Chapter 59: Two Hands

Chapter 59: Chapter 59: Two Hands

The argument started over breakfast.

Tobin had insisted on feeding the newcomer before anything else, so at five in the morning they were all crowded around the long table in the Sanctum kitchen while he fried eggs and something that smelled like sausage but was probably eel. Hana sat at the far end in a borrowed sweater of Marcus’s with the sleeves rolled four times, eating like someone who hadn’t had a hot meal in a month. She probably hadn’t.

Marcus was explaining how things worked here, in his flat, sensible way: gates, ranks, the Association, the family. He’d reached the Hollow Mines when he said it.

"—and that’s where Elias put Kessler in the river."

Hana’s fork stopped.

"Kessler," she said. "Was that a monster?"

The table went quiet. Tobin’s spatula paused over the pan.

"No," Elias said. "A man."

Hana set the fork down very carefully.

"You killed him."

"Yes."

"Was he armed?"

"He was trying to kill me. And my friend. And he’d have kept trying."

Hana looked at him for a long time. Her face wasn’t angry. That was the worst of it. It was tired, the way it had been tired on the roof, the way a face gets after four years of watching what weapons do.

"I spent four years putting people back together," she said quietly. "Both sides. Every side. Every one of them had been trying to kill somebody else. I never asked who started it. I just held the pressure." She folded her hands on the table. "I’m going to save your sister, Elias. I want you to know that before I say the rest. Nothing you’ve done changes it."

"Say the rest."

"I won’t carry a weapon. I won’t help you take a life. Not ever. Not for a good reason, not for the best reason in the world. Don’t ask me. And when someone falls, whoever they are, if I can reach them, I’ll bring them back. Even the ones you knock down."

Elias held her eyes.

"I won’t ask you to," he said. "But I won’t promise I’ll never do it again. If someone comes for my family, I’ll stop them. However I have to."

"I know," Hana said. "Men like you always say that." She picked her fork back up. "And men like you are usually the ones I end up stitching."

Nobody spoke. Then Aveline said mildly, without looking up from her tea, "She’s going to be good for you."

"I know," Elias said.

Tobin slid another egg onto Hana’s plate. "Eat," he said. "Arguing’s hungry work."

For three nights after that, the surgeon and the pacifist argued about everything.

They argued in Lena’s white-tiled theater at the edge of the Sanctum, which had grown a neighbor overnight: a long canvas tent with forty cots, every one of them made up with clean sheets and empty, smelling of rain and carbolic. Hana had walked into it the first morning and stood very still for a long time, and nobody had disturbed her.

Then they argued.

They argued about anesthesia. Hana’s world had ether and not much else, so Lena had to explain every drug twice, and Hana wanted the dose of every one written down in her little notebook in her careful, slanting hand.

They argued about who would lead. ("I’m the surgeon." "And I’m the one keeping her alive while you cut, so when I say stop, you stop.")

They argued about the room. Lena wanted the ICU’s equipment. Hana wanted a door that locked.

They argued about hand-washing for forty minutes, until Tobin brought them tea, which they both drank without noticing.

Mostly, they tested Rewind.

Tobin volunteered. He nicked his thumb with a paring knife, over and over, and Hana turned it back each time while Lena timed her with a stopwatch. They learned the edges of it fast. Rewind could reach back a little over a minute; past that, the wound stayed. The first few uses cost Hana nothing. By the sixth she was pale. By the eighth her nose was bleeding, and Lena took her wrist and said, "Enough."

"Eight," Lena said, writing it on the tiled wall in grease pencil. "Eight, if she’s fresh. And the heart may stop more often than that."

"Then it won’t," Hana said. "Because you’ll work fast."

"I always work fast."

"Then faster."

And yet, Elias noticed, there was one thing they never argued about. Whenever Mira’s name came up, the voices dropped and the bickering stopped. They’d lean over Lena’s sketches of the channels the gate mana had dug through his sister, heads together, murmuring low and quick, and they agreed on every single line.

On the third night, Lena put down her pencil.

"One more thing," she said to Elias. "Extraction has rules. The target has to be subdued or consenting, and I’m not knocking your sister out and pulling things out of her without asking."

"She’s asleep most of the time."

"Then wake her," Lena said. "And ask her. Properly. She has to know what she’s saying yes to."

Hana looked at him. "Does she know? What you are?"

Elias didn’t answer.

"Oh, Elias," Hana said softly.

Mira woke a little after four the next afternoon, the way she sometimes did: suddenly and all at once, with her eyes already looking for him.

"You look terrible," she said. Her voice was thin, but it was hers.

"Thanks."

"No, really. You look like you got hit by a truck." She squinted. "And you look different. Bigger. Did you join a gym? You can’t afford a gym."

Elias pulled the chair close to the bed. He’d rehearsed this on the bus, and every version had sounded insane.

So he just told her.

The Drowned Cathedral. The wall. Garrick. The voice in the dark, the window of light, the knight who’d come through it. The gates. The levels. Marcus and Tobin and Lena. The night doctor who’d been drawing poison out of her while she slept. The money. All of it, in order, while she stared at him.

When he finished, Mira burst out laughing.

It turned into a coughing fit halfway through, and he had to hold the water cup for her, but she kept laughing anyway. "Oh my god," she wheezed. "Oh my god, Eli. You’ve been reading my web novels. You read the summoner one, the one with the—"

He held out his hand, palm up, and said, "Aveline."

A fold of white-gold light opened at the foot of the bed. A knight in plate armor stepped out of it, ducked her head under the IV pole, and bowed.

"Lady Mira," Aveline said. "It is an honor."

Mira stopped laughing.

She looked at the knight for a long time. Then she looked at her brother: at the bruises fading on his arms, at the old watch ticking on his wrist. Elias watched her understand. Not the summons. The rest of it. Every night he’d come in late. Every bruise he’d explained away. Every gate.

Her face crumpled.

"You idiot," she whispered, and she was crying. "You absolute idiot. You did all of that for me? By yourself?"

"Not by myself," Elias said. "Not for a long time now."

Mira wiped her face on the hospital blanket, furious and red-eyed.

"Everyone," she said. "I want to meet everyone. Right now."

"Mira, it’s an ICU—"

"Right now, Eli."

Nurse Ruiz, passing the glass, looked in at the knight standing beside Mira’s bed and stopped. She looked at Elias. She looked at the knight again.

Then she sighed, reached up, and drew the curtain across the window.

"Ten minutes," she said through it. "And if anyone asks, they’re cousins."

So he called them. Marcus came through first, stood at the end of the bed, and saluted, perfectly straight, which made Mira laugh again. Tobin came through holding a covered dish ("It’s only broth, love, but it’s a start") and knelt beside the bed as if he’d known her for years. Lena checked her chart without asking anyone’s permission. Hana came last, quietly, took Mira’s wrist, counted on Elias’s watch, and smiled.

There were six of them in a room built for one bed. The knight’s elbow was caught in the curtain, the cook was crying a little, and Mira looked at all of them with her eyes shining.

Then Lena sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Mira," she said. "I’m a surgeon. I can take the gate sickness out of you. All of it. It will be the hardest night of your life. Your heart will stop, and Hana will start it again. I’ll need hours. And I need you to say yes, knowing all of that."

Mira looked at her. Then at Hana. Then, last, at her brother.

"Yes," she said. "Obviously, yes."

[Extract and Graft: Patient consent registered.]

Lena nodded once and stood.

"Three a.m.," she said. "Tomorrow."