Chapter 275: A Small Miracle

Verrick ran the first check at eight and the second one at eight-oh-four.

Instead of moving to the next test, she checked the sensor’s fit and repeated the reading. Jin watched her compare it with the earlier records.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Let me finish," Verrick said, already reaching for another pad.

The examination ran well past the booked interval.

At the end of it she had Flicker do a short flight — crate to perch, two and a half meters, which Flicker performed readily despite having managed her first proper flight only yesterday — and then Verrick sat with her hands on her knees and watched the recovery curve come down.

"Ninety seconds," she said.

"Is that normal?" Jin asked.

"Completely normal for an Ashwing of her age after that flight." Verrick studied the curve again. "Her temperature is regulating properly. The second reading agrees with the first. Even her core activity stayed stable through the effort."

She looked up at him.

"I knew she was improving," Verrick said. "I expected to extend her walking circuit. A little more endurance, perhaps. This..."

She looked between the old record and the bird on the perch.

Flicker, bored, flew to the top of the equipment cabinet.

Verrick’s head turned to follow her and she made a small noise.

Verrick brought her back to the padded perch and checked that she was settled. When she turned to Jin, she was gripping the tablet in both hands.

"What did you do." ℯ

"I optimized her diet," Jin said. "And there were some exercises."

"No." Verrick crossed the stall in two steps. "No, absolutely not, that is not an answer, that is the answer you give a form. What diet? Which supplements? What ratio? At what interval? Was it the thermal regulation you were targeting first or the core activity, because the order matters enormously and if you targeted core first then everything I have been taught about avian rehabilitation is—"

"Verrick—"

"—which exercises? The circuit? You changed the circuit, didn’t you, you changed something about the loading, was it the turn? Was it the turn?"

She had gotten very close. Jin backed up one step and discovered the wall.

And then, to his complete horror, she went down on one knee — and then not a knee, both of them, and her hands closed around his leg just above the knee, gripping his trousers, her face tilted up at him with an expression of open, unembarrassed academic desperation.

"Jin. Please. Give me the protocol. Give me any part of the protocol."

"Could you—"

"I’ve recorded every small improvement in this bird. Every one. And you’ve made an adjustment that changes the whole assessment." Her grip tightened on his trousers. "How am I supposed to accept ’some exercises’ as an explanation?"

"Could you please let go of my leg?" Jin asked.

"Will you tell me if I do?"

"Verrick." He looked down at her hands. "Please."

Somewhere behind them, Glitch made a low interested sound from the doorway, which was the least helpful contribution anyone had ever made to anything.

Verrick let go.

She stood and straightened her coat. Jin moved his leg back before she could reconsider.

"Right," she said. "Then I’ll pay."

"Pay?" Jin repeated.

"A proper consultation fee. We have a budget for outside expertise." Verrick named a figure. "You’ve told me enough about home to know that would be useful. I’m asking for your time and a detailed account of what you changed."

Jin’s brain went completely silent for a second.

He thought of his mother’s shifts, then of the feed bills he was learning to plan around. The hatchery debt was gone, but that didn’t make an offer like this small.

For a moment, he wished there were a diet sheet he could hand over that would justify it.

"No," he said.

Verrick drew breath to argue, and Jin spoke before she could raise the offer.

"I’m not holding out for more. I adjusted her diet and used private exercises based on my appraisal. That’s all I can tell you." He kept his voice steady. "I’m grateful for what you’ve done for her. But I’m keeping the method private."

Verrick opened her mouth, and closed it.

She looked down at the tablet, then back at him. Detailed talent methods were private; she knew that as well as he did. Jin waited without adding another explanation.

"That’s fair," Verrick said at last. "I’ve been pressing you. I apologize."

"Thank you," Jin said. He was still aware of the creases her hands had left in his trousers.

Verrick looked toward Flicker. "I find it difficult to believe a tailored diet and exercises produced this much improvement. But Data Appraisal could let you identify things I’m missing. I don’t know its workings well enough to tell you otherwise."

She set the tablet aside. "I’m quite certain now that the C-Rank label tells me less about what you can achieve with it than I thought. You have every right to keep the details to yourself."

"She’ll need proper flight work now," Verrick went on, briskly, herself again. "Distance, duration, landing control. She’s healthy, not trained — she’s spent her whole life not flying and her muscles know it. Don’t let her decide her own limits for a few weeks."

"I’ll keep it gradual," Jin promised.

"And Jin." Verrick stopped at the door. "It’s a small miracle. I’ve been doing this a long time and I don’t use that word."

He called home that evening, because he had promised and because Elsa would have called him first anyway.

She answered on the second ring with the tablet already too close to her face.

"Is she there? Did the vet person clear her?"

"Verrick cleared her," Jin said.

Elsa leaned closer. "And?"

"Get Mum and Dad."

"Oh — oh, that means yes, that means yes—" A scuffle, a complaint from somewhere, a chair moving. "MUM. DAD. Now, it’s the thing—"

Thirty seconds later all three of them were crowded into the frame at various distances, his mother still holding a dish towel, his father slower and last.

Jin propped the phone on the feed crate, stepped back, and put his hand out.

"Flicker. Come here."

She came off the perch, crossed four meters of yard in the air, and landed on his palm.

The sound that came out of the phone was not a word.

"Jin." Elsa, at a volume that must have carried through the whole apartment. "Jin — she — was that — MUM SHE FLEW—"

"I saw it, love. I’m right here," Elena said, smiling at the screen.

"Do it again!" Elsa demanded.

"Let her settle first," Jin said.

He gave Flicker a short rest, checked her breathing, then offered the perch. When she flew back to his hand, Elsa made almost exactly the same noise.

His mother was crying, quietly and without making any fuss about it, which she would have denied. Elsa was demanding details at a rate that made answering impossible. And Arthur, when the noise finally dropped, leaned close to the camera and looked at Flicker for a long moment with the specific attention he’d once given to beasts for a living.

"Her wing carriage is even," he said.

"Yeah," Jin said. "Verrick checked it."

"She isn’t bracing herself after landing either." Arthur sat back, smiling. "I noticed that in the earlier recordings. This looks much more comfortable."

Jin glanced down at Flicker, who was inspecting his sleeve. "Normal healthy baseline. That’s what Verrick said."

"Normal," Arthur repeated, then laughed. "Your sister asked me once whether that bird was going to survive. I wish I’d given her a better answer."

"You said probably not," Elsa reminded him.

"I did," Arthur said. "I’m very glad I was wrong."

The following day, Flicker practiced a few short flights and was made to rest long before she wanted to. Glitch took his walks and ate. Jin went to class, checked the ranking board afterward, and found a challenge waiting.

[Challenge received.]

[Challenger: Ivo Talren — Third-Class Rank 24]

[Target: Jin Astor — Third-Class Rank 20]

[Proposed match: tomorrow, 15:00, Arena 1]

Two days remained before the cutoff. Jin checked Glitch’s latest clearance, then accepted.

He reopened Talren’s recordings. Ice projectiles and the held sword were plainly within his talent’s demonstrated uses. Jin didn’t need another look at the rules to know he could be targeted; a tamer unable to continue cost his side the match.

He watched Talren cut across a retreating student’s path and marked the direction of the first dart.

Keep room behind me. Don’t let him walk me into the ring.

Tomorrow he would have to manage that while keeping Glitch on Quarrel.