POV - Azra'il
There are many ways for a man to demonstrate incompetence. Most of them are discreet, occurring in meetings or questionable financial decisions and conveniently ignored by everyone involved. Paul Greyrat, however, was a man who preferred the theatrical approach.
The scene unfolding in the side courtyard had all the elements of a classical tragedy: a determined protagonist, a simple task, and a sequence of events that strongly suggested the universe had opinions about the situation.
Paul was repairing the hole.
Or attempting to.
〈Eos, technical analysis of the structural repair progress.〉
[Specimen Paul initiated the process fifty-two minutes ago. Estimated progress: 12%. Additional damage caused during the process: 8%. Net result: 4% improvement at the cost of considerable pride.]
〈Admirable efficiency for someone whose profession involves splitting wood with a sword.〉
Rudeus was standing beside me, the two of us contemplating the work in progress with the respectful silence one reserves for natural disasters and school dance recitals. Paul had set the replacement plank crookedly for the third time, stepped back to assess, furrowed his brow with the intensity of a military strategist, and then struck with the hammer in the conviction of someone who believes that force compensates for geometry.
The plank remained crooked.
"He does know there is an instrument called a set square," said Rudeus, in a low voice, with the tone of someone genuinely trying to understand.
"He does," I confirmed. "He has chosen to disregard it."
"Why?"
"Because admitting he needs a measuring tool would be admitting that the first attempt was wrong. And the second. And the third." I looked at the visibly incorrect angle of the plank. "It is a matter of principle."
"That is completely irrational."
"It is completely human. They are different things."
Paul stepped back another pace to assess his work, tilting his head to the right as though a different viewing angle might make the plank less crooked by force of perspective. Then he sighed with the resignation of a man not yet ready to accept defeat, repositioned the hammer, and struck the nail with a precision that would have been impressive had he been striking the correct nail.
The hammer came down.
Missed the nail by two centimetres.
Found the thumb.
What followed was a sequence of words I had heard on battlefields, harbour taverns, and at least two imperial courts during particularly prolonged wars. Some of them I had not previously encountered in that specific combination, which was, objectively, a considerable creative achievement for a village knight.
〈Eos, catalogue that vocabulary. It may prove useful.〉
[Already catalogued. Your interdimensional collection of profanity now includes three new combinations from the local dialect.]
Rudeus looked at me with the expression of someone discovering that their father has more layers than previously calculated.
"Come along," I said, turning my back on the spectacle with the dignity of someone who knows when a scene has reached its climax and will not improve.
We went back inside and began climbing the stairs whilst the soundtrack of Paul and his feelings about carpentry tools continued echoing from the courtyard. Rudeus had the magic book tucked under his arm with the posture of someone who has a clear destination in mind.
"I'm going to my room to study," he announced, in the unnecessarily formal tone of someone declaring a plan nobody had asked for.
"Fascinating," I said.
"Aren't you going to study?"
"I have already memorised the entire book."
Rudeus looked at me. "You are making that up."
"Page thirty-two has a channelling diagram with the flow reversed and a footnote from the author explaining that the reversal is 'intentional for philosophical reasons,' which is the most elegant way I have ever seen someone use to say they made a mistake and did not wish to admit it." I looked at him. "Page fifty-seven has a medicinal tea recipe inserted in the middle of a chapter on water evocation with no explanation whatsoever for why it is there. I appreciated that."
Rudeus stared at me for a moment. "You memorised the entire book."
"As I said."
He processed the information with the expression of someone who keeps discovering new reasons to question their own perception of reality. Then he continued down the corridor with the renewed determination of someone who has decided the best available response is to study harder.
"Just don't explode the bedroom," I said, to his back.
He stopped.
"I am not going to explode the bedroom."
"I did not say you were going to. I said not to." I kept walking. "They are different things. One is a prediction, the other is a reasonable request."
"I have control—"
"You put a hole in a loft wall with a water spell."
"That was—"
"With water, Rudeus." I stopped and turned to face him with the expression of someone presenting evidence in court. "The gentlest element on the list. If you ever attempt fire without supervision I recommend doing so out of doors, preferably at a safe distance from any structure I subsequently need to use." I resumed walking. "And should you explode the bedroom, do not come to sleep in mine. You sleep in the corridor."
