Chapter Text
Aventurine had not meant to hide the screen.
He had also not meant to show it, which was an important distinction and one Ratio, being Ratio, would almost certainly refuse to appreciate. The projection hovered over Aventurine’s wrist in a neat fan of light, angled toward him where he lay half-reclined against too many pillows in a hotel suite expensive enough to have windows that simulated weather on demand. At the moment, the glass showed rain over a city in a solar system so distant it might as well as be entirely fictional.
Ratio had chosen to complain about the humidity setting anyway.
He was stretched out on the other side of the bed with a book balanced against one knee, his reading glasses low on his nose, and a rolled cigarette resting unlit between two fingers because Aventurine had informed him, that if he smoked in bed, the suite’s fire suppression system would drown them both and he would deserve it. Ratio had argued about the likelihood of that outcome for seven minutes, about how Aventurine had enough money for one smoke system to not be an issue, and then, irritatingly, had not smoked.
This, in Aventurine’s opinion, counted as affection.
The screen over his wrist shifted as he flicked through messages- a short note from Topaz, a schedule adjustment, a procurement dispute that had somehow become his problem, and a discreetly marked travel file with three possible routes and two resort recommendations attached below the business itinerary. He had opened the latter mostly out of curiosity. Mostly.
Ratio turned a page.
Then he stopped.
Aventurine felt the pause before Ratio spoke.
“Why,” Ratio said, in the tone of a man discovering a flaw in the foundation of a building, “are you looking at routes to Minoa anywhere near the fifteenth?”
Aventurine did not look away from the screen. “Are you reading my correspondence?”
“Your correspondence is projecting itself over the margin of my book.”
“So you are reading my correspondence.”
“I am being visually assaulted by your poor scheduling.”
Aventurine glanced over at him, smiling already. Ratio had not moved except to lower the book slightly, which was never a good sign. If he had sat up, Aventurine could have accused him of dramatics. Remaining still meant he had found something genuinely objectionable.
Interesting.
“It’s minor business,” Aventurine said. “Possibly not even mine by the time the file stops being passed around.”
“On Minoa?”
“Apparently.”
“During the week of the fifteenth?”
“Is that ominous?”
“Yes.”
“Oh?” Aventurine let the projection expand a little, just enough to show a rotating image of a coastline under clean blue light. White buildings clustered up a slope. A harbor like polished glass. Terraces, beaches, dry hills, sunset packages with prices designed to make lesser executives weep. “It looks nice.”
Ratio stared at him.
Aventurine widened his eyes. “Is it not?”
“That depends on whether one considers population collapse through holiday migration to be nice.”
“Mm. I usually do, if there’s good room service.”
“There will not be good room service.”
“It’s a resort planet.”
“It is my home planet.”
Aventurine blinked.
Ratio watched him over the top of the book.
“No way” Aventurine said.
“No?”
“No.”
“You were unaware.”
“I was unaware.”
“I have told you I am from Minoa.”
“You told me you were from an island in the southern archipelago of the Pellian system.”
“That is Minoa.”
“That is a sentence designed to punish people who did not grow up memorizing star charts for recreational purposes.”
Ratio’s eyes narrowed. “Most people would ask follow-up questions if they didn’t know.”
“Most people are not lying in bed with you while answering procurement disputes.”
“You are not answering procurement disputes. You are looking at beachfront suites.”
“Market research.”
“You already have a suite open.”
“I was comparing options.”
“Against what standard?”
“Whether the private pool faces the sea.”
Ratio closed the book around one finger, which meant the conversation had escalated from tolerable distraction to unavoidable stupidity. Aventurine turned the projection toward himself again and pretended to read. The truth was that the itinerary had been vague enough to be ignored and not really interesting enough to keep. A minor negotiation with a regional shipping collective, a signature he could likely delegate, a report he could certainly skim from somewhere else. But the planet looked warm. Expensive. Blue.
And if Aventurine had noticed that Ratio almost never spoke of home, that was unrelated.
Probably.
