Chapter Text
Artemy makes it a point never to rush out of the lecture hall. He will gather his things sedately, tuck them all into his satchel. If he has questions, and if the lecturer is one who will deign to answer them, he’ll hang back to ask. If, rarely, a fellow student stops to talk to him, he will show no impatience.
And if, inevitably, that fellow student does that up-down once-over check for his nyur, Artemy will not rush to explain. He will not give on that he’s noticed at all, that he knows full well he’s become a kind of curiosity for them. If his fellow student has the balls to ask, and sometimes they do, Artemy will say, simply, evenly, “He’s outside.”
The conversation, such as it is, that excuse to come gawk at him, usually wraps up pretty fast after that. None of them ever have the balls to ask how his nyur can be so far from him, or why. None of them will ever notice the narrow stairwells, the narrower labs, think of how even if he managed to get a fucking bull up here, there’s no room for his other half to squeeze in among the rest.
But it’s fine. He and Noukher have figured out a schedule, so Noukher knows where to move and when, distantly mirroring Artemy’s path through the building to ease the stretch between them. Now there’s only one, maybe two classes whose locations leave him short of breath, and he can endure that easily enough. It’s nothing compared to the distances they’ll need to learn to put between them when they return home. A menkhu sometimes needs to be in two places at once, after all, and his father and Moihon-Ezhe can stretch the whole Town’s distance. What’s a building compared to that? Even if it’s a big one.
No, this isn’t so bad.
And yet, it isn’t until the day Artemy emerges to find Noukher for once not tucked away by the stairs, head on the ground and waiting, but already on his hooves, ears perked and tail held high, that he realises he can scarcely remember the last time he saw his nyur so lively.
The change should make him feel…happy, maybe? Pleased? Something other than the unease that fills him as he slows to a stop at the last step.
Noukher, either unaware or undeterred, trots up to him. Turns his head to his pockets, where—
A paper. There’s a folded paper wedged in between the leather of Noukher’s pockets and the woven blanket underneath, and he slides it out now, holds it carefully between his lips as he turns to Artemy, expecting him to take it.
After a beat, Artemy does, pinching the paper between thumb and forefinger and just letting it hang there, swaying gently in the breeze.
“What is this?” he asks.
“A note.”
“From?”
“My friends,” Noukher says, his voice a low, pleased rumble. As though that makes any kind of sense at all, as though they haven’t left all of their friends behind along with their father, their people, their Town and everything else they’d ever known just to come to this fucking place.
“We don’t have friends here.”
“You don’t.”
Which makes even less sense. But Noukher has gone and sat himself on his haunches, expectant, and Artemy is aware of the stream of other students and staff coming and going around them. Best get it over with.
He unfolds the paper and there, in what starts as painfully dense cursive but then eases into more legibility, he finds:
Apologies for the unorthodox method, dear colleague, but as our schedules seem stubbornly intent on not aligning, it falls on us to engineer such an alignment ourselves. What fate will not provide—blah blah, Artemy skims the rest, more apologies, something or the other about research, whatever. The important thing is that he and Noukher (and it’s unsettling that the letter names his nyur as well) are being invited to a café Artemy’s never heard of but the address of which tells him he could scarcely have afforded to walk by.
Our treat, of course, the writer says, which is maybe meant to be courteous but just makes Artemy bristle.
And at the end, signed with a flourish, is D.D. & A. Dankovsky.
*
D.D. & A. Dankovsky are, it turns out, one person, because for some baffling reason, this Dankovsky signs on behalf of his nyur as well. Asclepius, Noukher tells him, which is all kinds of pretentious for a medical student. And a snake, no less.
Then again, Noukher never chose himself an adult name, keeping his childhood name of friend, so…stones and glass houses, at least when it comes to nyur names. Artemy will have plenty to string up this Dankovsky without it, and that’s the only reason he’s walking up to the specified café on the specified Saturday after he’s done with his work, only ten or so minutes past the specified time.
Dainty circular tables sprawl outside the cafe to take advantage of the riverside view, and never mind autumn’s brisk winds. At the very edge, one of the tables looks pulled a little further out than the rest, breaking the organised line, and it’s to that one that Noukher goes thundering ahead with a pleased call of, “Asclepius!” leaving Artemy, unsettled, to follow.
And at that table, with a large glossy black-and-yellow-banded snake draped over the shoulders of his student uniform, a cigarette in his gloved hand that he balances on the lip of the ashtray as he rises and greets them, is this Dankovsky. He’s shorter than Artemy—which isn’t new, it feels like most people here are shorter than Artemy—but better put together. His dark hair is neatly parted and combed back, his uniform is crisp and fits him well in the shoulders and sleeves, definitely not second-hand. Even the visored cap he’s left on the table looks pristine.
