Chapter 179 A Place at the Table

Liam left before breakfast carrying half a bed.

The other half was with Benedikt. Tamsin had the ropes and a bag that looked heavier every time someone remembered something else the rescue party might need.

I watched them from the doorway with my stick in one hand and a cup in the other.

Anja stood beside Liam while he adjusted the strap.

“Eat when you get there,” she said.

“I know.”

“Before you decide everybody else needs feeding first.”

He looked at her.

She looked back.

Then he leaned down and kissed her, which ended the argument without persuading either of them that the other was right.

Sera hugged him carefully around the frame.

“Bring everyone home.”

“That's the plan.”

He looked toward me.

“Don't improve the whole camp before I get back. Leave me something to complain about.”

“I'll preserve your cooking.”

He laughed and turned toward the western path.

I stayed in the doorway until the last part of the frame disappeared around the bend.

Day 497.

Sera's treatment came next. Then breakfast, then the small movements Toby had given me, which remained disappointingly small even when I did them properly.

The leg was less sore than yesterday.

It was also very willing to remind me that less sore and ready for a day's work were different things.

I wrote down what had changed while Luna checked the morning signal times.

Risa stood at the window, fastening her hair back.

“You keep looking west.”

“Yes.”

“They've barely left.”

“I know that too.”

She came over and put her hand on the back of my neck.

“Come and look at something closer.”

She meant the water shelf.

I had never been so pleased to be invited to inspect a tap.

We walked there slowly.

Risa didn't hold me upright. She stayed beside me, matching the shorter stride, with my stick taking the weight when it needed to.

The back of my thigh tightened near the turn.

Not the old stopping pull.

Enough that I knew to sit down.

There was a seat there now.

I sat and felt foolishly grateful to the person who'd thought of putting it in.

That had been me, with Nessa explaining why the first place I chose was wrong.

Risa sat beside me.

For a little while, we watched the camp wake around the new paths.

Clean bowls moving one way. Empty water containers moving another. Someone coming from the washing place with a towel over one shoulder and no need to ask three people to clear a route.

“You can see the difference,” I said.

“Yes.”

“It didn't take a tower.”

Risa smiled.

“No. But I imagine the tower was easier than listening to Nessa tell you where to put a bench.”

“She had strong opinions.”

“She had a crutch.”

I nodded.

That was the better explanation.

The first message came while we were still there.

Frame at northern shelter. Moving to crossing.

Wren read it aloud before putting it into Luna's hand.

Nothing had gone wrong.

Nothing had been finished either.

I studied the words as though a second reading might carry the party a little farther.

Luna folded the message and looked toward the medical shelter.

“We need somewhere for four people to sleep.”

“We have space,” I said.

“We have places where we can move things.”

She was right.

There was a difference between room for a stretcher and a place someone could wake without discovering they'd been put in everybody's way.

We took the list of beds and blankets to Priya.

By the time we left, it also had cups, dry clothes, somewhere to keep personal things, and a note about a second low shelf near the beds.

I added a clear route to the washing place.

Priya looked at the page.

“Food first,” she said.

We put that at the top.

Old Son was beside the records table when Luna approached him.

He'd been studying a page of chemistry with one arm holding it flat and another resting near the mirror clamp.

She waited until he turned toward her.

“Could you help move two of the storage boxes?”

His rivers brightened.

“Query. Destination?”

She showed him.

The boxes went to the raised stores. The space they left became part of the sleeping shelter rather than a narrow passage between medical beds and spare equipment.

Old Son carried the last one as though it weighed less than the paper he'd been reading.

Then he went back to the table.

At noon, he stopped to send Rafe's number.

Nobody put another box in front of him while he did it.

I watched the mirror turn and thought about the names in Holt's books.

We could make more room without asking people to put away what they'd brought with them.

The next message was longer.

Upper support position unsuitable. Moving line. Testing again.

I read it with the frame drawing in front of me.

The first arrangement we'd imagined wasn't going to work where the rock actually was.

That wasn't a disaster.

I knew that.

My stomach didn't.

Dot stood beside the table while I traced the load on the page and stopped myself from drawing a solution to stone I couldn't see.

“Can you reach them?” I asked.

“Not from this position.”

