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The second night they spend in Basuras, Laudna leaves. She sits up out of their shared bed and pulls on her clothes and tiny fine boots – the ones with the purple bloom flowers embroidered up the ankles that she’d found a few months into their travelling together, the ones she had spent nights painstakingly stitching, copying a bloom she had pressed into her journal, a wildflower from somewhere, and the flowers had turned out a little lopsided but rather beautiful – and cinches her belt around her waist, slips out the door. A chill creeps into the room that has everything to do with the fact that it is a cold wasteland night, and nothing to do with the fact that Laudna is leaving her.
Imogen doesn’t follow.
She means to. Her fingers are curled around the edge of the blanket and her body is tense, ready to roll out of their bed and catch Laudna and – and – well, she doesn’t know quite what she would do when she caught her but certainly not let her leave in the middle of the night. The thought makes Imogen’s breath catch and she's suddenly breathing ragged and sharp like she's run a mile. She stares across the room at the little wooden dollhouse, the only thing that keeps her from leaving her bed. Pâté sits inside it—Imogen can just barely see his red string loops, grey in the dark of the room, where they are dangling off the edge of the low table—and Imogen knows, even if Laudna can leave her, she won’t leave him.
It is a long time before Laudna returns. A long and sleepless stretch of time in which Imogen doesn’t move. Just stares at Pâté and waits.
The door creaks open.
Laudna enters the room like a nightmare, like the best dream ever. Every bit of Imogen relaxes and the loss of tension has her drifting into sleep even before Laudna climbs back into bed. She hears a mug being set next to the bed and feels Laudna ease the bedsheets out of Imogen’s grip, brings them up around her neck. Imogen’s eyes flutter, open enough for her to see Laudna bent over her.
‘Laud?’
‘Imogen,’ she says, sighs, and Imogen drops deeper toward sleep. She cannot fear a thing when Laudna says her name like that, like there are no other words she cares to say as much as that one. ‘Did you dream?’
Imogen might say something in response but she doesn’t know what it is. Whatever she says, Laudna’s breath escapes her in a long, rattling sigh and for the first time in what feels like forever, Laudna touches her gently, easily. Strokes Imogen’s hair back from her face; it is growing rapidly, already tickling the tops of her ears, and will be grown back by mid-morning probably. Imogen fumbles, holds Laudna's hand to her cheek; it is cold, cooler than usual, and smells of rust and oil.
She sleeps.
They don’t talk about it the next day. Laudna is still skitterish, at turns blurting things out and sitting quietly and never seems pleased with either, hunching into herself. Imogen aches to loop their arms together as they wander through the streets, to tease a smile onto her face, but—she can’t. There’s a weight missing from her hip. It doesn’t have the decency to fade away; she feels it with every step, and hears her own words echoing back to her. You lied. You lied. You lied. It’s exhausting and irritating and by the time they make it to bed that night her migraine is two-fold—the pressure of minds against her own, and another pressure radiating through her jaw from where she has kept her teeth clenched all day.
Imogen sleeps fitfully.
Something wakes her. She can’t say for sure what it is, but in one moment she is asleep and then the next she is aware she is awake and Laudna is moving, slipping out from the bed again. She is dressing - then pauses, looks back toward the bed; Imogen lays very still, not sure whether she wants Laudna to know that she is awake.
Spindly fingers tap against the roof of the dollhouse. It feels like Laudna sits there for a long time, tap-tapping, no rhythm to the pattern, just a slowly mounting urgency. Her other hand strokes down Pâté’s spine, coils his tail around her pinkie a few times before letting it fall away. She resettles him—puts his back against the wall of his new home, moves his arm around Sashimi—before she stands to her full height, posture perfect, and leaves.
Imogen follows. She dresses fast, slips her knife into its sheathe. Pulls gloves up and over her scarred arms that spark and fill with errant, erratic flares. Sashimi is watching her with her weird faceless face and sunken eyes; Imogen hopes it’s not true love between her and Pâté, she really doesn’t think she can stand having the doll around for another two years.
‘Stop lookin’ at me,’ she whispers to the doll. Flicks her fingers and concentrates on moving Sashimi away from him and hiding her inside the house, as Chetney intended for them. She makes a mental note to kiss him on the top of his tiny fluffy-hatted head for this gift. ‘You don’t love her, do you?’ she says to Pâté. ‘You only just met her.’