Oddly, though, those leather gloves he’s wearing don’t look half so looked-after.
“Noukher,” Dankovsky says, with a nod towards Artemy’s nyur. And then, shifting his attention to Artemy, he offers his hand to shake, says, “Artemy Burakh, I presume. A pleasure to meet you properly at last.”
A clean Capital accent. Unsurprising.
Artemy looks down at the outstretched hand like he’s not sure what to do with it. He hadn’t planned what he’d do or say before coming here, and experience tells him to keep calm, measured, even. Instead, he finds himself saying, “What the fuck kind of man talks to someone else’s daemon? Especially without the human present.”
“Artemy,” Noukher rumbles, chiding. Artemy ignores him.
Dankovsky looks as though he’d been expecting this, mouth skewing into a wry lopsided smile even as he starts to withdraw his hand, fingers curling together. Before he can give Artemy his deserved apology, however, the snake nyur slithers down that arm, rearing up with a show of its vibrant yellow underside to meet Artemy’s eyes.
And for the first time since Artemy arrived in the Capital, a nyur addresses him.
“I was the one who talked to your daemon. Or do you take issue with that too, Burakh?” the snake hisses, and if the human half of Dankovsky was polite, his nyur half drips disdain. He flicks his tongue towards Artemy. “I suppose you expected him to remain mute in response? I would have thought, given how Noukher describes your—”
“Asclepius, that’s enough,” Dankovsky says, lifting that arm and, with it, his nyur out of the way.
“If he’s going to be rude, Daniil, I can be plenty rude back.”
And Artemy, meanwhile, is still recovering from the shock of it. He’s been in the Capital a bare handful of months, but already he’s gotten used to how things are done here, where not only are nyur meant to remain unacknowledged and never spoken to (the way of the Townsfolk back at home) but politeness dictates that nyur should never be heard in the first place. If they must speak to their human halves in public, it’s in whispers, but even that’s discouraged, as far as Artemy can figure.
So this, a nyur not only speaking out loud but to him, directly, a Capital nyur and not one of his own people, it feels…uncomfortable, in a way Artemy doesn’t know how to unpack. The nyur’s anger is almost secondary, and anything Dankovsky is saying ranks far, far below that.
Then a waiter materialises at Artemy’s elbow, looking as awkward as Artemy feels with a tray of tea held tight in both his hands.
“Ah, yes, thank you,” Dankovsky says, and settles back into his chair, gesturing Artemy into the one opposite. “You’ll forgive me this second presumption, I hope, Burakh. I’m afraid I took the liberty of ordering for us both. Just to start with.”
Artemy doesn’t want to forgive this second presumption. Doesn’t want to forgive the first one either. But now there’s this waiter looking between them, the cardinal nyur on his shoulder shifting her wings uneasily. And now Noukher’s sat himself down by the dainty table, and once he’s sat down, there’s no moving him if he doesn’t want to be moved. What choice does Artemy have? For all he started strong, he doesn’t want to make a whole thing of this, not with him so damnably recognisable, the man with the fucking bull daemon. So he drags the offered chair out, wincing at its grating scrape against the cobblestone, and takes a seat.
“That’ll be all, thank you,” Dankovsky says, and the waiter nods, leaves, relief evident in the hunch of his shoulders and his hurried stride.
Dankovsky takes it upon himself to pour their tea, ask how Artemy takes his, and nudge both his tea and the accompanying plate of vatrushka, warm and steaming, Artemy’s way. Artemy considers ignoring this too, just out of spite, but he’s never been in the habit of refusing free food and drink and he’s even less inclined to now as a perpetually-broke student in the mind-bogglingly expensive Capital. What work he and Noukher can find is scarcely enough to keep them afloat. So, sure. He’ll accept.
This delicate little teacup feels awkward to hold, though, and every sip feels dangerous, like he might snap the handle off by accident or set it down too hard.
Dankovsky, cigarette back between his fingers, seems to have no such fears, takes his sip with a careless grace and follows it with a drag. Finally, smoke curling from his mouth, he says, “You’ll be wondering why I invited you here. And, indeed, what the fuck kind of man I am.” His lips twitch, thick eyebrows rising. Amusement. Challenge. What an imminently punchable face. “Again, my apologies for the method. I did attempt to—”
“Get to the point.” A beat, as he pulls apart the soft dough. “Please.”
