Chapter 87 Somewhere to Be

The first drawing arrived upside down.

Enna studied it for almost a minute before asking whether anyone on Avalon understood gravity.

Asha turned the image over.

Enna studied it again.

“That has made it worse.”

Dinraal stood behind her chair with a cup in his hand. He had come to the relay room expecting another account of the recovery after the ring, perhaps a message from Lucas, perhaps simply the pulse.

Instead, a long curving structure filled the wall.

It rose above a stand of trees.

Dropped sharply.

Turned.

Rose again.

Then, for reasons nobody in the room had yet explained, it went completely upside down.

“Is it a transport system?” he asked.

“Apparently.”

“Where does it go?”

Enna traced the line back to its beginning.

“Here.”

Dinraal looked at her.

She looked at him.

Isolde, who had been reading the accompanying text, began to smile.

“What?”

“It’s for fun.”

Enna turned toward her.

“Someone has misunderstood the word.”

More of the drawing resolved. Small connected cars sat along the track, each with seats facing forward. A separate sheet showed restraints, wheels, supports, and a series of calculations in several different hands.

At the bottom was Keir’s name.

Beside it, another name.

Aster.

There were notes from Doctor Bell and corrections from Kyria.

Dinraal leaned closer.

“This is what they’re building?”

“Part of it,” Isolde said.

She scrolled down.

A wheel carrying little rooms.

Swings over water.

Boats.

Paths wandering between trees.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Enna sat forward and reached for a clean sheet.

“Well,” she said. “Someone should make certain they get to enjoy it twice.”

The explanation came with a drawing Genny had made herself.

It was less polished than Garnet’s work.

The lines wandered. One of the curves had been rubbed out so many times the original paper was almost certainly damaged.

Dinraal liked it immediately.

Genny had gone to Lucas with a list of children who had stopped being grey.

Eleven thousand and four.

They were eating.

Sleeping.

Beginning to recover from what had been done to them.

And they did not know how to play.

Isolde read that part aloud.

Her voice slowed.

Three children had been given a ball.

They had held it carefully and waited for instructions.

Across the table, Nessa lowered her eyes.

She had come to collect another packet of drawings for the school. Now she stood with the papers against her chest and listened while Isolde continued.

There was already a park on Avalon.

It was full.

Children queued for hours to ride the carousel. Some waited all day, went home without reaching the front, and returned the next morning.

Others had not yet learned that they were allowed to want a turn.

Genny had asked for somewhere larger.

Somewhere for those children.

And somewhere for adults who had spent years meeting on crowded porches, in wards, in workshops, and at the edges of landing fields because there was nowhere else to go together.

Dinraal glanced at Isolde.

She caught him.

Neither said anything.

Enna was already making notes.

“Who is responsible for the moving assemblies?”

“Keir and Aster are designing it,” Eve said. “Other people are checking different parts.”

“And they want us to check this one?”

“Yes.”

Enna nodded once.

Then she looked at the first climb.

No army was advancing behind it.

Nobody was trapped beneath it.

No one had asked her to calculate how long a damaged ship might remain intact before the people inside ran out of air.

A machine was being designed because someone wanted children to laugh.

Her pen stopped.

Dinraal saw it.

After a moment, she began writing again.

“I’ll need the support details.”

Two days later, Hearth sent its answer.

Show me the load path.

Enna insisted on those exact words.

Asha suggested including a more expansive introduction.

Enna looked at her.

The suggestion was withdrawn.

Keir answered with drawings.

Then more drawings.

Then, when Enna marked three places she could not reconcile, an arrangement of views that occupied the entire wall and part of the ceiling.

“That,” Enna said, pointing upward, “is unnecessary.”

Eve checked the projection.

“It’s the only way to display the whole assembly at this scale.”

“Then make it smaller.”

“You said you couldn’t read it when it was smaller.”

Enna considered this an unreasonable reminder of something she had said.

Dinraal fetched another lamp.

By evening, the room had become a workshop.

Halen arrived with timber samples because the track was to be made of wood, and he refused to accept that the words timber track constituted a sufficient material description.

Meret came to see why Dinraal had borrowed two of the reservoir’s measuring instruments.

She stayed when she learned what the instruments were for.

Aramaeis looked in, took one glance at the diagrams, and quietly supplied a second table.

On Avalon, Keir kept answering.

Sometimes the response was immediate.

Sometimes there was enough delay for Eve to remind them that there were people at the other end who needed to move, eat, or find the correct sheet.

