THE PROGENITOR

the pressure is released at the joke, tension, sombriety, the sensation of rushing headlong into emotions relieved. lijin scoffs at it, settles back into her usual self, buries the vulnerability back deep. animals showing off matching wounds, examine the way they caused them, on the other, on themself.

sohrab’s explanation, apology, who the fuck knows what, rushes on too fast for lijin to latch on, to comment in kind, to reassure or hit back, and perhaps her silence is for the best. the apology is rough, a struggle for them both, and lijin just nods, finds her own throat tight, moves past it. it doesn’t bear thinking on - the past ( she wants to laugh, she wants to weep ). there’s nothing that can change there.

‘ i’ve tried to be their ally by being their enemy, same way i was taught. ‘ she chances a glance up, a smirk. ‘ for it worked. the universities were nothing in comparison, i’d never felt as though i’d had to prove myself to them. ‘ but to you. ‘ and then i didn’t have anyone to prove myself to with the heights i’d reached, but these lot haven’t reached that, and i was trying to keep them down. the kind of knowledge, the kind of searching that we’re after? isn’t it better to dissuade them from this entirely? to not let them make our mistakes? ‘

———

Sohrab doesn’t miss the chanced, sidelong look. The latter note, in fact, wrests a snort of her own free. A slight, crooked smile. “Dissuade them? Like I dissuaded you?” A vague, gesture toward the expanse that surrounds them. The shifting ice and looming dark, as if to say, since I was so successful. 

Then, a low hum. Thoughtful as she once more twines her hands behind her back and regards the leaden night. A sort of concordance; that maybe some things are unknowable. That they necessitate a kind of death. A kind of undoing. Whether physical, or not. 

intrepidim​:

(cont.) Together they cut the breadth of the deck, now depleted of some fifteen souls, fifteen pairs of useful hands that might turn the tide. They halt just short of the milksop’s silhouette. ❝ To give them something to do, we must first give them something to talk about. Someone here has spent their whole life talking. Picking truth in and out, like fleas off a stray’s fur. The crew trusts you: that will be your domain. But for those you have not yet charmed, I need a dirtier hand, a finger bent by the force of circumstance. ❞ Estrada measures the second, the plunge of his eyes into theirs. He measures it, and then, when its length relays nothing but agreement, and the cord pulls smooth, he steps forward. Calls to the Ambassador, this nowhere boy, this nowhere man. 

❝ Vashe prevoskhoditel'stvo. Ser Voronin. We have a job for you. ❞

“Is the inauguration so soon?” Voronin canted his head, though it was some moments after that his eyes rolled over to the pair. Your excellency. His lips curled charily. He’d not asked for Pasha, then; he’d asked for the ambassador. “Ah, you can spare me the formalities. If you’re about to ask of me what I think you might, Ser Voronin has a rather lovely record of official exploits that I’m sure would clash heinously. Better this was set apart.”

The ambassador straightened up and faced them bodily, fingers clasped neatly over the arched brass wings of the scavenger-headed cane. He glanced between them, this rising storm and its riling wind. He wasn’t sure when they’d come, but he was versed in the warning signs. The shift in temperature - the warm and able bodies sent across the ice. The abrupt hush - the scarcity of sentinels on the upper decks, lips frozen shut. “There’s no need to waste our breaths recounting what we all already know. I spent enough time breathing the same air as legislators to get a nose for the rot and machinations that brew in close quarters such as these.”

Pasha’s gaze homed on Estrada. “If it’s my language you want to speak, Vice Admiral, I would like to hear what it is you think I want before we go any further. Escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere. Diplomacy is the art of building bridges; observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides…” he leant back his shoulders, and the cane struck decking like gavel to block. “This is a wide channel, but you know that. В тихом омуте черти водятся.”

Why would he do this? Why should he do this? He’d wait for Khosrow and Estrada to remind him. “I can accommodate a meeting in the middle. I can build you a bridge unfellable by Arctic winds, if you give me the groundwork. You should know platitudes make brittle shovels and ambiguity even brittler foundations… But I see you’re the type that values expediency as I do - Dowling barely turned his back and you’re on the draw,” his lips twitched in a would-be smile. He reckoned he may very well have to conserve them for better use, here out. Having spoken his piece, grave earnest resumed him and he looked across them both.

