Chapter 97: After Breakfast

Chapter 97: After Breakfast

Silas had decided to have a normal morning, and he was doing it very badly.

He’d buttered his toast, eaten half a slice, and put the knife away in the dart case. Now he was looking for his notes for Professor Sorel’s lecture, though the paper in his hand was a delivery slip covered in questions for his mother. Did he say yes? Conditions? When? What does she need? He knew them without looking.

"You put the knife in the dart box," Nim said from the pillow.

Silas opened the case. The butter knife lay across the dart, smearing it.

"I know," he said.

"You didn’t know. You were looking at the door," Nim said.

He cleaned the knife and the dart, which made him feel stupid in two separate ways. Then he sat on the bed with his communicator on his knee and told himself he was going to finish dressing, and didn’t.

Breakfast in the Rooke house was at eight; he knew that from the inherited memories. After breakfast meant half past, perhaps nine. It was nine now. She’s in there, he thought. She’s in his study right now. He could picture the room: the long desk, the window behind Edmund so that visitors had to squint, the chair he never offered.

He’d promised not to call his father. He sat on his hands, more or less literally.

At twenty past nine, the communicator buzzed.

He answered it before the first chime finished.

Mara’s face filled the screen. She was in her sitting room. Her hair was pinned up neatly, she had on the good gray blouse, and her cheeks were pink in a way he had only ever seen when she was angry or cold.

"He said yes," she said.

Silas let out a breath he felt all the way to his knees.

"For the assessment," Mara went on, before he could say anything. "A visit. However long the assessment takes, and then I come home. He was very clear about the coming home." Her mouth twisted slightly. "He said it twice."

"But he said yes," Silas said.

"He said yes," Mara said.

"How did it go?" Silas asked.

She looked down at her hands, deciding what to tell him.

"I didn’t ask him to let me go," she said. "I asked him for leave to attend a professional assessment. I told him what it was for. That a senior physician at Crownless wanted to judge whether I’m fit to practice again, and that I can’t know that without going." She hesitated. "He asked who arranged it. I said I did. He asked whether you’d put me up to it."

"What did you say?" Silas asked.

"That you’d found the door and I’d decided to knock." She almost smiled. "He looked at me for a long time after that. Then he said I could go, and come back when it was done, and that the steward would see to the dates. And then he went back to his letters. That was all."

She paused, looking down. Silas waited, but she said nothing more about Edmund.

"Mother," he said. "That’s—you did it."

"I did," Mara said, and the pink in her cheeks deepened. She sounded faintly astonished.

The relief came first, warm and simple. Then, right behind it, something else arrived, already moving fast. She’d be here. On academy ground. Once she was here, she could see Kerr, and if Kerr liked her, then perhaps there’d be supervised work, and if there was work, then rooms, and if she had rooms, then she’d never have to—

"Once you’re here," he said, "we could look at whether—"

He heard himself and stopped.

Mara waited, eyebrows raised.

"Never mind," Silas said. "That was me building the house again."

"It was a very large house," she agreed. "With a garden."

"I’m sorry," Silas said.

"Don’t be sorry. Just don’t build it yet." Her voice softened. "He agreed to a visit, Silas. That’s what he agreed to. If I treat it as anything else, I’ll lose it."

"What do you want me to do?" Silas asked. "Actually do."

Mara relaxed a little.

"Two things," Mara said. "Talk to Dr Kerr for me about a date. She’ll be busy, and you’re there, and I don’t want to send her six messages from here asking what day suits. Find out what days she has, and whether there’s anything I need to send her beforehand. Records, references, whatever she uses." She held up a finger. "That’s all. I’ll arrange my own travel. I’ll find my own lodging. I’ll pack my own case."

"Two things," Silas said.

"Two things," Mara said firmly. "And you can tell me what the weather’s like."

He laughed, and she laughed too, and some of the strain went out of her shoulders.

"I’ve been reading the material she sent," Mara said. "The introductory notes. Have you ever seen a flow plate?"

"No," Silas said.

"Neither had I. It’s clever. It’s a sort of layered glass, and you rest the patient’s hand on it, and the mana shows up as color in the layers, so you can see where it pools and where it thins." She was talking faster now, leaning toward the screen. "The old needles only told you one point at a time. You had to build a picture in your head by going up the arm. This gives you the whole picture at once. Half the guessing’s gone. I spent an hour last night trying to work out what a channel-shock pattern would look like on one."

"Did you work it out?" Silas asked.

"I think so. I’ll find out when someone shows me a real one and laughs at me," Mara said.

He’d heard this eagerness when she described her old patients, but today she was talking about work she might do again. She used words he didn’t know, caught herself, and waved a hand before explaining them. For once, she had gone several minutes without glancing toward the door. He was reluctant to interrupt.

She’s good at this, he thought, and he was proud of her so suddenly that it caught in his throat.

"You’re staring," Mara said.

"You sound different," Silas said.

"Different how?" Mara asked.

"Like you know what you’re talking about," Silas said.

"I do know what I’m talking about. Some of it." She looked pleased and embarrassed at once. "I’m terrified, you know. I’m going to walk into that infirmary and be the oldest beginner in the building."

"You won’t be a beginner," Silas said.

"I’ll be a beginner at flow plates." She glanced at something off-screen, and her voice dropped back to its household level. "I have to go. The steward wants to see me about the dates. Talk to Dr Kerr?"

"Today," Silas said.

"Thank you, sweetheart," Mara said.

The screen went dark.

Silas sat for a moment with the communicator in his hand. Then he wrote to Kerr before he could forget a single word of it.

Dr Kerr, my mother has leave to travel for the assessment. She asked me to find out which days would suit you, and whether there’s anything she should send beforehand. She’ll arrange her own travel. Thank you. — Silas Rooke

He finished dressing, properly this time.

"Good news?" Nim asked.

"Good news," Silas said.

"Is she coming here?" Nim asked.

"For a few days. To be tested by a doctor," Silas said.

Nim thought about this. "Does she like spirits?"

"She liked you," Silas said.

"Then she can come," Nim said, and lay back down.

***

He was running late for Professor Sorel’s lecture. Usually he would have dreaded every head turning when he slipped into the room; today, even that seemed bearable. His mother was coming. He wanted to show her the grounds, though he suspected she’d be more interested in the infirmary than any of the buildings he liked.

The notice board outside the lecture hall held the usual mess: lost practice gear, examination reminders, a society that wanted members for something involving bells. He was already past it when one notice caught his eye, and he walked back.

It was on the heavy cream paper the field-instruction office used, with the academy seal in one corner.

SUPERVISED FIELD EXERCISE — HARROWGLASS CONSERVATORY (OUTER SECTIONS). Applications open to eligible students.

He read the name twice.

Harrowglass.

He knew it. Not this notice, not this paper, but the name. A green-roofed glass hall on a loading screen, a map with half its rooms grayed out, and somewhere off to the side of it, in a corner nobody else had bothered with, a shaded little court with an old stone channel running through it.

And something growing there that he had once paid a great deal of money for, in another life.