The Q

by Beth Brower

They looked at each other long enough for one thousand past conversations to pass between them,

This particular New Year’s Eve, the sound of her boots on the pavement was the only sensation linking Quincy to the December night, the only sensation keeping her from living entirely inside the mental file room of her brain.

“It is one of the great arts of the human soul,” Ezekiel said to himself. Her hand on the door, Quincy shifted and looked back at her uncle’s profile. “What is?” “Staying with someone. Companionship is one of the great arts of the human soul.”

Many of the trees in Rhysdon’s parks were also beginning to leaf out into a lacy cloud of green so cheery that even Quincy—who was accustomed to thinking about walking only as a means to an end or as a means to calm herself down before someone else came to an end—looked about her and came close to granting the walk some kind of virtue in itself.

In all actuality, Quincy knew that, when riding in a wagon, your thoughts had plenty of room to wander and move and never bump into those of your companions. But in a carriage, with its confined space, people often felt compelled to speak with one another, even when their companion didn’t wish it. And Quincy did not wish it. She thought that the truest test of humanity was riding in a coach and saying absolutely nothing to one’s traveling companions. Few, if any, had ever succeeded.

This was opposite from her modus operandi of comfortably tabled ink and gears, and she did not like what she did not understand. So Quincy did what she knew always gave her the same results, she shut him out by locking her interior doors.

“It’s known in certain corners that I am friends with Crow. And being friends with Crow is better than carrying the king’s seal. No one wants to be on his bad side, and I’m on his good.” “You certainly are,” Arch said. And his words sounded like a dictionary entry that had more than one meaning.

“You don’t want to stay for the six fifteen?” Arch looked at his pocket watch. “It’s due in less than five minutes.” “I’ve figured out my problem,” Quincy said, matter-of-factly. “To stay any longer would be a waste of time.” “But the poetry.” He waved his hand over the spectacle below. “Isn’t that what you love?” “I love the perfection, Arch, not the poetry.” As he gathered his things, Quincy heard him mutter that perfection and poetry were often the same thing.

We’ve already arrived at mid-April.” Quincy made a disagreeable noise; she had never cared for months whose names sounded frivolous. April was the worst of the lot. February was a close second.

“Why do you think you should do that for me? Are you worried about my reputation? The lack of decorum I show?” Quincy asked honestly. “Only that I believe”—Arch lifted his shoulders, and the look on his face was so unguarded Quincy surprised herself by listening—“that each one of us has times when what we need most is someone who is willing to sit quietly by, waiting for us. Not interfering, just being.”

I'm marking everything to do with this character as being a spoiler, because it's just too lovely to watch their friendship grow from nothing to something.

“I understand The Q. When I turn this knob, profits do this. When I press that button, customers do that. The inside of a well-run business becomes a machine that can run above the unreliable base of human emotion.” “A rare thing you are, Miss St. Claire. It’s not often I find someone with enough drive to rival my own. Why don’t you marry me?” Something dropped in Arch’s office.

It's okay, Arch 😶

“Miss St. Claire,” Arch whispered, “I like to think of myself as a reasonable man, but this, this is not only highly improper but vastly rude. How you treated my friends—” “Your friends?” Quincy snorted. “Yes,” he hissed. “My friends deserve more respect than what you have shown. And I deserve more respect than you have shown.” “Because you cavort with the graced of Rhysdon?” “Because I am a human being!” His lips were actually quivering from white anger. “People are not numbers or quarterly reports, and I am not your slave. I give you above and beyond what is expected of my work. Now—” He took a breath and looked around, the perspiration that had gathered around his temples catching the dim lights of the hallway.

Quincy’s love for music came from the two things she held inside the tucks of her jacket beside her heart: mathematics and solitude. The benefits she reaped after an hour of playing Mozart or Bach, or whoever, were order and inhuman company. And this night, like on so many others, these were what she felt she needed above all.

