Vergence

by John March

  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

  SASH'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.

  “Uh, where's Leth?”

  “Resting, I should think. He came home with a huge belly on him this morning, so he's probably curled up, sleeping it off,” Sash said, frowning.

  From her expression, Ebryn realised he'd chosen the wrong thing to say. He opened his mouth just as Elouphe's head bobbed up between them.

  “Eby.”

  “Hello, Elouphe.”

  Sash sighed. “Come on, I'll race you both to the far end.”

  Sash set off without waiting for an answer, slicing easily through the water, heading towards the buildings. Ebryn followed, creating a wave as he fought to keep up.

  He guessed the pool might be sixty yards long and perhaps forty wide, surrounded by irregular wild-flower strewn slopes on three sides, and a stretch of dark, flattish rocks on either side of the drain, butting up against the side of the low building.

  Elouphe disappeared under the surface with barely a ripple, reappearing at the far end, before they were a third of the way across. He appeared transformed in water. Confident and happier. Out of the water he always seemed to be there, loping along with them, like Sash's shadow, barely noticed. Here, sliding smoothly through the water, he looked effortlessly elegant, and powerful.

  Ebryn arrived a few lengths behind Sash and grabbed onto a rock at the edge of the pool, breathing hard. “How did you learn to swim so fast?”

  “Swim all time, Eby,” Elouphe said.

  “No, I meant Sash. Where did you learn to swim like that?”

  “My waspa friends, and watching Elouphe,” Sash said, putting an arm around Elouphe. “I used to swim every day when I was young. Not as much as El, but enough.”

  Elouphe rolled onto his back, and they drifted with the eddies near the rocks. Ebryn lay on the water, facing upward, making the smallest movements needed to stay afloat, enjoying the contrasting heat from the morning sky, and the cooler pond.

  After a while, Sash let go of Elouphe, and swam back to the rocks near Ebryn.

  “I've talked to Teblin, and Leon, and a few others from the company, about visiting one of the spikes with us,” she said.

  Ebryn twisted onto his front, and leant both his arms on a flat slab of stone near the water outlet. “What did they say?”

  “Teblin said he'd come along with us, but only after the festival, if we choose a time which doesn't interfere with any of the performances. He said there'd be an opportunity for a break while the show's running — before we start working on the next one.”

  “A week or two then.”

  Sash smiled. “I imagine so.”

  “So which part of Vergence do you want to see this time?”

  “I'd really like to find the other tower — it wasn't on the map at all — but I don't think Elouphe could manage so many stairs. How about one of the spikes on the other side of the city, the one near the temple district?”

  “Why not, it can't be as grim as outside the walls.”

  Ebryn watched Elouphe glide through the water, travelling half the length of the pool in a few heartbeats “I don't understand why he's so happy. Does he really enjoy the work he's doing, pulling rubbish out of waterways?”

  “Elouphe? He doesn't mind,” Sash said. “I asked him about it, and I think he's happier here than anyone else.”

  Ebryn made a sceptical noise.

  “No, he really is. It's a great honour amongst his people to be accepted here. It's rare. Not many have any ability at all as casters, so that makes him special to them, and his kind are looked down on by the selerians, which makes being accepted here even more important.”

  “It's still unfair he spends all his time working with water, which he already knows. Isn't the point, for them, to teach him something new?”

  Sash splashed water at him. “Honestly, listen to you. You're lucky with Tenlier. I'm in the Genestuer, and even I don't get to spend more than a day or two a week learning.”

  “Yes, I know, but you enjoy what you do. I know you'd be doing plays in your own time, if you had to.”

  “That doesn't change anything,” Sash said, splashing him again. “We all get about the same opportunity to study, apart from you, and you still haven't shown me what it is you've been learning. I think the real reason you go to the library every day is to avoid us, and play that game with Hoi.”

  Ebryn laughed. “Then I really would be wasting my time, I'm terrible at it.”

  “You must have learnt something you can show us.”

  “I have something new I can try,” Ebryn said, recalling the casting he used to hold his book up the previous evening. “I'm not sure it'll work with water though.”

  He mouthed the words of the casting, focusing on drawing together the lines of power, and spreading them into a fine invisible mesh, almost like a ward. With the final words, he threw a handful of water into the air, and as the droplets fell back in an arc he caught them. A shower of fine rainbow drops hung suspended in the air between them.

