Chapter 133 — "Sixty-One Days"

The device had been silent for two years.

It sat on the low table by the window in the Arden house, where someone had put it the week the recognition papers came through, because that was what you did — you got the papers, you got a device, and then you had a very expensive lacquered box in your front room that never did anything.

Lacquered wood. Brass fittings. A slot on top, a slot on the front, and a small pale glass panel between them that stayed dark.

Kael had stopped checking it around month five.

That had taken effort.

He’d had to stop again around month eight, when he caught himself doing it, and again around month eleven, when he caught himself doing it on the way past, which he had decided was different and then admitted was not.

On Thursday, sometime before he woke, the panel lit.

He knew before he was properly awake. Not a sound — the device didn’t make sounds, that was one of the things you paid for. Just a change in the light through his eyelids that hadn’t been there when he’d closed them.

He got up.

He did not hurry.

He would maintain this position for the rest of his life and Tax would dispute it for the rest of Tax’s.

There were two sheets in the front slot.

The first one out was not from her.

NORTHERN LINE — SERVICE NOTICE

Transmission held at Vell relay. Fault: secondary coil. Duration of hold: forty-seven days.

Original posting: standard rate, fourteen-day service.

Actual elapsed: sixty-one days.

Compensation issued at delay rate — four silver marks, eight — credited to receiving house.

The Northern Line regrets the interruption.

He read it twice.

Then a third time, more slowly, because two words in it had gone in wrong and were sitting in his chest at an angle.

Standard rate.

He knew what the rates were. He’d read the schedule card once, in the first month, sitting on the floor of this room with a device he had nothing to put into, and had not read it again since because there had been no reason to.

Standard was the slow one.

Standard was the one you chose when it didn’t matter when it arrived.

He put the notice down on the table, face up, and looked at it for a while as if it might revise itself.

The second sheet was hers.

It came out the way they all did — fresh paper, faintly warm, the ink already set. Not the sheet she had touched. That one was somewhere in a machine at Vell, or filed, or burnt. This was the copy, made letter for letter in her handwriting, because that was the entire point of the thing and the reason it cost what it cost.

He had known that was how it worked.

He had not known how it would feel to hold it.

Kael.

Happy birthday.

You’re welcome.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, which he had not planned to do, and then continued sitting there for some time.

Tax found him forty minutes later.

The crow came in through the window, which was closed, in a manner nobody had ever satisfactorily explained, landed on the sill, and took in the situation: the lit panel, the notice on the table, the man on the floor.

Kael had migrated to the floor at some point. He did not remember the decision.

"You’re on the floor."

"Yes."

"With paper."

"Yes."

Tax turned his head very slightly.

"Ah," said Tax.

He read it eleven times.

Not by choice — he reached the end and started again, and this happened repeatedly, and eventually he noticed the light had moved across the boards and he had not moved with it.

Some parts got more than eleven.

There’s someone here called Eren.

He’s funny.

Not funny like Tax. A different kind. The kind that makes you stop walking.

He read that one considerably more than eleven times.

His face did nothing at all.

Tax watched a man’s face do nothing at all for approximately ninety seconds and then said:

"You’ve gone quiet in the bad way."

"I’m reading."

"You finished. You’re doing the other thing."

"What other thing."

"The one where you hold still and construct an entire person out of four sentences."

Kael turned the sheet over. There was nothing on the back. He turned it again.

"He found her ink," he said.

"So it says."

"The exact shade. Three weeks of looking."

"Kael."

"Three weeks is a long time to look for ink."

"It is," said Tax, who was not going to lie about arithmetic.

There was a pause.

"Say it," said Kael.

"Say what."

"You’ve had something since you landed."

Tax shifted his weight on the sill.

"Not funny like Tax," he said. "That’s a comparison. People reach for comparisons when they’ve been trying to explain a thing to themselves and haven’t managed it yet. She’s had two years and she still hasn’t landed on what he is."

Kael looked at the letter.

"That isn’t comforting."

"It wasn’t offered as comfort."

Daren arrived at the front door of the Arden house at some point past midday, which was unusual, because Daren did not come to the house — Daren occupied a bench three roads away and had strong feelings about it.

He was carrying bread.

He had been carrying bread for two years. Kael had privately concluded it was structural.

"Tax says the box went off."

"The box went off."

"THE BOX WENT OFF—"

"Daren."

"YOUR BOX HAS NEVER GONE OFF."

"I’m aware."

Daren came in without being invited, which was standard, and stopped in the middle of the room, which was not — because he had seen the service notice on the table and had, being Daren, immediately read something he had no business reading.

"Sixty-one days."

"Yes."

"Sixty-one—" He stopped. Read it again. Went slightly still.

Then, in an entirely different voice: "Standard rate."

"I saw."

"Kael. She bought me mine."

"I know."

"She bought Rowan’s. She sends me three-day. I’ve been getting three-day for two years and I thought that was just — I thought that was just how far away it was—"

"I know."

Daren stood there holding bread with both hands, working it out in real time, and Kael watched a series of expressions cross his face that he was fairly sure Daren had no idea were visible.

"Why would she—"

"Don’t."

"But why would she—"

"Daren."

"I’m not asking to be — I’m asking because it doesn’t make sense, she’s the most efficient person I’ve ever met, she once negotiated a cart down by half in a language she didn’t speak—"

"I know what she is."

"Then why—"

"Because it’s two weeks," said Kael.

Daren stopped.

"Two weeks each way is a month," Kael said, to the floor. "A month is a long time to not know something. If you’re afraid of the answer, a month is—"

He didn’t finish it.

Daren sat down on the floor.

He did this the way he always did it — abruptly, as though his legs had held a vote without consulting him — and then set the bread down beside him with great care, as though the bread had also had a difficult morning.

"That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard," he said.

"Yes."

"That’s genuinely the worst thing anyone has ever said in this house."

"Probably."

"And you’re pleased."

"I’m not pleased."

"You’re doing the thing with your face—"

"I’m not doing anything with my face."

"You’re doing NOTHING with your face," said Daren, "with feeling, and I’ve known you long enough to know that’s the worst one—"

Tax, from the windowsill, without inflection: "He smiled at a window this morning."

The room went very quiet.

Kael turned his head slowly.

"You were in the corridor."

"I’m often in corridors."

"You were in the corridor specifically—"

"He smiled at a window," said Daren, with the delight of a man being handed something he would be using for the next decade. "At a window. At what time."

"Seventh bell."

"SEVENTH BELL—"

"It was a good window," said Kael.

And then heard it.

And so did everyone else.

Daren put both hands over his face. Tax made a sound like a small door opening. Kael looked at the wall, at the letter, at the wall again, and declined to elaborate, on the grounds that there was no available direction that improved his position.

Later, when Daren had gone and taken most of the bread with him, Kael pulled the schedule card out from underneath the device where it had sat unread for two years.

Four rates.

He looked at the top one for about a second and a half.

Then took paper.

"You’re writing back," said Tax.

"Obviously."

Tax tilted his head.

That was not Kael’s word.

He had heard that word in this house exactly twice, and both times it had come out of a girl standing on a stair refusing to be reasonable about something, fifteen years ago, before either of them knew what any of it was going to cost.

Tax said nothing.

Some things you let a person keep.