Vergence (42 page)

“Be careful, some of the Aremetuet get violent,” Ebryn said.

“Yeah? Well I've gotta go, I'll see you around,” Jure said, slapping Ebryn on the back, and heading for the main door.

Sash's head came up as Jure walked away. “I think I've been asleep. Did I miss anything good.”

“Not much,” Ebryn said. “To be honest, I wasn't listening either.”

They stood waiting, as the students from the lower rows filed slowly out of the chamber.

Elouphe turned to them. “Sash, Eby, come swim now?”

“Not now, El, can we do it tomorrow morning before rehearsals?”

“Swimming?” Ebryn asked, thinking of the small weed-choked canal he'd last seen Elouphe in. “Where can you swim around here?”

“There's a large pool hidden away between the first and second Claws. Elouphe says it's warm enough for us to swim in.”

“Warm,” Elouphe said, “you swim in morning, Eby?”

“Yes, why not,” Ebryn said. “It's been a while since I swam.”

Sash yawned. “I'm going to have a rest. What are you all doing now?”

“I have work which I must do. I too will see you in the morning,” Addae said.

“Swim, swim, swim,” Elouphe said.

Ebryn shrugged. “I don't have any plans. I thought we'd all be going to the Westerwall.”

“Do you want to walk back with me?” Sash asked.

Ebryn found Sash's rooms much the same as the last time he'd been in them. Although lavishly furnished, they felt hardly lived-in. He realised she must seldom use her rooms for anything other than somewhere to sleep, and store her things. And a place for her dragon, he thought, as Leth glided through the bedroom doorway, and performed a clumsy landing on the back of a divan.

He watched Leth's colours shift to match the deep plum and gold weave of the wall hanging behind him, while Sash pulled off her shoes.

“I'm just going to lie down for a bit before we get something to eat,” Sash said. “Will you wait?”

Ebryn nodded. They'd regularly met up for a meal together in the early evening, until a couple of weeks past, either at the Westerwall or the Genestuer dining hall. More often than not they were joined by Elouphe and Addae, and sometimes actors from Teblin's company. He'd been surprised how much he missed her when she wasn't there.

“Do you have any of your books with you?” Sash asked.

“A few books from the library, and Ullvenard's, I think.”

“Will you read it for me?”

“Ullvenard's? Uh … yes,” Ebryn said. “Which bit do you want to hear?”

“Read the piece about Senesella.”

“I thought you didn't like what he wrote about Senesella?”

“No, it's funny — and wrong,” Sash said. “But it reminds me of home.”

Ebryn nodded, and unfolded the book. It dropped, heavy and cold into the palm of his hand.

“Where should I read?” he asked.

“In here,” Sash said, moving through to her bedroom.

Ebryn followed her, and waited while she folded the heavy valance from her bed. Sash dropped it onto a chest in the corner before moving on to tidy away a stray brush and hand mirror.

He remembered the last time he'd been in here, with Leth heaving up bits of leatherwing onto the carpet. Like the sitting room very little seemed to have changed. An imposing bed occupied most of the centre, the headboard resting against the wall on the left. His eyes ran over the room, looking for a place to sit, coming to rest on a small footstool in the far corner. Barely higher than the floor, but better than nothing.

Sash seemed to read his thoughts. “Don't be silly, it's too small. The bed's big enough for both of us.” She piled three large cushions together on the side nearest the door. “There you are, I'll have this side, you sit there.”

“Right, I'll just take my boots off then.”

When he returned to the room he found Sash already lying down, on her side, facing towards the door with her eyes shut.

“I'm still awake,” she murmured.

Ebryn sat down cautiously, careful not to lean against her. He quickly discovered she'd hardly left him enough room, and there was no way to hold up the book without resting an elbow on her head.

He propped the heavy volume up against his knees, but it slipped each time he tried to turn a page.

Struggling to find a way to keep it open, he recalled a structured casting he'd found in a set of old scrolls he'd had from Ben-gan, a casting for holding something in place. Although the description mentioned things like chairs and doors, he could see no reason why it shouldn't work for a large book too.

While the work hadn't been written as an instruction or learning guide, it did provide a very detailed description of how that type of casting should be structured, drawing out similarities with some of the types of wards he already knew.

The casting proved easier than he'd expected. As with wards, the key lay in anchoring the casting to something heavy. He chose the bed. The book hung, held open in the air before him, in line with his eyes.

Leafing through the pages, he passed by the pieces on miniature dragons and waspa. He knew too much about both now not to find Ullvenard's wholesale invention annoying.

A large colourful drawing of a Senesellan wyrm caught his eye. A fanciful description of Leth's larger brethren followed — wyrms twice the size of a large horse, apparently often to be seen at a distance, delicately eating wild flowers with their razor-sharp teeth.

Suppressing a snort, Ebryn paused at the end of the page. “Sash?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you miss your home?”

Her voice sounded half asleep, muffled against her pillow. “Yes, sometimes.”

