Chapter 72: Five Hundred

By noon, every cook fire on the Aldermere side had a story about it.

"The Voss woman was up on the wall at dawn." A corporal held out his cup. "Turned the whole garrison out of bed. Then she went straight down to the Pools and threw the guards off the door."

"The thief again?"

"My cousin’s on the gate. Says she came back across the yard at sunrise, soaking wet, with something on a chain around her neck." He drank. "Didn’t look like someone who’d lost anything."

"Didn’t look like someone who’d won, either," the man beside him added. "Looked like someone who’d been dead for an hour."

They laughed, and Aren filled the next cup, and the next, and kept his face carefully blank.

[Kaela Voss. Rank D: Blood. 36% → 49%.]

’Thirteen percent. In one night!’

He had made four in an hour in the smallest pool, at the very start, when everything came easily. She had gone into the deepest pool in the hall and stayed past the line where a body gives up, with an iron heart on her chest to restart it when it did.

Six days left, and fifty-one percent still to climb. It wasn’t enough, but it was no longer impossible.

His own window was waiting behind hers, as it waited every morning now.

[Rank D: Blood Tempering. 9%.]

It hadn’t moved in six days, simply because he hadn’t been inside the Pools since the night of the bath. Every vent was watched, and every guard on the Imperial side was looking for a masked man with something white in his side. He could carry water for an army. He couldn’t get close enough to a pool of blood to dip a finger in it.

’Great investor. Everyone’s growing except me.’

He carried water all afternoon and tried hard not to think about it.

Roderick was awake when he came back up the ridge at dusk. He was sitting at the mouth of the hollow with his cloak pulled up, and he didn’t turn around.

"It came back."

Aren didn’t need to ask what.

"This morning, after you left. It sat patiently on the rock for an hour. Then it went down toward the fortress again." Roderick’s voice was very quiet. "It doesn’t do anything, ghost. It doesn’t bark or come close. It just looks at the place where we sleep. Like you’d look at a door when you know someone’s behind it."

"It’s not looking for you."

"I know who it’s looking for." Roderick finally turned his head. "If she follows it up here, I won’t hurt her. I want you to know that before it happens. I’ll run."

"So will I."

Roderick held his gaze a moment longer, then nodded and turned back to the valley.

Varro didn’t throw the first stick that night.

He stood behind the woodpile in the dark and studied Aren with his pale old eyes.

"Somebody dug under the lone pine at the Grey Ford." "An Imperial scout saw the grass this morning. They’re saying it was the thief."

Aren said nothing.

"I told you not to get caught."

"I wasn’t."

The old man grunted, tossed him a stick, and set his feet.

"No. You weren’t. Weight forward."

He came in suddenly, without warning.

It was faster than the other nights. Varro always went easy at the start, three or four slow blows to let the boy’s body remember where it was. Not tonight. The first strike came at Aren’s head, the second at his knee before the first had finished, and the third at his ribs, on the left, low, right where the scar ran under his shirt.

’Of course he knows. Of course.’

Aren held his ground stubbornly.

He put his weight a finger’s width forward, turned with the first blow, let the second hit his thigh instead of his knee, and caught the third on his own stick, so close to his body that the wood rang against his ribs. He held, and the old man pressed, and he held.

Varro stepped back.

"Again!" He didn’t wait.

They went eleven times. Aren went down on the fourth and the eighth. The other nine, he stayed on his feet, and on the last one, for the first time, he didn’t only hold. He pushed back. Not hard, only half a step, into the old man’s guard, with his weight behind it, and Varro had to move his feet to stay up.

The old man looked down at his own boots. Then at Aren.

"Huh."

That was all. But he didn’t throw the stick again. He leaned on it, breathing, and gazed out across the dark valley toward the Grey Ford.

"Whatever you took out of that ground," he murmured, "I hope it’s doing some good."

[Street Fighter’s Instinct. Mastery: 68% → 70%.]

He went down to the cistern at midnight.

She was there, sitting on the bottom step with her back to the wall and her arms around her knees. Her hair was wet, a chain disappeared under her collar, and she didn’t get up.

He went past her to the water, knelt, and began to fill the first bucket.