Once, a correction arrived in a different hand.

Kyria’s.

Enna read it twice.

“Has she actually built something like this?”

Eve found the accompanying explanation.

Hyrrani wall-rails.

A ride from the highest ridge to the sea.

At night.

Traditionally undertaken by a First Blade on a seventh birthday.

Dinraal stared at the text.

“Seven?”

“That is what it says.”

He looked toward Isolde.

She shook her head.

“No.”

“I hadn’t asked anything.”

“You were about to wonder whether it was less alarming if you could see it.”

“Would it be?”

“No.”

Enna tapped Kyria’s corrected calculation.

“Her arithmetic is excellent.”

“That is not the part worrying me,” Dinraal said.

Near midnight, Enna found the question she had been trying to ask.

She drew a circle around a car stopped at the highest point.

“What happens here?”

Eve transmitted it.

Keir sent back the braking arrangement.

Enna read it.

“That answers how it stays.”

Dinraal, standing beside her, understood.

“What happens if it needs to come down?”

“Exactly.”

The next exchange took longer.

A drive could fail.

A connection could be interrupted.

A section of track could require inspection.

The passengers might be entirely safe in their seats and still be very far above the ground.

Dinraal looked at the height.

“I could—”

“No,” Enna said.

He closed his mouth.

Isolde smiled into her cup.

Enna pointed at him without looking away from the drawing.

“You are not a maintenance procedure.”

“I was going to say Lucas could.”

“Neither is he.”

They worked through the arrangement.

An independent means of release.

A controlled return.

Something the people operating the ride could understand, inspect, and use without asking an extraordinary person to abandon whatever else they were doing.

Enna wrote the instruction slowly.

Put a release on every car. So if it stops at the top, nobody has to be carried down.

The reply came as a revised drawing.

Then a question.

Then a revision to that revision.

By the time the sky beyond the window began to pale, Enna had stopped frowning.

She checked the last line.

Checked the load transfer.

Checked the sequence again with Meret, who had become determined that no passenger should ever be trapped by the recreational equivalent of a reservoir valve.

Then Enna put down her pen.

Good.

That was the message.

Only that.

Dinraal watched Eve send it.

“That’s all?”

Enna rubbed her eyes.

“That is a very good word.”

He looked back at the track.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it is.”

They went home in the morning.

The First Weapon had fallen asleep across the corridor outside the relay room and appeared offended when asked to move.

Isolde stepped over him.

Dinraal attempted the same manoeuvre while carrying a box of borrowed instruments.

It went less well.

Nothing broke.

Enna, watching from the doorway, informed him that this was why engineers put releases on things.

At home, Isolde made breakfast while Dinraal returned the instruments to their cases.

He put the wrong instrument in the wrong case three times.

Then she took the case away.

“Sit.”

“I’m nearly finished.”

“You’ve been nearly finished for ten minutes.”

He sat.

The window was open.

Cool air moved through the kitchen, carrying the smell of damp soil and the sound of someone sweeping a path nearby.

Isolde set a plate before him.

He looked at the food.

Then at her.

“What?”

“We stayed up all night arguing about a ride.”

“Yes.”

“A ride people will go on because they want to.”

“Yes.”

He laughed quietly.

It caught him by surprise.

Isolde sat opposite him, smiling.

For a while, they ate without speaking.

Then she said, “Genny has a point.”

“About children?”

“About places.”

Dinraal considered their town.

The clinic.

The workshops.

The school.

The meeting hall.

Homes.

Paths between things that needed doing.

There were benches, but most had been installed where people waited.

There were open spaces, but someone usually had a plan to store something in them.

They had built Hearth with a great deal of thought about survival.

They were still learning which other questions to ask.

“We have the river,” he said.

“We do.”

“And the coast.”

“Which requires arranging transport.”

“Our garden.”

“Which I love.”

He looked at her.

She leaned forward.

“I’m not complaining about our life.”

“I know.”

“But I would like to go somewhere with you and not have everyone assume we’re there to inspect it.”

Dinraal looked toward the gate.

Beren would probably have an opinion about that too.

“I think I would like that,” he said.

Nessa raised the matter at the next town meeting.

Not the roller coaster.

She was careful about that.

“I am asking for the west field beside the school to remain a field.”

Julius glanced at the plan.

“It is currently marked for temporary storage.”

“It has been marked for temporary storage since before the school opened.”

Cleopatra leaned over the table.

“What is stored there now?”