“Very well.” Dankovsky draws himself straighter, clears his throat. And in a voice that distinctly does not sound like getting to the point, with a slow spread of his hands in the air as though to lay a picture out before him, Dankovsky says, “I’d like you to imagine, dear colleague, a world wherein the tyranny of death has been vanquished. Wherein man is no longer beholden to such—”
“The point?” Artemy insists again, giving his other half a brief sidelong look. This is his new friend? This? Noukher ears are kept neutral as he focuses on Dankovsky, but the lash of his tail at the back of Artemy’s calves tells him to shut up and listen, as though Dankovsky’s saying anything at all worth listening to.
Tyranny of death? Vanquished? Really?
The snake, Asclepius, slithers down from his human’s arm entirely now, curling onto the table between them and making Artemy pull his hands back, holding that delicate little teacup against his chest.
“Simply put,” Asclepius says, sharp as a reprimand. Dankovsky does nothing to curb the overstep this time, seemingly content to smoke and watch them. “We’re soon to graduate, and when we do, we and other like-minded individuals have decided to dedicate ourselves to the study of death and the curing thereof. This includes, naturally, the study of souls, and therefore of daemons. Although Noukher says you consider us something else, isn’t that so? Part of the body instead of the soul?”
Just what has Noukher been saying to them? And how long have they been talking, if Noukher got so far as to mention the Khatange here, in this place of asphalt and glass and steel? The look Artemy cuts at Noukher is less subtle this time, because…because why? Because how dare he?
Noukher flicks one of his ears, saying without needing to say it: I had every right.
Despite the silence, or because of it, Dankovsky picks up where his nyur left off. “We do have to wonder if that view of daemons as part of the body might not contribute to the incredible distance you’ve managed to put between the two of you. And with nothing more than diligent training, as well. You must be aware that historically such separation has only ever been the result of extreme circumstances?”
“Or, rather, the instances of separation that have been formally studied have only ever been the result of extreme circumstances,” Asclepius corrects him.
“Yes, fair point. And even these instances are almost all a very recent thing. Before, oh, I want to say ten years ago?” Dankovsky looks to his nyur, who promptly replies, “Sixteen, if you mean the case of the American aeronaut who claimed a storm separated him from his daemon, but he buried it in a lot of sensationalist drivel. Really it was the incident with the train passenger—”
“Who lost hold of his daemon as he was boarding at the last minute, yes, that’s the one.”
“Twelve years ago, then.”
“Twelve,” Dankovsky says, and finally remembers to address Artemy again as he taps ash from the end of his cigarette. “Before that, the medical consensus was that any such separation between man and daemon immediately resulted in death. Now, of course, we know that isn’t always the case, although not how or why or what might make a person more likely to survive such a thing—”
“Mind you, and returning to the extreme circumstances, almost all of these instances were rapid and involuntary separation. There’s only one study I can think of—”
“The cave explorers, yes? In France.”
“Precisely. Trapped underground until one of their daemons managed to burrow her way to the surface to call for help. It’s one of the few that actually thought to include the bloody daemon’s account on things, finally.”
“Mm. She described a slow, willful separation, the closest thing we’ve ever heard of to your and Noukher’s case and even then, this was a matter of life and death. A man may find himself capable of many an impossible feat when his life is on the line. To manage it without such an incentive…” Dankovsky’s mouth quirks up into a little smirk. “The two of you remain utterly singular, Burakh.”
In Artemy’s experience, being singular is not a good thing, although no doubt Dankovsky and Asclepius and their like-minded colleagues would see that differently. Artemy waits several beats longer, chewing on another bite of vatrushka, just to make sure that both halves of Dankovsky are, in fact, done with their rambling.
Then he swallows and says, slow, “No, we’re not,” because it’s true. Generations of Burakhs before him, including Ersher, had done it. Done it younger, even. The same for other menkhu families, not to mention the Mistresses. But, more importantly: “Either way, you’re not studying my daemon.”
And that’s that.
“We didn’t ask you here to study you,” Asclepius says, with the sort of incredulity that suggests Artemy’s the one being unreasonable and not the snake that spent the past however long rambling with his human about the study of daemons and daemon separation.
At least Noukher is on his side enough to point out, “You two did just go off on that tangent.”
And Dankovsky, abashed, nods, before clearing his throat and saying, “We did. And, admittedly, yes, that was part of why we approached him at first.”
“What we want is to work with him,” Asclepius says.
