Chapter 73 Four People and a Very Bad Idea

Theo said yes before Jin finished the invitation.

“After lunch. I'm free until seven. Choi gave us the evening back.”

“You don't know what I was going to ask.”

“You were looking toward the kitchen.”

Jin checked the clock.

“Can you bring your pin?”

Theo took it out of his coat and held it up.

“Packed my personality too.”

They put their phones, Theo's pin and his little wallet in the zipped shopping bag. His ordinary clothes and boots needed nothing extra. At the kitchen threshold, Jin registered Theo's fresh willing profile, took his hand and waited through the crossing.

They arrived beside the narrow bed in Aster.

Theo breathed out, then laughed at himself.

“Still strange.”

“Yes.”

Jin put on his own pin from the cage and handed Theo the loaned one from the bag.

Theo caught his wrist.

“Mine, now. I paid you back for it.”

Jin looked at him.

“You haven't.”

“Worth trying.”

He put it on and opened the window.

The six-legged roof creatures had gathered on the opposite chimney. One unfolded a thin sail between its front legs and drifted across the lane.

Theo watched it land.

“I'm staying.”

“You have rehearsal.”

“I'm visiting aggressively.”

Before they went down, Jin took two copper from his purse in the chest. Theo claimed both. At the inn door, he bought a warm twist of bread, broke it in two and gave Jin half.

“Breakfast tax?” Jin asked.

“Foreign aid.”

“With my money.”

“You got the bigger half.”

They ate while a cart squeezed through the lane. Theo pressed himself against the wall to let a stack of empty baskets pass, then watched a little boy riding on top wave at them.

He waved back with his bread.

“You were right,” he said.

“Rare, but continue.”

“It isn't a holiday destination.”

The cart hit a rut. The boy laughed. Someone below shouted for him to sit down.

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Theo followed it with his eyes until it turned out of sight.

“I still like it.”

They found Nell in Rusk's yard behind a wheelwright's shop. Her red coat hung from a peg; she was helping the quarry crew hang a new practice gate.

Rusk watched from a bench with his arm supported.

“I said I could do that.”

“Yes,” Nell said. “It's the second part I doubted.”

Lark and Kessa were already there. Kessa had bought four replacement arrows; the damaged pair from the quarry lay beside the sharpening stone.

Theo went to examine her new bow.

“You got it.”

She turned the grip toward him.

“The part I wanted back.”

He touched the old leather, smiled and stepped aside when Nell came down the ladder.

Jin introduced them.

Nell looked from Theo's face to their matching little pins.

“Your partner?”

“In several crimes,” Theo said.

“Friend,” Jin added.

“He keeps choosing that word. I prefer accomplice.”

Nell grinned and offered him a practice staff.

“Then show me what the accomplice does.”

Theo took it in both hands.

Jin went to sit beside Rusk.

Nell rolled a small sack along the ground toward Theo's feet. He glided sideways without lifting his heel far off the dirt. She sent the next one faster.

He stepped past it and turned the staff in the same movement.

“Again?” he asked.

She changed the angle.

This time the sack clipped his boot. His turn came out too wide, and the butt of the staff dug into the ground.

“There,” Nell said. “You were leaving before you chose where to go.”

Theo pulled the staff free, face intent now.

“Once without it?” he asked.

Nell held out her hand. He passed her the staff, then tried the turn with nothing to catch his weight if he got it wrong.

His heel slipped. He caught himself, shook his head and reset his feet.

He tried it slower.

Lark came over to Jin with a handbill.

“This arrived this morning.”

The paper showed a tower, a winding stair and a great open mouth cut into the hill below it.

“Crown Trials,” Lark said. “Four-person crews. First round opens on Friday.”

“What time?”

“Entrants' door opens at noon.”

Jin glanced at Theo. Friday evening's performance was still in his mind.

“I have somewhere to be afterward.”

“Then we'd better find the far door,” Lark said.

Jin glanced toward Rusk.

The veteran lifted his good hand.

“Nell's going in my place. My shoulder gets no vote.”

Kessa laid an arrow beside the handbill.

“I want in.”

Lark nodded.

Three.

Jin looked at the mouth in the hillside.

“What's the first round?”

“A ruin under the north ridge. Reach the far door before the bell. Crews start separately.”

“What's in it?”

“That's part of what they want us to find out.”

Jin looked back at the drawing.

“Very educational.”

Nell handed Theo back the staff after his next run and came to join them.

“You can say no,” she said. “The quarry wasn't an audition.”

“Merrit might disagree.”

“Merrit isn't invited.”

Jin liked the trials a little more already.

“Four days,” he said.

“Three mornings to train,” Lark corrected. “Then we go.”

Across the yard, Theo planted the staff, repeated the turn and stopped exactly where he'd meant to.

He looked over, pleased with himself.

Jin raised a hand in reply, then put it on the handbill.

“I'm in.”

Nell nodded and turned the paper over.

There was another drawing on the back.

Jin leaned closer.

Under the contestants' entrance, the artist had drawn a second passage. Something much larger waited behind its gate.

“What's that?”

“The thing they release after the bell,” Nell said.

“How long after?”

“After you hear it, you should already be running.”