Free Ariah by B.R. Sanders Page A

“Let’s get something to eat. There are things we should discuss.”
    He took me to a cafe in the Tinker’s Borough. It was strange, because the place was so thoroughly Semadran, but no one in it so much as raised an eyebrow at the two of us. It was strange to be in a place among my own where I was no longer notable. Over familiar food, Dirva tried to speak to me. He couldn’t for a very long time. He was as emotional as I had ever seen him, and emotional in a quiet, tightly-controlled way. A Semadran way. I gave him the space to marshal himself. “Will the squat house suffice?” he asked.
    “ As long as it doesn’t collapse, I suppose so,” I said. He laughed, and I felt a wave of relief wash over me.
    He wrote two addresses down one a slip of paper and handed them to me. “The top one is my parents’ place. The bottom is where I am staying. Should you need me, I will be at one or the other.”
    “ You’re not staying with your parents?”
    “ No, I’m not.” He said it with a finality, which precluded further conversation. Dirva sighed. He had not eaten much more than a few bites, but he pushed his plate away. “We won’t be here very long.”
    I heard what he wanted me to hear. I heard what he could not bring himself to say. “I am sorry.”
    “ It is what it is.” He was quiet for some time. The counter-minder came and cleared away the plates. She returned with a glass of water for me. “You’ve met my sisters and my younger brother. You don’t have to meet anyone else if you’d rather not. But if you would not be opposed to it, I would welcome you to meet the rest of my family.”
    “ Yes, of course.”
    He nodded. Then, he caught my eye. “I bid you remember they are not Semadran. I know you know that. Between Abira and Sorcha and Cadlah I am certain you know that, but remember it. My family is not like yours.”
    “ I will remember.”
     
    * * *
     
    Dirva’s family was bound together by their traditions. The children orbited wildly, swinging out away from and back again to their parents again in settled rhythms. It was tradition for the children to strike out and join the Natives when they grew testy and adolescent. It was tradition for them to scrape a living in some half-illegal or wholly illegal way. They were a defiant, willful group: smart and crafty, street-seasoned, full to the brim of tempered bravado. It was tradition for them to have dinner with their parents once a week. These traditions were sacred: they were the glue that held the family together. Dirva methodically, intentionally, broke every single tradition he could. He was the only one to avoid the squat house. He sought out a formal education in the Semadran schools of the West Quarter. He left the family, left the City, and didn’t return for twenty-five years.
    The family dinners were deeply private; to be brought to one meant you were adopted into the family. My closeness with Dirva and my growing friendship with Sorcha granted me entrance. It was there I met the rest of them: Dirva’s parents, his da, his older brother Falynn, and Amran, a man who I can only describe as Falynn’s other half though they were not married. Dirva’s father was a full red elf, old yet spry. He was a tender man, a man who doted on his children, but there was a coolness, an uneasiness between him and Dirva. They circled each other like wary animals, both afraid the other was about to strike. There was love between them, but it was a broken thing, something shattered long ago and never fully repaired. Dirva’s mother was the unquestioned head of the household. She was an improbable scientist—street-born, abandoned, illiterate until nearly adulthood, but she’d been taken under the wing of an academically minded half-Magi man in the City and had produced volumes of work on the mathematics of time. She could not seem to utter a sentence without a curse word in it. She had a total lack of patience with everyone around her. Dirva