Chapter 160: Spending Lifespan

Warm air came out to meet them.

It was dry, and it smelled of beeswax and dust. After the smoke and damp of Tarry, it was almost pleasant. Alice stepped over the threshold first. Logan followed her, and Burr came last with Whistle on his wrist.

The door closed behind them without a sound.

Logan turned at once and put his palm flat against it. The wood swung open a hand’s width under the lightest push. It would let them out. He let it close again.

Then he looked at the room, and he understood that it could not be where it was.

From the terrace, the door had sat in a strip of rock between two houses. There could not have been four paces of stone behind it. The room in front of him ran back further than he could see.

Shelves stood in long rows, floor to roof, with narrow aisles between them. Every few paces an amber lantern hung from the ceiling on a chain. Each one burned with the same steady flame as the one outside.

On the shelves sat hundreds of small objects. Every one of them rested on a square of dark cloth, under a bell of clear glass.

Just inside the door stood a counter of black wood.

There was nobody behind it. There was no stool or bell or ledger. Its top was worn into two shallow hollows, side by side, about the width of a pair of hands.

In front of the counter was a single low step. It was worn too. The hollow in the middle of it had not been made by boots.

It was too wide and too uneven, as if a great many different feet and paws and claws had stood there over a very long time.

"That is where they stand," Alice said. She was looking at the step. "The units."

Burr looked at it as well. He did not move toward it.

"Only looking, Lady," he said in his scratchy voice. "You said."

"Only looking," Alice agreed.

Logan went to the nearest shelf.

Under the first glass bell lay a coil of thin grey cord, no thicker than a bootlace. As his eyes settled on it, a panel opened in the air beside the glass.

[ Catchcord ] [ One use. Arrests one fall. ] [ Price: 120 Abyss Points ]

He read it twice. Then he thought of the path along the wall, and of Vina walking it with her hand in an old man’s.

The next bell held a small stoppered bottle. He knew it before the panel told him.

[ Feverbane Draught ] [ One use. Cures one sickness of the First Layer. ] [ Price: 200 Abyss Points ]

"That is Corin’s," Alice said quietly at his shoulder.

They walked down the aisle together. There were whistles carved from bone and stoppered jars of black sand. There were needles and folded cloths and a single iron nail. Each had a panel, and each panel said one use.

Logan stopped reading them after the twentieth. He had begun to feel that the shelves were reading him back.

The stone was at the end of the first aisle.

It had a shelf to itself and a lantern directly above it. It was the only object in the shop that looked as if it had been picked up off the ground.

It was a river pebble, smooth and grey and about the size of a thumb joint. Water had worn a hole clean through the middle of it.

Somebody had threaded a loop of plain string through the hole. The loop was small. It was the right size to go over a child’s head.

[ Hearthstone of the Small ] [ Permanent. Binds to one bearer who cannot become a player. ] [ The bearer cannot be called. ] [ Price: 40,000 Abyss Points ]

Alice made a small sound in her throat.

She was seeing it again, and so was Logan. A warm gold light bobbed below the lip of a ledge. A lullaby came out of a mouth full of needles, and a little girl walked toward the edge with her arms loose at her sides.

’Cannot be called,’ Logan thought.

He saw Vina throwing herself at Teska’s back. He saw her face afterward, white and shaking, in Rishin’s hands.

’She saved Teska because the thing was singing to somebody else. What happens on the ledge where it sings to her?’

"Forty thousand," Alice said.

"I can read."

"I know you can." Her voice was not steady. "I needed to say it out loud."

They went back to the counter.

Logan laid his hand in one of the worn hollows. He did it only to feel the wood. A panel opened above the counter at once.

[ Rates of Exchange, per day of life ] [ Normal: 1 ] [ Uncommon: 2 ] [ Rare: 4 ] [ Epic: 8 ] [ Legendary: 16 ] [ Mythic: 32 ]

"Each rank is worth double the one below it," Alice said slowly.

Logan was already doing the sum he did not want to do.

’Billy has three hundred and sixty days left. At thirty-two points a day, that is eleven thousand five hundred and twenty. It is the same for Solveig, and the same for Sonic.’

He added the three of them together and came to thirty-four thousand five hundred and sixty. The stone cost forty thousand.

’Billy and Solveig and Sonic, emptied to their last day. Then half of what Terry has left on top of them.’

His hand had closed into a fist inside the hollow.

’It is not priced at random. It is priced so that a party like ours can just barely afford it, if we walk our four oldest friends through that door and come out alone.’

"Logan." Alice had seen his face. "Stop. I can see where you have gone, and we are never going there."

"No," he said. "We are not."

Burr had been watching the two of them.

He looked down at the worn step. Then he stepped up onto it, and he set his right hand in the second hollow of the counter. Whistle shifted on his other wrist.

"Burr," Alice said sharply.

"You wished to know what it pays for a day, Lady. It will not say until one of us stands here." He did not sound afraid. "It has taken nothing. I would feel it."

The panel above the counter changed.

[ Offered: Thornwing Falconer (Burr) ] [ Rank: Rare ] [ Rate: 4 Abyss Points per day ] [ Available: 729 days ]

Every lantern in the shop dipped.

It was not a flicker. All of the flames sank together to half their height, down the whole length of every aisle. They held there for as long as it took Logan to notice. Then they rose again and burned as steadily as before.

Alice’s hand had gone to her bow.

