Chapter 130 — "The Sixth Day"

They were four hours from the outpost when the smoke appeared.

Not much of it. A thin grey line to the south-west, going straight up in the still air — which was the wrong direction entirely, because everything they knew was south, and everything that had crossed the line was going north-west, and smoke to the south-west made no sense at all.

Kell saw it and did not change pace.

That was worse than stopping.

"Sir—"

"I see it."

"That’s the direction of—"

"I know what direction it’s in." Kell kept walking. "Sennick. What’s burning."

Eren looked at it for maybe two seconds.

"Wet wood. Something with resin in it. It’s been burning about an hour and somebody’s feeding it badly."

Kell’s head turned about a degree.

"How do you know it’s been an hour."

"Colour of the column and the fact it’s still going straight up. If it were newer it’d be dirtier. If it were older someone would have sorted the airflow out."

There was a pause.

"That’s correct," said Kell.

He did not ask a follow-up.

Seraphina noticed that. Filed it — on the stack, which by now had a definite lean to it.

"Change of route," Kell said, twenty minutes later. "We’re going to walk past it at distance. Not toward it. Past it. If it’s a patrol fire we’ll see the flag. If it isn’t, we keep walking and we don’t slow down and we don’t look interested."

"And if they see us?" said Ost.

"Then they see four students and an officer walking a rotation route on the day a rotation route is walked." Kell adjusted his pack. "There is nothing suspicious about us. That’s our entire advantage. Don’t waste it by behaving suspiciously."

"How do I behave unsuspiciously."

"Talk about something boring."

Ost thought about this.

"Sir, I could talk about the month-two supply requisition—"

"Perfect," said Kell.

They passed it at about six hundred metres.

No flag.

Seraphina saw that first and felt something in her chest do a slow, cold thing that had nothing to do with the weather.

Small fire. Three figures near it. A cart, or something cart-shaped, and something beside the cart under a cover that was the wrong shape to be supplies.

"Don’t look," Eren said.

"I’m not looking."

"You’re looking with the side of your face. It’s worse."

"How is it worse—"

"Because side-looking is a thing people do when they’re pretending not to look, and everyone knows what it means, and there’s a much better technique which is look directly at it for one second and then be bored."

"That’s insane."

"It’s correct. Bored people look. Frightened people glance."

She looked directly at it for one second.

Then away.

It was — infuriatingly — easier.

Ost, behind them, was reciting the month-two supply requisition at a completely normal volume with total commitment, and something about that struck her as unexpectedly brave.

They were past it by half an hour, and nobody had followed, and the smoke had gone thin behind them.

Kell called them in close and kept walking while he talked, which meant it was serious.

"Three men. No flag, no colours, no markings. Cart with the wheels chocked, which means it’s been there overnight. Fire built by someone who’s cold rather than someone who cooks."

"And the covered thing," Seraphina said.

Kell’s eyes moved to her.

"You saw that."

"It was the wrong shape."

"It was the wrong shape," he agreed.

"What was it."

"I don’t know," Kell said, "and I’m not going to guess in front of four students, because a guess said out loud becomes a fact in a report."

"So what goes in the report?"

"Wrong shape."

They made the outpost with an hour of light left.

She’d expected relief. What she got instead was a small unpleasant surprise, which was that the outpost was four buildings and a fence and nineteen people, and it looked, from any reasonable distance, like something you could remove from the map in an afternoon.

Kell went straight to the officer of the watch and talked for eleven minutes.

The four of them stood outside in the cold and watched through the window, which told them nothing, because Kell’s face did nothing and the other officer’s face did nothing and at the end of it they both nodded once and that was that.

"He didn’t believe him," Ost said.

"He believed him," said Halvard.

"How do you—"

"Watch his hands. He wrote it down."

Kell came out.

"You leave at first light. Two days back to Kestral, direct route, no marker stones. You’ll be met."

"Sir—"

"Sennick."

"You said met."

Kell looked at him for a moment longer than he’d looked at anyone all rotation.

"I did."

"By whom."

"By whoever they send." Kell shouldered his pack. "That’s not evasion. I don’t know. I’ve sent the notification and I don’t get to choose who reads it."

