Chapter 593: Two Separate Roads

Rumi put the iron weight down at the wrong mark, realizing why Ferra had stopped speaking when her sister began to smile.

"That one is mine."

"You could share."

"You could read."

She picked it up again, giving the chalk arrow an injured look before carrying it through the ordinary doorway to the other side of the testing floor.

They had cleared the surviving floor of the same vault chamber, keeping their test marks beyond the broken entrance Ferra had secured with two crossed braces.

They had waited until the floor stopped settling.

Rumi could still feel the last escape in her legs, the new fourth Wing shifting whenever she turned too quickly beside something solid.

Hajin moved his chair away from their reach.

"I used to fit there," she told him.

"I remember."

"You could sound less pleased about it."

He grinned, leaving her enough room to spread all four without catching his shoulder as Vella checked the joint of the lower pair.

"Slowly this time."

Rumi let them open, feeling the unfamiliar reach settle behind her while the ache beneath her ribs stayed exactly where the earlier effort had left it.

’Pretty expensive way to need a wider chair.’

Beyond the doorway, Ash slept against his mother’s foreleg with his blanket twisted under one cheek, having lost interest during Ferra’s third inspection of the floor.

The Watcher kept her head above him while the protected girl rested farther along the broad landing, close enough for the clinic attendant to hear her without entering the test marks.

Rumi touched the first receiving stone in the nearer alcove, then walked to the window recess and the clear corner beside Hajin’s chair.

She pressed her palm to each one before returning to the starting mark.

"Three," Ferra said, putting the weights beside her, "show me which one is working."

Rumi kept all three prepared routes within reach, finding the difference less like holding three doors open than remembering where she had left their handles.

The nearer alcove answered first.

She passed an iron weight through its low fold, watching it settle onto the stone she had touched before drawing the opening shut.

The second route waited where she had left it.

"I don’t have to find it again."

Ferra looked up from the receiving scales.

"Then take the next one."

Rumi changed the carrying route to the window recess, sending the second weight across while the first remained on its ordinary stone.

She wanted to laugh at how little happened between the two transfers.

No scramble to recover the earlier position, no need to throw one useful place away before reaching for the next.

"Again," she said.

Nari handed her the last weight.

Rumi chose the clear corner beside Hajin, letting him catch the iron on the cloth he had already spread over the receiving stone.

"Three places kept," he said.

"One doing the carrying."

Ferra brought a longer test bar for the next check, resting its first end across the active fold while Rumi tried to give the second route the same work.

The waiting route refused to take weight.

Rumi felt the limit before either scale moved, easing the bar back onto the starting floor while Hajin kept his hands clear of its far end.

"It won’t split the job."

"Good," Ferra said, recording the unchanged second scale, "bring the first one through before asking another road to carry."

Rumi finished the single transfer, then changed the active route and sent the empty cloth to the window recess.

The other two prepared places stayed available through the change.

She looked at her sister with a satisfaction too large for the little piece of cloth lying in the sunlight.

"I can keep the way back while I look somewhere else."

"Somewhere you’ve already touched."

"Yes, you may continue enjoying that part."

Nari’s smile widened.

Ferra recorded the three actual destinations beside the single carrying channel, leaving the dark wall beyond the window out of their arrangement.

Rumi had never stood on the other side of it.

The new reach gave her no answer from there.

She closed the carrying fold after the last weight returned, keeping the successful routes marked while Nari took her place on the separate test square.

Ferra had placed the test square around four empty archive apertures left by the keeper, giving Nari existing openings to seal while Rumi’s three marked routes remained outside the boundary.

Her sister studied those four exposed edges before setting her feet.

"Nobody use these until I say."

Hajin glanced toward the ordinary doorway.

"That one?"

"Walk through it if you like."

He did, taking the long way around to stand beside the receiving marks as Rumi settled near the closest fold.

Nari waited until Ferra turned the small hourglass.

No Exit caught the four exposed spatial openings together, pinning their edges within the marked boundary while the ordinary air between them stayed clear.

