Ariah (12 page)

“
I’m not like you,” I said.

He frowned and crossed his arms. He stared down at his feet, and then peered up at me from the corner of his eye. “Thought you said you were only a little bit shaper?”

“
I’m not a shaper.”

“
Yeah, all right. Take your word for it. You’d know better than I.”

“
Sorcha, I have to go.”

“
Go where?”

“
Go home.”

“
You are home.”

“
No, I have to go back.”

He stared at me in disbelief. I don’t think it was clear to me until that moment that the depth of our friendship was shared. I had thought his interest in me was a thing of circumstance, a passing fancy. “What, cause of that? Look, I’ll keep my hands to myself. I’ll not ever charm you again. Word of honor. You can’t just run off.”

“
It might happen again.”

He glanced away. He tried to stifle a smile and couldn’t. “Ah, that would be so bad, eh?”

“
It would, yeah. Sorcha, it would. I can’t…I’m not…I’m Semadran.
Semadran
, Sorcha.”

“
So’s Da.”

“
No, he isn’t. I am.”

Sorcha’s jaw twitched. “Look, can’t we talk this through? Let’s go in, yeah?”

“
I can’t go in there with you!”

“
You want to have this out on the street?” he asked.

“
It might happen again.”

He threw his hands up. “Ariah, fuck, give a man some credit, would you? I am not so hard up that I’m about to try and trap you. I have my dignity. Trees and streams. You’re not the only one in this, you selfish ass.”

He was right to call me out. I nodded and followed him into the squat house. We went up to his room, which had been our room. He sat on the bed, and I sat against the opposite wall. I refused to make eye contact with him. “I guess you’ve not been with a fella, then?” he asked.

“
No. Mercy, no. Of course not,” I said quickly, the words falling out over each other. “Sorcha, I’m Semadran, and I’m not married. I’ve not been with anyone.”

“
Come off it. Just be straight with me,” he said.

“
I am! This is not me! I don’t do things like this!”

“
Really?”

“
Yes!”

He was quiet for a long time. “Shit. Ah, shit. I thought…ah, shit, this is a mess. I mean, I knew you were tink. I did. So I just thought you needed time to ease into it. I mean, you knew, right? I been all over you for weeks.”

I had known. I had known right from the start. “I thought you knew I couldn’t.”

“
You could. You were about to. I didn’t know you wouldn’t.”

I burned a deep red. I hid my face in my hands. It was true. It was horribly, inescapably true.

“
Look, all I’m saying is this isn’t the Empire. I don’t see why the way you live there has to be how you live here. I don’t see why you got to be so Semadran when you’re crashing with a nahsiyya gang.”

“
I am here with my mentor.”

Sorcha raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. I know. You’re here with Lor, right? So why hold back? I’m not trying to pressure you, I’m not, I just don’t understand.”

Something about the way he said it struck me as very odd. I looked over at him. “Why would it matter that I’m here with Dirva?”

Sorcha looked back at me with impatience. “Because! C’mon, he plays at it, sure, but he’s not so silver deep down. He had Ro. Like he’d hold me against you. He’s a lot of things, but he’s not a hypocrite. I don’t think. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he is.”

“
Ro?”

“
Liro. C’mon! Ariah, this is you and me. Can’t we leave him out of it? Can’t we ever not talk about him?”

My mind ground to a halt. I had idolized Dirva for four years, which felt to me a lifetime at that age. I had struggled so hard to grow into him, with his brusqueness and his ineradicable will. Four years I had lived with him, studied him, mimicked him, and suddenly it seemed I had no idea who the man was. At that moment, he wasn’t Semadran, he wasn’t who I thought he was, and suddenly I didn’t really know who I was either. It was terrifying.

Sorcha let out a noise of frustration. “Ariah, look. I like you, I do, but I don’t need this shit right now. My da’s dying, yeah? Lor’s not the only one feeling it. So, just hurry up and decide. Stay or don’t. I don’t have the patience these days to sit around while you sort it out. Just pick one or the other and go with it.”

He had not spoken with me about his da’s death until then. I had been, shortsightedly, keeping my life with Sorcha and the heavy weight of Nuri’s death separate. They felt separate. In some meaningful way, I had forgotten Sorcha was part of that family and one of those children about to be left behind. “Sorcha, I’m sorry.”

He leaned back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “Just go, then.”

“
No, I’m sorry about your da. I’m sorry about this. This is stupid. I’m being stupid.”

He looked at me, surprised, unguarded. He had a bravado that made me think he was older than I was, but actually we were the same age, only months apart. In that moment, he looked terribly vulnerable and terribly young. “I could use a friend these days. Could stay the way it’s been, that’d be fine with me. But I could use you around.”

I didn’t feel that there was much choice. Yes, perhaps he was a bad influence. He was not the sort I should have been around. But he needed me, and it didn’t seem right to leave. I agreed to stay. In unspoken compromise, Sorcha slept clothed that night.

