Chapter 93: Five in a Row

Chapter 93: Five in a Row

At half past six, Silas caught himself making a list.

It was a short list, written nowhere but in his head. How far could Elyra feel a spirit through a wall? Did distance feel like faintness to her, or something else? Why had he placed the visitor in the right direction yesterday and the wrong distance? Somewhere between ordering food and wiping the table, he’d started arranging the evening around what he might get out of it.

He stopped with a cloth in his hand.

She’d asked to come back. Not for lessons. She had said it at the door, as if it had cost her something to say, and he’d said yes. He’d been looking forward to seeing her. There was no reason to make her work for her dinner.

No questions about spirits, he decided. Not unless she starts it.

His communicator buzzed on the desk. Mara.

Dr Kerr answered. We’re speaking tomorrow, late morning. Don’t call me before. I’ll be practicing my face.

He grinned at that and put the communicator face down.

Elyra knocked at seven.

She stepped over the threshold, and the reading came and waited, and he dismissed it. The copy had until four tomorrow afternoon. Her walking in didn’t change that, and he didn’t want it to be the first thing he thought about whenever she arrived.

She had brought nothing this time but herself, in a plain dark coat. She looked at the table, where the food sat in its covered dishes, and then at the flat wooden box beside it.

"Lines," she said, pleased. "I haven’t played since I was small. We call it something else at home. Little stones, five in a row."

"Same game," Silas said.

He knew the game through the memories he had inherited. The original Silas had played it with Mara on wet evenings, when he was young enough to cheat badly and she was kind enough to pretend not to notice. Silas had bought a cheap set from the student store that afternoon, because sitting across from Elyra with nothing to do but talk seemed like asking for trouble.

They ate first. She liked the spiced flatbread and ignored the noodles, and Nim came down from the pillow to inspect the flatbread on her behalf and decided against it. Then Silas cleared the dishes, opened the board between them, and gave her the pale stones.

The rules took one sentence. You took turns setting a stone on any crossing; the first to get five in an unbroken line won.

Elyra played fast, reaching for her next stone before he’d finished placing his. She won the first game in what felt like a dozen moves, sat back, and looked enormously satisfied.

"Again," she said.

The second game went slower. Silas had remembered by then that the trick was to stop her lines early rather than build his own, and she began to frown at the board. She placed a stone and studied the crossings with her chin on her fist until he shifted in his chair.

"We could play something else," he said. "If this is dull."

"It isn’t," Elyra said.

He let it go. Two moves later she went quiet again, eyes narrowed, and he said, "Or we could stop. I don’t mind."

Elyra looked up. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?" Silas asked.

"Deciding I’m bored." Elyra set her stone down without looking at where it went. "That’s twice. You look at my face, decide I’m not enjoying myself, and offer me a way out."

"You looked bored," Silas said.

"I was thinking," Elyra said. "That’s what my face does when I’m thinking. If I’m bored, I’ll tell you. I’m not shy." Her annoyance was plain enough. The hurt in her voice was harder to hear. "I came because I wanted to be here. You don’t need to keep checking whether I’ve changed my mind."

He opened his mouth to say he hadn’t meant anything by it. Then he shut it again, because that wasn’t true. He had been watching her face all evening. He’d been watching it for weeks, at the edge of every conversation, for the moment it went still and became the face he remembered from a screen in another life.

He couldn’t tell her that. He could stop doing the part she’d noticed.

"Sorry," Silas said. "I’ll stop."

"Thank you." Elyra looked back at the board. "I’m losing. That’s why I’m scowling."

She was. She had just put her stone down in a useless spot, and Silas had four in a row along the lower edge with both ends open. He set the fifth, and she looked at the board and made a sound of pure disgust.

"That’s a child’s mistake," she said.

"You weren’t looking," Silas said.

"I was too busy being annoyed with you." Elyra swept her stones back into their bowl. "That doesn’t count. Again."

Nim chose that moment to come up onto the table. He walked across the empty board and sat down beside it. He hooked a paw under the cord, ducked out of it, and set the brass bell carefully on the center crossing.

"That’s mine," he said.

"It’s on the board," Silas said.

"Then the board is where it lives now," Nim said.

Elyra looked at the bell, then at Silas. "It’s a wall," she decided. "Nobody can play through it."

"That changes the whole game," Silas said.

"Good," Elyra replied. "You’ve learned all its tricks already."

So they played around the bell. It made the center useless and drove every line toward the edges, where neither of them was used to playing. Nim sat beside it like a small, smug guard, and twice when Elyra reached past it, he leaned against the bell to make sure she knew.

During the third game, Silas laughed at her description of his defense as a dormitory corridor. He’d been watching her hand hover over the board, wondering where she’d play, and had forgotten to check her face for signs of displeasure. He could scarcely remember the last time he’d done that.

The third game ran long. By the time the lamp needed trimming, the board was half full and neither of them had a clear line. Elyra checked the window and sighed.

"I have an early session," she said. "I don’t want to leave this."

"Then don’t. Leave it as it is." Silas looked at the board. "We can finish it another time."

"Tomorrow?" Elyra asked.

He thought about the afternoon. At four, the copy would run out. If she came after that, the room would offer him a new recording, and he’d take it. The thought sat there, practical and a little cold.

He also thought about the bell in the middle of the board, and his lucky lower-edge win, and the way she’d said again as if it were obvious.

"Tomorrow," he said. "After four? I’ve got a practical in the morning."

"I’m in a seminar until four anyway," Elyra said. "Half past?"

"Half past four," Silas agreed.

"Don’t touch the stones," Elyra told Nim, as she stood.

Nim opened one eye. "I never touch other people’s stones."

"Good," Elyra said.

She went out still smiling, and Silas stood looking at the half-finished board for longer than made any sense.

He practiced before bed. There was still time to use the copy, and he wanted to.

The visitor came in through the window glass a little after ten. The panel noted it, and he closed his eyes and let his thread out thin and level and left it alone.

He recognized Nim asleep by the bell and the steady contact of his own mana. Beyond those was the small cool presence, high and to the left. The curtain rail. He opened his eyes and found a pale speck resting on the brass rod.

He closed his eyes again and waited.

After a while, the cool place moved. It drifted down and across, slowly, and stopped somewhere near the middle of the room, lower than before. He judged the distance carefully this time, not by how faint it felt, but by how much of the room lay between.

"The desk," he said aloud. "Near the lamp."

He opened his eyes. It was on the desk, but at the far end, on the corner of the green book, a full arm’s length from where he’d put it.

He’d followed it, at least. Yesterday he’d kept losing it when it moved.

He tried twice more and got it right once.

When it finally left, he turned the lamp down and lay looking at the dark shape of the board on the table, the stones waiting where they’d left them, and found he was looking forward to half past four for more than one reason.