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Inej wrapped her arms tightly around her child as the wind whistled over the rooftop of the Slat, only slightly pulling at their thick coats. They watched the barges pass in the distance, for a moment in silence. Then a tug on her sleeve.
“Mama?”
Inej hummed. A question. Her fingers rubbed warmth into the back of her daughter’s tiny hands as they huddled in the chill.
“Why do everybody die?”
Inej suppressed a sigh, her eyes running the length of the distant gondol that carried the dead out of the city to the Reaper’s Barge, the sight of which no doubt had prompted her child’s inquiry.
“Well, Chaaru.” The Suli word for my dear. “There truly is no death, only transformation.”
“More Suli proverbs?” The voice was rough stone.
“Papa!” The child wriggled excitedly out of Inej’s arms and nearly tackled her father where he stood, having just clambered through the office window.
Inej’s heart skipped a beat when Kaz’s good leg briefly lost its footing, but he righted himself with his cane and wrapped one arm around the tiny shoulders of their little girl.
Inej pulled her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees as she watched them.
Kaz slid gracefully into the spot just beside Inej, stretching his legs before him, and letting their child crawl into his lap.
“Go on,” he murmured, his eyes on the barge in the distance.
Inej’s breath caught slightly at the words, and by the twist of Kaz’s lips he knew it.
“My people don’t believe in death the same way...” she paused, considering, “shevrati do.”
At this, their daughter giggled. “You’re shevrali, Papa.”
Kaz made an affronted sound but there was no mistaking his grin; he adored when their daughter was clever, even when, maybe especially when, it was at his expense.
Inej allowed herself a laugh and reached forward to run her fingers through her daughter’s silky coil of hair, so reminiscent of her own. The movement brought her flush with Kaz, and she was pleased when he leaned into her, when he didn’t tense. He hadn’t frozen like that in so long. Inej was glad.
“Our people,” she corrected herself, “know that life can only ever be created, not destroyed. When we leave this life, we are brought back, in the air, the water, the people.”
In the love we show for those who are gone, Inej thought but didn’t say as she watched Kaz watch their daughter. She knew exactly the ways in which their daughter reminded him of his brother lost those years ago, forever a boy; she knew the fear these thoughts fed him.
“No mourners.” Their daughter replied at last in what could only be a mournful tone, as if she understood too well, though Kaz and Inej had so far protected her from life in the same way they had not been allowed to be.
“No funerals.” Kaz and Inej both murmured back, their smiles helpless.
Later, down in the office, their daughter fast asleep in the cot across the room, Inej wandered over to the desk where Kaz was finishing some last minute accounting from the day’s earnings. She stopped short of the desk in her customary way. She’d made a habit of giving him his space, letting him pull her into it.
He scribbled on and she thought she’d retreat back to the cot until he was ready but it was as if he’d been watching her the whole time, waiting for that moment. He let the pen drop and pushed away from the desk.
Wordlessly, she circled the half of the desk separating them and let him collect her in his arms. He hadn’t held her like this for some time, but in the moment it just felt right.
“You never told me I was going to live forever,” he accused.
Inej pulled back slightly to stare up at him as if he was dense.
“What are you going to tell her when her kitten gets snatched up by a hawk?” He asked almost gently.
Inej’s eyebrows hiked their way up her forehead. “You’re getting her a kitten?”
His face smoothed over automatically; Kaz had always had a good face for bluffing.
Inej huffed and buried her face in Kaz’s neck. “I’ll just have to teach the cat how to not get caught,” she said into his jacket, her voice muffled.
Kaz’s responding chuckle was low, some joke known only to him.
“Our lives are eternal, you know,” she murmured near his ear. He shivered, but she knew it wasn’t in aversion to her. “We are what we leave behind. Not just our children, but every act, every blessing, every curse.”
He paused; she could almost hear his brain work, considering.
“Our...children?”
Inej startled, lost. “What?”
“You said,” he started, reaching to take her hand in his and bringing it slowly to his mouth, “children.”
Inej blinked slowly up at him. “All that wisdom and that’s what you took from it.” She snapped, but her cheeks were warm, the implication of his last words still hanging densely in the air.
His lips met the curve of her palm tentatively, and Inej felt the familiar blaze low in the pit of her stomach at the gesture.
“Is that a no?” He spoke into her palm, his breath hot on her skin.
She swallowed heavily, her mouth dry. She opened her lips to respond when- a tiny meow sounded from across the room.
In a split second, Inej went from expectant to exasperated.
“Kaz, you didn’t.”
He avoided her gaze, looking only bored.
She began to slide out of his arms to go find the source of the sound. But he caught her hand at the last second.
“I believe you, you know.”
She found his eyes in surprise. They were dark with hunger. Her body reacted in kind.
“About what?” Her voice was less steady than she would have liked.
“Life after death,” he said simply, his thumb running tantalizingly over her knuckles. The look in his eyes was blazing as he looked at her, something intense set in them. “How could I not believe around you?”
Her voice was nearly short of breath when she spoke.“You’re just trying to butter me up.”
He tilted one eyebrow as he gazed at her as if to say Really? Inej’s cheeks went hot now. The look was true enough; he already had her right where he wanted her.
She stared at him, her mind flashing over the long chain of events that had brought them both to this point. “Alright,” she said finally.
His turn to look surprised, though he quickly masked it. “Alright?”
“Children,” she repeated firmly before untangling herself to go find the kitten.
Dumbstruck, Kaz let her go. She didn’t have to turn to know he was smiling.