Chapter 117: The Girl at His Table

Chapter 117: The Girl at His Table

Silas spent the morning in Sorel’s lecture hall, trying to take notes on mana circulation. Every quarter hour he looked out the window toward the infirmary and lost his place.

He’d offered to wait outside. Mara had told him, kindly, that she would rather walk into her own assessment like a grown woman than with her son on the bench outside like a parcel. So at nine he’d watched her go up the infirmary steps from across the green, and then he’d gone to class.

At noon she was waiting for him on those same steps with an envelope in both hands.

He couldn’t tell how it had gone. He looked at the envelope, hoping for some helpful word on the outside.

"Well?" he said.

"Sit down," Mara said. "I’ve been sitting for three hours, but you sit."

He sat on the step. She sat beside him and turned the envelope over.

"She’s good. Dr Kerr. She doesn’t waste a word." Mara took a breath. "My judgment’s sound. That’s what she said. She gave me four cases on paper and two real patients, and she said my decisions were right and my hands are steady and my mana handling is clean. Then she put me on the flow plate and the new charting forms." A small grimace. "I was slow. I knew what I was seeing and couldn’t write it down the way they want it written now. Half the forms have changed since I trained. She said I can’t practice on my own until that’s fixed."

Silas’s stomach dropped.

"So she’s offered me a refresher placement," Mara went on. "Supervised, here, at the infirmary. A set number of weeks working under one of her senior medics. Then she reassesses me. If I meet the requirements, there may be paid assistant work after that." She tapped the envelope. "It’s all in here. In writing. The dates she’ll arrange with me later."

He nearly offered to ask about rooms near the infirmary. She hadn’t even told him whether she wanted the placement yet.

"What do you think?" he asked.

Mara looked at him for a moment as if he’d surprised her.

"I think I want it," she said. "I want to do it properly. I’m taking this home and reading it about fifty times, and then I’m writing to her." She smoothed the envelope flat on her knee. "And I’m still going home tomorrow. That’s what I came for."

"I know," Silas said.

He was so proud of her that he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he put an arm round her shoulders on the infirmary steps in full view of the green, and she let him, and laughed at him a little for it.

***

Silas could fit three people around his table, provided nobody wanted to move once they were seated.

Mara took the guest chair, because she was the guest. Silas dragged the desk chair round for Elyra and sat on the end of the bed himself, with the table pulled close and a pot of soup from the refectory on it, and a loaf from the bakery by the gate, and Mara’s tea, which she’d insisted on making herself because nobody else made it strong enough. Nim had retreated to the top of the wardrobe to watch.

Elyra arrived exactly on time. She’d put her hair up with more care than usual, and she was wearing a dark blue dress he hadn’t seen before, and she had a small paper bag of honey biscuits she held out to Mara with both hands, as if it might be refused.

"Thank you," Mara said, taking it. "You must be Elyra."

"Yes. It’s very good to meet you, Mistress—" Elyra stopped.

"Mara is fine," his mother said.

"Mara," Elyra said carefully, as if trying it for size.

Silas started talking. He told Mara about the soup, which was barley, and where the bakery was, and how Elyra’s Star Class had a different timetable from his, and why the honey biscuits were from the shop by the east gate, which he only guessed. Every time a pause opened, he filled it. He could hear himself doing it and couldn’t stop.

"Silas," Mara said gently.

"Yes?" Silas asked.

"I think Elyra can answer for herself," Mara said.

Elyra looked down at her soup, and her mouth twitched.

He shut up. It was surprisingly difficult.

Mara turned to Elyra. "Does he still forget to eat when he’s busy? At home I used to send a tray up and find it there at midnight."

"Yes," Elyra said at once. "When he came back from Harrowglass, he’d had nothing since a coach lunch at midday. It was past eight in the evening. I took him bread rolls and he ate them faster than I could hand them over." She stopped. She seemed to hear, a moment too late, how much it said about where she’d been at eight in the evening and whose bread rolls they’d been.

Mara looked at Silas.

"It was a long day," Silas said.

"It’s always a long day," Mara said.

"I had a ruin," Silas protested.

"You always have a ruin," Mara said.

He looked from one of them to the other. There was no defense to be had against two people who had both been right there. "I’m going to eat my soup," he announced, "and neither of you can stop me."

Elyra laughed, properly, with her hand over her mouth, and Mara laughed too. Silas finally tasted the soup. It was quite good, considering he had chosen it in a panic.

When Mara cut the bread, she passed Elyra a thick slice from the middle of the loaf, all soft white crumb. Elyra took it as though it were a test she’d studied for, and lifted it with clear determination.

Silas, without saying anything, took it off her plate and put his own piece there, the end of the loaf, mostly crust.

Elyra looked at the crust. Then at him. Then she began to eat it.

He caught Mara watching, her cup halfway to her mouth. She didn’t say anything. She drank her tea.

After that, Elyra did ask about the work, the way she’d said she would, and Mara told her about the flow plate and the apprentice’s wrong hand, and Elyra laughed at exactly the right place and then asked a real question about what mana looked like on the plate when someone was frightened, and Mara set her cup down and answered it at length.

Silas mostly listened. It was easier than he’d expected.

Eventually Mara asked, "And what do you enjoy? Away from your classes."

Elyra straightened a little. "I’m studying spirit behavior," she said. "Particularly settlement patterns among minor elementals. My advisor thinks it might—" She stopped. Her hands had gone still on the table.

Silas remembered her voice in the half dark, weeks ago, saying something about wind.

"You told me once the little wind ones settle in corners," he said. "Where two winds meet. Is there a place like that here?"

Elyra turned to look at him. For a second, she didn’t seem to know what to do with the fact that he remembered.

"The north wall walk," she said, and her shoulders came down. "Behind the bell tower. The wind comes round both sides and meets, and they collect there, a dozen of them, sometimes more, in the evenings. I go there when I can’t sleep. It’s very cold. I don’t think anyone else knows about it." She looked at Mara, a little shyly. "It’s the nicest place in the academy."

"Then I hope I see it someday," Mara said, "in summer."

***

He walked Elyra to the bottom of the stairs, where the lamps were on and the air was cool.

She stopped on the last step and turned. "Did I talk too much?"

"No." He meant it so plainly it surprised him. "I liked having you there."

She looked at him for a moment longer than usual. Then she smiled and went off across the yard, and at the corner she turned and lifted a hand.

When he got back, Mara was washing cups at his little sink with her sleeves pushed up, as though she lived there.

"Leave those," Silas said.

"No," Mara said. She rinsed one and set it upside down to drain. Then, without turning around, "Do you like her?"

Silas stood in the middle of his room and thought about lying, and couldn’t see the point.

"I think I do," he said.

Mara nodded at the cup in her hands, and didn’t say anything else, and he loved her a great deal for it.