Chapter 66: A House with Open Windows

Dinraal discovered that moving into a house required considerably more judgment than moving an asteroid.

The asteroid had not needed to fit through a doorway.

“Turn it,” Isolde said.

He turned the cabinet.

“The other way.”

He stopped.

Behind him, Beren made a sound of profound disappointment.

“You helped build that door.”

“I remember.”

“Then you should remember how wide it is.”

Dinraal looked at the cabinet, the doorway, and the silver beginning to spread over his fingers.

“No,” Isolde said immediately.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I could widen it.”

“The doorway?”

“A little.”

Beren set down his tools.

“If you alter my frame to avoid turning a cabinet, I’ll make you hang the door again.”

Dinraal withdrew the silver.

With considerable maneuvering, and advice from both sides of the wall, the cabinet finally entered the house.

It stood beside the kitchen.

Exactly where Isolde had wanted it.

Dinraal stepped back.

“There.”

Isolde came beside him and slid an arm around his waist.

“Well done.”

He looked at her.

“You sound surprised.”

“Only by how little of the house we lost.”

They did not have much to move.

That surprised him.

Their lives had filled ships, councils, battlefields, and more conversations than he could remember.

Their possessions occupied a few bags, two storage cases, and a cart that Halen had loaned them.

Isolde carried her wedding dress herself.

She laid it in the wardrobe and stood looking at it for a moment before closing the doors.

Dinraal placed the small pot of green shoots on the kitchen windowsill.

Morning light would reach it there.

Their cups went into the cabinet.

Their blankets onto the bed.

Her journal onto a shelf within easy reach of the table.

His gauntlet remained on his hand.

He had nowhere else to put it.

Aurelius arrived carrying a wrapped object.

Dinraal opened the door.

“You don’t have to bring anything.”

“I know.”

The older man stepped inside and looked around.

His gaze moved over the table, the window, and the doorway leading toward the bedrooms.

Then he handed over the parcel.

Inside lay a small wooden box.

Dinraal opened it.

Two spare keys rested on a folded cloth.

He looked up.

Aurelius smiled.

“Beren asked me to bring them. I thought wrapping them would make him seem less irritable.”

From the kitchen, Beren called, “I heard that.”

“I expected you would.”

Dinraal turned one of the keys between his fingers.

A small piece of metal.

No command authority.

No ancient inheritance.

Just a way to open his own front door.

He closed his hand around it.

“Thank you.”

Rhiannon brought food.

Tiamat brought plates.

Aramaeis brought a bench for the garden, carried beneath one arm as though it weighed no more than the wrapped bread in Rhiannon’s hands.

Dinraal watched him place it beside the back door.

“Did you make that?”

“With help.”

Beren glanced through the doorway.

“He measures properly.”

Dinraal decided not to answer.

The First Weapon investigated every room before settling beneath the table, where he could observe the preparation of food without appearing too interested.

Isolde put a dish on the counter.

“We said a quiet first meal.”

Rhiannon looked around the kitchen.

“It is quiet.”

Aurelius and Tiamat were arguing about where to put the extra chairs.

Beren was explaining to Aramaeis why the garden gate needed to remain open until its lower hinge had been adjusted.

Someone knocked at the front door.

Rhiannon smiled.

“Relatively.”

It was Mara.

She carried no food.

Only a folder.

Dinraal’s stomach tightened before she spoke.

“It can wait,” she said.

He looked at the folder.

“Can it?”

“Yes. Nothing urgent.”

After a moment, he opened the door wider.

“Then come and eat.”

Mara hesitated.

Isolde appeared behind him.

“We have enough.”

“That has become a dangerous claim in this town,” Mara said.

But she entered.

The meal spread across the table, then onto the counter.

People passed plates.

Tiamat opened the kitchen window because the room had grown warm.

A breeze moved through the house.

Dinraal sat with his back toward the wall out of habit.

Then he noticed the empty chair beside Isolde.

He moved.

Aurelius saw.

He said nothing.

Mara waited until the food had been cleared before opening the folder.

“There are requests from the annex survivors.”

Dinraal’s attention sharpened.

“Problems with their rooms?”

“Some. We’re handling those. This is about contact with their families.”

Several survivors had relatives in other colonies.

Others had been taken from ships whose destinations were uncertain.

A few wanted to leave Hearth as soon as they were medically cleared.

Mara spoke carefully.

“They’re grateful. But this isn’t where they were going.”

Dinraal nodded.

“Then we help them get there.”

“We’ll need courier space. Passenger berths when routes are secure.”