’Seven hundred and twenty-nine,’ Logan thought. ’No unit that ever stood on that step can have shown it a number above three hundred and sixty-five.’

Rishin had warned them in the gallery. Whoever kept the shops could see exactly what they were being paid with.

’It noticed,’ he thought. ’I do not know what noticed. But it did.’

"Seven hundred and twenty-nine days at four points each," Alice said. She was keeping her voice level by force. "That is under three thousand. Everything Burr has would not buy a tenth of that stone."

"No."

She turned to look at him, because his voice had changed.

Logan was staring at the rate panel. He was not seeing the shop anymore. Alice knew the look. He had worn it on the plaza steps in the Warlord match, with five hundred cards spread out at his feet.

’A merge adds the days together,’ he thought. ’A merge also lifts the rank by one, and every rank doubles the rate. So the days double, and the rate doubles as well.’

He counted it out on the fingers of his free hand.

’One Normal pull is a year at one point a day. That is three hundred and sixty-five points, and it is nothing.’

’Two of them merged make an Uncommon with two years, at two points a day. Four make a Rare with four years. Eight make an Epic with eight.’

His lips were moving.

’Sixteen make a Legendary. Sixteen years on one unit, at sixteen points a day.’

Five thousand eight hundred and forty days, at sixteen points each.

"Ninety-three thousand," he said aloud.

Alice blinked. "What?"

"Sixteen pulls. Sixteen hundred Tower Points, even if every one of them comes out Normal." Logan took his hand off the counter. It was shaking slightly.

"I merge them into one Legendary. He walks in here carrying sixteen years. He pays for that stone with fewer than seven of them, and he walks out again with nine still on him."

Alice stared at him.

"It is very stubborn math," Logan said.

"Sixteen hundred points," she said faintly. "At ten a crawler."

"Then we do not hunt crawlers."

Burr had not taken his hand off the counter.

"Lady," he said. "The cord. The one that stops a fall."

Alice looked at him.

"I have two years. You need me for less than one." He nodded at the first shelf. "It is a hundred and twenty points. At four a day, that is thirty days. I would like the little one to have it."

"Burr, I named you one sleep ago."

"Yes, Lady. It is a good name." The briar falcon on his wrist whistled once, very softly. "He agrees with me. He usually does not."

Alice looked at Logan. Logan thought of the path again, and of all the layers still below them.

"It has already seen his number," he said. "And she walks on that wall every day."

Alice shut her eyes. Then she nodded.

Burr turned back to the counter.

[ Exchange: 30 days (Burr) → 120 Abyss Points ] [ Purchased: Catchcord ] [ Burr: Lifespan 699 days ]

Three white feathers along Whistle’s wing curled and turned brown. They dropped onto the black wood. When Alice looked down for them, the counter was bare.

The coil of grey cord lay in the first hollow. On the shelf behind them, the glass bell stood empty.

Burr stepped down off the worn step and rolled his shoulder.

"It is like putting down a pack I did not know I was carrying," he said thoughtfully. "And finding that I miss the weight."

Rishin was waiting for them outside.

He sat on the steps of the house across the terrace, where he could watch the door without being near it. His hands were tucked in his sleeves. From the set of his shoulders, he had been sitting there since shortly after they went in.

"You bought," he said.

Alice held out the coil of cord. "For Vina. It stops one fall."

Rishin took it. He ran its whole length slowly through his fingers, and then he handed it back.

"Tie it around her wrist, under the sleeve," he said. "It does nothing at all until the instant she needs it. She will forget she is wearing it. That is the best way."

"There is another thing in there," Alice said. "At the end of the first aisle. A stone on a string."

Rishin’s hands stopped moving inside his sleeves.

"It is called the Hearthstone of the Small," she went on. "It is for somebody who cannot be a player. It says the bearer cannot be called."

"So it is still on the shelf," Rishin said.

He was looking at the black door and the amber light beside it. His face had not changed. But Logan had been reading that face since the garden, and he saw the old man’s jaw set.

"Forty thousand," Rishin said.

Alice had not told him the price.

She looked at Logan, and Logan gave the smallest shake of his head. Neither of them asked.

"I can get it," Logan said instead. He kept his voice very low. "Not by spending anyone we brought. Sixteen fresh pulls, merged into one. He pays for it and walks out with years to spare."

Rishin turned his head.

"Sixteen hundred Tower Points," he said.

"Yes."

"On the first layer."

"Yes."

The old man was silent while a bucket creaked its way up the lift on the far wall. Daniel’s new pin was holding.

"Then you need better prey than crawlers," Rishin said. "And there is only one place on this layer that keeps it."

Vina was still asleep when they came back to the Long Table.

She lay curled between her parents with one arm flung out across the floor. Alice knelt beside her. She pushed the sleeve back from the small wrist, wound the grey cord around it twice, and tied it off. Then she drew the sleeve down again.

Vina muttered and did not wake.

"Nobody catches anyone here," Logan said under his breath.

"Your father never heard that rule," Alice said. "Neither has the cord."

Solveig had watched every movement of her hands. When she stood up, he inclined his head to her.

Hesper was sitting at the end of the stone table with a cup between her palms. She had been watching too.

"You went in," she said. "And you came out with all the units you took. That is rarer than you might think."

She pushed the bench opposite her out with one foot.

"Sit down," she said. "I told you I would tell you what took my party. If it is points you are after, you had better hear about the Narrows first."