Chapter 115: What the Refiner Said

Chapter 115: What the Refiner Said

Corwen’s smelled like a kitchen where someone had been cooking pine sap and dried orange peel for thirty years.

Jars lined one wall of the narrow shop, each labeled in the same small square hand: resin, white. Ash bark. Ember root, split. Opposite them, drying shelves held curled leaves and gray pods. At the back, a woman in a canvas apron was pressing dark paste into a mold with the flat of a knife.

She finished the mold before she looked up.

"You’re the student Leander Solvain wrote about," she said. "I’m Corwen. Let’s see it."

Silas set the collection box on the counter and opened the lid. Inside sat one pad, the one with the missing corner, and the cloth bundle of loose growth. The other two pads were on his windowsill at home, with Nim under orders not to sit on them.

Corwen studied the pad through a lens without touching it, then lifted one silver strand with the point of a pin. She rolled a pinch of the loose growth between finger and thumb and smelled it. Finally she laid a single strand on a white tile, rested her fingertip beside it, and let out a little mana, a faint pressure in the air like a held breath.

The strand brightened along its length.

"Well," Corwen said. "It’s real."

Silas breathed out.

"Silver-thread. Clean, fairly fresh, and this one’s alive because you kept the backing on." She tapped the stone with the pin. "It’s low grade. That isn’t an insult, it’s what the plant is. It goes into the base of common cultivation incense with five or six other things, and it needs washing, drying and grinding first, or it burns like wet hair." She looked up. "What do you want from me?"

He’d practiced this on the walk over, and it still came out slower than planned.

"Two things, if they’re separate. What would you pay for the pad as it is, alive? And what would it cost to make the loose growth into something I could use?"

"They’re separate. Good. Most people bring me a sack and ask what it’s worth, as if the answer’s the same whether I burn it or grow it." Corwen considered the pad. "Three hundred and sixty credits for that, backing and all. We’ve a grower past the river who’ll try to set it. For the bundle, six short sticks. I supply the rest of the compound and the work. Ninety credits, off the pad’s price if you like. Ready in three days." She tied the bundle up again. "And I’m not promising you that price next time. Bring me a clean lot and I’ll look at it."

Two hundred and seventy, Silas thought. For a box I carried home on my knees.

"Can I have a moment? It’s not only mine," Silas said.

"Take ten," Corwen said, returning to her molds.

Under the awning, he wrote to Alden and Dagna together: the price, the processing, ninety credits and two sticks each, and the two remaining pads staying with him to grow.

Dagna answered first. Yes. Get a receipt.

Alden’s came a moment later. YES. Also, you said once your mother’s visit was settled. Coach and lodging booked counts as settled, doesn’t it? I’m free at three today.

Silas grinned at the street.

Three, he wrote. I’ve got tea.

He went back in and shook Corwen’s hand, and she wrote out the receipt without being asked twice.

***

Alden knocked at three exactly.

He stepped over the threshold looking around with open curiosity, at the windowsill and the desk and the cat-shaped spirit on the pillow, who raised his head, assessed the visitor, and lowered it again.

[Record Soul Talent: Battle Evolution?]

Yes, Silas thought, and kept his eyes on his friend.

[Battle Evolution recorded to temporary slot. Duration: seven days.]

He had wanted this since Carrow Hall. Silas put the kettle on to give himself a moment, then came back before Alden could wonder why he was smiling at the stove.

"So, I’ve worked out what I actually want," Alden said, too restless to sit. "When something pushes back lightly, I’m fine. When it pushes back hard, I’m fine. But when it’s light and then suddenly gives, I go straight through it. Leander drops his blade a hair in line work and I’m three inches past where I meant to stop. Every time."

Silas thought about crossed feet in the chalk yard and a pail of water emptying itself into his boot.

"I know that one," he said.

He set a wooden drill block in the middle of the floor, about the size of a loaf. "Push it toward the wall. Slowly, with your hand, not your mana. I’ll hold it back."

Alden pushed. Silas laid Remote Grasp along the far side, thin and light, a little less than he’d use for a cup. The block crept forward against it.

Then Silas let go.

The block shot out from under Alden’s hand. Alden lurched after it, caught himself on one knee, and looked up with a wry face. "Like that."

"Like that," Silas said. "Again."

They did it a dozen times. Silas let go early, let go late, held a little harder and then softened instead of releasing. At first Alden went through every time. Around the eighth try he stopped leaning his shoulders over the block, and the lurch shrank to a stumble. Around the eleventh, he began testing the resistance with a light press before he committed his weight, like knocking on a door to hear who was home.

Silas hadn’t told him to do that.

"That," he said. "Whatever you just did."

Alden looked at his palm. "I listened first. I think I’ve been pushing before I know what I’m pushing against."

When he left an hour later, he was still flexing that hand and frowning at it in a satisfied sort of way.

***

The door clicked shut, and Silas turned straight to the block.

He used Split Focus to maintain Remote Grasp against the block while pushing it with his hand. Even knowing when he would release the hold didn’t keep him from overcommitting. The block slid forward, and his weight followed it.

Battle Evolution drew his attention to his left heel. It had risen before he released the hold, leaving him leaning on resistance he was about to remove.

He tried again with his heel down. It was clumsier, and better.

"You’re grinning at a block," Nim observed.

"I’m allowed," Silas told him.

He could have kept going for hours, and he knew it. But the window had gone amber, and he didn’t want to open the door to Elyra sweating, with a block in his hand. He washed and changed instead.

***

She came at half past six, and they walked to a soup counter by the gate where the bowls were huge and the benches were not, so they sat close because there was no other way to sit.

He told her about Corwen’s. When he got to it’s real, she smiled so suddenly that he lost his place.

"Three hundred and sixty," Elyra said. "For one."

"Minus the processing," Silas said.

"You said it might be worth nothing," Elyra reminded him.

"I did say that," he admitted.

She went back to her soup looking pleased, as though the money were partly hers. "Your mother arrives tomorrow."

"At noon. The assessment’s the morning after, and then she’ll eat with us that evening, if she isn’t worn out."

Elyra turned her spoon over. "What does she enjoy?" She saw his face. "Not food. You told me food. What does she do when nobody needs anything from her?"

Silas opened his mouth and found very little behind it.

He thought of a board game on wet evenings, with a small boy who cheated. He thought of her voice speeding up on the call when she’d talked about flow plates, as if a door had come open in her.

"She likes her work," he said slowly. "I only found that out this month. And she used to play a board game with me and let me win. She thought I didn’t notice." He hesitated. "I don’t think anyone’s asked her that in a long time."

Elyra nodded, filing it somewhere careful. "Then I’ll ask about her work."

A strand of copper hair had slipped from Elyra’s pin. She tucked it back, still considering what he’d said, and Silas forgot his cooling soup. He had been so busy worrying about awkward pauses that he hadn’t admitted how much he wanted his mother to like her.