Ariah (45 page)

“
My presence was requested.” I slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind me. The girl yelled, her eyes wide. I indulged in a shaper’s instinct that nudged her into calm again.

She blinked at me. “How did you do that?”

Shayma Hepzah’Brahim came down the hallway. “He has nothing to teach you, Biral. Go to bed.”

The girl, Biral, cut one last look at me and slipped away. Shayma Hepzah’Brahim turned down the hallway, and I followed. She wound up a lantern, and her eyes flicked up to mine. I burned. She read me deep, and she read me with no gentleness. It was suffocating. “This is not a time for visitors,” she said.

“
Why am I here? What do you want?”

She laughed. It was a flat laugh, a brittle laugh.

“
What is it?”

“
It is not I who wants something from you.”

“
Then who? Then why did you call me here?”

She smirked. She stared down at the nails of one hand, and I could breathe again. “I am a matchmaker. I have been asked to deal with you in that capacity.”

“
You…what?”

“
I have been asked to match you, Mr. Lirat’Mochai.”

“
Is this a joke?”

“
Would that it were.”

I stared at her. I confess I tried to read her, but she had walls of pure granite. “You have a match for me?” The idea of it was absurd.

“
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have been asked to match you,” she said. She slid along the edges of the truth, halving it and halving it again.

“
I don’t understand.”

“
You will,” she said, “in time.”

“
Asked by whom?”

Shayma Hepzah’Brahim stared down at the lantern for a long, long moment. She smirked. “Shayat Bachel’Parvi has expressed an interest in you. Go back to your man, Ariah Lirat’Mochai. You have things to discuss with him. I’ll send Biral for you when it’s time to speak again.”

I crept back home. There were still some four hours yet before my shift at the factory began. I crawled into bed and sat beside Sorcha. I watched him sleep for a little while. I nudged him awake. He rolled onto his back and blinked up at me. He glanced out the window, and back at me. “Why’re you dressed? They change your shift?”

“
I’ve been out.”

He propped himself up on his elbows. “You’ve been out? It’s well past curfew.”

“
That girl who came by this afternoon…”

“
Are you in trouble? Did I get you in trouble?”

“
Do you know her?”

“
No,” he said. “Should I?” I sighed. He rolled his eyes and took refuge under a blanket. “Not again.”

It was, by then, an old argument. Why did he need someone else when I was right there? What did they give him that I didn’t? The familiar questions lodged in my throat, held in place by the specter of this match.

Sorcha pulled down the blanket. He gave me a curious look. I curled up around him, still fully dressed, and he nestled against me. He took my hand and kissed it. “Shayat is back,” I said.

“
Is she?”

“
She’s hired a matchmaker.”

Sorcha squeezed my hand. “Well, she don’t know what she’s missing.”

I tucked my face into the nape of his neck and breathed in the smell of him. It was a test of sorts: did I still want him, this? I did. I very much did. But, still, the teasing possibility of Shayat lingered. “She…she might know. She expressed an interest in me.”

Sorcha rolled over onto his back and turned to face me. “She did?”

“
She did.”

“
She’s been gone for years, and she rolls into town and hires a matchmaker?”

“
Apparently.”

“
But why? You’d have her if she came calling, I’m sure you would. Why the formality?”

“
Well, I…you know, all I can do is speculate. I am likely far off base. I can’t say for sure. She said once Parvi wanted her to get married, and it might make sense for her to marry to quash certain rumors about her.”

“
Married?” he asked.

“
Well, that’s what matchmakers do: broker marriage. They don’t do anything else, really. So, it might make sense for her to marry. Just…uh, just…it might make sense, but it wouldn’t make any sense at all for her to marry me.”

“
Unless she wants to marry you for you,” he said.

I laughed. I held him closer, half out of some misplaced excitement and half to remind myself what I already had and how little else I needed. “Maybe we should leave town. Go back to Alamadour. Or the City.”

Sorcha took my face in his hands. “You’re his falo. Falos stay, remember? What’s this about?”

I held his hand against my cheek. I laughed again. “I don’t know.”

“
You want this to happen with her, you think?”

“
I don’t know.” I burned with it, this half-confession. Anything other than a resolute, immediate denial felt to me like a betrayal.

Sorcha searched my face, but I wore an old mask. He pulled me against him, my face in the hollow of his shoulder. He stroked my hair, and he felt calm, but I’d seen the trace of a frown cross his face. The guilt I felt was overwhelming. “Matchmaking with you all, it’s not a fast thing.”

“
No, it isn’t. Even when you express an interest it’s not a fast thing.”

“
Then you’ve got plenty of time yet to decide what you want. Grab a couple hours’ sleep before you have to go to that damned factory, yeah? No reason to fret over anything.”

He’d said it with unruffled patience, but there had been that frown. I edged just far enough away to get a good look at his face, catch his eye, and then I read him for all I was worth. “You don’t think I can split attentions.”

