Ariah (9 page)

“
I guess not.”

Sorcha raised his eyebrows. He motioned for me to stay where I was. He jogged around the corner, calling the satyr girl’s name. A second later he was back in front of me. “Violet says you Imperials don’t drop coins for them. They stay out of your way. Huh. Didn’t know that. Hey, you a runner at all?”

“
What?”

“
We’re late. Gonna have to run the last bit. We’re not far.”

“
All right.”

Sorcha shouldered his violin case and took off. It turned out he was a runner. He ran for pleasure most days, just for the hell of it. I have never been prone to such a masochistic thing. He had said it wasn’t far, but that was a lie. I could only barely keep up with him. I was drenched in sweat, bleary-eyed and lightheaded by the time we got to where we were going. It was an apartment building a few blocks away from an already-bustling opera house called the Barlan. A pair of men sat at the foot of the building’s steps. One was an old red elf, a man with a face more weathered than lined. He had heavy steely eyebrows that furrowed over a pair of bottomless black eyes, eyes so black they seemed not to have irises at all. Next to him, sitting with a matronly, protective hand on the old man’s back, was a middle-aged man with elvish ears and short, black hair. The old man looked up as we approached. “You’re late, Sorcha.”

“
Sorry, sorry.”

The old elf pointed at me with a violin bow. “Who’s that? You got a shadow.”

Sorcha grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. I was a disheveled mess, the sweat seeping through my borrowed clothes, my hair going every which way. I’d cut myself shaving, and a trickle of blood wound its way down my neck. I had hoped Sorcha would let me slink behind him, tuck myself out of sight, but I had no luck with it. “This is Ariah. He’s with me.”

“
Aye, a blind man could see that. I’ve a set, boy. Music’s a discipline, right, you can’t pop in and out with your conquests. It’s work.”

Sorcha laughed. “No, he’s not…Prynn, it’s a long story. C’mon. Let’s go play.”

The man with the black hair stood up and offered a hand to the old man, Prynn. Prynn refused it. “If he’s not a conquest, why’s he in your clothes, Sorcha?” the black-haired man called.

Sorcha laughed again. He glanced down at his boots. There was an odd tension in him, one threaded with gentleness. When he looked back up, there was a curious half-smile on his face. “I’ll tell you later, Tayvi. I promise I’ll tell you everything after we play, yeah?”

They went to the Barlan with me in tow. They played a set of traditionals, none of which I was familiar with—most were Lothic and dated back to the war in the South. Both Prynn and Sorcha played violin; Tayvi sang. They were extraordinary. Even I, with little exposure to music, could tell they were extraordinary. It was very early, but the Barlan was packed. When Tayvi bowed after the last song, the crowd surged forward, bearing me along with it, and coins poured forth from their pockets. Sorcha pulled me on stage. He sat me next to Prynn, who thanked everyone who gave them money. He was warm with his audience, easy with them, an altogether different sort than the cantankerous old man who’d glowered at me at his building. Prynn seemed profoundly uninterested in me. I was glad for it.

Sorcha pulled Tayvi off to the side. They had a whispered conversation I couldn’t hear, but the talents are what they are, and I saw more than I should have. There was no amount of gentleness that would have adequately softened the blow he delivered to Tayvi. The loss, the bitterness, was palpable. I knew with some odd certainty—a certainty, which may not have been magical—that it had something to do with Dirva. I knew it, and the curiosity burned me alive, but I could not bring myself to ask Sorcha about it. We went directly back to the squat house after his set. We walked slow, and he told me about how he’d started playing the violin. How Prynn had taught it to him since he was young, how Prynn was from the Lothic coast and had trained formally with human musicians, but then turned rebel and fought in the war. He told me about a man named Ezra who’d been married to Prynn, who’d died a violent and pointless death, and who had a place in satyrs’ songs. Sorcha spoke in an unbroken monologue, and at most a quarter of what he said made any kind of sense to me. I didn’t try very hard to make sense of it. I didn’t even listen very closely. This happens sometimes, even now, even after years of marshaling my gifts. There are times when someone speaks to me at length and I listen to the tenor of their voice, the cadence of their words rather than the content. It gives a window into their frame of mind, but it has also given me a reputation for a wandering attention.