“Yes, Mr. Arch?” “I would like to request some time off.” “Time off?” When Quincy spoke the words, it sounded as if it were the first time they had been uttered together, bringing into existence a level of leisure never before seen among the human race. Her tone dripped with disapproval.

She sliced through the information like a paring knife, cutting around any unnecessary talk and keeping only the essential fruit of the matter.

“The vote was put forth with no argument, and everyone except myself voted in favor. I, after soundly calling them all idiots, demanded a revote, and three members joined me, obviously uncertain which force they should throw themselves behind: me or Rutherford and Levins.” “You, clearly,” Arch said, his face starting to glisten from the heat of the day. “Well,” Quincy complained, “intelligence is not God’s gift to every soul.” Arch looked at her, a wry smile on his face. “Neither is humility.”

“When did you develop this sense of humor, Arch?” Arch leaned back and considered. “Probably the moment you gained yours.”

“Arch.” Quincy slammed the contracts on his desk. “I read through these before I went to sleep last night and wasn’t pleased with something I found.” He looked from the contracts up to Quincy’s face, doing his best not to smile. “What?” she snarled as she sat down. She was in a tempestuous mood, as she had needed to fire a Q boy for theft. She hated firing Q boys. “It better be good or else I’ll hang you in the square.” Arch shrugged and flicked open his hand. “The image of you, sitting down for a cozy tête–à–tête with Q contracts just before bed—nightclothes, a cup of tea, slippers, smiling eagerly as you dive into the paperwork before you—it’s almost,” he paused for emphasis, “Dickensian.” She opened her mouth, halted, and then closed it. An image that shouldn’t have been funny, as Quincy had been doing it for years—without the slippers, obviously—suddenly seemed lined with humor because of how he had said it. Blasted Arch.

There is nothing better on a rainy September evening than a room full of books, don’t you think?

Her eyes lingered on the beautiful instrument—rich red in color, well-loved, yet beautifully kept—lying contentedly against the green velvet of its case. “Do you play?” Quincy jerked her eyes away from the instrument to find Lord Arch watching her, his mouth drawn in a very familiar straight line. “Only for myself, now that Ezekiel is dead,” she answered truthfully. “How delightful,” he said, smiling, his handsome face giving way to the refined wrinkles of his age. “Why don’t you play for yourself now, and I’ll just listen?”

“Good. I’d hate to think you invited me out of pity.” “Never for pity; always for the company.”

“I think that’s my point, Quincy. If The Q ceases to exist, Spense goes home to his wife. Jade goes to Jack. The Q boys go home or to the marble tournaments in the park. Graves visits her sister in Mirshire. Each and every life marches on because their stronger connections, of family and friends, are still intact. It would be a blow—I am not diminishing their work here—but everyone has a place to go.” “Except me,” Quincy said aloud, still finding the image impossible. “Except you,” Arch repeated her words. “Would you go to Fisher and Mado in France?” Quincy snorted. “No.” “I didn’t suppose you would. So, that leaves me with a promise to make.” “A promise?” “If the structure of your world ever evaporates, I will still be here.” He gave her a slight smile. “I’ll have you to tea the following day, or something of that sort.” “Tea?” Quincy rolled her eyes. “You? You are to be what I have left when the world ceases to exist?” “Why not?” Arch said lightly. “We will talk business, and poetry, and whatever else we find interesting.” “I don’t care for poetry.” “You will. Not as much as I do, but you’ll learn to appreciate that I appreciate it. That’s part of maintaining connections with people. You give yourself a little to what they give themselves to a lot. And they do the same for you.” “Sounds boring.” “I suppose it is, if you’re not focused on the person you’re doing it for,” Arch answered. Quincy pretended to be reading through an accountant’s report on her desk a while befor...

And as they walked the puddles that were turning pink and gold from the building sun, the streets of Rhysdon began filling with people. The scents of a city morning rose to meet the heavy and content leaves of early September. And back at The Q there was work to do. Good work. Real, solid work. Perhaps the day would not be as miserable as Quincy had supposed.

