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Here’s a list of things Kuwei can’t stand, in order.
- Damp tombs in miserable graveyards with a group of teenage criminals for company.
- Being spoken to, or about, like he doesn’t exist past the rare moments when one of the others deigns to address him, or give him something to do.
- Wylan van Eck, in particular, talking to him like that.
Because really, what the hell does Wylan know about it?
Kuwei’s life is increasingly turning into a series of being taken from one place to the next, hidden away until someone decides he’s of more use elsewhere, and the whole thing starts over, ad infinitum. He’s tired of it. Tired of feeling like a lost piece of a puzzle instead of a person, tired of being looked at and looked over and not seen. And saints help him, he’s tired of being grudgingly kept like a deliberate inconvenience in places he didn’t ask to be.
It’s tempting to say he wants to go home, but home is a foreign concept, somewhere that’s supposed to feel safe and good but he’d sooner die than be taken back to Shu Han, and Kuwei wishes he had any kind of home to return to at all instead of just more places to hide. Home died with his father. He watched it get shot. Any remaining point of safety, of stability, bled to death in Ahmrat Jen. It’s exhausting and lonely and he can’t remember what it’s like to not feel scared, so if he wants to waste time being sullen and moody and pushing boundaries just to see if he can, then it’s absolutely none of Wylan’s business.
Here’s another thing Kuwei can’t stand: Wylan van Eck, talking to him like that, with his voice and Kuwei’s face. What kind of cosmic joke is that ?
They’re supposed to be going over the chemistry, once again, for the as-yet-unnamed weevil. Progress is frustratingly slow, but it’s preferable by far to listening to Wylan pretend he has any idea what he’s talking about.
“You are too young to be so condescending.” Kuwei doesn’t look up as he speaks, keeps his eyes fixed on the page in front of him and hopes that’s the end of the conversation. Of course, because this is his life now, he’s not that lucky.
Wylan sighs, pushing their work to one side. “I’m not trying to be condescending.”
It comes to you naturally, then. He’s not trying to start an argument. He knows Wylan didn’t mean anything by it. But, see above, so Kuwei will take it how he damn pleases. It’s about the only control he has over anything, these days, but small victories are better than none. Chemical formulas scribbled in his notebooks. The ability to say no even when there’s no choice but to ultimately say yes.
There are Shu warships in the harbour. People in the Stadhall, this very minute, having followed rumours of parem (of Kuwei’s own unlikely liberation) to Ketterdam. Everything feels very cold. The world is closing in on him.
Homesickness is a pointless feeling when there’s nowhere left to think of as home, wasn’t anywhere in the first place. Still, if he has to name the feeling, homesickness is close enough. A longing for familiarity, for the brush of his father’s hand through his hair or the stray cat that used to sit outside their front door.
Anything.
“Let’s take a break from this,” Wylan says, and Kuwei wordlessly gathers up the notebooks he’s been working from and moves to the other end of the tomb, flopping down in the corner. he can feel Wylan’s eyes on him the whole time. Looking up, though, would mean having to look back at himself staring at him , which Kuwei doesn’t want to deal with in the slightest, so he doesn’t.
He starts flicking through his journal instead. There’s nothing much to write, less he wants to read, but it gives him something to do.
The tomb is spacious, as far as tombs go, but with all of them inside, it often feels crowded. It’s not often Kuwei actually finds himself wanting everyone to be there, but everyone, it appears, has jobs to do outside , which leaves him and Wylan and the work they’re not doing.
People and crowdedness would be preferable, he thinks.
Or this would be alright, if only Wylan could go back to ignoring him, because now he just feels more on edge than he did before. Silences shouldn’t be this loud.
“This must be strange for you too, huh?”
….Fine. Looking up to see himself on the other side of the room is exactly as disconcerting as Kuwei knew it would be, but apparently, this is just how the day’s going to go. There’s nothing much to say to that, though, so he shrugs and fixes his eyes on a spot somewhere behind Wylan’s head.
Wylan looks every bit as uncomfortable with the conversation as Kuwei feels, but for reasons unknown, decides to keep going. “We’re working to get this fixed as soon as we can. Once the weevil’s working, we’ll get Inej back, and you can go–”
“–to Ravka.” Not to Novyi Zem or the Southern Colonies. Not forever, anyway. Logically, Kuwei knows his options for leaving Ketterdam are the Southern Colonies or nothing. But still, one day… it’s one thing he’s not willing to give up on yet.
Wylan knows what Kaz said as well as Kuwei does, but he doesn’t argue the point. Only offers an uncertain “It’s for the best.”
Sure it is.
Kuwei’s getting tired of everyone else deciding that for him.
He can’t stop thinking about those Shu warships, the drüskelle contingent, about every other reason he can’t step outside the tomb and a choice between either death or being shipped off to some other unfamiliar place devoid of friends or allies. Or, worse, to somewhere familiar, full of enemies.
It had seemed just bearable when his father was alive. Now there’s no point of reference, no clear way forward, just…. whatever this is.
“You’ll be safe,” Wylan continues, and safety is as much a foreign concept as home but if it exists, Kuwei thinks it might look an awful lot like a parem antidote. It might look something like Ravka.
Go somewhere. Start over. Ad infinitum.
Kuwei stands, walks back over to the table. Picks up the small vial that’s supposed to bring down the Van Eck empire and holds it up to the dim light. “I think I know how we can refine this. Maybe… tell me what you were saying earlier?”
It’s a poor distraction, but it refocuses the conversation to the task at hand and Wylan doesn’t protest. By the time Kaz and the others return, they’re actually somewhere close to a solution.
At least for the weevil.
The rest can come later.