Back at the squat house, Sorcha handed me a plum and asked me if I was properly awake yet. I said I wasn’t. He grinned. “Yeah, me either. I’m gonna crash for an hour or two. You’re lucky I’m a heavy sleeper. You’re lucky I don’t kick you out of my room for the snoring.”

It took me a second to realize it was an invitation. An invitation to what, I was not completely sure, but the way he watched me, measuring my reaction, made it clear that he was waiting for me to respond. I had no idea what the proper response was, so I didn’t respond at all. Sorcha plucked the plum out of my hand, took a bite, and gave it back. He left me in the kitchen. I listened to him walk the stairs as I idly ate the rest of the plum. When I was done with it, when there was nothing else to do, I went up the stairs myself. Sorcha was already asleep. He was curled up on the inside, facing the wall, still clothed. I lay down next to him and was asleep myself soon after.

It was Dirva who woke me next. He shook me gently by the shoulder, whispering my name. He loomed over me when I opened my eyes.

“
Dirva. Good morning.” I was relieved to see him. He was a fixed point of familiarity, a remnant of the Empire. I noticed he was still dressed in Semadran clothes even if I wasn’t.

Dirva held a hand to his lips. He pointed at the door. I nodded and pulled myself up. Dirva was already at the door, his left hand on the knob. It was already half-turned. And then Sorcha rolled over. “What time is it?” he murmured. “Where you off to?”

“
Oh, I…Dirva’s come to get me.”

Two things happened at exactly the same instant. Dirva opened the door, his back still turned, and Sorcha shot across the room and grabbed Dirva by the back of the shirt. “No you don’t, you bastard,” Sorcha said. “You’re not sneaking out of my room without even a word to me.”

Slowly, deliberately, Dirva turned around. The way he looked at Sorcha was so strange. His face was tender and suspicious at the same time. He slowly rested his hands on Sorcha’s shoulders. Carefully, he smiled. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

The harshness in Sorcha’s face evaporated, just like that. He wrapped his arms around Dirva and buried his face in Dirva’s chest. “Holy shit, Lor, you’re really here.”

“
You’re grown,” Dirva said.

Sorcha laughed. “You’re old.”

“
I am,” Dirva said. “I am at that. I need to speak to Ariah.”

Sorcha pulled away. He crossed his arms against his chest. “You been speaking to him for four years. I’ve not seen you in twenty-five.”

“
I need to speak to Ariah,” he said again. He said it simply, easily, and I watched as he pointedly ignored the hurt it caused in his brother. He caught my eye and nodded to the door. Guilt gnawed at me as I edged past Sorcha and left the room with Dirva. We did not speak until we were out in the Main Square. “What happened to your face?”

I rubbed a hand against my jaw. “Your brother made me shave in the dark.”

Dirva raised an eyebrow just the slightest bit. “He made you?”

“
He insisted. It seemed polite to acquiesce. He insisted on the clothes, too.”

“
Ma told me he lived with Falynn for a few years. The vanity must have rubbed off on him. Have you eaten?” I told him I’d had exactly one plum since I’d seen him last. “Let’s get something to eat. There are things we should discuss.”

He took me to a cafe in the Tinker’s Borough. It was strange, because the place was so thoroughly Semadran, but no one in it so much as raised an eyebrow at the two of us. It was strange to be in a place among my own where I was no longer notable. Over familiar food, Dirva tried to speak to me. He couldn’t for a very long time. He was as emotional as I had ever seen him, and emotional in a quiet, tightly-controlled way. A Semadran way. I gave him the space to marshal himself. “Will the squat house suffice?” he asked.

“
As long as it doesn’t collapse, I suppose so,” I said. He laughed, and I felt a wave of relief wash over me.

