CHAPTER 48: ARTISTIC FAVORITES

  Elias was sketching scenes from the day’s race when someone knocked on his front door. He set down his pencil, somewhat taken aback. There were only a handful of people who knew his address, and all of them were members of his crew. They had also spent a long day together after another successful round for The Sapphire Spirit, this time placing second, which meant they were headed for the final race. Elias was, of course, soaring—and also discovering a renewed energy to draw when he had not put pencil to paper in months. Now he couldn’t help himself. He had fallen into a trance, only to be snapped out of it by the unexpected knock on his door.

  He walked over, unclicked his lock, and open the door with a discerning frown. The woman standing on the other side was the last person he expected to see here, or anywhere in Lowtown for that matter. Abigail Graystone looked positively out of place.

  “I can go if you’re busy,” she said, responding to his frown.

  He quickly flipped it upside down. “No, sorry. Stay, please. I’m just… surprised to see you at my door.”

  “I’m a tad surprised myself, truth be told,” she admitted. “Mr. Fairweather gave me your address at the Sirens competition. He suggested I stop by.”

  “Did he?”

  “Bertrand had many kind things to say about you.”

  “Really?”

  “It wasn’t all kind, of course, but evidently the kind parts won out. Or perhaps the culprit is my own questionable judgment.”

  “Come in.” Elias gathered his manners, stepped back, and opened the door wide for her, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t prepared for guests, not that he had much to rearrange. He remained a relatively neat person, though not even neatness could salvage his dreary matchbox of a home, its peeling walls, its threadbare curtains.

  Abigail exuded no judgment, or perhaps she simply hid it well. She noticed the sketches in his notebook, however, buzzing toward them like a bee to a flower. “Your drawings,” she said. “You mentioned you were an artist.”

  “I’m not sure I used the word artist,” he clarified.

  “No need for false modesty, charming though it might be.” Abigail flipped between pages as Elias watched on nervously. “You’re quite skilled with a pencil.”

  He thanked her, snickering like a schoolchild. “There’s a joke there, but I won’t make it.”

  “Please don’t.” But Abigail could not help herself either. “Shall we go for a walk?”

  “A walk sounds wonderful.” He collected himself. “I didn’t realize you were coming over, so I haven’t anything planned.”

  “I didn’t know I was coming over either,” she said. “I suppose it will be like Azir. We’ll just have to see where the evening takes us. On second thought, let us hope that it is not quite like Azir.”

  “I’ll try not to shoot anybody,” Elias promised as he put on his boots.

  “It looks like someone already did a number on you.” She nodded toward his black eye as they stomped down the skinny stairs from his apartment.

  “I was attacked a few nights ago,” he said. “Three men. They were delivering me a message from an anonymous sender, though I have my theories as to its origin.”

  Abigail did too, by the sudden look of her. “That son of a bitch.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I returned the message.”

  “You don’t need to escalate things, Elias,” she said like an echo of Bertrand. “My brother will not back down.”

  They stepped outside into the warm dusk air as he replied, “That makes two of us. How about we head up to Hightown. My last wander through Lowtown ended with this.” He pointed toward the eye.

  “You’ll be racing him next time, you know,” Abigail said as they started walking. “He placed first in his second round. He hasn’t shut up about it either, I assure you. Please don’t kill each other. I will hold it against you.”

  None of this was news to Elias, who promised to be on his best behavior. As ever, it was Edric he was worried about. Elias could hardly be blamed for defending himself if it came to that, a prospect he had already been worried about. Trading glances with Abigail, his worry only heightened. Her affection was a steep price, but what if they had no choice?

  “Have you ever been to Montgomery Park?” she asked as they headed up the mountain toward Hightown, taking one of the many roads that connected the two districts. The slender street was as winding as it was bustling, terminating at a tall wooden staircase up to the docks that divided high from low.

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Elias said as they climbed up. “Is it popular?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend it if it were. It’s my favorite park.”

  “Why is an unpopular park your favorite?”

