Ariah (8 page)

“
Oh.” I reached up to poke at my ear. He swatted my hand away. I’d never been asked that. It’s not the way Semadrans discuss magic. We teach it, we theorize, but we don’t discuss it in any personal way with anyone besides our mentors. “It feels easy, I guess. Sometimes…sometimes it’s a simpler thing to mimic. Sometimes it feels strange to speak in my own voice. Sometimes it feels like my voice is a pretense, so it’s easy to slip into someone else’s. But it’s not always easy to slip back out. And if I don’t, things get…sometimes they get confused. Does that make sense?”

“
No, not really,” he said, but he smiled as he said it. “You’re an odd bird.”

“
I know.”

“
Good on you.”

I had a strange urge to thank him. I stood up instead and kicked idly at the wall. Sorcha walked to the edge of the platform, took a running start, and scrambled up the wall. He leaned over and offered me his hand, dragging me bodily up and over the edge. He was a good deal stronger than he looked.

I followed him back into the squat house. “Where am I sleeping?” I asked.

“
With me.”

“
What?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “What do you mean ‘what?’ It’s either with me or with someone else. Not much floor space available. You got the ring, fella, you’re a beggar now. No room to choose, eh? C’mon, I don’t bite. Got no bedbugs. Got a wall and a door away from the rest, which is a good deal round here.”

“
What about privacy?”

“
Privacy is overrated. C’mon. I got to get up early. Prynn makes me play at the crack of dawn, and you’re so tired you can’t hardly see straight.”

I underestimated what he meant when he said that. I followed him in and untied the bedroll I’d used on the trip out. Sorcha hung his lamp on its peg. I heard the rustle of cloth and thought it was a blanket. I sat back on my heels to find a good spot to roll out my bedding.

“
Oh, for fuck’s sake, you’re not sleeping on the floor.”

I looked over my shoulder to tell him it only seemed polite, that I was already an imposition, but I couldn’t get the words out. He was naked. Unabashedly so. I blinked once or twice and whipped my head away. I swallowed and found I still could not conjure up any words. It was, in fact, the first time I’d been in a room with a naked person since, perhaps, my birth. Certainly I had not been in the same room as someone in that state in my conscious life.

“
Look, you want the inside or the outside?”

I hastily rolled up my bedding and made for the door, my chin tucked down and my eyes pinned to the floor. I was almost there when Sorcha caught me by the wrist. “This is improper,” I croaked.

“
What’s improper is you being such a dainty priss. Come on, man, let’s just get some sleep. I’m the youngest, yeah? I’m used to sharing.”

“
I’m not. We don’t. I…you’re naked!”

“
Well, yeah.”

“
I can’t.”

Sorcha sat on the bed. He leaned against the wall with his arms resting idly on his knees. He’d chosen a place in the small pool of light from his lantern. From the corner of my eye I could see the smooth, unbroken lines of his body. “Can’t what?” he asked.

“
I can’t share a bed. It’s not done.”

“
Really? Not even with your brothers and sisters?”

“
I’m an only child.”

“
Oh.”

“
Yes, so I should really just…”

“
So, what, you just up and bolt whenever you’re done fucking?” he asked. I glanced over. He was stretching, his arms snaked up the wall and his chest pulled tight and tall. He caught me looking and grinned.

I turned a deep red and stared at my feet. “That’s not done, either.”

Sorcha laughed. “Oh, sure, me neither. Certainly wouldn’t ever, no. Sure, Ariah. Look, just curl up and get some rest, eh? You can have my spare blanket all to yourself. We’ll have to share a pillow, though.”

Now, I have always been impressionable. It has always seemed to me that to go with the flow of a situation is more prudent than to hold steadfast to arbitrary rules. And I was very tired, and perhaps still a little stoned. The mattress didn’t look like much, but I’d just spent weeks sleeping on bedrolls so thin they might as well have not existed, or trying to sleep sitting upright in the train since the elves’ cars never have bunks. As impressionable as I was, there was yet one thing that held me back. “You’re naked,” I said. I just blurted it out, my voice horrified and slightly shrill.

Sorcha laughed. “Fucking hell, that’s what’s keeping you on the floor?”

“
Well, I…yes?”

“
I’m not sleeping in trousers. Gets too hot keeping them on. C’mon, you’ve got your own blanket. I’ll keep myself to myself. Inside or outside?”

I opted for the outside. I waited until Sorcha slid in and cut the light. He gave me plenty of room and fell asleep quickly. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. I had his spare blanket tucked tightly around myself. I started the night fully clothed down to my socks. I listened to the formidable creak of the squat house, the patter of feet outside the door. It was a loud place. The night was cool, but his room was small and had no window. Sorcha alone was enough to warm it up. The blanket he’d given me was a Lothic wool thing, thickly spun and tightly woven. Between his body heat and the effectiveness of the borrowed blanket, I grew first comfortably warm, then uncomfortably hot, and then I began to sweat and could not fall asleep. I took off my socks. A little while later I took off my shirt. Halfway through the night, blushing furiously in the dark, I slid off my pants. So it was I spent my first night in the City of Mages: ear freshly pierced, the smell of pipeherb still lingering in my hair, sharing a bed with a naked stranger, with my Semadran clothes in a pile on the floor.