She could send a wing toward the lookout, but the ridge beyond remained a ridge. The hands didn't turn stone transparent simply because I wanted another view.

I put the pencil down.

“Ask whether they need any different fittings,” I said to Wren.

She sent it at the next clear interval.

The answer came back before I had finished finding reasons to dislike waiting.

Fittings adequate. Ilse checking new ground. No movement with patient until test complete.

I sat back.

That was what I'd have wanted them to say if I'd been there.

Holt had watched the whole exchange from his chair.

“Let me see.”

I gave him the message.

He read it, looked at the sketch, then rested the paper on his knee.

“Outer shelf fools you from below.”

“You knew?”

“I knew it could. Didn't know whether it had got worse.”

He tapped the line where we'd marked the alternative.

“They're looking. That's the right thing.”

I looked toward the west again.

Holt waited.

Eventually, I said, “You make this look easy.”

“No.”

He handed back the paper.

“I make sitting down look easy. Took years.”

I laughed despite myself.

His face softened a little.

“People who can think don't stop thinking when you can't see them, lad.”

I knew that too.

Apparently knowing something wasn't always the part I needed help with.

We worked on the sleeping space while we waited.

Not new stone rooms. Not yet.

The existing high-ground shelter had a sound frame and a dry floor. Moving the stores gave us room for two more beds without narrowing the aisle. Another two went in the adjacent space, with curtains that could be tied back when the people using them wanted company.

Edda measured the cloth from a chair.

Sera helped mark the hems, then passed the cutting to someone with less tired hands.

I made the small ordinary brackets for the shelves and stopped when my eyes began to ache.

Dov checked every shelf edge before it went near a bed.

We'd learned that lesson from the forehead Holt was certain someone would eventually bring into contact with the stores.

At the entrance, Neri tried the turn with her support.

“Too close,” she said, pointing at the last bed.

We moved it.

“Better.”

By midafternoon, there were four places where nobody had to climb over somebody else's belongings to lie down.

It wasn't much to look at.

I thought it was good.

The crossing took most of the afternoon.

We knew that from the spaces between the messages.

Test holding.

Then nothing for a while.

Patient moving.

Then a longer silence, during which I discovered I could make an untouched cup of tea go completely cold merely by looking in the wrong direction.

Risa took it away.

Replaced it with water.

Didn't say anything.

The next message came with Wren walking faster than usual from the watch position.

Olin across. All safe. Resting before return to shelter.

Luna read it.

Closed her eyes for one moment.

Then asked for the rest.

There wasn't much more yet. The carrying party was tired. The other three survivors were on the safe side. Nobody had fallen. They would use the northern shelter overnight rather than bring an exhausted group down the longer path after dark.

I let out the breath I'd been taking in pieces all afternoon.

Holt reached for his cup.

“Good,” he said.

It was enough.

We learned how it had gone the next day.

Liam told part of it while eating. Corr corrected him where a joke had begun to improve the facts. Ilse showed us the change on the sketch.

The upper ground had been sound farther back, but the edge beside the first position had hollowed beneath a crust. They'd found it before putting Olin on the frame.

So they'd moved the support and carried the load along a slightly longer line.

The weight test had gone through first.

Then Olin.

Bram had stayed where Olin could see him, explaining the stops before each one happened. Vera had gone ahead so that, when the frame reached the wider ground, the first face above it belonged to someone he knew.

It sounded simple when they told it beside the cooking shelter.

From the marks on their hands and the way Benedikt lowered himself onto the bench, I knew it hadn't been.

I put the corrected sketch in the record with the first one.

The first showed what we'd planned.

The second showed what the ground had allowed.

We needed both.

They arrived late in the morning of Day 498.

I met them at the upper bend, which was farther than Toby had originally intended me to walk.

He had agreed after moving the resting chair to the bend and making certain I understood it wasn't the first half of a trip all the way to the western shelter.

The frame came first.

Olin lay under a blanket with his injured right leg supported. His face was drawn and dusty. One hand held the edge of the frame so tightly that the knuckles looked pale through the dirt.

Dara walked beside him.

Seth carried a pack with a broken fastening tied shut. Vera followed with Ilse, turning her head toward every sound from the camp.

