Chapter 200: I knew you were there

The door across the road opened at dawn.

Leon had not slept. He had sat on the flat roof with his back against the brick for the whole of the night, and he had watched the street turn from black to gray to the thin pink of early morning.

Nothing had come down it but the cat. A milk cart had rattled past at five, and a baker had opened his shutters at six, and not one hunter had so much as glanced at the little house with the lit kitchen window.

He considered that a successful night.

Then the door opened, and Iris stepped out onto her front step with her arms folded and her hair still tied up from sleep.

She did not look at the street. She looked straight up at the roof where he was sitting, and her face was entirely without surprise.

"Good morning," she said.

Leon sat very still.

’She has seen you,’ Medusa observed.

’I noticed.’

’I told you that she would.’

"I know you are there," Iris called. She did not shout. She pitched her voice across the empty road, flat and clear, like a woman calling a child in for supper. "You have been there since last night. Come down."

He thought about pretending that he was a chimney. It would have been a poor effort, and he was fairly sure that she would see through it.

He stood up instead, brushed the grit off his coat, and dropped lightly from the parapet to the road, where he landed on the stones with a soft thump.

They looked at each other across a dozen paces of damp cobbles.

"How long have you known?" Leon asked.

"Since about ten minutes after you left." She tilted her head. "You cast a shadow on my curtain. Whenever the lamp at the end of the road flickered, I could see the outline of your head. It was very distracting."

"I did not think the light reached that far."

"It does."

"I am sorry."

"Do not be sorry. Be better at it." She stepped back from the doorway. "Come inside. You are making Mrs. Pell nervous."

"Who is Mrs. Pell?"

"The woman in the yellow house next door. She has been watching you from behind her blind for an hour. She thinks that you are a burglar." Iris’s mouth twitched.

"I told her yesterday that I had a lodger. I am going to have to tell her that you were out all night, and she will want to know with whom."

"I am not your lodger."

"You are today."

She went in. After a moment Leon followed, because it seemed to him that a person who had been invited to cross a threshold ought to take the invitation before it was withdrawn.

The kitchen smelled of fresh bread.

He noticed it at once. There was a loaf on the table, still steaming, and beside it a small dish of butter and a pot of the dark honey that he had used to eat by the spoonful when he thought that she was not looking.

A single chair had been pulled out. The other chair, the one that wobbled, was pushed neatly under the table, where it belonged.

He looked at the bread, and then at her.

"You said that you did not want me here," he said.

"I said that I did not want you here last night." Iris went to the stove. "It is morning. I have changed my mind."

"Have you forgiven me?"

"No."

"Then why..."

"Because you sat on a roof for nine hours, in the cold, watching my house, and you did not come to the door." She lit the flame under the kettle with a practiced flick.

"I do not know whether that is the stupidest or the most decent thing that anyone has ever done for me. I would like to know which."

"So you are going to sit down, and you are going to eat that bread, and we are going to talk."

He sat.

It was an odd thing to be fed by a person who was angry at him, and he did not entirely know how to behave.

He buttered a slice, and bit into it, and found that it was the best thing that he had ever eaten. He did not say so. He thought that it would have sounded like flattery.

Iris stood at the stove with her back to him, waiting for the water. Nobody spoke for a while.

"The association withdrew your bounty." she said at last.

"They did."

"It was on the screens yesterday afternoon. I watched the board change." She said it carefully, as one might handle a hot dish. "Was that you?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I asked."

"That is not an explanation."

"It is most of one." He swallowed the bread. "I went to the Association tower, and I asked them to stop. They said yes."

"Just like that."

"After I had explained why it would be wise."

She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder. "You explained it with your fists."

"I explained it with a shield, mostly."

"That is worse."

"I thought it was more polite."

She made a small noise that might have been the beginning of a laugh. It did not become one. She poured the water into the pot, and set it on the table, and sat down across from him.

She took the other chair, the good one, and she folded her hands together on the wood.

"I thought about it all night," she said.

"I know. I could see the curtain."

"Stop that."

"Sorry."

"I thought about what you said. About not standing still." She looked at her hands.

"I have been afraid for a very long time, Leon. I learned early that the way to stay alive is to be quiet, and to be small, and to never tell anyone anything."

Leon said nothing.

"I do not know how I feel about that."

"Neither do I."