He wrote two addresses down one a slip of paper and handed them to me. “The top one is my parents’ place. The bottom is where I am staying. Should you need me, I will be at one or the other.”

“
You’re not staying with your parents?”

“
No, I’m not.” He said it with a finality, which precluded further conversation. Dirva sighed. He had not eaten much more than a few bites, but he pushed his plate away. “We won’t be here very long.”

I heard what he wanted me to hear. I heard what he could not bring himself to say. “I am sorry.”

“
It is what it is.” He was quiet for some time. The counter-minder came and cleared away the plates. She returned with a glass of water for me. “You’ve met my sisters and my younger brother. You don’t have to meet anyone else if you’d rather not. But if you would not be opposed to it, I would welcome you to meet the rest of my family.”

“
Yes, of course.”

He nodded. Then, he caught my eye. “I bid you remember they are not Semadran. I know you know that. Between Abira and Sorcha and Cadlah I am certain you know that, but remember it. My family is not like yours.”

“
I will remember.”

* * *

Dirva’s family was bound together by their traditions. The children orbited wildly, swinging out away from and back again to their parents again in settled rhythms. It was tradition for the children to strike out and join the Natives when they grew testy and adolescent. It was tradition for them to scrape a living in some half-illegal or wholly illegal way. They were a defiant, willful group: smart and crafty, street-seasoned, full to the brim of tempered bravado. It was tradition for them to have dinner with their parents once a week. These traditions were sacred: they were the glue that held the family together. Dirva methodically, intentionally, broke every single tradition he could. He was the only one to avoid the squat house. He sought out a formal education in the Semadran schools of the West Quarter. He left the family, left the City, and didn’t return for twenty-five years.

The family dinners were deeply private; to be brought to one meant you were adopted into the family. My closeness with Dirva and my growing friendship with Sorcha granted me entrance. It was there I met the rest of them: Dirva’s parents, his da, his older brother Falynn, and Amran, a man who I can only describe as Falynn’s other half though they were not married. Dirva’s father was a full red elf, old yet spry. He was a tender man, a man who doted on his children, but there was a coolness, an uneasiness between him and Dirva. They circled each other like wary animals, both afraid the other was about to strike. There was love between them, but it was a broken thing, something shattered long ago and never fully repaired. Dirva’s mother was the unquestioned head of the household. She was an improbable scientist—street-born, abandoned, illiterate until nearly adulthood, but she’d been taken under the wing of an academically minded half-Magi man in the City and had produced volumes of work on the mathematics of time. She could not seem to utter a sentence without a curse word in it. She had a total lack of patience with everyone around her. Dirva resembled her inside and out. They understood each other, I think, and it smoothed things between them when he came back after so long.

Falynn, Dirva’s older brother, was a healer, trained in three different elvish traditions and mundane Qin doctoring by a close family friend. Sorcha had told the truth when he’d said he looked nothing like Falynn: like Cadlah, Falynn had his father’s pale red elvish skin and his mother’s black hair. Like Dirva, he was tall. His eyes had the same startling brightness as Dirva’s. They may not have looked alike, but there was a lot of Falynn in Sorcha. Falynn was the beauty of the family, and he knew it. He was someone who was used to being looked at, used to being fawned over. The first thing that came to mind when I met him was my father’s lectures about the golden ratio, how beauty is beautiful only in the right proportions. Falynn was a study in perfect proportions. He was distinctly androgynous, a wild sort of beauty that flickered between masculinity and femininity moment to moment. Beyond the beauty was an effortless charisma, a natural charm. It was strange, then, that Falynn was always shadowed by Amran. Amran is a well-known poet both inside and outside of the Empire—like Liro, he is part of the Nahsiyya Movement. But his gentle poems do not give you a sense of the man. He is a force. A dark thing, a man with an icy cruelty right at the center of him. Amran and Falynn together are a study in contrast and balance. One thing they had in common is that neither ever forgave Dirva for leaving.