“With both of you,” Dankovsky amends. Like Artemy’s the afterthought, tacked on at the end as they remember Noukher is only one half of a person. “Given the insights he’s shared over the course of our conversations, your unique experiences, and the fact you’re a fellow student of medicine, I feel we’d be remiss in not inviting you to lend your expertise to our endeavour.”
Artemy looks down at the tea in his stupid dainty cup. Swirls it around. Knocks the remainder of it back like twyrine.
“No,” he says, setting his cup and saucer back on the table. He ignores Noukher’s tail swatting him again. Hasn’t he heard them out plenty? What more does Noukher want? “Was that all?”
Asclepius, predictably, hisses at him, but Dankovsky sighs as though he expected this. He hunkers down closer, both elbows on the table, shoulders high and head low, his eyes intent on Artemy. “Burakh, listen. I recognise you have reason to be skeptical of what we’re saying, and…perhaps we didn’t do the best job in convincing you, got off on the wrong foot and whatnot. But I’ll ask you to consider this: even if we should fail at our goal of defeating death, and I have the utmost faith we won’t but for argument’s sake, say we do…you must recognise that simply striving towards it is worthwhile. The strides we could make towards improving longevity! At the very least, towards a better understanding of death and daemons. Imagine the—”
“No,” Artemy says again, firmer. He pushes up from his chair, another screech of its scraping legs. “Thanks for the tea. Don’t talk to my daemon again.”
“Burakh,” overlaps with, “Artemy,” and then cutting through them both, a hissing laugh.
“Surely that’s not up to you to decide,” Asclepius says.
Artemy should just go. He knows that. He should ignore the nyur, the way everyone does, remind the snake of where they are and what he is, what he should be as far as being Dankovsky’s half goes.
“He’s my daemon,” Artemy says anyway, and curses himself immediately for taking the bait.
Because the way Asclepius coils around himself, slow and precise, can only be called smug. “Yes, and you’re his human. So what? If he wants to work with us, are you going to stop him? If he wants to speak with us? Why should you be the one who gets the last say?”
Artemy looks past the snake to Dankovsky. “What is this?” he asks. “My daemon told you how things are done among my people and you thought, what? It’d be a fun thing to try out? Is that what this is? A joke?”
Because Noukher might not be able to spot this sort of thing, too straight-forward and well-meaning, too used to things back home where the fact they’re Burakh means something and garners them at least a modicum of respect and not at all used to here, where they’re outsiders, a curiosity at best. Artemy’s learned, by now, knows better. Shoves down the simmering rage because he knows better than to give in to that too.
People see the bull at his side, the bull that is his self, his guide, and they aren’t his Kin, they don’t know the responsibility of that shape, the weight he and Noukher will one day carry. What they see is a big, dumb farm animal. Cattle. Food, even. Quick to anger, sure, and dangerous, but easy to fence in, they think, easy to steer, to take advantage of.
Of course this sleek fucking snake thought he could have a laugh, why wouldn’t he? And sure, Dankovsky says, “We’re not joking, Burakh, I assure you,” but then he follows it up with, “This philosophy is one we’ve already long espoused. Seeing that is what prompted Noukher to share that you thought the same, not vice versa.”
“Supposedly thought the same,” Asclepius says, with a pointed flick of his tongue.
Ignoring him, Dankovsky says, “It seemed a happy coincidence. One of several, and yet more reason to invite you to join us. Far be it from me to call myself a man of mystical inclinations, but such an alignment in goals, in thought, it seemed…”
And then Dankovsky trails off, as though finally hearing himself. Or maybe, seeing Artemy dig his fingers into the underside of Noukher’s pockets, he gets that the game is done.
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Artemy gives Noukher’s pockets a tug and nods back the way they came. There’s no world in which he’d be able to drag a fully-grown bull anywhere, he’s no odonghe, but he’s at the point where he’s willing to try anyway if Noukher doesn’t get up.
Noukher fixes him with a long, long look, what Artemy might have called quiet disappointment if he’d cared to call it anything at all. He gives another tug, warning, and at last, Noukher slowly rises to his hooves.
Dankovsky pulls himself up as well, a resigned tightness to his smile that suggests he’ll at least pretend at being gracious. The snake on the table, uncoiling and then coiling again in agitation, betrays how he actually feels.
“Believe it or not, we’re not the only ones who think this way,” Asclepius insists. “There’s plenty of us. We have gatherings, even—Daniil, give him the address.”
