Idol of Glass (13 page)

Eighteen: Perspicacity

At a glance, she could have been Ra's twin, though on close inspection, there were obvious differences between them. Huddling in Jak's four-poster bed, curled among the quilts, she resembled the man called Ahr—the nose, the mouth, the color of the eyes without question. But she possessed an indefinable quality that had made it easy to mistake her for Ra. The hair had been the final trickery. In the glow of candlelight, it was Ahr's kerum brown, but the length was simply Meeric. On the moor, lit only by starlight, it had appeared to be the rich ebony that was the final sum of Ra.

Jak sat before her on the bed, overcome and unable to speak. Ahr could only have returned because Ra had willed it. What Ra had termed “renaissance” couldn't just happen spontaneously to an ordinary human being. The spirit needed time to renew, just as the physical elements needed time to break down and rejoin the greater fabric of the universe, and it frightened Jak what might have been compromised with the lingering ashes left behind. Ahr wasn't meant to be part of Jak's lifetime, not anymore, and Jak had been grievously resigned. To think otherwise would have been a daily cutting at the wound. But Ra had apparently spoken, and here she was.

Jak clung to her hand, precisely Ahr's, amazed. This was the Ahr whom Ra had seen in the street, and it was no wonder she'd captured the heart of a god. Jak needed to maintain the connection of touch to be certain she was real.

Ahr stirred after a bit and made a soft sound of distress, drawing her feet up as though beginning to feel the thaw. They'd bundled her here while she trembled from the cold, heating stones in the fire to wrap in blankets around her. She'd given no sign of awareness of them, locked in a palsy of shock. The others, baffled and without answers, had long since retired for the night, but Jak, understandably, had remained on this vigil.

Now, after midnight, Ahr removed the lifeline that was her hand from Jak's, and the blue-jet eyes focused at last on the one who'd found her.

“Ahr.” Jak spoke softly, almost afraid to utter the word.

Ahr tilted her head. “
Kuthísch?
”
Who is.
Jak didn't know if this meant “who is Ahr?” or “who are you?” Either was troubling. In any case, it wasn't Mole.

“It's Jak. You know me.”

Ahr blinked at Jak as though this meant nothing to her. She pulled the blanket closer and tucked her arms into one another beneath it over a cotton undershirt of Jak's, surveying the room as though taking its inventory. Minimalist that Jak was, there was little to survey.

“Do you know who you are?” Jak struggled to find the Deltan equivalent. “
Sehta—sehta kuthíschta
?”

Ahr studied Jak, showing interest at the sound of recognizable words. She pondered the question as though uncertain of the answer. “
Maísch mene Ahr.
”

Jak was unfamiliar with this construction, but it at least contained her name. “Do you know me?
Ma sehta
?”

Ahr peered at Jak in an apparent earnest attempt to answer this question. “
Maóvetseh
.” She gave Jak an apologetic shrug. Jak would have to be content with this. Ahr wished to know Jak. It was better than nothing.

“Jak.
Maísch
Jak.”

Ahr nodded. “
Ischvetsehta,
Jak.”
An honor to know you.
Jak stifled a pang at this impersonal greeting.

“You don't remember me. Yet you remember Ra.”

Ahr's eyes were riveted on Jak's the instant the sacred word had been uttered. “Ra?” She swung her legs out of the bed. “
Katísch
Ra?”

“Not here.” Jak bit out the words tersely, rising, acutely injured by Ahr's devotion to the one who'd killed her, and unable to contain it. “Remember me and maybe I'll tell you.”

Ahr pursued Jak to the door, anxious and grasping. “Ra!” Her voice was plaintive. This was apparently the one thing she knew, and it was above all else. She must have Ra.

“
Nai
Ra!” Jak snapped at her, pain manifesting as anger, and shook her off. “I will not give you Ra. Search your renaissanced head and find her yourself.” Jak opened the door and went out, shaken, knowing this was pure spiteful cruelty that Ahr didn't deserve, but unable to stop.

Ahr followed and stood in the corridor before the doorway, striking a picture straight out of Temple Ra: the maiden under the arch. “
Naiahlmánzelman
?”

