Chapter 75 A Second Beat

Nell took her cracked staff back at the yard.

“I'll mend it,” Theo said.

“You'll tell me before you borrow the next one.”

“That's fair.”

At the inn, Jin left his knife and pin in the cage. Theo's pin, their phones and his wallet went into the closed shopping bag. They crossed home together.

The clock said five forty-one.

Theo stood in the kitchen for a moment, looking at the door to the hall.

“You don't have to do it now,” Jin said.

“I want to.”

He read his choices aloud.

“Twelve Strength. Twenty-eight Agility. Ten Endurance.”

His fingers closed on the edge of the table. He opened them again before the wood complained.

For a few breaths he said nothing.

Then he laughed.

“It feels—”

He shook his head and tried a step.

His foot went farther than he'd intended. Jin caught his shoulder as he reached for the doorpost.

“Smaller.”

Theo nodded. He moved again, barely letting his heel lift.

This time he stopped cleanly.

He looked at the empty stretch of floor, then back at Jin.

“Fifty.”

“You earned them.”

“I know.”

His voice broke on it a little. He sat down before either of them could make a joke.

The empty sling was still hanging beside the coats. Theo looked at it, rubbed his left thumb across his right palm and let his hands fall open on his knees.

Jin pushed a glass of water across the table.

Theo drank half of it before he could speak again.

Jin sat opposite him.

The first three had changed what Theo thought might be possible. Jin could see him trying to fit the new number into the same life.

“There's something else,” Theo said at last.

He touched a place in the air only he could see.

“Level Ten opened it. Second Beat.”

Jin leaned forward.

“An extra step after the glide. One stride. On the ground. I have to take it straight away.”

Readers, the author's chapter is on the NovelPhoenix site; this text was taken from that page without approval.

“How often?”

“Twenty seconds.”

Theo got up and tried it along the hall.

The first glide took him past the coat stand. The extra step cut him sideways, short and sharp, into the space beside it.

He caught the wall with one palm and stared back at the floor.

Then smiled.

Mira opened her bedroom door.

“I heard the stand.”

“Didn't touch it,” Theo said.

She looked at his hand against the wall.

“Did you mean to be there?”

Theo glanced at the untouched stand, then at his palm against the wall. His mouth opened and closed.

“Nearly.”

“Practice nearly somewhere bigger.”

She went to fetch her phone. When she came back, she asked him to do the slow version for her.

Without the skill, he walked the turn for her. Mira filmed the slow steps, replayed them and made him point out where the second one began.

By the third replay she was smiling too.

That evening, Jin met Yu-ra at a noodle shop near the Academy. She caught sight of the clean shirt and the damp trainers and raised an eyebrow.

“Water monster?”

“Very small tyrant.”

“You got wet.”

“Its foreign policy was aggressive.”

He told her about Theo. Her chopsticks stopped halfway to the bowl.

“Twelve?”

“Fifty new points.”

She set the chopsticks down and smiled at the table for a moment.

“He'll be impossible.”

“He's had years of preparation.”

“After Friday, I want another visit,” she said. “With him, if he wants to.”

“Not both at once yet.”

She looked at him over her bowl.

“Then you have homework.”

He laughed. She was smiling when she reached for her chopsticks again.

She nudged his knee beneath the table.

“And you?”

“I drank some of the ditch.”

“Your new skill.”

“Bae made it look stupid first. Then I got him once.”

“Good.”

She reached across the little table and straightened the fold at his cuff.

“I like when you tell me both parts.”

He watched her fingers linger against his wrist.

“I have a clear tomorrow,” she said. “With Hyeon's crew. I'll be back late.”

“Then I'll message. No dramatic announcements.”

“Please.”

He grinned. She squeezed his wrist, and for a while they talked about things neither world was trying to kill.

On Wednesday morning, Jin brought his phone across in the zipped bag, put on his pin and found a parcel waiting at the inn.

Fenn had sent it over with a boy carrying horn offcuts. The package had come with her latest shipment from Riverbend, addressed to Kessa.

Nell had joined them for breakfast. Kessa unwrapped the parcel while Lark read the letter aloud.

Dessa had finally got her new kiln built. Jory had insisted on trying the first firing himself. Three pieces had survived; he claimed this was the number he'd wanted.

One had been made for Jin.

Kessa lifted out a squat clay mug. Around it, someone had painted a little monster wearing a pair of trousers on its head.

Jin put a hand over his face.

“They're selling these?”

Lark read the next line and began laughing.

“Dessa says not until Jory can make the legs look less like ears.”

Jin took the mug. The handle fit his hand, though one side sat a little higher than the other.

He ran his thumb over the painted crown.

Kessa folded the wrapping carefully instead of throwing it away.

“Calder kept your trousers,” Lark added. “The bird's taken an interest.”

“I don't want to know.”

“Apparently he doesn't either.”

The innkeeper appeared at the door with a second message.

“From the marsh camp. They asked for you yesterday.”

Lark read it.

“Selene. She needs four hunters. A wagon leaves the east gate at nine. Two hours to the camp.”

Jin looked at the three people around the parcel.

Kessa picked up her bow.

“That's us.”