"You aren't going to make this easy, are you?" Sariel asked.
"What do you mean?" I watched the last thin streaks of Sariel's smoke turn on the night air.
"Don't do this, Belimai," Sariel said. "If you're angry at me, then say so. Scream at me if you want, but don't treat me like a stranger. Don't pretend that I'm some stray off the street who you've never seen before."
"I thought it would be better for both of us this way," I said at last.
"Better?" Sariel shook his head. "I'd rather have you beat my head in. At least then I'd know that you still felt something for me."
"I'm not going to beat your head in. I'm not even angry at you."
"How could you not be?" Sariel looked at me as if I were lying.
"I'm just not," I snapped. "What happened was my fault. How could I be angry with you?"
"It never occurred to you that I got you dragged into the Inquisition in the first place?" Sariel pulled a cigarette case out of his coat pocket, took one of the cigarettes, and lit it with a snap of his black nails. "If I had gone straight right after school, like you did, it never would have happened. We could have set up house, and maybe you would have gotten into that school..." He paused to exhale a long swirl of smoke. "What was it called?"
"I don't remember," I replied.
"Like hell you don't remember." Sariel stretched out onto his side and looked out at the sky. "It was the Downing Academy, wasn't it?"
"It's old history, Sariel. It doesn't matter what school. There's no point in trying to get me mad at you about something that's long past."
"You've avoided me for six fucking years, Belimai." Sariel jabbed his burning cigarette in my direction. "You're barely speaking to me now. It's not over. It's still going on right now between us. You think that I'm furious because you turned me in. And I think you hate me because...well, you're acting like it."
"I don't hate you, and I don't think you're furious at me." I shook my head.
"Then why did you stay away so long? Why did you leave Hells Below?" Sariel demanded.
"I changed." I knew that didn't make much sense, but there was no way that I could describe what had happened to me in the Inquisition. It hadn't just been the matter of a few scars and twenty pounds. I had been brought in as a proud youth, and I came out a pathetic addict. I might as well have been killed and my name given to a mongrel who resembled me around the eyes and jaw.
"You changed?" Sariel blew a hot tongue of smoke into my face and I glared at him. "Same nasty look, same vicious glare. You don't seem changed."
"I don't.. .Look at me, Sariel." I thrust my upturned arms out at him. "Open your eyes and actually look at me."
Sariel stared into my eyes for several moments. Slowly, his gaze moved over my dirty face. He glanced to my bare chest and at the white scars there. He followed the white letters over my shoulders and then down my arms. His expression was gentle until the moment he caught sight of the bruised, deep furrows that years of needles had left on both my arms. He looked away, but not before I saw an expression of revulsion flicker across his handsome face.
I folded my arms back in across my chest. I had invited his gaze to force him to admit that I was a wreck of what I had been. Still, the moment he glanced away from me, rejection knifed through me like a deep wound. It was what I had expected-demanded, even—but still it hurt me.
"You just need a bath and some rest," Sariel said, but he couldn't bring himself to look into my face.
"I know what I need, Sariel. In fact, I need it more than I need you." My bitterness at him made my words come out more harshly than I had wanted. "Don't patronize me with that 'all the boy needs is a bath, a bed, and a hot meal.' Save it for your Good Commons gatherings. I know perfectly well what kind of man I am."
"It isn't who you are; it's only what the Inquisition did to you." He was sitting up now, his red eyes glowing almost as brightly as the cherry of his cigarette.
"They took you in three times before they came after me, and you're the same as ever," I responded as coldly as I could manage.
"That's because I just confessed. I told them what they wanted to know, and I paid my fines." Sariel glared at me. "What were you thinking, trying to hold out?"
"I promised you I wouldn't betray you."
"It was only a fucking fine, Belimai!" Sariel was shouting now. "Fifty coins! Didn't you think I would have paid fifty coins just to not have you hurt? Did you think I was that cheap?"
"I didn't know what the charges were," I snapped. "I didn't know, and I didn't want you to end up roasting at the stake because I—" I cut myself short, realizing that this whole thing was going wrong. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All of this was over. It had come and gone. Screaming at Sariel now wouldn't alter even a moment of the past. Not even his one glance of repulsion could be taken back, now.
"I'm too tired to fight with you, Sariel. And I don't want to, in any case," I said.
"Neither do I." Sariel leaned back again. "Fighting is about the last thing I want, honestly."
He took a drag off his cigarette, and I looked up at the sky. The stars were still shining brightly, though a pale blue light crept up from the horizon.
"It's a nice night, isn't it?" Sariel asked at last.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Can we start over?" Sariel asked, and I knew he meant more than the conversation.
I wanted to tell him that we could. But the past could no more be forgotten than it could be undone. It would always be between us. When I looked at him, I could not help but remember who I had been and how low I had sunk since then. No matter how many years passed, I knew that I would never be able to think of him without recalling my time under the prayer engines. He would think of the same things when he saw me.
"No," I said. "Let's just go on."
A few more moments of silence passed. Sariel blew smoke rings, and then as a thick plume of smoke floated up from between his lips, he whispered the word, "Moth." The smoke curled into the form of a gypsy moth. Its wings beat against the breezes, dissipating as it rose up.
I smiled. Creating smoky moths had been the first magic Sariel had accomplished. He had shown them to me on a night much like this one, when the two of us had snuck up to the roof of the school. I remembered how his young face had been flushed with exertion and pride. He had singed his hair and burnt one of his fingers, but that had hardly mattered to him. Now he made it look as effortless as breathing.
Sariel leaned languidly on one elbow, as if he were on the edge of sleep. He watched me, but from the shadows of his lowered eyes. I didn't catch the word that he whispered, but the smoke that rose from his mouth whirled up into two slender forms. They circled each other, the thin trails of their bodies winding together. At last they drew into an embrace that swallowed them both.
Sariel looked directly at me then. As much as he wanted to return to the past, I needed to leave it behind. The man I was could never reclaim that time of trust and pride. I no longer fit into it. I looked past Sariel to where black walls of smoke still hung over Edward Talbott's house.
"Did you know Joan Talbott very well?" I asked.
"I knew her," Sariel said, "but we weren't associates outside of Good Commons. She was never willing to get her silk gloves that dirty."