“So, then. Let me hear you.”

———

Bright boy, Sohrab had murmured by his ear when the waltz spun their sights toward the Ambassador Voronin. A well placed next step in this dance of theirs, far as the cartographer could map it. The accordance was struck; the Ambassador wasted no time— nor breath, apparently.

“You get right to the point,” Sohrab marveled, eyes narrowed with razor’s intent. “Then we won’t.” Not another breath wasted, Sohrab lets Marc from her arms and turns to face the Ambassador as well, looming by the vice-admiral’s right hand. Captain’s, shortly, she minds herself. As it is, Pasha asks for Marc’s thoughts on what they reckon him wanting. The cartographer elects to leave him to it.

reevaluating, as though this was a sentence that could be taken back, as though the years could be undusted and this carpet rolled up, but this is the closest that either of them have ever admitted at even potentially failing the other, and it has taken their to their twilight years and standing at the edge of the world to do it.

and so lijin absorbs sohrab’s words in silence, actually listens to both their words and their context, to hear the way that they have always ever wanted only the best for the other.

‘ i wanted, so badly, to not be like my parents. to not be like the stuffy academics in their brick walls. to not fail as a teacher as i thought you had failed. i don’t know if i succeeded on any of those counts. ‘ perhaps you don’t have to shatter to let vulnerability happen. in this case, she goes numb, again, feels herself turn to ice - what need does cold have for regret?

‘ lucky students? two who followed my papers now on this ship and cyrus i have no doubt mostly due to me and here they are. lucky? i don’t know if i’ve ever brought luck to where i’ve gone. ‘

———

“Well, when you put it like that,” Sohrab’s lips purse thoughtfully as they, of all things, crack a joke ( eyes crinkling slightly ) “sounds like you’ve really cocked it up.” Takes one to know one, is the clear sentiment. 

Then, in a tone a measure more serious, they twine their fingers together behind their back and venture to add “when you were young, I thought the trick to teach you was to harden you the way the world was bound to. Figured if I got there first, the blows that followed would be as nothing,” she grunted. “I was your enemy, when I should’ve been your ally.” 

Over the years, the cartographer has brought countless dogs to heel. What was one more deadeye? The deck was split down the middle, those returning from their jaunt across the eyes at odds with those who’d held down the frozen fort, and as the chaos cleared, the now Captain Estrada was at the fore of it. The cartographer, among others, poised just by his shoulder like a carrion bird.

Sohrab scanned the faces corralled loosely against the railing, looking for— ah, there. Mr. Devine, she’d told Estrada and Voronin just a quarter-hour earlier, Is a keen shot, and one I’d wager we’d do well with on our side. So she’d aimed to scoop him from the fray when the moment presented itself. Here it was, now.

She hones in on the bounty hunter, Mariah, as he stands in bewilderment; prodding at the chaplain’s elbow as though the poor sod might fill him in on the details he’d missed while away. He receives no answer, of course, because the chaplain is frozen to the deck, vacant stare affixed to the professor and the still-warm body he carries. Miss Stanley, she notes, face darkening. What a fucking shame. Almost feels sorry for it all— and would. If she hadn’t seen it coming. Not in this exact shape, of course ( could’ve been brown hair instead of red. could’ve been black. sandy blonde. ) but the heart of it’s the same. One of them was bound to end up dead of this. More. It’s one reason things had to change, she justifies ( among others, of course. )

There’s nothing to it, really, saith the serpent. Just take a bite.

With the rescue party god knows how far into the island by now, the ship smothered by a downy, dreadful quiet, Sohrab and Marcus are taking their promised turn about the main deck. It’s not so much the waltz as a bastardization, really— box steps in all the wrong places. But that’s beside the point. It isn’t about the steps so much as where they take you. With luck, their next steps will take them to the passage, to the board, and far beyond. 

With any luck, they’ll waltz themselves straight back to dry land, as promised. As Malachy as had chance enough to deliver them. He’s tried hard, tried valiantly, of course— but she’s simply been left fucking wanting.

