Chapter 77: Well for Once

Chapter 77: Well for Once

The dormitory stairs were the same stairs he had run up that afternoon with his forearm complaining at every rail. Now he took them two at a time, and halfway up he realized he was enjoying it.

He reached the landing without needing the rail. For once, climbing to his own room hadn’t reminded him of everything wrong with his body.

Huh, he thought, and went the rest of the way up grinning like an idiot.

He pressed his palm to the lock. The door opened, and he stepped over the threshold, and the room settled around him.

His Territorial Awareness unfolded through the undisturbed studio. Here, at last, he could set his back to a door without wondering who might come through it. His depleted mana began recovering at the room’s doubled pace.

He unbuckled the dart’s case from his chest and put it back on its shelf. He hung the live shortblade on its rack beside the padded one he’d left there that afternoon. The bracers came off, stiff with dried dust. His hook by the door was empty where the weatherproof coat usually hung. It had gone out under a sheet with Corm, and Silas found he didn’t want it back.

He ordered braised beef and a whole tray of fried dumplings. Then he sat on the bed and called Mara, still in his dusty clothes.

She answered before the first ring finished. Her face filled the little screen, too close, her hair coming loose from its pins.

"Silas," Mara said.

"I’m all right," he said. "I’m home. I’m in my room. I’m not hurt."

She put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. For a few seconds she didn’t say anything at all, and he waited.

"They released the names of the rescue team," Mara said when she could. "Your name was on it. A Red Gate. With no way back out."

"I know. I’m sorry you found out like that."

"Don’t be sorry. Just—" She stopped, wiped her face, and when she looked at the screen again her eyes had sharpened. He recognized the scrutiny she used on patients, though her hand was still shaking. "Hold the screen closer. Let me see you."

He did.

"Your color’s good," she said slowly. "Your color is never good."

"That’s the other thing I wanted to tell you," Silas said. "A classmate gave me a Trait seed after the gate was cleared. It’s a regeneration Trait, and it healed me. Not just my arm. Everything. All the old damage."

Mara went very still. "Everything?"

"I ran up the dormitory stairs tonight," Silas said. "Two at a time. I wasn’t even breathing hard at the top."

He watched her try not to believe it. She had watched his face on this same little screen through the bad weeks, gray and tired, and she had heard the infirmary reports after Lydia. She knew exactly what a reassuring son sounded like, and she wasn’t going to accept another one without proof.

"Breathe in for me," she said. "Slowly. All the way."

He did. She listened to it, her head tilted.

"Again," Mara said.

He did it again. Somewhere in the middle of the second breath, her face crumpled.

"What kind of Trait?" she asked unsteadily.

"A good one. A very good one. I’d rather not say more on a call."

She nodded at once. She understood that kind of caution better than most people. "And your classmate gave it away?"

"She did," Silas said.

"That’s a very generous classmate," Mara said, and there was a question folded into it that she didn’t ask.

"I know," Silas said.

They talked a little longer, about nothing very important. She made him promise to eat breakfast. He made her promise to sleep. When the screen went dark, he sat holding the communicator until its screen dimmed. Then he went to wash.

The shower water ran gray with sanctuary dust. He washed the grit out of his hair, changed into the softest clothes he owned, and came back to find dinner waiting at the door.

A shimmer opened beside the bed as he set down the food.

Nim tumbled out onto the pillow, sneezed, and sat up looking rumpled. Silas felt the familiar presence through their bond and reached to steady him before he rolled off the pillow.

"It’s quiet," Nim said. "Is it finished?"

"It’s finished," Silas said. "We’re home."

Nim’s ears went back. "I could feel them through the pocket. The copper elf’s big ones. The red one especially." He shivered all over, like a wet cat. "It was like sitting next to a fire that was looking at me."

"Are you all right?" Silas asked.

"Yes." Nim stretched, then sniffed toward the food. "Don’t give me mana yet. Keep it until you have more. I can have a dumpling."

Silas rubbed the spirit’s ears, relieved enough to forgive the hopeful glance at his dinner. "You’d tell me if you weren’t all right?"

"I’d tell you," Nim said. "Loudly." He sniffed at Silas’s hand. "You smell different."

Silas sat down on the edge of the bed. Out of everyone in this world, Nim was the one he could tell, and he found that he badly wanted to tell someone.

"Elyra gave me a seed," he said. "In the dungeon. It’s called Supreme Regeneration. It’s an SS-Rank Trait."

Nim’s eyes went round, and for once his attention stayed off the food.

"What does it do?" Nim asked.

"It fixes me. Automatically, as long as I’m alive. If something breaks inside me, it mends. If I lose a lot of blood, it comes back. If something cut my arm off, it would grow back. My spine, my nerves, my organs, all of it. Things that would kill anyone else."

Nim considered this with great seriousness. "Can you grow a tail?"

"No," Silas said. "Only the things I already had."

"Oh." He looked disappointed. "If I bit you, would it heal?"

"Yes. Please don’t test that," Silas said.

"I wasn’t going to." Nim’s tail twitched in a way that suggested he had been considering it. Then his ears went down again. "So you can’t die now?"

"I can," Silas said. "That’s the important part. It can’t bring me back if I’m actually dead. And there’s a better version, one that can rebuild someone from a single drop of blood. This isn’t that. If something kills me outright, I stay dead."

Nim crept across the pillow and pressed himself against Silas’s hip. "Then don’t let anything kill you outright."

"That’s the plan," Silas said.

"Why did she give it to you?" Nim asked.

Silas thought of her smile. "She says she wants me alive until she’s worked out how I keep surviving things."

Nim was quiet for a while. "I like her," he said finally. "I’m also scared of her."

"Yeah," Silas said. "That’s exactly it."

They ate on the bed, Nim rejecting the darkest dumpling until Silas broke it open to show him the filling. After that he wanted that one in particular.

By the time Silas cleared the containers away, Nim had fallen asleep against his thigh. He eased the pillow beneath the spirit and sat beside him a little longer.

He thought, briefly, of Alden lowering his sword without having swung it. He put that aside for the morning.

He could have checked his reserve or cleaned his bracers. Instead, he pulled the blanket up over his legs and turned down the lamp. Mara knew he was safe. His door was locked, his stomach was full, and nothing hurt.

He wanted to enjoy that for a while.