Arch had stood opposite the counter from Quincy, covering the report she was reading with his box of sweet smelling temptations. They had only just come from a baker’s oven. “Where did you get this?” she asked. With a smile and a nod towards the extra stool behind the counter—which Quincy lifted over the counter to his waiting hand—Arch answered only as he opened the parcel. “Pandora,” he said. “What?” “I got this from Pandora. I’m afraid that if I open the box, I will start something rather dangerous.”

“Why are you doing this?” she had asked one morning. “Is it because Fisher asked you to watch over me as if I were a poor, wayward orphan?” “Poor you are not. Orphan,” he cocked his head, “you once were. Wayward? So wayward it’s troubling.”

Now, after a few weeks of establishing the habit, both seemed to take it for granted that they would begin the day in this butter-flaked, fruit-filled, peppermint-steeped sort of manner. “Have you seen this?” Arch repeated, shaking the folded paper just enough to bring Quincy back to the present. She had only just realized something that made her not want to look at him. This routine felt rather like something one kept after a fortieth wedding anniversary. “Sorry,” Quincy flushed. “I was thinking.” “About the board meeting later today?” “About bad ideas,” Quincy quipped, taking a sip of her coffee.

😶🙃😦

Arch leaned back into his chair, but he was entertaining a smile. “There are few things more tedious than a friend who will not graciously receive.” Quincy could have explained that nine years of poverty might have something to do with it, but instead she just replied, “You must find me maddening, then.” Arch’s mouth twitched. “You, ma chérie, are something else entirely.” Quincy made an impatient noise, and Arch turned his attention back to the Paris report before him, not looking up when Quincy replied, “I don’t speak a lick of French.” He moved his thumbnail against the corner of his mouth as he answered, “I know.”

“The way you are with your numbers is the way James is with people. Very astute and concerned. So, when something turns into a puzzle without a clear solution, it vexes him. He can’t control everything, and he sometimes has the mistaken notion he should.”

“Mary says you always assume you are right and sometimes have a hard time distinguishing when you are not.” “Only that you so often are right,” Mary amended. “So it makes you blind,” Quincy added. “Blind?” Arch fought a smile. “Blind to the times when you are quite wrong,” Mary finished. She smiled at her brother, who had creased his forehead in thought. “Do I do it often?” “No,” Mary said. “Probably,” Quincy said at the same time. Arch looked towards Quincy. “How did I get myself into this conversation?” “You walked in,” answered Quincy.

He laughed. “Walking to Gainsford Street this morning, I could smell every harvest in the entire country. The very air was singing with it. And the trees have all found their golden mark, Quincy, hovering in the perfection of their year’s work.” “Which is?” Her voice sounded less interested than she was. Arch opened his eyes. “To offer one day of blazing, unrivaled glory to all who pass beneath.” The door opened just then, the bell adding sound to Arch’s internal poetry. He gave Quincy a dimpled smile as he went into his office. And on the heels of the customer came the smell of a city remembering autumn. It was rather nice.

“Why Fall?” Quincy asked as she leaned over a rail that was, itself, leaning over the cliffside. “Why all this—” she hesitated, looking for the right word as she moved her eyes towards him, “exuberance?” “Because the fall is when all good things are made manifest.” Arch waved his hand as if he were the beneficent spirit of the season. “The harvests are come on, rolling into the city, a message of bounty and abundance. The trees are turning, their color revealing their most beautiful intentions, kept to themselves all year long until now.” He paused, turned, and looked at Quincy with a directness she now understood to be tied to his strongest feelings. “I always feel I might be my best self in the fall; I wish to pen my best essays, listen to the purest music, taste the best fruit I can find.”

Quincy interrupted, “Is all poetry this long?”