“When the status quo fails, when the sails go limp and the ocean lays flat, men grow desperate. Doldrums. Eviler than any deva. Boredom makes men caustic as quicklime. So imagine what fear does?” 

The cartographer switches the script on him, now. Shifting his hand from their hip to their shoulder and taking him by the small of the back; once the follow, now the lead. In control before the first snag in their stride is even registered. “The only medicine is purpose. Keeps sailors happy, keeps 'em agreeable... keeps 'em calm...” Voice lilting lower and lower in its conspiratorial hush. 

“They’ll fall in line for almost anything, now— long as it’s a change of pace. So give them something to do.” The crew, they mean. “You’d make a fine enough Captain, my boy. Fine enough to see it through. And it wont take much; the groundwork is practically laid for you,” teeth gritted now, jaw indented with ire as their molars scrape the inside of their own cheek until they taste copper. “—and it’s already been stained bloody enough.”

He ducks away from her blows with a smile on his lips    for all their verbal ferocity, they were an attack forged with sound and knowledge, with the intimate mapping of someone’s armour. The weak links, the rickety plates. Sohrab could pry it off his body entirely, if they wanted to. Just say the word, and Marcus would disrobe; not for fucking, and not even for the show of it, but because revealing and regretting is how it went, between them. A dance once risque, now rendered blunt with time. The cartographer preferred incapacitating his defenses even as it was still being used.

❝ Prod at my masculinity, then, and hope it’ll make me roar? ❞ He spits out laughter, somewhere deep in his throat. It’s not biting, nor injured in the least; with a spin, Marcus grabs Sohrab’s hand and twirls her in a pirouette on the deck. A good thing, perhaps, that most people who had attended the boatswain’s service had already dispersed to their duties, to their rigid and insulated tasks. He brings their hand to his lips, plants a quick kiss on it; all he affords, all any man should, without having his eyes gouged out with a compass.

❝ Go ahead and curse me for a lady in waiting, as if that’s not the bloody dream. If I could have been the rake and worn the skirts too I’d have lived a far more peaceful life. Oh, Sohrab, you know you can shake my pride as few people can, but you’re still off the mark on this. Maybe a decade ago, sure, I would’ve twitched. But I’ve got gray hairs, darling. I’m truly beyond fussing about the length of my cock. So, I’m afraid of death. So, I’d like to be out of this place in a damn wink, to hell with the admiral. What about it? Is there any fool that puts fear below him and lives enough to, well, actually enjoy his courage? Come off it. Better think about how we’ll make a run for it. Or, better yet, what song you’d have me waltz you off on, when the world tips into its eager end. Start planning. ❞

———

With as long as they’ve known one another, a sudden pirouette wouldn’t come as a surprise. But here? Sohrab would have put such a move at such a grim affair past him for at least a few more years. “You’re a fiend.” She scoffs as she snatches her hand back with the fondest roll of her eyes mock-disgust can allow. Rearranges her skirts. Loops her arm back through his for warmth.

“Oh, Marcus,” A sagely snort. “A life led in skirts only ever looks peaceful. Whatever storms she avoids without just make their home within.” In different ways, of course, but tempests all the same. His claim she’s off the mark elicits a quirk of one brow; a shuttering of the lids. Do tell. And tell he does. He sounds as if he speaks from this place quite like his heart but deeper, somehow; maybe it’s closer to the gut. More animal, more instinct. I’m tired, he says. I’m afraid. He’d already freed her from the pirouette, so why do her insides still churn? The smile once skin deep now invades the eyes to crinkle the lids, wilting into something sorrowful. "And a decade on, or two more, you’ll feel quite different.” She turns toward him, adjusting his collar to busy the hands. “Once you get old as I am, you start to feel quite far away from it all if you’re not careful. Like Rozier’s balloon— only he’s forgotten to tether it down. But way up there, you know what you see, my boy? You see it’s all just a bloody circle.” Sohrab plucks some lint off of his vest and smoothes out a wrinkle. Then releases him entirely, hands hovering a beat before the fingers fold into her palms, unclench, and take his shoulders.