CHAPTER 5

Sorcha woke me only a few hours after I’d managed to fall asleep. He sat up and shook me awake by the elbow. I have never woken easily, and left to my own devices would have slept fully half the day away. But, as he had mentioned the night before, Sorcha had a standing appointment in the early hours of the morning, and apparently he’d decided that I was to make said appointment with him. “Hey, wake up. Prynn’s isn’t close and I don’t want to have to run there, yeah?”

I pulled his borrowed blanket over my head. I was not awake enough to really understand where I was. I was not awake enough to remember I’d met him the night before. Sorcha climbed over me. “Gah, you snore,” he said. “You could’ve mentioned that. Wake up, dammit!” He kicked me in the back. I responded by shuffling over onto his side of the bed. It was warm, and it smelled like honey. It was really very pleasant.

There was a burst of cold air as he ripped the blanket off of me. I was mercilessly thrown into consciousness. Sorcha grinned down at me. He was bare-chested, and his pants slouched lazily around his hips. They were, as yet, unbuttoned. He looked wicked and brilliant and predatory. He poked my pile of clothes with his foot. “What’s all this then, Captain Modesty?”

I pulled the blankets up around my chest. I felt exposed. “I got hot.”

“
I told you.” He held out a hand. “C’mon, we got to get out of here. We’re gonna be late.”

I let him pull me up. “Late for what?”

“
Got a set with Prynn and Tayvi. Can’t miss it. If I missed it, he’d…look, I just can’t miss it, yeah?” He pulled a shirt on and tucked it into his pants.

I sat back down on the mattress. “You should go without me. I wouldn’t want you to be late.”

“
What’re you going to do? Hide in this room?” That was exactly what I’d hoped to do. “Nah, you’re coming with me. Get dressed!”

“
Fine, fine.”

I reached for my clothes, but Sorcha’s hand closed around my wrist. “For fuck’s sake, not in those. Here.” He dropped a pile of his own clothes into my lap.

“
What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“
I have standards is what’s wrong with them. Just wear mine.” He handed me a razor. “And shave off that scraggly mess you’re trying to pass off as a beard, yeah?”

“
What? No!”

He shrugged on a high-collared vest and looked at me over his shoulder. He fixed me with a stern look, one that bore no questioning. One that I’d seen on Dirva’s face countless times. The sudden resemblance between them made me laugh. “What?” he asked.

“
You look like your brother when you make that face.”

He laughed with me. “Oh, I don’t look nothing like Falynn.”

“
Who?”

“
Falynn. My brother, Falynn. We don’t look nothing alike.”

“
No, I meant Dirva,” I said. I was reading him a little as I spoke. “I meant your brother, Dirva.”

“
Oh,” he said. “Hey, stop it with the prying eyes, would you? Shave and get dressed.”

Caught, abashed, I followed his directions. I shaved haphazardly in the dark and pulled on his clothes. I couldn’t help but think about what I’d eavesdropped: at the mention of Dirva he had turned hard, irritable, and confused. I followed him out of the squat house. We were the only ones awake. When we were outside, Sorcha dawdled by the door. “Aren’t we late?” I asked.

“
Yeah, but…” He peered out into the Square. He whistled, and someone else whistled back. “Yeah, just had to wait for Caddie to get back. Can’t leave the little ones on their own, right?” He started off, towards the south end of the Square.

I walked with him, but craned my neck to catch a glimpse of his sister. I saw nothing but the soft yellow glow of the streetlights. “She’s just getting back?”

“
Tables run all night.”

“
What tables?”

“
Card tables.”

“
Sorcha, she’s not…is she a gambler?” I ducked close to him when I asked it, very much scandalized.

He laughed. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, charmed, I think, by my naiveté. “I don’t know that I’d call her a gambler. Gambling makes it sound like she might lose. Ariah, she’s a card sharp. Keeps the squat house afloat practically single-handed. Gets it from Pa.”

We walked deep into the musicians’ district of the South Quarter. It was populated predominately by red elves who ran from the war in the South and blue elves who’d run from whatever it is in the forest they run from. The South Quarter had no order to it—it was all chaos, with some streets already alive and bustling before dawn and some that did not wake until noon. The edge of the quarter, which bordered the Qin quarter, was home to card and drug dens. Brothels were sprinkled throughout. On the other end, where the South Quarter met the West Quarter, which the locals called the Tinker’s Borough, blue elves felled Magi buildings and grew gardens in their place. In the heart of the South Quarter was the musicians’ district. It was there that I saw my first satyr. I saw several of them on that first morning’s walk to Prynn’s apartment. My mother’s mother had spoken of them when I was young, but I had thought them legends. The first one I saw leaned against a building, impossibly tall, hoofed and horned. I slipped close to Sorcha, eyes wide, too surprised to know whether or not to be afraid. The satyr grinned at me. “Off to see the Lover’s Lover, Sorcha?”

“
Yeah. Morning, Violet,” he said.

I could not help but stare at her as we passed by. I tried not to, and I failed miserably. “You know the satyrs?” I asked Sorcha when we turned the corner.

“
Huh? Oh, sure. Can’t be a musician and not know at least some of the bards.” He caught sight of my face and stopped. “Hey, you all right? Look like you’ve had a fright.”

“
Are they safe?” They didn’t look safe to me. The satyrs looked feral.

“
Who, Violet? Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess it depends, but yeah, they’re safe to us. They can get brutal with their own kind. Hey, they’re just canny bastards who mess with you, that’s all. You all right?”

“
I’ve never seen one.”

“
They don’t go into the Empire?”