Ariah (30 page)

I pulled away. As discreetly as I could, I wiped my eyes. “No, I don’t.”

“
All right. Well, that’s a shame, but given you’re Imperial, I can’t say it’s a surprise. Dancers. The thing with dancers, the thing that lets them keep their balance when they are whipping so fast the world is a blur, is they find a spot. Some spot that don’t move. A point of stability. And that’s what you need: a thing that centers you and keeps you upright. And yours is the little brother. That’s a dangerous game to play, pinning yourself on someone else.”

“
I need the herb.”

“
You want to be tethered to a pipe the rest of your life? You want to be a man who can’t handle the world unless he’s caught in a haze of smoke?”

“
It is so hard here.”

“
We’ll work more on breaking the charms,” he said. He checked his watch, a lovely Semadran-made thing Dirva had given him years before. “I’ve time now. Break eye contact, get yourself some distance. Find your center.”

For three hours Vathorem charmed me. For three hours I struggled with it. When I fought the gift, when I pushed it down with all that focus and determination I’d lived with in the Empire, I could scrape together the presence of mind to break his charms. But I was there in Vilahna because ignoring it had only brought me trouble. I wanted mastery of the gift, I wanted to live with it, in it, instead of against it, but I was still so new to it and so untempered that I could not see through it. When he charmed me, I felt the magic faster and deeper than I would have otherwise. The charms obliterated me. The effort of fighting them left me exhausted.

That night something broke within me. The strain of it all—the gift, my helplessness, the shame of constant failure—crushed me. I wound up on the floor of the loaned apartment, the blood roaring in my ears. Breath would not come. I felt I was drowning; I felt I was dying. The noises that came from me were these terrible, animal things: hisses and whines. My vision blurred, narrowed. Sorcha brought me back from the dark edge. He charmed me, and it helped. There are different kinds of charms, you know. The way you charm has a lot to do with how well you know who you’re charming and what you want from them. Sorcha knew me as well as he knew himself, maybe better than he knew himself. All he wanted from me was my own safety. A charm born of that is a sweet thing, a tender thing. It is a comfort.

He took my face in his hands. My eyes locked to his, terrified, full of wordless pleading. “Shh, shh. Ariah, hey, Ariah, shh,” he said. In minute increments, my throat unlocked. I took a breath. He nodded; he smiled. “Hey, see? Ariah, you’re all right. You’re all right, Ariah.” One by one, my muscles unclenched. My heart slowed. Sorcha studied me, took stock of me. “Ariah, I’m here. You’re all right.”

I held his forearm, just above the wrist. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall. “Thank you.” It came out a wounded croak.

He sighed with relief. His hands drifted to my shoulders, then away from me completely. He sat next to me. “What was that?” he asked.

I took some time to catch my breath. My shirt was plastered to me; my face was slick with sweat. “I don’t know. Thank you.”

“
It’s this damned training,” he said. “That damned man, he don’t know what he’s doing.”

“
No, he’s…he’s right,” I said. “I need it. It’s just, it’s all a lot to unlearn, and this…this is such a hard place to unlearn it in.” My thoughts turned again to the charms, the strange apartments, the awful stinging tension in the throne room between Dor and his mother. I remembered again the irritation Vathorem had, and the way the gift took it and welded it to my heart, the way I felt his irritation and my terror at the same time, doubled and redoubled like an image reflected in mirrors facing one another. It all came unbidden. It all came, and my body tore against itself as if it was trying to smother my thoughts without regard to the fact that doing so smothered my body along with them.

“
Ariah! Ariah, hey!”

Hands on my hands.

“
I’m here, I got you.”

Someone else’s smell in my nose.

“
I’m here. Ariah, I’m here.”

Another’s body pressed to mine, arms around my back, and a slow, steady heart beating against my chest. My heart found it, clung to it, and started to slow.

“
Ariah. Ariah, shh.”

And the relentless panic was dammed up again. Sorcha took my chin in his hand. He looked me over, inspecting me like he could see straight through my skin to the psychic wounds below.

“
You all right?”

“
For now.”

“
What happened?”

“
I was thinking.”

“
Well, stop! Don’t think no more.”

I laughed and rested my head on his shoulder. “I wish I knew how to do that.”

He was silent a second. “I know how,” he said. He stood up and crossed the room. He returned with a pipe packed with herb.

“
I can’t.”

“
The hell you can’t. You tell him you’re like this?”

“
He knows.”

Sorcha frowned. He tamped down the herb and fished in his pocket for a match. “Then he’s a right bastard. Look, you can. You should. You’re all taxed, Ariah, all stretched taut. Give yourself an hour.”

I smoked nearly the entire bowl myself. Sorcha took just enough to feel it, but not enough to get really stoned, but I drowned myself in it. And it helped. It was a crutch, and it was an escape, but sometimes you have to run away, and a broken leg is nothing on which to do the running. The first thing I did when the herb took hold was peel off my shirt. The air was cold against my damp skin. I pulled off my boots. I leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, and listened to my own heart. I counted my breaths. I felt the world through my skin. I felt contained in that moment, separate and bounded, and it was a relief. “Sorcha,” I said.

“
Yeah?”

“
Thank you.”

“
Stop thanking me. Nothing to thank me for.”

I found his hand with my eyes yet closed. I gave it a squeeze. “Thank you. I am so glad you’re here. I’d be lost if you weren’t here.”

“
Oh, Ariah, no. You were fine in Rabatha.”

I looked over at him. He was fiddling with the pipe. He wore half a grin, a kind of giddiness. “No, I was a mess there. It was hard. I don’t know who I am when I’m not with you.”