“So feel your fear, darling. Alright. Draw up our plans and lace up your boots for the running. I’ll be right behind you. Just know that the fear’s not forever. You’ll be pushing seventy, picking fights with daevas, and fussing below the belt again soon enough.” Satisfied with the prim fold of his collar once more, she returns to his shoulder, tucks her head against it, and stares ahead; perhaps even more akin to the hot air balloon than when they’d begun. Another sandbag dropped. The Promethean’s deck a stage for scurrying ants that will wane smaller and smaller, until they too, are lost to cloudcover.

“Le Cygne,” she finally answers. For that waltz. “Saint-Saens. I’m sure that silly chaplain could crack it.”

hands as hooks that cut every time they reach, pride and folly that compounds until they have fashioned each other into diamond ; bitter, cold, coal-dusted. to crack the shell is to become flawed, but this -? is this a reaching out? a hand offered out even if neither can bend nor break enough to turn towards the other?

‘ was? ‘ from eager student to abrasive collegaue to arrogant success, lijin was also a fool. ‘ what about now? ‘ open hand on open hand, and she’s bleeding to worry too much about another wound.

their language is one unspoken, hidden and in need of deciphering. she and james had worked in silence and understanding, clear as pictograms. she and sohrab - their rosetta stone had yet to be uncovered, but sheer familiarity meant she felt both the cut and the balm.

her silence stretches out, for a discussion on darwin isn’t what is being asked, but neither does she know how to turn herself into glass and let herself shatter. ‘ i’ve become a teacher. ‘ and apparently, a fool.

———

“Now?” Sohrab bobs slightly in thought, mulling it over. They are trying— is what nearly emerges; but it’s early. Perhaps it would be disingenuous. “They are,” a dry swallow “—reevaluating.”

Lijin doesn’t need to add on the unspoken apparent. It comes through naturally, given their banter ( if that’s what you could call this. it’s as close as they’ve gotten to it in years. years and years. ) “It’s not too late for you,” at the edge of humor, now, as if being a teacher is a terminal sentence. But then their lips purse, because regardless of what Lijin believes, they have never taken her for a fool. Prideful, yes. Shortsighted, sometimes. Stubborn and tactless and utterly vexing, on more than one occasion—

But a fool? Never. 

Sohrab folds gloved hands and admits ( in the only way she knows how to admit things, ) “you’ve had much to learn by nonexample, I’m sure.” But that’s not all of it. They reach a sliver farther, “but you were always more clever than to stop your search there.” You invented. 

so much fire, on a ship, made of wood. it’s not like there are alternatives, but the amount of wax that was slowly beginning to pool up on every surface was something that stretched belief even on this journey of nothing but horrors and hauntings and - apparently - mythology as well.

charydbis, sea monster, grecian, suggested to be based on a whirlpool in the strait of messina. it’s a suggestion, at the least, but not one sohrab seemed incline to discussing ( or debating, or being shot down in debate, as so many of their conversations tended towards ). but if not a discussion, perhaps there was no-one better to chew on empty heavy silences with - those burdened with the weight of personal and global history, dead in the same sense as the things they had once unearthed together.

so lijin stands, straight backed and uncompromising, watches the unchanging darkness infront of them. the air is smoky and ashy from the candles, but also in the clouds of dust that rise from old books opened again, in the grit between teeth from narrow escapes, the sand in the eyes from new discoveries hard won. it could be their destruction - but death is a friend lijin knows intimately, and she doesn’t care to be worried for this visit.

‘ my teacher wasn’t thorough enough either. ‘ the remark is sharp as it cuts back through the air, all mockery and sarcasm stripped from her tone, yet it only seems to amplify it instead. ‘ decided lamark was a better waste of my time instead. ‘ the comment is undeserved - lamark had been the theory of that time, but near four decades of friction wasn’t enough to wear away the prickly hostility lijin draped herself in for every meeting.

———

They stand as two unyielding pillars, side by side. Maybe they could go on like this. Maybe they could stretch up and up for leagues and never once meet in the middle. For a moment, Sohrab strains against her own stone architecture— surely tempting tension cracks just to turn her head a centimeter. Glimpse her former student from the corner of the eye.