CHAPTER 7

Curiosity is woven deeply into Semadran culture. There is a tension, a fine line we walk, where we are compelled to know what we don’t know, understand what we don’t understand, without giving anything of ourselves away. It is a thing of survival bred from generations of living under the thumb of the Qin. In any case, there was suddenly much about my mentor that I did not understand in the least. I was desperate for answers. I pumped Sorcha for all that he knew—all of which he told me, but it was not much. Dirva had left when Sorcha was very young, only about ten years old, so everything he knew were secondhand stories from his siblings. And Sorcha was the youngest—young enough that he was only a bare handful of years older than Falynn’s first child—so he had grown up with his siblings like they were his parents, and his siblings’ friends like they were aunts and uncles. He knew Liro, but not in a terribly personal way. All I could really get from Sorcha was that in their youth, Dirva and Liro had been inseparable. The family expected them to marry. But then, Dirva left for Vilahna with no notice, no warning. His da arranged travel and forged papers to get him to Vilahna, but no one else in the City knew he was planning to leave. Dirva, apparently, had not told Liro he was leaving. He, family lore claimed, had not even said goodbye. He was simply there one day and gone the next.

The man I knew was one who, in spite of his impatience and brusqueness, was unfailingly respectful. Dirva checked and double-checked appointments he had. He was compulsively punctual. But then again, he was a man with a great capacity for secrets, and the notion of him preparing for a new life in a foreign country while living his old one as if nothing was about to change did not seem so far-fetched. I pushed Sorcha for more than this rough sketch of Dirva’s youth. What had drawn them together? How long had they been together? Was it the shaping? There are stories of that, tales of a shaper so thoroughly caught in the thrall of an admirer that they cannot extricate themselves for weeks, months, even years. How had they met? What happened to each of them after Dirva left? But Sorcha didn’t know. He said no one talked about it. Dirva’s exit was a sore spot for his parents, and whatever happened to Liro in the weeks after was a sore spot with siblings.

I had to see Dirva. I needed to see him. I fought the urge for two or three days because I knew coping with his dying da was sapping all his strength, but there are times when the things you need are so immediate that you can’t help but demand them, even when you hate yourself for being so selfish. I went alone. Sorcha asked me where I was off to, and when I told him, he rolled his eyes. On the long walk to Liro’s house, I rehearsed my questions and my statements over and over. Seeing Dirva again was a thing for which I needed to prepare.

It was late afternoon when I got there. The world was painted in primary colors: a red sky served as a backdrop to the blue houses, and the sandy street burned a glowing yellow. I knocked on the door and stared down at my feet, running through my prepared statements one final time in my mind. I heard the creak of the door and launched in. “Mr. Villai’Muladah, sir, it is not disrespect that brings me to this door today but instead a deep wish to…”

“
You must be the student.” He spoke Semadran, but the voice was not Dirva’s. I looked up and saw instead a nahsiyya man with blue skin and black hair. He was razor-thin and narrow, all long lines and sharp angles, and stood about inch or so taller than me. His eyes were large and black, ringed with Semadran violet. He was dressed simply, in a loose linen shirt and wool pants, barefoot, and covered with bright streaks of paint.

I did not need to be told who he was. I blinked at him, wide-eyed, star-struck. I looked away quickly when I remembered what I knew about him and blushed a terrible red when I remembered the things I had said in this man’s own house. I could not find any words to say to him. I tried to; my mouth opened and closed. My brows furrowed together, but I could not get a single word out. My mind had gone blank.

“
He’s with his da,” Liro said. The formality of Semadran when he spoke it seemed an odd fit. I managed a nod. I stood there, rooted in place, but I couldn’t have said why. After a second, Liro invited me in. I managed to decline in some approximation of politeness. I had half-turned when he invited me in a second time. “Come in. Get your bearings back,” he said. “It might make some sense for you and I to talk.”

He held the door open for me. He seemed exhausted, a little withdrawn, but he hardly seemed angry. I felt it would be rude not to go in. I kept my eyes pinned to the floor and followed him inside. He asked me if I wanted anything, tea or food or water. I shook my head. Then, he asked me if I wanted any pipeherb. My face jerked up. He laughed at my expression. He had a warm, slightly caustic laugh. “I don’t mean to lead you astray, but sometimes it helps me gather myself when I’m nervous. You seem nervous.”

I was nervous, but it struck me as irresponsible. “No, thank you.”

“
Suit yourself.” He sat down on a couch and watched me expectantly until I sat down on the couch across from him. On the wall behind him hung portraits of Dirva as a young man. In the portraits, he read and wrote, lost in a private world. The questions about their shared past, and all that it entailed, came back to me unbidden. I pulled my eyes away from them and glanced at the table between us, but it was no safer. A sketchbook was open to a rough portrait of a shirtless man who could only have been my mentor. I resorted to staring at my hands. “Given what you said when you were here last, and given the way you’re acting now, I am going to guess you know about him and me.”

“
I…yes. Sorcha told me.”

“
The two of you are on speaking terms?”

“
Yes.”

“
Huh. Well, Sorcha’s always been quick to forgive. You know, I’m not a leper. It’s not contagious.” I looked up at him, trying and failing to find a way to tell him that in my case, with my gifts, it could be contagious. “Dirva thinks you’ve gone. I told him it’s a rare one that up and leaves just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I told him most people, when they get attached, tend to linger at least a little bit. And here you are. Why have you lingered?”

“
I…I want to make amends.”

Liro raised his eyebrows. “You think you can after that?”

“
I don’t know. I want to. I can try. It seems worth trying.”

Liro sighed. “You know life is hard for him right now. You know that, and you’re adding to it.”

A wave of shame swept over me. I nodded. I could not bring myself to speak.

“
I could wring your neck for doing that to him. But it’s done. And he’s very fond of you. Did you know that? He hasn’t stopped talking about you since he got here. Well, until you came by the other day, but he’s not one to voice his sufferings.” Liro sighed again. He pinched his forehead with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “He says you know about art. My art.”