Ratio said, “Do not go during the fifteenth.”
“Because of the population collapse?”
“Because half the planet returns home, the other half hosts them, transportation becomes irrational, nothing works, nothing is open, and no one respects privacy.”
Aventurine’s smile spread. “Doctor.”
“No.”
“Cruel. I haven’t even said anything.”
“Yet.”
Aventurine dismissed the projection with a flick of his fingers and rolled onto his side to face him properly.
“Let’s go together,” Aventurine said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on!”
“No.”
“You just said it’s your home planet.”
“Yes. That is precisely the reason why I am declining.”
Aventurine propped his chin on one hand. “I’ll upgrade you to first class.”
“I am not being bribed into visiting my own family.”
“I’ll upgrade myself to first class too.”
“You already fly first class.”
“Then I’ll make it private.”
“You already do that.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Aventurine said, softer, and gave him a smile that had closed more expensive deals under worse lighting. “Properly.”
Ratio looked at him for one long, unimpressed second.
“No.”
Aventurine sighed with theatrical injury and flopped onto his back. “Cold.”
“Correct.”
“Cruel.”
“Also correct.”
“Doctor, I have minor business on a beautiful island planet that has, through absolutely no fault of mine, turned out to be your home planet. This is fate!”
“This is poor timing.”
“Fate often has poor timing.”
“It also has poor judgment.”
Aventurine laughed and turned his head toward him. “You are seriously not tempted?”
“No.”
Ratio’s mouth pressed into a thin line.
Ah.
Aventurine’s amusement softened a degree before he could stop it. Not vanished; that would have been too obvious. But the game shifted because something in Ratio’s face had done the same. This was not only annoyance. His gaze had gone briefly past Aventurine, toward something neither of them could see from a suite on another planet: a house, perhaps a kitchen, a road - the kind of history one could leave without ever fully extracting oneself from it.
Aventurine looked back at the empty air where the projection had been. “I don’t have to go.”
“Yes,” Ratio said. “That is why it is absurd that you are considering it.”
“I consider many absurd things.”
“I am aware.”
“But I can delegate it.”
Ratio looked down at the book without opening it. “Can you?”
The question was too quiet to be casual. Aventurine’s smile returned by instinct. “Are you worried about me, Doctor?”
“I am worried about what you consider a vacation.”
“That’s fair.”
“And what you consider minor business.”
“Less fair.”
“And the consequences of you arriving on Minoa during the fifteenth as an IPC representative with no local context and an excess of confidence.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The real issue.” Aventurine rolled back toward him. “You think your family will hate me.”
Ratio’s expression became, for a moment, very blank.
“I think,” he said carefully, “my family’s tolerance for the IPC is limited.”
“And their tolerance for me?”
“You are not separable from your employment. Never mind my family, the reactions from strangers-”
“Doctor, are you already elevating me above stranger status with your relatives?” Aventurine cut him off.
“Do not look so pleased.”
“I’m trying to decide how pleased to look.”
“Less.”
Aventurine laughed again, but Ratio still had not opened the book. That was telling. He reached out with one foot under the sheet and nudged Ratio’s ankle. “Come with me.”
“No.”
“You can show me where you grew up.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You can prevent me from causing an interstellar diplomatic incident at a family festival.”
Ratio paused and Aventurine smiled.
“There,” he said. “Useful.”
“I hate that you arrived at a valid argument through blackmail.”
“I prefer leverage.”
“I know.”
“Come on,” Aventurine said. “Minor business. Brief trip. One beautiful planet, one inconvenient festival, one terribly reluctant doctor. What could go wrong?”
“An impressive number of things.”
“Then you should supervise.”
Ratio looked at him for a long time.
Aventurine kept smiling. He had not meant to ask in a way that really mattered. He had meant to tease. He had meant to flirt and annoy and perhaps obtain a guide with excellent legs and a terrible attitude. The business itself barely mattered. The only reason anyone had suggested sending someone like him was to perform goodwill, stroke a few egos, and make the IPC’s interest look more personal than it was. Nothing that actually required him and nothing he couldn’t delegate. He had not meant to notice the way Ratio’s hand had tightened around the edge of the book, or the way his refusal had begun to look less like dismissal and more like calculation.