The remark slices like a mishandled map against their fingers, though, Sohrab is hardly stranger to paper cuts. Takes this one in stride, undeserved has nothing to do with it. “Your teacher was a fool.” Was. Is. Will be is not yet off the table, but they are still thinking. 

WHEN / A FEW DAYS AFTER PANTEA DISAPPEARS  WHERE / SOHRAB’S CABIN WITH / @ferroustype

cyrus hesitates for a long moment, hidden in the shadows of the doorway to sohrab’s cabin.

what exactly does he mean to say? that his mama never taught him the words for grief, for loss, and that speaking them in english seems to strip them of all relevant feeling, all emotional resonance? that pantea was kind to him when she did not have to be, and she deserves to be mourned for in the manner of the home she never got to see? does he mean to ask if there is some sort of map that will chart a course from knowing to not knowing? from being so alive that it pains you, makes the heart in your chest beat wildly and with the erratic melody of the ward drum into being haunted? from dreaming into the unknown country of nightmare? 

will he ask her, with his shaking hands and his frightened rabbit eyes, how to plead in his mother’s tongue for the ghost of a friend to leave him alone? to go to her rest instead of adding her voice to the chorus of anguished howls that do not cease inside of his mind? 

he bites down hard on his bottom lip, wrings his hands as he steps forward into the doorway, into one of the small pools of golden lantern light that now serve as the only source of illumination onboard. he has no answers–fear has dulled the sharp edges of his academic mind, narrowed the scope of his focus to only seeking out comfort where it can be found, if it can be found, and keeping himself alive. everything else seems trivial, or belongs to a future that seems absurd to hope for. 

“هیچ خدایی جز خدا وجود ندارد.” he says slowly, carefully. “i read once that that’s what you’re supposed to say during persian funereal rights. there is no god but god. i also read that you’re supposed to wear black, if you’re mourning.” he gently touches his wrist, where he’d carefully tied a strand of black ribbon. he runs his fingers tenderly over the material, wraps the ends around his fingers. “it was my mama’s–she gave it to me so i would remember her while i was away. it’s the only black i have.” he shakes his head, chuckles quietly. “it reminds me of her–too. pantea–even though she would have probably thought it was too simple for her tastes.” 

———

Pantea is gone, six more have left and a rescue follows. But for some time now, the cartographer has been sitting on the edge of this cot, brushing through her unbound hair. It borders improper back home, to do something of vanity in the wake of a loss— but already she is dressed down ( finer coat swapped for a black shawl and face bare of makeup,) and it is the one ritual she cannot let go. The gesture lies so closely beside the one once reserved for Pantea, it's almost like touching her. Sohrab's hair is so long that if her eyes remain closed, the sensation becomes so distant by the time she reaches the splitting ends that the tresses could pass for someone else's.

It's like this that Cyrus walks in on her. Tradition, time-weathered habit, is what sends her hands flitting— abandoning the brush to tug the shawl up over her head for propriety's sake.

"Well, you were reading all the right books," She snorts with a derisive turn of the chin. A sharp jerk of the head that says leave me— before catching herself. Before interrogating the way she bristles. Then the why of it. Because he is speaking their language to her in aboard the vessel of a crown that's long demanded she leave it behind. The words fall like a flurry of birds from his mouth, sure— but in this moment, they are no less comforting in their flight. He is hurting just as she is, for reasons akin to hers. And she pushes him. Why does she ground her heels and push him?

Sohrab tries something new. "...The only black you have?" Her arm strains through the gesture like a hinge against rust, but she pats the cot beside her. Then she lifts the corner of her shawl, a gesture like a raven's wing unfurling, as if to spirit him under it.

it dawns on him slowly, that he wants to be angry with her. 

he wants to take her map in his hands and tear it to pieces, watch as they flutter like bird feathers to the ground before treading purposefully over them–as if to call attention to the fact that it did not require a university education, an office in a white marble building, a pitiful acolyte who doesn’t know any better, for him to put his work underneath his heel. 

