Ariah (18 page)

She was right about me: I was still very young, and very green, and because of that I took offense instead of seeing it as the offering of help it was. I petulantly ignored her. At the end of the class, she dropped the address of her father’s shop on my podium as she walked by.

Late that afternoon, Dirva and I discussed how the day had gone. We sat on the floor of his apartment facing
The Reader
, each armed with a steaming cup of tea. “You should go see that tailor,” he said.

“
I will not give that woman the satisfaction,” I said.

“
Why not give her the satisfaction? What would it matter? You would get a good price for the clothes.”

“
I have my pride.”

“
You have too much pride,” he said. He studied the painting and drank his tea. The mood in the room changed, became settled and sad. He opened his mouth to speak, looked over at me, and closed it again. I asked him if he was all right. He nodded. “I think…I believe it may be time for me to see a matchmaker.” He sat staring at Liro’s painting. He didn’t look at me while he said it, and he didn’t look at me afterward to gauge my reaction.

I was stunned. “Why?”

“
Solitude wears on a man.”

“
But Liro…”

“
Liro is in the City.”

It felt wrong to me. I had no right to feel any way about it, certainly, as it was his life and not mine, but it felt wrong to me nonetheless. It seemed unfair to Liro. It seemed unfair to whatever match was made for him. “You would be happy with a Semadran match?” I asked carefully.

He glanced over at me. Surprise lit his face. “Ariah, what a forward question.”

I stared into my teacup, red and flustered. “I’m sorry.”

“
If it’s a good match,” he said, “it’s a good match.” Dirva studied
The Reader
for a long time. He sighed and took our emptied cups to the sink. When I returned to the apartment after my classes the next day,
The Reader
was gone. The wall was empty. All that remained was a pale square on the wall, an impression that it had once been there. In its wake, Dirva’s apartment felt drab and lifeless.

* * *

The vanity that drove me into Sorcha’s clothes in the first place drove me to Parvi Doshah’Vanya’s tailor shop. It was located on the fringes of the Semadran borough, as far out as a Semadran could reasonably set up shop and still stay safe. The streets there were wide enough to accommodate rickshaws. Qin and Semadrans walked the street in equal numbers. Shayat looked like her father. The man who answered the door was tall and taut, and he had the same deep black skin. He wore Qin robes in a peculiarly Semadran way, just like his daughter.

“
Can I help you?” he asked.

“
I don’t have an appointment,” I said.

“
I know. Is there something I can help you with?”

“
I have need of a tailor.”

His eyebrow raised slightly. “Yes. Yes, it would seem so.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Shayat!”

I could have died. I began to giggle instead. The door creaked open a little wider, and Shayat Bachel’Parvi stuck her head through the door. “Yes, Papa, that’s him. Evening, professor.”

“
Hmm. I see what you mean,” said the tailor. I looked up, horrified, offended.

Shayat laughed at me. In that moment, it was very hard to believe Dirva when he said it didn’t matter if I gave her the satisfaction. “He says he’s from Ardijan, Papa.”

“
Well, people say many things.”

“
Give him a good price, Papa.”

The tailor nodded and opened the door for me. I considered not going in, I considered walking away and wearing those clothes until they fell off of me seam by disintegrated seam, but I caught the way Shayat looked at me. She looked like she expected me to leave, tail between my legs, my pride wounded. I shot her what I hoped was a defiant look and followed her father across the threshold. “Well, professor,” the tailor said, “what style do you want?”

“
This style.”

“
All the rage in Ardijan, I take it,” he said. He gestured to a bench in the main room of the shop and slipped behind a curtain.

Shayat lingered in the doorway. The robe she had worn earlier that day had been replaced by loose-cut Semadran clothes, which suited her. She was broad-hipped, and the clothes drew attention to her waist where Qin robes hid it. Her hair was long and fell in loose waves down to her elbows, and she was barefoot. My face grew hot. My pride shattered into a thousand pieces. I was undeniably attracted to her, but I would have killed myself before letting her know that. “You’re forty-six, and you live with your father?” I asked. Venom dripped from my voice.

“
I am forty-six, and I have rented the attic apartment while I take courses at Ralah University. You’re thirty-nine and have one pair of pants?”

“
I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

She laughed and held up her hands. “You certainly don’t. May I ask you a question about the classes?” She smirked and leaned forward slightly, haughty and conspiratorial. “You don’t have to answer.”

“
Yes, ask.” I did my best to sound uninterested, but I’m sure it came out strangled and shrill.

“
It might help me learn if you taught vocabulary along with grammar.”

I looked over. “But you won’t know what to do with the vocabulary until you understand the grammar.”

“
But I won’t be able to work with the grammar until I have some words to use it with.”

“
But you won’t get the words right if you don’t understand the grammatical structures.”

“
But building sentences in foreign grammar using Qin words makes no sense to me.”

I blinked at her. “That’s what you’re doing?”

“
Yes.”

“
But I’m just lecturing.”

