Ariah (17 page)

“
I welcome you to do it,” Dirva said. He pulled our papers from the policeman’s hand, shouldered his bag, and led me out the door. We did not speak until we were safely back in his apartment with the door locked and the curtains closed. Once we were assured of privacy, he read me. He had never done it before, and the force of it shocked me. I had underestimated how much he had in him, I think, though looking back it should have been obvious. I was horrified at the intrusion, and at the same moment, I was impressed at the level of control with which he wielded it. It was masterfully done, his reading: penetrating, but subtle, with little of the burn one usually feels.

“
Ariah, I cannot keep snatching you from the law like this,” he said. “This anger you have, you should think on it. You should think on whom you’re really angry at,” he said. He left me there by my old cot, but his words hung heavy in the air. I hadn’t admitted the anger to myself. I certainly had not admitted that I was angry at him, or that I was angry at him because I had left Sorcha. He read me, but more than that, he shaped me: he pulled it to the surface, this bitterness, this confusion, and forced me to face it. I had been read before, but I’d never been shaped. I’d never had someone reach deep into my soul and show me its inner workings. It is a profoundly unsettling thing. When he did it, I understood a little why the Qin were so uneasy with magic. I think, until then, I had taken the power of it for granted.

There are parts of ourselves that, once seen, can never be unseen. Things that, once thought, will exist in every thought after. He made me acknowledge it had been a sacrifice to return, and he made me face the guilt I felt at leaving Sorcha behind. Guilt that I’d tried to pin on him, but which I couldn’t blame him for once he’d rescued me, and then rescued me again. As I made my bed, I had to reconcile myself to the fact that Dirva had only offered me a place with him, he had not demanded I take it, and he was not responsible for the fact that I took it. Leaving the City had been my own choice made for my own reasons, and he had shaped me into being just grown enough to own it.

CHAPTER 12

I was to teach classes in Coastal Lothic and Athenorkos to potential traders venturing south. I had two days in Rabatha before the classes began, which was no time at all. I spent the first day sleeping. I spent the second day buried under anxieties about the start of my new position. It did not occur to me to do such things as find new clothing, or even wash the one set of clothing I had. It did not occur to me to let my beard grow back or to take out my earring. Dirva, likely, would have suggested such practical things, but I spent the day plaguing him with a thousand questions about where to go and what to do and when to do it. “You’ve seen me teach,” he said. “You attended school. You’ll know what to do.”

But I didn’t. For once, Dirva was wrong. My schedule dictated I was to teach two three-hour sessions a day: Athenorkos in the morning, and Lothic in the afternoon. I had no idea what to bring to that first class, so I brought everything which possibly could have been useful—the requisite pads of paper and pens, but in egregious numbers; some of Dirva’s notes from his own days teaching; and any book in Athenorkos or Lothic I could find, including at least three cookbooks. I missed breakfast. Every time I started to step out the door, I thought of something else I might need. When I finally got to Ralah College, only a handful of minutes before class was supposed to begin, I realized I had no roster and did not know where to get one. The notification of which classroom I was to teach in was buried in the heavy sack of documents I’d dragged with me. I made a desperate stop at the college’s registrar on the other side of campus, got the information I needed from a Qin clerk who could not be truly convinced I had a legitimate work assignment there even after I produced my papers, and got to the lecture room after all the students had already arrived.

Now, I had known that the class would be full of Qin students. Technically the college is open to all Imperial citizens, but given how work assignments function for Semadrans, and given the paltry pay those work assignments award us, it is rare for us to attend college. I knew this, but it was still a shock when I looked up from the podium and saw three hundred pairs of Qin eyes staring into me. In the wake of my time at the border, the Qin made me hostile and skittish. The anxieties I’d carried within me hardened into something stupidly caustic. I grew willful. I became what the Qin refer to as “uppity” in an elf: there was a decided lack of simpering graciousness in my carriage. I dropped my things and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of Sorcha’s old shirt. I scanned the room and saw three hundred Qin faces utterly disinterested in me and what I had to say. I saw three hundred Qin faces who saw me as an inconvenience. And far in the back, I saw a single Semadran face. In the back row sat a young Semadran woman, her chin held up just enough to betray an intriguing level of defiance. The only empty chairs in the entire hall happened to be located on either side of her. Dirva had advised me to find one or two students who seemed genuinely interested, who were taking avid notes, who nodded along when I spoke, and to teach to them. I decided to teach to her.

The roster was still in my hand. The brewing resentment within me would not let me waste an hour reciting three hundred Qin names. “I assume everyone is here,” I said. The halls had been built by elvish mimic engineers, and the acoustics were perfect. My voice carried well without needing to be raised. I dropped the roster on a table next to the podium. “Feel free to mark your presence, if you wish, after class has ended. Since this is a beginner’s course in Athenorkos…”

A Qin man in the third row let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “You can’t just ignore formalities. Read the roster.”

“
No. Since this is a beginner’s course…”

“
My position requires a record of attendance!” a Qin woman a few rows over said.

“
Then mark your attendance at the end of class. Does anyone else have a question?” A dozen or so raised their hands. “Questions will wait until the end of class,” I said. In the shocked silence which followed, I taught them Athenorkos. I taught it the way it made sense to me: outlining the patterns of grammar first, how verbs formed corridors for nouns, how word order shaped the flow of ideas from one sentence to the next. For three hours I spoke, diagramming sentences on a chalkboard behind me, lost in the surprising richness of red elvish language. When I turned to address the students directly, I always spoke to the Semadran woman in the back. She took copious notes, her eyes trained on the board behind me.