“Never,” Jak confirmed. “Jak or Ra.” There was a painful lump in Jak's throat at the certainty of whom Ahr would choose once she understood. Even restored, Ahr would choose Ra. Jak was deliberately courting pain. Jak turned away and left her standing in her substitute Rhymanic arch, half-naked, grief-stricken, lost. It was exactly how Jak felt.

“Jak or Ra,” Ahr repeated carefully, arresting Jak's stride. Jak looked over one shoulder at her, pained by the pristine renaissanced beauty. “
Isch
Jak
mene midt
?”

Jak swallowed over a painful lump. “Yes. Jak
isch midtlif.
” Was it fair to use this term when they'd never spoken of it? It felt true—“friend of my heart”, “lover”—and Merit, who'd known Ahr best, had believed it.

“
Ai
,” said Ahr. Jak turned away, unable to bear the look in Ahr's eyes.

The stranger was walking away from her once more, into the dimly lit center of the little stone warren, and after a brief hesitation, Ahr followed, her bare feet silent on the weave of the carpet runner. The hallway was lit by a few tallow candles in simple sconces on the wall, and at the end of it, a low fire glowed, left on the central hearth some time ago. Jak was standing before it, prodding it with a poker, the dying glow turning the tips of the dusty fawn hair into corn silk. She stared at Jak intently, trying to place this person who seemed urgently important and yet was not Ra. Ra, who must be had at all costs. This Jak wanted her to choose between the two. She was becoming certain she couldn't bear the loss of either.

All at once, Ahr knew she'd made some terrible mistake at the moment of her death. She'd chosen wrongly
—
the same choice
—
and wounded Jak. She wounded Jak again, here, with her invocation of Ra. There could be no compromise. Ahr watched Jak brushing a stray summer-dust strand of hair behind one ear and knew she loved this person, though she could remember nothing of the time in which they'd been together.

Jak had been waiting here at her bedside, unsleeping—how long? Jak had found her on the moor where she'd come to herself in the bitter cold. She was alive because of Jak. Jak had carried her.

“
Midtlif
.” She spoke softly from the edge of the fire-lit room. Jak turned, eyes overflowing with an intense relief. It was clear Jak believed Ahr had remembered. To Ahr, it didn't matter. Jak was
midtlif.
It was without doubt.

Jak dropped the poker by the rack of irons as Ahr approached. “You know me.”

Ahr nodded, though she didn't know what this meant. She put out her hand and touched the fire-warmed face as she stood before Jak. “
Nai Ra
,” she promised, though the words drove nails into her heart.

Jak grabbed her and kissed her hair, and Ahr moved the hair aside and offered her mouth. The feel of Jak's lips against hers was unfamiliar but absolute. This was right. The sensation of touch against her untouched skin drove shivers of unexpected need through her. She wanted to feel this on every part of her. She'd been denied Jak, she was certain, and it was suddenly urgent that not another moment pass without knowing and being known.

“Lie with me,” she whispered in Deltan, pulling Jak down to the stones before the hearth. “Quickly, before another life is over.” She felt she must be nothing but a mayfly, as if the span of life might be only an instant.

Jak pulled back, but Ahr stretched against the stones and urgently directed Jak's hand to the uncovered brush of sable beneath the hem of the borrowed cotton shirt.

“Quickly! Now!” Ahr tugged at the buttons at Jak's waist.

Her palm was flattened by one of Jak's in an adamant gesture. Ahr wriggled instead out of her own shirt and pulled Jak down against her naked flesh.

Jak curled a hand around Ahr's breast and nestled into the arch of her throat beneath her temple, mouth traveling down the slope of Ahr's throat and collarbone to her breast and closing around it with a moan. Ahr answered with its echo, rising and twisting beneath Jak's mouth, her hips dancing upward to try to reach Jak's body, still elusive.

“Enter me!” Ahr begged, but Jak's mouth closed over hers to hush the Deltan words. Ahr pressed upward even more madly, her stomach for a moment touching Jak's, and drew Jak's hand once more to the place where she desired it. “Enter me,” she moaned again, and Jak complied.

It hadn't taken a Deltan scholar to understand what Ahr wanted. She'd been like a hot spark from the fire, writhing and pleading beneath Jak on the tiled hearth. Jak had ignored every sane thought that said they shouldn't do this, and had given in at last.

Ahr slipped back against the warm stone when she was satisfied, breathing heavily, her own sweat and Jak's dancing on her. Jak fell beside her, holding the familiar-yet-unfamiliar body close.