Rumi touched the near side of the archive fold without leaning her weight into it.

Nothing admitted her.

"I’m on your side," she pointed out.

"The skill noticed the road."

"Heartless thing."

Nari watched her sister leave the blocked fold and walk through the ordinary doorway, the longer route bringing her outside the boundary with a deliberately weary sigh.

"You could have warned me about the distance."

"You helped measure it."

The last grains fell after sixty seconds, releasing all four folds together while the hourglass remained in Ferra’s hand.

Rumi pressed only the cloth’s edge across the nearest reopened margin, withdrawing it without entering the unfamiliar route as Nari’s fingers loosened at her sides.

All four had stayed pinned for the full hold.

Her sister had been trapped by the same rule an enemy would meet.

"We clear friendly folds before you start," Hajin said, looking at the route Rumi had just been denied.

Nari nodded toward the ordinary doorway.

"Or make sure there’s a walk out."

They rested before the shorter movement test, Vella refusing to let the new Wings turn the word practice into permission to ignore shaking hands.

Nari reached for the cup Vella offered, finding her sister already supporting its bottom when her fingers missed the handle.

"I had it."

"Then I helped unnecessarily."

Rumi kept her hand there until the cup reached Nari’s mouth, looking away toward the sleeping child while she drank.

The water tasted faintly of the tea someone had carried in it earlier, its ordinary bitterness helping Nari notice how thirsty she had become.

When Nari could hold her fingers still again, Ferra reset the hourglass for another measured seal.

This time Nari walked across the square without loosening the seal, then deliberately stepped outside its chosen boundary and released her hold before the sand finished.

The four openings released.

She stopped with her heel beyond the chalk, looking back at the boundary she had just surrendered.

"That gets a large mark," Ferra said, taking up the chalk.

Nari put her foot down fully.

"I felt it go."

"Someone behind you needs to know before they rely on it."

She watched Ferra record the release beside the full sixty-second result, then turned toward the corner where Rumi had already begun imagining the next use.

"I would keep three approaches ready," Rumi said, "let them chase us toward whichever one is safest."

"You would keep changing which one looks safest."

"Things change."

"Then let them change outside my boundary."

Hajin drew his feet back as Rumi set a harmless wooden marker beside his chair, assigning him the part of someone they were trying to move.

"We swap for one try," she suggested, looking at Nari, "you choose where he goes, I’ll decide which pursuit gets caught."

Nari chose the nearer alcove immediately.

Rumi moved the marker toward it, then paused halfway to open space on the window side.

"That gives him another way if something comes down here."

"You just let the pursuit around your own trap."

Rumi looked at the gap she had made.

Hajin raised one hand from the chair.

"Am I allowed to walk away from this lesson?"

"Apparently everyone is," Nari said.

Rumi laughed, surrendering the marker before her attempt to think like her sister acquired another escape.

Nari tried moving it herself, bringing it toward the alcove before turning the window route away so sharply that she left her imaginary traveler with nowhere to change direction.

Rumi leaned over her shoulder.

"Lovely little box."

"He reached the alcove."

"He may want to leave it one day."

Their laughter carried through the open doorway, making Ash shift beneath his blanket without waking as Ferra collected the test weights.

Nari kept the wooden marker a moment longer, turning it between her fingers while the new Wings settled behind her.

She liked knowing where the chase would stop.

Rumi liked having somewhere else to take the person being chased.

The heavy fixture beside the barred vault groaned before either of them put the marker away.

Ferra dropped her chalk into the tray, catching the nearer brace as a tremor lifted dust from the floor beneath it.

Nari looked down through the inspection gap.

Black threads were drawing the stolen records around the wounded silver sliver below, their tightening loops bringing a face toward the surface before another expression took its place.

A woman’s mouth moved without the rest of her appearing.

Nari lowered the marker onto Hajin’s empty chair.

He had already stood, drawing the divine blade into his right hand and the demonic blade into his left while Juna called the landing clear.

The next face opened its eyes beneath the floor, looking past the tools and test marks toward the people who would recognize it.