Ariah (46 page)

“
Only skin deep, I guess.”

“
Like Da,” he said.

I laughed. “Mercy, you’re right. Sorcha, I leave this room, and so little makes sense. Everything is so complicated, so hard. But you make sense; being with you is easy. I don’t want to lose you. And I don’t know what it means that I want to let her court me. And I don’t know what it means for us.”

Sorcha pulled on a pair of pants. He sat cross-legged on the sleeping mat and leaned against the wall. “Fuck, I’d give my arm for some herb right now.”

I wrapped a blanket around my waist and sat down next to him. “Me, too.”

“
All right. Well, the way I see it, her courting you, you wanting her to, that don’t really have to mean anything for us. Us is you and me; it’s a separate thing. If it don’t change the way you are with me, what I am to you, then it’s a separate thing. Which I think it is. I think you’re overthinking it.”

“
You think so?”

He unlatched his violin case. “Ariah, you overthink everything. We’re fine. We’ll stay fine,” he said, and then he tuned his violin.

CHAPTER 31

I fully expected every meeting with the matchmaker to be the last one. Certainly, Shayat would come to her senses, or Parvi would put a stop to things, or the matchmaker would refuse to broker the match. But Biral appeared week after week, and I ended up in that house with that matchmaker who had nothing but contempt for me. She read me mercilessly; she poked and prodded me. She asked me invasive questions and permitted herself small noises of disgust when I answered them.

I met with her the customary four times. Biral came to me with a date and a time for the fifth session, traditionally the session where the matched pair meets together. Something snapped in me. Something came loose. Sorcha went to Dirva’s house alone. I drank just enough to drown the gift and went to Parvi’s shop. I slipped around the back and pelted Shayat’s windows with pebbles until she stuck her head through her curtains. She stared at me in shock. She frowned and slammed the window shut. I pelted her window with pebbles again until she opened it once more. She glared at me and pointed into the alley.

She stormed through the alleyway wrapped in Qin robes worn all wrong. She took me by the elbow and dragged me behind a broken fence in the next yard. Emotions flickered across her face: irritation, then impatience, then amusement. She pinned me against the adobe wall of her neighbor’s house and leaned in to kiss me. I slid away, out of her grasp. “Shayat, what the hell is this?”

“
It’s a courtship,” she said. She smirked.

“
I’m with Sorcha,” I said.

“
I heard he was still here. Is he staying out of trouble?”

“
No, Shayat, I am
with
him. We’re…we’re lovers.” The word felt strange. Before that moment, I hadn’t named it.

Shayat blinked at me. She let out a strangled laugh and stole a glance out at the street. “I’d heard rumors.”

“
The rumors are true.”

“
Oh.” She frowned. “Ariah, what the hell? You’re fucking Sorcha, and you come here asking me what I’m doing? Why have you allowed the match to go on like this if you’re with him?”

“
No, you answer me first,” I said. “It’s been years, and you just turn up in town and want to marry me, just like that? It makes no sense.”

“
Well, it does to me,” she said.

“
I will marry you, Shayat, if you need me to. Maybe in Iyairo or at the embassies in Vilahna a marriage mark on your papers will help you move easier. But marrying me? I’m on a factory line, Shayat, a fucking factory line. Everyone in the borough knows it. Marrying me will sink you here. Marry someone else—anyone else—unless you’re thinking about unloading your goods in Shangri or Tarquintia or someplace else. But you owe me an explanation.”

She leaned back away from me like she’d been slapped. “You think this is about the route?”

“
What else would it be about?”

“
It’s about you!”

“
What?”

She gestured at me, flustered, irritated. “You! It’s easy with you. It’s not easy with anyone else. I thought…this is stupid. Fine. I’m refusing the match. Fine.”

I caught her arm as she shoved past me. “Wait.”

“
For what?”

“
I just don’t understand. A matchmaker? You could have just come to see me.”

She shrugged herself out of my grasp. “I wanted it official.”

“
But why?”

“
Because I’m done looking. I’m done. You’re the only one who has not been more trouble than he was worth, and even then you dragged me through the desert for no profit and got my camel confiscated right out from under me. I have long nights, and I think about you. I’m with another man, and I think about you. Everything gets measured against you. I’m done measuring.” She sighed and glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “I hate this. This is ridiculous. And that damned shaper. I hate her.”

“
Oh, me too.”

Shayat grinned. “She is so…”

“
Judgmental,” I said.

Shayat laughed. “Yes. Exactly.” She leaned against the decrepit fence. She sighed again. “So, you and Sorcha finally crossed that line?”

“
We did.”

“
You’re happy?”

“
With him, yes. With everything else, less so. I’m on a factory line, Shayat.”

She took my hand and turned it palm up. “You’ve got a line worker’s hands, now. They were soft before. How long have you been on it?”

“
A year.”

She whistled. “Why not leave?”

“
Nuri. Dirva’s son.” I took her hand. She looked over at me. “This match is a farce. But we’re not. You should come to my place. We should…we should think this through, see where this can go.”

She let go of my hand. She shook her head. “This was a mistake,” she said, and then she left.