“Two empty containers, several damaged pallets, and a machine nobody has claimed.”

“I know the machine,” Halen said.

Everyone looked at him.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know who owns it.”

Mara Den, sitting at the head of the table, made a note.

“What do you propose?”

Nessa placed a page before her.

Grass.

A few trees.

A place for sand.

Low climbing structures.

Benches where adults could sit without occupying the edges of children’s games.

A covered area.

Paths wide enough for people who could not easily cross uneven ground.

Dinraal studied it.

There was no grand central feature.

Nothing that required silver.

“Who designed this?”

“The children started it.”

“Started?”

“They wanted a river through the middle, a tower taller than the school, and somewhere to keep the First Weapon permanently.”

Dinraal looked down.

Beside his chair, the First Weapon was sleeping with the serene confidence of someone unaware that a public institution had proposed acquiring him.

“What happened to the river?”

“Meret explained drainage.”

“And the tower?”

“Halen explained falling.”

“The permanent accommodation?”

“I explained that he has preferences.”

The discussion continued.

Land.

Labour.

Materials already allocated elsewhere.

Nobody suggested the idea was foolish.

That mattered to Dinraal.

They argued about the practical difficulties with the same seriousness they gave water, shelter, and repairs.

Eventually Mara turned toward him.

“Could the silver clear the site?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Not long.”

Nessa looked at him.

“But I’d rather the children help decide what stays before we move anything.”

Dinraal nodded.

“Then we’ll wait.”

The decision surprised him less than it once would have.

The children wanted to keep the useless machine.

It had a broad, rounded housing, three missing panels, and no working parts.

Halen declared it scrap.

Mira declared it a ship.

The discussion became difficult.

“It cannot remain with those edges,” Halen said.

“Then fix the edges.”

“It also has oil in it.”

“Take out the oil.”

“It is full of holes.”

“Ships have doors.”

Dinraal watched Halen attempt to decide whether this constituted a technical argument.

Beside him, Isolde was trying not to laugh.

The eventual agreement involved removing the dangerous parts, cleaning the housing, anchoring it securely, and cutting two larger openings.

The machine became a ship.

The empty containers became something else after the children rejected every adult suggestion for them.

One would be a shelter.

The other would remain undecided until they had spent more time looking at it.

Nessa supported this.

Julius found it distressingly vague.

“Does it need a designation on the materials sheet?”

“Undecided,” Nessa said.

“That is not a designation.”

“It is now.”

By the end of the afternoon, the field contained more chalk marks than grass.

Dinraal had carried timber, moved a container, and spent twenty minutes holding a plank while three children debated whether the doorway should be large enough for him.

They decided it should.

He felt unexpectedly honoured.

Then they explained that otherwise he would not be able to bring things inside.

Isolde laughed so hard she had to sit down.

For a moment, Dinraal forgot the ring.

When he remembered, the happiness did not disappear.

It remained beside the grief, awkward and real.

He had not known that could feel like progress.

Over the following weeks, Avalon sent pictures.

Not every day.

Not on a schedule that made another duty of it.

A framework rising among trees.

A great wheel taking shape.

A channel curving beneath a bridge.

Benches.

Lamps.

People standing around something with their hands on their hips, apparently having the same arguments that occurred on building sites everywhere.

Garnet’s drawings made the structures look inviting.

Keir’s drawings made Enna want to ask questions.

Both kinds were useful.

One picture showed a path turning out of sight around a stand of trees.

The accompanying note explained that Miss Pell had objected to making the whole place too neat.

Dinraal showed that one to Nessa.

She read it and nodded.

“I like her.”

“You haven’t met her.”

“I can still like her.”

A later message described spaces made for the broods.

Deep sand.

Moving water.

A tower from which young creatures could catch the wind and glide.

Dinraal studied those drawings for a long time.

At Hearth’s field, they had been arguing about the height of a bench.

On Avalon, someone had asked a queen what her young would enjoy.

The answer had become part of the plan.

He took the picture to Mara Den.

“We should check who we haven’t asked.”

She read the note.

Then she looked at him.

“The families in the medical residences?”

“Yes.”

“The older residents?”

“Yes.”

She reached for a fresh sheet.

“Good.”

The next day, two benches changed height.

A path changed direction.

The entrance to the shelter became wider.

Nothing about the field looked dramatic afterward.

Several people could use it who otherwise would have struggled.

Dinraal found that satisfying in a way he was still learning to recognize.

