Chapter 387: The Distance Between

On the morning of Cassia's walk with Davren, Julian gave her a drawing.

She accepted it with a pleased expression that changed when she unfolded the page.

“Is this the waterwheel?”

“The part that keeps catching.”

Across the breakfast table, Lysandra stopped buttering her bread.

Julian pointed to a small mark beside the axle.

“If he knows about bridges, he might know whether the frame is bending.”

Cassia looked at him.

He looked back with complete sincerity.

“You don't have to ask immediately,” he added.

Lysandra put down the knife before she hurt herself laughing.

I tried to be more useful.

“Perhaps Cassia could enjoy her walk before commissioning an inspection.”

Julian considered that.

“She can ask afterward.”

“I can take the drawing,” Cassia said, folding it carefully.

Adriana smiled at her over the rim of her cup.

“You don't have to bring work.”

“It's Julian's wheel.”

Apparently that answered the matter.

Beside her, Lysandra opened her notebook and checked something she had written inside.

Lexander noticed.

“Are those questions for your tea?”

“They're notes about the book.”

“How many?”

She closed it.

Io touched his arm before he could continue.

“Let her discover that conversation can occasionally proceed without preparation.”

Lysandra looked offended.

Cassia looked at the folded drawing in her hand.

Then the two of them began laughing together.

They went through the gate for their morning lessons as usual.

The outings would follow in the afternoon. Their guards knew the arrangements, the college knew when they were leaving, and Mary had removed the possibility of anyone sending Cassia three urgent errands on her way out.

This left the rest of us with nothing useful to arrange.

Lexander discovered that before I did.

“I could find something to do in Concordia,” he said as we walked toward the training enclosure.

“You generally have something to do there.”

“Exactly.”

I looked at him.

He sighed.

“Io said the same thing with her eyebrows.”

“They're going out in daylight with people they've been studying beside.”

“I know.”

“And they promised to return for supper.”

“I know that too.”

We walked several more paces.

“You aren't entirely calm either,” he said.

“No.”

That seemed to help.

At the enclosure, Thor took one look at our faces and handed Lexander a practice weapon.

“Excellent. Something for you to think about.”

“I wasn't planning to train.”

“Then you'll be surprised by how much it helps.”

Evelyn examined my arm before Vaerun began.

The bandage was gone. The skin beneath it still carried a pale mark, and certain movements pulled enough to remind me that healing did not happen faster because I had become impatient with it.

My side had improved as well.

Improved was the word Evelyn used.

I had learned not to substitute a more convenient one.

“No hard impacts,” she told Avarn.

He nodded.

“No repeated journeys if the first leaves him unsteady,” she told Elyan.

Another nod.

Then she looked at Vaerun.

“And he returns to himself before he becomes exhausted.”

“That's the lesson,” Vaerun said.

Evelyn glanced at me.

“Good. Listen to it.”

I watched her leave with the uncomfortable awareness that all four of my teachers intended to be reasonable.

Vaerun walked into the center of the enclosure.

“Today, your whole body.”

That immediately improved my opinion of the morning.

There were no weapons in the circle at first.

Vaerun had me stand barefoot on the grass and listen to the storm within me.

I had grown better at finding it without anger. That surprised me more than dissolving my fingers had. For so long, lightning had come most easily when something threatened the people I loved. Wind answered when I needed to drive danger away.

Now it stirred because I asked quietly.

Rain formed along my wrists.

“Let it continue,” Vaerun said.

My forearms blurred.

I could see the grass through them.

The sensation spread toward my shoulders, cool and strangely spacious. My body had always told me where I ended. Suddenly that certainty was gone, replaced by motion I had to recognize as my own.

I lost it when the change reached my chest.

Flesh returned with a gasp.

Vaerun waited while I steadied myself.

“What happened?”

“I couldn't feel my heartbeat.”

“Did you need one?”

I stared at him.

He spoke gently.

“In that form.”

I looked down at my chest.

“I don't know.”

“Good. Now we know what frightened you.”

Thor came closer, her hammer resting against one shoulder.

