Chapter 131 — "Debrief"

Kestral in the afternoon looked exactly the same, which Seraphina resented personally.

Six days. Thirty tracks. A body-shaped cover on a cart. Four riders on a road who’d been moving before anyone told them to move.

And the yard was full of second years doing footwork drills, and someone had spilled something outside the mess and hadn’t cleaned it up, and Torin was lying on the common hall floor.

"Are you dead," she said.

"I’m recovering."

"From what."

"From six days of not knowing anything." He sat up so fast he had to steady himself. "Was there a fire."

"How do you know about a fire."

"There’s always a fire."

"There’s never a fire, Torin—"

"There was this time though," said Torin, with the terrible calm of a man whose entire worldview has been validated by an accident.

They were separated for the debrief, which nobody had warned them about.

Four rooms. Four instructors. Same questions.

Renna took Seraphina.

"Start at the rise."

"Sir—"

"Not the fire. The rise. Start where it starts."

So she started at the rise, and Renna let her get all the way through without interrupting once, which was somehow more difficult than being interrupted.

At the end Renna said: "Who saw the tracks first."

"Kell."

"You’re certain."

"He stopped first. Halvard stopped second."

"And you."

"Third or fourth."

Renna wrote something.

"Fourth?"

"...Fourth."

"Who was third."

Seraphina heard the question land before she’d decided what to do with it.

He’d stopped four seconds before Kell.

I have good eyes.

That’s not an answer.

No. It isn’t.

"I don’t know," she said. "We were spread on the path. I couldn’t see everyone."

Renna’s pen did not stop moving.

"That’s a reasonable answer," she said, "and it’s also the first thing you’ve said in eleven minutes that took you longer than half a second."

Seraphina said nothing.

Renna finished writing.

"You’ll be asked again," she said. "Not by me. By someone who’s better at this than I am, and who won’t tell you they’re asking. When that happens, give them the same answer you just gave me, and give it at the same speed you gave everything else."

"Sir—"

"That’s not instruction to lie. That’s instruction to be consistent, which is a different thing, and which will matter to you more than you currently understand."

She closed the book.

"Go and eat something. You’re grey."

The mess was almost empty at that hour.

Mira was there.

She had a cup in front of her and a second one already poured, sitting across from her at an empty seat, which meant she’d known within about ten minutes of the gate opening.

Seraphina sat down and drank the second cup before saying anything at all.

"You look terrible," said Mira.

"Thank you."

"It wasn’t a compliment."

"I know. That’s why I said thank you."

Mira watched her drink.

"How bad."

"It wasn’t bad."

"Seraphina."

"It genuinely wasn’t. Six days of walking. We saw two things and did nothing about either of them, which was correct, which is apparently the whole job." She set the cup down. "The worst part was the fourth day. Nothing happened on the fourth day. That’s what made it the worst."

Mira nodded slowly.

"And Eren."

"What about him."

"You said we saw two things. You’ve been back forty minutes and you haven’t said his name once."

Seraphina looked at the cup.

"He noticed the tracks before Kell did."

Mira’s expression did not change.

"How long before."

"Four seconds."

"Four."

"About four."

Mira turned her cup a quarter turn on the table, which was the most agitated Seraphina had ever seen her.

"Did you tell Renna."

"No."

"Why not."

"Because I don’t know what it means," Seraphina said, "and Kell said guesses become facts, and I’m not putting my friend in a report because he has good eyes."

Mira looked at her for a long moment.

Then reached into her coat and put the notebook on the table.

Not open. Just — on the table. Face down.

"Two years ago," she said, "in week one, I asked everyone’s name. Everyone gave me one. Family name, home region, year of entry. It’s the same three questions and I’ve asked them four hundred and six times."

"Mira—"

"He gave me the name," Mira said. "He gave me the year."

She tapped the notebook once.

"He never gave me the region."

Seraphina found him on the north stair an hour later.

Sitting on the bottom step with his back against the wall and his eyes closed, which was the closest thing to tired she had ever seen him produce.

He didn’t open his eyes.

"You’ve been standing there eleven seconds."

"How do you do that."

"You breathe loudly when you’re deciding something."

"I don’t—"

"You do. It’s one of my favourite things about you. Please don’t fix it."

She sat down on the step beside him.

Neither of them said anything for a while, which was new, and which she found she didn’t mind.

"They asked me who stopped third," she said eventually.

He was quiet.

"I said I didn’t know."

More quiet.

"Was that the right thing," she said.

Eren opened his eyes and looked at the opposite wall.

"No," he said.

Which was not the answer she’d braced for.

"It was the kind thing," he said. "Those aren’t always the same. You should know that they’re not the same, and you should know that you picked kind, and you should know that I noticed."

"Eren—"

"I’m not going to explain it on a stair."

"That’s the second time in two days you’ve told me where you won’t explain something."

"Yes," he said. "That’s true. I’ve noticed that too."

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand — an ordinary, exhausted, entirely human gesture, and she had never once seen him make it.

"Ask me at Kestral," he said. "That’s what you said. On the road."

"I said ask me when I’ve slept."

"You’ve slept."

"I’ve slept four hours."

"That’s some."

"Eren—"

"I’m not asking," he said. "I want it on record that I’m not asking, right now, when you’re grey and you’ve been interviewed for an hour and someone put a body on a cart six hundred metres from where you were standing."

He stood up.

Looked down at her.

"I’ll ask when it’s a good day," he said. "You’ve had a bad six. You’d say yes for the wrong reason and I’d know, and then I’d have to give it back."

And he went up the stairs.