“
There’s no way I can learn a language just by listening to you lecture. I’ve been trying to practice it. But how do you practice speaking a language when you don’t know the words?”

You will remember what I said before about how talents make one arrogant. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that those who were not auditory mimics learned languages in a different way. To be clear, I could not have cared less whether the Qin students in my classes learned anything at all. They didn’t seem particularly worried about it themselves. But I felt I was doing Shayat a disservice. “I’m afraid I can’t change much in the class. There were complaints.”

“
I am shocked,” she said.

I frowned at her. “I was about to make an offer to you, you know. I could do without the mockery.”

She grinned at me. “You’re very sensitive.”

“
I am not.”

“
Yes, professor. If you say so. What’s this offer?”

“
I would be willing to tutor you if you’d like. Once or twice a week. To teach you Athenorkos and Lothic in a way that works for you.”

She stared at me for a long moment, then she smiled, and the smile was pleased and genuine. I am certain I blushed. “Papa?”

“
Yes?” The tailor emerged from his storeroom with his arms full of City wools.

“
The professor and I have struck a deal. His clothes are on the house.”

Shayat’s father shot her a curious look. “You bargain my services, Shayat?”

It was a joy to see her knocked off-kilter. “Papa, it is a good deal.”

“
For you.”

“
I will pay you back.”

“
When?”

“
When I get the routes going.”

Her father laid out the cloth. “I am marking it in the ledger. Give us some privacy, Shayat. I need to take the professor’s measurements.”

CHAPTER 13

Dirva woke me on Saturday morning. The single pleasant thing about teaching at Ralah College had been that the classes were scheduled according to Qin rhythms, and not to Semadran rhythms. We work every day, every single day without exception. The Qin get time for reflection and spiritual growth. Apparently our spirits don’t have all that much growing to do. In any case, I was on a Qin schedule, but I was paid a pittance because an elf on a Qin schedule is really an elf working only two-thirds of the time. I had been permitted to sleep as late as my body demanded on Saturday morning, a thing I relished, until I agreed to tutor Shayat Bachel’Parvi. She ripped the simple pleasure of sleep on those Saturday mornings from me as easily as she ripped away my dignity every time I spoke to her.

“
Ariah, you have an appointment,” Dirva said. He stood over my cot, his hands on his hips. He looked somewhat perplexed, but mostly he looked annoyed.

He was already dressed. This was not surprising; he was an early riser, and he was usually dressed before I woke up, but he was dressed nicely, and that struck me as odd. I propped myself up on my elbows and peered at him. “Do you have an appointment?”

He frowned at me and left the room. “Not one I’m about to be late for,” he said as he passed by.

I stumbled out of bed. My one set of clothing sat in a rumpled heap next to my bed. I noticed a stain on the knee of my pants as I put them on, which I knew with unwavering certainty would draw a caustic comment from Shayat. I grew bitter about the deal I’d struck with her, and in my bitterness I took my time. She could wait, I told myself. She should be grateful if I showed at all. I tried to prolong my dawdling by asking Dirva impertinent and personal questions. “You have somewhere to be?” I asked.

“
Not so urgently as you do,” he said. He was reading the local Semadran paper, his eyes trained to the page. I could glean nothing from him.

“
Who is it with? Not with a Qin.”

“
It is not with you, Ariah.”

I lingered in the doorway, my sleepy mind grasping at possibilities. There weren’t terribly many things he kept secret from me by then. There wasn’t much he felt was in need of hiding or discretion. It didn’t take long before I realized where he was going. “Oh.”

Involuntarily, his eyes flicked to where the painting had once hung. “You will be late, Ariah.”

“
Yes, I should go.” I slipped out the door a second later. I hadn’t wanted to know, not really. Dirva’s personal life was not a thing either of us were really equipped well to handle. I walked to the tailor’s shop ruminating on this—that I was the one person who knew him well enough to know that he hadn’t let anyone in, and may not let anyone in ever again. I wondered at his motives. Was it a bid to gain legitimacy in the borough? He’d been a bachelor noticeably long, and gossip is a cheap and abundant distraction in a ghetto. Was it an anchor to this life he’d chosen? It’s harder to up and leave when you’re married. I had no answers. I only had the worry and the questions, and a nagging notion that I had already caused too much damage in the City to offer any comfort here in Rabatha.

I was disheveled and introspective when I arrived at the tailor’s shop. The bitterness of having my precious lingering sleep snatched away still hung heavy on me. I was late. I knocked on the door, and Shayat answered it. She raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re a mess. Is that a new stain on your pants?”

“
I can go if you’d rather.”

“
Don’t be an ass. You’re getting free clothes out of this, which you obviously need,” she said, waving me inside. She led me to a narrow corridor and up two flights of stairs. The attic was small, with one large, bright window, and low ceilings. A sleeping mat took up most of the available space. The room was spotless: the bed was impeccably made, the books on the shelves were meticulously straightened, and not a single stray sock was to be found. A low table against the far well held a camp stove. A kettle whistled to a boil just after we came in. “Do you want some tea?”