Chapter 96: Half Past Four

Chapter 96: Half Past Four

At twenty past three, Silas sat on the floor with his back against the bed and his eyes closed, and found the visitor without trying very hard.

It had come in through the glass at three, and the panel had noted it. He let his thread go out thin and level. Nim was on the pillow, a bright impatient spark, half asleep. Silas set him aside, set aside his own thread, and there it was: a small cool place up and to his right, on the second shelf, near the end.

He opened his eyes. A pale speck sat between two books, exactly where he’d felt it.

Three days ago, finding it at all had felt like a miracle. Now it felt like finding a familiar cup in a cupboard: still a little slow, but not a guess. He tried twice more as it drifted. He followed its direction both times and judged the distance correctly once. When it settled in the curtain fold, he placed it a hand’s width too high.

His assimilation was nowhere near complete. It was nearly a quarter to four, and he didn’t want to spend the last few minutes straining. He kept the contact steady and followed the visitor as it returned to the shelf. Nim barely stirred, warm and bright behind him. Silas could hold those two impressions apart now without constantly checking where they were.

At four, it went.

[Spirit Communion — temporary recording expired. Assimilation retained.]

There was no pain and no sound. The second layer of the room simply wasn’t there. The cool place on the shelf vanished from his attention, and the brightness that was Nim narrowed to what it had always been before: the ordinary steady warmth of the bond, and a cat-shaped spirit asleep on his pillow.

Silas sat very still.

On the second shelf, the pale speck was still visible to his eyes, glowing softly between the books. It hadn’t gone anywhere. He just couldn’t feel it now. It was like going deaf to someone in the middle of a conversation.

Nim opened one eye. "You’re making a face."

"I’m fine," Silas said.

"You’re making the face you make when you’ve dropped food," Nim said.

"I haven’t dropped anything," Silas said. "Go back to sleep."

Nim tucked his chin over one paw and went back to sleep. The brass bell remained on the game board, where he had put it the previous evening.

Silas let himself be disappointed. He’d known the copy would run out and planned for it. That didn’t make the room feel any less flat.

What surprised him was why it bothered him. He wanted Spirit Communion permanently, and not because it was S-Rank, or because a spirit-sensing Talent might be useful someday in a gate. He wanted it because he’d started to like what it showed him. The little visitor drifting along the shelf like a seed on a draft. Nim’s quick spark. He would miss these small, useless things even on a day when nothing threatened him.

He thought briefly about the other people who would cross his threshold this week, and the other Talents he could fill the slot with. Then he put that away. He had a book, a teacher who’d asked to keep visiting, and progress that was finally starting to mean something. Starting again on something new would only be chasing the shine.

Same one, he decided. Finish it.

At twenty past four, he put the kettle on.

Elyra knocked at half past exactly.

She stepped over the threshold, and the reading came, and beneath it, as it hadn’t the evening before, the prompt.

[Record Soul Talent: Spirit Communion?]

He accepted it while she was taking off her coat.

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

The visitor’s cool presence returned on the shelf, with Nim bright behind it on the pillow. Silas smiled before he could help himself. He took Elyra’s coat and hung it beside his own, glad to have the perception back and glad she was here.

"You’ve made tea," Elyra said, holding up a small paper packet. "I brought some."

"We’ll try yours next," Silas said.

"Good. I liked the smell. I want to know whether it tastes as nice." Elyra put the packet beside the kettle, found the cups, and poured for both of them.

The board was still on the table, stones in place, the brass bell in the middle like a small, smug fortress. Nim had announced that morning that he was keeping it there until they finished.

Elyra sat down in the guest chair, then changed her mind, pulled off her boots, and tucked her feet up underneath her. She studied the board with her chin on her fist.

"Your move," Elyra said.

"It was yours," Silas replied.

"It was not," Elyra said. Then she looked up. "Was it?"

"I put a stone on the lower edge," Silas said. "You stared at it, said you had an early session, and stood up."

Elyra considered this, then picked up a pale stone. "I was going to block that."

"You still can," Silas said.

She did. He started a new line. For a while they didn’t talk much, and it was easy not to.

Nim woke up halfway through the game, came over to the table, and sat beside the board with his tail wrapped round his feet.

"The bell is tired of the middle," he announced.

"The bell lives in the middle," Elyra said. "You told us."

"It’s tired now," Nim said. He hooked the cord with one paw and started to drag the bell toward the corner.

"Nim, that changes the whole board," Silas said.

"Yes," said Nim, with satisfaction, and set it down at a crossing two away from Elyra’s best line.

Elyra stared at it. Then she laughed, the surprised one, and pointed at Nim. "That was deliberate."

"I don’t know what you mean," Nim said.

"He’s taking your side," Elyra told Silas.

"He’s taking the bell’s side," Silas said. "I’m collateral."

She won anyway, three moves later, by going around the bell along the far edge where Silas hadn’t been looking. She put down the fifth stone and sat back with an expression of enormous, childish satisfaction that she made no effort to hide.

"Two to one," Elyra said.

"You’re gloating," Silas said.

"I’m entitled to gloat," Elyra said. "I lost the second one to a child’s mistake." She picked up her tea, which had gone cold, and drank it anyway. "Next time, a new board. I’ll beat you fairly."

"Next time," Silas agreed, and realized he’d said it without checking her face first.

She stayed until the window went dark, talking about a lecturer who mispronounced spirit names on purpose to see who’d correct him. When she left, she put her boots back on at the door, and Nim followed her to the threshold and said goodbye, which he didn’t do for most people.

Mara’s message came a little after eight.

I sent the request this afternoon. Your father will see me tomorrow morning, after breakfast. He hasn’t agreed to anything, so don’t decide he has. I’ll call you after.

Silas read it standing in the middle of the room.

He opened his father’s contact before he’d finished deciding what to say. He could call tonight. He could tell Edmund that a senior physician at Crownless had judged Mara’s experience worth assessing, that she wanted to work again, that she was ready to study, and that if Edmund said no—

His thumb hovered over the call.

She’s handling the first one, he thought. She asked you not to call anyone.

He closed the contact and wrote to her instead.

Do you need anything tonight? I’ll be here tomorrow. Call whenever you’re done.

Her reply took a while.

Nothing tonight. Just be awake after. And don’t write to your father. I mean it.

I won’t, he wrote, and meant it.

Silas sat at the desk and wrote down the questions he still needed answered. What could Edmund lawfully require of Mara? Who could advise them? Would a note from the infirmary help, or make his father dig in?

He left the note beside his communicator. He could think without making a call. That ought to be easy enough; it was only tonight that every unanswered question seemed like something he should already have dealt with.

On the desk, the little visitor had come back and settled on the green book. He could feel it again, cool and small.

Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, his mother would walk into his father’s study and ask for something she had never asked for before.

It wasn’t a dream anymore. It was close enough now to be told no.