Chapter Text
It had not been a productive day. Garak got up from his desk and stretched, trying to relieve the stiffness in his spine. He had arrived at work just after dawn, and now it was well past sunset. He had not seen the sun for more than a few minutes today. There were no windows in his office or the processing room where the agents under him worked.
The Obsidian Order compound sat like an eyeless but all-seeing beast in the middle of the city, close to the corridors of power in Tarlak, far enough from the military garrisons in Akleen, visible from the populous Torr. The compound, that formed a walled city of its own, was never identified as more than “Government building” on maps, but the people of the Union Capital knew. Only foolish children would ever talk about the Obsidian Order in the vicinity of it, but anyone who had to walk past it thought of the name. What lay beyond the walls was a mystery to the public. The most they might see was a skimmer with shaded windows passing through a gate that would bolt as soon as the vehicle had entered. No guards could be seen. Some must wonder if the rumours that this was the heart of the Obsidian Order were actually lies to cover up something more mundane. That suited the Order’s purposes just fine.
Garak was pulling his coat on when the doorbell to his office chimed.
‘Enter.’
The door opened. Senta stepped in, several PADDs under her arm. Seeing him in his coat, she said:
‘I’m sorry, sir, but these can’t wait.’
Garak waved to her to present what she had.
‘Inquisitor Lok wants an update on the Cardassia IV situation.’
‘Tell him that we have dispatched two agents to deal with the matter.’
‘And next octad’s surveillance plans need approving.’
He took the PADD from her, looked through it and approved it with his thumbprint.
‘Anything else?’ he asked, giving back the PADD. Senta stuffed it in her belt and moved the PADD she had pressed under her elbow into her hand with an elegance that could only come from practice. Her other sleeve was empty, pinned up by her shoulder. How she, who had been such a promising field agent only two years ago, was not more bitter about being stuck working on administrative tasks in the compound, Garak would never understand.
‘The listeners picked up something interesting in North Torr.’
Garak looked over the report from the comm-monitoring section.
‘“The Workers’ School of Learning”,’ he read aloud. ‘Sometimes I think they take us for fools.’ He handed back the PADD. ‘Get someone on it. Level three surveillance should do it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, then asked: ‘Shall I call your skimmer?’
‘No. Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping it is a pleasant night for walking.’
Senta snorted, but she looked sympathetic.
‘Good night, then, sir.’
‘Good night, Senta.’
He left the office and descended the stairs to one of the lower levels. At the boundary of the complex, marked by the wall above them, his credentials were inspected and his exit was registered. The corridor ran for another hundred metres. At its end, Garak climbed up another set of stairs and emerged into one of the buildings outside the compound that were used as entry points. When he stepped out of the doors, no one looked at him twice.
Most nights, he would skirt the Tarlak memorial grounds and the borders of Munda’ar to reach his apartment on the edges of Torr. The thought of that routine felt oppressive today. Instead, he crossed the section boundary to the east. The broad boulevards and dominating buildings gave way to narrow streets and simpler houses. Where the Tarlak was imposing and dry, North Torr was alive. The noise was unavoidable. Music and conversations and shouting created a unique cacophony. From somewhere in the distance, Garak could hear the sirens of a police skimmer. Despite the din, Garak felt detached from it. He walked down the streets, unable to feel a part of it. He passed taverns where customers spilled onto the pavements, establishments where heat-lamps and vorsa pipes were set out among low couches, bars where the music and glass-clinking seemed to drown each other out. Twice, Garak was passed by groups of people big enough that he had to push himself against the wall to let them through. Each time it caused a flash of panic before the crowd passed and the street opened up again.
He had crossed into East Torr by the time he turned off the larger streets. In one of the smaller alleys, he stepped into what to the initiated only looked like a shabby corner-shop. A few words were exchanged. The shopkeeper waved him through to the back and opened the door to the cellar. Garak climbed down the stairs. For a brief moment, the stairwell seemed to crowd him like the people in North Torr had. Then, the stairs stopped and the walls pulled back, leaving him free in the cellar bar.
Garak felt himself relax a little. Through the pipe-smoke, he could make out a few familiar faces: a man with his chufa stained with blue dye, another who wore the same Bajoran jacket as always, the handsome young man he had entertained a few octads ago. He could not remember his name – perhaps he had never known it? That would make more sense. He passed by these acquaintances, greeting them only with nods. Finding a stool at the bar, he ordered a glass of spring wine. No one approached him to talk. He must have managed to look more forbidding than usual. He looked around, feeling unhappy in his isolation. A dull pain had settled in his chest. Absentmindedly, he rubbed it, forcing himself to breathe properly.
