“Fine.” Skinner said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just, I’m sure you’d be welcome. Even if it’s just for a few days. We haven’t much, of course, but…”
Skinner waved her off, flushed a little with shame, but still too angry to apologize. “Fine.”
This was how Elizabeth Skinner found herself in Bluewater, in one of the ramshackle tenements inhabited by Trowth’s indige citizens. Bluewater was a site of frequent skirmishes in the Architecture War, but little strategic value, and the whole thing had, in recent years, fallen into the gauche and modern style of the Ennering-Vies. Or so Skinner was told; she had little personal interest in the architecture of the city beyond which families preferred high ceilings, as this affected her telerhythmia. Valentine had once tried to explain the many different styles and aesthetic philosophies that underpinned Trowth’s most complex and byzantine feud, but he might as well have been describing castles on the moon for all Skinner cared.
The Ennering-Vies preferred low ceilings, which made Karine’s family home cramped and hot, and preferred not to spend very much money on houses in Bluewater, which made them leaky and humid. This discomfort was compounded by the unusual numbers that the Akori presented. This group was how Karine introduced them-though she also took the time to provide a given name for every person present, Skinner had not been able to remember any except for Pogo-and Skinner was not sure if “Akori” was a patronym, or some manner of clan affiliation, or simply a regional appellation. Certainly, the tiny house was filled with far more people than might reasonably be expected in any immediately family. Twenty-two at the least, by Skinner’s count, though the noise and the panoply of voices made it difficult to be sure.
Though she was determined to spend the night sulking, one of Karine’s relatives-possibly an uncle or an older cousin-was determined to cheer her up. This was Pogo, and his constant overtures of good cheer were the reason that Skinner remembered his name. Karine had introduced the man as the ramo, which Skinner recalled was some kind of priest. Hardly a minute passed that he wasn’t regaling her with a story about how he had to stab Jorgi once for violating the tabu, or the time he’d found a sixty crown note in the gutter. When he wasn’t telling stories, he was pressing cups of hot mulled wine into Skinner’s hand, or offering her a bowl of starchy fish soup. His charm was aggressive and very nearly contagious, though Skinner struggled hard against it.
In truth, she was happy to just hear someone speaking Trowthi; the family spoke Indt incomprehensibly rapidly, and the only words of that strange tongue that Skinner knew were certain profanities she had hear Karine utter in times of distress. While they found liberal use in conversation, they did not lend any particular clarity to the topic under discussion. Certain words, like malaka, which Skinner knew for a fact to be a malign slander regarding the gender and species of a person’s sexual partners, were used with verve and laughter, belying the word’s clear intent; others, like lobber, which was the slang term that the Indige used for the Lobstermen and ought to be fairly neutral in its value, was said with the sort of unadulterated venom that one would suppose was ordinarily reserved only for the worst malakas.
Only the strongest and most committed of miseries can withstand such a relentless onslaught of charity and hospitality, and Skinner found her resolve weakening. The hatred she felt towards the Emperor was forgotten quickly, of course; her anxiety about her future took longer, but it, too, began to evaporate after the fifth time that Pogo tried to tell his “Fat Trolljrman” jokes. Only an icy pain in her heart when she thought of Valentine remained. The thin layer of ichor beneath the silver plate on her eyes had dissolved her tears before they could reach her cheeks, but she’d shed them, nonetheless, and still sometimes felt more coming. It wasn’t that she had liked Valentine, precisely. He had, in fact, been more than a little annoying. It was just that she missed him, as though she’d grown accustomed to his bumbling good nature. For all the petty inconveniences he’d caused (and Skinner couldn’t help but feel guilty recalling them, knowing that he had lost his life seeking to provide her one great convenience) Valentine had been a good man, and the world always suffers when a good man dies.
Skinner coughed, and realized that she hadn’t been listening to Pogo’s joke.
“You see?” He was saying. “Because he wanted grapes. Haha!”
“Yes, it’s very funny.”
“I know,” Pogo said. “I try and tell Jorgi”-this was the man that he’d stabbed in the leg two weeks ago-“This is a funny joke, I tell him. He doesn’t listen, though. Stupid, huh!”
“Oh, Miss Skinner!” Karine’s voice sprang up out of the forest of Indt. “Do you know this?” The indige girl passed her a wooden object, which Skinner ascertained to be some kind of stringed instrument; like a small guitar, but with a teardrop-shaped body. “I have seen you play something like it. Aga bought it-” she added, not disguising her contempt for Aga’s poor financial decisions.
“-but he doesn’t know how to play it or even tune it.”
Aga responded with an impassioned defense in Indt.
“Well, it’s because you are an idiot, Aga. Miss Skinner, do you know anything about it?”
Skinner lightly touched the instrument, counted the frets, plucked at the strings. “Well, it’s basically like my guitar, but with four strings, instead of six, and a little smaller. These three strings are tuned in fourths, this middle one is tuned to the third of the string below it.” She plucked at the strings again, then fiddled with the tuning keys until they made a proper chord. “Not out of tune at all.” She smiled slyly. “Good choice, Aga.”
“Oh, please don’t get him started, miss, or I’ll never heard the end of it.” The entire room-all twenty-two or so indige cousins held their breath expectantly. “Can…can you play it?”
“Karine, I can’t. I don’t even know…”
Pogo interrupted, saying something softly to Karine in their native language. Karine responded enthusiastically, then said to Skinner. “Please, miss? One song, just to show Aga how to do it, then he’ll play it for the rest of the night.”
Skinner grimaced at the thought of that, but relented. She hadn’t had the chance to play for several days, and it wasn’t all that dissimilar from the guitar. It was practically the same thing, really. “All right. I guess. Let’s see. Something simple, obviously.” She plucked aimlessly for a few seconds, then began to strum the chords for “By Sacred Text Redeemed”-an old rondel that had been one of her favorites. The instrument had a bright, jangling sound, that gave the song a sense of whimsy lacking in most interpretations.
After the first refrain, one of the men began humming a counterpoint in a low tenor. Another began tapping on the table. Two of the women joined in, taking turns switching between soprano and alto parts. They sang in Indt; the words flowed like water. The women invented melodic variations on the spot. More voices joined in, as the whole family took turns playing with the song. When there was a pause, Skinner grinned wildly, and began improvising her own tune, and a mad joy bubbled up inside her as she did, so that by the time the song ended she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.