When they saw the water shelf and the people waiting near it, they slowed.

Nobody cheered.

Luna stepped forward.

“I'm Luna. You're at Scarecrow.”

Vera looked beyond her at the tower.

“That really is yours?”

“It's here,” Luna said. “We live up here now.”

She showed them the path to the shelter.

They followed.

I went to Olin after he'd rested long enough to stop gripping the frame.

Toby asked the first questions. I listened.

The leg had been broken in a fall. They'd supported it as well as they could, but the shelter and the shortage of water had decided most of what they were able to do afterward.

It hadn't settled straight.

Trying to move had made it hurt too much to continue. Staying had made everything else harder.

I looked carefully while Toby supported the limb.

Bone. Old repair. Strain where the pieces had healed in a position that didn't let the leg carry weight properly.

There were things I could understand.

That didn't mean taking hold of them immediately was the kindest thing to do.

“You can fix it?” Olin asked.

“I think we can improve it. I need to finish looking before I tell you how much.”

He looked at my stick.

Then at the way I was sitting.

I nodded.

“I'm working on mine too.”

For some reason, that seemed to reassure him more than my first answer.

We settled the immediate pain and the poor support first.

I reshaped the ordinary splint where it pressed. Toby checked the skin beneath the binding and showed Dara how the new arrangement differed from the one they'd been forced to use.

She watched every movement.

“You kept it supported,” he told her.

“It still went wrong.”

“You had what you had.”

She looked at Olin.

He had fallen asleep while we were talking.

Not unconscious. Not slipping away.

Asleep because the bed didn't move and he wasn't waiting for someone to ask him to endure another stretch of path.

Dara sat down beside him.

I left the next explanation until he could hear it.

Outside, Seth was eating with both hands around the bowl, as though someone might otherwise take it while he looked away.

Priya put another piece of bread within reach and went back to the pot.

She didn't make him ask.

Vera found the washing place and then came back to ask whether she'd understood it correctly.

“For anyone?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Not only the injured?”

“For anyone.”

She looked at the curtains.

Then at the clean cloth Priya had given her.

“I haven't been able to close a door in months.”

I didn't know what to say to that.

Fortunately, she wasn't waiting for me to find something.

She went inside.

Later, she came out with wet hair and stood in the sun beside Ellis. They didn't seem to need much conversation.

Edda brought Dara a cup.

Jonas shifted his supported foot so Seth could sit beside him.

Two people we'd only just brought home were showing four newer people how the place worked.

I watched them for a moment.

Then went to sit down before the good moment became a bad decision about my leg.

Fifty-one.

I wrote the number beneath the names and counted again.

Forty-nine humans. Dot. Old Son.

Four more people needed food, water, warmth, room, and a way to stop being the newest people in the camp.

That last part wouldn't happen because I wrote them neatly on a board.

Still, Vera touched her name when she saw it.

“That's right,” she said.

I hadn't asked.

I was glad she told me.

Olin's name went up while he was asleep. Dara checked the spelling for him, then asked if he could come and see it later.

“When he's ready,” I said.

She nodded.

At the bottom, there was room for more.

I left it.

Liam reached the cooking shelf and found Anja waiting with a bowl.

He accepted it, sat down, and ate before attempting to tell her anything.

She looked pleased.

Sera sat beside them for a little while. When Liam finished the first helping, she hugged him again without a frame in the way.

I was close enough to hear him say, quietly, “All of them.”

“I know,” she answered.

Anja rested her hand against the back of his neck.

Across the path, Wren came out of the medical shelter beside Toby. He'd finished the first checks and handed over the immediate watching to Juno.

Wren gave him something wrapped in cloth.

He opened it.

Bread he'd forgotten to collect.

He looked at her.

She raised an eyebrow.

He ate.

There were certain forms of authority I was beginning to recognize wherever they appeared.

That afternoon, Holt asked to meet them properly.

Not through the shelter screen this time.

Toby checked him first. I looked at the ordinary tissue we'd been watching. Better than at the fever's worst. Still not a complete answer to what the early modification was doing.

Holt waited until we were finished.

“Well?”

“A short visit,” Toby said.

Holt looked offended by the word short, then stood slowly enough to make it clear he'd listened.

