Ariah (47 page)

She touched the scar. “It is. Did they leave you with scars, too?”

“
Yes.”

Her smile turned tricky. “Can I see them?”

I felt the pull of her, the draw of what she wanted and what I could be for her. I did not realize I had moved toward her until Sorcha pulled me back. “Go smoke,” he said.

“
I have…”

“
You got to keep your wits about you,” he said. “Go smoke.”

So I did. I took two, three hits by myself while they watched. I swear I could taste the wooded wetland in which the herb had grown. It was earthy and familiar and it took hold immediately. I peeked over at them. They sat there watching, Sorcha with his dogged ease with the world around him, and Shayat with her haughty defiance. They were both, in their own ways, magnificent creatures, and they sat there watching me. It seemed absurd. I was incredibly flattered. I grinned, and I blushed, and I didn’t even bother trying to hide it. Sorcha grinned back and held out his arm. I fell in beside him, tucked in close. He played with my hair and kissed me on the cheek. “Good herb?”

“
Good herb.”

“
You all set?”

“
I’m set.”

“
Then let’s negotiate.”

I looked over at Shayat. She stared at us with a blank mask. She stared at us with an intensity, but what kind of intensity was shielded. What she felt right then, confronted by the facts of my life, could have been disgust as easily as it could have been fascination. “All right,” I said. “I am a falo, and falos stay. I stay in Rabatha. I stay with Sorcha.”

She leaned forward. Her mask slowly fell away. “Is there space for me?”

I had not expected such a vulnerable question. I expected her to trick me or trap me, to edge me into a corner. It caught me off guard. I had to think, fight my through the haze of herb and really think. “It depends on what you want. What do you want?”

She chewed on her fingernail. She looked down at the floor. “I want someone who has given up on these damned ghettos.”

“
I didn’t give up on the borough, Shayat, the borough gave up on me.”

“
In the end, it’s the same thing if you’re smart. And you are.” She sighed. “I want…I want you. I’m glad you’ve got Sorcha. He’s lucky, and he knows it. I want to be lucky like that, too. I see the red elves do it, these threes and fours, and it works. And I just…I watch them when I’m on the route, in Alamadour or in Bardondour. I see the way the burden is shared, the way all those feelings stretch and fit. If they can do it, I can, too.”

“
Are you sure?” I asked.

She laughed. “Are you serious?”

“
Well, things are different now.”

“
No, they aren’t. You two were practically married back on the trip. You think I couldn’t tell? You think I didn’t think about it? Of course I did. I knew no matter what happened that there was you, and there was him, and then there was the rest of the world. I’m not trying to steal you, Ariah. I just want whatever you’ve got left over to give to me. And when you think about it, doesn’t that make the most sense for someone like me? A caravaner? I never wanted to marry. I didn’t want to leave a husband behind for months and months at a time, pining, worrying. And you wouldn’t. You have him. I can come and go from this. And if you have him, I could have others, yes? No reason to keep to myself on the routes. This is a thing that makes sense. Don’t you see that? And I—look, I have thought this through. There’s no one else for me but you, not really, not in a deep way. You understand. The reds, they’re good and all, but they don’t understand what it’s like here. Men here have expectations, restrictions. They are inflexible. I don’t know how you did it, how you managed to turn into who you are, but you did, and we fit.”

She’d grown animated as she spoke. She spoke with confidence, with a sureness. When she was done, she stared at me hard, willing me to speak. Sorcha stared at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. “I…”

“
Yes?” she asked—demanded. She demanded an answer. I was drawn to her entitlement, the way she knew she was worthy of an answer.

I looked at Sorcha. He still stared at her, his head slightly cocked to the side, deep in thought. I wished I could have read him just then, but I couldn’t. I tried to speak again and found I had no words. It felt like the world had opened up, that there were endless possibilities, and all of them good. I tried to look anywhere but at Sorcha and couldn’t tear my eyes away. And so I watched while he took the decision I’d made but couldn’t voice and put it into action. I watched while he leaned forward, leaned onto his hands and knees, and closed the distance between him and Shayat. I watched, transfixed, while she stared at him wide-eyed and curious, and I saw the happy shock on her face when he kissed her. She kissed him back, but looked at me while she did it, a question in her eyes. How much was too much? Where were the lines? Sorcha pulled back and smiled. “One like you,” he said, “we got all the space in the world for. Right, Ariah?”

All I could do was nod. All I could do was let them draw me over, draw me in, and follow where they led. I was the center, the heart, the thing keeping the three of us together. Shayat spent the night there, and the next day. I abandoned my place on the line. I drowned myself in their attentions, and I was a conduit for their attentions to each other. Love in a triad is a strange thing: there are times when a pair breaks off and the third is left behind. There are times a pair starts and a third is brought in, but how and when are sometimes clumsy. I had expected, I think, for it to be two pairs: me and Sorcha, and me and Shayat. I had not expected Sorcha to pull us all together, to forge something himself with her. I think if it had occurred to me as a possibility it would have terrified me. I don’t think I would have let it happen. I would have pushed her away simply to have him all to myself. But it did happen, and it worked, and somehow the sharing made it sweeter between him and me. I don’t know how, I can’t explain it, but the three of us fit together: a puzzle solved.