He laughed. He wouldn’t look at me. He beamed, bursting with life. “You’re so dramatic. You’re you when you’re not with me. Same as when you are with me.”

“
No,” I said. “It’s different.” I watched him spin the pipe in his hands, around and around and around. I watched the rise and fall of his chest. I wanted to preserve the ease of that moment, the security of him. I wanted to forget the terror of the panic. I wanted my body worn out so thoroughly it didn’t have the capacity to rebel again. I wanted something corporeal, something good, and I wanted a lasting memory of it. I wanted him wedded to me, as bound to me as I was to him. My heart pounded in my chest, a deep
boom boom boom
that drowned out every other noise. My skin came alive, every nerve alert and full of anticipation. I forgot to breathe. Slowly, I took the pipe from his hand and set it on the floor beside him. He looked over at me, curious and slightly worried. I turned toward him, my left arm crossing his body. I leaned into my arm, and cupped the back of his neck with my other hand. I pulled him to me, and I kissed him. Without regret or hesitation, I kissed him. Man to man without any shadow of shame, I kissed him. And I still remember it with startling clarity, that kiss. It was the first kiss I’d ever had I can remember, the first one with no charms and no shaping wedged between it and my memory.

He tasted of smoke and oranges and slightly of ale. His mouth was hot, and grew hotter as we kissed. His tongue slipped along mine, and the muscles of my back tightened. When our mouths closed, I felt the soft dryness of his lips. He let out a sigh, hot against my jaw. He started to say my name, but my mouth found his a second time. I leaned into him, and we fell against the wall, my body stretched along the length of his. He laughed very softly, pulled just far enough away just long enough to say my name. “Ariah.”

My face hovered just in front of his. I breathed his breath in; he breathed in mine. “Yes?” I felt safer, more alive, more complete than I ever had before. It was intoxicating.

“
Ariah, what is this? What’re you doing?”

I grinned at him. I spoke in his voice. “I thought we were making it finally.”

He blushed. With skin as dark as his it’s hard to tell, but I was close, and I could not tear my eyes from him, and it was a deep, burning blush. He laughed again, but there was a tension in the laugh. His eyebrows knitted together, and he pushed me gently away from him. “Ah, you’re stoned.”

“
I want to remember it.”

He rubbed a hand through his hair and moved slightly away from me. He stared down at his feet. “Ariah, I can’t.”

“
We can.”

He shook his head. “You’re not listening. Ariah, I can’t, not with you, not like this. Look, I just…I know myself. This thing ’tween us, it’s all deep down in me. When you left, there were all these memories of you, and I couldn’t…I couldn’t sleep right. I had to get out. That’s why I’m here, right, that’s why I’ve stayed. Fresh start. And I’m nahsiyya, but I’m pretty red when it comes to this. But the thing is, even reds fall hard. It hurts reds, too, when it’s one-sided. You and me, what we are, that’s all right with me. I’ll take it, I want it. But if we fuck, it’s over for me. I’m trapped in it. I’ll never get out from under it.” He swallowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I don’t know what this is, what you’re doing here right now, but if it’s not all I want it to be, it’ll hit me hard. So just…Ariah, just don’t. Not unless you’ve thought it through. Really thought it through. Just don’t.”

“
I want you,” I said.

He looked at me. His face was the strangest mix of hardness and softness, of cynicism and hope. “Right now you do. But c’mon, how do you know what you really want? These are uncharted waters for you, right, you could bail halfway through, and I’d not fault you for it ’cause you only learn by doing, but you’d leave me all sprung. I love you, I do, and you know it, and what I’m saying is I can’t be the one you try on. What you need from me right now, I can’t give it to you.” He sighed. He ran his hands over his face. He looked over at me, stroked my cheek, and smiled, but the smile was a little sad. “I’m gonna take a walk, clear my head. I’ll see you later.”

CHAPTER 20

Vathorem sat across from me in a small room in the palace. Somewhere down the hall, a pair of violins played a desperately sad song. Guards in the next room conversed loudly about the recent influx of satyrs into town. “It’s not working,” he said, half to himself. He peered at me, read me, and shook his head. “Maybe you aren’t built to build walls.”

“
What?”

He shook his head again. “It’s not working. Can’t force it. We’ll have to try something else.”

“
What else is there to try?” I said. My heart rushed to a sprint.

“
Ariah, shh.”

My heart slowed down again. “Vathorem, shapers build walls. That’s what we do. That’s how we manage.”

“
That’s how some of us manage,” he said. “But not you.”

“
But in Moshel Atoosa’Avvah’s book…”

“
Moshel made guesses. Good guesses, but they were guesses. He didn’t know everything about every shaper, just a whole lot about most of them. I’ve been thinking on this. I know you can’t charm none, but there’s a trick to charming that might work for you.” He held his hand up. “I know you can’t charm. I know. It’s a technique, Ariah, that charmers use, but that’s not to say it might not be a technique shapers could use, too.”

No walls. What is a shaper without walls? Lost. Mad. A hermit.

“
Ariah. Stop ruminating.”

“
When you tell me to stop, it just makes it worse.”

He sighed. “Ah, it’s the same for me. Let me tell you the trick. There is a thing in red magic called a litany, which I think is some convoluted mishmash of charming and shaping. It’s complicated, but the gist is you charm someone so much, so deep, that you make a lasting mark. It’s a charm that lingers. It’s a charm that takes something of yours and puts it in someone else. Not like other charms, where you coax something in them to the surface. You understand what I’m saying? And you have to maintain a litany. And the way you do it is you have to feel yourself and you have to feel them at the same time. It’s like you’ve got two hearts inside you: yours and theirs. To learn a litany, you have to learn to be yourself and not yourself at the same time. Ariah, if you could do that, you might make some progress.”