He felt better after a few mouthfuls of wine. When he looked around again, he saw that a soldier, uniform visible under his jacket, had joined the man with the dyed forehead. They were sitting close, talking conspiratorially. The soldier reached out and stroked his companion’s cheek ridge. The other man’s tongue flicked between his lips, tasting the air. The soldier’s fingers moved to his forehead, touching his chufa. The man exhaled with pleasure. Garak could see the soldier ask his paramour something, then lean in and put their mouths together in the Bajoran fashion. Garak looked away again, feeling wretched. He thought of going to talk to his friend from last month, but dismissed it. He was beautiful, but he did not have a thing to say.
A voice, crisp and high-pitched, rose over the music.
‘You’re completely wrong,’ it said. ‘There is no measure according to which Preloc is better than Hapek.’
Garak turned on his stool, trying to see where the voice came from. The haze made it difficult to tell at first, but then the voice spoke again, lower now but still easy to make out.
‘Every sentence in Hapek’s works is finely crafted. Every word is carefully chosen. Preloc gets carried away by the narrative and her style goes out of the window.’
The speaker was sitting at a corner table, gesturing as he criticised Preloc’s over-reliance on superlatives and metaphors. He was around Garak’s age, but his hair was an eye-catching white. It was long, combed back from his forehead and twisted into a long, loose braid. Through the smoke, Garak saw something on his face flash, catching the light. His first thought was that he had his cheek ridge pierced. Then he realised that the man was wearing glasses. Taking his wine with him, he made his way over to the corner table.
‘Look here,’ said the bespectacled man, taking a book out of his pocket and showing the man who was with him a passage. ‘Here. I had to read this three times before I realised where this sentence was going.’
Garak was close enough to see the pages. He barely needed to read them – he knew Preloc well.
‘The style of that sentence is exemplary,’ he said. ‘If you couldn’t understand it the first time around, then no wonder you prefer Hapek.’
The man looked up, surprised at the intrusion. He had a beautiful face, made intriguing by the spectacles. Garak wondered if they were an affectation.
‘If you can’t tell which of the three accusatives in the sentence is the direct object on the first read, then there is something wrong with the sentence,’ he answered tartly.
‘The meaning is perfectly clear,’ Garak said. ‘Preloc’s use of the accusative of respect is famous.’
‘And annoying,’ the man said. ‘It’s an unnecessary archaism.’
‘The archaism makes perfect sense. She is describing a monument of an ancient battle. The style is evoking the antiquity of the memorial.’
‘But she does exactly the same thing on the next page, when she’s describing a bouquet of flowers!’ the man said. ‘How does that make perfect sense?’
‘If you are looking for sense, I’m surprised you’d like Hapek,’ Garak snorted. ‘His style is sloppy at best.’
‘Sloppy? It is minimalist – modern.’
‘It’s vulgar.’
‘Are you saying that because of his use of postpositions or his compounding?’
‘I was thinking about his over-use of neologisms. He goes out of his way to find new, obscure words.’
‘Hapek is an innovator,’ the man said. ‘Many of his words have made their way into common parlance.’
‘But not literature. Hapek’s influence on his contemporaries and successors was infinitesimal. Preloc defined her genre.’
‘Your position, sir, betrays your chauvinism,’ the man said and his eyes gleamed behind the glasses. His friend stood.
‘I’m getting something to drink,’ he muttered and left. Garak looked after him, then back at the man with the poor literary taste. He was smiling.
‘How much of Preloc’s work have you read?’ Garak asked.
‘All of it,’ the man said. ‘Twice. And I still prefer Hapek.’
‘Perhaps the comparison is unfair,’ Garak said. ‘Preloc is superior to Hapek, but they do work within different genres. It might skew the argument.’
The man’s smile widened. He pushed the vacated chair out from under the table with his foot.
‘What’s a better comparison?’ he asked. Garak sat down.
‘To my mind, the only stylist superior to Preloc is Tegor.’
‘Again, different genre,’ the man said.
‘Is she?’ Garak asked. ‘Preloc builds on Tegor’s historical themes. They are related.’
The man folded his hands and rested his chin on them. He leaned a little closer.
‘Parmak.’
For a moment, Garak thought he had mentioned some author he had not heard of. Then he realised it was an introduction. He looked the man in the eye. His irises were an uncommon amber.
‘Garak.’
Parmak smiled.
‘Tell me your take on Tegor,’ he said.
