Chapter 88: Not Only Luck

Chapter 88: Not Only Luck

At ten to four, Nim moved his bead, his two feathers, and his bent spoon from the windowsill to the pillow, looked at them, and moved them back.

"She’s not coming to inspect your things," Silas said.

"You don’t know that," Nim said.

Silas had done his own tidying earlier, with less excuse. The guest chair was cleared. The kettle was full. The green book lay on the desk, closed, with a strip of paper marking the exercise he’d been stuck on since before the gate. He had thought about what he would say to her about Lydia on the walk back from Sorel’s lecture, and in the shower, and while eating lunch, and he still didn’t know.

At four exactly, someone knocked. ℴ

He opened the door. Elyra Thale stood in the corridor with her copper hair tied back and a small paper parcel in one hand.

"Come in," Silas said.

She stepped over the threshold, and the reading unfolded behind his eyes, familiar in every line that mattered to him. Beneath it waited the prompt he had been expecting since they had arranged the visit.

[Record Soul Talent: Spirit Communion?]

He accepted it while she was still looking around the room.

[Spirit Communion recorded to temporary slot. Duration: seven days. Previous assimilation retained.]

It didn’t feel like learning anything. It felt like walking back into a house he’d lived in before and finding the furniture where he had left it. The room had a second layer again, faint and quiet, and Nim was in it, a warm bright weight on the bed. Silas let out a breath he hoped looked like ordinary nerves.

Seven days, he thought. Four o’clock, a week from now. Don’t waste them.

Elyra had already found Nim. She didn’t go to him. She sat down in the guest chair, put the parcel on her knee, and waited.

Nim watched her from the far side of the pillow.

"Is the red one with you?" he asked.

"It isn’t manifested here," Elyra said. "You don’t have to worry about it."

Nim’s ears came up a little. "And the big one? The one under the ground?"

"Not here either," Elyra said. "I came to visit. I don’t need them for tea."

Nim thought about that. Then he came down the bed to the edge nearest her chair and sat, a careful arm’s length away. Elyra unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a little brass bell with no clapper, polished until it shone, threaded on a green cord.

"It doesn’t ring," she said. "I thought you’d prefer something quiet."

Nim stared at it. Then he reached out one paw, hooked the cord, and drew the bell across the blanket toward himself. He looked at Silas over it with tremendous meaning.

"I know," Silas said. "I know."

"Did he promise you something?" Elyra asked Nim.

"Something shiny," Nim said. "I suggested screws." He took the bell to the pillow to sit with it.

Elyra laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of her, and for a moment she looked like any girl in his year. Then she turned the guest chair a little toward the desk, toward him, and folded her hands, and Silas knew the moment had come.

"Lydia," she said.

He sat down on the desk chair. He had told her twice that it was luck. He could say it a third time. She would make the same small, sulky noise she’d made in the sanctuary, and go away, and come back, and keep asking. He could see that road running ahead for months.

He was tired of it, he realized. Not of her. Of the lie, which was so thin it didn’t even protect anything.

"It wasn’t only luck," Silas said.

Elyra didn’t move.

"She prepared an ambush. She was stronger and faster than me. You’re right about that." Silas kept his hands still on his knees. "But I knew this room better than she did, and I used what was in it. The furniture. The light. Whatever gave me a chance."

He remembered the blanket and the shadow it had restored. He couldn’t explain that part without explaining how he had used the shadow, and he wasn’t going to begin.

"She nearly killed me," he said. "I didn’t come through it because she forgot to try."

"That’s true," Elyra said slowly. "And it isn’t everything."

"No. It isn’t everything." He made himself look at her. "There’s more, and I’m not going to tell you."

The room was very quiet. On the pillow, Nim had stopped turning the bell.

"I’m grateful for the seed," Silas said. "I mean that. You gave me my body back. I ran up the dormitory stairs that night and grinned like an idiot the whole way. But I’m not ready to hand anyone every way I have of staying alive. Not you. Not anybody. That’s not about you being who you are. It’s about me still being alive."

He waited for the temperature to change. He had seen her face go still before, in a game, on a screen, right before something terrible.

Elyra looked at him for a long moment.

"That’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me about it," she said.

"It’s not much of an answer," Silas said.

"It’s a better one than luck," Elyra said. "You knew I wouldn’t believe that, but you kept saying it. I couldn’t tell whether you wanted me to stop asking or thought I’d eventually accept it." She studied him. "Now I know you won’t tell me. I can work with that."

"You make that sound like a challenge," Silas said.

"It isn’t an agreement to stop wondering," Elyra said. "I’m still curious. I’m going to stay curious. I’ll probably ask again one day."

"And I’ll probably give you the same answer," Silas said.

"Then we’ll both know where we are." Elyra unfolded her hands. "And I didn’t give you that seed to buy the answer, Silas. If I’d wanted to trade, I’d have said so before I put it in your hand. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not bad at bargaining."

He hadn’t expected that. He had spent days braced for the bill, for the moment she’d lean forward and mention what he owed. Now she was sitting in his guest chair, looking around his room with open interest, and apparently meaning it.

Don’t relax, he told himself. She’s still her.

He relaxed a little anyway.

"Your message said something wasn’t working," Elyra said.

It was, he realized, an offer to change the subject, and he took it gratefully.

"The exercises in your book," Silas said. "I’ve been rereading your instructor’s notes and practicing the breathing and mana control when I can. But when I try to listen, I mostly notice Nim. He’s bonded to me. I don’t know how much of what I feel is useful perception and how much is familiarity." He hesitated. "You said once that I had some receptivity. I want to know if I’m using it wrong, or if there just isn’t enough of it."

"There’s enough," Elyra said at once. "I wouldn’t have lent you the book otherwise. Which exercise?"

"The second. The one in the margin."

"Ah." She seemed pleased about something. "That one’s hers. She made me do it for a whole summer." She leaned back in the chair. "Show me. Exactly how you do it. Don’t do it the way you think I want."

Silas closed his eyes and settled into the breathing he had practiced without the Talent. Now Spirit Communion was active again, he could attempt the part that had been missing. He let mana extend gently into the room on each exhalation, then waited for a response.

The book called it offering attention. He had read that phrase often enough to remember the shape of the handwriting, but remembering words and doing what they meant were apparently different skills.

He did it four times.

"Stop," Elyra said.

He opened his eyes. She was watching him with her chin on her hand, and the corners of her mouth had gone tight with what he slowly recognized as an effort not to laugh.

"You’re talking every time you breathe out," she said. "Every single breath. A little push, and then a little push, and then a little push. You’ve filled your whole room with your own voice, and then you’ve been sitting in the middle of it, wondering why you can only hear yourself."