I walked beside him to the broad seat near the newcomers' shelter.

Two sticks. A considerable amount of attention to the ground.

We reached the seat without either of us falling or turning the trip into a contest.

He sat down with a sigh.

Dara came outside when Luna told her who he was.

“The map?” she asked.

Holt nodded.

“It was old.”

“It got them to us.”

He looked toward the path.

“Ilse got to you.”

Dara considered him.

Then said, “Both things, then.”

He didn't argue with her.

They talked about the shelter beneath the overhang.

Not the ship.

Not the fever.

The place where the wind came around the corner and the stone that looked like a crouching person when the light was wrong.

Holt remembered that stone.

Seth came out and said he'd nearly spoken to it the first night.

Holt laughed.

The sound surprised me.

I realized I'd been listening for his breathing, his cough, the pauses between words. I hadn't been leaving much attention for anything he might enjoy.

So I stopped examining him for a while.

Sat beside him and listened.

When he grew tired, he told them he was going back to his chair.

Nobody made him pretend he wasn't.

Dara asked whether she could bring the little route sketch they'd kept.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Bring it to the table.”

Then he looked at me.

Apparently we needed a table.

We had plenty of tables.

That was what I told him on the way back.

“We have workbenches,” he said. “Eating boards. Things people have to clear before somebody can do something else.”

“The records table.”

“Too high for a person sitting properly. Too near the path for a loose page.”

I thought about it.

He was right.

Again.

It was becoming inconvenient.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“A place where someone can sit down with a map without being asked to move it because the bread needs cutting.”

“Under a roof.”

“Preferably.”

“Light.”

“That would distinguish it from a cupboard.”

I laughed.

He rested on his stick while I opened the shelter screen for him.

“And room for somebody who needs the map turned around,” he added.

I thought of Luna turning Father's books toward me a very long time ago.

“All right,” I said.

Day 499 began with rain.

I stayed in bed long enough to hear it find all the roofs we'd been arguing about.

No shout from the stores.

No sudden rush to move bedding away from a leak in the new sleeping space.

The cooking gutter made a steady sound along its new route.

Beside me, Luna opened one eye.

“You're listening to the camp.”

“Yes.”

“Is it still there?”

“So far.”

She moved closer and put her hand against my chest.

“Good. You can listen from here for another minute.”

I stayed.

Risa made a sleepy noise on the other side of me. Sera pulled the blanket over a shoulder the cold had found.

The rain kept falling.

For that minute, the roofs did their work without us.

After Sera's treatment and breakfast, Toby looked at my leg again.

The small repair had settled. There was still weakness. The numb patch hadn't changed. We hadn't done anything to earn pretending it had.

He watched me walk the short level section under the roof.

At the turn, I caught myself bracing for the old sharp pull before it arrived.

It didn't arrive in quite the same way.

I still shortened the step.

Toby noticed.

“You've had a long time to learn that.”

“What?”

“Expecting it to hurt.”

I looked back along the few steps I'd taken.

My body hadn't read the notes about the improvement.

It remembered the forge, the floor, the months of avoiding one movement.

“Can I unlearn it?”

“Let's give it a reason to, slowly.”

We did the small movement again.

This time I watched what actually happened instead of what I expected.

It was tiring work.

It was also work I could do.

Neri watched part of it from her chair.

When Toby went to check Olin, she nodded toward my stick.

“Hard to stop leaning before you need to?”

“Yes.”

“I do that.”

She shifted her own damaged leg a little.

We sat quietly for a while.

Then she asked what I'd found in hers when we'd last looked.

I told her again, with the drawing this time, and let her stop me where the words had become too much like a book.

Not every leg in the camp had the same injury. Not every repair would ask for the same thing afterward.

But there were useful things we could share. A level place to practise. A rail within reach. Seats at both ends. Enough cover that rain didn't cancel the day's small work.

Neri looked at the space beside the washing shelter.

“Not in the doorway.”

“No.”

“I don't want an audience every time someone needs a wash.”

I moved the line on the sketch.

She nodded.

That was becoming a familiar way to make things better.

The covered stretch became part of a larger conversation.

We had fifty-one people and no reason to think that was the last number we'd write.

The temporary shelters were doing more permanent work every week.