Aurelius reached for the folder.

“I can arrange coordination with the Imperial colony.”

“One woman wants to return to the depot.”

The room quieted.

“Why?” Isolde asked.

“Her son worked there. He wasn’t among the people we recovered.”

Dinraal looked down at the table.

The depot still contained too many unanswered questions.

“We should give her the current search report,” he said. “And someone she can speak to regularly. She shouldn’t have to ask a different person every day.”

Mara made a note.

“Davren asked for you as well.”

Lysa’s husband had been awake for longer periods over the last two days.

Johanna still refused to allow visitors whenever he grew tired.

“What does he need?”

“He says he remembers something.”

Johanna let Dinraal and Isolde into Davren’s room the next morning.

“For fifteen minutes.”

Dinraal nodded.

“I mean it.”

“I believed you the first time.”

“Your expression suggested negotiation.”

Inside, Davren sat propped against pillows.

Lysa occupied the chair beside him, mending the cuff of his jacket.

The repaired elbow remained exactly as it had been.

Dinraal noticed and smiled.

Davren followed his gaze.

“She won’t replace it.”

“It survived longer than most of our possessions,” Lysa said. “It can survive you complaining.”

Davren managed a small laugh.

Then he looked at Dinraal.

“I keep remembering pieces.”

“You don’t have to force them.”

“I’m not trying to. That’s the problem.”

Lysa put down her sewing.

Davren rubbed his fingers together.

“They asked about Halden’s Reach. Who handled arrivals. Who would notice a ship missing. Which people would open a door if they heard someone they knew.”

Dinraal sat.

Isolde took the chair beside him.

“They recorded you.”

Davren nodded.

“But sometimes they argued.”

“With one another?”

“Yes.”

He looked toward the closed door.

“The thin one. Voss. I heard someone call him that. He was talking to something through the wall.”

Dinraal kept his voice even.

“What did he say?”

Davren swallowed.

“That they were wasting material.”

Lysa’s hand tightened around his.

“He said copying a voice didn’t teach them why someone would answer it.”

Isolde went very still.

“Do you remember anything else?”

“A place.”

Davren closed his eyes.

“The next shipment was going somewhere called the Choir.”

Dinraal told Johanna when Davren began trembling.

They left before the fifteen minutes had passed.

Outside, Isolde leaned against the corridor wall.

“The Choir.”

He nodded.

Neither liked the name.

Through the door, Lysa spoke softly to her husband.

Dinraal waited until his breathing had steadied.

Then he took the memory to Asha and Eve.

They did not find the word in the depot’s destination lists.

They found it in the freight classifications.

Asha placed three transfer entries beside one another.

“The spelling is abbreviated here. We thought it was an internal cargo code.”

Eve brought up the attached records.

Each shipment contained living captives.

The four missing survey workers were among them.

Dinraal read the entry carefully.

“Same destination?”

“Same receiving authority,” Eve said. “The actual routes are missing.”

Aramaeis stood behind her.

“The depot’s dispatch system may have held them only until departure.”

“Then we need the carrier records,” Isolde said.

Asha nodded.

“Alexander is still there. We can send the request with the next courier.”

Dinraal studied the dates.

The transfers had left before their assault.

Before Voss knew they were coming.

Somewhere beyond the depot, another place was holding people.

Teaching itself their voices.

Their fears.

Their habits.

Asha looked up at him.

“This gives us a way to narrow the search. It doesn’t give us a location yet.”

“I know.”

This time, he did.

While the researchers worked, Hearth prepared to receive another convoy.

These were people who had chosen to relocate before an attack forced them.

They had packed tools.

Food stores.

Family records.

Doors from houses they intended to rebuild.

The passenger lists included farmers, teachers, mechanics, and a woman who described herself as a baker with no interest in administrative duties.

Julius read that entry aloud at the council meeting.

Rhiannon immediately asked when she would arrive.

Mara brought the discussion back to housing.

“We can take the first three ships on schedule. The fourth will need another week.”

“They can remain at the Imperial colony until then,” Aurelius said.

Meret studied the projected water demand.

“I need the northern reservoir connected before any of them land.”

Halen nodded.

“The pipe supports are ready.”

“Supports do not carry water.”

“I’m aware.”

Dinraal sat beside Isolde, listening.

A few weeks earlier, he would have offered to build everything himself.

Now he asked, “Where will lifting crews save the most time?”

Halen turned the map.

Meret leaned forward.

The answer occupied the rest of his afternoon.

