Incarnate

I wanted to remind him there was nothing to change. Nothing had happened this morning. Still, it wasn’t exactly true, and after all my thoughts in the Council chamber, things had already changed. It was just a matter of discovering how. “I don’t know.”

Sam bowed his head, then led me upstairs and around a maze of bookcases packed with stuffed photo albums and videos from various ages of technology.

We entered a secluded area where the full shelves would muffle sound. He motioned at one of the big chairs and bade me sit while he searched for memory chips and photos on the shelves. At a button click, a panel slid aside to reveal a large, blank screen. He pressed the chips into appropriate slots, and while they loaded, he placed a photo album on the desk between our chairs. An egret lamp made cheery light over the glossy cover.

He flipped through album pages and indicated a color photo of two men in their early forties, arms around each other’s shoulders. They grinned at the viewer, one wider and with a hand on the brim of his hat. The other had a slier smile that turned up one corner of his mouth more than the other. He wasn’t attractive; he had bad skin and limp hair, but that smile and the energy he radiated— “That’s you.” I pointed.

Sam—the young, handsome one—eyed me askance. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

He gave a single nod. “The other is Stef. He died in an accident a week after this was taken.”

As hard as it was to believe the Sam in the photograph was the same Sam sitting next to me, it was even more difficult to believe the woman I’d met this morning was also the fellow in this picture.

Sam flipped to a photo of two men and a woman playing music. A man sat at the piano, and my first instinct was to say that was Sam, but it didn’t seem right. I studied them more closely, searching for something familiar.

I glanced at Sam for a hint, but he just leaned his elbow on the desk and stared at the photograph, expressionless. I wished I could tell what he was thinking.

The man at the piano definitely wasn’t Sam. Something about the way he sat over it. I’d only seen Sam play a few times now, but he never possessed it. He caressed it. The other man had a flute; he wasn’t playing, so his expression was easy to read. It wasn’t a Sam-I-knew expression. Too . . . someone else. I turned to the woman with the violin.

She was tall, soft, and curved, wearing a wistful expression as she cradled her violin. Something about her relaxed posture and the way she looked at the piano or its player. I couldn’t tell which. I touched her face. “Found you.”

“Did you recognize the dress?”

I looked again. Sure enough, she was wearing the dress I’d worn this morning. She—he—filled it out better, too, and I tried not to be envious. “No, I hadn’t noticed it.”

The videos had long since loaded, and the screen glowed brightly, waiting for instructions. Sam obliged, and we watched a group of people chatting in the market field. The images were low quality, but the faces were clear enough. “This was shortly after we learned how to record videos. Someone, I won’t name names, went around recording everything he could. We have years’ worth of videos like this. No one watches, but no one will recycle them, either.”

I might watch. But I didn’t say so out loud.

It seemed we sat there for hours, watching old videos and looking through photo albums. I found him in crowds in the market field—Heart hadn’t changed at all in the last three hundred years—in groups of musicians, or giving rude gestures to whoever was recording while he mucked horse stalls. I found him holding someone in a rainstorm, or being held, and leaning toward a stranger with a smile. Twice I spotted him kissing a man or woman, and my throat closed up so I just nodded that I’d seen him, and he believed me.

The screen went dark, and the stained-glass lamp was the only light in our alcove. I’d heard him sing, seen him shuffle away when someone approached with a video recorder—his friends usually grabbed his arms and made him stay—and watched him laugh until his face was red. I’d seen him old and young, skinny and fat, male and female, ugly and beautiful. None of those Sams looked like my Sam. I just knew they were him.

“Are you okay?” he whispered. Other than my thudding heart, the silence was complete.

I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to feel about this. It was like drowning, the cold and the aching lungs and heavy limbs, with things bumping you, and not being able to tell which way was up. I pulled my hands into my sleeves. His sleeves.

“No,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. We have work to do.” I stood up and pretended to be brave.

Chapter 15

Market

WE MANAGED TO finish the library tour, and he showed me how to escape the wing without needing to trek through endless halls of the Councilhouse. Then, awkwardly, we made our way through everyone in the market field and went back to his house. I clutched my crude library map—and crude street map—against my chest as we walked. I went upstairs.

Everything in me hurt. For over an hour, I didn’t leave my room, just sat on the soft bed and tried to sort through feelings.

Mostly, it was seeing a dozen different Sams that confused me. “He’s still Sam,” I told myself, the bedcovers and lace and walls. Anything that would listen and not talk back. “He is who he’s always been.” I’d always known he was old, had previous lives, and probably had a thousand different lovers.

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t.

I needed to focus on the Council threatening to take me from him. No matter what didn’t matter, I couldn’t let them put me back with Li. I couldn’t risk being exiled.

Which meant I needed to take everything seriously, do better than they expected. Awkward or not, I needed Sam. I could take my time sorting out everything else.

I washed my face and went downstairs to find Sam on the sofa, writing in a notebook. Not words. Music? He lifted his eyes as I sat at the piano, tugging on a pair of fingerless mittens.