Aramaeis came to the field on an afternoon when most of the heavy work was finished.

He brought a box.

Inside were wooden pieces.

Squares.

Arches.

Wedges.

Small wheels on short axles.

Dinraal picked one up.

“You made these?”

“With Beren.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They’re blocks.”

“They can be both.”

His uncle looked away with an expression Dinraal recognized from the wedding.

Discomfort at being thanked for something he had wanted very much to do.

They set the box beneath the shelter.

Within minutes, three children had begun constructing a structure that would not survive its own ambitions.

Aramaeis started to reach toward it.

Stopped.

Dinraal noticed.

“You could suggest a wider base.”

“Yes.”

“Would that help?”

“It would remain standing longer.”

They watched.

The structure fell.

One child laughed.

Another looked offended.

The third immediately began again, this time with two wide pieces at the bottom.

Aramaeis folded his hands behind his back.

Dinraal smiled.

They walked toward the edge of the field.

“Did Bahamut ever make things like this?” Dinraal asked.

Aramaeis took a little time before answering.

“Small things, sometimes.”

“Toys?”

“Repairs, more often. Something someone had broken and was embarrassed to ask anyone to fix.”

Dinraal looked at the blocks again.

“I know so much about what he was expected to do.”

His uncle nodded.

“And less about what he liked.”

“Yes.”

The admission settled between them.

There was no accusation in it.

Only a missing part.

Aramaeis sat on one of the new benches.

Dinraal sat beside him.

“I remember him repairing a little wheeled animal once,” his uncle said. “One wheel kept coming loose. He spent much longer on it than the object was worth.”

“To the person who owned it?”

Aramaeis glanced at him.

“No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

Dinraal waited.

His uncle smiled faintly.

“He put the first replacement wheel on crooked. He denied it until the thing reached the end of the table and turned in a circle.”

Dinraal laughed.

The sound startled a child nearby.

Aramaeis watched him for a moment.

Then he continued.

They stayed on the bench until the shadows reached the shelter.

The first afternoon the field opened, several children did not go in.

Nessa had expected that.

Dinraal had not.

He stood beside the shelter and watched a little group remain near the entrance while other children ran toward the wooden ship.

No one had told them to wait.

No one was preventing them from joining.

They watched the activity with intense concentration.

One girl held a small piece of bread in both hands.

A boy kept looking toward the adults.

Dinraal took a step.

Nessa touched his sleeve.

“Give them a moment.”

“I was only going to say they can go in.”

“I know.”

He stayed.

Isolde sat near the blocks and began building something.

It was not a particularly convincing structure.

Dinraal suspected that was deliberate.

She put an arch on top of two mismatched supports.

The arch fell.

A boy at the entrance frowned.

Isolde tried again.

It fell again.

He came closer.

“That one is too short.”

She looked up.

“Which one?”

He pointed.

She handed it to him.

He examined the available pieces, chose another, and put it in place.

The arch stayed.

Isolde smiled.

“Thank you.”

He did not answer.

He sat down beside the box.

After a while, the girl with the bread joined him.

Dinraal watched without moving.

Nessa stood beside him.

“Some need to see what happens when there isn’t a right answer,” she said.

He looked toward the ship.

Mira was loudly informing another child that he could not be captain because captains were required to know where they were going.

He replied that she did not know either.

She said that was why she needed a crew.

Dinraal smiled.

Then he looked back at the boy beside Isolde.

The boy had begun building a second arch.

Nobody had asked him to.

A packet from Avalon arrived that evening.

Among the construction updates was a drawing of bicycles.

Dinraal understood the mechanism immediately.

Two wheels.

Pedals.

A chain.

Balance.

He understood the appeal more slowly.

“They fall over when you stop,” he observed.

Enna, inspecting the drawing, looked unimpressed.

“Only if you refuse to put your feet down.”

“I can see that.”

“Then you’ve grasped the difficult part.”

The bicycles had begun with a request from Chancellor Voss.

Her brother had made one for her when she was a child.

Red.

With handlebars too wide and a seat too hard.

He had run behind her holding it steady.

Then let go.

Dinraal read the account and thought of Aurelius walking beside him through recoveries that had not looked like recoveries at the time.

Of Aramaeis beside the table where the little wooden animal turned in a circle.

Of people who remembered someone through an object nobody else would have understood.

Asha wanted to build a bicycle immediately.

Enna told her to finish reading the brake arrangement first.

Beren, when shown the drawing, said the wheels were possible.