  “That's clever,” Sash said. “Elouphe, come and look at this. It looks like an illusion, but it's real.”

  Elouphe's head bobbed up to examine the curtain of suspended water. “How you make, Eby?”

  “I mixed two castings together, a stasis casting, and part of a ward.”

  Elouphe blinked at him.

  “I'll show you how, the next day we're all free of work. It's not too difficult.”

  “Why don't you show us something you can do with water, El,” Sash said. “We've never had a proper chance to see what you can do.”

  “Show what Sash?”

  “A fountain of clean water?”

  “Clean water,” Elouphe said. He dived under, and reappeared half-way across the pool.

  “You know your friendship means a lot to him, he's very impressed by what you can do,” Sash said to Ebryn.

  “Really? I'm not doing anything that special,” Ebryn said.

  She snorted. “I don't know any other apprentices who can blend castings at will.”

  Four spouts of clear water appeared, arching through the air, sparkling in the light, and landing near the edges of the pool as a fine spray. The nearest fell in front of them.

  Sash reached out to capture some in a cupped hand. “See … it's clean, you can drink it.”

  “That's good,” Ebryn said.

  “You should tell him. People don't know how you feel, if you don't say anything.”

  “I'll tell him when I get a chance.”

  “It is the time at which I must now go,” Addae called out, from the far end of the pool.

  They swam back to the other side of the pool at a leisurely pace, with Elouphe diving under them, from one side to the other, and back again. Ebryn stopped at a natural underwater ledge a few paces away from Addae.

  Sash floated near Elouphe. She seemed to have gone quiet again.

  “So when do I get to see what you've learnt since we've been here?” Ebryn asked her.

  “When you come to see our play, at the festival of stilts.”

  “Eby and Addy not at play Sash, going between between,” Elouphe said.

  Ebryn looked at him, surprised. “Where did you find out about that?”

  “Addy tell me,” Elouphe said.

  Addae grinned. “Brydeline is the one who told me. We will go there at the time of the festival.”

  “Oh,” Sash said. “When did you know about this?”

  “Addae told me yesterday,” Ebryn said, realising he hadn't thought about either Sash or her play when he'd heard.

  “Why are you going during the festival? It's supposed to be a holiday — you knew we'd be giving our first performance. Can't you go some other time?”

  “No, Sashael, this must be do
ne when the seasons are joined.”

  Sash gave Addae a blank look. “What do you mean, when the seasons join?”

  Addae locked the fingers of his hands together. “Like this. When the seasons pass, there is a time they are together. This is when we must do this learning.”

  “I see,” Sash said.

  “Can't we see another performance? You're doing more than one, aren't you?” Ebryn asked.

  “We've been working so hard on the play, I really want you to see the first performance. I wanted you to come and celebrate with us afterwards.”

  Ebryn laughed. “After last time I'm not sure I ever want to see the inside of the Westerwall with Teblin again.”

  Sash looked away. “Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. You're right. You can come to one of the other shows.”

  Elouphe surfaced next to them. “What not matter, Sash?”

  “They'd rather go walking the between than come and see the play I've been working on.”

  “It's not like that, Sash,” Ebryn said.

  “I need to go,” Sash said, after an uncomfortable silence. “El, will you give me a push?”

  She stepped from the pool, dripping wet, and completely naked.

  Ebryn hurriedly looked away. “Can't you use a glamour to cover yourself?” He could almost feel Fidela's disapproving glare burning into the back of his head.

  “Why?”

  “So we — people can't see you — you know, without clothes.”

  “I don't care,” Sash said, her tone brittle. “If you don't like looking at me like this, then don't.”

  Ebryn opened his mouth to protest, but Elouphe chose that moment to push him out. He landed heavily on his knees, accompanied by a curtain of water.

  Sounds of laughter and splashing drifted through the large open windows of the Aremetuet quarters. Outside, Fla could see heads two heads bobbing up and down in the large pool on that side of the building. Occasionally they were joined by a third, brown and sleek, surfacing from below. At first Fla watched without interest, paying little attention to the swimmers, calculating what Brack might want from him, and deciding what response he should give.