#jovan rogala

It didn’t surprise Jovan Rogala much that the adoption official his lady Alissa had straight-up threatened didn’t show up for the third visit.

Instead, an unsmiling old lady knocked on the door, and though he offered her the first floor for her business, she demanded to climb the steep staircase to the classroom instead. With every labored step, he imagined his chances with the children floating down some drain.  At least the old lady seemed pleased that he insisted the tutors sit with her as she interviewed the children.

As he paced around his office, a dozen versions of disaster raced through his thoughts.  Tirsa could get into one of her angry moods and mouth off. Hopefully Haji got to sit with her -- the mesmer calmed Tirsa down like no one else in the house.  Nijah might be so polite the adoption lady would wonder at her real happiness.  Urwah, Urwah was quiet when he wasn’t around Mrs. Fiori, and Ashla’s best friend in the house was Payam, the bloody tiger.  Explaining that might get fun.

He winced at the sudden realization that he wasn’t the favorite of any of them, not the four wards he meant to adopt, or the two already grown. 

Then again.  Nijah loved looking at the columns of numbers in the household ledger with him and Rosella.  Urwah watched Jovan at dinner, and what his sponsor ate, the boy ate too.  Tirsa was bloody exhausting sometimes, but running laps around their little garden calmed down that temper of hers.  And Ashla - she still didn’t talk much, still didn’t express much, but when Jovan came home, she was always one of the first to the door.

A thump sounded from the classroom upstairs.  He froze and waited, only for silence to follow.  Thank gods.  He raked both hands back through his thick hair and walked to the little statue of Grenth decorating his office window-sill. 

“I know you do death,” he muttered to the image of the god.  “But you’re my favorite anyway.  You’re honest.  No tricks.”  He lit the small candle beside the statue and added, “You know I follow you.  I send you souls.  ...too often, maybe.  Still.  Let me have this.” A belated “please,” followed as he took up pacing again.

Half an hour later, the old lady’s measured progress down the stairs seemed to take ten years.  “Thank you, we’ll let you know,” she said, with a tiny pat to his arm and not even a hint of a smile on her seamed face.  He held the door open for her, watched her go, and tried to breathe again.  It’d be what it would be. Nothing he could do about it now.

Their first impression: “Well, didn’t expect to see the ass of my girlfriend’s cousin this early.  That’s a bee? ”

Their current impression: “Gods, I’m glad she and Alissa aren’t fighting anymore.  No one’s as vicious as women who are related.”

What they like the most about your muse: “She knows who she is, what she likes, what she’s about.  She doesn’t muck around pleasing other people.”

What they dislike the most about your muse:  “I figured Alissa would get shit for being with me, and she did.  More for being quiet about it than me being me, but damn, better not happen again.  Alissa gets what she wants, even if it’s mangy old me.”

What your muse is for them ( Friend, lover, rival ecc.): Acquaintance?  He likes the lady, but hasn’t spent enough time with her to be friends.

A general opinion of their relationship: They could do serious damage if they ever drank together.

What, Jovan and Alissa go shooting.  Isn’t that love?

He says it in ways Alissa isn’t particularly interested in hearing – protecting her from things she doesn’t need protection from, worrying about her safety when she’s fine taking care of herself.  Learning to trust in her capabilities is an act of love in itself, and he’s trying.

She doesn’t know it, but he’s also curtailing some of his old vices.  He’s drinking less, smoking less…killing fewer people unless Rabiah has a really good reason?  All love.

“Heh,” he says while reading the note.  His smile tugs up on one side while he looks over the label.  Upstairs, a fight that has been brewing all morning reaches a fever pitch, and Tirsa lets out a furious cry of, “Get out of my ROOM” to someone who responds with tears. 

“Tom.  Get up.”  Thirteen-year-old Jovan kicked his sleeping friend hard in the calf.  Tomas Marino didn’t stir.  Jovan shifted sideways and rose, inch by slow inch, until he could just see over the low wall near the Flagon.  Two Seraph, a man and a woman, kept solemn, dutiful expressions on their faces as an affronted nobleman missing his coin-purse raved and gestured.

Jovan patted his pocket to make certain he still had the nob’s fine purse.  Fat old bastard, he didn’t need it.  The old man’s coin purse was decorated, embroidered, a fancy thing that swung against his big belly with every step. Nasty old bastard, just begging to be robbed with a thing like that.

But Jovan knew these Seraph, and they were smarter than most.  He gave his prone friend a desperate look.  Tomas was three years older, so he knew ten times the boltholes and sewers and hidden crawlspaces than Jovan did.  Jovan hissed the other boy’s name again.  “Tomas.  Gods, get up.”  A sharp kick pushed Tomas’s body sideways, and Jovan finally noticed the wet, dark puddle that soaked the older boy’s tunic and blackened the scrubby soil beneath him.