***
Parmak’s friend did not come back. Garak wondered how long Parmak had bored him with talking literature. Clearly a fool, he reflected. The conversation had been wasted on him. Garak could not remember when he had a discussion quite like the one they had at that corner table. They discussed Tegor, the Tetrarchian poets, the possibility of retelling non-Cardassian stories in a Cardassian mould, the recent import of Bajoran metre into Cardassian poetry. Parmak moved his hands as he spoke, waving and pointing and emphasising. At first, Garak watched his hands. His scales were finer than most men’s and he had filed down his claws, making the tips of his fingers look almost mammalian. Then he had decided that the hands were a distraction and looked at his face instead. Parmak’s eyes seemed never to leave Garak’s. He watched him with startling directness while outlining his arguments and hearing Garak’s refutations.
They stayed until the bartender started to put the stools up on the tables around them. Garak had been in the middle of praising Meran’s latest collection of poems when the bartender put a stool especially hard on the table next to them. Parmak made a face at the noise, then turned to Garak.
‘Shall we…?’ He nodded towards the exit.
‘An excellent idea.’
As they climbed the stairs from the cellar bar, Garak returned to the subject of Meran’s poetry.
‘The beauty is in the versatility of the collection,’ he said. ‘If you read them in the order they are in, they tell one story. If you read them in reverse order, it gives another.’
‘I would have thought that would not appeal to you,’ Parmak said. ‘Your literary tastes seem so… inflexible.’
‘Not at all,’ Garak said. ‘I am not fond of frivolity. Meran’s work is sincere.’
Parmak stopped and turned to face him. Then he descended the steps between them until they were on the same level. It was Garak who reached out first, to stroke a lock of hair behind Parmak’s ear. Parmak rested his hand on Garak’s shoulder, just at the edge of the neck ridge. They moved closer. Their cheeks touched, pressing together. Then, angling his head, Parmak pressed their foreheads against one another. Garak pushed closer, tracing the ridges around Parmak’s eye with his fingers. When he put his mouth close to his skin, he could taste the arousal on him.
‘I think we have had quite enough literary discussion for tonight,’ he said. Parmak drew back a little and pushed his glasses up his nose. He did not look away from Garak’s face.
‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘Mine or yours?’
‘Yours, if that’s acceptable.’
He smiled.
‘Come along, then.’
They took the shuttle running along the sector boundary of Munda’ar and Akleen, into Paldar. There, they disembarked. Garak followed him to the tram, observing but not commenting. The tram-route took them north, in among the respectable homes of the middle-class. Parmak was looking out of the window, but his hand was resting on the seat. Garak felt how his fingers spread and touched his leg. He did not allow his reaction to show, but that small, invisible signal was thrilling.
Parmak removed his hand.
‘This is it.’
Garak followed him. Under the street-lights, his companion’s white hair shone. In the darkness between the lamp-posts, it seemed to hold onto some of that light. Had it not been for the glasses and the suit, he could have been a tamtha spirit of legend, tall, pale and unworldly. Parmak looked over at him, and the thought was gone. There as nothing cold or ethereal about the look he gave him. He brushed past him, climbing the steps of one of the houses. Garak followed nearby, close enough that their shadows became one.
‘Do you live alone?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Yes,’ Parmak answered. He unlocked the door. ‘Come in.’ He took him by the hand and led him over the threshold.
That first time in Parmak’s home, Garak did not pay any attention to his surroundings. He allowed himself to be blind to the details and simply followed him. They touched, first gently and then urgently. Parmak was down to his under-shirt when he broke away, panting.
‘How do you feel about Resar?’ he asked. It took a moment for Garak’s endorphine-addled mind to understand why he was asking his opinion about that.
‘He’s one of the finest composers Cardassia has ever produced.’
Parmak smiled.
‘At least we agree on something.’
He went over to the computer panel in the wall and tapped in a few commands. The first tones of Resar’s sixth symphony flowed out of the speakers. It always made Garak draw a sharp breath, so eery was the combined sound of the brass and the strings. Parmak stepped closer. Their eyes locked. Parmak’s chufa rubbed against Garak’s, making him gasp like the music. He leaned closer, buried his fingers in that strange, white hair and nuzzled against his neck-ridge. In response, Parmak planted a hand on the nape of his neck to hold him close. Their bodies pressed together. Against his hip, Garak could feel the pressure of his genitals.
As the tones of the symphony spiralled upwards and created new patterns, they broke apart and stripped. Parmak took his glasses off. Without them, his face looked different, but equally beautiful. They fell onto the bed, the music drowning out the sounds they made. Their bodied entangled – face to neck, chufa to chuva, chest to chest.
As the final cords of the string-sections sounded, they pulled apart, as if the music and the pleasure were one. Garak breathed heavily, feeling thoroughly spent. Parmak looked over at him and smiled. He smiled back.
