[Najmi] spend our vacation at

[mr_gaeta]

Despite Azimar's assertions otherwise (and Gaeta's own firsthand experience, now), he still wants to learn how to decipher the language he sees around him in occasional signs and charts. Considering the maps they'll soon have on hand, he thinks it doubly important. You can't navigate if you can't read.

So, for the time being, he's taken to the manor library. Gaeta nearly upended a tiny dish of ink as he was pulling down a couple of texts, but caught himself in time; now, he's trying to puzzle over the written language as Kaya taught him. Under his breath, he sounds out each word as carefully as he can, with the halting uncertainty of someone far younger.

Comments

[mr_gaeta]

It makes just enough, though, for Gaeta to break off and glance up.

He smiles and lifts a hand in greeting.

[no_thief]

She smiles back, coming closer.

Hushed: "What're you reading?"

[mr_gaeta]

"...Honestly, I don't know," he confesses in a half-laughing whisper. Gaeta angles the book toward her. "I've got a couple of the words, but -- "

[no_thief]

She slips up next to him, resting one hand on the edge of the desk, and angles her head to look at the book. Her eyes widen a little.

"It's old," she murmurs, with something approaching reverence.

[mr_gaeta]

"Yeah." He's handling the yellowed pages with care, trying not to put too much stress on the well-worn leather spine. "I think it has to be at least a couple hundred years. What do you think?"

[no_thief]

Kaya nods. "The words are all made differently," she murmurs. "My -- my papa used to say that means it's from a long time ago, because the way we make words can change, only it happens so slowly that nobody notices."

[mr_gaeta]

"Most languages do," he whispers, nodding back. "They evolve over time. Even just the words people choose -- it happened back where I'm from, too."

Gently, he turns a page.

[no_thief]

The next page has an illustration: a landscape of hills and a ramrod-straight river, extending off into the distance, done in blue and green and brown inks. A stylized scroll across the top of it bears an inscription in the older, angular versions of the letters Kaya's been teaching him.

"Can you read that?" she asks him, looking up.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta squints at the page for a moment, puzzling over the change in font.

"I think so," he says at last, and, one painstaking letter at a time, begins to sound it out.

[no_thief]

Kaya listens, nodding. "No," she says once, "that's the old curled-over thak, it looks a bit like a jado but it's not."

[mr_gaeta]

" -- Okay, right, yes," he says once he gets a closer look, nodding to himself as he touches the very tip of his finger to the letter. Backtracking a little, he repeats the word with the correction added in.

[no_thief]

Anthi'ar, it reads.

"It's the name of the river," Kaya says. "It's the old word for arrow."

[mr_gaeta]

"Oh," he murmurs. Gaeta skates his finger down the page to the illustration. "I can see why they named it that."

[no_thief]

"And the book says here --"

She's pointing to the block of text at the bottom, and her words cut off in a tiny indrawn gasp.

[mr_gaeta]

He blinks, looks to the text, glances back to her with his eyebrows pulled together.

"What?"

[no_thief]

Very softly: "It used to also be called the Iron Road River."

He should remember; he wasn't there when Itral had her first fit of prophecy, naming the broken city, but he's heard Kaya and Itral go over the words again and again.

Follow the black, the blue, the --

[mr_gaeta]

"Oh my gods."

Not much louder than Kaya, as he stares at the words she's highlighted. The back of his mind keeps turning, puzzling out the letters, shaping them to words, cross-referencing them to the translation she's provided. The rest of him stands stock-still and motionless, trying to take in its other meaning.

"That's the route. Is there -- " He's skimming the whole page again, though he knows it won't do any good. "Any mention of black or blue there? As landmarks, or...?"

[no_thief]

"I don't see anything, wait --"

Her finger's sliding across the text, tracing the words as she reads them silently.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta peers over her shoulder, following the path of her finger as if reading along.

A brief movement catches his eye, but when he glances up in an automatic check of their surroundings, he doesn't spot anything. Frowning, Gaeta studies the spot for another moment before returning to the book.

[no_thief]

"It doesn't say anything about blue or black."

She lowers her hand, her shoulders slumping a little.

Doubtfully: "Maybe the Voice just meant the color of the river?"

[mr_gaeta]

"Maybe." He doesn't sound any more sure of it than she does. "It doesn't seem like it would -- "

Another skittering burst of movement in the corner of his eye. Gaeta's head snaps around.

[no_thief]

Kaya starts, looking in the same direction. "What?"

(Under the reading desk, her hand closes on her knife.)

[mr_gaeta]

"I thought I..."

He blinks, and shakes his head in a tiny frustrated movement. Ghosts on a DRADIS screen, he thinks.

"Never mind. I thought I saw something."

[no_thief]

"Where?" Low and intent.

She's close enough to him that he can probably feel it: she's tensed all over.

[mr_gaeta]

Gaeta tips his head toward a chair some ten feet from where they're seated.

"I'm sure it wasn't anything," he whispers.