Page 22 of Brave Truth

Isembard came back out with three bottles of cider, all open, and a plate of sliced apples. He handed a bottle first to his wife, then one to Claudio, then settled down next to Thesan, thigh to thigh. Thesan nodded, took a long sip, and then said, “You haven’t done something wrong, Claudio. But you’ve done something that might be read in a way you didn’t realise you were doing. I’m trying to figure out how to explain it. It’s one of those conversations that would not actually have been less awkward when you were nineteen or twenty. But we didn’t have it then or since. I wasn’t actually expecting it now. You know how I am with things I haven’t planned out in triplicate.”

“Now I’m— um. Curious?” Claudio offered, a little cautiously. It got a smile from her, though.

“All right. Two more questions. Did he ask you out for a cider in particular? When he suggested that pub?” Thesan settled herself a bit more comfortably, but she put the darning basket firmly away. “And what was your goal with the conversation on Tuesday, explicitly? If you were writing up a summary for a report, that sort of statement.”

Claudio thought back. “Suggested the pub, I had a cider both times, but I don’t think he specifically suggested it? He wasn’t in any state to the first time.” Then he had to think about the summary. “That I wanted him to know I wasn’t going to be awful about whatever his preferences are. And that I was interested in— I mean. He needs friends.”

“And you think that should include you?” Isembard leaned forward, elbow on the knee not next to Thesan’s. “Something about him, then?”

“He runs an excellent meeting.” It sounded ridiculous even as he said it. “I mean.” Claudio swallowed, then eyed his cider, and had a swallow of that for good measure. “He was doing difficult work out on his own. I know what that’s like. I could see the gap and the tangle. Blame Gabe for that.” It got a slight smile out of both of them. “I just like talking to him, the more we do. And he hasn’t pushed me away. Or made it all about Mother or what I could do for him.”

“All right.” Something in that made Thesan rearrange something mentally. She wasn’t hiding the shifts from him. “All right. Let me give you a couple of pieces of information you don’t have yet. You know people prefer pubs for all sorts of reasons, and that they develop specific groups of patrons. Urania’s Apples has a long history— well back to before the turn of the century— as the place for the Ministry folks of certain preferences to find each other. Or at least a place no one’s going to fuss at them.”

Claudio blinked at her, startled. She went on, absolutely deliberately, making it clear with no ambiguity. “Men who prefer men, women who prefer women, other combinations that aren’t focused on marriage for family and production of the desired two children. Men who prefer men are known as Uranians in some circles, and the apples are a reference to a poem by Sappho. Quoting Sappho pointedly being the single most reliable way to find other women of a shared persuasion.”

She left it there, keeping her voice even throughout. “Asking someone to go there for a cider, specifically, is a way of signifying that sort of interest that has plausible deniability if it goes wrong. The way that the Astronomy Guild means different things by asking about stargazing or doing a bit of observation together. I know I’ve told you that one.”

Claudio blinked at her, a hundred thoughts colliding in his head. What came out, more a squeak than an actual sentence, was all impulse. “Wait, how do you know that? Is that— is that why you like cider?”

The last bit of it made her smile, though, and she lifted the bottle. “In this case, I like cider because it’s a fantastic drink, and it reminds me of where I grew up in all the good ways. But have I gone to Urania’s Apples and ordered the cider with purpose in the past? Yes, I have.”

Claudio’s jaw dropped. Every tiny scrap of coherence flung itself out of his head. He’d had no idea. Isembard, however, had obviously known this. He was just watching Claudio, his hand on Thesan’s knee, letting her guide what she said and how she said it. It felt like forever before she took pity on him. “While I was an apprentice. Though, for the record, Isembard didn’t know the details until Ursula was a few months old.” A couple of years into their marriage, then.

Isembard picked up, as if they’d rehearsed this, even though Claudio knew they hadn’t. “As I’m certain Thesan will explain in a second, there are many reasons people don’t talk about their preferences. I’d burdened her with an excessive number of former partners and flings to deal with. I made it clear that while I’d be glad to hear about her prior relationships, if she wanted to keep it private, that was fine with me. I was, of course, entirely confident they wouldn’t be the sort of problem for me that I’d saddled her with.”

His tone made Claudio snort, because he’d been around for the last of those. Specifically, for Isembard having to work around the junior librarian for years, after he’d badly handled that relationship and her admittedly unreasonable expectations about it.

