quite like
It’s nearly a week after Skivårnat, and Venor’s enthusiasm for Zako’s blood isn’t waning. I can’t go two blocks without spotting one of his wanted posters. Branders follow me in the shadows. The Glassworks is still full-tilt on the endless panes for the Hexagon Hall. Elsewhere in Portcaye, cobbles are replaced, fences mended, walls whitewashed.
“He’s sprucing it up before Clarion Lovemore arrives,” Felicity tells me, dangling another of her slim cigarettes. “Wants to show what a good little governor he’ll be.”
“How’s the profile coming along?” I ask her, a bit nastily. She can make all the digs she likes, but she’s still puffing Venor up.
“Good, thanks,” she says, and has the grace to look ashamed.
Now I’m back in my room, drawing. I have another new customer and I want to finish. The rain’s making a racket, but I can still hear Ruzi snoring through the thin wall as I hunch under my blanket.
I’m in the dark – literally, because I need to refill my lantern but I don’t want to quit my chair, and figuratively, because I still don’t know what’s so compromising about Venor’s Life Record.
My mind keeps chasing the question. What is his dark secret? Were his parents famous pirates? Cannibals? Has he lied about his age or his origins or his payments?
I freeze in terror at a light knocking on my bedroom door as another snore floats through the wall. A head pokes in. It’s Kit. He’s let himself in.
“Saw your window light.” He frowns at my feeble lantern.
I stand. “You’re soaked,” I say. “And it’s curfew! Someone might catch you!”
Kit’s hair’s plastered down, his neat work shirt wet through and clinging to his body. He’s clean-shaven – it suits him.
“Thought it was too warm for a coat.” He ignores my mention of curfew.
I realize I’m staring.
He’s carrying a cloth bag. He fishes a pouch of coin from it – half again what he gave me for the first batch of drawings.
“You’ve sold the second lot already?” I keep my voice low. I only gave him my latest batch of uncommissioned drawings a few days ago. Mostly easy landscapes and Portcaye street scenes – less personal than portraits, and not too technical like boats or flowers or insects. Those consume more time.
He’s dripping on the floor. I pass him my towel. It’s a bit ragged around the edges, a bit off-colour. Not like the towels at the Lugger. I see it for the first time and feel ashamed. But he doesn’t care. He wipes his face, his messy hair, drags it down his neck.
“I did. Went like that—” He clicks his fingers.
“Oh.”
He still hovers uncomfortably near the door.
“Come in if you’re here.” I wave at my chair.
He hangs the towel over the back of it, stretches it out like it’s nice and not frayed and faded.
“Your Reedstone friends haven’t got you out stealing things in this weather?” I ask, observing, not for the first time, how the tip of a tattoo climbs out of the back of his shirt. More of it’s visible now, a black smudge, darker than his dark skin under the wet fabric stretching across his shoulders.
“They’re out of town,” he explains. “I haven’t been able to ask them about the Kellins or Venor’s Record. And I’m not stealing anything tonight, don’t worry.”
He fetches the tin of ragleaf fuel from its corner in the kitchen and tops up my lantern. Then he takes my offered chair as I cross my legs on the bed beside him.
“What’s your tattoo?” I ask.
One of his hands rubs self-consciously at the back of his neck.
They’re raptors keen on rabbits, fish, chickens. Nowadays they’re rare as hen’s teeth, but I saw a pair once, when I was a child. And there was one that sometimes flew near the farm, when I worked out there. “I thought Kalqitlan meant ‘bear’.”
He nods. “Growling bear, or thunderstorm –” he gestures at the window – “take your pick. There’s no rule about names and tattoos. That’s not how it works.”
“Is it on the back of your arms as well?”
“It is.”
“Why did you get it?”
“My dad arranged it, just before he died. Took me to the Akani Inker.”
I’ve never heard of the Akani Inker. I know Kit was twelve when his dad died after a long illness.
“Nena-Okuma, we called her. She was a healer. An elder of the Akani clan. Powerful. So many rituals we’ve lost now. Links to the old gods. They say vocifers were one of the gods’ favourites.”
“The Xan gods have favourites?”