At last, Ratio closed the book fully.
“Fine,” Ratio sighed.
Aventurine sat up. “Fine?”
“Do not make me repeat myself.”
“You’re coming?”
“I am preventing disaster.”
“You’re coming.”
“I am supervising a preventable error.”
“You’re bringing me home with you,” Aventurine said, delighted.
Ratio’s eyes sharpened. “Do not phrase it like that.”
“Oh, I absolutely will.”
“I will cancel the trip.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I can.”
“But you won’t.”
Ratio looked like he wanted very badly to deny that and found, to his visible irritation, that accuracy prevented him.
Aventurine brought the projection back up with a flick of his wrist, already opening the route options again. “Private transport, then.”
“Commercial is sufficient.”
“I thought you said transportation becomes irrational.”
“That does not mean you should worsen it through excess.”
“Doctor, you have agreed to a holiday during a planet-wide family festival with your IPC-affiliated situationship. Let me have the private shuttle.”
Ratio stared at him and raised one eyebrow.
“Situationship?” he repeated.
“Would you prefer ‘travel companion’?”
“I would prefer silence.”
“Beloved travel burden?”
“I am leaving.”
Aventurine caught his sleeve before he could get far, laughing as Ratio gave him a look that would have killed a less well-insured man. Ratio did not pull away immediately,instead he rolled his eyes and rested his head on Aventurine’s shoulder, mumbling something under his breath. That was as good as victory.
No, Aventurine thought. Better than victory.
Aventurine had not expected Veritas Ratio to look so… ordinary.
That was not the right word, perhaps. Ratio did not become ordinary simply because he stood in a crowded ferry terminal with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and a travel bag beside his foot. He still held himself with the same straight-backed severity he brought into lecture halls, boardrooms, and arguments he had already decided he was going to win. He still looked faintly offended by the existence of other people’s poor planning. He still managed, somehow, to appear overdressed without wearing anything particularly formal.
But there was something… different about him here.
It was not relaxation. Aventurine would not go that far. Ratio looked anything but relaxed as he watched a family of six attempt to maneuver ten suitcases, two beach umbrellas, and a sleeping child toward the boarding line. Yet the tension in him was not unfamiliarity. It was recognition. The kind of irritation one had only for a place one knew too well. His eyes moved over the terminal with practiced annoyance, cataloguing the late ferry, the shouted conversations, the children running too close to the edge of the pier, the vendors selling coffee to people who were already too hot and too loud.
Aventurine watched him for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he said, “I still don’t understand why we chose the boat.”
Ratio did not look at him. “We did not choose the boat. I chose the boat. You objected repeatedly.”
“There is a perfectly functional private shuttle route to the island. I also offered to settle for commercial.”
Ratio looked pointedly toward the boarding line, the tickets, the luggage, the ferry waiting at the pier with its ramp lowered like an open mouth.
“This is commercial,” he said.
“We were supposed to leave 35 minutes ago. Do you know how much 35 minutes of my time cost?”
Ratio closed his eyes briefly, as if asking the terminal roof for strength. “Arriving by private shuttle during the Fifteenth of August would be remembered by people who I’d rather avoid making a scene in front of.”
“Your family?”
“Worse. People who know my family.”
Aventurine smiled. “That sounds charming.”
“That is the face I told you to stop making.”
“What face?”
“The one that suggests you find all this… charming.”
“But I do find it charming!” he grinned and Ratio mumbled something under his breath in his native language, too quiet and cut for the translator to catch. No fair.
The crowd lurched forward before Aventurine could answer. Ratio reached down for his bag with the grim efficiency of a soldier taking up arms, and Aventurine followed, letting himself be carried into the movement of bodies, luggage, voices, and heat. The ferry ramp rang underfoot. Someone behind them shouted instructions to someone who was plainly not listening. A port worker answered with the hoarse voice of a man who had repeated himself since dawn and expected to be ignored until sunset.
