Ariah (26 page)

“
I know. Vath knows. It was an excuse. This is useful, though. Walking through like this. Getting answers from you, this is very useful.”

“
Useful for what, may I ask?”

He looked out at the street. A clutch of children stared at him—hard, careful—and slipped into a back alley. “Things down the line. Decisions down the line.”

“
May I ask you something personal?”

“
Yes,” he said. He said it without hesitation, without alarm. I found it charming.

“
Why did you lie about remembering Dirva?”

He laughed. He glanced over at me and laughed again. “Hell, I don’t know. It’s not like there was a point in doing it, not in front of three of you. Just slipped out. I was little, though, when he was at court. If he remembers me at all, it’s as a little one. Does that make sense?”

“
What was he like, then?”

Dor shrugged. “I was little. To me he was fascinating: a foreigner, a mix, another shaper. He was always with Vath, and I was always with Vath. He was quiet, and smart. I’m quiet. There’s not many quiet folks around where I’m from, just me and him and Vath, really. He was nice to me, let me hang around, let me pester him with questions. He was, uh…” and here he paused. He looked me over, careful, uncertain. “He was close with a couple of my brothers. They knew him better than I.”

The conversation had slowed the walk. I was very late for my appointment with Shayat. I felt a dread in my bones when I knocked on the door of Parvi’s shop, one that was well founded. Parvi opened it, already apologetic. “Ah, professor…”

That was all he got out. Shayat batted the door open wide. “Oh, you made it.”

“
Shayat…”

“
You’re an hour and a half late, and I’m the rude one.”

“
I’m sorry. Shayat…”

She sighed. She glared at me. And then she noticed Dor. “Why is there a red elf with you?”

“
I was going to explain that to you, actually.”

Parvi slipped away from the door. “I’ll just leave you to your lessons,” he said.

Beside me, Dor began to laugh. He tried to hide it and failed miserably. Red elves are not used to hiding laughter. Shayat stood in the doorway, haughty, irate, arms crossed. I was unhorsed by her, swept up in her, and I began to laugh, too. She was not pleased. “I’m sorry! I am! May we come in? I’m here now. I’m sorry for the lateness, I am.”

She frowned at me. She frowned at Dor. Then, she held the door open for us. “It’s late,” she said. “Are you hungry? Did you eat?”

“
I haven’t eaten, no.”

She led us into the kitchen, which I’d never been in before. She pointed to the table and a second later dropped a platter of flatbread on the table. It landed with a heavy bang. Then she dropped a bowl of hummus next to it. The bowl tottered, half-spun, threatened to fall over. Shayat glared at it, willed it into obedience. She sat down next to me, eyeing Dor hard. “Who is he, and why did you bring him here?”

Dor began to laugh again, and I couldn’t help it, it was contagious. Shayat threw her hands up at me.

“
He speaks Semadran! I kept trying to tell you that, but you just keep on and on!” I said.

She looked at Dor. “You speak Semadran?”

“
A bit, yes.”

The irritation went out of her. She took a piece of flatbread and scooped up some hummus. “Huh. Look at that. Where did you learn it?”

“
In Vilahna.”

“
He came with Vathorem,” I said.

“
Ah.” She looked like she was going to ask, pry about his gifts like I had already done, but she swallowed down her questions. “Why did you learn it?”

“
People smarter than myself thought it would be useful for me to know it,” he said. He reached across the table. “Shaliondor,” he said.

And something came alive in Shayat. She took his hand and did not let it go. “Shaliondor? Shaliondor da Where?”

“
Da Alama.”

“
You came here with the queen’s right hand?”

“
I did, yes,” he said. There was surprise in his voice, a hint of wariness. He tried, and failed, to reclaim his hand.

Shayat held it tight and pulled him slightly farther across the table. “Are you the heir, Shaliondor da Alama? Are you Rethnali’s successor?”

His eyebrows shot up. He glanced at me, then back at her. “I…am. Yes, I am.”

“
You are?” I could not believe I asked it. My hand flew to my mouth.

“
He is,” Shayat said. She let go of his hand. “If you plan to trade in a country it makes sense to stay informed, yes?” She switched to Athenorkos. “Mr. da Alama, I have many, many questions for you. About trade. About routes. About, uh…” She searched for the word, her fingers dancing in the air as if to pluck it out of the ether. She grinned. “About prices.”

* * *

Vathorem and Dor stayed with us a week. I spent as much of that week at Parvi’s shop as I could, partly because Shayat demanded final lessons before I left, and partly because with four of us in a bachelor’s apartment there was no room to breathe. Dor almost always came with me to Shayat’s. When I came home from the classes, I usually found him sitting on the landing, alone, watching the borough. He had an air of remoteness around him, of separateness, that I lacked. There were times when he spoke, when I caught sight of the way he carried himself, that I could not shake the feeling that he belonged there in Rabatha more than I did. Those thoughts drove me into quietness; they whipped my fears into a frenzy. It is not so surprising, then, that Shayat seemed to lose interest in me. The final lessons were really lessons with Dor while I watched and ruminated and chewed my fingernails down to ragged edges.

