Chapter 798: Means

Faerith’s hand remained still on the tool she had been holding.

Aira looked toward her mother, then back at the screen.

"I know what that means now."

"Knowing it doesn’t make these people yours to assign," Mingyue said.

Aira’s face reddened.

"Then why ask me to help?"

"To compare the records," Vesa said. "You found mistakes. Keep doing that. Ask before changing where someone goes."

"You’ll have someone check everything?"

"Yes."

Aira glanced toward the doorway. She could still leave the tablet and walk away.

Then the attendant beside Petricia asked whether the duplicated woman’s second room was actually empty.

Aira checked both entries.

"It should be," she said, then stopped. "I haven’t looked."

"Come with me," the attendant said. "We’ll check."

Aira went with her, carrying the record instead of sending an order ahead of them.

Faerith returned to the valve.

Vesa landed on the edge of the open housing while Faerith attached the relief line to the empty tank. Her claws clicked against the metal. Neither spoke about the exchange across the room.

When Faerith was ready, Vesa supplied the formation with its ordinary working power.

Water ran through the added outlet. Faerith closed it sharply, watching the connection she had built.

The relief line caught the pressure, but a joint beside the old housing began leaking.

Faerith shut the feed herself.

"This part needs replacing."

"You were about to connect it to the occupied rooms."

"I said I would test it."

Vesa stepped back to give her room.

They replaced the joint with one from the maintenance stores. Then they tested the line with both outlets open, one closed, and finally both closed.

This time, the pressure settled without a leak.

Faerith left the housing open while they connected the nearest washing station. An attendant filled a basin and held her hand above the water before carrying it toward the beds.

"Warm enough," she said.

Faerith followed her with her gaze until the basin reached the patient.

Then she began showing a maintenance worker where the shutoff and the new relief line were, making him point to both before moving on.

A report arrived from Proxima.

Dorian wanted the returning vampire fighters placed in the first available sleeping rooms. The human carriers could rest farther from the receiving route.

Vesa asked him whether the forward line was short of people.

"No. But those fighters will be needed if the Empire returns. The humans can sleep in the outer hall."

Petricia had come back with Aira and the attendant. She heard enough of the exchange to stop beside Vesa.

"The outer hall hasn’t got beds for the injured carriers."

"They aren’t on the line," Dorian said.

"One of them carried people until his hands stopped closing," Petricia answered. "Another knows the streets your soldiers are using. Put them too far away to rest or find us, and you’ll be calling for them when the next group needs moving."

"The vampires can do that work."

"Then send them to replace the carriers before you give them all the beds."

There was a pause.

Mingyue stepped into the conversation.

"Selene controls reception. Give her the number of fighters who need rest and when you need them back. She’ll place them with Petricia."

Dorian’s voice hardened.

"You still want them ready to fight."

"Yes. I also want the people who keep them supplied able to stand."

Vesa could hear other voices near his end of the connection. He gave an order to someone, then returned.

"I’ll send the replacement carriers. Two of my people stay with them until they know the route."

Vesa waited for the names before ending the connection.

Petricia asked for the replacements’ names and kept the outer hall out of the sleeping plan until someone had checked what it needed.

Aira added the new names without assigning them to a room herself. Before going to check the empty beds, she stopped beside the man who had covered his injured leg.

"Is someone coming to find you?" she asked.

"My sister. If she got out."

"What’s her name?"

He told her after a pause. Aira entered it beside his, then showed Petricia the note instead of putting him among the people available to carry.

He watched the tablet until they turned it toward him. The anger had not gone from his face, but he corrected the spelling.

The replacement carriers came through the opening before the next beds needed moving. One of Dorian’s vampires reached for the handles of a loaded stretcher, then stopped when the human beside him warned that its rear joint was cracked.

He changed his grip and let the other man show him how to lift it without dropping the patient.

Petricia sent the relieved carrier to an empty bed. He tried to insist he could make another trip, but his fingers shook when he untied the cloth around them. She stayed until he lay down.

By the time the next group arrived, Petricia had a place ready for the relatives who did not need the ward. The attendants knew which patients had someone staying with them, and which were waiting for people who had not been found.

The mother and son from the water-control building were given two places together. The dead man’s covered body remained elsewhere, with his name recorded separately so it would not disappear among the recovered dead.

Vesa watched Petricia give the woman a towel and show her where she could wash. Petricia pointed out the room where her son was sitting and told her who would be there when she came back.

Faerith finished the second washing station before leaving the tools with the maintenance worker. The old housing still needed replacing. She wrote that down so the temporary repair would not be mistaken for a permanent one.

Aira returned with the corrected room count.

"This room is full," she told Petricia. "The next one has places, but the bedding isn’t there yet."

"Then it isn’t ready."

"I marked it that way."

Petricia checked the entry, then asked a carrier to bring the bedding that had just arrived.

Mingyue looked over the work.

An attendant approached Vesa with another room question. Vesa turned toward her while Mingyue left for the garden.

At the ward entrance, a young woman with an injured leg stopped Petricia.

Her father lay on a bed behind her, awake but too weak to rise.

"I need to find the property records from the city," she said. "Before someone decides the fighting burned them all."

Petricia asked her name.

"Beatrice."

Vesa recognized the name from the shelter transfers and flew from the housing to the edge of the records table.

Beatrice looked from her to the tablet Aira was carrying.

"You’re keeping records of who came here?"

"Yes," Petricia said.

"Then I want someone to keep what happened to our house too."