"You cannot banish me—"
"I am not banishing you. I am establishing that my room is not an available residential alternative." As I had no desire to be near him whilst he studied, I decided the best course was to go downstairs to the sitting room and find something to occupy myself. "They are different things."
The sound of Rudeus muttering something I decided not to ask Eos to translate accompanied my descent.
[He said "unbelievable" and three further words that have just entered your new vocabulary collection.]
〈He is learning from his father. Evolutionarily consistent.〉
The Greyrat sitting room had that particular quality of cosy wooden houses: the light came through the window at a golden angle that made everything slightly more peaceful than it deserved to be, the smell of the hearth fire mingled with that of clean fabric, and there was a functional silence that meant no disaster was currently in progress.
Zenith was in the large armchair by the window, with a pile of clothes beside her and Paul's shirt open in her lap, examining a hole in the shoulder with the professional expression of someone assessing a patient. Paul's work clothes were a study in structural optimism, the fabric always surviving one more wearing than it should, mended with the precision of hands that knew what they were doing.
I sat on the rug near her feet without announcing my arrival, which was simply my standard manner of arriving anywhere.
Zenith looked at me with the smile of someone accustomed to this. "Have you tired of watching your father repair the wall?"
"He is arguing with the hammer," I said. "I thought it best to leave before I felt obliged to take sides."
Zenith laughed, quietly, in the particular way of someone who does not want to encourage the remark but cannot help finding it amusing. "He will fix it."
"He will fix it crookedly," I agreed. "But he will fix it."
She looked at me with that expression of "you are very strange and I accept this completely" that had become her default response to my observations, and returned to the shirt with her needle.
Her sewing kit was on the floor beside me: a light wooden box with internal dividers organising spools of thread in various colours, needles of different sizes arranged in a worn red velvet pincushion, several pins, and small scissors with an ornate handle. The kind of kit that has lived in the same house for years and accumulated that quality of an object that belongs to the space as much as the furniture does.
"You may have a look if you like," said Zenith, without taking her eyes from the sewing. "Just mind the needles."
I made a vague gesture that meant simultaneously "thank you" and "I have survived things considerably more dangerous than sewing needles" and began examining the contents of the box without any declared purpose.
The threads were of reasonable quality by local standards. Nothing comparable to the natural silk I had worked with in other lives, but the twist was consistent and the colours had been fixed with some skill. I picked up a few spools, testing the texture between my fingers with the automatism of someone whose hands remember things the mind has decided to archive.
〈Eos.〉
[You are making the expression you make when something triggers skill memory. Shall I pull the relevant file?]
〈Out of curiosity.〉
[Handicraft file: Azra'il as documented artisan across forty-three lives. Painter in the ninety-eighth incarnation, awarded recognition in two imperial courts. Sculptor in life number 437, whose works survived at least three subsequent civilisations without anyone knowing who had made them. Tailor in the forty-first incarnation and in life number 659, exclusive supplier to two royal families. Most recurrently documented speciality: silk embroidery, with particular mastery of the Suzhou technique from the forty-seventh incarnation onwards.]
〈The forty-seventh.〉
[You were twenty-two years old in that life and spent fourteen hours a day for three years learning from a master who said your hands were "adequate but your patience was an offence to the art." You eventually surpassed the master. She never admitted this aloud, but you later found an entry in her diary that read: "the girl with the strange eyes is going to cost me my livelihood."]
〈I miss her.〉
Then something caught my attention.
It was an old shawl, at the bottom of the pile of clothes beside the armchair, folded with the care of something stored rather than discarded. The fabric had been pale blue at some point; now it was a faded and honest version of itself, with at least two visible patches along the edges and a weave that had loosened in places from so much use. It was not the most worn piece in the pile. It was the most loved, which is an entirely different category.
And I recognised that shawl.
It was the same one Zenith used to fold over the two of us when we were too small to regulate our own temperature, in those first months when the wicker cot was the entire world and the smell of clean fabric, herbs, and sunlight was the most constant thing in existence.
I took the shawl from the pile. Then I took the spools of thread I had set aside: blue in three different shades, white, a soft gold, and a pink that was more salmon than pink, which was better for what I had in mind.
