Chapter 118: Ninety Each

Chapter 118: Ninety Each

The morning coach left at eight, and Mara was at the stop by half past seven, because she had never once in her life been late for anything that had wheels.

Silas carried her case. She carried the envelope from Kerr inside her coat, against her chest, and kept touching the place where it sat as though making sure it hadn’t climbed out.

"When you know the dates," Silas said, "what do you want me to do? Actually do, I mean."

Mara considered his question before answering.

"Keep an eye on the infirmary notices," she said. "If they post anything about placements or the refresher terms, send it to me. And answer when I write. That’s all." She paused. "I’ll do the rest. I’ll write to Kerr, and I’ll talk to the house when I’m ready to talk to the house."

"All right," Silas said.

"I mean it, Silas," Mara said.

"I know you do. I’m saying all right." He held her gaze until she believed him.

She studied his face, then nodded, satisfied.

The coach came in. The driver began heaving cases up onto the roof. Mara watched hers go up with the anxious attention of someone who had once lost a hatbox to a careless driver and never forgotten it.

Then she turned back and took his face in both hands, the way she had when he was small.

"You’re well," she said. "I’ve seen it now. I don’t have to imagine it." Her thumbs pressed his cheekbones once. "And tell Elyra I enjoyed meeting her. Not because you’d want me to say it. Because I did."

His throat did something inconvenient. "I’ll tell her."

"Eat breakfast," Mara told him.

"I’m going straight to breakfast," Silas said.

"Liar," Mara said fondly, and kissed his forehead, and climbed up.

He stood on the paving and watched the coach turn out of the square. She waved from the window until the corner took her. He waved back for a little while after that, which was stupid, and then he went to breakfast. He bought eggs and sat down to eat them, leaving his communicator in his pocket.

***

Corwen had the sticks wrapped in waxed paper on the counter when he came in mid-morning: six of them, each about as long as his finger, the color of dark honey. She’d tied them in pairs with thread.

"One at a time," she said, before he could touch them. She put a small clay dish beside them, half full of clean sand. "Stand it upright in that. Not in a cup. Not in a plant pot. Open the window a crack, because it’s smoke and you’re a person with lungs. One stick is one normal sitting. Don’t light a second because you’re impatient. It’ll help you hold your attention steady while you cultivate. It won’t do your cultivating for you." She looked at him over her spectacles. "People come back and complain it didn’t make them a rank higher overnight. I tell them to stop burning three at once."

"One stick. Window open. Normal sitting," Silas repeated.

"Good." Corwen checked the receipt and sent the remaining 270 credits to his account, then laid the paper beside the sticks. "If your growing pieces come on, bring me a clean lot. No promises on price. I’ll look."

He paid for the dish, which was extra, and carried the whole bundle home under his coat as if it might catch cold.

***

He found Alden and Dagna on the bench outside the Star Class practice hall in the early afternoon, where Dagna was rewrapping the grip of her practice blade and Alden was eating an apple.

"Payday," Silas said, and sat down between them.

He did the transfers on his communicator while they watched. Ninety to Alden. Ninety to Dagna. Then he took two pairs of sticks out of the waxed paper and held one pair out to each of them.

Dagna checked the transfer on her communicator and tucked it away. Then she unwrapped her sticks, held one to her nose, and sniffed it.

"Pine," she said. "And something like orange peel." She looked at Silas. "One at a time?"

"One a sitting, with the window open," Silas said. "She was very firm."

"Fine." Dagna wrapped them again and tucked them inside her jacket. "Thank you."

Alden turned his pair over in his fingers. He looked delighted in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with money.

"We picked this," he said. "Well. You picked it. We held slabs. But it came out of that court and now it’s this." He held the sticks up to the light. "I thought we’d come home from Harrowglass with a mark on a slate and some bruises. I didn’t think it’d turn into anything."

"Neither did I, really," Silas said.

"You did," Dagna said. "You’d been reading about that moss for weeks."

Silas couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t.

He sat on the bench in the sun between them, with a hundred and eighty credits gone from his account, and felt better than he had in a long time. He had been anxious about the price right up until Corwen paid him. Now Alden was admiring the incense and Dagna was carefully putting hers away, and Silas wanted to find another reason to do this together.

It wasn’t much. Ninety credits each would buy some meals and a pair of decent boots. It wouldn’t free him from his father’s allowance or anything like it. Corwen hadn’t promised to buy anything else. But it was real, and it was a start, and it had his friends’ names on it.

***

That evening he opened the window a crack, set the clay dish on the floor in front of him, stood one stick upright in the sand, and lit it.

The smoke rose thin and straight, then curled. It smelled of resin and something clean and faintly mineral underneath, like the damp under the Harrowglass hood. On the pillow, Nim sneezed, gave the dish a look of deep offense, and moved to the top of the wardrobe.

He sat, closed his eyes, and began Steady Current.

He knew this circulation the way he knew the stairs to his room. In through the core, out along the arms, down and round, and back. And he knew the place where his attention always drifted, a little past the turn at the left shoulder, where the current thinned and his mind wandered off to think about dinner or tomorrow or whatever was itching at him. He’d lose a breath there, sometimes two, and have to pull the flow back together.

Tonight his attention stayed with the current through the thin stretch. He was already past it when he noticed he hadn’t lost a breath there, or needed to gather the flow back together. He let it carry on, careful not to spoil the next turn by being too pleased with himself.

He did three full circuits like that. The session ended cleaner than any in weeks, with less wasted effort and less of the familiar ache behind his eyes. His rank hadn’t changed. He had simply finished more useful work before losing concentration, and for once Corwen’s warnings about impatient students seemed meant for someone else.

When he opened his eyes, the stick had burned down to a stub in the sand. He looked at the one still wrapped on the desk and decided to keep it for something that mattered.

He went to the windowsill. The two pads were holding up well on their stones, damp, with the draft from the window frame touching them. One had put out a single new strand at its edge, finer than a hair. The original slate sat beside them, its four threads a little longer than last week.

It would be weeks before either pad was large enough to split, months before there was enough to sell. They needed shade, and air, and a steadier arrangement than a windowsill and some pebbles. He couldn’t walk into Corwen’s tomorrow with another lot.

But he could build toward one. A lucky patch in a ruin had paid once. A crop he could rely on would pay again.

He wrapped the remaining stick in its waxed paper and put it in the desk drawer.

Then he set the padded target swinging, rolled his shoulders, and went back to work.