We needed more dry sleeping space. A place to mend clothes without clearing away food. Better separation between clean supplies and the things that came back muddy from a search.

We also needed to eat what we had while Teo's next planting grew.

Stone walls were not going to speed up wheat.

So we made two lists.

What we could finish with the materials already set aside.

What depended on food, water, weather, or more people being rested enough to do it.

The table and the covered walking space went on the first.

A new row of rooms went on the second until we'd checked the ground and worked out how much shelter we actually needed.

Sera drew small rectangles beside the existing roof rather than a grand new building.

“Extend what works,” she said.

I looked at her drawing.

“Yes.”

Water took longer.

More people meant more carrying, and rain arriving all at once didn't help if we only caught enough to overflow one jar.

We weren't going to take more from the channel below without checking what that did to the nursery and the field.

We had already learned that somebody else's water could look like waste if you didn't follow it far enough.

Instead, Bram showed us where the new roof gutters could feed an additional covered holding vessel when it rained.

Teo checked the overflow route.

Risa asked how we'd know when the supply was low without opening every lid.

Jonas suggested a marked measure kept beside the containers, then pointed out that someone would have to use it at the same time each day if the marks were going to mean anything.

“Morning,” Priya said. “Before we start carrying.”

That settled it.

We marked the place for the vessel and kept the existing drinking-water routine. Catching water wasn't the same as making every new container ready to drink from.

Bram took the measurements outside when the rain eased.

The map table went under the dry end of the common roof.

Close enough to the records box that nobody had to carry a book through rain to answer one question. Far enough from the cooking shelf that a map didn't acquire soup merely by being opened.

Dov made the top in sections we could replace.

I made the ordinary supports while seated, working on one at a time instead of treating my recovery as permission to exhaust the rest of myself.

Holt insisted on testing the height before the final joints were fixed.

He sat.

Put both hands on the surface.

Moved his bad knee beneath it.

“Lower on that side.”

I stared at him.

He smiled.

“Joke, boy.”

Dov laughed so suddenly that he dropped the cloth he was using to wipe the edge.

I left the height alone.

We added a lip for pencils and a clear space where someone could bring a chair or support close without catching it on a crosspiece.

Then we turned the table and let Holt choose which way the light should fall.

Dara brought her sketch that afternoon.

Edda came too, with Jonas helping carry the little box of papers while keeping his recovering foot out of the worst ground.

Holt spread their accounts beside the older map.

I sat at the end, expecting to help.

For most of the hour, I didn't need to.

They disagreed about the shape of one ridge. Dara showed why the view from below had made it look like two. Jonas recognized a watercourse that Holt had only marked as a possible crossing.

Wren put dates beside the observations.

Old facts stayed old. Recent facts acquired the names of the people who'd actually seen them.

The map became more useful without becoming cleaner.

At one point, Holt caught me watching him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Find somewhere else to put it. You're covering the pencil.”

I moved my hand.

He went back to the map.

I didn't think he'd looked that much like himself since before the fever.

The four newcomers had seen Teeming too.

Seth described two passing below the overhang one night, low against the rock, carrying something between them.

He'd stayed quiet. They had kept going.

It didn't tell us whether they belonged to the queen beneath our canyon. It didn't tell us what they would have done if Seth had stepped into their path.

It gave us a direction and a night when nobody had been attacked.

Dara looked at me when I explained the guide and the water passage.

“You're speaking to them?”

“Trying.”

“With words?”

“Mostly with things we can both see. Paths. Lamps. Water.”

She looked down at the map.

“Olin said he heard them while he couldn't move.”

I waited.

“He thought we'd have to leave him if they came up.”

“But you didn't.”

“No.”

I nodded.

“We're trying to make it so nobody has to make that choice here.”

I didn't promise her the whole world had changed because one guide had brought us a broken lamp.

I told her what had actually happened.

She listened.

Olin was awake when I went back to him.

He'd eaten. Slept. Had the chance to look at his new surroundings without someone moving him through them.

Now he wanted the explanation I'd promised.

I showed him the drawing of the damaged bone and the poor alignment.

We talked about what I could see, what would need changing, and why making the leg straight wasn't the same as making it strong.

He asked whether it would hurt.