don’t you get it? he would snarl. she would gape at him he’s sure–when did the boy grow falcon’s wings? when did he learn their fearsome call, that wolf’s howl that does not belong in the mouth of the bird? he would snap his newly grown beak, look at her with his yellow hunter’s eyes, and say don’t you understand yet that none of this matters? 

you thought the frontier could be contained, forced into submission and inside of borders made of stark black lines on paper? i’m here to tell you, cartographer, that the frontier is so much bigger than we are capable of understanding–the frontier flays the flesh from your bones and takes root inside of you, makes your pathetic body that is barely capable of containing the terror inside of you part of it. 

we go forth, we push boundaries, we discover, not because god has granted us the grace to do so. we go forth because the frontier has decided to spit us back out instead of swallowing us whole. 

he wants to be angry–but anger would involve an explanation. anger would involve trying to translate a language that he has only learned through having his jaw forced open, and having each word shoved down his throat until he spat them back up like bile. anger would involve admitting that he was not smart enough to keep himself alive. 

because he isn’t, is he? logic would dictate that one who shares his body with so many dead must count himself among them. 

“thank you.” he says after clearing his throat, dragging a hand through his hair in an effort to bring himself back to the present, to remind himself of his own physicality. ‘but that won’t be necessary. my hands–” he shakes his head as he spares a glance down at them, bloodied with black ink. “clearly aren’t steady enough at the moment, and accuracy should be prized above all else. especially here, and now, when it seems to be in such short supply.” 

here, he thinks, as he drags his thumb across his temple in an effort to soothe the phantom ache that always seems to be lingering there, as we come to the ends of knowledge itself. it leaves a black mark that disappears into his hairline. 

he meets her gaze, and in the back of his mind there is howling–if it is lonely, if it is a cry of pain, or if it is a foreshadowing of grief, he cannot tell the difference. “should we–map this place, i mean? maybe–” he exhales slowly, shakes his head. “maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging people to come here. there isn’t anything remarkable about it except death and cold.”

———

She can tell by the apparent drift of him, by the crackling sound of him, that the lad’s along a mental journey she’s not privy to. Sohrab only studies him, sore-knuckled hands interlaced before her. “Wise.” 

The cartographer hums in a clipped syllable as Cyrus thanks her in one breath and doubts his hands in the next. She’s never known maternal instinct half as well as she’s known the mantis’, but as she watches him smear ink across his temple, Sohrab finds she has to resist a sudden and strange urge: retrieving the ink rag and mopping his brow. 

How awful.

“پسر نادان,” she mutters as she twists the rag in her hands instead. “Mankind have thrown themselves at mountains since their inception, and will continue to do so until our collective ruin, with or without our encouragement.” That is to say, “Someday, someone will map this hellscape. We are already here. We have made it this far,” This ‘we’ is more of an inclusion than Sohrab has ever extended to the budding young cartographer; as if to drive the conspiring nature of it home, she affords a passing wink. 

How fool she had been, thinking that because she knew how to deal with the aristocracy, she would feel at ease while mingling with them. Even Etienne’s reassurance sprinkled with Cecille’s teasing hadn’t been able to calm her nerves. Her insecurities didn’t lie with her appearance, Fahra knew that she looked the part because Cecille had been determined to make sure everything was perfect ( in the end Etienne joined them and all the lace and expensive fabric was thrown away once again ).

Looking away from her glass to realize that Sohrab Khosrow herself was walking towards her. Being away from her lovers, Fahra subtlety glanced at the room, searching for a escape. Her insecurities were product of her being around scholars, professors, scientists, most of them being academics that would tear apart her not so educated words.

And Sohrab, was one of the most infamous, Fahra could see the sharp mind and sharper tongue focusing on her and the desire to run was very much strong in her mind. She would hate to be seem as a simple minded woman, a pretty toy, even if Etienne and Cecille assured her that this was not the case.

The sound of clinking champagne lutes and the fact that the woman was at her side and actually speaking to her eventually brings Fahra back to reality. She slowly sips the drink, buying time before answering, pretending to not understand the question probably would end with Fahra receiving the end of Sohrab’s wit.

