Word and Breath by Susannah Noel

familiar smell of the city. It was late October but still felt like it should be summer. She held the question back, however.
     
    Partly because she figured he’d tell her when he thought best. And partly because she was kind of scared to find out.

    Irrationally, she felt a coil of anxiety tighten in her gut—a vague dread without apparent cause.
     
    She tried not to dwell on it. Instead, she set herself to enjoying the treat of going out to eat, as they took a table in the café and ordered their salads and soup. She got to go out to eat for dinner too. It was definitely a red-letter day.

    Jenson had already declared he was going to pay for their lunches, which allowed Riana to indulge without guilt.
     
    He didn’t appear to be in a hurry to get to the point. He chatted pleasantly about the setting, making clever commentary on the other people in the restaurant. He asked her a little about her childhood, which Riana answered with a guarded precision she’d developed over the years. He laughed at her as she visibly enjoyed the food, sighing over the marinated strawberries on the salad and moaning as she tasted the crab bisque.

    Jannie was a pretty good cook, but she wasn’t particularly adventurous in cuisine. Riana, however jaded about human nature, wasn’t afraid to enjoy the simple pleasures of food.
     
    She didn’t even care that Jenson laughed at her—since there was both irony and fondness in his expression.

    She scowled at him, of course, but she was pretty sure he knew she wasn’t genuinely offended.
     
    He let her finish her meal before he moved into the real purpose of their lunch date.

    Riana saw the shift in his expression as he put down his soup spoon neatly on his saucer. She took a long sip of her water and felt that knot of anxious dread—briefly diverted by the food—return as a weight in her stomach.
     
    “So,” she said, the word half-question and half-segue.

    “So,” Jenson repeated. He cleared his throat and, for the first time, looked vaguely reluctant. “I wanted to thank you—for helping me out last week.”

    He didn’t need to explain what he was referring to. “You’re welcome. I think.” The nervousness fluttered up into her chest, and she clasped her hands in her lap to keep them still.

    “I’d like to give you an explanation—since I assume you want to know what’s going on now that you got pulled into it.”

    Jenson’s dark blue eyes held hers, and she was the one who looked away first.

    She glanced over to the counter at the generic business people on their lunch break paying for sandwiches. “I don’t know if I want to know or not.”

    “I can understand that. But I’m going to tell you anyway.”

    Something about the blunt challenge in his voice made her suck in her breath and stare back at him. He still looked vaguely reluctant, but he also looked confrontational. As if he were daring her to hear what he had to say.
     
    One part of Riana’s mind wanted to act like a petulant child and defy him—getting up and leaving before he could say anything more. That was an unworthy part of herself, though. She wasn’t a child. And she could at least hear him out, since he clearly believed it was important.

    She didn’t have to make any decisions yet. A truth she used to soothe the frightened twisting in her belly.

    “The anomaly you found—the word ‘wordless’ in unexpected contexts—is part of a written code used by the Front.”

    As simple as that. As obvious. As life-changing.
     
    Riana bit her lip and stared at Jenson blindly.

    “I asked you not to report it because it would do significant damage to the Front’s message system if the Union became of aware of it.”

    They were on the corner of the patio, seated close together in a curved booth like lovers. He was speaking too low for anyone else to hear.

    But Riana felt like the words had just been screamed at her. Her mouth was dry, so she took another sip of water.
     
    Jenson