Fess up

I scrambled wildly to remember everything I'd said in the last few moments—for an instant I considered walking back on the whole thing, playing it off, and attempting some reasonable excuse for having just had a conversation with a blank wall—except I’d also waved at someone who wasn’t there, and then asked if she was his relation.

We’d been so busy lately that I hadn’t made it to the temple for my normal psychesuppressants, and I had meant to go tomorrow now that we were on our break, and it had only been two days without, but—well—fuck!

If I hadn’t been so cocksure showing off my Csoglaran, I would have realized quicker not to acknowledge that woman. “Uh…” I felt a cold sweat spring up on my brow. “Curry—” I said, then switched to Tetran, **** back my fear at being caught so outright like this. “I’m sorry, I know I should have told you about this sooner, only it’s just that people get a bit funny about it, or worse, a bit creepy, or they always think I’m a bit daft after that—and I... like you pretty well, so I was going to tell you, I really promise, only I thought I’d be able to wait for a more right time, and I haven’t been to the temple to get the—”

They exchanged a long look, because I was confusing things even further by babbling instead of just having out with it already.

I was suddenly near tears. “—suppressant potions,” I finished lamely. “Look,” I pleaded, “I, uh, let most people think the reason I grew up in the home is I was a bastard or an orphan, but—” I glanced at his grandmother, wondering whether she was about to completely change her mind about me for a second time—stereotypically, Csoglarans could be on the superstitious side. “—really it’s because my parents had to give me up after they couldn’t break me of chatting to people who weren’t properly there. I was four already but I wasn’t very quick to catch on what dead was supposed to mean.”

I chanced another look up at Curry and my heart sank to see a frown creasing his ordinarily cheerful countenance. “I know—and I should have told you right away instead of putting it off—I understand you’ll want to put in for a different partner,” I said, because it would be easier for us both if I just got out in front of the thing before he had a chance to say the words himself. “But… would you only mind waiting to tell anybody exactly why?” I begged. “Whoever I get I’d rather tell them myself. It’s such poor luck something happened before I could explain it to you.” I raised my eyes to him, knowing I must look totally unhinged from the strain of **** back all my sick regret at knowing I had lost such an excellent watch partner so soon on. I’d delivered this little speech very fast, though, and apparently that was the only thing holding my feelings back. Now I felt a single treacherous tear skidding down my cheek, which I was too dispirited even to wipe away.

Curry stared at me like he had never heard anything so mad in all his life. I looked down at my feet, **** back a sob, because I was an idiot who had outed myself as if I had no experience at all ignoring dead people, and now I would seem like one of those people who just cried all the time, which was very unfair, because I wasn’t.

“Put in for somebody else, what, are you being serious right now?”

I looked up, confused why he wasn’t following the script.

“I want to work in serious crimes one day—and I had a look over your watch careers form so I know you do too. So if we both want to make detective… can you even think of anything that would make us better at homicide work than one of us chatting to dead people?” His face spread into a huge grin. “Besides, I like you. I don’t want some other randomly assigned jackass. I want my randomly assigned jackass.”

I stared back at him, not adjusting quickly enough to this unexpected turn, then glanced at his grandmother, who was watching us both with her sharp gaze. “Um. I would prefer my current jackass, too,” I managed after a moment, wiping quickly at my damp eyes.

Curry grinned even wider and pulled me into a sideways hug. “So that’s sorted, then. Stop panicking.”

My heart was thudding in my chest. Of course, I burst into humiliating tears. “Um… thanks,” I managed after a moment. “I’m—I’m better than this, usually. There are suppressant potions I normally keep up with, to avoid having to register. Ordinarily those tamp it down. But the academy is in the second ward so it’s hard lately to make it to the Rook’s temple where I get them—so—I ran out—they had us doing those rounds—but now that we’re back in the fourth ward it’ll be more under control. I don’t know how useful it’ll actually be to us, since with the suppressants I mostly can only see them, a bit, not talk or anything—” I realized I was babbling and ought to wrap this up. “I promise I’m not just fucking you around—”

“—shut up, dummy. Nobody needs to know about it but us.” He scuffed his hand over my hair, making a mess of the proper, grown-up bun I was trying out today, but I was so relieved it didn’t even cross my mind to be annoyed. “And if you ever need me to go to the temple of Rava and get your stuff for you, just say so. Partner,” he added, as if newly trying out the word.

