The Mark That Recognises You

The wall was cold under her thighs. Kira had been sitting on it long enough that the cold had stopped being a sensation and had become a fact about her body.

A woman sat down next to her, leaving the right amount of distance. Not too close. Not too far. The exact distance somebody sits next to you when they have decided to talk to you but are willing to look like they haven't.

Kira did not turn her head.

“You're not from here,” she said. “You're cleaner than here.”

“That obvious.”

“That obvious.”

The woman did not introduce herself.

After a long moment she said, “May I see your hands.”

“No.”

“All right.”

Silence. The market was a low, broken sound a hundred metres away. Someone was hammering something out of something else.

“You read it off Lian's paper,” the woman said.

Kira's stillness changed shape. The same stillness, slightly different temperature. She turned, slow, and looked at her.

“What.”

“The fragment he picked up. You read it. He thought you read the words. You didn't. You read what was underneath.”

“How do you —”

“That's why I'm sitting here.”

The woman wasn't looking at Kira. She was looking out at the wall opposite, at nothing. She had a face you would forget the moment you stopped seeing it. Kira got the distinct sense that this was deliberate.

“Who are you,” she said.

“Ember.”

“What do you want.”

“Nothing.” A small smile. “Or — almost nothing. To say one thing and then leave.”

“Say it then.”

Ember reached into her coat and took out a small square of folded cloth. She laid it on the wall between them. She did not hand it across.

“There's a thing in your chest,” Ember said. “You feel it in other people. You feel it in paper. I am guessing you have felt it in animals and in weather and in rooms after the people have left them.”

Kira did not answer.

“That thing is not a weakness,” Ember said. “And it is not a miracle. It is a frequency.Most people don't have it. Some people have a little. You have a lot.”

“What is this.”

“A piece of paper from the year before the Citadels. Different fragment than the one Lian found. Same year. Different writer.” Ember pushed the cloth one finger-width closer to her. “I am not asking you to read it. I'm asking you to put your hand on it for the count of three and tell me what you feel.”

Kira hesitated.

“What happens if I do.”

“You find out you're not alone,” Ember said. “That's all. It is not a contract. It is not an initiation. I'm not asking you to come anywhere. I am telling you there is a network of people who can do what you do, who have been collecting and listening for as long as anyone can remember, and we don't recruit and we don't proselytise. We just — when we recognise someone, we let them know.”

Kira looked at her.

“Why now.”

“You read his paper,” Ember said. “Most people who pick up a fragment like that put it down and don't notice. You didn't put it down. You felt it. The frequency turned up high enough we could —” she made a small gesture, hand opening like a flower — “feel you back.”

Kira put her hand on the cloth.

Something in her chest — the thing she would not have called a thing — said afraid for somebody who wasn't going to listen,the same words she had heard off Lian's paper, the same texture, the same exact pitch. Afraid for somebody who wasn't going to listen.

She lifted her hand off the cloth like it had burned her. Not in fear. In recognition.

Ember was already standing.

“Find me,” she said, “when you want to. I am not hard to find if you know how to listen. The market knows me as the one who never buys anything.”

She was gone before Kira could turn her head.

The cloth lay on the wall. Kira looked at it for a long time before she picked it up and folded it into her sleeve.