“So you missed me,” said Jak with an irrepressible grin. The unconsummated night with Ahr a year ago during the snowstorm, after the revelation of Ra's identity and Ahr's connection to her, had been an event of tension and discomfort, Jak feeling an unreasonable anxiety over Ahr's touch, and on some level desiring to humble him. This, tonight, with the renaissanced Ahr, had been mutual desire. Jak didn't know whether it was Ahr's sex or the death of the “rabbit” at Shiva's touch that had changed this between them. It hardly mattered now. Ahr was here again. Ahr was a woman. And Ahr had renounced Ra.

Her chest still heaving, Ahr sat up with a conspicuous rumble in her stomach, and Jak laughed. “Hungry?”

She smiled, kissing Jak as though it was Jak she still hungered for. “Hungry,” she agreed, copying the sound of the word.

Jak helped her to her feet and reached for the discarded shirt, but Ahr was dragging Jak away already in search of the room where food could be found. Jak, pulled along, steered her eventually toward the kitchen, where Ahr discovered the leftovers of the night's feast—another Heart of Winter Ahr had managed to miss.

The sideboard was soon spread with sweet cakes, qirhu cheese, black bread and nut paste, and Ahr devoured it with the relish of one who had never eaten before. Putting some wine and spices on the stove to simmer, Jak watched her experience the food, recalling both the exuberance of Ra's first meals and the feast Jak and Ahr had eaten together, conjured by Ra, during the fateful storm.

Chin in hands, at the table opposite Ahr, Jak pondered her and mused aloud. “How did it happen? It has to have been Ra's doing, but why this way?”

Ahr paused at the sound of the name, and Jak regretted its mention, but Ahr lowered her head once more to the presently more important food in her hands.

The fragrant smell of winter wine was rising and Jak turned back to the stove to fill the kettles. “
Ta aovet
nutmeg?” Jak asked, tapping the spice against the grater, but Ahr was absorbed in the bread she was scooping into the nut paste. “Ahr,” said Jak, but still she didn't raise her head. “
Ahr
.”

Ahr looked up, curious. “
Kesuth portemasta Ahr
?”

Jak came away from the stove, the nutmeg forgotten in one hand. Ahr didn't know her name. But she'd remembered. She'd come to Jak and spoken with recognition. They'd been intimate. She
must
know herself.

“
Taísch
Ahr,” Jak insisted. “You know.
Taseh.
”

Ahr set down her bread. “
Maísch
mene
ahr
.” She emphasized the Deltan word “mine” before the un-emphasized word “
ahr
”. This wasn't a proper name after all.

“
Mene ahr?
” Jak repeated, feeling as hopeless as in the early days of trying to communicate with Merit.

Ahr put her hand to her bare chest. “
Ma
,”
she said. “
Meneahr
.” She let her hand hover over Jak, respectfully careful not to touch, already attuned to Jak's unspoken reticence in that direction. “
Ta. Teneahr
.”

“Yourself,” said Jak, understanding at last that
ahr
was a word with separate meaning. “Jak, Ahr.” Jak touched each of them respectively, fingers lingering on Ahr's pristine skin. “
Taísch
Ahr.
Taísch
Jak's Ahr.” It was painfully clear now that this woman, who was Ahr, whom Jak loved, was entirely without memories, except for the language of her original birthplace. It was as if Jak had been intimate with a stranger—and what intimacy it had been. “
Nai masehta
.” Jak frowned. “You don't know me at all, do you?”

“
Midtlif
,”
said Ahr comfortingly, taking Jak's hand. And she believed this, because Jak had said so.

Running footsteps sounded in the hall, and Jak looked up to see Sevine, in a shirt of Geffn's, her mouth stopped in the middle of a muffled laugh. She glanced at Ahr and swiftly away with a blush at the sight of Ahr's unclothed body. Geffn rounded the corner behind her and caught her around the shoulders, nipping at her ear as he embraced her before realizing they weren't alone. Sevine looked awkwardly at Jak, holding the collar of the oversized shirt at her throat.

“Well,” said Jak. “If this isn't just shit on toast.”

Gamely ignoring Jak's vulgar expression, Geffn smiled at Ahr. “It's good to see you, Ahr.”