There are just a few tiny gaps in Quincy's education 😂

“What do you think of this gathering?” he asked in low tones. “I can’t imagine this is what you often choose to spend your time doing.” “It’s a foreign country; that’s the true mark,” Quincy admitted, wondering why she was willing to be honest with Lord Arch of all people. “In some senses, yes,” Lord Arch answered politely, “but, in other ways, people are people, if you can strip the lens away.” “The lens?” “Yes. Like with a pair of spectacles.” Lord Arch shifted towards Quincy, who was now sitting with half decent posture in her chair. He leaned forward, a tête-à-tête gleam in his eye. “Strip away the expensive clothing, strip away the well-placed hair, the polished accents, the appropriate social cues, and watch them interact without all those trimmings. People are what you will find, more often than not.” Quincy’s expression must have looked doubtful, for Lord Arch rejoined with, “Oh, yes, you must believe me. It’s true. You don’t think it possible because you insist on operating outside these cues and trappings—one of the reasons I like you so much—but you must make an effort to see people for what they are, must you not?”

Lord Arch took a long sip of his tea and thought on what Quincy had said. She felt as if she could hear the sound of his mind turning and shifting her words into a formula he could understand. “If I were to treat what you have just said as poetry—” he began. Quincy scoffed, but Lord Arch continued, “—I would say that you, Miss St. Claire, think of yourself as the smashed bottle, edges and all, and that when you look around the room, you see an unbroken set, capable of different things than you for their perceived wholeness. Have I understood right? Have I seen?” Quincy did not answer, for what he had said was not what she had thought, but the echo of it was strangely familiar: as if she had an indefinable taste in her mouth and he had told her what it could be.

Frowning, Quincy looked around the room. Admittedly, she liked the people she worked with, especially those who cared for their work in a percentage acceptable to Quincy, but why was Arch so converted to the idea of people in and of themselves? “I don’t believe that anything you can gain from a person is worth the misery that follows when they are taken away,” she said at length. Arch’s reply was quiet, “Do you really mean that?” Quincy shrugged and slipped down from the ancient. Looking back up at Arch, Quincy opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, then bravely said the words that were on her mind anyway, despite fearing how it might change the place where she and he now found each other. “I’d like to think that I mean it, because I’m not capable of giving anything to anyone, despite what you think. And isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? People,” she waved her empty plate towards the boisterous crowd of her employees, “they require things from you, and you may even try to give to them. But what else can you count on? Their reactions, their thoughts, their safety, their attitudes, even their lives—none of these come back at you the way you think they will.” She dropped her hand and took a breath. “I can’t risk not knowing what’s coming back my way, Arch.” A shadow of thought passed Arch’s face, and Quincy guessed he was composing a well-written thesis on human experience in his head.

Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, the empty mug still between his hands, he gave Quincy a long look. “Come to my house Saturday for tea.” “Can’t,” responded Quincy. “I’m busy avoiding human connection.” “Come,” Arch insisted, dropping off the ancient and resting his hand on it, while staring at Quincy. “Mary has been wanting to see you, by any way, and I can make you a promise.” Quincy cocked her head. “What?” “I, as a flawed human, am promising to give you just the outcome you expect, that I will be there and that it will be nice.” “I might be in a horrible mood, which wouldn’t be nice, proving your formula flawed.” Arch leaned towards her, his lips almost brushing her ear, and spoke quietly with an intonation that gave Quincy no room to disagree. “That only proves your own formula flawed, Quincy.”

Now, in the golden shadows of November, tripping over things she didn’t understand—like the way he had been looking at her and the way she had been looking back—Quincy

Spent leaves had escaped the parks and been blown down every avenue of the city as if in a declaration of something. Quincy tucked her shoulders forward, hands in her pockets. She didn’t know what nature was trying to declare; that was Arch’s job: to explain things Quincy didn’t understand.