“Asclepius, I hardly think—”
“I’d like that, actually, yeah,” Noukher says, and though Artemy tugs at his pockets again, Noukher just blinks at him, placid. Daring him. Until Dankovsky has hurriedly scribbled something down and handed it to Asclepius who, in turn, stretches himself to offer the folded paper to Noukher.
Noukher does not give it to Artemy. He tucks it, instead, into his frontmost left pocket, pointedly within Artemy’s reach.
When they’re sufficiently far enough from that café and Artemy can’t feel Dankovsky’s eyes burning in the back of his neck anymore, just as they’re crossing the street and without looking his nyur’s way, Artemy says, “We are not going to any gathering of theirs.”
He waits, and waits, and Noukher says nothing. Too late, and with the annoyance already prickling at his skin, he realises, of course Noukher won’t say anything. He is, after all, a daemon in a public space.
“We’re not,” Artemy says again. Just to confirm that he’s gotten the last word.
*
This gathering happens every Wednesday evening, according to Dankovsky’s hurried scribble, and although Artemy manages to hold onto his resolve for that first Wednesday’s gathering, and even for the second, he caves on the third.
Noukher says nothing on the way, as he has had nothing to say to Artemy ever since they left that café, no matter how Artemy tried to goad or demand or, once he’d calmed down, reason with his nyur. But that silence said plenty by itself, as did the low droop of his ears and tail.
Now, of course, his ears are perked up and pointing forward, his tail held high, and as the townhouse comes into view, Noukher overtakes him to trot up to that door and knock on it with the side of his horn and Artemy tries very hard not to feel like an idiot.
He still half-expects this to all be one big joke. Braces himself for that door to open on a stern, unforgiving face, scandalised by this nobody student from some nowhere place presuming to stand here in his nothing uniform.
Instead, the door opens to surprised laughter and a large man in his shirtsleeves, a cigarette dangling from his mouth that he quickly takes hold of to give room to his warm smile, and an effusive, “You must be Noukher! Good god, Asclepius wasn’t kidding. You’re a big lad, aren’t you? Come in, come in! Oh, and you’ll be Burakh! Wonderful, yes, come in!”
He opens the door wide and steps away from it to give Noukher the room to ease his horns and then the rest of his self through, not even sparing a glance behind him to Artemy, who nearly forgets to follow. He hurries through and the man closes the door behind him, just as a fiery red squirrel nyur pops up over the man’s collar to tug at his ear and hair.
“You’re too slow, why are you so slow!” she says. “He’s going to cheat and we’re going to lose and it’ll be all your fault, I’ll have it known.”
The man laughs, offering his palm for his nyur to scurry into, so he can better see and speak to her. “Let it be known, then. The brave and clever Glafira was definitely not to blame.” And then turns her in Artemy’s direction, hand out, far closer to Artemy than any unrelated nyur should be.
It feels, absurdly, as though he’s…offering? It? Her? Obviously he isn’t, because who would do that? Artemy slides a half-step back, just in case, as the man says, “Burakh, Noukher, this is my Glafira. Glafira, meet our newest guests. You remember Daniil mentioning—”
“Yes, yes, hello, welcome,” she huffs, rising onto just her hind legs. “If it’s Daniil you want, last I saw him and Asclepius they were…I don’t know, near the library, I think? To the left. Someone got Daniil talking about bloody moths again, so he’s probably still there. There, duty discharged, now Platon, let’s go!”
The man—Platon, apparently, who hadn’t thought to introduce himself but had gone and introduced his nyur to a perfect stranger—gives Artemy an exaggerated shrug as though to say, what can you do? as Glafira scurries down, around the trunk of his body and to the floor. She’s off like a shot, and Platon follows sedately after her to go…do…whatever it is Glafira is so intent on winning.
Leaving Artemy and Noukher alone to figure out how to navigate this—nope, and there’s Noukher already going on by himself. To the left, as Glafira indicated. Artemy swears under his breath, is tempted to just stand here and let the Line between them go taut, eventually, and pull Noukher back to him, but a glance over the sheer mountain of coats and hats by the door as he adds his own to it quickly dissuades him from that idea. With as many people as there seem to be in this place? He doesn’t want to be—uh, to leave his other half by himself.
Artemy quickly follows. And Noukher, sensing the distance between them closing, at least pauses to wait for him this time, albeit with an amused turn of his ear once Artemy finally catches up.
“Don’t,” Artemy grumbles.
The ear turns again, facing forward, an I didn’t say anything all the more smug by being wordless.
