Ariah Read Online Free Page A

in the City, it’s not like the herb’s changed any just ’cause you did,” she said.
    “ I did not change!”
    “ Guess you’re right. Guess you were always a selfish ass.” There was a moment of heavy, sharp silence. Dirva left the room. He gave no pretense at all, just left. Abira shook it off like a dog shakes off water. She pulled a small wooden pipe and a pouch out of her sleeve. She packed herself a bowl, watching me watching her do it with a sly smile. Her fingers were quick and deft; in a few seconds the pipe was packed, and she fished a match out of her other sleeve. She shoved the pipe and the match at me. “Quick, kid, before he comes back.”
    I took it. I admit I was intrigued. My grandmother smoked pipeherb right up until her death. It has a rich smell, one I still associate with her and all her stories of the war in the South and her life before her silver husband swept her away up into the Empire. Thinking back on it, I’m not entirely sure how she supplied herself with it way out there in Ardijan. She was resourceful; she may have grown it herself. Still, though, she never let me have any. My parents very much disapproved of her smoking it, and she said it wasn’t worth the trouble getting me into to trouble with her.
    I must confess I was also intrigued by Abira. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met. She struck me as someone totally unfettered, a person with no comprehension of law. That she was Dirva’s sister fascinated me. They had been raised together yet were so different. Part of me had always wanted to be wild and lawless, and that part of me had been handily seduced by Abira. I struck the match. Abira grinned and nudged me with her elbow. My heart pounded against my ribs. She elbowed me again, harder this time, and I sucked in a huge, billowing lungful of smoke. It was heavy smoke, dry smoke, which felt like it was strangling me from the inside. It sent me into a violent coughing fit. I doubled over, gripping the edge of the table for dear life. My eyes watered. I felt I was going to vomit any second. The pipe clattered to the floor.
    Dirva rushed around the corner asking questions I couldn’t quite hear and couldn’t answer. He shoved Abira out of her chair and ordered her to get me a glass of water. He pulled me back into my seat and patted my back until the coughing subsided. I felt safer when he was next to me. Once I felt safe again, the situation struck me as impossibly absurd, and I began to laugh. It was a painful sort of laugh, one of those laughs where it seems like there’s a muscle trying to launch itself out of you, and the more you try to stop, the harder you seem to laugh. Dirva snatched the glass out of her hand. “Drink this, it’ll help,” he said. I took the glass in both hands and drank as much of the water as quickly as I could. The pipeherb had taken hold by then. I remember having some strange epiphany about the pureness of water, which I fully believed was quite profound. “Abbie, what the hell is wrong with you?” Dirva hissed.
    “ Hell, I didn’t know he was going for half the bowl,” she said.
    Dirva plucked the empty glass out of my hands. “Ariah, are you all right?”
    I let out a couple of weak-sounding coughs and nodded.
    “ He’s fine! Look at him, happy as a clam,” Abira said.
    I grinned and gave Dirva’s sister a playful shove. She no longer seemed so threatening. “Did you bring drums? Did I see drums?”
    Abira sat next to me. “Oh, sure. I’m a drummer.”
    “ Let’s play the drums.”
    “ Do you play?”
    Dirva sighed. “No, he doesn’t play. Ariah, I think you should lie down.”
    I let him lead me to my bed. Sometime soon after that, I fell asleep.
    My life before Abira’s arrival had been a very stable thing and comfortably slow-paced. By that I mean that very few things happened to me suddenly. Even moving to Rabatha had not been a sudden thing. I had known for months beforehand. The train ticket had been bought five