Aventurine’s translator handled most of it with ease. Fragments came through in his ear, clipped and imperfect due to the multiple voices overlapping but serviceable: ticket checks, boarding calls, complaints about the delay, one heated dispute over whether a certain cousin had remembered the cooler. The local language moved quickly, full of swallowed vowels and sudden emphasis, but the device had parsed far worse.
They found space on the outer deck, near the railing. Ratio chose the spot with the practical explanation that the interior would be loud, cold, and overfull, though Aventurine suspected he simply wanted the sea air. The ferry had not yet departed, and already passengers had begun arranging themselves as if settling in for a siege. Plastic containers appeared from bags. Coffee cups multiplied. An elderly woman claimed three chairs with a shawl, plastic bags and a look that discouraged any challenge.
Ratio stood with his back to the rail, one hand resting on the handle of his bag. His gaze drifted once toward the water, then toward the distant line of islands still softened by haze.
“Minoa is the larger one?” Aventurine asked.
“One of the larger ones.”
“And your family is there.”
“Some of them.”
“Will they be excited to see you?”
Ratio’s expression did not change much. “They will be loud.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“It is the more relevant answer.”
“And me?”
This time, Ratio did look at him. Very briefly, but still long enough for Aventurine to catch the calculation before he smoothed it away.
“They will be polite,” Ratio said.
Aventurine smiled. “That doesn’t necessarily mean nice.”
“Maybe.”
“Because of the IPC?”
“Among other things.”
“Mmmm. I’m sure I can persuade them. I am very charming.”
“Yes,” Ratio said. “That may also be a problem.”
Aventurine laughed, but Ratio’s attention had already shifted back toward the terminal, toward the crowd moving around them. It occurred to Aventurine that Ratio had not described his family as cruel or unkind. Only loud. Only complicated. Only unlikely to greet an IPC executive during a family reunion with uncomplicated delight.
That was fine. Aventurine was excellent with complications.
The ferry horn sounded before he could press further, deep enough to vibrate through the deck. A cheer went up from somewhere near the front, though Aventurine could not tell whether it was sincere enthusiasm or relief that the vessel was finally moving. The port began to slide away. Water churned white behind them. Wind crossed the deck, hot at first, then cooler as the ferry turned towards the open sea.
For a while, it was almost peaceful.
Aventurine had been on the boat for seven minutes and had already begun bargaining with gods he did not believe in.
“This,” he said, one hand braced lightly against the rail as the ferry lurched beneath them, “is an avoidable experience.” he huffed. “I could have solved this.”
“You suggested landing in my village by private spacecraft three days before the fifteenth.”
“Yes. Efficient. You like efficient!”
“Socially catastrophic.”
Aventurine turned his head slowly. “Doctor, I have done many socially catastrophic things. Usually with champagne.”
“And usually far away from my mother.”
“Again - I would have settled for commercial,” Aventurine said.
Ratio glanced around the deck.
Aventurine followed his gaze to the crowd, the bags, the old man loudly peeling an orange with a pocketknife two benches away, the woman scolding someone over a comm, a dog attempting to eat a paper napkin, and a teenage boy blocking a walkway with a cooler large enough to contain a body.
“And again - This is commercial,” Ratio said.
“This is a hostage situation.”
“It is a ferry.”
“We’d be in your home already by now and not sweating on a boat! A boat! Like what civilization in this Amber Era would even have this as an option!?”
Ratio closed his eyes briefly. Aventurine smiled into the wind, pleased with himself despite the boat, the noise, and the fact that his expensive shoes had already been stepped on twice by people who had not paused to admire them first.
The sea was bright around them, almost aggressively blue. In fairness, the view was excellent. The island had not yet appeared properly, only a darker suggestion ahead through the glare, but the water looked like something designed by a tourism committee with too much funding. Aventurine might have enjoyed it more if the deck were not full of people loudly returning home with the collective energy of an invading army.