Halen said the frame was possible.

Meret said she wanted no part in teaching people to ride near the reservoir.

By the following week, there was one bicycle in Hearth.

It was intended as a trial.

Nobody could agree who should ride it first.

Gilgamesh volunteered.

The frame was not designed for him.

Cleopatra pointed this out.

He called it a narrow view of possibility.

She took the bicycle away.

Dinraal eventually tried it on the broad path beside the field.

Isolde held the back of the seat.

“Don’t let go.”

“I haven’t.”

“You moved.”

“I’m running, Dinraal.”

He made it several yards.

Then turned to check whether she was still there.

The bicycle promptly attempted to introduce him to the ground.

Silver flashed.

He caught himself.

Behind him, Isolde stopped running and laughed until tears stood in her eyes.

From the bench, Beren shook his head.

“Look where you’re going.”

Dinraal straightened.

“I usually do.”

“That explains a great deal,” Isolde managed.

Avalon’s new place opened after forty days of work.

The message announcing it was accompanied by so many pictures that Eve arranged them in a sequence rather than attempting to display everything at once.

Trees full of warm light.

The roller coaster rising above them.

Swings reaching over water.

Little painted rooms turning slowly on the wheel.

A channel winding beneath bridges.

Children standing at the edge.

Then, in the next picture, some of those children moving forward.

The account of Tally and the boy at the swing came separately.

He had waited for her to explain.

She had kept swinging.

Eventually, he had pushed himself forward.

A little way.

Then farther.

Nessa read it twice.

She did not comment.

She simply took the page to the school and put it beside the drawings they had sent.

Keir sent Enna a view of the release on one of the cars.

Then another showing it during a check.

Enna enlarged both.

Dinraal watched her face.

“Well?”

She studied the mechanism.

“Good.”

He smiled.

“You could say more.”

“I already did. That’s why it looks like that.”

Later came a picture of Okafor on a swing.

Ruth stood nearby with her arms folded.

The Marshal’s feet were close to the ground.

She was not rising high.

She was smiling.

Johanna looked at the picture for a long time.

Then she said, “Ruth appears sensible.”

“Do you know her?” Dinraal asked.

“No. I recognize the posture.”

Rhiannon laughed.

There were other pictures.

Genny and Callum.

Garnet and Rowan.

Brock and Saska beside the little cars.

Dinraal found himself searching for the blackened hand, then made himself stop.

Brock was smiling too.

He deserved to be seen doing that.

That evening, Dinraal asked Isolde to go out with him.

She looked up from her notebook.

“Where?”

“I have a plan.”

Her expression became cautious.

“A good plan?”

“I believe so.”

“Does anyone need rescuing?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Will I be expected to inspect something?”

“No.”

“Have you arranged for us to accidentally meet someone who wants to discuss a structural problem?”

He paused.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I have specifically arranged for that not to happen.”

“Better.”

He had spoken to Aurelius.

That had led to Rhiannon.

Which had led, through channels Dinraal did not fully understand, to an agreement involving the small bakery near the lower terrace, two chairs, a table, and the clear threat that anyone interrupting without a genuine emergency would answer to several people.

Isolde did not know any of this yet.

She closed her notebook.

“When?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

“I would like that.”

He smiled.

The simplicity of the answer warmed him.

Then she added, “Wear something clean.”

He looked down at his shirt.

A trace of lubricant from the bicycle remained on one sleeve.

“Of course.”

“And leave the work gloves.”

“I wasn’t going to bring them.”

She glanced toward the pair he had placed beside the door.

Dinraal moved them.

Later, Dot sent a brief account of Lucas discovering that building a place for dates did not excuse him from taking his wives on them.

Isolde read it over Dinraal’s shoulder.

Then she looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was not a nothing expression.”

“It was an appreciative expression.”

“For my planning?”

“For the fact that five women are having a conversation I find very understandable.”

Dinraal considered asking for clarification.

He decided he had understood enough.

The following evening, Hearth looked unfamiliar.

Not because anything had changed.

Because Dinraal was walking through it without carrying tools, reading a report, or trying to reach someone before a problem became worse.

Isolde had put her hair up.

He noticed one of the pins from their wedding.

“You kept those.”

“Of course.”

“I thought Rhiannon might have reclaimed them for future operations.”

“She tried.”

“And?”

“I told her I was keeping them.”

“That worked?”

“I was wearing the dress.”

He laughed.

At the bakery, the little table stood beside a window.