“You don't have to stop being Uriah because the shape changes.”

I remembered Aurethar saying something like that before my hair turned pale and winter settled permanently behind my eyes.

Understanding it once had apparently not exempted me from learning it again.

I breathed.

Then tried.

The second time, I followed the turning wind instead of searching for a pulse.

My arms became rain.

My shoulders followed.

For a moment, fear rose when the familiar pressure beneath my ribs disappeared.

I let it rise without rebuilding myself around it.

There was still a center.

Still awareness.

Still the sound of Thor telling Lexander to remain outside the marked grass.

I looked down.

The world showed through me.

Rain circled where my body had been, held within a shape that belonged to me without requiring flesh. Wind moved through my chest and returned along my spine. My feet touched the grass as pressure, as intention, as a turning current that did not scatter.

“There,” Vaerun said softly.

His voice sounded unusually far away.

“Now hold.”

I held.

Avarn stepped into view with a thin strip of plain cloth.

“May I?”

I nodded.

He drew it through my forearm.

The cloth passed into the rain and out again, damp but unobstructed.

No pain.

No wound.

I laughed.

The sound came out mixed with wind.

Thor grinned.

“That's unsettling.”

“You're enjoying it,” Lexander said.

“Very much.”

Vaerun raised one hand before my delight carried me further.

“Come back now.”

I obeyed.

My weight returned all at once. Knees, lungs, the grass cold beneath my soles.

I stumbled one step, and Avarn caught my elbow.

Then I was standing solidly in the enclosure, laughing in my own voice.

We rested before trying anything else.

That was Vaerun's instruction, and for once I was too interested in what had happened to object.

I kept turning my hand over, remembering the cloth passing through it.

“How long?” I asked.

“A few breaths,” Avarn said.

It had felt much longer.

Elyan sat beside me.

“You found the same thing you need during a journey.”

“The center?”

“The certainty that you're still there when your ordinary senses stop explaining you.”

I looked toward the arrival stone at the far end of the enclosure.

“Farther today?”

“Not after that effort.”

I sighed.

“You all get along unusually well.”

“A burden for you,” Avarn agreed.

Instead, he placed a practice sword in my hand and asked me to show three slow movements while seated.

By the end of the third, I understood why he had chosen them. Each required less force than I wanted to use. Each kept the point threatening the space in front of me while my wrist changed direction.

“You won't need to arrive everywhere swinging,” he said.

I considered that.

Then tried the first movement again.

Cassia returned first.

Mirelle was in the garden with Helena, helping the children sort seeds into little dishes. I sat nearby with Adriana and a report I had read twice without retaining the final paragraph.

Cassia came through the arch carrying her case.

There was a small paper parcel in her other hand.

Carol saw it immediately.

“Cake?”

Cassia smiled.

“Buns.”

“For us?”

“Some.”

The children gathered before any adult managed a question.

Cassia distributed the buns under Helena's supervision, then sat beside her mother.

Mirelle looked at her.

Cassia looked back.

Both began smiling.

“It was nice,” Cassia said.

Adriana leaned forward.

“Just nice?”

“Very nice.”

“There we are.”

Cassia laughed and loosened the strap of her case.

She did not tell us everything at once. The account came in pieces while the children ate and Helena rescued a dish of seeds from Ignatius's sleeve.

They had walked along the river. Davren had asked whether she preferred the busy path or the quieter stretch near the old embankment, and accepted her answer without turning it into an opportunity to prove he knew a better route.

They had spoken about lessons.

Then families.

Then nothing especially important for a while.

“There were ducks arguing over a crust,” Cassia said. “He started explaining which one was winning.”

“Was he right?” I asked.

“No. A third one stole it.”

Adriana laughed.

Cassia's smile lingered as she looked down at the empty wrapping in her lap.

Julian arrived from the workshop shortly afterward.

He tried to look as though he had come to see who was in the garden.

His eyes went straight to Cassia's case.

She reached inside and brought out the drawing.

“He looked at it.”

Julian came closer.

“What did he say?”