‘Stay there,’ Parmak said. He brushed his cheek against Garak’s and got out of bed. Garak watched as he left the room. Now, naked and with his long hair let out, he again looked like something otherworldly. He lay back again, thinking of his long body. In the act, his chula had flushed violet. Garak had licked at it, as if hoping to swallow some of that colour.
The door opened. Parmak was back, now wrapped in a silk dressing-gown.
‘No need to cover up, is there?’ Garak asked playfully. Parmak sat down on the bed and smiled.
‘Perhaps I wanted to show it off.’
‘You’d be right to. But I think you were showing off even before.’
Parmak reached out and traced the ridges on Garak’s face, over his chin and down the finer scales over his larynx. Garak drew a sharp breath.
‘Can you stay?’ Parmak asked quietly. The wording intrigued him. It was not “will you stay”, asking intent, or “would you stay”, an invitation, but “can you stay”, an enquiry of previous engagements. In suggesting they go to Parmak’s home, he must have given him the wrong impression. It happened, of course – married men sneaking off to places like the one where they had met.
Garak sat up and touched Parmak’s face.
‘I don’t have a wife at home.’
Parmak sighed with relief.
‘Good.’
Garak smiled. Parmak’s nervousness was rather endearing.
‘I would like to stay.’
He smiled.
‘I have to be up early, I’m afraid.’
‘I don’t mind. I’m an early riser.’
Parmak slipped off the dressing-gown and got into bed again. His fingers returned to Garak’s face, drawing patterns on his cheeks. He had screwed up his eyes to focus, causing two lines to run on either side of his chufa. Garak returned his gaze. He did not look away until Parmak closed his eyes and drifted off, his hand slipping from Garak’s face to the crook of his neck.
***
Garak was not used to seeing lovers the morning after an encounter. When it happened, it was always an awkward meeting, and conversation was never more complicated than where the closest tram-stop was.
This was different. As Parmak prepared breakfast, Garak took him up on his invitation to look around. He looked into a room that appeared to be a study, and decided not to enter. Instead, he wandered around the living-room. The walls were lined with books. There were data-rods in cases with titles on them, but the overwhelming majority were codices. Most were Cardassian. Garak concluded that Parmak was well-read, and he made a mental note of works to discuss with him. There were also some Bajoran books, which did not surprise him. A small section of book-scrolls caught his interest in particular. He edged one of them out and looked at the tag.
‘You read Vulcan?’ he asked, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen.
‘Yes,’ Parmak said. ‘Although I’ve never spoken it in my life.’ He came into the living room with two bowls of fish juice. ‘Do you know Vulcan?’
‘Yes. Rather well, in fact.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Parmak said drily.
Garak sat down at the table with him.
‘Have you read the Var T’Lamok Be’t’hy’la?’ Parmak asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Garak said. ‘I find Vulcan literature rather dull.’
‘This is not dull. It’s pre-Surak.’
‘I didn’t realise there was literature that was pre-Surak.’
‘There is,’ Parmak said. ‘Some of it is absolutely beautiful. Do you know about the ancient custom of t’hy’la?’
‘“Brother”,’ Garak translated, sipping his fish-juice.
‘Actually, the semantics is more complex than that.’ Parmak was warming to the subject. ‘Vulcan children are always born with seven years between them, with the rare exception of twins, so the concept of brotherhood as a close one is rather alien to Vulcans. When Vulcans came into contact with humans, humans translated the word t’hy’la with “brother”, and when Starfleet made contact with us, the mistake was repeated in our dictionaries. T’hy’la describes a close bond between two men. In ancient times, it was used of allied warriors, whose love for one another spurred them on in battle.’
‘And you managed to get hold of this?’ Garak asked disapprovingly. ‘How could such a thing pass the censors?’
‘Oh, it hasn’t been published on Cardassia, as far as I know,’ Parmak said. ‘A friend brought a scroll back from a conference on Vulcan. The customs officer didn’t bother to run it through the translation matrix. He thought it was just a souvenir. It is the best gift I’ve ever been given, and one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.’
Garak shook his head theatrically.
‘And you’ve read Preloc. I do not know what to make of you, Parmak.’
That only made him grin.
‘Can I see you again?’ he asked suddenly. Garak raised his eye-ridges. The enthusiasm took him aback, but it made something warm flare up inside of his chest.
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s say this,’ Parma said, leaning closer. ‘I’ll lend you my copy of Var T’Lamok Be’t’hy’la, and next octad, you return it to me.’
Garak smiled.
‘Same place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you lending me the book to make sure I turn up?’ he asked. Parmak’s eyes twinkled.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you to read it. You deserve to have read something that beautiful.’
Garak looked at him for a long moment. He’s a romantic, he thought. As a rule, he found romantics insufferable. This time, however, it felt different.
‘I’ll read it with interest,’ he promised.