I went to the most well-lit corner of the room, near the smaller window, sat on the floor with my legs crossed and the shawl in my lap, and began.
Zenith watched me for a moment with the smile of someone watching a child decide to play at being an adult. "What are you going to make?"
"Something," I said.
She waited for more information, received none, and returned to the shirt with the expression of a woman who had learnt to accept incomplete answers as her daughter's standard mode of communication.
The Suzhou technique begins with the preparation of the thread: separating the fibres into thicknesses finer than the original, working in layers, building the image from the inside outward like someone painting with light rather than pigment. My hands did this without my needing to think, with the muscle memory of hundreds of hours in a life that had ended longer ago than most civilisations on this continent had existed.
[Your mana channels are stable. Am I to assume that the motor precision is being lightly assisted by magical intention?]
〈Only enough to compensate for the fact that these hands are four years old.〉
[Technically three.]
〈Technically.〉
Zenith glanced in my direction twice whilst she worked. The first time, I was separating the threads with concentration. She smiled faintly and returned to her work with the serenity of a mother who had decided that as long as there were no screams and no blood, everything was perfectly fine. The second time, there was something different in the corner where I was sitting, but the afternoon light had shifted angle and she could not quite see what it was before I repositioned.
I worked.
The cherry blossom petals first, because they were the foundation of the composition: five petals per flower, each built in three layers of pink and white with the veins in an almost invisible gold, the kind that only appears when light catches the fabric at a certain angle and makes it look as though it is alive. The flowers were not perfect in the technical sense that a Suzhou master would demand, the hands were too small for the ideal tension and the local fabric lacked the receptiveness of true silk. But they were honest, which is a quality that fabric can possess when the person embroidering it is not trying to impress anyone.
Then the birds.
One large, with wings slightly open at the angle of something that is not departing but is not quite settled either, the exact space between movement and presence. Two smaller ones beside it, close enough to be within reach of the larger wings without that needing to be stated explicitly.
〈Eos.〉
[I know what you are about to ask, and the answer is: no, I will not record the reason behind the choice of composition without explicit authorisation.]
〈Thank you.〉
[You are welcome. Although it is reasonably apparent to any observer with access to the full context.]
〈For the record, I am doing this because the shawl was worn and it was the most suitable material for a technical exercise.〉
[Recorded. With the note that your vital signs throughout the process have been consistent with something I would categorise as "care," were you to permit me the use of that word.]
〈I do not permit it.〉
[Also recorded.]
I was finishing the second smaller bird when Zenith's voice came from the armchair, closer than I had calculated.
"Azra'il."
I looked up.
She had risen from the armchair without my hearing her, which was reasonable evidence that technical concentration still compromises my peripheral awareness even after millennia of training, and was standing two paces from me with Paul's shirt forgotten on the seat behind her. Her eyes were on the shawl in my lap.
I extended the shawl towards her without comment.
Zenith took it in both hands, slowly, with the care of someone receiving something fragile without anyone needing to tell them it is fragile. She looked at it for a time I did not measure, because I was paying attention to her expression rather than the duration.
Her fingers found the flowers first, touching the petals with a lightness of someone who does not want to disturb something that too much pressure might undo. She traced the gradation from pink to white, the almost invisible golden line in the veins, and I saw the precise moment she understood that this was not the embroidery of a child playing with thread.
Then they found the birds.
She stayed longer with the birds.
Her finger traced the outline of the open wings of the larger one with a slowness that was no longer that of someone examining technique. It was that of someone reading something. Then it moved down to the two smaller ones, close together, within reach of those wings, and I saw her breathing change rhythm before she realised it had changed.
Zenith said nothing for a long moment.
When she raised her eyes to me, there was something in them that I recognised from other lives on other faces. It was not surprise. It was the kind of thing that has no clean name in any language I know, and I know many, that specific instant when a person receives something they did not know they needed and understands, with the full weight of comprehension, what was held inside the gesture.
Zenith's eyes were bright.
She blinked once, as though reorienting, and then blinked again, and this time a tear slid from the corner of her eye with the silent betrayal of tears the person had not planned to shed.
[Your vital signs are doing interesting things.]