He started toward the barracks. Stopped.

"For what it’s worth," he said, without turning, "you four did the job. All six days. Including the part where you didn’t go down the slope."

"Sir," said Ost, "we didn’t do anything."

"You didn’t do anything incorrect," said Kell. "That’s the entire job. You’ll understand in about nine years."

He went inside.

That night, for the first time in six days, they slept indoors.

It was too warm. All four of them lay awake and eventually admitted it, one at a time, in an escalating series of complaints that started with Ost and ended with Halvard saying "it’s the ceiling" with genuine feeling.

Seraphina lay looking at the ceiling that Halvard had strong opinions about, and thought about the covered shape by the cart.

"Sennick."

"Mm."

"The thing under the cover."

"Yes."

"You know what it was."

A pause.

"I have a guess."

"Kell said guesses become facts."

"Kell was talking about reports." Another pause. "This isn’t a report."

She turned her head.

He was on his back, hands folded, looking straight up at nothing.

"Tell me."

"It was person-shaped," said Eren.

The room got very quiet.

"...One person?"

"Two. Or one and something else. I couldn’t tell at six hundred metres."

"You could tell it was person-shaped at six hundred metres."

"I could tell it was person-shaped," he agreed, "which is why I told you not to look, because you’d have seen it too, and then you’d have had to decide what to do about it in front of Kell."

She lay very still.

"And if I’d decided to go down there."

Eren didn’t answer for a while.

"Then I’d have gone with you," he said, "and we would both have died on the slope, and it would have been extremely stupid, and I’d have gone anyway."

Across the room, Halvard shifted.

Neither of them was certain whether he was asleep.

First light.

They were forty minutes out from the outpost — flat road, easy pace, the first genuinely easy walking in six days — when Seraphina saw the riders.

Four of them, coming north on the road, unhurried.

Not soldiers. Not patrol. No colours she recognised.

Halvard stopped first this time.

"Kell said we’d be met."

"He did," said Seraphina.

"He said two days," Halvard said. "That’s forty minutes."

Ost said, quietly, "That’s not the same thing at all, is it."

Nobody answered him.

Beside her, Seraphina felt Eren change.

Not move. Change. Some small internal adjustment, entirely invisible, that she registered the way you register a room getting colder before you understand a door has opened somewhere.

She turned to look at him.

"Eren."

He was watching the riders come.

"Don’t say my name for a minute," he said.

"What."

"Sixty seconds. Then say it as much as you like. Say it constantly. I’d enjoy that enormously and we can discuss it later."

"Eren—"

"That’s within the sixty."

The riders were maybe three hundred metres out and not hurrying, which Seraphina had learned by now was the thing that should worry you.

Halvard had shifted his weight forward onto the balls of his feet without appearing to move at all. Ost had gone very pale and very quiet, and had — she noticed — positioned himself half a step in front of her, which was tactically useless and which she decided not to mention, ever.

"Right," Kell’s voice said behind them, and all four of them jumped.

He had come up the road from the outpost at a walking pace and nobody had heard him.

"Sir, you said—"

"I said you’d be met in two days by whoever they send." Kell looked past them at the riders. "These aren’t whoever they send."

"Then who are they."

"Don’t know. Let’s find out. Everyone shut up."

The riders stopped at forty metres, which was polite, and then one came forward alone, which was politer, and Seraphina understood that both of those things were choices and that she was watching a conversation that had begun before anybody spoke.

The one who came forward was maybe thirty. Grey coat, no insignia, good horse.

"Officer Kell."

"You have me at a disadvantage."

"I do." The man didn’t smile. "That’s the situation. My apologies for it."

"You came out fast."

"We were already moving." He looked past Kell at the four of them, unhurried, and his eyes went across each of them in turn and did not stop on anyone. "Your notification arrived at the outpost at seventh bell. We were forty minutes south of it at the time. That’s not a coincidence I’m going to explain on a road."

"You’re not going to explain it anywhere," said Kell.

"No."

"Fine." Kell adjusted his pack. "Do you need my students."

"I need their eyes."

"You have mine."

"You looked at the tracks," said the man. "They looked at the fire."

Nobody moved.

Seraphina felt her heart do something she disliked.