"Someone was down here last night. Before me. Was it you?"

"I filled the buckets for the morning, Captain. Same as every night."

"Did you see anyone?"

"No, Captain."

She didn’t ask again.

He filled the first bucket and started on the second. Behind him, he could hear her breathing. Short, hard breaths that went to the top of her chest and no further. The same breaths he had heard in the dark of the Pools, right before she came at him.

’Don’t. Don’t say it. Water boys don’t give advice to captains.’

"Captain. An old book I read said something about breathing."

"Then keep it to yourself."

He kept filling the bucket.

"What did it say?" she asked, after a while.

"All the way down. Slow. Hold it at the bottom. Let it out in one line, like the tide." He set the bucket on the stone. "Take nothing. Return everything."

She stopped moving.

He knew at once he had said too much. He heard it in the silence.

"That’s Ashgrave breathing." She said it slowly. "They say it’s how Vivienne Ashgrave pulled the moon down in front of ten thousand people. It’s not in any book a farm boy reads."

"It was in a library, Captain."

"Which library?"

"I don’t remember."

’Why not tell her your real name while you’re at it?’

She stared at him. He kept his eyes on her badge, his face empty, his hands on the bucket handle.

Then she closed her eyes and breathed. All the way down. Badly, the first time: her shoulders came up and she let it out too fast. The second time was worse. On the third, she held it at the bottom, let it go in one slow line, and her hands loosened on her knees.

He picked up his buckets and went quietly to the stair.

"Water boy."

He stopped.

"Tomorrow night." She didn’t open her eyes. "The Pools. You hold the lantern at the door, and you count. If I’m not up by five hundred, you come in and pull me out."

"Captain, I’m..."

"You don’t matter. Nobody will ask why a water boy was there. That’s the point." She opened her eyes. "Five hundred. Don’t lose count."

The Pools were warm and silent and full of steam, just as he remembered. She walked in through the iron door without a glance at the two guards beside it. They looked at the water boy behind her with his lantern and decided not to have an opinion.

She stopped abruptly at the edge of the deep pool.

"Turn around."

He turned to face the iron door, the lantern in his hand, and heard the clink of her coat buckles and the thud of her boots on the stone, then the soft heavy sound of someone stepping off stone into something thick and warm.

"Count."

"One. Two."

The blood closed over her.

"Three."

He counted exactly as he had counted his days on the rock by the black sea. Slowly, out loud, under his breath, one number for every heartbeat. Steam drifted past him through the lantern light. Somewhere in the walls, water dripped.

At forty, the cold in his side opened one eye.

He felt it wake, slowly and heavily, and turn toward the pool behind him. Not toward the blood. Toward what was in it. Toward the warm, thick, months-deep thing it had tasted once in the dark and never finished.

"Fifty-one. Fifty-two."

He pressed his free hand hard against his ribs.

It pushed back.

It had never pushed back before, not like this. In the Furnace, in the Pools, in the frozen forest, it had leaned and tugged and sulked, and in the end it had always settled when he held it. Tonight, it pressed against his hand from the inside like something leaning on a door, and it didn’t stop.

"Ninety. Ninety-one."

He had fed it before he came down, more than he had ever fed it in one night. The heat of a whole brazier. The hardness of twenty stones. The grip of every crawling thing he could find on the ridge.

It didn’t want stones.

"One hundred and forty."

His hand was shaking against his ribs. The scar was cold enough to burn. Behind him, the pool lay perfectly calm, and he could feel her in it, at the bottom, in the dark. He knew exactly where she was, as surely as he knew where his own hands were. The cold could feel her.

’Don’t turn around. Don’t you dare turn around!’

"Two hundred."

"Three hundred and six."

At four hundred, he felt her heart slow.

At four hundred and fifty, he felt it stop.

He stood with his back to the pool, the lantern in one hand and the other pressed so hard against his side that his fingers ached, and he counted. The thing in his scar had gone silent, like a cat right before it pounces.

"Four hundred and ninety. Four hundred and ninety-one."

Behind him, nothing moved in the blood.

The iron heart on her chest didn’t wake.

"Five hundred," Aren said.

And turned around.