“Yes,” I said. “We can make you more comfortable, but I won't tell you there'll be none.”

He nodded.

Then asked whether I would leave the room if I got tired.

“I'd stop before that became dangerous.”

“Good.”

He looked at my stick again.

“Don't break yourself trying to beat me back onto my feet.”

I laughed.

“I don't think either of us is ready for racing.”

“Then put me down for later.”

We agreed to begin with another examination after he'd had more rest, with Toby there and the whole morning left clear.

It was the first future appointment he had in Scarecrow.

He asked Dara to write it down.

That evening, Holt wanted to sit outside.

The rain had cleared. The air smelled of wet stone and the green beyond the field.

I checked the route with my own stick before he came out, then stopped when I realized I was doing exactly what he disliked.

The path was finished.

He knew how to use it.

We walked together as far as the broad seat, each keeping his own pace.

Above the canyon, the sky had opened.

For a while, we said nothing.

Then Holt leaned back and looked at the stars.

“Better than a roof.”

“You've spent three days asking for roofs.”

“Useful to have a choice.”

I smiled.

From the common shelter came the sound of the new arrivals eating with the others. Liam said something. Anja laughed. Somebody dropped a spoon, and three people offered one before the first had finished bending down.

Holt listened.

“Getting crowded.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I asked him how he felt.

He considered the question instead of dismissing it.

“Tired. Less foolishly tired than before.”

“Any heat?”

“No.”

We'd keep checking. We'd keep reading the old notes. The difference between his modification and the later records hadn't disappeared because the fever had.

But he was sitting beside me, making plans for tomorrow's map.

I let that be true too.

“You frightened me,” I said.

He turned his head.

“Aye. Frightened myself a bit.”

I hadn't expected him to say it.

He looked back toward the stars.

“Don't want to leave yet.”

I swallowed.

“Then don't be in a hurry.”

He laughed quietly.

“Not a quality anyone's accused me of lately.”

I stayed beside him until the air began to cool.

When he said it was time to go in, I stood with him.

Neither of us pretended the other didn't need a moment.

At the shelter, he stopped beside the records box.

“The folded ship page,” he said.

“I know.”

“You've got other drawings. From before.”

“Yes.”

“Bring them to the table tomorrow. We'll look while the light's good.”

We.

I liked the word enough that I nearly missed the rest.

“And don't stay up all night deciding what it means before you've put the pages next to each other.”

I looked at him.

He looked back.

“Your father did that too.”

“Did what?”

“Thought he could make morning arrive faster by refusing to sleep.”

I smiled.

“I'll bring them tomorrow.”

“Good.”

He went inside and let Toby do the evening check without complaining until the second question.

That seemed reasonable progress.

Our room was warm when I got back.

Sera had left a space for the stick beside the bed instead of leaning it where it would fall across the doorway.

Risa looked up from her book.

“Holt?”

“Tired. Planning to be difficult tomorrow.”

“Encouraging.”

Luna moved the blanket so I could settle the leg comfortably.

“Your day?” she asked.

I thought about the frame crossing the narrow ledge. The new names. Olin asking for an appointment. Holt putting his hands on a table built at the right height.

“Good.”

The answer surprised me with how much it could contain.

Sera kissed me, then sat close enough that her shoulder rested against mine.

Risa returned to the book. Luna asked her to start the paragraph again because she'd missed the beginning.

I listened.

There were four more people asleep in dry beds nearby.

Tomorrow's work could wait until morning.

Day 499. A place at the table.

Dara Vale, Olin Beck, Seth Ader, Vera Noll home. Fifty-one people. Forty-nine humans and two kits.

Crossing completed with the revised support position. No falls. Rested at northern shelter before return. Keep both sketches.

Four beds made ready. Olin's support improved. Further examination before correcting the old break.

Covered walking space planned. More water storage marked. New rooms need ground checks and a proper account of supplies. Wheat still takes time.

Leg improving slowly. Still need the stick. Learning which movement hurts now instead of only remembering which movement hurt before.

Holt used the new table. Helped join three accounts of the northern ground. Sat outside under the clear sky. Fever still absent.

Ship drawings tomorrow, in daylight, with him.

Tonight, everyone has somewhere to sleep.