Dor and I rarely spoke to each other but for questions about this or that. I avoided Vathorem for days, pleading work and then lessons, and then only getting back just before curfew to sleep curled up on the floor of the kitchen. Vathorem took my cot, and Dor took the floor beside the cot. Vathorem gave me space for four full days, right up until the day before the marriage, and then it was Saturday and I had nowhere to go, and he decided I’d had space enough.

I woke early and tried to slip out, but he was already awake and already waiting. “Let’s you and I talk, eh?”

“
Yes, well, I…I have to go.”

“
Go where?”

“
To, uh, to…”

Vathorem laughed. He stood up. It was a fluid motion, one that betrayed no hint of how old he was. “Dirva tells me you’ve a fondness for the gold elves.”

“
Yes. That’s true.”

“
You know, it’s been ages since I’ve seen one. Show me some gold elves, Ariah, and we’ll talk on the way.”

There was nothing for it but to do as he asked. We walked slowly, mostly in silence. I felt him watch me, I felt his magic gently prod me and probe me. There was little of the burn our shapers have. I remembered how little of the burn there had been with Dirva. And I asked him my first question, and when I did, my training with Vathorem began. “Why doesn’t it burn with you?”

“
There we are. There we go. That’s the way of it. It don’t burn because I’m charming you while I do it. It’s all bound up in me, the red magic and the silver. Can you charm, Ariah?”

“
No.” I wondered about Dirva, what talents he had that were not Semadran.

“
Dirva can, aye,” Vathorem said. I looked over at him. He laughed. “Oh, I’ve got it in spades, lad. I’ve got so much of it I can’t see past it. Got so much of it seems it’s all there really is of me. Lad, have you ever tried to charm?”

“
No.”

“
Then you can’t say for sure one way or another. Tell me about the gold elves. Tell me what draws you to them.”

“
I don’t know.” And I didn’t; it was a draw, a visceral draw, which until then I’d never questioned or examined.

“
Sure you do,” he said, and he said it with such expectation that I really had no choice but to divine an answer for him.

“
There is a…unity to them. It seems. The boundaries of where one starts and another ends are porous. I think.”

“
That appeals to you, does it?”

It didn’t seem to me then to be a matter of preference, but more a matter of truth. I have come to reconsider this, but at the time, it seemed to me that the gold elves were more accurate, more honest, about life than Semadrans are. And maybe that is true—but maybe it’s that they are more accurate and more honest about me than Semadrans are.

Vathorem did not wait for me to answer. “You’re very different than Dirva.”

“
I’m not so different.”

“
You are. He’s a world to himself, that one. All contained, a universe in one man. The magic drives him away from the rest of us. And it drives you right into the arms of slaves. Who, Ariah, who do you think in this city has a more urgent life than a slave? What people anywhere live more moment to moment than them? And when you live like that, you live loud. It’s all right there on the surface. Dirva and I are alike. You and I are not.”

“
You won’t train me?”

Vathorem smiled at me. “Oh, no, I’ll train you. Are you willing to be trained, though, that’s the real question. Will you let me, that’s the question.”

“
I’ll let you.”

* * *

The marriage was absolutely, perfectly Semadran. We arrived at the matchmaker’s house just before dusk. Dor and Vathorem were led into the house by the matchmaker and seated in the front room. Dirva and I entered the house through the matchmaker’s back door. We stood huddled against the wall, tucked out of sight. Dirva was calm, unruffled, full of certainty. Just as the sun dipped halfway below the horizon and the moon crept up into view, the door to the parlor opened for us. I went in first, then Dirva. Nisa’s parents came in through the other side of the room, followed by Nisa. The matchmaker and a razehm stood on either side of a small table. They stood in front of a west-facing window, and the mingled light of dusk flooded the room. On the table were the documents: licenses, affidavits, and genealogies.

The matchmaker gestured the families forward. Nisa’s mother stepped towards me. “It is a gift and an honor,” she said.

“
It is a gift and an honor,” I said. We signed an affidavit of witness for the razehm.

Dirva and Nisa went forward, drawn together like magnets. I’d never seen her in anything but her work clothes. I’d never seen her hair uncovered. She looked different, there in flimsy, soft clothing. Her white hair was long and wavy; it hung loose, freshly washed, gently curled. She looked young like that. She looked girlish. And she looked so obviously, so totally, in love with him. Dirva stood across from her, a well of lies. The genealogy was a fiction, and she would never know it. He had oceans of love for someone else. She stared at him, devoted to who she thought he was, and he stared back, hopeful that he could become that man for her.

“
Now, when the sun and moon meet, in this room where you first met, you are married,” said the matchmaker. “A bond is forged, a bridge is built, and two lives are now lived in parallel.”

Dirva opened Nisa’s genealogy. It was a thick book bound in black leather, the spine a full two inches thick. She had spent days copying her parents’ genealogies into it, name by name, relationship by relationship. She had written so much that her hands were still stained with ink that day. He wrote his name, the one on his citizenship papers, the one that hid his family from existence, next to hers. “A life together and only together,” he said.

She beamed. She took his hand in hers, and he handed her the pen. She opened his genealogy, a slim volume detailing the course of lives, which had never been lived, and wrote her name next to his. “A life together and only together.” Together, they signed Qin marriage licenses. The razehm stamped their marriage onto their citizenship papers. I left Rabatha three hours later.