At the end of the session, I reiterated again that the roster was there for those who wanted to record that they’d sat through the lesson. A line of Qin students queued up to mark themselves present. I noted that a handful of them were students who had, at one point or another, fallen asleep during the lesson. They had no questions for me, no questions about the content of the lesson, simply a concern that policies should be followed. The Semadran woman in the back of the room gathered her papers. She came down the center aisle and made for the door, but halfway to it she turned and came to me. My vicious armor from the moment before abandoned me. A glance at the line of Qin students still waiting to sign their names assured me I was trapped, and that whatever it was she was about to ask I would have to answer.

When she drew near, it became increasingly clear to me that she was more than a match for me. She was older than me and carried an unassailable self-possession I could not help but envy. She was tall for an elf and towered over me by a good three inches. Defiance was marked into every inch of her: she wore Qin robes, but wore them with her hair uncovered. She took up as much space as she pleased. There was, in her, a refusal to be diminutive. She reminded me of Dirva. When we were face to face, she raised her eyebrows. “How old are you?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “I’m…I’m old enough. How old are you?”

“
Forty-six. How old are you?” she asked again. She peered at me, her head cocked to one side. She spoke Semadran, which turned a number of Qin heads our way. When she noticed them, she smirked.

I lied. “Thirty-nine.”

“
You’re a boy.”

“
I am old enough,” I said. It came out petulant, adolescent. I blushed. She smirked wider. I began to hate her. “Do you have a question?”

“
How did you get this assignment? Who would assign you to this?”

“
What?”

“
You’re very green.”

I considered showing her my papers and grew irritated with myself for considering it. I leaned against the chalkboard and crossed my arms against my chest. “Do you have a question for me?”

“
You’re getting chalk all over your back.” I leapt away from the board like it had electrocuted me. I frowned at her. Her smirk turned highly amused and slightly cruel. “Are you teaching the afternoon session on Lothic, too?”

“
Yes.”

“
That would be my luck,” she said, and then she sailed out the door without so much as a backward glance. Two hours later, she and I were once again in that same lecture hall. This time, she sat in the very center of the front row. The bravado with which I had taught that session of Athenorkos abandoned me. I stumbled through the class on Lothic. My points were punctuated with shrill giggles. My nerves got the better of me and led to several dropped and shattered pieces of chalk. As the class wore on, her face grew more amused and more disgusted with me. When I dismissed the class, the Qin students glared at me and lined up to sign the roster. She stayed where she was. She leaned on to the arm of the chair and studied me. “Where are you from?”

I pretended not to hear her. It was no use.

“
Professor, where are you from?” This time she asked it in Qin. A dozen pairs eyes turned toward me.

“
Ardijan,” I said. My voice cracked halfway through.

She laughed—a quick, authoritative
ha!
—and leaned back in her seat. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

Once again I considered showing her my papers. “I’m not showing you my papers. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“
You’re from the City,” she said. She gestured at me. “Look at you. How did you get this assignment?”

“
I’m from Ardijan,” I said again. I left the lecture hall without taking the roster. Her laughter taunted me all the way down the hall. At home, I recounted my failures to Dirva. He told me I was making too much of it, but I wasn’t. When I arrived the next day, a Qin official was lying in wait for me. He led me to the hall, handed me my abandoned roster, and said there had been complaints. Ralah College, he said, is not a place students complain about. My assignment was granted in the graciousness of the Exalted’s example, he said, and it would be a shame for such graciousness to be misplaced, or worse, for it to go unrecognized.

I held my tongue admirably well. I had no option but to hold my tongue. If I was reassigned due to complaints, I knew it would be to somewhere unsavory. The best I could hope for was a factory. The worse—and probably more likely—scenario was reassignment back to the border. I went into the lecture hall cowed and defeated. I was there early that day, so I had a chance to look through the roster. The only Semadran name on it was Shayat Bachel’Parvi. Shayat herself came in shortly after I’d discovered her name, some minutes before the arrival of any of the other students. “Good morning, professor,” she said. The way she said it was a mockery. I gave her a curt nod and refused to look up at her.

“
Is this all the classes are to be?” she asked. “Just lectures?”

“
That is how the Qin conduct them, yes.” At least, that is how Dirva conducted his classes, and he had had no complaints as far as I knew.

“
What a stupid way to do it. How will you know we’ve learned anything? How can we learn a language if all you do is explain it to us in Qin?” It was a good point. I looked up at her and told her as much. She smiled. “I’m not just here for the attendance records,” she said. “I do want to come out of this farce actually able to speak it.”

I smiled back. I was on the verge of asking her how she thought that would work, what she thought would make the class useful, and then she splintered what little ease I had with her. She pointed at me and raised her eyebrows. “Weren’t you wearing this yesterday?”

I blushed. I frowned at her and went back to studying the roster. I told her it was none of her business.

“
You still have chalk on your shirt,” she said.

“
Perhaps I have more than one chalk-covered shirt,” I snapped.

“
Perhaps, but I doubt you have more than one chalk-covered City shirt with the same exact badly-sewn patch on the left elbow.” She wrote something down on a slip of paper and handed it out to me. “My father is a tailor. I’ll get you a good price.”