House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(10)
“House women are idiots,” Harun says, and it takes all my self-control to not throw one of his own plates at his head.
Isidro stays quiet.
The rest of the mealtime conversation is stilted and uncertain, but after the desserts, Isidro walks outside to take fresh air and Jannik follows him. Through the long blue glass of the garden doors, I see them standing shoulder to shoulder, and they are talking.
I’m uncertain if I should join them. Something about their stance seems so oddly intimate, as if the rest of the world does not exist. I suppose I should be happy they are being brought together, even if it is by something as grotesque as Carien’s notions. Jannik could use a friend in this city.
Harun comes up quietly, and stops just behind me. I don’t turn back to look at him, just listen to him pouring himself another glass, the soft liquid slap as he drinks. He’s watching them, like I am.
“Looks like they’re finally getting on,” I say, and keep my voice light. “That’s good”
“Is it,” Harun says flatly.
I flush. He has merely echoed what I think, that I was happier when Jannik and Isidro had nothing in common, no little black ribbons to tie them to each other. “We all need friends,” I say. I still cannot bring myself to look back at Harun. I keep watching the two of them, though they have made no move and seem to be merely staring out over the garden, still talking. There is a space between them. “Someone who understands us.”
Jannik and Isidro, despite whatever differences they have, will always have more in common with each other than with either of us, I realize. We will never truly understand what it is to be them, to feel the needs they feel, the iron laws under which they live. The people will write on our walls – mine and Harun’s – but they will spit in Jannik’s and Isidro’s faces and pull the teeth from their skulls, strip their bones and leave their meat to rot on a rubbish heap.
That is the future that is waiting if people like Carien become too interested in them. Perhaps it would be easier just to run again, find some other place where we can go. And nothing will change. “Perhaps it is better for the two of them to have each other.”
“Do you always give up your partners so easily?” Harun says. “Or only when you realize how much effort they will cost you to keep?”
I swallow, stare, count the seconds out before Jannik turns away from Isidro, their conversation now over, and walks back up to the wide glass doors. And to me. “Effort?” I say. “Or silver?” Finally, I glance over my shoulder and meet Harun’s eyes. “I don’t need to keep mine on a leash, Guyin.”
My stomach hurts as I say it.
*
It is morning, and the dry, sage smell of dogleaf blows through the open windows, perfuming the Pelim apartments. Magic shifts through the breakfast room. It is calm, quiet as sunshine. I let the feel of it roll over my skin, and close my eyes, relax. This is Jannik’s attraction.
No. This is exactly the kind of thing Carien and her cronies meant. I may have shrugged off the yoke of scriv, but here I am replacing it with something else. And I don’t even mean to. I tighten my fingers around my cutlery and take a deep breath, open my eyes, and make myself watch him. He is a person; not a drug, not a collection of bones and skin to be ground to dust.
Jannik is sitting with his head bowed, the morning Courant spread out before him. No breakfast dishes clutter his side of the table. A lock of black hair slips forward, and he tucks it back behind an ear with an unconscious gesture. He’s frowning. Every morning we meet at breakfast. I eat. He reads. We pass the opening of the day in a companionable routine that to others, would look for all the world as natural and normal as any other marriage. It is also often the only time we see each other.
He starts talking. The words wash over me, his voice soft, with a hesitancy that means he’s reading something out to me. He always sounds nervous when he reads out loud, as if he fears he is saying everything wrong while a critical audience watches, mocking.
I try concentrate on what he’s saying instead of just letting the cadence of it flow around me like his magic.
There is a body. Hoblings found it while working the middens that surround MallenIve. The hands and feet were cut off, face neatly removed.
“Despite this, it was not hard to identify as a bat,” Jannik reads.
We are at the breakfast table, where I am now most decidedly not eating my toast and preserves. He rustles the Courant, and clears his throat.
Carien. Or one of her cronies. My throat closes up. They’ve done it already. Then logic takes over and I give myself all the reasons why this has nothing to do with the things Carien said to me. She’s not a butcher, just a girl who has the natural inclination of the weak to find power fascinating. She wanted to touch the skin, not peel it from their flesh.
I make myself hold my head still and pretend that today is normal, that nothing has changed. “A bat?” The question comes out in a cough, as if it has been years since I last used my voice. I find it hard to believe Jannik used the word.
“I was reading it as written, Felicita.”
“Did they say who?”
Jannik sets the paper down and glares at me. “What.”
“Pardon?”
“Not who – what. Or did you forget where you live?” Before I can answer, he carries on. “No, the reporters did not give a name. Frankly, the chances that the sharif will investigate this further are slim to none. It would make about as much sense to them as hunting down a Hobling who drowned a litter of unwanted kittens.” He’s so very angry. His fingers are trembling.