“They love all the beasts that eat the other beasts. Even better if they eat people. You know – wolves and bears, sea monsters, kraits.” His shoulders shudder. I know he hates kraits – they’re a kind of sea snake. They smell blood in the water and drink from anything that bleeds. Black and yellow, kill a fellow, the old song goes.
“But vocifers don’t eat people,” I say.
“They say in the old days they used to snatch little babes to feed to their chicks.”
“Oh, lovely.”
He leans back and tilts his face up. “They dine at the gods’ table. Feed on us, same as the gods,” he tells the ceiling. Then, still looking at the ceiling, “You haven’t been around much since Skivårnat.”
A question that’s not a question.
“I’ve been busy.”
He gives me a half smile. “You’ve been drawing.”
I heft the latest payment. “This is so much.”
“You’ll get more. We’re still building you up. Missus S has been singing your praises to all her friends.”
“I went sketching last Endweek,” I say, and show him my small stack – topped with a mock wanted poster for Valour Venor. The fancy script reads:
PREFERRED DEAD TO ALIVE
FOR TREASON AGAINST HUMAN DECENCY, LIFE LARCENY AND INNUMERABLE COUNTS OF CONTEMPTIBLE SHITSACKERY
Kit lets out a stutter of surprised laughter. “Bold of you to have this lying around,” he warns me.
But I don’t feel cowed. Somewhere along the line, my anger’s grown greater than my fear.
He leafs through my few sketches of the statue of Imilia Dezil in Sinton Square, her stone plinth plastered with wanted posters.
I’ve drawn her in her high boots and wind-blown greatcoat from different angles.
“I used to fancy Captain Dezil,” Kit murmurs.
“She’s a statue.”
“I like them hard-hearted and unattainable.”
“Or shiny and silent?”
He meets my gaze like a challenge and laughs. “Maybe sometimes.”
Does he always blink so slowly? I look away as his long black lashes shutter. I stand and push papers around on my makeshift desk, feeling his breath near my ribs.
“What else should I do? I was thinking animals. Missus Heane wanted me to draw kine. Or seascapes?”
“Sure. Anything you want.”
A catch in his usual rasp makes me turn. He’s looking at our reflections in the night-black window glass.
“Have you thought about life portraits? Bet some of them would go for that.” His hands curl lightly around the arms of the chair.
Now all I want is to draw him, rain-washed, drying in my chair. Not from memory – now. Even just his hands. Before I lose my nerve, I pluck the book of white paper off the table.
“Sit back then. Turn round.”
“You want to draw this?” His hands gesture to his face. He’s wearing that open expression he sometimes has. Innocent. “I look like a drowned rat.”
“Don’t smile.”
I begin with big, loose strokes. His shirt’s still clinging – there’s more shoulder and chest than seems fair for a young man working in a tavern.
“Where’d you get all this muscle?”
His innocence burns away like fog. “You think the barrels carry themselves up from the cellar?”
“No way all that’s just barrels.”
“Breaking up brawls then. Throwing out rowdy good-for-nothings. Opening jars for Renny. It’s a gruelling job.”
I have seen him do all those things. And yet.
“Do you have to steal heavy things for your Reedstones? Are Goldie and Glister after cast-iron safes, perhaps?”
His expression tightens. “No. Oh, I meant to tell you … I think I’ve found a guitar for Ruzi.”
“Ruzi will be over the moon.” He will. I feel uneasy about Ruzi putting on a performance, opening himself up to a crowd of Skøl. It feels too much, somehow. It’s not illegal, but it’s not something we do.
“Why are you such a good drawer, then?”
“What?”
“How’d you learn?”
I pause to try and remember. I started drawing so young.
“Guess my folks always encouraged it.”
“Could you draw me like this even if I wasn’t here?”
I haven’t tried to draw Kit from memory, but I know it’d be no challenge.
“Yes.”
“What about places? Buildings? How does it work? Could you draw someplace you just walked through, or only someone or somewhere you spent time … observing?” He catches my eye.
I gather my thoughts. “I could do either if I had to.” How to explain something I barely do consciously at all? Everyone thinks my memory’s a blessing. It’s a dagger. Sharp edges of good and bad, with a wide, flat boring in between. “Look, this might sound weird…”
“I love weird.”
