Chapter 73: A Friend

"Maigh, wait there, would you?!"

Milo had to jog uphill to catch up.

"Stop!"

Not once had the boy turned at the words or at the rattling gravel.

"How much would you pay for your knife?"

Maigh walked on. His knuckles had swollen to the color of plums where the stone had struck.

Part of Milo thrilled at the sight, viewing it as a testament to his strength.

"Look at that. Not so untouchable after all."

"Say that again, Ashpicker."

"I’m selling you the knife you just lost. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, isn’t it?" He slid the knife out of his pocket and laid it across his palm, handle toward the boy. "Common. A Week left in it. Four grooves neither of us has the fingers for, so somebody older wore those in. Somebody who phones the academy when his son goes missing, I bet."

That got Maigh to look around.

"Who told you he called?"

"You did. You’re loud."

The boy’s eyes dropped to the handle and its carved band before rolling back on the horizon.

"What do you want for it?"

"A phone’s worth. For a Week piece, mind you."

A family that sent its son into a box with a relic from home could pay that out of a coat pocket.

Already, Milo was choosing between the models. What phone would he get for himself? Surely one that ran smoothly and could receive messages.

Games. Maybe he’d get to play some of the ones Ollie talked about.

Perhaps even on the expedition, he could dissolve himself into worlds of fantasy and return knowing what the teenage world was all about.

Maigh pressed a palm to his sternum and drew a slow breath through his nose, as though testing whether it would go all the way down. It did, making no sound on the way out, either.

"No," he said at last.

"No?"

"Did the rock get your ears too?" Maigh lengthened his stride. "I’m not buying it."

"You’d rather go home and explain an empty strap?"

"Explain," he scoffed. "Yeah. I’ll explain it."

"It’ll be on a stall by Monday. Some stranger will be whittling spoons with it? Doesn’t that make you burn up from the inside?"

"So sell it. Sell it, bury it, choke on it. You won the thing. It’s yours."

Choking on it had been considered. A Week piece no longer justified the trouble.

At the crest, Milo worked the knife back into his torn right pocket and slowed, the gap between them two stretching.

That was what losing to an Ashpicker did to a boy with Daddy’s money.

Out of spite, the bastard would sooner throw away a Week piece for good than toss a single coin into the hand that had taken it from him.

Ten paces on, Maigh spoke without turning around.

"That thing with the wrist was cheap, Zeuqe."

"It worked. How spiteful do you have to be to refuse this offer?"

"...Yeah."

"Yeah?"

...Well, that complicated the selection of phones quite a bit. Inside his head, the models dimmed as he encountered the grand wall of time estimation: how long would it take to sell the relic?

There was only tomorrow left before the expedition, and Milo doubted they’d make a stop by some market just for him to buy a mobile device.

Maigh faded beyond the next rise, where the red bricks of the academy surfaced.

On its second floor, a clock was half an hour behind the rest of the parish, and Ollie had just provided him with a free afternoon to fix it.

Every instructor who might ask what he was doing upstairs stood two kilometers away, watching bricks fly.

There would never be a better hour—assuming no one had corrected it already.

Surely there’d been classes in that room since Monday.

Milo reached the gate, but stayed outside it.

Layla would come back along this path, and he had a flower to deliver.

Of the eight platforms at Hollins Cross, three were out of service. After climbing onto the farthest of them, he sat on its edge, legs hanging over beams no capsule would be coming down on.

Moment of truth. Paste, or at least a few distinguishable petals intact?

The pocket’s zipper snagged on dried grass before giving way, and what came out between his fingers was a petunia, practically untouched!

One petal was creased, but the violet was as vibrant as it had been in the park.

Through three falls, a kilometer on all fours and Maigh, it had hung in there.

So he waited with the stem in his palm.

Students returned in ones and twos, most of them empty-handed as the winners stacked on the riches. Capsules whirred in, swallowed the platforms, and whirred out.

When a familiar laughter emerged, he looked up.

Layla’s ponytail bobbed with each step down the hill, her white coat gray to the elbows. At her side, a boy jabbed and hooked at the air before staggering backward in an impression of somebody else losing.

She laughed at that one hardest.

It had taken her a long time to get back. Gone far into the tournament, or a leisurely stroll over two kilometers in such company?

Milo looked down at the flower and found a fist.

Shit!

He hadn’t noticed his fingers contracting. As he uncurled them, two loose petals settled beside the bent stem in his palm.

A whir approached the beams. The boy broke into a run, and Layla ran after him, still laughing.

Loose petals and all, Milo hid the petunia back into his pocket.

The boy made the doors with a hop. His capsule pulled out and shrank toward the east, where the towns thickened into cities.

When Layla spotted him on the dead platform, she spun from the departing capsule and began waving to him instead.

"Milo! I was wondering whether you’d be waiting for me or I’d be waiting for you."

"How did you do? I haven’t seen many come back. What’s going on out there?"

"Most of them stayed to watch the fights. I left as soon as I could."

"So you did well?"

"Oh, much better than I expected!"

"So who was that? Your teammate?"

"Yeah, I did the throwing." She dropped down beside him, shoes swinging above the beams. "He was sooo good, though."

"How come he got a low score if he’s that good? Not to say you did badly, of course—"

"We kinda arranged it," Layla admitted.

"Arranged, what?"

"They paired similar scores together... and so..."

"He did badly on purpose?"

"Don’t say it like that! We thought it might work, and it did."

Huh. Somebody ditched his own score on the off chance of getting matched up.

For her?

Neither of them could even have known what the exams would look like, let alone that a run time would decide anything.

Most likely, the boy had been scared of the expedition all along and now dressed a bad result up as strategy. Coward!

A friend had given her a petunia on Monday, too...

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Not Affiliated (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]