Chapter 104: Three People and One Plan

Chapter 104: Three People and One Plan

Alden’s someone turned out to be Dagna Korr.

She was sitting on the low wall at the edge of the east yard when Silas arrived, eating an apple with the efficiency of someone who considered lunch a task. Her shield gauntlets lay beside her. Alden stood next to her, still flushed from drills, looking faintly guilty about the introduction. ℴ

"Rooke," Dagna said.

"Korr," Silas said.

"Alden says you’ve got a plan for Harrowglass that involves dirt," Dagna said.

Silas looked at Alden. Alden looked at the sky.

"I said materials," Alden said.

"You said dirt first," Dagna replied. "Then you said materials."

Silas sat down on the wall at a careful distance from the gauntlets. He knew Dagna mostly from the gate, where she’d held the line at every stage and said perhaps twenty words to him in total. He wanted to know what she expected from this.

"Why are you interested?" he asked her. "Honestly."

Dagna dropped her apple core neatly into a bin three paces away.

"Shield drills are walls," she said. "You stand in a lane, someone hits your shield, you hold. It’s good for the arms. But in the gate, everything I protected was moving. The litter. The people coming out of the alcove. Everyone on that ramp." She turned one gauntlet over on the wall. "I’m good at holding a door. I want to get good at holding a door that walks. Harrowglass is old paths and bad corners and people carrying things. That’s what I want to practice."

Silas could see why she wanted the exercise. His own interest in the collection window might fit hers after all.

"I want a proper fight," Alden said, a little apologetically. "Not to win, exactly. Something real enough that I have to change halfway through. The yard’s too clean."

"And you want your dirt," Dagna said to Silas.

"I want a look at where it came from." He kept it plain. "I bought some old Harrowglass substrate from a salvage shop. There was a dormant moss in it, and I got a scrap growing again. It’s an ingredient for cultivation incense, if a refiner prepares it. There’s a service court on the east side where it might have grown originally." He shrugged. "Might. I don’t know if there’s any left, or if the area’s even open this season. I’m not promising anyone a fortune. I’d just like a look during a collection window, if the official work’s done."

Dagna studied him for a moment.

"The official work comes first," she said.

"Yes," Silas said.

"Good. Then what do you do when the route gets awkward? Alden’s going to be in front hitting things. I’m going to be holding things off. What are you for?" Dagna asked.

She asked it without any edge. Silas thought about the answer he couldn’t give and gave the one he could.

"Precision," he said. "I can open, lift, steady, or retrieve things at a distance without putting a hand anywhere stupid. Latches, crates, a pack on the wrong side of a gap. I passed retrieval with Ferrow yesterday." He paused. "With two-thirds of a pail of water. The rest went in my boot."

Alden laughed. Dagna’s mouth twitched, which Silas suspected was her version of the same thing.

"Fine," Dagna said. "How do we work together?"

***

The first plan was Alden’s, and it was very tidy.

Alden in front, to meet anything coming. Dagna beside him with her shield, to stop whatever got past. Silas behind them both, carrying whatever needed carrying while they protected the front.

Dagna listened to it all the way through. Then she said, "And who’s watching behind us?"

Alden opened his mouth.

"Nobody," Dagna said. "All three of us are looking the same way. Anything coming from the side would have the whole crate to itself." She held up her hand flat, then tipped it sideways. "My shields point. They don’t wrap. I can cover one side properly, not every side at once. So I take the open side, wherever it is. Alden goes where something’s actually coming, not just to the front. And whoever’s carrying watches backward, because they’ve got the slowest job and the most time to look."

"That’s me," Silas said.

"That’s you," Dagna said.

Silas looked at the gaps between the yard posts. On a narrow path, he might see something behind them before either of the others could turn. He’d have to make time to look.

"Try it," Dagna said, and stood up.

***

They borrowed a weighted training crate from the yard store and took it into the post field at the far end of the yard, a grid of chest-high posts set close enough that you had to pick a path through them.

The crate held only a small practice weight. Silas would bring it through the posts with Remote Grasp, keeping it low between himself and Alden. Alden would move to whichever side Dagna called. Dagna would keep her shield on the open side and call the threats, which today were imaginary.

The first run lasted eleven seconds.

"Left," Dagna said.

Alden went left. Silas, who had been planning how to thread the crate between the next two posts, began explaining. "Alden, if you go round the post on the left, I’ll bring the crate through behind you on the right, and then if Dagna—"

Alden, halfway through a turn, went round the post on the right.

Silas checked the crate as Alden stepped into its path, but the leading edge still bumped the back of Alden’s knees. Alden staggered with a yelp. Dagna’s shield snapped between him and the crate while Silas arrested the remaining swing.

The crate rested against the shield. Alden was on one knee.

"My shield," Dagna said slowly, "just protected Alden from our own luggage."

"That was my fault," Silas said.

"It was a little bit mine," Alden admitted from the ground. "I heard left and then about nine other words and I stopped listening after post."

"It was mostly Rooke’s," Dagna said. "But yes."

Silas set the crate down. He’d meant to clarify Dagna’s instruction and had talked straight over it. One person calling the turn. Start there.

"Short words," he said. "Three of them. Hold means stop where you are. Through means I’m bringing the crate past you. Mine means I’ve got something, leave it to me."

"And mine means the same as yours," Dagna said. "If I say mine, the threat’s on my shield and nobody else touches it."

"Then we need something else for you," Silas said.

Dagna thought about it. "Wall," she said.

Alden got up and dusted off his knee. "Hold, through, mine, wall. I can remember four."

The second run was slower and much better. When Silas said "Through," Alden simply stepped aside, and the crate went past him. When Dagna said "Wall" and tilted her shield toward the gap between two posts on their right, Alden moved toward the left without being told. Silas walked half-backward at the rear, step and close, keeping one eye on the crate and one on the empty yard behind them, and for the first time it felt as though the three of them were one thing moving instead of three people taking turns.

On the last run, Alden called "Mine" at a post he’d decided was a monster and cut at it so seriously that Dagna laughed out loud.

"Good," she said afterward, pulling off her gauntlets. "Not perfect. Good. We register together, if Ferrow and Osk allow it. They’ll decide the final assignments."

"Agreed," Silas said.

"Agreed," Alden said.

Dagna looked at Silas. "And if there’s no dirt in your court?"

"Then I’ve lost a walk," he said. "And you still got to protect a door that walks."

Dagna nodded. "Then we’ve all got a reason to go."

***

Back in the studio, Silas sat on the bed with his boots off and wrote to Elyra.

About tomorrow. Could you come around five instead of seven, if that works after your seminar? No reason it has to, I just finish early. Also, I qualified for Harrowglass yesterday.

The Spirit Communion recording would run out at half past four. He knew that. But nothing about it was urgent, and he wasn’t going to make her come any earlier than suited her.

Her reply came after a few minutes.

Five works. Don’t tell me the Harrowglass story in a message. Save it. I want to hear it properly when I’m there.

He read it twice.

He’d been about to type the result and leave it there. Now he was remembering Rovan’s expression when he’d emptied his boot. Elyra would enjoy that part. He left the details out of his reply.

Saved, he wrote, and lay back with his arms behind his head, smiling at the ceiling like someone with nothing important on his mind.