Jade shook her head and leaned with one hand against the press, the other hand resting on her waist. “I don’t care how you came to be dancing, Quincy. I really don’t. But when I saw the two of you and the look on his face, I was ready to die a happy death. Bury me now, for life could not get better, nor more surprising.”

“Quincy St. Claire,” Arch whispered, both of his hands now on her face, his forehead pressed against hers, his eyes closed. “Please give room for me.” He kissed her again, a patient expression, and then let go.

The best moment in all of fiction, I really think

“I say: Preach! Preach! If you know of a higher ideal, if you see a better way for mankind to exist, then preach! Don’t sit quietly by because of your own imperfections! What happens when a set of imperfect people spend their time talking about becoming better? Chances are one or two of them might actually choose to become better.

“I’ve given myself permission to see you as human, a vast improvement. When I look at you now—” He paused, suddenly becoming preoccupied with wrapping the string perfectly around his finger.

“Blast it, Quincy. Do you think I don’t know that?” Arch lifted his eyes to hers, his eyebrows furrowing. “Do you think I don’t realize that you don’t need anybody or anything? Even if it appeared a week ago that you felt different than you obviously do now!” “I—” “Is it good for you?” Arch continued, hitting the floor lightly with his cane, releasing his own frustrations over her silence on the matter of their kiss. “No. Do I wish you would stop treating human intimacy as the plague? Yes. Do I wish that you would realize that I’m being selfish in wishing you paired with me at the ball? Yes. I am being selfish, Quincy, and I want to be with you because I want to be with you. But don’t you dare think for one moment I don’t consider you the most capable person of my acquaintance.”

“They’ve been calling me the most articulate man in Rhysdon: absolutely untrue, but encouraging. Yet, within a matter of minutes, you can dismantle all my language so I don’t make any intelligent sense.

Instead of leading Jade back up the stairs and into the front office, Quincy walked the length of the print room and pulled open the door of a closet where they kept the crates of ink, brooms, and whatever Spense couldn’t stand sitting about the floor. There were no lights, and so Jade hesitated at the door, then she shrugged and entered. Quincy followed, claiming a place on the floor against the wall. She could see, just as the door was closing behind them, that Jade was leaning against a stack of crates. “Jack,” Quincy said in the dark. “Jack? You dragged me into a dark closet to tell me what my husband’s name is?”

Only Quincy would handle emotional difficulties by calling her sort-of-best-friend to an urgent "meeting" in a closet with no lights 😂

The darkness became the only noise between them, until Quincy let an audible sigh escape. She was worried about something going wrong when she wasn’t certain she was comfortable with it going right. The door to the closet flung open, and Quincy lifted her arm to cover her eyes. “What the—?” It was Spense. Quincy scrambled to her feet and Jade was grinning. “Important meeting, Spense,” Jade said. Spense pulled his red face to the side and scratched his chin but refrained from asking. “I need some ink,” he said at length.

Jade is wonderful

Instinct, built from years on the street, told Quincy she had never been in more danger than she was now, but hope argued against it. And Quincy was surprised, for she had never been one to invite hope in. It must, she decided as she felt her hand trembling in his, be Arch’s fault.

The next hour proved an exercise in all of Quincy’s self-control. She did not want—no, she was determined not to let Arch down. He had taken a risk, he had speculated wildly on Quincy St. Claire, and she found herself wishing to come through, to prove herself wrong. The simplest solution, she thought as she and Arch met with endless guests, was to say little or nothing and to avoid breathing in extraordinary amounts of perfume, which Quincy was certain reduced one’s intelligence.

“I don’t know how you exist as you do. Isn’t it exhausting, to think well of so many people?” “Quite the opposite, Quincy St. Claire,” Arch said, a light smile on his face. “I think people are the most worthwhile use of our time,

First, she wanted to accuse Arch of not taking her as she was. But Quincy knew that he had taken her at her worst and still treated her decently. He had taken her as a mix of good days and difficult days and had managed to maintain his bizarre idea that she was worth having in his life.

😭