  Abigail shrugged. “It just is.”

  He chuckled and then, when she chuckled too, could help himself no longer: “Back at Mr. Grimsby’s estate, I asked you out for dinner. Is this your way of saying yes?”

  “This,” she said, “is a lovely walk. Don’t ruin it.”

  “You are an enigmatic woman, Miss Graystone,” he responded, “but I shall take what I can get. Where is this favorite park of yours?”

  “Not far from here. Far from my estate, however, which is probably half the reason it’s my favorite.”

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  Elias followed as she led the way. “I used to have a favorite spot by the river back in Acreton,” he mentioned. “I would spend my free hours there contemplating life, sometimes sketching—mostly those two things. Never brought another soul there, not even close friends. That spot was just for me. Do you know why it was my favorite?”

  “Obviously not,” Abigail said, though her curiosity was plain for anyone to see.

  “Because it was my favorite.”

  “It was your favorite spot because it was your favorite spot?”

  “I think that’s all there was to it,” he confirmed. “I could tell you that the view was scenic, that the crickets were calming. I could say the stars shined brightly or describe how the moon came down to earth on the river’s smooth surface. But the truth is, there are countless places in Sapphire’s Reach that fit that description. This one was my favorite because it was my favorite. I don’t believe that favorites are found, you see. I believe we choose them.”

  “What if someone doesn’t want to choose?” Abigail inquired before promptly answering her own question: “I suppose that is a choice too.”

  They wandered a bit farther, chewing on that thought, and just as she had said, the park was not far from the stairs to Lowtown, though Elias would have easily missed it. The modest public garden did not border any busy roads, nor did it call much attention to itself. It was a neighborhood park, built for those who lived in its vicinity, and precisely the right amount of unkempt. Its cobblestone paths were losing a war of territorial expansion with the encroaching wildflowers, while leafy hardwoods, their unfurling leaves still bright and unblemished, further helped hide an already hidden oasis.

  “Over here.” Abigail waved them toward the middle of the park as if into some secret entrance. A young girl was gathering a bouquet of flowers at one end of the garden, while two old men were huddled over a cracked stone table along the other, deep in a game of Sirens. Its most recent visitors stopped inside a white wooden gazebo that was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Underneath its pointed roof stood an old piano with covered keys.

  “When we replaced the family piano, my father was about to send this one to our junkyard,” Abigail explained, placing a hand on it. “I brought it here instead. I’ve seen that girl over there sit and play. That old man too. Sometimes they’re just hitting keys, but a few of them have learned simple songs. There’s this one boy, probably twelve or so, he’s quite the young prodigy. I keep it tuned up.”

  Elias took in the park from its sheltered center, more illuminated by lamplight now as the sun slipped away from them. “I can see why it’s unpopular,” he said. “I’m kidding. It’s lovely. It might be my favorite park too.”

  “I’ve already claimed it, I’m afraid,” she informed him.

  “Is that how favorites work?”

  “It was you who said we choose them. I’ve chosen this one, and no one else can have it.”

  “Not even that little girl over there?”

  Abigail sat down on the piano bench, her back to the instrument. “Not even her.”

  Elias laughed and leaned against a support beam, gazing at her. She was wearing a cream-colored dress, a burgundy jacket to cover her arms, and shorter heels better for walking. He had never seen her wear the same thing twice, whereas even the different items of clothing he possessed all more or less looked the same. Elias was a man of white shirts and tan breeches, though he had bought a second coat last fall better suited for the shoulder seasons, this one navy blue with brass buttons. He was wearing it open tonight.

  “Are you going to play something for me?” he wondered aloud.

  “I didn’t bring you here to play you a song,” Abigail said.

  “Didn’t you?” he pushed. “On some level.”

  He expected a sharp rejoinder rather than her delayed response. Had he struck a nerve, said something wrong—or maybe right? For Elias, Abigail’s contemplative pauses were deep valleys of possibility. “You aren’t entirely incorrect,” she eventually said.

