Chapter 126: His Name on the Letter

On the fourth morning after Harrowglass, one of the new pads put out fresh growth.

Silas found it while misting the tray before breakfast: three fine silver threads along the edge that had rubbed against a peg on the coach, no longer than an eyelash, but definitely new. He looked at them for a long time with the mister in his hand and his breakfast forgotten, which Mara would have had something to say about.

The other new pad was holding, though it hadn’t put out fresh growth yet. The two from the first trip were still healthy beside it. Getting both new pieces through the journey and their first few days here was enough to please him. The original sample sat on its slate on the windowsill, apart from the rest, its four threads exactly as stubborn as ever.

He’d need months of growth before he could offer Corwen another lot. For now, he bent closer to make certain there really were three threads, then went to rescue his breakfast.

He had to move the mister to make space for his plate. The growing tray took up one end of the desk. The carrier, cleaned and empty, leaned against the wall by the door because there was nowhere else for it, and the padded bag hung from its hook in the middle of everything. Nim’s bell sat on the pillow. Elyra’s spare pencil had somehow ended up in his mug of pens. It was crowded and slightly ridiculous, and it was his.

***

He’d spent two days on Bulwark, and it was hard.

Holding a shield on its own was easy enough now, a pale pane the size of a tray that he could put on his left or his right without thinking. Holding it while he did something else was another matter. He set the bag swinging, raised the pane on his right, the side the claw had found, and tried to stop the bag with Remote Grasp at the same time.

The first dozen times, one or the other went. The pane thinned to nothing while he reached for the bag, or the Grasp arrived late while he was busy keeping the pane up. Split Focus helped him keep track of both efforts, but he still lost the shield’s shape when he rushed. Bulwark also took far more mana than the familiar Grasp.

Battle Evolution helped with the order. It turned each failure over and showed him where the two efforts collided: he was raising the shield and reaching with the Grasp in the same instant, and both arrived half done. Shield first, while the bag’s still coming. Then reach. By the second afternoon he could do it about half the time, sweating, with his jaw clenched and the pane shrunk down to the size of a dinner plate by the end.

He stopped before fatigue undid what he’d learned. Next time he pulled someone through a gate, he wanted to be able to cover his own arm.

***

Elyra came at seven, on the evening she’d moved them to, carrying a paper bag that smelled of fried dough.

She stopped in the doorway and looked at the carrier leaning beside her.

“You brought it home,” she said.

“It’s the only room I have,” Silas said.

“It’s taking up half the room you have.” Elyra edged past it. Then she saw the chair. The one usable chair was occupied by a stack of field notes, the folded cloth from the carrier lids, and Nim, who was lying on top of all of it.

“Move,” she told Nim.

“I was here first,” Nim said.

“I brought dough balls,” Elyra said.

Nim considered this, rose, and relocated to the pillow with every sign of having intended to do so anyway. Silas cleared the notes and the cloth onto the bed, and Elyra sat down on the chair with an air of having won something.

They ate the dough balls out of the bag. Somewhere between the third and fourth, he said, “Your help mattered. At the refuge. I wouldn’t have known when to stop. And I liked having you along.” He hesitated. “Even when we were just sitting in the bunkhouse afterward.”

Elyra turned a dough ball in her fingers.

“Does that include,” she said carefully, “after you were hurt?”

He wanted to say yes and keep the evening pleasant. But she was waiting for a proper answer, and his wrist had hurt.

“Some of that frightened me,” Silas said. “The shadow, and then my wrist.” He made himself look at her. “I want you with me. I mean that. But when I tell you I’m all right, or ask you to let go, you have to listen. You have to actually do it.”

Her face went hot and closed for a second. “I did let go.”

“You did. Straight away,” Silas said. “I’m asking you to keep doing that.”

She looked down at the bag. For a moment he thought she’d argue, or leave, or say something sharp and pretend she hadn’t.

“I’ll try,” Elyra said at last, quietly. “I don’t always know it’s happening until it has.” She glanced up. “But I’ll try.”

He believed she meant to try. He wished she could promise more, but he didn’t want her to say it just to reassure him.

She took the last dough ball, broke it in half, and gave him the bigger piece.

A while later, when she was explaining how the wind ones kept to the sheltered side of the bell tower even when the wind was faint, she reached over without looking and rested her hand on his forearm, where the claw marks had long since disappeared. She didn’t grip. She left it there while she talked.

He didn’t move his arm.

***

He walked her down at nine. Rovan was in the porter’s lodge at the bottom of the stairs, leaning on the counter, ears up, with an envelope in his hand.

“There you are,” Rovan said. Then he saw Elyra, and his tail twitched once. “Sorry. I’ll be quick.”

“I’m going,” Elyra said, amused, and went, lifting a hand at the door.

Rovan held out the envelope. It was heavy cream paper with the academy’s Field Office seal on the back.

“Came through the yard office,” he said. “Ferrow sent it on. I’ve had one too.” He shifted. “They asked the retrieval instructors for names. I sent Ferrow a note about our work at the frame. He’d already written you up after the first Harrowglass trip, and he put you forward.”

Silas opened it there under the lodge lamp.

Field Office: Closed Preview of Upcoming Paid Frontier Field Placements.

Candidate: Silas Rooke. Role: Retrieval.

Below that, it explained that sponsors from several frontier holdings would present available placements, training conditions, and terms. Candidates had been selected for their ability to recover material, control loads, and make sound decisions under pressure. Attendance did not commit him to anything. The date was six days off.

He read his name twice.

Ferrow’s report, the retrieval frame, all those attempts with Rovan pulling against him: someone had looked at that work and wanted Silas Rooke. He ran his thumb along the printed role beneath his name.

He remembered this season. In the game, the recruiters had come round in the second term, and sponsors had fought over Alden Cross, and a dozen named characters had stood in a bright hall weighing offers. Silas Rooke hadn’t been in that hall. In the game, he’d been a sickly young master at the edge of Alden’s story, and nobody would have trusted him to carry a crate, let alone written his name on a letter like this.

He wanted to go. Paid work, field instruction, news from beyond the walls—and, if he was honest, people with Talents worth seeing up close. He didn’t know which sponsors would want a C-Rank retrieval student or what they’d expect of him. He could find that out before agreeing to anything.

“Going?” Rovan asked.

“Going,” Silas said. “To listen. I’m not signing anything.”

“Nobody’s asking you to sign anything,” Rovan said.

“Good,” Silas said, folding the letter carefully.

He climbed the stairs with the letter in his hand. Bulwark’s recording would run out the day before the preview, and by then he meant it to be his. Before then, too, he wanted to know who else had received one of these, which holdings were sending people, and what a retrieval placement on the frontier actually asked of the person who took it.

He sat down at the desk beside the moss and started a list.