〈Do not report my own vital signs to me without being asked.〉
[New policy. Recorded. Though I note that you have not looked away from her at any point during the past forty-seven seconds.]
〈Unnecessary monitoring.〉
[I agree. Entirely unnecessary.]
"Azra'il," said Zenith, in a voice that had gone smaller than usual, in the way voices go when the throat is doing extra work. "You made this."
It was not a question. I answered it nonetheless.
"The shawl was worn," I said, in the most neutral voice in my repertoire. "I thought it could be improved."
Zenith looked at me for a moment with those eyes that were still brighter than they ought to have been. Then she did something I had not calculated: she bent down, wrapped both arms around me with the shawl still in her hands, and stayed there for a few seconds that I decided not to measure or comment upon.
She smelt of sunlight, clean herbs, and healing magic.
As she always did.
Then she released the embrace slowly, straightened up, and turned her face slightly to one side with the discreet gesture of someone doing something with their hand they would rather not have remarked upon.
She dried her eyes with the back of her index finger. Then she drew a slow breath with the quiet composure of a woman who had decided she had been sufficiently emotional for one afternoon and it was time to move forward.
She looked at the shawl one final time. Then at me.
I looked back at her with the most neutral expression in my repertoire, and then she called out.
"LILIA!"
Zenith's voice carried through the house with an energy I had until then associated exclusively with medical emergencies.
Hurried footsteps came from the kitchen. Lilia appeared in the doorway with an expression prepared for the worst, her eyes scanning the room for the source of the problem, her hands already in the position of someone about to need to do something urgent.
She found Zenith standing in the middle of the room holding a shawl with an expression that was clearly not one of emergency.
Lilia's posture descended two floors of readiness. "My lady, what—"
"Look." Zenith extended the shawl towards Lilia with both hands, as though presenting evidence. "Look what Azra'il has done."
Lilia approached with the cautious expression of someone still uncertain whether she ought to have run in quite such a hurry. She took the shawl, looked at the embroidery, and then went quiet for a period I classified as informatively long.
She turned the shawl over to examine the reverse. Then the front again. She brought the fabric to the window light, tilting her head to catch the angle at which the gold thread appeared in the petals.
"This is..." Lilia began, and stopped, which was notable for a woman who rarely found herself without words. "This is master-level work. I have never seen anything like it outside of—" she stopped again, reorienting. "The noblewomen of Roa have expensive embroidery on their ceremonial gowns and it does not come close to this finish. That gradation in the petals..." she touched the fabric with her fingertips. "How did you do this with these threads?"
I shrugged with the naturalness of a child who does not fully understand the scope of what they have produced. Which was, for the internal record, one of the most comfortable performances in my repertoire, because it required only that I remain quiet.
"Can I learn to do this?" asked Zenith, still looking at the shawl with that expression.
"It is a lengthy technique," I said. "But the foundation is not complicated."
"Will you teach me?"
〈Eos, probability of my regretting teaching Suzhou embroidery to the inhabitants of this house.〉
[Calculating... low. The technique requires patience and fine motor coordination. Zenith has both. Lilia almost certainly does as well. The primary risk is that they become proficient and you lose the local monopoly.]
〈That is not a risk. That is the objective.〉
"I can teach the basics," I said.
Zenith and Lilia looked at each other with the expression of two women simultaneously arriving at the same conclusion regarding the social potential of a skill that nobody else in the region possessed.
"The women of the village," said Lilia, in a slightly different voice, the voice of someone making calculations, "have never seen anything like this."
"Never," agreed Zenith, with a smile that I would classify, with all due respect, as mildly predatory.
〈Eos.〉
[Yes?]
〈Note that Zenith Greyrat, beneath the appearance of a gentle and peaceful housewife, possesses considerable competitive instincts when the right territory is engaged.〉
[Added to the file. With the observation that the talent for concealment appears to be a family trait.]
I looked at the shawl in Zenith's hands, now held with the specific care of something that had moved from the category of "worn object" to "kept object." The birds in the fabric caught the afternoon light in precisely the way I had calculated they would.
It was technically satisfying.
〈That is all I shall record on this matter.〉
[Understood. The file remains open should you change your mind.]
〈I will not change my mind.〉
[Of course not.]