"Raynare."
A couple of steps take you over to the Chair, and you drop into it. The noise that escapes you should not be repeated in polite company.
"Sorry, what?"
"My name is Raynare," you less say than sigh, half with pleasure and half with something you refuse to acknowledge. "No point to that secret any longer."
"Was there ever a point to any of the secrets?"
"Don't be a brat, Ruri." It would take effort to cuff her with a wing, so you don't bother. "Go sit down or something. You look like you're going to collapse."
"Which chair would you recommend?" she asks. "You only have, what, eight?"
"I know. It's such a consuming obsession. One for every four to five centuries I've been alive. I should slow down my collection a little more."
Your room is less that than it is a museum. One wall is a cacophony of bright, swirling tiles and gilded flowers; you looted both from the Tower of Babel. Another is the rough, sanded stone the Egyptians preferred, and just as old. The third is gothic—dull, dreary, and fresh out of a gargoyle convention—and the fourth is unable to even be seen, given the closets and wardrobes that regiment themselves across it. For lack of a better system, you ordered their contents by age; simple, homespun tunics from the Iron Age on the left all the way to something that's less a piece of clothing than a set of well-placed straps on the far right.
Most of the furniture you own is sculpted from rich, dark wood a few shades lighter than your hair. Your ceiling is actually one, full block of ebony, carved with constellations; each star is a diamond, and they glitter in the light cast by the smokeless torches that ring all but one of the walls. It was horrendously expensive, but whenever you look up, it makes you feel like you're sitting out under the sky.
The chairs that Ruri's talking about are the only real exceptions to the rule: they're too covered in leather, or fur, or both (all black, of course) to tell whether there's any wood underneath. None of them are anywhere near as comfortable as the Chair, but that's only because it rearranged your standards of comparison completely.
"Actually," you say, "don't sit down quite yet. I need a drink."
You imagine lifting a mountain would be easier than gathering the will necessary to raise an arm and point toward a particular cabinet, but eventually you manage it.
"In there. Pick something, I like most of it."
"I'm not your gopher," Ruri says, but she moves toward it all the same.
"You're my student. Close enough."
You return your attention to the roof. It's easier to pretend you're free this way, beneath a fake sky with a fake friend who'll probably fetch the fake alcohol because you just realised she can't read the labels. That's… God damnit. You're the teacher. That's your responsibility to fix. You'd have never agreed to this if you'd realised you'd actually have to do the job, instead of just ranting on about politics or species a couple of times a week.
Ruri holds up a flask and a pair of wine-glasses. "I have no idea what this is, but the colour's pretty."
She's right about that; it's like someone's distilled spring and sunlight and infused it with rubies. Firewine is lovely to look at, and even lovelier to drink. You only have one bottle left of the stuff, but it's not like you'd be saving it for a better celebration than of the day you transcended possibility. Why not?
"Firewine," you tell her. "I swindled a case off a pixie in the sixteen hundreds. It's very sweet."
Most of your alcohol is sweet. There's a joke in there, somewhere.
Ruri pours out two generous serves—good girl—and hands you one. You're so relaxed you almost drop it.
"Sit over there," you say after swallowing half the glass. Your tongue traces your lips, licking away the residue—like sugar, strawberries, and flame—and Ruri takes a second or so to realise you're pointing her to the closest chair with a foot. It's the only one you can see from where you are. "Unless you'd prefer my lap."
There are few things better in this world than a pretty drink and a prettier person both within arm's reach, but you're fairly sure you're at least a week too early before Ruri will consider saying yes. You'd know she was angry with you even if you were drunk and, regretfully, you are not.
God.
You're practically maudlin.
This needs to stop.
"In your dreams," she says, a slight sway in her step as she strides over to the chair and sits down. She's trying to tease you. Your apprentice really can't be this cute.
"I don't sleep, Ruri. The closest I've ever come to dreaming was overdosing on acid a few decades ago."
"...that sounds like an interesting story."
You snort. "I have a lot of those. Be good and I might tell you a few."
"By be good, I assume you mean do what you're told." Ruri sounds amused, if anything.
"Well, obviously," you reply after a long sip of firewine. "Which brings me on to my next point – I'm going to need to teach you Enochian if you're to get anywhere in this place. Can't do what you're told if you don't know what you've been told, and not everyone has bothered to learn Japanese. Or Russian."
"Wait, really? Isn't that forbidden?"
You don't quite fall out of your chair in paroxysms of laughter, but it's close. "You do realise who and what you're talking to, right?"
Ruri—oh glorious day!—pouts. "After today? I don't think I'll ever forget. But I was serious – isn't it some sort of status symbol or something? A language designed entirely by a god? By the God?"
