Chapter 125: Three Hundred and Sixty Each

The first thing Silas did when he got home was open the carrier on his floor and count.

Eight cradles, eight slabs. Half a day of coach road, two ruts deep enough to bounce Alden off the bench, and one long wait at a river ford in the sun. Every slab sat where it had been bedded, leaning against its stop in damp grit, silver side up. One had shed a few strands from its outer edge where it had rubbed against a peg. The rest looked as though they’d been lifted an hour ago.

He sat back on his heels, relieved. At the ford he’d kept shifting the trays out of the sun, and he’d spent the worst stretch of road bracing them with his boots. Looking at the eight surviving slabs, he forgave the driver a little.

Nim came out onto the pillow, looked at the open trays, and asked hopefully whether the bell could have its place back now.

“No,” Silas said.

He took out the two pads he’d be keeping and settled them on the windowsill, with the original sample and the two from the first trip. That made one small slate and four harvested pads, which turned out to be more than a windowsill wanted. He gave up and lined one of Pell’s seed trays with damp grit instead, set it on the desk end nearest the window, and rigged a cloth half across it against the afternoon sun. The four pads sat in it on their little stones. The original sample stayed on the sill where it had always been.

It looked less like a nobleman’s room every week. He found he didn’t mind.

That evening a message came from Mara. Kerr has written. If the house agrees to the leave, the refresher could start next month. I’m working on the house. How was your ruin?

Profitable, he wrote back. Nobody died. One hound tried. I’ll tell you properly.

He deleted the part about the hound before he sent it. Then he read I’m working on the house again and found himself grinning at it.

***

After checking the eight slabs at home and settling the two he was keeping, he’d taken the other six to Corwen’s. She’d told him to come back in the morning. When he did, she had them laid out on her bench in a row, and she’d already written on a slip of paper beside each one.

“Two of these are nearly as good as your first,” she said, tapping the densest pair. “Thick growth, healthy backing. Three hundred each. The other four are thinner, or they’ve a patch of bare stone, or both.” She tapped each in turn. “Two hundred and ten apiece. Fourteen hundred and forty for the lot.”

Silas looked at the row and did the arithmetic in his head, then looked again at the four thinner slabs. She was right about all of them. He’d known when he lifted the third one that it was patchy, and he’d taken it anyway, because a patchy slab was still worth carrying.

“The first one was three-sixty,” he said. “For one.”

“The first one had denser growth. The missing corner mattered less than what was still on it.” Corwen didn’t sound offended. “These are a bigger lot of mixed pieces. If you’d rather I priced each one at three-sixty, I’d rather not buy them.”

“That’s fair,” Silas said. He’d half expected it. “I’ll take it.”

She wrote the receipt, then looked at him over her spectacles.

“I’ll look at more,” she said. “Don’t think that means I’ll buy whatever you dig up. Lifting good stock out of a ruin before somebody drains it is one thing. Growing it so there’s more next season is another trade altogether. Let me know when you’ve done that.”

“I’m trying,” Silas said.

“Everyone’s trying,” Corwen said. “Come back when it’s worked.”

***

They settled on the bench outside the Star Class practice hall again, all four of them, because it had become their bench without anyone deciding it.

“Fourteen forty,” Silas said. “Take out the two-forty we spent, and we each get our sixty back. That leaves twelve hundred. Three hundred each.” He did the transfers while they watched. “Three-sixty apiece.”

Dagna checked her communicator twice, the way she had last time.

Alden whistled. “That’s four times the first lot.”

“We sold six this time,” Dagna said. “And there are four shares instead of three.” But she looked pleased.

Elyra looked at the number on her screen for a long moment with an expression Silas couldn’t quite read. He’d wondered, briefly and unworthily, whether she’d try to wave it away, as if being paid would spoil something.

She didn’t. She put the communicator away and said, “I’m buying a better pencil,” and then, after a moment, “and a coat for the wall. It’s freezing up there.”

“That’s a lot of pencil,” Alden said.

“It’s a very good coat,” Elyra said.

Silas checked his own transfer after everyone else’s. Three hundred and sixty credits, three hundred of it new money. He had earned more on this trip than on the first, and he still had living stock at home. For once he could think about buying something without wondering what his father would say it was for.

***

Dagna knocked at two, exactly as arranged.

She’d come to look at the carrier properly and to talk about the lane, and she came in looking at the growing tray first, then at the chalk marks he’d already drawn on the floor.

[Record Soul Talent: Bulwark?]

Yes.

[Bulwark recorded to temporary slot. Duration: seven days.]

Silas put the kettle on and tried not to smile too widely. Dagna had come to talk about keeping people safe, and he was already imagining a shield of his own. He looked down at his healed forearm, remembering the glass she’d caught above Alden’s head on their first trip. He’d wanted this Talent before the hound ever touched him.

“Here’s what’s bothering me,” Dagna said, sitting on the floor by the chalk marks with her cup. “When you three move, I’ve got two choices. I can stand still and hold a big wall that covers everyone in one spot. Or I can move with you and hold a small one that covers whoever I’m nearest. If we’re carrying that box across a court, I want to be able to move and still cover the box. I don’t know how yet.”

“Show me the lane,” Silas said. “Where you were.”

She set three cups on the chalk marks. One for the hound, one for the worker, one for herself. Then a fourth for Silas, in the gate.

“You went through here,” she said, sliding his cup. “I swung the wall round to cover him as he went through. He was the one on the ground, and he was right in front of it.” She angled her hand to show the pane. “But you were behind him. Turned. Your arm was out past the edge, pulling. I couldn’t cover him and your arm both, from where I was. I’d have needed to be a pace further left, and there was a stack of stone there.”

Silas looked at the cups, and at her hand, and saw it.

He’d felt the shield move and trusted it to cover him. From Dagna’s position, with the stack blocking her next step, his arm had been out of reach.

“I didn’t know you’d chosen,” he said. “I thought you’d just missed me.”

“I didn’t miss you. I picked him.” Dagna drank her tea. “I’d pick him again. But I’d rather not have to.”

“Then call it when you choose,” Silas said. “Covering him, or covering the box. And I’ll know where the edge is.”

Dagna thought about that. “That’s simple.”

“I could have managed that in the lane,” Silas said. “I wouldn’t have heard a longer explanation.”

They spent the next hour moving cups between chalk marks and arguing about angles. At the door, Dagna asked him to keep the drawing. She wanted to try those calls with Alden the next time they carried a load together.

***

When the door shut, he stood in the middle of the room and reached for the new thing.

A thin, pale pane formed in front of his left hand, no bigger than a tray. He turned it toward his right side, feeling exactly how much of his chest it covered and how much he had left open.

He laughed under his breath.

Then he went to the chalk mark that stood for the gate and set himself in the same position he’d been in at Harrowglass: half turned, weight forward, right arm reaching back for an apron that wasn’t there. He held his arm there, remembering where the claw had reached him.

He raised the pane and began to practice the turn.