Together, step by careful step, they wade through clouds of music and laughter and smoke (not all of it tobacco, he’s pretty sure) and voices raised in heated debates that he can neither make heads nor tails of and—
There are women at the centre of these conversations, smoking and laughing and yelling just the same, some of them also in their shirtsleeves. Which would have been surprising enough for the Capital but then that surprise is immediately overtaken by the fact there are also nyur at the centre of these conversations.
Not just talking. Being listened to. Made space for.
One cluster of people they pass is gathered around a toad nyur sat on the top of an upside-down vase, lecturing. In another, a cat nyur interrupts an argument by winding between both humans’ legs before jumping onto the shoulders of one to offer his own interjection.
The fact that the cat nyur touched both of them only hits Artemy several steps away, blooming heat up his neck, and it only gets worse from there, because he sees it again in the flutter of a butterfly nyur dipping from one face to the next in greeting, her human following suit, and then again in the offer of a hand to someone’s snake nyur and her sinuous wind around that hand and onto the other person’s shoulders, just like that. Like it’s nothing. Like…
What is this place? How can they just—?
Touch is not out of the question among the Khatange, one Kin and one body as they are—and with as many large nyur as they have, in such tight quarters as they live in—but only among the Khantange. Even they wouldn’t think to purposefully touch the nyur of a stranger. Let alone the Townsfolk, let alone the Capital, with as strict and contained as they are with their nyur. Beyond some accidental jostling in crowded streets (which Artemy’s experienced plenty of, owing to Noukher’s size) or being stuck in cramped buses or trams (which Artemy hasn’t experienced at all, owing to Noukher’s size, but can imagine well enough) that sort of thing would be unthinkable even among family.
Usually.
Right?
Unless Artemy’s gotten this entirely wrong. But he doesn’t think so.
Then again, who knows? Those nyur he saw touching other people, maybe they’re family, or…or involved, or something like that.
(Only they can’t be involved, in that sense, because…Well, because if they are, then nyur talking and touching freely would be—well, no it’d still be the most scandalous thing here, but…)
Still too intimate a thing to be done in a public space like this, mind, but it’s not his business, whatever the case. So long as no one reaches for Noukher, and Artemy keeps close to his other half, keeps an eye out, is ready to intervene if necessary.
It never is.
Despite Noukher’s size, and for as crowded as these hallways are, it turns out that even people caught in conversation and drunk or dazed or not altogether there can, if at least one of them pays attention and gives half of a shit, sidestep and pull at their companions and at least try to make room for his other half after all. Look at that.
Now if only that all came without being stared at like some curiosity put on display, but Artemy supposes he can’t blame them. He half-wonders if these Capital folk even realised nyur could be this size or this shape.
Noukher, apparently undaunted, pauses to ask a pair, one with a sparrow nyur on his shoulder and the other with some colourful lizard nyur on his lapel, which of the way-too-many closed doors they see up ahead might be the library, or just if they’ve seen Dankovsky.
Lizard nyur guy elbows sparrow nyur guy, who startles out of his staring, laughing at himself, and says, “I’m guessing it’s your first time here,” and gets another elbow to the side before his sparrow points out the door they’re after. If Noukher realises the way the two of them immediately start to whisper between themselves as soon as he turns away, he makes no indication, just heads for that door and says, “Artemy?”
So Artemy catches up, and once he’s at Noukher’s side, leans forward to turn the doorknob and push it open for him, since Noukher seems intent on entering first. Artemy doesn’t mind. Not like he’s in a hurry to see how smug Dankovsky and his snake will no doubt be, seeing that they came after all.
Inside, sure enough, there’s Dankovsky, sat with a woman by an open window just opposite the door. The woman is writing something down intently, and it’s hard to tell if she’s listening to whatever it is Dankovsky’s saying as he gesticulates with a sheaf of papers in one hand, his eyes alight, but her apparent lack of enthusiasm certainly hasn’t dampened Dankovsky’s.
He’s in the middle of saying, “—too, you realise, not only calyptra thalictri,” when his gaze settles on Noukher and instead of the smugness Artemy expected, he sees bright, unfettered delight on Dankovsky’s face instead.
That’s…
Artemy doesn’t know what to do about that, only that it can’t be right, and finds himself casting about for Asclepius. Seeing him will give a fuller picture of whatever’s going on here.
Except, where’s Asclepius? Or the woman’s nyur, for that matter? Now that he’s paying attention, he can hear a low whine of…he’s not sure, a Line disturbed, maybe, and realises that she and Dankovsky are unnervingly solitary. The sort of solitary where Artemy knows in his bones there are no nyur hiding under a chair or within their clothing or even underneath their skin, like Herb Brides or odonghe. Herb Brides and odonghe always feel complete, despite their lack of outward nyur. This, them, they very much don’t.
