Ariah (11 page)

Sorcha stood next to the chair. He looked confused, adrift, a little lost. “Hey, you all right?”

“
What just happened?” The words came out hoarse, coated in fear.

“
Well, I thought…hell, Ariah, I thought we were making it finally.”

“
What?”

Sorcha sat heavily in the chair. A bitterness settled over him. “Ah, shit. Ah, for fuck’s sake. Look, we been circling each other for weeks, right, I figured you as shy. Look, if you didn’t want to you could’ve broke the charms.”

“
You charmed me?” It came out horrified, but actually I was relieved.
It wasn’t me
, I kept thinking.
I wouldn’t have done it if there hadn’t been magic involved. It was all him
.

“
Yeah. Don’t be like that. You’re a quarter. Could’ve broke them easy.”

“
I don’t know anything about charms!”

“
What? You’re a quarter!”

“
I’m Semadran!”

He stared at me for a long moment. He softened slightly. “I guess that explains why you didn’t charm me back.”

“
Yeah, it explains it! You charmed me? What the fuck, Sorcha?”

He turned away from me. He drew his knees up to his chest and sat there in the chair curled up and taut. “Fuck you, Ariah, it was an honest mistake. Stop playing like you’re all spooked.”

What I had not told anyone then, not even Dirva, was that I was more shaper than mimic. One of the shapers in Ardijan plucked me from my classroom when I was young and felt me out. She told me I had it, the gift, but that training would be hard for me. There is not enough of me in me, she said. I didn’t know what she meant, and frankly I was glad for it because it meant I wouldn’t have to live a shaper’s life, so I pretended I only had streaks of it. I’d used what she said as a way to avoid the training, which let me pretend I was something I wasn’t even as the gift took advantage of me. The years have shown me what she meant, and I believe what she meant was that the way that gift works for me is that I am in danger of obliteration. Much of Semadran shaping is bound up in the walls, developing strategies to know what someone else is feeling without really feeling it yourself. And I can’t build those walls.

I tell you this because it explains what happened next. It explains a lot about me and Sorcha, I think, but specifically what happened next. Every fiber of my body was heightened. I was in a panic—I’d just broken a whole host of rules with him, and I think some stupid part of my mind fully believed my parents were about to run in and disown me. I panicked, and the gift leapt out of me, thirsty for knowledge, dying to understand the situation.

Sorcha was not looking at me, but I could tell. I could feel it, what he wanted, how I’d hurt him. I felt it with a clarity that I doubt he even had. And I cared about him enough to want to bring him some peace. The memories of what happened next are discrete, jagged things in no real order. I must have crossed the room, but I don’t remember doing it. I remember kissing him and knowing exactly how he wanted to be kissed. I remember letting him push me down to the floor, and then onto the mattress because that’s where he wanted to go. The next thing I remember is hesitance. Sorcha’s hesitance. “Are you sure you want to?” he asked. Pulled along by him, caught in his current, I said the last four words of his question precisely at the same time and in his voice.

He pushed me back gently and held me by the shoulders at arm’s length. His fervor cooled and mine along with it, but it was still there, and I knew he wanted me to kiss him again, and I tried to do it. He held me in place. “Hey. Hey. You still in there? Ariah, you in there?”

Slowly, I came back to myself. He was naked, and I was down to my underclothes.

“
This don’t seem right,” he said. “You were about to bolt. Maybe we should talk this through?”

I was myself again, and I was confused and scared. I couldn’t talk about it; I had no words for it besides slurs. I bolted. I pulled on my pants and boots, grabbed his shirt instead of mine because it was closer, and ran out the door without a word. I was drenched in anxious, clammy sweat. I felt like everyone on the street who saw me could read everything, knew everything, and I was drowning in shame. In my pocket, mercifully, was the slip of paper Dirva had given me. I could not face his family, but the second address listed seemed promising, and I headed into the West Quarter.

The address took me to the West Quarter’s edge where the blue elves lived. I thought I was lost, but a street vendor confirmed I was going in the right direction. Really, the only thing I knew about the blue elves was that many of them were pirates. The men in their gardens looked forbidding, dangerous, to me. The City is a loud place, but the neighborhood of the blue elves has a thick quietness in it. It feels very separate from everything else there. The browns of sand and stone give way to green. The air is different. The blue elves watched me from their gardens, curious about the outsider. The house I came to was the only one on the street with an empty garden. The small house sat on a plot of empty land. I knocked on the front door, and Dirva answered. I had never been so happy to see anyone. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked.

“
May I come in?”

“
Yes, of course.” He ushered me inside. Speaking Semadran stabilized me somewhat. He pointed at a threadbare couch on the other side of the room. “Take a seat; I will get you a glass of water.”

I didn’t make it to the couch. The room was covered in paintings. They hung on the walls; they were stacked on the floor four and five canvasses deep. One wall held a collection of paintings from several different artists. One was even done by my father. All of the rest were by Liro, and many of them were his more famous works. Folded easels were crowded into one corner of the room. Sketchbooks were strewn on tables and chairs. A set of shelves held brushes and paints. “Dirva, where are we?”

“
West Quarter,” he called back from the kitchen. “Ariah, what happened?”

“
An artist lives here,” I said.

Dirva came around the corner. He looked slightly embarrassed. “Yes. An artist lives here. Liro lives here.”

My eyes grew wide. “Liro lives here?”

