Ariah (13 page)

“
I do, sir.”

He waved at me. “Don’t call me sir. I grew up on the streets. He says you’re Mochai Tzotel’Mosol’s boy.”

“
I am.”

“
It’s hard to hate a kid born and bred to good taste. Look, I’ll talk to him when he gets here. You should go. There’s no telling how things are with Nuri; it’s touch-and-go day to day, and I don’t think he’d take it well if Nuri had a rough day and you were here lying in wait for him. I’ll talk to him, and I’ll tell him you’re at the squat house. He’ll come find you if he wants to find you.”

“
Thank you,” I said. Liro nodded at me, distracted. He looked like he was carrying a weight far too great for him. There was a deep bittersweetness about him, and there was a fierce privacy to him, and I felt I’d trespassed even though he’d invited me in and done most of the talking. I saw myself out without having to be asked to do it.

* * *

When Dirva arrived at the squat house, I finally felt I could breathe again. Sorcha and I were smoking pipeherb on the platform at the time. I grew more stoned by the second, and when I am in that state, I am not terribly observant. Sorcha could do virtually anything through the haze of the herb and had an unwavering awareness of his surroundings built from a life constantly skirting the edge of the law. He saw Dirva first. He elbowed me in the ribs. “Hey, Lor’s here.”

I sat up taller. “He is? How does he look?”

“
Hell, I don’t know. You’re the one that lived with him, not me. Look for yourself.”

Dirva walked across the Square with the same kind of contained purpose I’d seen him use when meeting with Qin dignitaries. It did not bode well, but I was stoned, and I have always had a hopeful streak a mile wide. I scrambled clumsily up to the roof and ran down the stairs of the squat house. I took a second to catch my breath, smoothed the front of my shirt, and stepped outside. He must have seen me, but he did not acknowledge me. He walked past me to the platform. He shielded his eyes and called up to Sorcha. “Can we talk?” he asked.

Sorcha leaned over the side. “You and me?”

“
Yes,” Dirva said. “You and me.”

“
Oh. Uh, yeah, I don’t see why not.” He jumped from the platform and landed in a plume of dust.

“
I would’ve waited for you to use the stairs,” Dirva said.

Sorcha shrugged. “No harm.”

“
You’re going to break something one day.”

“
Well, when I do, Falynn’ll patch me back up. What’s up, Lor?”

Dirva may not have acknowledged me, but he took pains to keep me from eavesdropping. He led Sorcha across the Square, far out of my earshot, and angled himself so that he could see me in his peripheral vision. He would have caught me if I had dared to sneak over. I very much wanted to sneak over. Instead, I stayed where I was and watched them.

They spoke for some time. I confess, I thought it would be over and done quickly. Neither of them had had much to say to the other since our arrival. They spoke with warmth that was obvious to me all the way across the Square. There was laughter; there were smiles. There was an obvious comfort with each other in the way they stood. And at the end of it, there was a hug. When Sorcha started across the Square back towards me, Dirva made a move to turn away. Sorcha plucked at his sleeve until he nodded and followed Sorcha over. “Your turn to talk,” Sorcha said when he got to me. He slipped past me into the squat house.

The Square was bustling then, but it felt empty. It felt like it was just me and my wounded mentor. He stared me down, his face hard, the hardness masking a wary vulnerability. “I’ve been told you want to make amends,” he said.

“
I do. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I never guessed.” The words tumbled out in fits and spurts. I tried to remember the things I had decided to say to him, but the pipeherb had gotten the better of me. “It’s been very confusing here. Seeing you with them. Sorcha. It’s been strange.”

Dirva sighed. “You’re stoned.”

I let out a strangled laugh. “I am. I’m sorry. But it helps. It’s helped me from falling into it—him—all of that again. It is a…preventive measure? I guess that doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t be smoking it, I know, but I can’t build the walls. I’m sorry I keep doing everything wrong.”

Dirva studied me for a moment and sighed again. His hands were on his hips, and his head was bowed slightly. He looked to be at a loss with me. Something about the way he stood there propelled another incoherent stream of words from my mouth. “I didn’t know. And I-I thought…it’s strange here because sometimes you’re still Semadran and sometimes you aren’t. And if it had happened in the Empire, I thought you’d, uh, that you’d disapprove. Or worse. You’d send me back to Ardijan, and people would know, and I’d be pushed out. Because that’s what we do, and that’s how we think.”

He looked at me. The brightness of his eyes in that moment was harsh, forbidding. “No, Ariah, that’s how you think.”

“
No! No, I mean to say that’s how Semadrans think.”

“
No, that’s how you think. You never stopped to wonder. You never questioned. You took what they told you, and you drank it in. You stand there, you who will never know, and you tell me that’s just how Semadrans think. Not all Semadrans are the same, Ariah. You are…were…my student, and I welcomed you into my home and my life, and this is what you think of me and my brother.”

“
You never told me!”

His eyebrows shot up. “I never told you?” he said. His voice was steely. There was an edge of dark, dark humor in it: a mockery, a condemnation. “I owed you this? You had some right to know private things about me, my past, which had no bearing at all on your life? Things that disgust you, that make you shrink away from me? I can feel it, you know. I am a shaper, too. I have spent a lot of time feeling that. No, Ariah, I never told you, because you are truly Semadran, right to the heart, and you carry in you all that’s good and bad about our people. No, I never told you. And you never asked. And why would you? It has never been relevant.”