Shit, no wonder his classmates find him so weird, walking around all day without Noukher.
“Just consider it, will you?” Dankovsky says, and then he’s hurrying to move chairs out of the way, beckoning for them to enter—well, for Noukher, which prompts Noukher to step forward to join them, the clop of his hooves muffled on the carpeted floor. Artemy reluctantly follows. “More importantly, Serafima, let me introduce you to Noukher and Artemy Burakh, fellow students of medicine.”
And however much Artemy might be surprised, even a little charmed, that he’d introduce them as fellow students, a good chunk of that gets flattened under how this woman, turning to give them both a quick up-down sweep, says, “The ones with the abnormal stretch distance, weren’t you?”
She looks barely his age, this Serafima, buttoned up tight despite…everything happening here in this place, in the way of someone who looks like she’s trying very hard to look serious and no-nonsense. Her eyes are keen, though, a glass-edge sharpness to them that reminds him of Gravel, so much so that he finds himself expecting a small weaselly face likewise peeking from around her collar.
But no, there really is no nyur with or on or around her.
“Tell me about this blood layer business, if you’d be so kind. Asclepius did an abysmal job explaining it earlier,” Serafima says, snapping his attention back to her. Then his gaze swings to Noukher, incredulous.
The Layers?
Mortification claws, hot, at the back of his neck. He starts to say, “That’s not—” only to have Noukher interrupt him with, “It’s simple,” and then, yes, goes on to explain the Layers of the body to this Capital woman and Dankovsky, flaying their father’s teachings open for all to see with so much faith and certainty in his voice, as though they haven’t spent every class and lecture having it hammered in just how simplistic, maybe even incorrect—
No. Artemy has spent every class and lecture learning the Capital’s understanding of medicine and having his world upended. Noukher has spent every class and lecture waiting for him outside, alone. Except for when he’s been making friends, that is. And as Noukher’s explanation of how nyur—and he calls them nyur, too, doesn’t switch to daemon for these Capital ears—are tied to the blood layer winds down, Artemy steels himself to hear how “unscientific” and dangerous his “primitive practices” are, fist tightening at his side in anticipation of it meeting Dankovsky’s face.
Serafima gives a considering hum, her eyes narrowing as she glances at Dankovsky briefly. No doubt wanting to ask really? This is who you’ve brought? but what she says out loud instead is,“Why the blood layer?”
She might as well ask why humans breathe air.
“You think another layer works better,” Noukher says, settling down on his haunches.
“Well. It seems to me a bit too reductive of a system, to be frank,” Serafima says, and Artemy starts to take a deep, calming breath when, unexpectedly, she continues, “But for the sake of argument, of those three? The nerves, surely, would be far better suited.”
“And why is that?” Noukher sounds amused, his ears relaxed and his tail tucked contentedly beside him, despite Artemy’s tension. “Dankovsky, you were partial to the bone layer, weren’t you? Something about the marrow?”
And just like that, somehow, Noukher has these two Capital students, doctors-to-be (?), debating the Layers as they relate to nyur, how one might go about testing something like that, and what implications each of the Layers’ relation to nyur might have.
Artemy feels like he’s missed something, like he keeps missing that something, as he remains on their periphery. Meanwhile, Noukher, rather than set the record straight, seems to be having fun encouraging these hypotheticals, even as they get more and more absurd.
When they get on the question of whether, if daemons belong to the blood layer (which they do, there’s no ifs about it. Except for the if of whether Artemy still believes in his father’s teachings, but that’s…he’s not thinking about that), a blood transfusion would mean a sharing of one’s daemon, and if so, what the threshold might be for the daemon to transfer entirely, Artemy can’t help his, “That’s…no, that’s not how that works.”
And though it’s only a mumble, it still manages to cut through the lively back and forth.
Dankovsky and Serafima share a look that Artemy can’t read, and then Dankovsky says, “No, of course not, colleague.” Not unkindly, but the way his eyebrows draw together and that lopsided smile he offers, all of that still grates. “This was only a thought experiment, you understand. We do enjoy our thought experiments here.”
“Well, I don’t. Not about this.” This time, he manages to be firm about it, and when Noukher gives him a huff, he huffs right back.
A beat follows. Two. Artemy thinks they’re probably expecting him to say something more, smooth things over, maybe that he doesn’t mind actually, it’s fine, do continue.
But he does mind.
Three beats. Four.