Ratio’s peace appeared to require active resistance. He ignored two separate attempts at conversation from strangers before the third succeeded.
“Ωπα!”
Ratio’s eyes closed for one brief, very telling moment.
The voice came from behind them, warm and booming, cutting across the deck with the confidence of someone who had never once considered whether he was interrupting. Aventurine turned and saw a man pushing through the crowd toward them, grinning broadly, one hand lifted in greeting. He was perhaps Ratio’s age, perhaps a little older- Aventurine found that the sun, the casual clothes, and the general atmosphere of island familiarity made everyone difficult to place.
“Βερίτα!” the man called. “Ρε μπατζανάκι, εσύ είσαι;”
The translator chimed in Aventurine’s ear.
Then it stopped.
Aventurine waited. A second passed. The device produced a soft error tone, the kind designed to be unobtrusive and therefore immediately alarming.
“Term unresolved. Possible kinship relation: co-brother-husband. Context insufficient. Regional usage unstable.”
Aventurine looked at Ratio.
“Doctor,” Aventurine said slowly, grinning “why did my translator just tell me that man may or may not be your co-husband-brother?”
Ratio opened his eyes again. “It did not.”
“It absolutely did.”
“Then it is defective.”
“It also suggested ‘little brother-in-law,’ ‘male marriage-adjacent associate,’ and, for some reason, ‘social masculine unit.’”
Ratio exhaled through his nose and turned fully toward him, the old acquaintance temporarily ignored. “Your implant is active?”
“It is always active.”
“Not for this.”
“I’m sorry?”
Ratio looked at his ear, then at his wrist, then at Aventurine, clearly calculating something “You have an older model. Fifteen to twenty years? Never got the new one?”
“It’s vintage?”
“It’s antiquated.”
“That is a very unromantic thing to say on a boat.”
“The local language package was never fully integrated into several IPC-standard implants because of a licensing dispute with the regional linguistic authority.” he sighed.
“So what you’re saying is the IPC ruined my vacation before I even got here.”
"You're supposed to be here on business. But yes.”
“How on brand.”
“You will need to activate the auxiliary receiver manually.”
“The what?”
Ratio pointed to his ear.
Aventurine lifted a hand and felt, after a moment, the tiny crescent of metal tucked along the outer curve. He had forgotten it existed. Truly forgotten. It was one of those little legacy pieces the implant kept as a backup for unstable acoustic environments, rural dialect patches, ceremonial registers, and other things he had not had a reason to care about in years.
“Oh,” Aventurine said. “That.”
Ratio looked personally offended. “You forgot you had an external receiver.”
“It’s very small.”
“It is part of your translation system.”
“I pay people to remember what my technology does.”
“That is not a defense.”
“It has worked so far.”
“Evidently not.”
The man, who had been watching this exchange with great interest and understanding maybe half of it except perhaps the rhythm of Ratio being irritated, leaned in and said another sentence in the local language. Then turned his attention fully to Aventurine and smiled. “And you? What are you?”
He smiled. “Aventurine.”
The name moved easily, polished by use. He had given it to ambassadors, debtors, executives, enemies, and people who had mistaken him for something easier to own. It was a good name. Bright. Lucky. Expensive. He knew exactly what it did in a room.
He repeated it badly and cheerfully. “Aven-tour-in. Good, good. Friend of Veritas?”
“Colleague,” Ratio said at once.
Aventurine did not need the translator for that one. He knew Ratio’s tone. Aventurine had come to associate with a man choosing not to commit violence even though he wanted to. Dr. Ratio sighed and turned to him. “Turn your device off and back on.”
“That is your scholarly recommendation?”
“For once, yes.”
The man reached them before Aventurine could decide whether to obey. He clapped Ratio on the shoulder with enough force that Aventurine privately reassessed their relationship as either close or dangerous. Ratio endured it, but clearly just barely.
The conversation that followed was fast, familiar, and only partially caught by the translator. Ratio’s name. Professor. Long time. A question about whether he had finally remembered the way home, which made the man laugh and made Ratio’s mouth flatten. Another phrase came through, imperfect but clear enough- Ratio was always like this.