Sorcha sat up and turned his back to me. “Oh, come on, don’t read me.”

“
A man needs his privacy?”

“
Ariah, stop.”

“
I love you.”

He looked at me over his shoulder.

I laughed. The magic fell away. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure if it was you or me that felt that. Probably both of us. But it is true. I do love you.”

“
I know.” He rubbed his face. He leaned against the wall and lit a candle. Our sole clockwork lantern had broken weeks before and neither of us had managed to scrape together enough to replace it. The light flickered a harsh orange. “I guess I’m up,” he said.

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Ah, hell, worse things have happened.”

“
I never expected this.”

Sorcha smiled. He held out his arm, and I nestled in against him. “You know,” he said slowly, “I didn’t expect it, can’t claim that, no, but I won’t say I’m surprised either.”

* * *

It took a little over a month before Biral appeared again at my door. It took long enough that I had begun to suspect, with some relief, that Shayat had been warned off or lost interest, and the courtship had died before it began. Sorcha was tender with me in those weeks. He was careful, and he was sweet, but he threw up the highest, most formidable walls he could manage. The walls were broken in places, the walls had chinks, but they did give him some measure of privacy. The walls terrified me. They made me feel I was walking in a minefield, always one step away from a violent end. I mentioned it once—I was a little drunk, I drank now and again when I had a rare day off—and Sorcha grinned at me. “What?”

“
Look, there are more of us than there are of you.”

“
More of you?”

“
Yeah,” he said. “Most of us don’t got your talents. Most of us aren’t shapers. We got to just fend for ourselves without dropping all those eaves everywhere.”

Until Biral knocked on the door, that was as close as either of us could seem to get to talking about the match. She came, smirked, and handed me a note. The matchmaker requested a meeting in two days’ time after my shift was over. Sorcha leaned against the wall. “That was that shaper girl again?”

I held up the paper. “The matchmaker wants to see me.”

“
When?”

“
The day after tomorrow.”

Sorcha raised his eyebrows. “Hmm,” he said, and then crossed the room.

I followed him. He half-turned, began to say something, but I didn’t give him the chance. I pulled him to me, and I kissed him. The gift poured out of me, and I lost myself. I gave him everything he wanted effortlessly. It was a heartfelt, willing submission. I came to myself again in stages. It was dark; after curfew, and Sorcha lay half-asleep beside me. He was naked, and he was beautiful. I stretched, and he felt the movement and looked over. He fingered my chest hair, a lazy smile on his face. “You shapers,” he said. He whistled.

I blushed and hid my face in my hands. He asked me if I was all right. “I am. I’m fine.”

“
Should we not have?”

“
No, no. No, I wanted to. I did.”

“
Been awhile since you let your gift out like that,” he said. And it had been. Even with Sorcha, sex sober was rare for me. Even with him the aftermath was disorienting. The lack of clear memories never became less disturbing, but with him, at least I always felt safe. With him it did not feel dangerous. He sat up and pulled me up with him. He kissed me and held my face in his hands. “You don’t got to convince me to stick around, you fool.”

I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

“
Yeah, course.”

“
There’s no going back to how it was before, is there?”

He was silent for a long time. I stayed pressed against him, soaking up his warmth, counting his heartbeats to keep the gift at bay. A man needs his privacy. “Hell,” he said. “That’s how you see this falling out?”

“
I don’t know.”

He edged away from me. He ran his fingers through my hair as he passed by, but still, he was on one side of the room, and I was on the other. I had landed on a mine. “Look, Ariah, I told you back in Alamadour how it was with me. We been at this now for years, living like we’re the ones married for two years. Yeah. There’s no going back. I’ll not begrudge you what you want, I’ll not try and trap you, but yeah, I can’t go back to sharing a blanket and hoping, not when we’ve been living like this.”

“
Even though you’re so red?” I asked.

He laughed. He crossed his arms against his chest and stared down at his feet. “I mean, yeah. Sharing is one thing, and rejection’s another.” He sighed. He looked over and caught my eye. He had a hardness to him in that moment, an untouchable strength. I’d seen him look at Dirva that way, and it shook me when he looked at me that way. “Can I ask you something, Ariah?”

“
Yes.”

“
What’s this been to you? You been treading water with me? Am I a placeholder?”

“
No,” I said. I stood up and made it to the middle of the room before I froze again. “No. No, this is…No, Sorcha, I love you. I’m…” I blushed, and I lost my nerve, and I turned away. “I’m in love with you. I don’t say it enough, I know that. I’m sorry. You’re not a placeholder. Everything leading up to you was the placeholder.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Yes. I swear. Yes.”

“
Then why are you so fucking convinced all that’s just going to evaporate as soon as you’re in the same room with Shayat?”

“
Because…because I’m not red.”

He laughed. It was a genuine laugh, a warm laugh. It helped clear the air between us. “You know, you always say that, but from where I’m standing you just get redder every day. Whatever you are now, you sure as hell aren’t silver.”