“Shit me, shit me.”  Jovan crouched, pushed, stared.  The old nob, he’d had a tiny joke of a pistol in his pocket, a woman’s weapon.  No, a little girl’s, like a toy.  Jovan had laughed at the thwp of a sound the baby weapon made before he swatted it out of the old man’s hand and followed Tomas back around the Flagon and into high, untended brush.

Tomas’s dark eyes stared up at nothing.  The dead boy wore a muddy look of surprise, and in death looked no older than Jovan, just a soft-featured youth with a slack jaw and cheap, bloody clothes.

Jovan whispered, “Tomas,” even though he expected no response.  Shit me. “Check over there,” he heard the Seraph lady say, crisp and efficient.  Gods, no one would care about dead Tomas, but a living Jovan found next to a dead Tomas would be an entirely different matter.  

He bent down, and with tears briefly blurring his vision, kissed Tomas on his clammy forehead.  The dead boy landed with a wet, heavy squelch of a noise when Jovan dropped him and rolled into a crouch.  One lunge over the wall, and he’d end up either in the Seraph lady’s lap or with a clear run halfway back to Salma.  The nob’s coin purse knocked against his leg.

Sorry, Tomas.  Grenth keep you.  The Mists maybe weren’t that bad, or at least full of purses to pick.  Jovan wiped a sleeve over his wet face, picked a direction, and jumped.

“Ah, gods,” he says.  “I’m sure.  I mean…there’ve been ladies who’ve wanted me to stick around, and I haven’t.  And friends who’ve probably wanted more from me than I even knew how to give.  But seriously –”  He looks off into the middle distance, considering.

“Before Alissa – look.  I’m the second chosen.  Always.  By women, by captains, by whatever.”  His chuckle is dry.  “The backup fuck at the end of the evening, when the real target left the bar with someone else.  That one stung.”

Rosella Vidal’s boots set down lightly on the townhouse roof.  She folded her collapsible glider and slid through her chamber’s tiny window before letting the shadows that wreathed her slip away.  In case Nasim was wandering again, she changed quickly into her drab secretarial garb and set a ledger on her desk, open to tidy columns of household accounts.

With the necessary stage set, she instead sat on the floor beside her bed and wrapped her arms around her knees.  Give your observations context, Keeper Torres would have said.  Put your observations in proper order.  She shut her eyes to remember the scene and reported it in her thoughts as if to Torres himself:

Context:  Rogala met with a man so thick with shadow that it seemed to cleave the very air. 

Observation:  The meeting was neither planned nor especially friendly.

Observation:  They engaged in no violence and minimal posturing.  The encounter ended cordially. 

Observation:  The shadowed man may have noticed my passage.  Act accordingly.  

The last was the most worrisome.  She flicked a glance toward the still open window and the deepening shadows beyond.

((None of these are sent, and he burns them in an ashtray when he’s finished writing each one.  In a house full of inquisitive youngsters, he’s already in the habit of covering his tracks.))

Rabiah,

Well, I feel like shit that they chose me, but I’m sure not sad about it.  Tzafrirah’s right, I’d miss them and her way with the little ones, and you’re only a neighborhood away.  But I still feel like shit about it.  All those kids, they were yours first.  

Godsdammit, I miss my friend.

J.

Rabiah,

Sounds stupid to ask, ‘could I have done something?’  Your cousin said it didn’t have much to do with me, just with being a refugee who needed something to fix on.  Some north star.  

And you know what?  You’re a damn fine-looking woman, brave and smart, and I like you.  I like you plenty.  If you’d spoken up early, I - gods, I don't know.  You talked about my kind like shit on your shoe, and I agreed with it.  Mostly.  

J.

Rabiah,

Thing is, I love her.  Gods, she’s moody sometimes.  She could turn a bloody hangnail into a week of drama, and we fight like cats in a sack.  But I see shit in her that looks familiar, and she’s -- I’m no poet, I don’t know.  I don’t know words.  She’s no missing half of me or something, no one is.  I don’t need another half.  But there’s something about her that fits, and I like her and want her and love her, and I want to keep her happy for as long as I can.

J.

Rabiah,

I’m gonna put in paperwork to adopt the four youngest kids.  I’m a forty-year-old fighter with no wife and no history with children, so gods only know what’ll happen.  I’m doing it anyway.

I’d never have taken them in if you hadn’t said so.  Never.  You started all the good things.