I had thought him a simple man in Rabatha. Brilliant and determined, but at heart a man who made easy sense to those around him. He never seemed to doubt his place in our community, even when others did. He never seemed to struggle with it. That he housed within him such contradictions was a shock. That I housed such contradictions within myself was a greater shock. I understood him in that moment because I had tried to do what he had done in the Empire so effortlessly. There is much about me, which is classically, irrefutably Semadran, and there is much that has never been Semadran. I had always thought there was only one viable path, but seeing him then, it became suddenly clear that there were thousands of ways to live, and all of them were valid. There were consequences for choosing one over another, to be sure, but consequences did not mean they were the wrong choice. This had never been relevant. He was right about that, and it chastened me. But I could not help but see that he had chosen a life, constructed a life, where it would never be relevant. And I could not help but wonder why he had chosen that.

The truth was that I was still perplexed by his relationship to a man. I still could not shake this deeply bred feeling that it was wrong. But there was nothing in the world that could turn me away from him. He could have murdered babies and laughed gleefully while he did it, and I would still have killed myself trying to impress him. The Semadran word for mentor is closely linked to the Semadran word for parent. I loved him more than I loved the tenets of my culture. I loved him enough to want to unlearn everything, to start the arduous and fearsome process of questioning these beliefs I held. I gathered my thoughts, and I spoke very, very carefully. “Sir, I believe it’s relevant now. It perhaps shouldn’t be, but I know it and you know I know it, and we both know how badly I have reacted to it. I would very much like to make amends. I cannot see a way to make amends with you, if you are willing, other than to acknowledge that this is now relevant. The things I have said are relevant. I am sorry I said them, but being sorry doesn’t mean they weren’t said, and doesn’t mean they caused no damage. The only way to repair damage is to acknowledge it exists.” I took a breath. “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

Dirva did not answer me for a very long time. “I will think on it,” he said.

CHAPTER 8

At the end, some silver shreds left in Nuri rose to the surface. The red elves have a sanctity for life bred into their bones. We Semadrans are more careful about life: there are times, it is generally agreed, that a child should not be born. There are times when it is, perhaps, better to die than live. I am not sure why this difference between us and them exists. It may have something to do with the red elves losing so many in the war in the south: two lost generations to the Lothic Civil War. Semadrans, on the other hand…we have so little time, so few resources, and it behooves us to allocate them thoughtfully.

There came days where Nuri could no longer get out of bed, could no longer feed himself. His breath became ragged and uneven. There came days where the struggle of living and the indignity of the life in which he was trapped were more than he wanted. There was a family dinner two months into my stay in the City where Dirva and Falynn practically carried him out to the table. He was given a pretense of strength, a suggestion that all they did was aid him, but we all knew he could not have walked on his own. Like always, Nuri sat at the left of Dirva’s father, their bony, spotted hands clasped tight. Like always, Dirva sat on Nuri’s other side, but this time a little closer than usual, and this time he kept a hand protectively on his da’s back. We had not spoken since he’d come to the squat house, but I watched my mentor closely anyway. I felt the sadness radiating off of him in waves, pouring into me. I believe that Dirva knew what Nuri wanted before any other member of the family.

Nuri waited until we’d finished eating. He ate very little himself. His hands shook and his bones ached. He was given bread and a cup of broth, which he drank very slowly and very carefully. The bread sat untouched on a plate before him. He gave Dirva’s father’s hand a squeeze and released it. He cleared his throat softly, and conversation around the table died. “I am done living,” he said.

There was a heavy beat of silence. Falynn was the first to speak. “No, Da, I can help. What is it? The headaches again? You’re dehydrated. Are you not sleeping? I can…”

“
I am done,” he said.

The blood drained from Dirva’s father’s face. His mother’s mouth turned to a hard line. “What the fuck does that mean?” she asked.

“
You know what it means,” he said.

Dirva’s father left the room. Cadlah and Sorcha followed him out.

Falynn went to follow, too, but Nuri caught his wrist as he passed. “No, Da,” Falynn said.

“
Falynn, sit,” said Nuri. Falynn sat in his father’s chair. He stared hard at Nuri, willing him to change his mind, but it was no use. Nuri took Falynn’s hands in his. “I love you. You are my son. I hate that this will hurt you, but I am asking for your help. Give me this last gift: let me choose when and where.”

Falynn ripped his hands away. “No. No! I’m a healer!”

“
There is no more healing to be done.”

“
No! I won’t have your blood on my hands.”

“
If you do it right, Falynn, there won’t be blood,” Nuri said. A peculiar smile flashed and disappeared across his face and Dirva’s face at the exact same time. No one else was amused. Abira let out wordless noise, a primal thing of loss and frustration, and went after her father. Amran and Dirva’s mother drifted to the back of the room. The pair of them stood together, arms crossed, eyes watchful and wary. I alone sat on my side of the table.

Falynn dropped his face into his hands. “No.”

Dirva took Falynn by the elbow and pulled him aside. They spoke in low whispers, but the room was small, and I couldn’t help but hear what was said.

“
He wants to die, Fal,” Dirva said. “Letting nature choke the life from him in the dead of night when none of us are there, that would be better?”

“
You haven’t been here for years,” Falynn spat back.

“
This is not about me.”

“
No, it isn’t. It never has been. You think you can waltz in here, you think you still know anything when you’ve been gone so long? You don’t!”

Dirva took a breath. “He wants this. He raised us.”

“
You sure it’s not you who wants this?” Falynn said. “Moment he’s gone cold you’ll be gone again.” In the back of the room, Amran let out a low whistle. Dirva’s mother smacked Amran’s shoulder and told Falynn to stop being an ass.