Aventurine glanced at Ratio.
Something had gone very still beneath his irritation.
The man seemed delighted to tell the story of Ratio to Ratio in public. The cadence was warm. That did not mean it was harmless. Aventurine had spent his life listening for the small hooks people hid in fondness, and that man’s voice had at least one. Maybe not intentional. Maybe not sharp enough to draw blood. But there.
He knew a version of Ratio that had existed before the title.
Ratio did not appear grateful for the reminder.
Then he turned his attention to Aventurine with sudden interest and said something, laughed, glanced between them, and said something again that caused Ratio’s face to change in an extremely rewarding way.
The translator began, “Missing words - Context suggests suggestive implication regarding-”
Ratio reached across Aventurine, plucked the earpiece out of his ear, and tuned it off.
Aventurine stared at him.
“Doctor, give it back.”
“No.”
“Doctor!”
The man, delighted by all of this, said something else. Ratio answered sharply without looking away from Aventurine. Aventurine, who had conducted negotiations while imprisoned, bleeding, poisoned, concussed, and once while actively falling from a balcony, assessed the situation and decided he could absolutely retrieve one small translator from Veritas Ratio’s hand.
He reached for it.
Ratio lifted his arm.
Aventurine was taller than many people expected, but Ratio was even taller, which lent him an unfair amount of reach. Aventurine laughed under his breath and stepped closer, putting one arm on Ratio’s shoulder to push him and prop himself up and grab the device. The deck shifted beneath them with the ferry’s motion. Someone squeezed behind Aventurine carrying two overstuffed bags and what appeared to be a watermelon.
The collision was not dramatic. It was the sort of thing that happened every thirty seconds on a crowded ferry- a shoulder into a shoulder, a bag into an elbow, a small correction of balance. Aventurine did not fall. Ratio did not fall. The watermelon survived.
The translator did not.
It slipped from Aventurine’s fingers, flashed once in the sunlight, struck the railing with a delicate click, and dropped neatly into the water below.
All three of them looked over the side.
The ferry moved on.
“Doctor,” he said, “I dropped my earpiece into the sea.”
Ratio stared at him.
“Όχι ρε πούστη.”
“I have no clue what you just said.”
Ratio drew in a breath through his nose. He held it for a moment, long enough to gather what remained of his dignity. The man began laughing.
“It was not a phrase you need to learn,” Ratio said at last.
“I disagree. It sounded very useful.”
Ratio looked as though he had several replies and disliked all of them. He settled for pinching the bridge of his nose, which Aventurine took as a small victory.
The man leaned in to ask something. Ratio answered too sharply. Then he lifted both hands in theatrical innocence, then said a few more words that made Ratio’s mouth flatten further.
Aventurine waited, hands resting lightly on the rail.
After several seconds, it became clear Ratio had no intention of translating.
“Well? What did he say?”
“He said it cannot be helped.”
Aventurine considered the man, the vanished translator, and Ratio’s expression. “That seems like a generous summary.”
“It is the only summary you are getting.”
“Eh, I’ll manage for a few hours. I’ll just replace it when we get to-”
“No.”
Aventurine tilted his head. “No?”
“No. Anyone useful would be with family, at a table, on a beach, drunk, unreachable, or all of the above. There would be no repair counter waiting at the port, no offworld service desk with spare IPC-compatible translators, no efficient solution that can be purchased at an unreasonable price”
“Because of the Fifteenth?”
“Because of the Fifteenth.”
Ratio said it with such finality that Aventurine, for the first time since boarding, looked toward the island line on the horizon and saw it less as scenery than as a trap.
A pleasant trap, perhaps. A sunlit one. But a trap nonetheless.
“So,” he said, “I am about to spend the busiest family holiday of the year on your island without understanding a word anyone says.”
Ratio’s silence was confirmation enough.
“And you are my only translator.”
“Unfortunately.”