“That he can't tell whether the frame bends without seeing it. But he asked whether the wood swells after you've been running the wheel.”

Julian stared at the drawing.

Then toward the workshop.

“Grandfather!”

Garrick Valewood appeared in the doorway carrying a rag.

Julian repeated the question at considerable speed.

His grandfather considered it.

“Worth checking.”

They left together.

Cassia watched them go, laughing softly.

“Davren said he'd be happy to look at it sometime. If Julian wants.”

Mirelle's eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Did he ask to visit Greykeep?”

“No. He said I could bring another drawing after we'd checked the wood.”

She paused.

“I liked that.”

So did I.

I kept the thought to myself.

Lysandra returned with an expression that made Cassia sit upright before she even reached the garden.

“Well?”

Lysandra looked at the assembled family.

“This is a large reception for tea.”

“There were buns,” I explained.

“Of course.”

She sat beside Cassia and accepted the one Carol had reluctantly saved.

Lexander and Io joined us a few minutes later. Lexander managed to ask about her afternoon without sounding as though he expected a formal report.

I considered that progress.

“We disagreed about the book,” Lysandra said.

Io smiled.

“How unexpected.”

“Then he asked why I wanted to study languages.”

Her tone changed enough that we listened more carefully.

“I told him about the people arriving here. How often somebody can explain what they need only if the right person happens to be standing nearby.”

Mirelle nodded.

“And?”

“He said there are older students who practice conversation together. He offered to introduce me.”

“That sounds useful,” Lexander said.

“It does.”

Cassia nudged her knee.

“Did you talk about anything besides lessons?”

Lysandra looked at her.

Then smiled.

“Yes.”

She did not elaborate at first.

Then, while Cassia broke the last bun in half to share with her, she added, “I forgot to use my notes.”

Lexander looked surprised.

“Entirely?”

“Entirely.”

“That serious, then.”

She threw him a look, but there was no force behind it.

Renwick had told her about his first unsuccessful attempt to translate a letter for a neighbor. He had mistaken a request for a replacement hinge for a complaint about an unfaithful relative.

“Did anyone send the reply?” Io asked.

“Fortunately, someone checked it.”

Garrick Valewood, returning through the garden, stopped at the mention of hinges.

“What sort?”

Lysandra stared at him.

Then she began to laugh again.

“I didn't ask.”

“People rarely do,” he said, and continued toward the house.

Cassia recognized the boundary and, with visible effort, respected it.

The two of them disappeared into the sitting room before supper.

Their laughter reached the passage once, followed by a long stretch of quieter conversation.

Nobody interrupted.

At the table that evening, neither behaved as though an afternoon had settled the rest of her life. Cassia still had work to finish. Lysandra needed to return a borrowed text.

But when Mirelle asked whether they intended to see Davren and Renwick again, both said yes.

Lexander took a deliberate sip of water.

Io watched him with open amusement.

“You may survive this,” she murmured.

“I hadn't suggested otherwise.”

“Your face has been holding meetings.”

Lysandra laughed so hard she nearly lost the thread of what Cassia was telling her.

The love notes had not stopped, they added later. Two more had arrived that morning, and someone had asked Cassia to a musical evening while she was trying to return a book.

She had declined without inventing an appointment.

“It was easier,” she admitted.

Mirelle smiled.

Then asked about the mathematics exercise.

Cassia looked almost grateful.

The following morning, the wider world returned to our table in a stack of reports.

Stonewake needed fittings for another damaged sluice. Patrols had found evidence of people moving along a disused woodland road, but not enough to know whether they were refugees or soldiers. Orselle requested more cloth and two experienced builders.

Mary placed each report where it belonged.

Thor and Lexander discussed the patrol routes. Eliza asked for a second observation before anyone called the woodland movement safe. We arranged the supplies we could provide and identified what still needed an answer.

For once, I did not try to make the meeting end with my departure.

Thor noticed.

Afterward, she stood beside me at the window.

“The training is helping.”

“I can hardly contribute a few breaths of rain to a patrol.”

“That isn't what I meant.”

