at him, and Aremu had smiled back, and they had followed together, her arm gently looped through his.

What was a week, Aremu wondered, stacked against all the days that had already passed? But Aremu knew Uzoji as well as it was possible to know any man by secular means, and he knew, too, what this meant to his friend. And he knew, too, that whatever he could do for him, he would. There were obligations which stretched between men, which in time became so heavy that one could not hope to repay. Either the weight of them would snap the ties between any living beings that could never be more than fragile, or else one could build up friendship beneath it, and let it take the weight so that there was no strain.

And so Aremu was content to wait there on the ground, with the wind tugging at his coat and whisking over his skin, bringing with it the faint scent of sea brine. It was not the clean scent of the water by the islands, but the fishy tang of the Rose, warmed by the rain and inescapable.

Aremu shifted, and eased his hands into the pocket of his jacket. He had not needed to ask Uzoji to fetch his holster and gun; he was no newlywed to forget such things at the sight of his wife, not anymore. He was aware, too, of Tom Cooke, the way the two of them had stood a little far apart. It was not only on Tom, as Uzoji liked to call him - Aremu knew better than to burden another man with his presence.

As if, Aremu thought, distance could make you safe.

He did not quite look at Tom, but even in the corner of his eye he could see the man studying the Eqe Aqawe. He thought of the wink Tom had shot him in the bar - of the man’s inscrutable dark eyes beneath his heavy brows, the thick, Tek-heavy brogue that was the sort of Anaxi accent Aremu still struggled with. He thought, too, of Uzoji telling him about his injury, and the cold disdain that had rippled through Niccolette’s frame at the mention of the human.

Aremu turned his head to look at Tom when the other man spoke. He met those glittering dark eyes with his own, and turned back to the ship, tilting his chin upwards slightly and trying to see it with new eyes. Wondering how it would look, seen through Tom’s.

“Like a dream of being free,” Aremu said, and he knew there was a huskiness to his voice that had not been there before, and he was not ashamed.

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Tom Cooke
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Sun Oct 20, 2019 7:22 pm

A Shipyard The Rose
Evening on the 21st of Hamis, 2716
Like a dream of being free.

Tom glanced over at Aremu’s face, still half-lit and hazy. As he looked back toward that great dark hull, he wondered what the scrap saw, looking at it. Hovering there and blocking out the stars. Again, the sight of it suspended off the ground – the way the wind ruffled the moorings – set all those moths a-flutter in his belly; this time, he forced himself to look. To look long and hard.

He reckoned Aremu Ediwo’d seen the thing a hell of a lot more from the deck than he had from the outside. From the inside, then, looking out, what would you see? Those moths beat their wings harder. Cloud, and blue, and cloud, and maybe the glitter of scattered diamonds on the sea, so far below. And what about during a storm? Tom couldn't bear to think of it.

He wondered what the lot of one of his kind in Mugroba was like. He knew they didn’t cart them off to their university, not like they did here. He didn’t know much else, though, except that being gated wasn’t the only kind of thing that’d weigh a man’s heart down to the earth. He looked so young, Tom thought, to say such a thing. Quiet kov, but wo chet. He liked him, despite himself.

What would it’ve been like, had Tom found his way aboard an airship as a lad? One of the ones as ran hot, like they talked about. A natt made a successful career that way, even as a pilot, but every trip across the great blue bore on its aching back the chance of fire and screaming men and detritus in the sea. To be a pair of extra hands, then, aboard one of the golly-run ones? He’d been offered the chance, once or twice, as he’d begun to make his name with Hawke. To leave everything behind. To take out the part of his heart that belonged to hama and leave it there with him; to make the promise he’d always come home even more empty than it already was. To leave a hollow in his chest, for something like artevium or birds to fill.

He didn’t think the sky was much of a place for a plowfoot like him. There was too much of him tied down to the solid ground, and he was scared of heights, anyway. But maybe that was why being free was just a dream.

“Freedom’s a good dream, then?” A funny, sad kind of smile played out across his face. His voice’d got a pina more rough, too. “Seems to me sometimes a man spends his days trading one set of debts for another,” he added after a moment.

Tom tugged his old coat tighter round him, rolled his shoulders underneath it. He felt a scattering of little pops through his back like the toss of dice, and then the familiar ache of the scar that twisted from one side up to his shoulder, the one he’d got when he was a lad. A puff of a breeze rustled his collar, tugged at his hems and whirled a few strands of his hair. Shuffling a band out of one pocket and putting it in his teeth, he started bundling up his hair.

It was funny, too, thinking about all this shit right before a job. Usually, he avoided thinking about much of anything before a job; it wasn’t good, having your head off in the clouds when it was supposed to be down on Vita, thinking how best to scrag a kov that was coming at you with a point.

He scanned the gunwale again, then turned the glint of his eyes on Aremu. He grinned suddenly, warm and genuine. Taking the band out of his teeth, he finished tying his hair back into a messy bun at the nape of his neck.
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