The keys were cool and smooth, and when I pressed down on one, a clear note resonated through the house. I closed my eyes and smiled. No wonder Sam loved this so much. Maybe this was something we could share without awkwardness.

I played a few more notes, went seeking patterns and familiar things. A series of notes almost like what Sam had played earlier sounded under my fingers, but I was doing something wrong. I played it twice again, discovering the correct rhythm as I went, but not the right note. I tried the keys around the one I knew was wrong. Nope.

“Black key.” Sam’s eyes were on his book, but I could feel his attention. “Then you’ve got it.”

I wasn’t surprised when it worked, only that my hands did it. Stabbed by rose thorns, frozen, burned—and yet they still made music. “Will you show me the rest?”

He laid his pencil and notebook aside so quickly I wondered if he’d even been working to start with. “Nothing would make me happier.”

Market day brought freezing weather, but I bundled up in one of Sam’s old coats, found a hat and scarf and mittens to match, and waited for him by the door, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “Hurry!”

At last he came downstairs, dressed warmly, but without so many layers. “You look ready for a blizzard.” He offered a canvas bag, which I looped over my elbow. “Everyone is going to be there. You might get hot.”

“I’ll remove things as necessary. Besides, this way if someone knocks me over, I have lots of padding to land on.”

“You plan for that?” Cold air zipped inside as he opened the door. The sky was blue and clear beyond the skeletal trees and, except for the chill, it was the perfect day for my first market.

“I do now.” I hadn’t forgotten the way people had glared at me my first morning in the city, and their muttered opinions that I shouldn’t be allowed to stay in Heart. I couldn’t forget, because it happened every time we left the house.

We headed down the walkway and road, chatting about this week’s song. Étude. I was supposed to remember there were different forms of music. He corrected my use of the word “song” when I used it to describe everything. Songs had words, he insisted.

As we neared South Avenue, voices, clopping hooves, and whistles drifted on a breeze. I hopped, holding my hat steady. “I can hear it!”

He laughed and waited for me to finish bouncing. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this excited.”

“I’ve been wearing someone else’s clothes my whole life. Li’s, whatever Cris left behind, and now yours. Having something that’s my own will make it seem like—” Like I was a real person, not just the nosoul. But I didn’t want him to feel bad for not magically conjuring new clothes for me.

“Race you to the avenue?” It was only a hundred feet away, and no contest if he was serious, but he was trying to keep the mood light, so I didn’t wait to agree, just sprinted as fast as I could. He caught up easily but let me win.

The market came into view, shadowed under the temple and Councilhouse. Hundreds of colorful tents filled the area, cheery as a garden. The voices of thousands of people became a dull roar that grew louder as we neared. They milled around in bright colors, some with shopping bags, some with arms full of pottery, wooden whatevers, and clothes. A hundred scents assaulted my nose: cooking chicken, fresh bread, and spicier things I couldn’t name.

Sam pulled out his SED. Light flashed, and I blinked away stars. “So I can keep you like this forever.” He showed me the screen, which held an image of me grinning like an idiot.

“I look dumb.”

“You look adorable.”

I rolled my eyes as he put the SED back in his pocket. “Later, when you’re not expecting it, I’m going to take a photo of you.”

“That’s mean. I hate having my picture taken.”

I let my tone go mocking. “I’m sure you’ll look adorable.”

Strains of music floated along the breeze. I twirled and performed one of the steps Stef had taught us that morning, and Sam clapped. “Nicely done.”

“I like dance lessons.”

“They’re endurable.” He smiled, and I imagined he secretly enjoyed our morning routine as much as I did. Dance, chores, and music. Always music.

“Your lessons are still my favorite,” I said, earning one of his rare true smiles. After my turn on the piano, though, when he took his personal practice and I was supposed to be studying, it was really hard to focus on mathematics.

In the two weeks since we’d faced the Council—then each other in the hallway—we’d managed to find a place where our relationship was friendly and comfortable. Not like before we’d come to Heart, but we’d never be like that again. The Council’s rules made sure of that.

Still, happiness had been foreign to me before now. I never wanted this to end.

“Sam!” Stef waved us over as we approached the outskirts of the market. She peered at me. “The clothes are walking, so I assume Ana is in there. Somewhere.”

I stuck my tongue out at her as we waded into the fray. People held jewelry and clothes, jars of fruit preserves and baskets. We stopped to look at everything; Sam and Stef must have been bored silly, even when Sarit and Whit joined us, but they endured my ogling for two hours. In addition to serviceable trousers and tops, I finally chose a soft wool sweater in cream, and a deep blue skirt that went down to my ankles. I also ended up with a pair of shoes and boots, since Li’s castoffs were too big. Sam’s, from when he’d been a teenage girl, fit better, but they were old.

With all that and handfuls of underclothes, I felt . . . real. Special. Like when Sam first played my song. Waltz, he’d corrected.

“Where next?” Whit sipped from his bottle of water while we took a break on the northern edge of the market mayhem. The temple rose above, bright white against sapphire. I angled away from it, trying to spot the orchards in the agricultural quarter of Heart.