He’d talked through that with both Claudio and Orion once Claudio had finished school a few years later. And he’d also shared a lot of information Orion had found helpful in managing his own romps. Claudio had never needed to apply any of the advice in a practical sense. He just hadn’t been interested. Then he’d been married and still not interested.

Thesan picked up after a sip from the bottle. “Eventually, Isembard proposed the sort of bet we’re fond of. In this case, whether he could spot who it was without me telling him. Turns out that showing up for the first Guild meeting after having Ursula made a couple of things rather more visible. And he’d been along because, well, it had been a bit.”

“There were, admittedly, a limited number of places you might have met people to be interested in during that time of your life. They pretty much all involved the Astronomy Guild,” Isembard said, teasing now.

Thesan snorted and twisted to kiss his cheek before settling back to focus on Claudio. “To be clear, three men— you’ve met all of them, actually— and two women. One of the women was in a very delicate position professionally. Any hint of her preferences would have sunk her chances. She’s been more open about it for the last decade or so, with people who know how to spot it.”

Claudio nodded at that. He understood that set of maths well enough, even if he’d never had to do them on his own account.

“The other—” Thesan hesitated. “It ended very badly. The sort of badly that meant she was absolutely convinced I was going to blackmail her about it, or bring it out at the worst possible moment for her. My being thought to prefer women would have put her almost as much on edge. People would have gossiped. It wouldn’t have been easy for me professionally either. It was the year before I started teaching. I walled all of it off and stuck it deep in a chest in the back of my head. Told myself I wasn’t fit to have a partner, not and be the sort of teacher I wanted to be.” There was something of Orion’s absolute way of thinking there, that there was no middle ground, but she didn’t seem upset about it. Just stating a fact.

The first thing Claudio could think of, the loudest thing in his head, was simple. “She didn’t know you at all, did she?”

It was, he thought, the perfect thing to say. Thesan shifted, one of those changes of expression that couldn’t be simplified. He knew it meant she had in fact been terrified of mentioning it, and now she was all right with it. Isembard shifted his arm to rest around her shoulders and nodded. “No, she didn’t.” His voice was rock solid.

Thesan nodded. “I got into the habit of never hinting. Never thinking about it, really. Being steady for people. Especially here. Students, former students. Staff a couple of times, though I’m not going to say who. And of course parents get entirely unreasonable about the teachers of their children being anything other than utterly pure. Whatever that means. Now, you know about Seth and Golshan and Dilly, of course, who gave me a visible reason to be decent to talk to about it. They gave me permission ages ago to bring them up if it helped, and it has.”

Claudio had indeed known about them for years. Since before he’d left school. She’d made a point after he’d finished at Schola of introducing him to her brother Seth, his wife Dilly, and— as they put it in private— their Golshan. About how all three of them were parents to Seth and Dilly’s children, in every way that mattered.

But no one there had ever been specific about what that meant in private, beyond the fact that they were family. Seth and Golshan had been good friends since Schola, in each other’s pockets. Claudio knew perfectly well that was possible without being romantic or sexual. That was how Claudio was with Orion, and how Isembard had been with his best friend until Perry had died.

But they’d also had the family to bring them together, in a way that seemed different from other relationships he’d seen, where children weren’t part of it. It was certainly a far more fond and loving home than anything Claudio had known. Now, he considered. “And it’s also more academic for you now?”

“Being entirely happily married, and where would I have time for something else, anyway? Even if I could navigate people being around all the time? Just because I like both men and women doesn’t mean I need to do anything about it. And to be honest, that last relationship put me off trying again. Might have put me off men, except that Isembard managed to handle things in ways that didn’t make me scared of the same problem. For one thing, he wanted to be public, in ways she never had, even just as friends.” Her shoulder twitched. “Not that it made it something I wanted to talk about, even think about, for a few years in there.”

Claudio nodded. “I’m sorry that was so awful.” Something caught at him then. “Is that part of why your warding’s so good?” It was. It had been from before she and Isembard had even met. Isembard had mentioned that once.

Her mouth twisted up. “Not the only reason. But yes. I didn’t want to be surprised by someone catching me when I wasn’t ready for it. She did that. Twice.”

Claudio winced. “So. Unkind, as well as not understanding you at all.” Once could be chance, but he didn’t think twice was. He took a breath and rubbed his face, putting down his bottle of cider so he could do so with both hands. “I made it awful for Matthew, didn’t I?”