Whatever he may or may not feel about their father’s teachings, their menkhu’s medicine, their birthright and responsibility, it isn’t for these Capital students to play with. Just because Noukher has decided he doesn’t care or, hell, maybe just doesn’t want to upset his new friend here doesn’t mean Artemy has to stand for it.
At length, Dankovsky starts to say, “Duly noted. I, er…well…” His infuriating smile has solidified into a vaguely awkward grimace.
Then Serafima claps Dankovsky’s shoulder and, into that awkward pause, says, “His professors find him insufferable too, if it’s any consolation.”
“Oh, this was a shared blunder, don’t even try to pretend,” Dankovsky bites back, straight away. “And it’s hardly as though your professors like you any better.”
“Of course not, I’m a woman with thoughts of my own. Which you’d think they’d expect, given that they’re the ones teaching me, but there we are. Or perhaps I’m just as insufferable as you. See? That’s why we’re…mm, not friends, quite, I wouldn’t go that far…” Dankovsky scoffs at her teasing and she, smiling, steps away. “And speaking of far, I should go fetch Koios and Asclepius before they forget themselves for much longer. Then you won’t be tied to this window and can go show your guests around, hm? You’ve been an abysmal host, you know, Daniil.”
“This isn’t even my house,” Dankovsky protests.
“But they are your guests.”
“She’s got you there,” Noukher says, bafflingly comfortable interjecting himself in their (friendly?) banter.
And Dankovsky lets him, just sighs and says, “Et tu, Noukher?” to the backdrop of Serafima just…climbing out of the window?
They’re on the ground floor, sure, but the way she hikes up her skirts and matter-of-factly sets her heeled boot on the windowsill before ducking through the opening and hopping outside—again, the comparison to Gravel makes itself, but even Gravel stopped doing this sort of thing after her nyur settled, declaring she and Ignat were now too grown up. Serafima, for all her seriousness, seems to have no such compunctions.
As though all of that’s a perfectly normal occurrence, Dankovsky spares only a cursory glance to her oof as she lands on the other side and says, “I suppose she’s not…entirely incorrect. I’ve even failed to ask if you’ve been here long. Or greet you properly, for that matter. I’m glad you decided to come after all. ”
Artemy looks to Noukher, but Noukher is apparently more interested in where Serafima went, rising to head to the window and peer out into the garden outside. Figures, he’d leave Artemy to handle the speaking now, when it’s weird.
He shrugs, grasping for the right words. Says, “Yeah. Well,” which is a solid start, and then, “Glad it turns out you weren’t full of shit after all.”
Not about the whole daemons can speak thing, at least. Everything else is very much still up in the air, because there’s that smug little smile he was expecting.
“Are you?” Dankovsky asks, eyebrow arched and smile, yes, smug and expectant.
“Sure.”
Means Noukher’s judgment continues to be sound. Ish.
When he doesn’t elaborate, Dankovsky gives a small, “Hm.” And then says, “And how are you finding our little gathering so far? Rude thought experiments aside.”
“Uh.”
Words, again. He starts to consider how to express what that felt like, seeing what he saw on the way here. Decides he doesn’t want to, actually, and hey, how about he goes back to those rude thought experiments? The rude thought experiments should very much not be aside, now that it’s all catching up with him. Artemy had half-expected that him shutting down their fun would be the end of things and he’d be…he doesn’t know, laughed out of here? Ignored? Cordially invited to shut up and provoked into a fight? Left alone with Noukher after the other two found some excuse to duck away, at least, having committed the ultimate rudeness of pointing out someone else’s assholery. It’s not the kind of thing he can get away with, usually.
Instead, it’s…fine? Seemingly? Awkward, sure, yeah, but Serafima’s pivot got them through it and if Dankovsky resents him for it, he’s doing a damn good job keeping that under wraps. Artemy’s not sure what to do with him, frankly.
Not sure what to do with the space Dankovsky is leaving him to figure out what to say either.
“A lot,” is what he settles on, eventually.
“That’s fair. It can get rather raucous, even for me, hence…” And Dankovsky gestures expansively to the library around them, blessedly empty, the noise outside muffled by the closed door. Artemy hadn’t meant that in a noise sense, but yeah, sure, that too.
The sound of horn smacking against glass and his nyur’s quiet cursing in Khatange draws both their gazes to the window, where Noukher is attempting to ease his head back through the opening. Artemy would have gone to help, except Asclepius is draped over his horns. Neither he nor Dankovsky comment on this.
Instead, Dankovsky says, “You get used to it, though."
Artemy can’t see how.