Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~5 min read
Chapter 8: Fluency
ARYAN
She knew the word for the old clan greeting. She used it without breaking stride, in the third week, when one of his relatives visited the gallery for the first time and used the formal register that most non-clan people would receive as a pleasantry and not know how to return.
His uncle Vikram stopped.
He stared at her.
Priya looked up from the piece she was documenting and said: “Sharma family liaison. Third generation.” She held out her hand — the clan gesture, not the standard handshake. “You’re Vikram Singh. Your grandfather and my great-uncle corresponded in the eighties about the Konkan route records.”
Vikram, who had the specific expression of a man who had been expecting a pleasant professional interaction and had received something considerably more substantial, looked at Aryan.
Aryan said nothing. He was enjoying himself.
Vikram shook Priya’s hand in the clan gesture and said: “Your great-uncle was Anand Sharma?”
“Yes,” she said. “He kept the western route records. My grandmother took over from him in 1978.”
“Nani Sharma,” Vikram said. The name carried weight in the clan — it carried weight in several clans. His uncle was recalibrating rapidly, which he deserved. He had arrived with the slightly patronising quality some of his younger relatives adopted with humans who were attached to the family professionally, and he was now fully recalibrating.
“She’s coming to the retreat,” Aryan said.
Vikram turned. “For the quarterly review?”
“For the collection review. She’s the lead curator.”
His uncle looked at him with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and was not entirely managing it. Vikram was thirty-four and had been waiting, with the specific patience of an uncle who kept the family’s internal watch, for the question of Aryan’s mate to resolve itself. He had opinions, which he had not yet expressed to Aryan directly. He would.
“The records your family keeps,” Vikram said to Priya. “The full records — not just the public liaison documentation.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’ve read them.”
“I’ve been reading them since I was eight,” she said pleasantly. “My grandmother made sure I had the whole picture.”
“And the — the clan histories. The route records. The—”
“All of it,” she said. “What’s been compiled across three generations is extensive. There are still gaps. I’m working on some of them as part of the catalogue project.” She gestured at the documentation she had been building for three weeks. “The Singh collection is the best primary source I’ve had access to. It’ll fill in things that were documented secondhand.”
Vikram looked at the documentation. He looked at Aryan. He had the expression of a man arriving at a conclusion.
“I’m going to have significant opinions about this,” he told Aryan.
“I know,” Aryan said. “We’ll talk at the retreat.”
Vikram left.
Priya went back to her documentation without comment, which was its own form of comment. She had heard the subtext — she heard the subtext of everything, which was the specific, maddening, extraordinary quality of a person who had grown up in a world that operated almost entirely in subtext and had learned to read it as her first language.
His tiger, which had been smug since the first day, achieved a new level of smugness.
“Your uncle is going to support us,” she said, not looking up.
“Probably,” he said.
“He came in expecting to disapprove. He didn’t.”
“He didn’t expect the clan greeting,” he said.
“Most people don’t.” She turned a page in the documentation file. “It was my grandmother’s first lesson. She said: when you’re in a room with clan people, show them immediately that you know the register. Don’t wait to be tested. Take the test before it’s offered.”
He thought about his grandmother saying the same thing, in different words, about negotiation. About presence. About the specific advantage of moving before the other party had established their expectations.
“She and Nani were very alike,” he said.
Priya looked up. The full expression — the warm one, the one she showed when something landed the way it was meant to. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been thinking that.”
He sat down beside her — at the documentation table, which had become their table over three weeks, the place where they worked through the pieces together and the question of the bond existed in the space between them without being the subject of the conversation.
“At the retreat,” he said. “There will be more clan present. Some of them will be—”
“Testing me,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I know.” She did not sound concerned. “I’ve been tested by clan people before. Not Singhs specifically but connected families. Nani sends me to things on purpose. She’s been calibrating my exposure for years.” She looked at him steadily. “I can hold a room, Aryan.”
He looked at her. He had known, from the intelligence reports, that she was capable. He had not known, until he was in the same room with her, what capable looked like from the inside.
“I know,” he said.
“But you were going to warn me anyway,” she said.
“I was going to offer context,” he said. “Which is different.”
“It’s very slightly different,” she said, and the warmth was all the way present now, the not-quite-smile that was her specific register for moments where she was amused and comfortable enough to show it.
He thought: I have been waiting my entire adult life for this.
He thought: it is better than I thought it would be.
He thought: that should be impossible, given how precisely I thought about it.
He picked up the documentation file and handed her the next section.
She took it. Their hands touched briefly.
Neither of them acknowledged it.
His tiger acknowledged it completely.
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