He realised he missed very little about Goresyn, other than Sarl and Fidela, and riding Soren amongst the trees in the woodlands around the Conant estate. Everything else seemed to have slipped away from him like a threadbare cloak, discarded and forgotten.

This strange city had found a way into his heart, with its peculiar seasons and odd assortment of people from a hundred different worlds. And his friends, Addae, Elouphe, and Sash.

By the time he reached the end of the following page, she'd fallen deeply asleep. Moving the thin place-holder cord to the open page, he quietly closed the book, and folded it away.

As much as Ebryn knew he ought to get up, the temptation to stay a short while longer was too strong. He carefully eased two of the cushions from behind his back, and shuffled down the bed until he lay on his side facing Sash. Close enough to feel the rise and fall of her breath on his face.

In a corner of his mind he could almost feel Fidela glowering at him, but for the first time in his life he felt completely content, if only for a brief moment.

Barely touching her arm, he traced the fine patterns marked there. Tattoos, Jure had called them, applied with a fine needle or blade and coloured inks. Her skin felt soft and firm beneath his fingers, perfectly smooth, and the closer he looked, the less Jure's idea seemed likely.

The lines, red and sky blue, seemed to to be under the surface of her skin. Not any kind of paint, ink, or casting. Yet he sensed some kind of power flowing through them, fine threads which continued out beyond her fingertips, weaving through the world skin. Intrigued, he sent his far-sense out along the lines until she started to stir, and he quickly stopped.

Until now he hadn't admitted to himself how much he wanted this. Although in many ways he knew more about Sash than his other friends, he realised he understood her least.

A dull ache, a settling uncertainty, edged out his contentment. Had inviting him to sit on her bed meant anything more to her than taking Addae's arm, or hugging Elouphe? Thinking about it, he realised he was the one of the people she touched least.

Ebryn woke to a scrabbling noise in a dark room. For a moment he thought it must be mice, or rats, looking for scraps in the kitchen. Confusingly, someone lay pressed up against his side, with an arm thrown over his chest.

He lay still for a few moments before he realised where he was.

Illuminating the room with a dim golden light, he saw Leth perched on the sill of the open window, head low with an open mouth — no doubt sampling the scents drifting past on the night air. One of the few facts about Leth's species Ullvenard managed to get right.

While he'd been asleep, Sash had moved closer, and put an arm around him.

Ebryn groaned silently. It had been one thing sitting on Sash's bed reading during daylight; another entirely for her to find him still there when she woke in the morning. He couldn't guess how she'd react.

Swimming

S
ASH'S HEAD
broke the surface of the pool near to where Ebryn and Addae stood. She swam a few strokes towards them, stopping a couple of yards from the edge, with water streaming from her loose hair, her amber eyes vivid against the grey-green depths.

“Are you coming in?”

“I think not, Sashael,” Addae said.

“Why not — what about you, Ebryn?”

“Yes, I'll get in,” Ebryn said.

He didn't really feel like swimming in what looked like rather chillier water than Elouphe had reported, particularly as it meant a walk home in wet clothes afterwards, but he didn't want to disappoint Sash either.

“Among my people, swimming is offensive to the ancestors,” Addae said.

“Really?” Sash said. “I don't think mine really care.”

“Where's Elouphe?” Ebryn asked, as he pulled off his boots.

“Over there somewhere. He dives really deep, and this goes a long way down.”

Ebryn dropped his boots and pulled his shirt over his head, uncomfortably aware of Sash's eyes on him. He stepped to the edge of the pool and dipped his foot into the water. He found it warmer than he'd expected, and deeper.

The edge dropped away steeply, and within a yard of the edge he needed to tread water to stay afloat. The water felt heavy, as if filled with silt, and so murky he could barely make out his own hand, a few finger spans beneath the surface.

Sash ducked under, and came up next to him, wiping water off her face. “You didn't have to leave last night. You could have stayed.”

“I didn't think it would be a good idea … the right thing to do,” Ebryn said, feeling himself colouring, wondering if he'd woken her as he edged off the bed, a painstaking finger span at a time.

“I wouldn't have minded.”

They were so close he could feel the slow movement of her legs under the water. Ebryn looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “I know, but you were tired. I didn't want to disturb Leth, and wake you up.”

“Don't be silly. You know Leth's out hunting most nights. Anyway, he's very quiet, even when he's in the room, and I'm used to him.”

Ebryn felt completely out of his depth with Sash. A better friend he couldn't have imagined, yet she floated in the pool near enough to touch, with a face so beautiful a man could easily become lost in it. Sometimes her thoughts seemed so transparent, yet at times like this he found it impossible to read her intentions at all.

Addae seemed to be carefully staring in another direction. Ebryn followed the line of his gaze to the back of a building at the far end of the pool, where an outflow drained into an iron-grilled culvert. Was Addae trying to avoid watching them as they swam? He flushed again, imagining how he and Sash must appear in the water together. When he looked back, he found Sash watching him expectantly. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something.