You nod, slow and easy like the way the alcohol is settling in your blood. "It is – to the Church. To the Angels. But us? I know a couple of people who've never spoken it out loud since they Fell. They're unusual, though; most of us just don't care either way. A few centuries ago, Abiel and his cronies even tried to spread it amongst the mortal world; John Dee certainly wasn't visited by real Angels. The Church discredited it and shut down the attempt before any real dissemination could happen, though."
Another sip, and you're out of firewine. You extend the glass, and thankfully Ruri takes the hint to refill it—she's less than halfway through her own—because fuck getting up.
"Point is, I hope you're good at languages, because you're going to need to learn quickly."
"I'll do my best."
You honour her commitment by draining your drink. Heat blooms in your chest, and when you raise it toward her, your hand trembles. Or maybe that's your vision. It doesn't really matter. You feel too warm—too soft—to care.
Ruri opens her mouth, looks at you, closes it, and empties the rest of the bottle into your glass. You toast her, sopping a little over the edge; it splashes into the thick, sunset-red carpet and disappears. Thank God for self-cleaning enchantments.
The two of you are silent for a time. Ruri nurses her firewine, and you forget you're actually holding yours for a solid ten minutes. You're not quite sure whether to blame the Chair, or how quickly intoxication has crept up on you. Firewine is strong, far more so than any mundane alcohol. Now you've stumbled well past drunk – and Ruri is barely buzzed.
She sets her glass on the table beside her chair just a little too casually not to be deliberate. Oh, clever girl. She planned this, or at least took advantage of the opportunity. Maybe she'll take advantage of you, too.
You cross one leg over the other so that the smooth curve of your calf—and more—peeks out of the hem of your dress.
"So," Ruri says, "were you ever going to tell me about Nabi, if—if she hadn't died?"
"Probably," you muse, distracted by the shimmer of the stars on your roof. "She'd have realised eventually I was trying to corrupt you rather than ruin you, and it would have been a useful weapon to blunt any appeals to sisterly affection."
"You're a terrible person," Ruri says. Her smile is sardonic. You kind of want to kiss it off. She's cute when she's trying to be clever, but this? This is something else entirely. "You do know that, right?"
"Only terrible?" You shake your head; the world keeps going well after you stop. "I'm disappointed. Almost as disappointed as I am by the fact you got me drunk and that was the first question you asked."
You're not really—not at all—but some appearances have to be kept.
"You noticed?" She seems surprised. How insulting.
"I do this for a living, Ruri." You drain a third of your glass with a tilt of the jaw more provocative than most courtesans. It sears your throat on the way down. "You were impressive – for an amateur."
"I'll show you impressive," she shoots back. "One day I'm going to play you so thoroughly you won't realise until a week later."
"I like it when you talk dirty to me."
"That is not what I w—" Her mouth snaps shut, and she sighs. "I hate you."
You don't realise you're laughing until you've spilled most of your firewine on the floor. It seems like a good idea to spill the rest somewhere that'll appreciate it more, so you swallow it in one gulp and drop the glass to the side. It bounces off the carpet and rolls under the Chair.
"Come over here and prove it," you say.
She stands, stalks straight over to you, and leans down until her lips are close enough for kissing.
"No."
She straightens and returns to her chair. Her smile is so smug it'd probably break certain corners of the internet if they ever got a picture.
That little bitch.
You're not sure whether to applaud—she's learning!—or reach out, drag her back by her shirt, and demonstrate that the only person who gets to fuck with anyone around here is you. Figuratively and literally.
In the end, after careful contemplation, the Chair wins out. Lifting both your hands would require moving them off the armrests, and you'd need that to do either. Your pride—and Ruri—are safe. For now.
"Getting drunk makes me thirsty," you say, and wonder if she realises the joke. "Fetch me another bottle, apprentice."
"...I honestly don't understand you, Sa—Raynare."
You headpat her with your eyebrows. Or maybe you're just squinting against the light. Doesn't really matter.
"You don't need to understand me to befriend me," you say. There. That sounded reassuring, didn't it? "Just keep being adorable."
She looks speechless.
Wait.
If she's speechless, then she's not getting you another drink. "Hey. I asked you for something. Don't be rude."
Ruri throws her hands up the air, and marches over to the correct cabinet. At least, you think it's the right cabinet. Everything's a little blurry right now. It must have been, though, because she drops a bottle of what, upon cracking open the cap, smells like moonshine—the real kind, not a shitty human mockery—in your lap. Excellent. It fizzles on your tongue, and you shiver. God that's cold. Like an icepick to the back of your throat. An icepick made of ice.
You are so good at similes.
As she returns to her seat, you're pretty sure you hear her mutter something like "I am never drinking again." You must have imagined it, though. Nobody could be that silly.