Aventurine let that settle. He probably should have been more annoyed. His work depended on language, on tone, on precision and implication, on knowing whether a smile meant welcome or warning. A broken translator was not a small inconvenience. It was the removal of an entire layer of control.
Yet Ratio looked so profoundly displeased by the situation that annoyance became difficult to sustain.
Aventurine leaned against the railing. “That sounds intimate.”
“It sounds inconvenient.”
“Those two often overlap.”
Ratio gave him a look that would have silenced a weaker man. Aventurine, who had made many poor decisions in the presence of danger, only smiled. The ferry cut onward through the blue. Behind them, the man had already begun telling the story of the lost earpiece to another passenger, embellishing with gestures that involved the sea, Aventurine, Ratio, and what appeared to be divine judgment. Aventurine understood none of the words. He understood the laughter perfectly.
“You will stay near me when we disembark,” Ratio said.
It was phrased as an instruction, but there was something not simply practical beneath it. Something almost like worry.
Aventurine did not soften his smile. “Of course, Doctor.”
“You will not agree to anything unless I have translated it.”
“Reasonable.”
“You will not repeat unfamiliar words simply because someone laughs. Especially if someone laughs.”
Aventurine looked at him. “That one feels less reasonable.”
“It is not negotiable.”
Minoa drew closer over the next hour, sharpening from haze into white villages, terraced hills, awnings, and roads that seemed to have been built by someone with either great faith or no fear of death. The port was already crowded when the ferry approached. Flags moved in the wind. Bells sounded faintly from somewhere above the town. People pressed toward the exits long before the crew asked them to, gathering bags, children, flowers, covered dishes, and themselves in an order visible only to them.
Aventurine followed Ratio into the current of bodies as the ferry docked. Without the translator, the world had changed. Speech surrounded him as sound rather than information. It rose and fell in waves, fast and expressive, sometimes warm, sometimes sharp, often both at once. He caught what sounded like names. He caught laughter. He caught Ratio’s voice when the doctor answered someone behind them, lower and more fluid than it sounded in the languages Aventurine knew him through.
That was interesting.
Ratio in the common tongue was precise, sharpened, built for correction. Ratio in his own language sounded no less severe, but less polished around the edges. Quicker. More irritated.
Aventurine kept that observation to himself.
They stepped down the ramp into the heat of the island, and within seconds, Ratio was recognized again.
A woman in sunglasses seized him by both shoulders and kissed his cheeks before Aventurine had time to decide whether this was an attack. Ratio submitted with the grim patience of a man enduring a rite he had failed to escape since childhood. The woman spoke rapidly, smiling all the while, and then turned that smile onto Aventurine.
He smiled back. It was usually safe.
The woman said something to him, patted his arm, and looked at Ratio with unmistakable expectation.
Ratio said, “She says welcome.”
Aventurine looked at the woman, who was still smiling, then at Ratio, whose ears had gone faintly pink.
“Only welcome?”
“Yes.”
Aventurine let the lie sit between them. Without the translator, he could not technically prove it. From Ratio’s expression, he did not need to. The woman gave his arm another pat and swept away into the crowd, already calling to someone else. Ratio adjusted the strap of his bag with unnecessary focus.
Aventurine stepped a little closer, close enough not to be separated by the port traffic. “You know,” he said, “I may not understand the language, but I do understand faces.”
“That will not help you here.”
“It already is.”
“No. It is giving you false confidence.”
“I’ve built a whole career on that.”
Ratio looked at him then, properly, and for a moment the noise of the port seemed to fold around them. Aventurine expected another correction. Ratio had several prepared- he could see them. Instead, the doctor reached out, caught the back of Aventurine’s sleeve, and tugged him out of the path of a scooter with 3 people riding it, cutting through the crowd with suicidal confidence.
“Stay close to me,” Ratio said.
The words were clipped. Practical. Nothing more.
Aventurine looked down at the hand still holding his sleeve, then back up at him.
“Yes, Doctor,” he said, and did not make a joke of it. Not this time.