* * *

I helped Shayat gather her things, and Sorcha walked her to the door. She had routes to plan. She had a father to talk out of worry. She promised to come back soon. Sorcha gave her a peck on the cheek and sent her out into the world grinning. I packed away and hid the remaining herb. We’d decided to ration it. “Hey, can we talk?” Sorcha asked.

I looked over my shoulder at him. He frowned and stared down at his feet. I reeled the gift back in. “It’s to do with Shayat.”

“
Prying eyes.”

“
You know I can’t help it. What about her?”

He leaned against the door. He drummed his fingers on the doorknob. “You should’ve said.”

“
Said what?”

“
How you like it. You should’ve said.”

I caught glimpses of his mind as it turned and looked away to give him privacy. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He sighed. I wanted him to come to me, but he stayed where he was. “She is rough with you, Ariah.”

“
Oh.” I hugged my knees to my chest. “Well…yes. She is.”

“
I didn’t know.”

“
Back in the desert you must have noticed. She left marks.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. You should’ve said. Years now I been doing it wrong for you.”

I looked up. His face was still, his brows furrowed and mouth tight. “No. No, you haven’t. It’s different with you, but that’s all right.”

“
You sure?”

“
Of course I’m sure.”

He crossed the room and sat beside me. “I hope so. Truth be told, I’m not so good at that. Had a girl once who wanted it rough. I did it, but I felt right awful the whole time.”

I laughed. I blushed. Even then, even in that wild configuration, I still was not adept at such a discussion. My own body still embarrassed me deeply. “It’s good with you. It really is.”

He looked at me for a long time. He nodded and crawled under a blanket. He kicked at me until I curled up next to him. “What’re you going to do now that you’ve forsaken the line?”

“
I don’t know. Lie low, I guess.”

“
I got a girl I got to see later. Just checking in with her. She’s a nervous one. Want to come with?”

“
It’ll raise questions,” I said. “Better to lie low.”

“
If you’re lying low,” he said, “you got to do it proper. Don’t go skulking around the slave traders stealing songs.”

That was exactly what I had planned to do. I hadn’t been able to go with the line work; I lacked the time. I sighed and pulled the blanket closer. The songs had a draw on me as tangible and inevitable as Sorcha did, as Shayat did, but he was right. In the days that followed, I spent my time in my apartment or in Dirva’s house. I told Dirva everything—Shayat, skipping out on my work assignment, all of it. We sat on his back stoop speaking Vahnan for hours while Sorcha taught Nuri chess and djah. The boy was a wonder with games. Dirva told me I was playing with fire. He told me I had been for a long time. He told me I was reckless. He told me he worried about me. And I had nothing to tell him to assuage his fears.

One evening, he took me outside to talk. We sat close to each other, shoulder to shoulder. Any man sitting close to me, by then, drew looks, and the neighbors took note. Dirva let them. I could feel it bothered him, that it woke a long-buried wariness, but he let them. “I think you should go back to Alamadour. Vathorem says he can find you work. He says Dor is on the lookout for a shaper to take as his right hand.”

“
Dor will take Vathorem as his right hand.”

“
Vathorem will not let him. Go to Alamadour. No one will put you in a factory there. No one will care about you and Sorcha and this woman.”

“
Dirva, no, I’m his falo.”

He looked at me and sighed. He let me feel him, then. He pulled all his walls down and let his mind pour into mine. There was worry. There was gratitude. There was a great well of fondness and love. There was no blame. “The thing about red parents is they come and go. Sometimes one has to strike out. Sometimes they just want to strike out. He is safe here, and we can care for him, and you can’t care for anyone the way you’re living.”

I shook my head. “I belong here, with you. With Nuri.”

He sighed again. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come back. It was selfish.”

“
You didn’t know I would end up like this. No one did.”

“
It was selfish. I do not always see past myself. Ariah, I am telling you that Rabatha will bring you nothing but struggle and heartache. Like the City brings me nothing but struggle and heartache.”

I shook my head again. A thread of anger wound through me. “Sorcha won’t leave Nuri.”

“
He won’t want to, no,” Dirva said, “but he is smart enough to flee a sinking ship.”

“
How do you know? You never talk to him!”

Dirva’s walls flew back up. He stood up to leave. “I eavesdrop,” he said quietly, “and I watch.”

I didn’t tell Sorcha what Dirva and I had spoken about. I didn’t float the idea of leaving. I buried myself in Sorcha and Shayat, in the both of them together. I borrowed armfuls of books from Dirva’s house and read voraciously. I must have reread my notebooks full of Droma songs a dozen times as the days slid by. A week passed, and then a month, and then Shayat said her crew was restless and the route beckoned. That night she took me while Sorcha watched. She was rougher than usual, and I cried out in strange blendings of pain and pleasure. In her hands there was no separating one from the other. I felt a trust in her bone deep, and sex with her left me with a sense of purpose. I stayed on the border of stoned and sober: just high enough to keep the gift from taking over, and just sober enough that I felt Sorcha’s fascination, his excitement, while he watched. Afterward, Shayat offered to take us with her. “You can count,” she said to me, “and the compounders love you,” she said to Sorcha.

Sorcha smiled and shook his head. “Got the little one to think of.”

She accepted his refusal with grace. Sorcha kissed her, stroked her to show there were no hard feelings. Shayat was insistent with him, demanding, but gentle. She kept her claws in with him. It is strange to see the way a lover changes with someone else. Strange and compelling. Sorcha took me by the hand and pulled me into their knot, and I wound up in the center.