"How do you know we looked at a fire," she said.

The man’s attention came to her.

"Because there’s a fire," he said, "and you walked past it, and you’re not stupid."

And then, with no change of tone at all, he added: "Which of you saw the cart."

Silence.

Halvard said nothing. Ost said nothing.

Seraphina opened her mouth.

"I did," said Eren.

She closed it.

"Describe it."

"Two-wheeled, chocked, tongue down. Hadn’t moved since before dark. Load under a waxed cover, roughly two metres by one, sitting low, which means it’s dense and it isn’t grain." A beat. "It was person-shaped. Or two-person-shaped. Six hundred metres was too far to be certain and I’m not going to pretend otherwise."

The man in the grey coat looked at him for a long moment.

"You’re a student."

"Second year."

"At Kestral."

"Adequately."

"That’s not an answer to what I asked."

"No," Eren agreed pleasantly, "but it’s the answer to what you were going to ask next, so I’ve saved us both a step."

Kell, very quietly, said: "Sennick."

"Sir."

"Shut up."

"Sir."

The man in the grey coat wrote nothing down, which Seraphina found more unsettling than if he’d written everything.

"That’s useful," he said finally. "Thank you."

"That’s it?" said Ost.

"That’s it."

"We walked six days—"

"And on the fifth you found tracks you were right not to follow, and on the sixth you walked past a fire without slowing, and both of those things were the correct decision and both of them are why you’re standing on this road." He turned his horse. "Go home. Say what you saw. Say it to whoever asks you and don’t dress it up."

He got three lengths away and then stopped.

"Sennick."

Eren looked up.

"Where are you from."

The wind picked a poor moment to drop.

"North," said Eren.

"North of what."

"North of most things."

The man in the grey coat held the look for about two seconds.

Then rode.

They walked.

Nobody said anything for the better part of a mile, and then Ost said, "What was that," in the tone of a man who had been holding it in with both hands.

"That was somebody who was already moving," said Kell.

"Before the notification."

"Before the notification."

"Which means—"

"Which means somebody knew, and we’re not going to speculate about who, out loud, on a road, three days from anywhere." Kell looked at them. "You’ll be asked about this at Kestral. Answer accurately. Don’t theorise. Theories are how people end up in rooms explaining themselves."

By afternoon the tension had drained out of everyone, the way it does — not slowly, all at once, leaving behind an exhaustion so complete it circled back into a kind of giddiness.

Ost started laughing at nothing around the fourth hour and couldn’t stop for some time.

Halvard said "we’re alive" in the flattest voice imaginable and that set Ost off again for another four minutes.

And Eren dropped back beside her, hands in his pockets, entirely restored.

"So."

"No."

"You haven’t heard it."

"I’ve heard the shape of it."

"You survived a border rotation."

"Yes."

"You survived a border rotation, and you found tracks, and you correctly identified a cart as wrong-shaped at six hundred metres, and you did not go down the slope."

"Where’s this going."

"It’s going toward a proposal."

"Eren."

"You said my name," he said, delighted. "Sixty seconds passed a long time ago, and you said it, and I want that noted."

"By who."

"Halvard."

Halvard, ahead, without turning: "Noted."

"HALVARD."

"He asked."

Seraphina put both hands over her face and kept walking, which was — she recognised even at the time — not a defensive strategy that had ever worked on him.

"You should marry me," said Eren.

"I’m filthy, I haven’t slept in six days, and there was a body-shaped thing on a cart this morning."

"Yes," he agreed, "and you’re still the most interesting person on this road, which is a low bar today, but you’d clear it anywhere."

She dropped her hands.

Looked at him.

He looked back, entirely unbothered, breath not fogging any harder than it had at fourth bell on the first morning six days ago.

"Ask me at Kestral," she said. "When I’ve slept."

He blinked.

For about half a second, something crossed his face that she had never seen there before and could not identify at all.

Then it was gone, and he said: "That’s a date, that’s got a time attached—"

"It’s a condition—"

"It’s a time attached, Halvard—"

"Noted," said Halvard.

"STOP NOTING THINGS."

Ahead of them, Kell walked without turning around, and if his shoulders were doing something, nobody could prove it.