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The full weight of silence seemed to press against the very walls of the room, as if the violent cacophony of their noises had been a tide forcefully washing in only to retire after a while, sapping all energy from the space and leaving only ringing emptiness in its wake.
Riki’s frantic gulps of air had shifted from a desperate frenzy to a calmer and calmer rhythm, until their rise and fall could be barely heard, even with the closed windows muting the never-ceasing buzz of the city below.
Once more Iason had not left. Not yet, at least.
So high up over the streets the metal and glass spires of Apatia were washed in livid moonlight, only the flash of the occasional hover-car breaking its cold hue since the brightness of the city surrendered to darkness a few storeys under the apartment, after having blended in several delicate layers of twilight.
Still inside Riki’s room the shine from the tablet Iason was holding easily overpowered all other lights, haloing the Blondie’s head in a cold glow and covering everything else in shadows, except for the glimmer reflected in Riki’s dark eyes.
The mongrel was awake and observing, with unusually intent stillness, Iason’s face as the Elite studied his documents.
“Something you need to tell me?”
Iason’s voice slid through the air with insufferable grace, without disturbing the static atmosphere. He didn’t even raise his eyes from the data before him, only his fingers drifting gently through the air to scroll though the pages. The silk housecoat draped on his shoulders as still as if it had been on a statue.
In contrast Riki’s grunt and the sound of his still naked body turning on its back, hands twined under his head, seemed designed to shatter the silence.
“Nah, just thinking about an old drivel one of the Sisters in Guardians kept jabbering about.”
For an instant Iason’s index stopped moving, then his gaze left the device to settle on the man’s face, every trace of surprise that he might have felt jealously hidden. Riki didn’t seem to notice anyway, his attention apparently focused on the ceiling; or, if he did, he gave no sign of that, or of anything being out of the ordinary for him, and went on with a little snort.
“It was some odd crap. She told us there was this.. This poor fucker, I guess, that one day sees a tall lady all dressed in black at the market. And she’s giving him the stink-eye big time, totally focused on him. So he gets she has something huge against him and runs to his king Donny, and asks him to help him cut and run.”
Iason’s hands remained still and soon the light from his tablet dimmed to a low glow. Riki didn’t seem to care, but simply went on.
“Being a true Donny the king doesn’t ask questions and gives him the sickest and faster shuttle ever to reach this city… Sa.. Sar.. Samer-something. A very far away place, anyway. So he manages to get there in record time to turn Sinker but on the gates of that place who’s there if not that creepy lady? So the poor Sinker knows he is breathing his last, yet he asks her how the fuck she managed to follow him, and tells her that he saw her giving him the hairy eyeball the day before. At which the lady tells him she hadn’t been pissed at him, just surprised ‘cause she was waiting for him exactly at that time before Somer-Something, but she was worried he would not make it there, since he was still in that other place the day before.”
Riki’s lips bent in something more akin to a grimace than a smile.
The silence stretched for a few more seconds, then the mongrel sighed.
“Then she probably had him skanked..”
“Samarra”
Before his pet’s perplexed gaze Iason sighed softly and specified.
“The city the man ran to was said to be called Samarra in the tale.”
This time his words were met by a low, bitter, bark of laughter.
“Should have expected this was your kind of story..”
A spark of amusement flashed in Iason’s eyes before they turned back to the tablet. A flicker of his long fingers and the screen brightness flared up once more.
“It is not mine, only a very ancient tale. Some Religionists claim it, I believe. No matter its origins though it is quite the cautionary tale about the need to ponder before acting.”
Riki sighed.
“I s’pose all people peddlin’ some god want those beneath to think they should not even try.”
Iason lips bent in a tiny smile, amused and knife-sharp this time, and he cocked one eyebrow before speaking, his voice now deceptively soft as his gaze turned to Riki once more, pinning him down.
“Careful to what you say, or I might conclude that if you have time for such speculations you are clearly not tired enough to sleep.”
For an instant Riki tensed. Still, when Iason was expecting him to either protest or avoid his gaze and fall silent, the mongrel instead exhaled deeply and turned his head once more to face him, his eyes untouched by fear and incredibly deep. Maybe it was that look that made all scathing remarks and threats die on Iason’s tongue. That or the mongrel’s tone. When Riki spoke his voice was, deep, low, a man’s voice, yet it had never sounded so vulnerable, not even when he had been young and terrified.
“Do you think that, had he not run... The man, I mean. Had he stayed where he was, would he have avoided her?”
The answer left Iason’s lips before he knew it, as final as a star collapsing on itself, as final as the words of Jupiter.
“No. He would not have.”
Riki sighed before turning his head the other way.
“Should have figured this much… At least he got a good ride out of it.”
It was a good thing that Riki was not expecting an answer because, this time, Iason had none.