His arm falls slack, head dropping to the side too without Sashimi to hold him up. The stare of his empty eye socket is disapproving, judgemental. Probably horny.
She sets him upright with a careful nudge and hurries out after Laudna. There is an impulse driving her, one that she couldn’t name if pressed. All she knows is that if Laudna leaves the caravanserai without her, if she spends a minute where Imogen can’t see her tonight, she’s going to scream.
It has been a few minutes but still Imogen catches the flicker of Laudna’s dark skirt as she rounds the corner of the hall, hurrying down the stairs. She follows, first down the stairs and then out into the Strip. There are a few moments as she follows that Laudna slows her stride after she turns a corner so that Imogen can stay on her tail but she does so with a wide-eyed earnestness, staring at everything the Strip has to offer that Imogen can’t tell if it is honest fascination or a ploy to let her keep close behind. She suspects it is the latter but the thought of it makes Imogen’s grip her own hands so tight her knuckles creak.
Laudna leads her to a courtyard not unlike that of the Raha Den. It is old and new in places and proudly itself, in the charming broken-and-remade way that so much of Basuras is old and new and proudly itself. It sets Imogen on edge but she thinks Laudna likes it. She knows Laudna likes it; the woman likes every place they go, or says she does, but she wonders if there isn't a part of Laudna that would like to stay in a place like this, where there were people stranger than herself and more than enough broken things to mend. The thought is terrifying. Imogen lets go of it and is not too surprised to find that it lingers.
The court is long, rectangular, with a slim channel running down the centre of it that was once a trough, maybe, but the mechanism of it has obviously long since been scavenged, or broken, because there is no water just a drained gutter dense with a black, bulbous moss. The walls are dusty after the day's sandstorm but even red dirt can’t disguise that this was once a handsome space—the columns are tall and square at the top and base, carved with broken geometric designs; the walls are tiled, great clouds of white plaster disguising much of the patterns where the tiles have fallen away. It is the roof that holds Laudna’s attention, and Imogen’s when she ducks through the low archway after her companion. A great tangled net of cables and wires and ropes cobwebs the sky of the open courtyard. Orbs, glass lanterns, hang from the strings glistening like dewdrops. Laudna stands beneath one knotted cluster; with her hand raised above her head, she is not quite tall enough to reach. When she turns to look for something to stand on, there is no way that she could miss Imogen hovering by the arch but she says nothing.
On the opposite end of the court, there is a stall dishing out a stew or curry from a huge, dinged pot black with burns on its underside. The owner of the stall starts when Laudna approaches; she hands over a silver coin and then another—far too much for dinner—before the owner pulls a crate from beside their cart and offers it to her.
Laudna staggers under the weight of it. With a thought, Imogen reaches out and steadies it, eases the weight. Though Imogen had moved to follow her, Laudna does not need even a second to find her where she stands in the dark; she finds her, stares a moment, and pulls her eyes away with great effort as though it is hard to ignore her.
Imogen pulls a face, displeased—she hadn’t meant to interfere, or interrupt, only wanted to be here with Laudna. Maybe it was her turn to haunt her a little, to make sure she was thinking of Imogen since Imogen couldn’t stop thinking about her. She hadn’t meant to drop into this dreamlike haze, into thoughtlessness. But she had. The night had a chill to it that was pleasant but not bracing, and the smells of the Strip were a mix of familiar and unfamiliar—horse and hay and leather, worked through with machine oil and a musty smoke—that Imogen found herself between worlds, between sleeping and waking, between her own mind and beside it. It would be frightening if Laudna weren’t right there. It is hard to be frightened when she is with Laudna, even if they are both pretending that she isn't there.
She sets the crate beneath the cluster of cables and lights. Steps up onto it. The stall owner doles out a bowl to a man in a tattered green coat and turns to watch Laudna, expression bored. Then Laudna cradles the cracked globe in her hands and stares at it, feeds tiny portions of magic into it until it is whole again. The stall owner looks impressed. Shrugs, nods good-naturedly, and gives their pot a stir.
Laudna moves on, fixes another lantern and another.
Imogen finds herself entranced by it. Laudna is a splinter of marble against the black night. She coaxes the shadows to transform into the prettiest baubles for her. She reaches out and – it’s a magic trick, Imogen thinks and smiles very slightly. Laudna only has to imagine what it could look like, how beautiful and complete the lanterns could be, and then they are. It's the best kind of magic. Laudna continues in this way for a long time, until the lanterns shine and glitter. Laudna pauses. Regards her efforts, pleased.
