Umber

For the past several evenings Klavicus had been too busy to speak long with Mahlanda when she arrived; twice he had been out entirely and had not returned by the time she left. A meal was always waiting for her, however, and often he scribbled notes on what she was currently copying, usually exposition on errors in the texts. Tonight he was in, but slouched in front of the chasm of air watching scenes dancing on currents that shifted too rapidly for her to follow. As he failed to immediately acknowledge her arrival she took a book to the table with her and ate alone, and it was a measure of his preoccupation that he didn’t warn her of dire consequences if she spilled anything on the pages. There was a small covered dish on the table containing a light grey powder; even at casual inspection it was clearly not a condiment, but she left her curiosity until later.

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“Your diligence is commendable,” Klavicus said to Mahlanda as she arrived for her evening’s work, “considering events that are unfolding in Tyr.”

She accepted the cool water he offered her and gulped it down gratefully. “I may be coming as a refugee one of these days, if the situation doesn’t improve.”

He had developed the habit of providing a small supper for her when she arrived, and though the ingredients were invariably more common than the first meal he’d prepared she was oddly touched by the gesture. Her reflexive caution at first advised that, after all, these dinners were not silent affairs and he invariably quizzed her about the wider world, but she didn’t have to know him for very long to be confident that he could come by the information more quickly and reliably by other means, and probably often did.

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