Chapter 209: The Pin

’And whatever lands on me lands on whoever loves me most,’ Logan thought. ’And I do not know who that is.’

He found that he was afraid to know.

Helen had already turned away from the drop. She knelt down on the ledge in front of Vina and took the girl’s cut hand in both of hers.

[ Mending Spring ]

Green light poured out of her fingers and into Vina’s palm. The thin red line closed and faded until there was nothing left of it but clean skin.

Then Helen looked down at her palm. The cut there was still bleeding.

She cast it again, on herself this time, and that one closed too.

"Two," she said. She sounded thoughtful. "It took two. It shares the cut, but it does not share the mending."

Rishin had come out of the Throat behind them. He stood at the top of the ledge with his hands in his sleeves, and he looked out over the red land below.

"Listen to me," he said. "All of you."

They listened.

"On this layer, nobody bleeds alone. When you are hurt, half of it is yours. The other half goes to the one who loves you most." He paused. "Not the one you love most. The one who loves you."

"Is there a difference?" asked Daniel.

"Sometimes." Rishin kept his eyes on the land. "You will learn things about each other here that nobody says out loud. Be kind with what you learn."

He turned his face back to the red land and left it there.

It was Garen who suggested the pin.

He suggested it in his ordinary voice. It carried, which made him blink, and then he grinned.

"Words work again," he said. "Thank whatever runs this place."

"The pin, dear," said Isolde.

"The pin." Garen held out his hand to her. "You have a sewing needle in that ring. I have watched you darn my socks with it in three different worlds."

Isolde raised an eyebrow at him. Then she reached into her storage ring and brought out a fine steel needle.

"We need to know," Garen said to all of them. He was not smiling now.

"Before a thing down there finds out for us. If I take a cut in the middle of a fight, I want to know whose hand is going to bleed before it does."

Nobody argued with that. Logan wished somebody would.

Garen went first.

He pricked the end of his thumb with the needle. A bead of blood came up, small and dark.

Beside him, Isolde lifted her thumb. A bead had come up on it in the same place, just as small.

"Well," said Garen. He looked absurdly pleased. "That settles an old argument."

Isolde wiped her thumb on his sleeve. She took the needle from him and pricked hers.

Garen’s thumb beaded a second time. He held it up for everyone to see.

"Of course," said Alice softly. "Who else would it be?"

Daniel went next. He held the needle as if it might bite him, and he pricked the tip of one finger very carefully.

Helen’s finger beaded. She smiled at him.

Then Helen pricked hers, and Daniel’s beaded, and he smiled back.

Bram took the needle without a word and stabbed his thumb with it, hard enough to make Edda wince. Edda’s thumb bled. She shook her head at him, took the needle, and did the same back.

It went to Bram. He grunted, satisfied, as if a debt had been squared.

Alice held out her hand for the needle.

She kept her eyes off Logan while she pricked her finger. She looked at the bead of blood that came up on it. Then, slowly, she looked at his hand.

There was a bead on his forefinger, matching hers exactly.

Logan stared at it. He had known. He thought he had known. It was different, seeing it come up out of his skin.

Alice made a small sound that was almost a laugh. She only took his hand and pressed her bleeding finger against his.

Then she gave him the needle.

Logan held it over his finger.

His mother was standing beside his father. Alice was standing beside him. He looked at the needle, and he did not want to know.

He pricked his finger.

The bead came up. He did not look at Alice’s hand. He found he could not.

"Oh," said Helen.

She had lifted her left hand, the one that had already carried half of Vina’s cut. There was a fresh bead of blood on the end of her forefinger.

Logan looked at his mother. Then, because he had to, he looked at Alice.

Alice was looking at Helen’s finger. Her face was perfectly calm. Then she turned and met Logan’s eyes, and she smiled. It was a real smile.

"Of course it does," she said. "She carried you first."

It was only afterward that Logan understood what it meant.

Daniel understood it before he did. Logan saw it go across his father’s face, and saw him go pale.

"Helen," Daniel said. "That is three."

Helen was looking at her hand.

"Mine," Daniel said. "And Vina’s. And Logan’s." His voice had gone very quiet. "Logan fights at the front of everything we do. Every cut he takes, half of it goes to you. And you are the one of us who can least afford it."

Helen closed her hand.

"I know," she said.

"Helen..."

"I know, Daniel." She looked at her husband, and then at her son. There were tears standing in her eyes, but her voice was quite steady. "I have known since he was born. This place is only telling everyone else."

Logan could not find anything to say.

He thought about every fight since the rim, and every time he had stepped in front of a blow because it was quicker than stepping out of the way. He thought about the colossus and the keeper and the arms of the Cantor.

’Half of each of those would have landed on her,’ he thought. ’Half of every one.’

"Then I do not get hurt," he said.

Garen laughed shortly. "Good plan."

"I mean it." Logan turned to the units. They were standing along the ledge behind the family, silent and waiting. "On this layer, you go first. All of you. Your wounds go nowhere. Ours go to the people we love."

Billy looked at him. Logan could see the old protest forming on his face, and then he saw Billy understand.

The wheel rolled silently forward to the head of the ledge and stopped there.

Halden came after him. Then Terry. Then the rest.

Rishin had not moved during any of it.

He stood at the mouth of the Throat with his hands still in his sleeves. When Garen held the needle out toward him, the old man only looked at it.

"No," said Rishin.

Vina looked up at him. "Why not, Grandpa?"

"Because I would rather not know whose hand I would be cutting."

Vina thought about that. Then she frowned.

"It would be mine," she said. "I love you the most. Everybody knows that."

Rishin looked down at her. Logan saw the old man’s mouth tighten at the corners. His eyes went bright, and then his face closed over again.

"That is why," said Rishin.

He took his hands out of his sleeves and held one down to her. She took it, and he walked her down the ledge after the units.

Logan watched them go. He saw that the old man’s hand was trembling, very slightly, in the girl’s.

They went down the ledge all the rest of that waking.

It ran along the face of the cliff in long slanting stretches, doubling back on itself again and again. It was narrow and loose and edged with red glass.

Isolde brought strips of cloth from her ring, and they wrapped their hands before they had gone a hundred paces. Helen wrapped Vina’s twice.

Every time a stone turned under somebody’s foot, Logan felt his whole body flinch toward his mother.

They slept on a broad shelf halfway down. Helen lay between Daniel and Vina, and Logan lay on her other side with Alice behind him. He lay without moving, and sleep would not come.

Alice put her hand on his back.

"She would rather carry it," Alice said into his shoulder, very low. "You know she would."

"I know."

"Then let her know you know." She was quiet for a little. "That is all any of us can do down here."

[ Time remaining: 333 days ]