She has not just summoned shadows here; she has summoned the entire night sky, stars and all.
It is lovely. It is hard work. She hasn’t finished a quarter of the lights when she steps down from the crate with a sigh, rolls out her shoulders, her arms. She has been holding them over her head for the better part of an hour and her neck makes a sickening sound when she cracks it.
Laudna glances around the court.
‘The mural next,’ she says softly. Imogen thinks she is talking to herself, until she lifts the crate, and then she realises. Silently helps her move it to the wall.
Imogen moves too. Sits on a fallen pillar, chin in her hand, as Laudna cleans the surface of the wall with familiar magic—she recognises some of her own gestures and words and it’s peculiar to see Laudna, from whom she learned so much about being magical, use magic she obviously learned from her.
When the stall owner folds down the awning of their cart, Laudna finishes another bit of the mending on the mural—she has cleaned and repaired a square about five inches wide and tall—and picks up the crate to return it. Shaky arms have a harder time now, after so much work. Imogen stands, moves closer than she had all night. Gently pushes Laudna away. She picks up the crate and carries it back.
‘Friend of yours?’ the stall owner asks. Imogen glances up, no answer on her lips—yes but not tonight doesn’t seem right—only to find that they are talking to Laudna.
Laudna only smiles. ‘Thank you for the crate.’
‘Thanks for the silver,’ they laugh, sound harsh but not unkind. They scratch at their neck. Squint at the fixed lanterns for a moment before kicking at the front of their cart. ‘Reckon you can do anything about this bung wheel?’
The request obviously delights Laudna. She jumps forward, crouches by the front wheel of the cart – obviously cracked – and they all watch as the stall owners own shadow seems to stretch and bend and wrap its fingers around the wheel, manipulating it to snap into place. The hairline crack of the wood seals over, leaving a small scar in the woodgrain.
‘Fucking hell.’ They look a little spooked and a little impressed. ‘You should charge.’
Laudna shrugs. Disjointed, uncanny. ‘I like to fix things.’
They snort. ‘Plenty to fix here. Shithole of a city. You should charge,' they say again and then, instead of goodbye or goodnight, they pick up the poles of their cart and trundle away with a 'Don’t get knifed,' called back over their shoulder.
‘Goodnight!’ Laudna calls cheerily. ‘Don’t get murdered!’
And then it is the two of them.
The silence has been broken and when it resettles it is not as comfortable, not hazy as it had been, but stifling. Laudna’s fingers—dust- and oil-covered—twist and turn before her. She rocks on her feet before turning sharply on her heel and beginning the trek back to the Raha Den.
Laudna hurries ahead of her when they return. Imogen takes the stairs slowly, musters a weak smile for the hostess at the desk. The door to their room is open when she arrives and Laudna is there, hunched over the table and her dollhouse. Imogen pulls the door closes behind her, lock clicking into place. It is loud when there is no other sound in the room to disguise it.
She wants to say something.
Something like, you look like you had fun tonight.
Something like, that stall owner liked you.
Something like, it felt like old times, just you and me, I think I’ve missed it.
She says, ‘I thought you were gonna leave.’
Laudna trails her fingers over the dollhouse. She is tender and gentle with Sashimi when she retrieves her, sets her inside the dollhouse upright, not just pushed inside the way Imogen left her.
‘I wouldn’t leave unless you told me to,’ she says, but she doesn’t look at Imogen when she says it, and her voice is too even, too—too careful, too something. Or not enough something? Imogen doesn’t know. Only knows that terror spikes through her, spears up from the pit of her stomach to the roof of her mouth, and she’s spitting mad a second later.
‘Yeah, well’ she hisses, 'you always keep your promises, don’t you?’
She kicks off her boots. Shoves her vest and her overdress over her head and dumps it onto the floor, heedless of the mess. She’s dusty and smells like oil but she’s too mad to wash so she falls into bed, away from Laudna, and frowns at the wall.
Sleep is a long time coming.
When she wakes, her clothes are folded neatly. Laudna is folded equally neat into bed beside her, hand open at her side. Imogen’s hand flexes. Her mind rebels but her hand is too-hot, jittery with nerves and electricity. She slides her palm against Laudna’s, interlaces their fingers. A cool thumb brushes across her knuckles.
They sleep a little longer.