Word and Breath (20 page)

Mikel nodded, looking infuriatingly pleased with himself.

Smyde looked anything but pleased. “Is that all you needed from me? I have a lot of work to do today.”

Largan waved him off.

Mikel was still leaning against the doorframe, and he didn’t move even as Smyde approached. For just a moment, there was a silent standoff between them. They clearly disliked each other, but Largan sensed even more than that in their expressions.

Mikel looked at Smyde as if he were nothing.

And Smyde looked like he wanted to murder the Soul-Breather.

Interesting, Largan thought idly.

Finally, Smyde managed to leave, but he had to push by Mikel bodily in order to do so.

It actually made Largan feel better—in the most ridiculous of ways.

At least he wasn’t the only one who hated to see Mikel appear in his office.

And at least there were other people who earned more of Mikel’s loathing and condescension than he did.

In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, the nod Mikel gave him as he left seemed almost,
almost
like respect.

***

Riana wasn’t sure how or why, but she and Connor had fallen back into their previous easy friendship without any difficulty at all. It didn’t seem natural, after so many years, but there wasn’t any awkwardness or stiffness between them at all.

She supposed she should resent his dropping out of her life without a word—after he’d claimed to be her friend. She still remembered the years she’d had an embarrassing crush on him. He was always so cute, so smart, so funny. He always made her feel special. He must have known about her infatuation, but he’d never alluded to it. After a while, Riana had grown up and realized relationships were more trouble than they were worth.

They had been good friends, though, and she had been hurt and upset when he’d first disappeared. Often, in the last three years, she’d worried about him, wondered if he was doing all right.

He’d cut her off completely, and she might have been angry about that. But he hadn’t been lying on a beach on some free island, drinking fruity drinks and living off his family inheritance. He’d sacrificed a lot for the movement he believed in—he’d lost more than she had in the interim—and she just couldn’t make herself resent him for it.

At least not now. Not with so much else going on.

She needed him. He felt safe and familiar, when nothing else in her life offered that anymore. She could relax around him in a way she couldn’t relax with anyone else. She couldn’t give that up right now—not to indulge selfish indignation over his abandonment.

So that morning, when she went over to his office to work on discovering what her grandfather had taught her regarding the Old Language, she didn’t let him apologize about dropping out of her life as he had.

He tried. Looked genuinely regretful as he explained it had nothing to do with his trust in her or the depth of his friendship with her.

It was nice that he tried to apologize, but she brushed it away with a smile. It didn’t matter. It was past. He was here now, and he was helping her.

He looked rather unsettled by her response, but he didn’t press the matter.

They spent the next three hours writing out the fragments of sentences she could remember from her grandfather’s lessons to her as a child.

Eventually, it was getting close to lunch, and she was exhausted and hungry and drained. Her memory was vague and blurry, and she wasn’t convinced she’d correctly remembered even the sentences they’d written out.

Connor was focused completely on the puzzle. She remembered this about him, how completely he became absorbed in whatever project held his attention. He had a couple of ink marks on the back of his left hand, and his collar was askew. He’d taken off his jacket an hour ago and rolled up his sleeves the way he always did when he was distracted. His hair was a mess—he’d tugged on it far too many times that morning.

He chewed on the end of the pen as he stared down at the pages lined up on the coffee table in front of them.

“What about this?” He pointed out the sentence she’d written about the rabbits swimming in a race across a pond. “Is this the way he spelled out ‘water’?”

She peered down at the word, written in her halting Old Language script. Everything was starting to look the same, and her head hurt. “I think so. It’s been so long since I’ve read the Old Language that I can’t be positive. Why?”

“It’s spelled wrong.” With the pen, he precisely added a few curved lines to the letters. “It’s supposed to look like this.”

Riana leaned over closer to the notebook pages. “I don’t know. I thought it was like I wrote it out. But maybe I just forgot.”

“Maybe. Or maybe that’s the way he taught it to you.”

“But why?” Riana groaned and rubbed her scalp, loosening her braids in the process. “It’s not like he was teaching me a different language. All of these sentences are basically the Old Language. None of this makes any sense.”

“Not yet. But we’ve only just started. Can you remember the end of this sentence here? The one about the turtles?”

“I can’t remember, Reed. I’m sorry. I don’t have the perfect memory you do. And it’s all starting to blur together.”

Connor sighed and put down the pen. “We’ll take a break.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Does your head hurt?”

“A little.” She lowered her hands, not wanting to complain about something so trivial when everyone was trying so hard to help her out.

That thought made her glance over to the clock on the desk, wondering how Mikel was doing.

“He’ll still be at the meeting,” Connor said softly, reading the direction of her thoughts.

“Yeah. I know. I just want him to…to hurry up.”

There was a long silence, as Connor’s blue eyes scanned her face. “You’ve gotten close to him.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not pitched with any particular interest. “Is there something there, do you think?”

Riana shot him a quick glance and saw nothing but mild kindness on his face. She was a little embarrassed to be talking about it, but she appreciated that he was trying to act like a friend.

Jannie was the only other person she’d been able to really trust with something so personal.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, there’s something there, I suppose. But I don’t know how much of it is real and…and lasting. His purpose in getting close to me originally was…was…”

It still hurt, thinking about it. It still felt so much like a betrayal.