I managed a feeble little laugh, coming down from my scare. “I—all right. I—you’re sure?”

He shrugged good-naturedly. “Who else will tell me honestly how this beard looks, weeks from now? Without you I might wander around looking both stupid and try-hard.” He cut me a little grin. “I’m not emotionally cut out to live in that kind of suspense.”

Had anyone in the watch ever had such a good partner as mine, right out the gate?

Curry’s grandmother had remained quiet through this exchange, which made me worry she was about to fix me with the evil eye and drive me out of her house. “You see someone?” she asked, expression serious.

“Well, saw,” I said nervously. “A woman. Younger than you—looks a little like you, though, same curly hair—so that’s why I thought she must be an aunt.”

“What did she say?” Curry asked.

I glanced at his grandmother. “She laughed, said I put her ‘mam’ in her place,” I reported reluctantly. “I know your mother—just recently passed—only I wasn’t thinking on my feet just then.”

Curry and his grandmother, who seemed both struck dumb, gave each other a long look.

“And it’s not always that people haven’t moved on,” I rushed to explain. “Sometimes they just sense when things are going on, and come back, to have a sort of look about. She’s probably with Rava, most of the time.”

His grandmother looked so sad just then that I felt an awful pang of guilt at having dredged up something so painful.

“Oh, Nan,” Curry said, and let me loose to move around the table and pull her over to him in a hug. “It’s only been a season or so,” he said to me over the crown of her silver speckled dark curls. “We still miss her pretty bad.” There was a short pause. “Did she say anything else?”

“Um—not much. She was just—jaunty, and funny. Upbeat,” I offered. “She said to tell her when dinner was ready. She… didn’t want you to use too much horseradish.”

“That’s our Hildy.” Curry’s grandmother switched us back to Csoglaran, then let out a shaky-sounding laugh. “Come here, little witch.” She motioned to me, and when I moved uncertainly around to their side of the table she and Curry both pulled me into a hug with them.

I tensed a moment—for I had rarely ever been hugged by one person, let alone two—then relaxed into it, because it was pleasant, if unfamiliar. Curry’s nan smoothed my hair down with one hand where he’d messed it up, while I tried not to care how nice that felt and how much I wanted this moment to go on forever.

“Abandoning a little child because they have the sight,” she muttered. “Fucking barbarians.”

Curry looked up, as if to object to this language, then seemed to change his mind. After a moment his grandmother planted a kiss on his arm, and looked apologetically at me. “I've got your hair all floury.”

I shrugged, not entirely trusting my voice yet.

When I didn’t speak right away, she cupped my cheek in one flour-covered hand. “So I guess I’d better mess up your face to match,” she told me seriously, with barely a trace of orneriness.

I snorted despite myself.

Curry scooped up a bit of flour from the table and lifted it up, sifting it through his fingers so a light dusting of white sprinkled over her head like fine snow. “I thought you liked things to match, Nan,” he said sweetly when she wrinkled her nose and released me from her hug. “Did I get that wrong?”

“So you’re just going to put up with this young clown?” she asked me as if he weren't there. “What kind of a plan is that?”

“I guess I could ask you the same,” I said, getting my bearings a bit.

“Well I have to, he’s family and he has this, ugh, dead mother, what's your excuse?”

“Nan,” Curry objected, his tone scandalized as I let out a surprised little burst of laughter.

“I guess I just… like him,” I said. “I never had anybody but nuns to teach me any better.”

His grandmother gave me a full smile, before she reached up and Curry slouched obligingly to let her tousle his hair before straightening back up to his full height. “Well, come here, youngsters,” she said, still in Csoglaran. “Let’s us finish dinner.”