Below us, a cart turned toward the receiving hall.

I watched the driver lean down to hear a guard's directions.

“It feels as though I'm preparing something,” I admitted. “Instead of simply waiting to be fit enough to leave.”

Thor nodded.

“Good.”

“You could have told me that was part of the plan.”

“You would have argued.”

“Probably.”

She clapped my uninjured shoulder and went to find Avarn.

Adriana found me looking at the calendar that afternoon.

“Should I be concerned?”

“Only if you object to being asked what you'd like for your birthday.”

She came to stand beside me.

Her name was the next among the family dates Mary had marked. Julian's had passed. Io's too. The empty space beside Adriana's looked less generous than it had when we first discussed it.

“You remembered to ask again,” she said.

“You specifically warned me that your preferred food might change.”

“It has.”

“Then the warning was useful.”

She sat, easing herself into the chair, and I moved a cushion behind her back.

“What would you like?”

“Still an afternoon with everyone. Music. Somewhere comfortable.”

“Inside or outside?”

“A place where I can choose once I know the weather.”

I wrote that down.

She watched my hand for a moment.

“And I'd like Cassia to tell me about college without feeling she ought to ask whether I need anything every few sentences.”

I looked up.

“She's worried about you.”

“I know. I love her for it. But she can have something that doesn't begin with somebody needing her.”

Through the open door, we could hear the younger children arguing about the arrangement of chairs for a game.

Adriana rested her hand over the baby's movement.

“I think she's beginning to believe that.”

I put down the pen and sat beside her for a while.

Two mornings later, Avarn struck me with a wooden sword.

It passed through my chest.

I had known what he intended. We had agreed on the angle, the force, and precisely where everyone would stand. Vaerun waited within reach, and Evelyn watched from beside the gate.

Knowing did not make the sight ordinary.

The blade entered the turning rain below my shoulder and emerged from my side.

I felt the disturbance in the wind.

Nothing more.

“Keep the shape,” Vaerun said.

I held it.

Avarn withdrew the sword and presented a padded target in his other hand.

My own practice blade remained gripped within the storm of my fingers.

I made the short cut he had taught me.

Wood struck padding.

Avarn's arm shifted under the impact.

My chest remained wind and water.

For one instant, defense and attack existed together exactly as Vaerun had promised.

Then I returned to flesh, breathing hard and grinning like a fool.

Evelyn approached immediately.

“Any pain?”

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

“A little.”

She pointed toward the chair.

I sat without arguing.

Thor studied Avarn's target.

“That will do.”

“For today,” Avarn said.

His smile was small, but it was there.

That evening, Julian's waterwheel ran without catching.

The cause had been swollen wood near one support, made worse by an axle that was not quite seated evenly. Garrick Valewood had helped him make the adjustment, but Julian explained the correction himself to anyone willing to stand still.

Cassia wrote Davren a note describing the result.

She read it twice before folding it.

Lysandra watched from the other end of the table.

“It's a report about a wheel.”

“I know.”

“You've been looking at the final line for several minutes.”

Cassia glanced at her.

Then added something and folded the paper firmly.

Lysandra smiled without asking to read it.

Beside the window, Julian held his chest open while Carol carefully placed a little wooden piece inside. Garrick Grey stood on tiptoe to inspect the tray. Seraphina explained to Ignatius that they had to ask before borrowing anything.

The four children seemed taller every time I stopped long enough to look. Yet Carol still needed help with a stubborn fastening, and Ignatius still forgot that leaning over a basin brought his sleeves dangerously close to the water.

I helped with the fastening.

Across the room, Adriana settled beside Evelyn and drew her hand toward the place the baby was moving.

Evelyn's expression softened.

“There.”

Adriana nodded, smiling.

I went to join them.

Outside, rain began tapping against the windows. For the first time, I could feel its motion without imagining it only against my skin.

Inside, Cassia tucked her note safely into her case for the morning.

Lysandra returned to her book.

Julian closed the lid of his chest, checked that the clasp had caught, and asked his grandfather what they might build next.