  “Really?” He could not quite believe it.

  “It was those drawings back at your apartment,” she confided. “You can see so much of a person in their art. I suppose I wanted to respond in kind, to show you a part of me that wasn’t all walls and wit.”

  “There is nothing I want more in this world than to see that part of you,” he told her.

  “I know that’s not true,” she said.

  “It is in this moment.”

  Abigail sighed a resigned and beautiful sigh—not the sigh of a woman worn down but of a woman released. “You are persistent, aren’t you?”

  “Did you glean that from my sketchbook?”

  “I didn’t need to, but yes.”

  Abigail kicked up her heels and rotated herself toward the piano. She lifted the fallboard, cracked her knuckles, and hesitated only one last time, a chuckle escaping her lips as she struck her first note.

  Her song started slow. The same key could play a thousand different emotions, and Abigail always found the perfect one: an ephemeral tap, a heart-rending boom. The waves of her music ebbed and flowed, rising up the shore and reaching Elias when he least expected it, building into a crashing melody that took the young man’s breath away only to wash him back weakened in the quiet aftermath of her storm. He said nothing and listened for everything. “You can see so much of a person in their art,” she had said.

  Were he a more jaded man, Elias might have chalked up the feeling that overwhelmed him that evening as mere infatuation, a product of his age and unmet desires. But he had always been the son of a fellow dreamer, of a woman who had told him countless stories of his father and the love they shared, reciting them like the fables of legend. Her stories had taught him right from wrong, beauty from imitation, and love from despair.

  To say that favorites were not found did not strip them of their meaning—but imbued them with agency. And to understand Elias Vice, to understand the boy who had once been and would always be Elias Fisher, one had to understand this singular belief of his above all else.

  And so, when it came to determining a life’s love, he believed that a man had but one choice, and how precious a choice it was. And how juvenile he knew it would sound to that jaded ghost he imagined reading his thoughts, but he understood intimately the weight of a decision, and while practicality was another matter, nineteen years of never feeling what he felt then was evidence enough. His mind was made. He would choose her in countless futile futures in the hope that she might choose him in one. It didn’t matter whether this were true. It mattered only that he did not doubt it.

  Elias waited for her song’s final note to fade completely. “You play beautifully.”

  She sat facing her instrument, but as she turned her head halfway toward him, he saw the ripple of her smile. “Art for art,” she said, covering the piano’s keys once more.

  “Art for art,” he replied.

  Now on an equal footing, they spent the rest of their evening together sharing stories from the past as the sky darkened and the park was abandoned. With no one to eavesdrop, Elias told her about Melo and Ginger, how he felt guilty for disappearing the way he did. He told her about shooting competitions and Ginger’s temper and the liquor-fueled dalliances between her and Melo. So preoccupied by his future Elias was that he had not realized how much he needed to recite for someone all the stupid stories of his past.

  And yet, open as she was that night, he could tell Abigail was hiding something from him. When she eventually sighed and said the hour was late and that her father might send out a search party if she stayed out any later, Elias—now sitting on the piano bench beside her—waited for her to leave.

  When she did not, he leaned forward. She could have stood up and left then, so why did her elbow slide closer to his along the fallboard? For the same reason he touched her cheek. He kissed her, and she kissed him.

  The kiss lasted for only a few seconds, and yet it seemed to summarize their entire evening together: the hesitant first touch of their lips, a curious exploration of the other, a moment of lost passion, and then the final pulling away of a secret unrevealed.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  Folded hands fell to her lap. “You need to focus on winning your race,” Abigail said, “and I need to go to bed.” This time, she really did stand up.

  Elias rose after her. “Why can I never quite catch up to you?”

  “You caught up, Elias, in spite of impossible odds. That seems to be your special power. But I reside in a more constraining reality. We’ll talk after the race. Go win The Emerald Cup. Allow me to enjoy the look on my brother’s face when you do.”

  “Okay,” he said. “For you.”