“There’s a place in my head where all the images kind of … live. I have to reach them. It’s like a cave that changes all the time, made of memories. It’s got tunnels and ways into rooms and whole buildings. And I have to find the thing I want to draw. Or reach, or call – like something in between seeing and touching. It’s a half-real feeling. I’m not describing it right.”
“You go into your memory cave – sure.”
“Close enough.”
“You’re weird, all right. Weirdly brilliant.” His slow grin spreads.
Why am I melting like a slab of butter in a Lugger breakfast skillet?
“Can I see?” He reaches for my paper.
“Not yet. Sit still.” I fill in more detail, then put down the pencil. “There.”
When I pass it over the smile slips off his face.
“That was – what? Five minutes? This is … something else, Mora.”
I shrug.
“Didn’t get your eyes right.”
“No, it’s brilliant. Of course, the subject helps.” He winks at me. “This’ll fetch you a pretty penny.” He taps the page.
“It’s not for sale,” I decide. “I’m keeping it.”
“Are you, now?” Kit blinks. “Let me do you,” he whispers, reaching for my pencil.
No one’s ever wanted to draw a portrait of me before. I’m flattered.
“No peeking though.”
“Where should I sit?”
“You’re all right there.” He tilts the book away from me so I can’t see what he’s doing.
“Stop moving.”
“I’m not moving.” I clasp my hands in my lap, worrying at a small cut on the side of my finger until fresh blood wells up.
He frowns at my hand. “Don’t do that. It won’t heal.”
His eyes are flitting all over my face, but his pencil is still.
Then his voice is a low murmur over the sound of its scratching. “Child of conquerors. Eyes like suns. Slave of conquerors. Sunlit eyes.”
“Ah. Who knows. Something I read somewhere. Fowler, perhaps.”
Fowler’s one of the old Crozoni poets. It doesn’t sound like him.
He’s shading now, I think.
“How long is this going to take?”
“You can’t rush genius.” He looks up at me, all serious innocence again.
“Come on,” I say eventually. “You’ve had twice as long as me.”
He scratches a few final lines and hands it over. “Okay, I’m done.”
My heart is beating as I take it, but then I burst out laughing. It’s awful. Like a child’s drawing. Deliberately bad.
“Don’t laugh; that’s cruel,” he grumbles, but he’s laughing too. “For shame. You shouldn’t mock people who haven’t your skill.”
“I’m the one who should be offended. This is how you see me? My ears aren’t cup handles.”
“How I see you? Don’t be stupid. You’re beautiful. I just can’t draw.”
I feel heat creeping up my cheeks. He thinks I’m beautiful. And stupid. The silence between us stretches as we lean slightly too close. I notice his shirt’s dry already. I find myself wondering why he came here tonight.
On the other side of the thin wall, Ruzi’s faint snore turns into a cough, breaking the spell. Then it’s quiet again.
Kit passes the pencil back to me. “Could you draw the branders’ station?”
“What?”
“Where they questioned you and you saw the Artist. Could you draw it – the corridors, the doors, the windows?”
I stare. “I don’t know … maybe.” But I can already see it, in my mind’s eye. My memory cave. “Why?”
“Just curious.” I close my eyes and twirl the pencil, reaching for the tendrils of memory.
I’m in the cave, and there’s the thin young brander in front. Hove’s glasses flashing gold. My tired feet fumbling the steep, shallow steps down. Below ground now, the lantern light harsh. Deadhouse in thick, formal lettering on that door. Forensic Science Workroom and Darkspace. The smell of urine, sweat and blood, a gaping cell door, breath rasping. That sweet, awful smell. Human decay.
I scratch a quick schematic of the route I took. The main entrance with its sombre front desk, then our way to the interrogation room, past a long, dark armoury I could see through a barred slice of unglazed window. A glimpse of rows of guns and prods, stood up on their golden ends in a long metal contraption. Sucking up power to maim with later, I suppose. I draw the stairs Hove took me down. The shut doors. The cells – one with the Artist.
I let go. Un-call, un-reach. The tendrils of memory retract. The cave rests, dormant again.
“Incredible,” Kit whispers. I realize he’s standing, peering over my shoulder with a frown that’s at odds with his tone.
I tap my head. I’m tired now. “It’s all in here.”
His jaw is hard, looking down at the paper. There’s a new edge to his expression I don’t quite like.