“I know,” Connor murmured. He leaned back against the couch they both were sitting on and watched her with quiet reflection. His hands were relaxed in his lap. “His feelings now appear to be genuine.”

There was an odd note in his tone that made her eyes dart back to his face. But he still looked like his normal self—clever, sweet, and rather rumpled. “Yeah, I guess they are. But that makes it even harder. It’s just too much. I have so many other things to worry about that I can’t begin to even think it all through. And he, I mean, he wants…” She cringed and looked away, feeling a hot flash of confusion overwhelm her. “I don’t know.”

“Is he pressuring you to make some sort of decision?”

“No. He’s backed off. He must know it’s way too soon for me. I’m not a Soul-Breather who can know someone in an instant. I’m just a normal girl. But…” She flushed again, remembering Mikel’s silence and searching eyes last night as they left the meeting. “But it makes me feel weird. I know he wants me to respond the way I… the way I did before I knew who he was. And I can understand why. He’s upturned his life because of me. Of course, he’d want some hope that it was worth it.”

“All of that was his choice. You don’t owe him anything.” Again, there was no judgment in his tone, and his matter-of-factness made everything seem less intense and worrisome for Riana.

“I know. I know. I just wish it would all go away for a little while. It’s too much.”

Mikel wasn’t going to go away. That much she’d accepted. For whatever reason, irrationally, inexplicably, he was interested in her romantically, and he was going to great lengths to prove that to her.

“I suppose this advice won’t help very much, but try not to stress too much about it. Things like this have a way of working themselves out. Eventually, you’ll know whether or not this is something you want to pursue.”

Riana slanted Connor a little smile. “Thanks a lot. That’s very helpful.”

“Sorry. That’s all I’ve got.”

Laughing tiredly, Riana leaned over and gave him a half-hug.

She felt safe with him. In a different way than she felt with Mikel.

In her mind, Mikel was connected to strength and mystery and a hero-like capacity for rescue. Her instincts led her to turn to him for protection and a thrilling intimacy.

But the way she felt with Connor was different. It was safe in a comfortable, homey way. Like he was family.

Since her family had been ripped apart as a child, Jannie was the only other person she felt so close to.

She let out a long breath—trying to let go of some of the tension—when Connor put a friendly arm around her. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

“Likewise.”

She smiled at that Connor-like response. “It’s like having family again.”

She was speaking to herself as much as to him, but she felt a brief tension in his body that immediately relaxed. She looked up at him self-consciously, “Was that too weird?”

He gave a huff of laughter and settled his arm around her shoulders more securely. “No. It wasn’t weird at all. I agree.”

There was something vaguely bittersweet in his words and in the slight crack on the last word.

Riana suddenly remembered, with a sharp pang in her heart, that Connor had lost the closest member of his family two days ago.

The thought hurt—and hurt more as she realized he’d been putting aside his own grief to make her feel better.

She peered up at him again, but his expression was still mild and impassive. “Do you want to talk about it?”

It was a sign of what was so good—so honest and impressive—about Connor that he didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “Not really.”

“Are you sure?” She’d been leaning against his side, but now she pulled up enough to face him. One hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “It’s only fair. You’ve been so great about listening to all of my woes. I can return the favor.”

There was a little muscle twitching in his jaw, but his lips were soft and his eyes level as he shook his head.

She exhaled and turned away, leaning against him again. Closing her eyes, she just enjoyed the warmth and comfort of his body. Of his strength and heart.

“Jenson reminded me of you,” she said, after she heard Connor’s breathing slow down.

“Did he?”

He didn’t tense up again so she went on, “Yeah. And not just in the obvious ways, although your eyes were just the same.” Her throat clenched a little at the memory of Jenson’s eyes before he died. “He could always see right into the heart of the matter, just like you do. And he could put pieces together and see the whole without even trying. Just like you. He always seemed jaded. You know what I mean?” At his grunt of agreement, she continued, “But he wasn’t. At all. Not really. He really
believed
in things. He was going to tell me about them.”

Despite her attempt to stay quiet and peaceful, she got choked up at the end.

“He nagged me all the time,” Connor said, only a slight hoarseness revealing any emotion. “To not work all the time, to take more time for myself, to…to act on certain things he knew I wanted. He pretended to be an ironic, distanced observer of life. But he was really just a mother-hen.”

She didn’t turn to look at him, not wanting him to withdraw again. She scooted down a little lower, getting more comfortable and adjusting his arm around her like a wrap. “What was he like as a kid?”

Connor took a few deep breaths. She could hear them and feel them in his chest. “A lot the same. He was older than me, so I don’t remember him younger than ten. But he was always a smug know-it-all, trying to tell me how everything worked. I remember once—I was about six so he must have been around twelve—he convinced me to mow his parents’ lawn by telling me I was too big a weakling to do it all myself. So, of course, I had to meet the challenge. He stretched on the grass with a glass of lemonade as I pushed that lawnmower, red-faced and sweaty. And he kept saying, ‘You’re almost there. You’re almost there. Maybe you can do it after all.’”

Connor’s voice got more strangled as he told the story, until the last words were just a choked rasp.

Riana’s eyes flooded with tears, but she kept herself from crying out loud—not wanting to make Connor self-conscious.

He took off his glasses and dropped them on the side table with his free arm. “I can’t believe he got himself killed.”

Riana didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. She just grabbed his hand and squeezed it in hers.