Chapter 124: The Sheltered Side

Brede had the whole site stopped inside five minutes.

He came down the lane with two guards, looked at the hound on the paving, looked through the open gate at the blood in the bay, and asked three short questions of the guard who’d dropped it. Then he climbed onto a cart step and raised his voice.

“Work’s paused. Nobody goes near the outer yard till I say.” He waited while his guards walked the ridge road and came back. “They’ve run off over the top. Outer approach is secure. The east court and the north beds are open again. The yard stays shut. Bell’s still at four.”

That was all. He didn’t make a speech about it, and nobody suggested going after the rest of the pack.

Elyra hadn’t let go of Silas’s wrist.

She’d sat him down on an upturned crate in the corner of the bay and turned his forearm back and forth in the light with complete concentration. The three cuts had become three raw pink lines, already dry at the edges. She ran her thumb very lightly beside the deepest one, not touching it.

“I know you heal,” she said. “I know that. I’ve known since the gate.” Her voice was quite level. “There was still blood all over the stone.”

“I know,” Silas said.

“Next time something happens, call me,” Elyra said.

“I shouted,” Silas said. “I shouted at everyone, and I had about two heartbeats. You were round a corner.”

“I know where I was,” Elyra said.

He looked at her bent head. She was still watching the cuts, though they had almost closed. Explaining the distance between the court and the lane wasn’t going to help.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “Today. I’m really glad you’re here.”

Her thumb stopped moving.

He started to stand, meaning to go and check the carrier. Her fingers clamped down hard enough to grind the bones in his wrist together. Silas stopped trying to stand.

“Elyra,” he said. “That hurts.”

She let go at once, so fast her hand jerked back, and stared at it as though it had done something without asking her. For a moment neither of them said anything.

“I didn’t—” Elyra stopped. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Silas said, rubbing his wrist.

“I hated it,” Elyra said, low and quick. “Running round that corner and not knowing if you were all right. Getting there after.”

He’d spent bad nights picturing Mara alone in that house, beyond his reach. He could understand wanting to be there. But Elyra’s fingers had hurt, and the guard had backed away from her shadow. Silas glanced at the ordinary patch of gray beside her feet before looking back at her.

“I know,” he said. “I’d have hated it too.”

She looked up at him then. Whatever she saw seemed to steady her. She stood and brushed off her skirt.

“The refuge,” she said. “It’s still waiting.”

***

They went back to it together.

Silas and Alden carried a loose piece of the original facing from under the hood, slow and careful, its damp grit still bedded on the back, and set it on the ledge behind Hollis’s station. Dagna propped a broken slate over it as a roof. Then they stepped away and left Elyra to it.

She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap and did almost nothing for a long time.

Silas lay on the paving beside the hood, a few paces off, and kept his own attention thin and still, the way she’d taught him. He could feel her contact going out toward the presence, gentle and level, like a hand held out flat. He felt the presence notice it.

It recoiled. Hard, back into the deepest part of the silver.

Elyra withdrew at once. She didn’t push, and she didn’t try again for nearly a quarter of an hour.

The second time, she reached only as far as the edge of the moss. The presence stirred. It moved, by degrees, out of the thickest growth toward the outer edge of the vent, where the draft came in.

It followed the air, the way she’d said.

Brede’s men were already rigging the drain at the far end of the court. The vent’s damp would go with it. Silas watched the presence lean toward the moving air and back again, and looked at the refuge behind Hollis’s station, and at the angle of the afternoon light.

The broken slate Dagna had propped up let the sun in from the west. The open side faced the light. The air was coming from the pane on the other side.

“It sits away from the light,” he said quietly. “Under the hood, it’s always on the north side of the growth. The sheltered side.” He got up. “Our roof’s facing the wrong way.”

Elyra looked at the refuge, then at him, and nodded slowly.

He moved the slate himself, a quarter turn, so that the open side faced the broken pane and the moving air and the roof kept off the sun. It took ten seconds. Then he lay down again.

Nothing happened for a long time.

Nim put his head out of his pocket at Silas’s hip and watched the hood with great interest. After a while, he whispered, “Is it going to come out?”

“Maybe,” Silas whispered.

“Does it want to play?” Nim asked.

“I don’t think so,” Silas said.

Nim watched a little longer, then visibly lost interest and withdrew.

It was nearly three when the presence moved. It came out along the edge of the vent where the air was, paused at the rim of the stone, and went. Not quickly. It crossed the paving in short stages, stopping whenever a voice rose in the outer yard, and at the end of it, it slid under the turned slate onto the old damp stone and settled on the shaded side.

Silas lay very still and felt it there.

The presence stayed under the slate. Silas waited through another raised voice from the yard, anxious that it would bolt back toward the hood, but it only drew farther into its new shelter.

“Hollis will leave it be,” Elyra said softly, smiling at the slate. “It seems to like it there.”

***

The last hour was pure work, and they were good at it.

The facing came away slab by slab. Dagna held the boards, Alden steadied the stone, and Silas worked the seams with the scraper and a thread of Remote Grasp, always from the drier upper edge. Slabs went into the cradles, leaned against their stops, settled into the damp grit. The carrier filled.

Halfway through, one of Vessa’s men lost a crate edge on the shed corner, and Alden caught it before it tipped. Vessa came over afterward, looked at the carrier, and nodded at a fallen offcut at the end of her bed, dense with silver, much too thick for her blade.

“That’s no good to us,” she said. “Bad for stripping. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Thank you,” Silas said.

“Your boy saved me a crate.” She considered the carrier one more time. “It’s small.”

“We have to carry it,” Silas said.

“Hm,” Vessa said, and went back to her crates.

At the four o’clock bell, they had eight slabs, each in its own cradle, each one healthy and fully backed. A few damaged scraps went onto the cleared heap with everyone else’s. They logged the eight at Brede’s table, agreed between them to offer six to Corwen and keep two for Silas to grow, and walked out of the court as the conduit began to drain behind them.

***

The collectors’ bunkhouse by the outer gate had long tables, a stove, and a pot of something with beans in it. Alden ate three bowls. Dagna ate two and then fell asleep sitting up, as she had on the coach. Nim stole a corner of bread from Silas’s plate and took it to the windowsill.

Elyra joined him on the bench, close enough that her shoulder nearly touched his. He’d expected her to be tired of his company after a whole day, and was pleased to be wrong.

He moved his bowl over to make room.

Later, Alden went to check the carrier for the third time, and Dagna woke and went to find her bunk, and the bunkhouse filled with the low noise of collectors talking prices across the other tables.

Silas didn’t get up. He asked Elyra how she’d known when to stop reaching, and she told him, and he asked another question, and they were still talking when the stove burned down.