Her eyes instinctively search and find her lovers, Etienne with an arm casually wrapped around Cecille’s waist, the two laughing at some joke. When accidentally their eyes met and he waved in their direction, Fahra decided that the bottom of the champagne flute was suddenly very interesting.

❝ A shame we didn’t bring balloons then, Madam. ❞ the poor joke makes her wince a little.

‘Dear Lord, please protect me from making a fool out of myself in front of this woman’

———

( london, 1843 — cont. )

As Fahra bought time with a drink, a nearby pair answered on her behalf. Sohrab recognized them at a glance— Cecille and, what was it? Etienne. Of course— regular members of some of the same circles her late husband once captivated with lengthy dissertations about which cheeses paired best with which wines. She couldn’t parse whether she’d cared for them much in the past nor be arsed to discern whether she did now. What she did parse, was the way Etienne’s assertive wave sent Fahra retreating into her flute. Sohrab knew that look, and could well guess how the gesture might’ve read to the woman it concerned: over here—! She belongs to us.

As if to remind that possession had nothing to do with it, the cartographer circled the little standing table they shared to intercept their sightline. Glanced over her shoulder to cast a rehearsed ( sharpened ) smile their way, before offering an arm to Fahra. Between them, the brief veneer of pleasantry promptly fell away to a deadpan. What this woman had to offer as a conversational partner, the cartographer doubted she’d feel free to share under such watchful eyes as those two’s. Better to remove the pressure of the pageantry all together, Sohrab surmised.

He snorted at their words, an undignified and riotous sound    a sound which not even Marcus Estrada could paint propriety over. It was patently not matched to the occasion: the chaplain was just finishing speaking the service for the departed Boatswain, and people were dissipating into the bitter winds. But that was always how it went with him, with them both, didn’t it? The funereal and the obscene; the decorous and the indelicate. It was a dance they had mastered, yet a dance lacking all that many partners. It’s why they held so fiercely tight on one another, after all.

❝ Fuck, but are you brilliant at this. I wouldn’t want to have met you, in this life or the next, as anything but an ally. Alright, old darling, suppose the man is as easy a fox to snare as you claim it. The good ones always are, hm? I wouldn’t know it; my sins were always better at doing me in than my good deeds. And he seems to have no unorthodoxies he can spare, I’ll tell you that much. But if you think he’d bite, well, who am I to go against your word? I’ll work him from closer up. Confess it all, who the hell cares. It’s a privilege to have anything to hide, these days. ❞ 

With a steering sort of motion, Marc lays his palm over her elbow. He leads them both away from the melee and closer to the starboard, where the sky is bright and heedless of all hopes. Devious hopes, yes, such as their current embroidery on the margins of a man’s downfall; but also larger hopes, against finality, against their own ends. He allows himself a grimace. ❝ You seem awfully sure that we’ll ever see the shores of Commonwealth once more. ❞

———

Marc bends the knee to her advice and, my, is it a sight for sore eyes. Sohrab tilts her head toward one shoulder, crinkles her eyes, and pinches his cheek briefly ( gives the head a good shake. ) And so, they hold one another tightly still. And so Sohrab says “that’s a good boy,” spoken if only to see him squirm beneath her sheer parody of doting. A swift pat on the same spot, then, to conceal the redness of the pinch with a blooming blot of it instead. Save him at least some shred of dignity for when he returns to the crew.

And yet, he does nothing of the sort. Instead, he steers them both toward the railing, hand to elbow, for a moment of privacy. 

Sohrab’s brows pinch in the middle, then shove halfway up to her hairline; making no measure to conceal her feelings on the matter. “And the rest of you seem awfully ready to pitch your hopes in the bin. All these bleary-eyed wraiths wandering the deck, looking miserable as soggy kittens. Don’t tell me you’ve joined their ranks, Marcus.” She groans. “Don’t tell me you’re already picking out the wallpaper for your little corner room in hell.” She smacks his shoulder, a backhanded swat that might instill some sense with it. “Where’s the fight in you lot, eh? What happened to shaking the hand of the reaper when we meet him? What’s this knocking on his door like ladies-in-waiting.” They pantomime it, knock knock, the cherry on top of this lambast. “Are you ready yet, your majesty? How about now? Feh.”