Someone had placed a lamp on it.

There were no flowers.

Dinraal had specifically asked that Rhiannon not transform the evening into a second wedding.

There was, however, an arrangement of leaves whose sophistication suggested a negotiated settlement.

Isolde looked at it.

Then at him.

He shrugged.

“I did what I could.”

The meal was good.

He remembered that afterward, although he could not have described every dish.

What he remembered more clearly was Isolde telling him about a woman Nessa had interviewed who remembered her old home through the sound of rain on a kitchen roof.

About Mira deciding the wooden ship needed a bell.

About the boy with the blocks returning the next day and becoming irritated when someone moved the arch he had built.

“He wanted to keep it,” she said.

“Did he?”

“For the afternoon. Then he took it apart himself.”

Dinraal thought about that.

“That seems important.”

“It did to him.”

She asked about his afternoon with Aramaeis.

He told her about the wheeled animal.

About Bahamut’s crooked repair.

She smiled before he reached the end because she could already see how much the memory meant to him.

“I like knowing he could be bad at something,” Dinraal admitted.

“I imagine he managed it occasionally.”

“Everyone tells stories about what he endured. What he did for people.”

“They should.”

“Yes.”

“But you can have the crooked wheel too.”

He reached across the table.

She put her hand in his.

For a while, they let the food cool.

They walked home by the field.

The shelter was empty.

A few blocks remained in a box beneath the bench.

The wooden ship stood dark against the grass, still bearing a little of its former life as a machine.

Someone had tied a strip of cloth to the highest part.

It moved in the evening air.

Dinraal stopped beside the gate.

Isolde followed his gaze.

“We could sit for a while.”

“There’s nobody here.”

“That is generally an advantage on a date.”

He smiled.

They chose the bench Aramaeis had used.

From there, they could see the lower terraces and a little of the river beyond them.

No star filled the sky with the light of a burning ring.

No alarms sounded.

A window opened somewhere nearby, and a voice called someone in for supper.

Dinraal rested his arm along the back of the bench.

Isolde moved against him.

“Would you go on it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The ride. On Avalon.”

“The one Enna examined?”

“Yes.”

He considered the first drop.

The loop.

The seventh-birthday tradition, which still troubled him.

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes.”

She lifted her head.

“That is not a sensible reason.”

“It is a very good reason.”

“What if I want to go twice?”

“I’ll consult Enna.”

She laughed and kissed him.

There were no cheers.

No one hiding behind a door waiting to arrange the next part of the evening.

Just Isolde’s hand against his cheek, her ring warm where it touched him, and the faint sound of the river moving beyond the houses.

When they finally rose, Dinraal looked back at the bench.

He had spent so much of his life remembering places by what had happened there.

A battle.

A departure.

A loss.

Now he had another.

He intended to come back.

The next morning, a picture of Luna arrived.

She was wearing a blue ribbon.

The note accompanying it was brief enough to leave most of the evening where it belonged.

She and Lucas had gone on the wheel.

He had won the ribbon at Pip’s stall.

It had required eleven attempts.

No assistance from the silver.

Dinraal read that part aloud.

Isolde smiled.

“Did he specify that himself?”

“Apparently there were questions.”

“There should be.”

Enna, from the workbench, said she was pleased someone had finally found a useful test of his restraint.

Dinraal looked at the picture.

Luna’s face held a quiet happiness that needed no further explanation.

He did not ask for one.

Instead, Hearth sent a picture of its own.

The field in late afternoon.

A bicycle leaning against the shelter.

Children gathered around the wooden ship.

Nessa seated near the blocks.

Aramaeis on a bench with a small child explaining something complicated to him.

At the edge of the image, Isolde was laughing.

Dinraal had not realized she was in the picture until Eve showed it to him.

“Send that one,” he said.

Enna added the final reservoir drawing to a separate packet for Keir.

Then, after some thought, a sketch of the bicycle’s revised brake.

No emergency heading.

No casualty count.

Work that could wait until someone had time to be interested.

At the hour, the pulse passed between the two worlds.

Three.

A pause.

One.

Then the pictures followed.

Dinraal stood beside the window while Eve checked that they had arrived.

Beyond the glass, two children crossed the field carrying an awkward length of timber between them. They stopped, argued, changed ends, and continued in exactly the same direction.

He smiled.

“What are they making?” Isolde asked.

“I don’t know.”

She slipped her hand into his.

For once, neither of them went outside to find out.