She said it was a mistake, but she came to my place anyway three days later. I was changing out of my work clothes, and it was Sorcha who opened the door. Our apartment was just that single room and a cramped bathroom crammed in a refurbished closet. He opened the door; I was half-naked and in her line of sight, but my back was turned. “Shayat,” he said. I stood up very straight, but I was not brave enough to turn around.

“
Sorcha, you look well,” she said. “I brought you this.”

The door closed. The deadbolt slid into place. “Where did you get this?” he asked. His voice was hushed, half-whisper.

I looked over my shoulder. It was a jar of herb. Sorcha unscrewed the top, and its fragrance poured out. “Bardondour. That’s mountain herb,” I said. I looked at Sorcha; he grinned. I looked at Shayat, and she grinned an identical grin.

“
Let’s smoke,” Sorcha said.

I put a hand on his arm. “Shayat, what are you here for?”

She leaned against the door. She drank us in, the two of us standing there together. “Well, you know I love to negotiate. I thought the three of us could come up with an, uh…Sorcha, how did you put it that day in the desert?” She snapped her fingers, and her grin turned hopeful and wicked. “An arrangement. Let’s make an arrangement.”

“
I can’t smoke,” I said, though I very much wanted to. “I’m on the line right after curfew lifts tomorrow morning.”

Sorcha breathed in the smell of the herb. The smell alone seemed to get him high: he was only half-present, distracted, with a lazy grin on his face. Shayat glanced around. “You don’t have a chair?”

“
Nah,” Sorcha said.

“
Not a single one?”

“
Nah.”

She slipped off her boots and sat on the edge of our sleeping mats. My eyebrows shot up. Sorcha sat down next to her. “You smoking?”

She smiled. She cut a glance at me. “Yes. I am.”

“
Since when?” I asked.

“
The compounders don’t trust elves who don’t smoke,” she said. “Unless your name is Tamir and they owe you a debt, you have to learn to smoke.”

“
You didn’t smoke when we were there with you.”

“
Not that you saw,” she said. Sorcha laughed. He rifled through his things, looking for his pipe.

“
I can’t smoke! The line!”

They looked up at me in unison, the same exact impatient look on their faces. Shayat sighed. “Fuck the line. The caravan is doing well. Too well. I keep making this much and the mercantile office will renegotiate my license and take half my profits. It’s good for both of us if you let me slip you my surplus.”

“
What? No.”

“
Yes,” Sorcha said. “We say yes. Ariah, sit down.”

“
No! You can’t just come in here, bribe him with herb and me with money. No, you said this was a mistake.”

“
Well, I reconsidered,” Shayat said.

“
I have a life, Shayat! You can’t just play with it like this.”

Sorcha leaned forward. “We have a life with no chairs. Sit down. Smoke the woman’s herb. She wants to negotiate? Let’s negotiate.”

I stared at him. “Sorcha, I would like to speak with you. Alone.”

“
What? Why?”

“
Please.”

He frowned. He set down the herb like it physically pained him to do it. He slunk across the floor and glared at me when I grabbed his arm and thrust him through the door. “This is a bad idea,” I said.

“
Why?”

“
It just is.”

He reached out to touch me, but I backed away for fear the landlady would wander by and glance up the stairs. He dropped his hand and rolled his eyes. “Ariah, for fuck’s sake, she…”

“
She has plausible deniability, and that’s the only thing keeping a roof over our heads,” I whispered. I had come to understand in those days after I crossed the line why Dirva had turned to Nisa instead of Liro. The work it took to stay in the borough living like I did was a constant grind, and it took a toll. “She came here with…with that, she came here with promises of money. We have nothing to negotiate with, Sorcha. As soon as you hold that pipe you’ll agree to anything. The second she said she’d get me off the line I wanted to marry her, right there. She can make us dance like we’re puppets.”

“
Ariah, she wants you. You’ve got you to negotiate with.”

“
No, I don’t! I’m a…Sorcha, I will get lost. I forget who I am. I give myself away to anyone who looks at me.” Sorcha frowned. I dropped my face into my hands. “No. That’s not what happened with you. I swear that’s not what happened.”

“
Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“
You know that’s not what I meant! Why would I hesitate with her if it wasn’t real with you? You and me, it’s both of us.”

Sorcha looked me over, his eyes flicked up and down. He stepped to the door. “We’re going to have to deal with her at some point. She’s not one to be turned out. No reason not to deal with her now.” He opened the door and held it wide until I walked through it.

Shayat grinned. She had the pipe packed. The herb sat rich and green in the bowl, tantalizing, seductive. It was by far the most expensive thing in the apartment.

“
Ariah’s got qualms,” Sorcha said. He stood next to me, very close.

“
Who among us doesn’t?” Shayat said. “Let’s just talk, the three of us. Let’s just see what our options are.”

“
We talk first,” Sorcha said, “and then we smoke.” He sat down on the floor and pulled me down with him. He waved Shayat over.

A sly smile crept across Shayat’s face. She set the pipe down and sat down in front of us. She caught my eye, staring down the length of her nose at me, her neck long and taut. I noticed a scar on her forehead. “Is that from the bandits?” I asked.