Chapter 371: What She Chooses

Mei woke to the sound of a broom in the yard below her window. The strokes paused, resumed, then moved farther away. Pale morning light lay across the table. Her door was still open.

Eira sat in the chair with her notebook on her knee.

"There’s water beside you," she said. "I asked about your family last night."

Mei sat up and drew the blanket around her shoulders.

"Tell me."

"Dole’s office has the recovery report. They haven’t confirmed that word reached your family. Can you give me a name and somewhere to send a message?"

Mei looked toward the open door, then gave her the name, the place, and the route a message could take once it reached the Crimson Empire. Eira wrote them down and read them back. Mei corrected one part of the directions before she let the notebook close.

"I want to write it myself."

"I’ll get you paper."

Mei reached for the water. She drank while Eira went downstairs, listening to the broom and the voices in the yard. Someone asked the sweeper to move a bucket. She could hear his answer through the window.

— • —

Eira brought paper and a pen to the table.

"I’d like to be alone for this," Mei said.

"I’ll be outside."

Mei pulled the door almost shut after her, then sat by the window. The pen rested awkwardly between her fingers. She adjusted her grip and tried a short stroke near the edge of the page before beginning.

By the third line her hand was trembling. She put the pen down and rested her palm on the table until she could hold it steadily again.

She wrote where she was and that she was being looked after. She did not know when she would come home. They were to wait for her next message before setting out to meet her.

She read those lines twice. Then she added what she wanted them to send back, signed her name, and laid the pen beside the page.

There was room left on the sheet. She sat with it in front of her, considering whether to begin another line about the room she had left. She folded the blank part underneath instead. What she had written was enough to send.

When she opened the door, Eira was waiting along the corridor.

"I want to read it to you before you take it."

Eira came closer. Mei read from the paper, standing with one hand beneath it to keep it steady. Eira waited while she went back over a word she had written badly.

"And the reply," Mei said. "Bring it to me. I want to read it myself."

"I’ll tell the desk replies are for you."

Mei folded the page and handed it over. Eira put it inside her notebook with the delivery details and took it downstairs.

She returned while Mei was eating.

"The desk accepted it for sending. They’ve kept your directions with it."

Mei set her spoon down to listen, then picked it up again.

— • —

The healer came after breakfast. At Mei’s nod, she closed the door and set her case on the table.

She examined Mei’s hands first, asking her to bend each finger and show where it hurt. Mei watched as the healer turned her hand over. When pressure near one joint made her pull back, the healer eased off and marked the place in her notes.

Next came her feet and the worn patches on the soles. The healer listened to her breathing and asked what she had managed to eat since arriving. When Mei could not say when the soreness had begun, she wrote that down without asking her to count backward.

"I haven’t found anything urgent in this examination," she said. "Your hands are stiff, and the skin on your feet needs care. I’ll leave ointment and show you how much to use. We’ll check them again."

Mei watched her open the small pot. The healer showed her, then left it beside the bell where she could reach it.

"Call if anything hurts more, or if you notice something we haven’t checked."

"Thank you."

The healer gathered her notes and case. Mei asked her to leave the door open when she went.

— • —

The investigator arrived before midday. A post officer asked whether Mei would see her, then brought her upstairs.

Dole stopped at the door with a folder beneath her arm.

"I’m investigating your case. Would you like to talk today?"

"Some," Mei said. "Not all."

"All right."

Mei pointed to the chair. Dole sat and opened her folder. Eira remained in the corridor.

Mei began with the room: the bed, the basin, the high window and the hatch. She described taking the bowl through it, and the guard standing beyond the tray.

"Later there were two of them at every meal. One held the tray. The other watched."

"Had both always come?"

"No. There was only one before."

"Could you see their faces?"

"Not through the hatch. Their boots, the tray. The second one stood back."

Mei showed the space with her hands, then lowered them to her knees. Dole made a small addition to the page. She did not ask Mei to give either guard a name.

Mei went on to the wheels that caught in the same place, and the heavier door farther along the passage. She had learned its sound opening and closing. For a while the cart passed before her meal came. Then the two began arriving together.

"That was when I spilled it."

Dole looked up from the page.

"The bowl," Mei said. "I tipped it on purpose. The cart was close. A guard told them to hold it."

Her hands lay flat on her knees as she described the guard crouching and the view through the hatch: a stretch of passage, the heavy door open, shadows crossing the light beyond it.

"I heard someone say to leave the cart and carry the rest through. I couldn’t see who said it."

"What happened on the deliveries after that?"

"The wheels stopped farther away. I heard people going past and coming back, several trips. Then the heavy door shut. Only after that did they bring my food."

Dole finished the line she was writing.

"We took the receiving records. I’ll compare them with this."

Mei looked down at her hands. She had begun pressing them into her knees without noticing.

"That’s enough for now."

Dole closed the folder.

"I’ll leave you to rest."

She took her pen with her. No one came in to ask the next question.

— • —

Ren gave his account in a ground-floor room. Dole asked him to begin at the cart shed and describe what he had seen through to the custody handover. Twice she stopped him to establish where he had been standing.

At the heavy doorway, she checked his position again.

"You stayed on the near side?"

"Yes. The lead officer covered the opening. I never went through it."

She entered his answer beside the other accounts. Vesper went in after him with her notebook; Ren waited outside until she had finished.

"She asked about the crate by the roofed doorway," Vesper said when she came out. "The one on my drawing."

"It was still there when we brought the prisoner out."

"I saw you go around it."

They were gathering their packs when Eira came downstairs.

"Mei would like to speak to you," she told Ren.

He left the pack with Vesper and went up.

— • —

Mei sat at the table with her plate pushed aside. She looked up when Ren reached the open doorway.

"How did you find me?"

"Yueying, a friend of mine, found a freight instruction in some records. It had a receiving reference. Hask traced that to Saltmarch, and Dole sent people to check the yard."

Mei waited. Ren rested his hand against the doorframe.

"They found a worker who’d carried loads through the passage. He described your door, the guard and a voice answering from inside. That gave the officers a room to check. None of the observers had seen you."

"The worker didn’t?"

"No. When we came in, you called your name through the hatch. That was the first time we knew who was behind the door. An officer checked the likeness when Eira opened it."

"You heard me."

"From beside the desk."

She looked at the window. Below it, someone was unloading a cart; Ren could hear each load being set down. Mei waited until the next one landed before speaking again.

"I’m staying here for now. I want to rest, and I want to be here when the answer comes."

"Eira told me."

"She’ll stay while I settle. After that we’ll work out where I’m going."

Ren nodded. Mei drew the plate back toward her, and he stepped away from the door.

— • —

Eira walked Ren and Vesper to the gate.

"I’ll stay while she settles," she said. "We haven’t arranged anything beyond that. I’ll send word when we do."

"Let us know if you need anything from home," Ren said.

She nodded and turned back toward the care wing. Ren put the wrapped harness into his pack and buckled it closed. The scored guard would stay wrapped until the craftsperson could inspect it.

His slate had a message from Iris.

Vesper says you’re both leaving today. Will you be back for dinner?

Vesper was checking their travel papers against the crossing arrangements. She finished reading, folded the papers and handed Ren his copy.

"Tonight, if we leave now."

Ren wrote back before they went through the gate.

Yes. Starving.