“
I mentioned when you first came to live with me that we were friends when I was young. I am staying with him.” He brushed sketchbooks off a couch cushion and told me to sit. He sat next to me and handed me a glass of water. “You are in a state.”

On the Market
, a portrait of a nahsiyya boy whore courting Qin men, which is widely considered to be Liro’s first masterpiece, stared at me from across the room. I found it unnerving. I also found it, considering the situation that had driven me to that room, oddly fitting.

“
Yes, I am.” I drank some of the water. I wanted so badly to tell him what had happened, but I knew I couldn’t have stood it if he disapproved. I couldn’t see how he wouldn’t disapprove. “I need guidance. I need guidance on shaping. I can’t build walls.”

He knew. He was part shaper, too, after all. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“
No. No, I’m not hurt.”

“
Good.” He sighed and watched me for a long moment. I was still shaky; my hand trembled slightly as I drank the water. “You must show yourself compassion, Ariah. There are allowances made for ones like us.”

“
I am not a shaper.”

“
You are close to it. Ariah, I know we don’t talk about it, but these things happen to everyone, shaper or not. You have…there is a vulnerability in you, which I sometimes find worrisome. You want direction. I think what you need is confidence. For me, it was easy to build the walls when I decided who I was. A sense of self gave me an anchor.”

Well,
I thought to myself,
I am not a ghalio. I am not nahsiyya. I don’t belong here, and I’m not like Sorcha. I am Semadran,
I told myself,
and I am everything that entails
. But still, I sat there in Sorcha’s clothes, freshly shaved by his hand. I sat there and could not help but wonder how I’d hurt him when I’d run. “Dirva, can I stay here with you? Tonight, at least, can I stay here with you?”

“
I…we’ll have to ask Liro. But, yes, I think so.”

I drank the rest of the water. I felt better, more like myself. I needed more guidance. I needed a sympathetic ear. I looked over at Dirva, shocked at what I was about to tell him. I couldn’t do it while looking him in the eye. I was afraid that if I did I’d read him, and I was afraid of what I would read. I dropped my face into my hands. “It was Sorcha. It was your brother. I didn’t—it didn’t get far, I don’t think, but I—Dirva, it was with him. I’m not…I’m no deviant. I can’t understand…he charmed me, but then he stopped, and the gift pushed me to it anyway. I don’t understand. I can’t stay with someone like that. I can’t.”

I waited for a protective hand on my back. I waited for gentle words. All I got was silence. The couch moved slightly as he pulled himself up. He stepped away from me. “Given what you’ve said, Ariah, this is not the place for you.” His voice was cold and opaque.

I thought it was judgment. It was judgment, but not for what I thought. I looked up at him. “No, no, it wasn’t me. It was him! He’s the ghalio, not me.”

“
Ariah, you should go,” Dirva said.

“
Go where?”

He turned to face me. “You should go back to the Empire. It seems I have overestimated you.”

The words cut deeply. His voice, his face, everything about him told me he knew exactly what he’d said, that he knew exactly how it would affect me. He had considered it, this choice of words, and he had made the conscious decision to wield them as weapons. I felt nauseous. I felt desperate. I was on the verge of tears. “I have no money. I don’t know the way back,” I said feebly.

He held the door open for me. The street outside was desolate and frightening. “We are not cut from the same cloth.”

“
No, we are. We are! I’ve upset you. I’ve offended you, but I don’t know why,” I said quickly. I had stood, taken two steps, and couldn’t make myself go further. I burned with shame. “I told you, I’m not a ghalio,” I said very, very quietly.

Dirva’s face was hard as stone. He was a mountain of steadfast, brutal reserve. The surface of him was sheer, and stark, without any ledges or handholds. “You are too free with your words. You have no sense of the man to whom you speak, Ariah. Get the money from Cadlah. Tell her I will repay her.”

I left. My heart broke as I crossed the threshold. I felt very alone, indescribably empty. I had nowhere to go. My only real choice was to return to the squat house, to wake Cadlah, and hope she gave me money and directions back to Rabatha. I walked slowly. I was wounded and unguarded, and the feelings and voices of the passers-by on the street sunk into me. I was only half-myself. It is a very strange way to be.

I had hoped, of course, that I would not have to face Sorcha. Certainly he would have business to attend elsewhere, I told myself. At the very least he would be out somewhere complaining about me to one of his friends who had never much seen the point of having me around in the first place. I had convinced myself that he would be gone by the time I reached the Square, but he wasn’t: he sat on the platform playing his violin. A Qin peacekeeper yelled at him to stop under threat of arrest for disturbing the peace. He yelled that the racket was disrespectful to the courts. Sorcha played anyway. And the thing he played cut me to ribbons. Sorcha, like most musicians, communicates best through song. It’s his language. His violin spoke of hurt and confusion and resignation. Of loss. It told me that he, too, thought he’d overestimated me.

He spotted me. I felt it when he spotted me; it was like a crashing wave. I wanted to hide, but where could I have hidden? There was nothing to do but face him. At least it was on the street, where certainly my gifts would not get the better of me. He dropped the violin and jumped off the platform. He fell twelve feet and landed graceful as a cat. The Qin peacekeeper ordered him over, but Sorcha spat at his feet. “The racket’s over. Only one disturbing the peace now is you.” He darted away when the peacekeeper lunged at him and disappeared into the crowd. A handful of seconds later, he reappeared right in front of me. It was around noon, and the Square was a crush of people moving from one side of the City to the other. The flow of people parted around us like we were stones in a river. “So,” he said. “Rough morning.”