Chapter 90: Something in the Boot

Chapter 90: Something in the Boot

Elyra came back at four, as she’d said she would, and this time Nim was waiting by the door with the brass bell on its cord around his neck.

"You’re wearing it," Elyra said.

"It’s mine," Nim said, and went back to the bed, satisfied that the matter had been witnessed.

She crossed the threshold, and the reading unfolded and waited. Silas dismissed it. The copy he’d made four days ago had three days left to run, and Elyra walking into his room again didn’t change that. It was strange how ordinary her entrances had started to feel.

"Show me," she said, taking the guest chair.

He told her about the shelf first, because it seemed dishonest not to. That he had felt something there and seen it appear, and couldn’t tell whether he’d found it or only expected it.

Elyra looked pleased in a way he was learning to recognize. "Good," she said. "Most people don’t notice they’re guessing until someone embarrasses them. Then we’ll do it properly. Face the wall. Close your eyes. I won’t tell it where to go, and I won’t give you hints."

"Will it come?" Silas asked.

"It’s come every day, hasn’t it? It likes it here." She shrugged. "If it doesn’t want to play, it won’t. Then we’ll have tea."

He sat on the floor facing the bare wall beside the kitchenette and closed his eyes. Behind him, he heard Elyra turn her chair toward the window.

For a while, nothing happened. Then the panel told him what his senses couldn’t.

[Guest: unidentified minor spirit. Threat — external: Negligible. Territory: Negligible.]

It was in. It could be anywhere.

Silas established steady contact. He recognized Nim and his own mana, then waited for something else.

He almost turned his attention toward the bookcase out of habit. He caught himself and started again, giving the rest of the room the same patient attention.

Territorial Awareness gave him the familiar furniture and objects, but the visitor remained unmanifested. The guest reading had announced its arrival; finding it would take Spirit Communion.

At first there was nothing. Then, low down and to his right, there was a small cool place. It was so faint that he would have missed it a week ago, under the noise of his own knocking. It was near the floor, by the door, closer than he’d have guessed.

He waited. The impression remained, then shifted a little higher. He hadn’t tried to move it. That small change held his attention more firmly than its arrival had.

He wanted to turn and check. Instead, he tried to judge its position against the things he knew were beside the door. The umbrella was too tall. The impression came from just above the floor.

"By the door," Silas said. "Low down. Not on the floor. In something." He frowned, eyes still closed. "I think it’s in my boot."

There was a pause.

"Your boot," Elyra said.

"The left one," Silas said.

He opened his eyes and turned round.

His grip boots stood by the door where he’d kicked them off after the yard. For a moment nothing happened. Then a speck of pale greenish light rose out of the mouth of the left boot, hung there, and drifted in a slow, pleased circle over the laces.

Elyra put her hand over her mouth.

Nim lifted his head from the pillow, looked at the boot, and said, "That’s disgusting. He wears those."

Silas didn’t laugh until he was sure. Then he did, sitting on the floor of his own room, with his face hot and his heart going hard. He had found something he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and hadn’t expected, and it had been exactly where he said.

A private glance at his status confirmed that assimilation had advanced. Spirit Communion was still temporary, and he had a long way to go before it would be permanently his. But this time he could say what he had learned.

He wanted to do it again tomorrow, when nobody was watching.

"Again," Elyra said, when she had recovered. "Somewhere else. I want to see if that was a fluke."

It wasn’t. The second time, the spirit hid in the curtain fold above the window, and he found it after a long minute. The third time he got the direction right and the distance wrong, which Elyra said was perfectly respectable, and the spirit, perhaps bored, went out through the glass, ending the exercise.

They had tea after that. Elyra drank hers without sugar and looked at his bookshelf with frank interest, the way she looked at everything.

"Thank you," Silas said.

"You did it," Elyra said.

"After you showed me what I was doing wrong." Silas turned his cup in his hands. "I might have kept repeating the same mistake for months."

She studied him. Silas resisted the habit of preparing an excuse before she had even asked him anything.

It didn’t come.

"You were easier to teach today," Elyra said. "Last time you kept watching me whenever you got something wrong. As though I was deciding whether you were worth the trouble."

Silas looked down at his cup. He hadn’t realized she’d noticed. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Today you told me what you couldn’t do," she continued. "I prefer that. It’s restful."

"Restful," Silas repeated.

"Don’t let it go to your head," Elyra said. "I’m still curious about plenty of things."

"I know," Silas replied.

"My first instructor used to make me find a sparrow spirit in a hedge," she said. "Every morning, one whole summer. I was nine and furious about it. I thought it was beneath me." She set her cup down. "It was the most useful thing anyone ever taught me."

"Did you find it?" Silas asked.

"Eventually. Then it learned where I expected it to hide." Elyra smiled. "I liked it better after that."

He found himself wanting to hear more about that summer. For once, the interest had nothing to do with a remembered disaster or a Talent he wanted to keep.

She left before dark. At the door, she said, "Keep practicing," and then, as if it were an afterthought, "I’d like to come back. Not for lessons. Just to come back."

"Then come back," Silas said.

Alden’s message arrived while he was washing the cups.

Osk made me do Solvain’s distance step forty times. On the forty-first I tripped over my own sword. Dagna laughed so hard she had to sit down. Doing it fifty times tomorrow.

Silas read it twice and grinned at the screen. He typed back, Count the ones you learn from, and put the communicator down.

He didn’t need to ask for a detailed report. Alden had instructors, classmates, and plans for tomorrow. Silas was allowed an evening of his own. He dried the second cup and put it beside the first, pleased that there had been someone here to use it.

Silas sat down at his desk and opened the academy directory. He’d been thinking about it since Mara’s call. Work. And a door that’s mine.

Crownless was neutral ground. Its independence from Ormont made it worth asking whether the infirmary could offer someone like Mara a path back to work. He didn’t know whether Mara could qualify again after years away, or whether a baron’s reach stopped at the academy gates the way the treaty said it should. He didn’t know if Mara would even want it.

Dr Kerr could tell him what qualifications and recent experience mattered, or direct him to someone who could. He could ask those questions without committing Mara to anything.

He opened a blank note beside the directory. Training requirements. Previous experience. Where to ask about vacancies. He left housing off the list for now. Mara had asked him to listen before arranging her life, and he meant to keep that promise.

He wrote: Dr Kerr, could I have ten minutes this week? I have some questions about how the infirmary takes on mana medics, for someone in my family. Nothing urgent. — Silas Rooke

He didn’t send it yet.

He stretched instead, arms over his head, until his shoulders cracked, and felt nothing pull or catch anywhere. The lamp was warm. Nim was asleep on the pillow with the bell tucked under his chin. Outside the window, faint against the dark glass, a speck of greenish light had come back and settled on the sill, as if it hadn’t quite finished visiting.

He liked this. He liked all of it: the room, the body that worked, the spirit snoring on his pillow, the friend tripping over his sword across campus. He wanted to keep every bit of it.

And he wanted his mother to have something like it too.

He pressed send.