Chapter 33 Excess Baggage

“Two coins,” Jin said. “One very bad idea.”

Calder nudged the severed tip. Both coppers followed it through the air.

Then she squeezed its cut end. Gold flared; the coins dropped. The glow inside the tissue dimmed.

“Stored charge,” she said. “Use it up and it's string.”

Jin looked from the coins to his purse, his pin and his knife.

“Can you put that little space around different things?”

“Cagewright. That's what I do.”

Kessa folded her arms. “He wants luggage.”

Calder waited for the explanation. Jin gave her the kitchen, the violet sky, then the inconvenient tree between them.

She sat down on the fountain rim.

“Show me.”

“Two hours' walk.”

“You picked a terrible place for a door.”

“I was falling at the time.”

Calder examined the three tips.

“Two for the experiment. Bring me a moving picture of your streets. I keep the third.”

“You want traffic?”

“I don't know what that is.”

“You're going to hate it.”

At her shop, she fitted glass nodes into a wooden case, linked them with copper thread and closed the lid over the two coppers. A charged tip touched the latch. Light outlined the interior; the coins remained loose inside.

Kessa caught Jin's wrist before he could kiss the box.

“After it works.”

They reached the cedar after dark. Calder kept his thirteen silver while he packed the knife, its separate sheath and his tongue-pin beside her borrowed coins.

Without the pin, her next remark became meaningless.

He called for the crossing.

“Yes. That is the entire problem.”

Calder touched the latch node with two tips. Their glow enclosed the rattling contents.

Jin opened the cargo trace and asked the patch to use her boundary.

The case kicked in his hands.

He accepted.

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Both tips blackened. Sparks chased the copper thread.

Kessa gave him a fierce little nod.

Three seconds later, he was in his kitchen.

Knife. Sheath. Pin. Two coins.

All there.

Jin laughed so loudly that Theo came running, an oven mitt on his good hand.

“What?”

“Luggage!”

“Oh. Excellent. I thought something was on fire.”

Jin fastened the pin against his skin.

“You look beautiful in that.”

Theo inspected the mitt. “I know.”

Still Korean. Cold glass. Jin took it off again; the little tool had crossed, its native magic hadn't.

Mira called from the stove.

“If you're finished flirting, lift this pot. He's got one working arm.”

Jin helped, ate standing up and filmed the street through the window with his phone. Theo leaned into the last second of footage and waved the mitt.

“For international relations.”

When Jin returned to the cedar, the phone rode inside the case with everything else. He opened it and fastened the pin before playing the footage.

Calder watched a bus creep past a parked delivery van.

She watched it again.

“Why doesn't the large one bite the small one?”

“Give the driver another ten minutes.”

He returned her two coppers and took back his purse. She smiled at the screen as they walked to Riverbend, asking questions faster than he could answer them.

At her shop, he tried to select a new arrival point. The old cedar flashed in his trace and stayed put.

Calder tapped the final tip against his wrist. The same coupled pull tugged through his fingers, briefly catching the fading route outline.

“Two silver,” Calder said when he explained.

“You were going to keep that.”

“Now I'll keep two silver.”

He paid her two silver, leaving eleven, and crouched with his hand against her backroom floor.

Sixty uninterrupted seconds. Kessa counted the last ten aloud. Calder held the tip over his wrist until it curled to ash.

Jin stood.

“Please tell me that's the moving-the-door timer.”

Ordinary transit still showed thirty seconds. He let his forehead rest against the cool wall.

“I love this floor.”

“You can introduce it to your family later,” Kessa said.

She helped him up, then wiped the ash on his sleeve.

“For the last mile. You made me carry the box.”

Calder shut the backroom door on the noise of the square.

“Your things can stay here when you aren't carrying them. Don't bring something through that eats customers.”

Jin left the pin, knife and sheath in the case on her shelf. He put the purse beside it and took his phone in his hand.

The kitchen returned after the familiar three-second hold.

Theo looked up from the table.

“Two hours. Did you get lost?”

“Never again. I moved the door.”

Theo put his spoon down.

“You can do that?”

“Now I can. I have walked all the way to financial ruin and back.”

Mira slid a covered bowl toward him. His presentation reminder sat beside it, written in her enormous angry handwriting.

His phone buzzed.

Yu-ra.

Tuesday. Tunnel team. There's a paid E-rank place if you want it.

Then:

Eat something before you answer. I know you now.

Jin looked at the bowl. At the invitation.

He typed one word.

Yes.

Her answer arrived before he'd put the phone down.

Good. Tomorrow's team test is at two. Try not to terrify my instructor.