She sat on the bottom step for a long time after he’d gone.

She got as far as the second floor before Ost ambushed her.

"They asked me about you."

"What."

"In the debrief. Instructor Varn. He asked me about you four times." Ost had the wild look of a man who had been holding something in for an hour and had selected her as the container. "Not the tracks. Not the cart. You. What you looked at. When you looked at it. Whether you argued with Kell."

"Did I argue with Kell."

"That’s what I said, I said she didn’t argue with anyone, she asked one question at the rise and then shut up, and he wrote that down and then he asked me again in a different order."

"That’s just how they do it."

"That is not just how they do it," said Ost. "I’ve done four evaluations at this academy. They ask you the thing and then they stop. Nobody circles."

She thought about Renna.

You’ll be asked again. Not by me. By someone who’s better at this than I am.

"What did you tell him," she said.

"The truth. All of it, four times, identically, because I’m not an idiot." He paused. "I did tell him you’re better than me."

"You didn’t."

"I did. He asked me to rank the four of us and I ranked us and I put myself third."

"Third—"

"Halvard, you, me, Sennick."

She stopped walking.

"You put Eren last."

"He didn’t do anything," said Ost, entirely without malice. "Six days. He walked, he ate, he talked at you constantly, and he made one observation about a cart. On what basis would I rank him higher?"

Which was, she recognised, completely fair.

And which was, she also recognised — standing in a corridor with her pack still on her back — the single most interesting thing anyone had said to her since the road.

Nobody ranks Eren.

Nobody has ever ranked Eren.

"Ost."

"What."

"Thanks."

"For what—"

"For being consistent," she said, and left him standing there.

She slept eleven hours.

She woke at some point in the middle of it convinced she was still walking, and lay in the dark with her heart going for about a minute before the ceiling resolved into a ceiling and not the underside of a tent.

Then she got up, in the dark, and did the thing she had done almost every night for two years.

Found paper.

Found the pen.

Sat down.

Kael.

I walked six days on a border and came back and everything here is exactly where I left it, which I find personally offensive.

We found tracks. Thirty people crossing north-west in the night. We didn’t follow them, which was correct, and I have been furious about it being correct for two days.

There was a fire on the sixth day. There was a cart by the fire. There was something on the cart under a cover and it was the wrong shape and I am not going to write down what shape it was.

I keep thinking about the fact that we walked past it.

Kell said the job is to see accurately and go home. He’s right. I know he’s right. I have never in my life hated being told something correct as much as I hated being told that.

You’d have gone down the slope.

No. That’s not true. You’d have wanted to and you wouldn’t have. You’d have stood there doing nothing with your entire face and I’d have known exactly what it cost you and nobody else would have.

I miss —

She stopped.

Looked at the word for a while.

Then finished the sentence, because she always finished the sentence, because there was no reason not to when nobody was ever going to read it.

— arguing with someone who’s already three steps ahead of the argument.

It isn’t the same when I win.

— S

She put the pen down.

Read it once.

Then opened the trunk at the foot of the bed and put it on top of the others, and closed the lid, and did not count them, because she had stopped counting them somewhere in the first year and had made a policy of it since.

The lid didn’t shut properly any more.

It hadn’t for about four months.

In the morning there was a notice on the board.

Not the list. A different notice — small, official, entirely unremarkable except for the fact that Kestral did not post unremarkable things.

Second-year assessments postponed. Nine days. Further notice to follow.

By breakfast the year had produced six theories.

By midday there were eleven.

By evening Torin had settled on the correct one and was being ignored by everyone, which Seraphina thought was probably the natural condition of his life.

"It’s obvious," he said. "They’ve moved assessments because the instructors are busy."

"Instructors are always busy."

"They’re busy with something else," said Torin. "Renna wasn’t at drill. Varn wasn’t at lecture. Kell hasn’t come back from the outpost."

Seraphina stopped with the cup halfway to her mouth.

"Kell hasn’t come back."

"He didn’t come back with you, did he?"

"He walked us to the gate."

"And then he went straight out again," said Torin, "which I know because I watch the gate, because there’s always something at the gate, and everyone thinks that’s sad but it is currently making me the best-informed person in this building."

He was, annoyingly, correct.

She found Eren at the north stair that evening because she had begun to understand that this was where he went.

He wasn’t sitting this time. He was standing at the window at the top of the flight, looking out at nothing, and he had been there long enough that the light had changed on him.

"Kell hasn’t come back," she said.

"I know."

"Assessments are postponed."

"I know."

"Torin thinks—"

"Torin’s right." Eren didn’t turn around. "Torin is right roughly once a season and it’s always about something nobody wants him to be right about."

She came up and stood beside him.

Below, the yard was emptying. Ordinary evening. Ordinary people going to ordinary places.

"Nine days," she said.

"Mm."

"That’s a long postponement."

"It’s a specific postponement," said Eren. "Nine days isn’t a delay. Nine days is a rotation cycle."

She turned her head.

"You know how long a rotation cycle is."

He didn’t answer immediately.

Then, still watching the yard:

"Everybody knows how long a rotation cycle is."

"Ost didn’t know how long a rotation cycle is. He worked it out on the rise on the fifth day."

"Ost is a delightful man with a very specific set of gaps."

"Eren."

"Seraphina."

They stood there.

"You said you’d ask me on a good day," she said.

"I did."

"How will you know it’s a good day."

And he turned to look at her — properly, fully, for the first time since the road — and something in his face was so completely unguarded that she took an actual half-step back before she could stop herself.

"I’ll know," he said.