Gilgamesh returned two days later.

He arrived with Alexander aboard the escort, exhausted, bruised, and deeply offended by the chair in the shuttle compartment.

“It was designed for a smaller species.”

“You chose it,” Alexander said.

“The others were worse.”

Dinraal met them at the landing field.

“How many?”

“Twenty-three more,” Alexander replied.

Dinraal stopped smiling.

“Alive?”

“All alive. Found behind a maintenance bulkhead in the depot’s lower ring. Their water was nearly gone.”

Gilgamesh’s expression changed.

He looked toward the hospital.

“The youngest asked whether we were late.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then Isolde asked, “What did you tell him?”

“That we’d come as quickly as we could.”

She nodded.

Alexander handed Dinraal a sealed case.

“Dispatch fragments. Freight-controller storage. The patrol recovered them after isolating the power sections.”

“And Voss?”

Alexander shook his head.

“Still unaccounted for.”

“The station?”

“Under Imperial control in the cleared sections. Remote systems remain disconnected. They’re searching compartment by compartment.”

Dinraal accepted the case.

Behind him, Gilgamesh looked toward the lower terrace.

“Now. I was promised a chair.”

The chair was on the porch.

Beren had built it wide enough for Gilgamesh to sit without looking as though he had borrowed furniture from a child.

Gilgamesh examined the joints.

Pressed a hand against one arm.

Then lowered himself into it.

The chair did not complain.

He closed his eyes.

“Acceptable.”

Beren folded his arms.

“High praise.”

Dinraal carried out a cup.

Gilgamesh opened one eye.

“Is this another medical beverage?”

“Tea.”

“Johanna’s tea?”

“Ordinary tea.”

He accepted it.

Inside, Alexander was speaking quietly with Aurelius.

Isolde and Rhiannon were arranging food.

The First Weapon lay across the threshold, causing everyone to step over him.

Gilgamesh looked out across the river.

After a while, he said, “They were building more than the anchors.”

Dinraal sat on the porch step.

“At the depot?”

“Rooms. Narrow ones. Windows into larger chambers. Some had chairs fixed to the floor.”

Dinraal stared toward the garden gate.

“The recording rooms.”

“Yes.”

Gilgamesh turned the cup slowly.

“I like enemies I can recognize before they start speaking.”

“So do I.”

For once, neither tried to make the other laugh.

The recovered freight controller contained a route.

Not a complete one.

Two departure points had been overwritten.

Several timestamps disagreed.

But one destination remained consistent across three shipments.

A cold system beyond the old survey corridor.

No registered colony.

No active Imperial installation.

Only an abandoned extraction site listed in an outdated chart.

Asha called the others after checking it twice.

Dinraal entered the research shelter with Isolde and found the map already open.

Arcturus had marked distances from nearby patrol routes.

Eve stood beside a list of transferred captives.

Among them were the four names from Halden’s Reach.

“Can we send a probe?” Dinraal asked.

“Yes,” Arcturus said. “A passive survey first. Nothing that answers local traffic.”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow.”

Asha enlarged the extraction site.

“The original installation was built beneath the surface of an airless moon. Deep tunnels, shielded power systems, large storage caverns.”

“Enough room for what?” Isolde asked.

Asha looked toward the transfer figures.

“More people than we found in the annex.”

Aramaeis studied the route.

“We should compare it against the archive’s restricted locations.”

Eve nodded.

“I already sent the coordinates to the team preparing the return supply run.”

Dinraal looked at her.

They had promised the custodian help.

That promise had not been forgotten.

“Who’s going?”

“Engineers. Storage technicians. Two medical researchers who want access to the preserved studies.”

“And an escort,” Arcturus added.

Dinraal turned back to the map.

Two journeys.

One toward answers someone had preserved.

One toward people someone had hidden.

He hoped both would return.

That night, the house finally became theirs.

No guests remained.

The dishes were washed.

The last storage case stood empty beside the bedroom door.

Isolde walked through the kitchen, extinguishing the lights one at a time.

Dinraal checked the garden gate.

Its lower hinge moved smoothly now.

When he returned, she stood beside the front door holding the key Aurelius had brought.

“Ready?”

He glanced around.

Their table.

Their cups.

The plant on the sill.

Her journal open beside the lamp.

The First Weapon had claimed the rug at the foot of the bed.

“Yes.”

Isolde closed the door.

Turned the key.

The small click carried clearly through the quiet house.

Dinraal came up behind her and rested his hands at her waist.

She leaned back against him.

For a moment, he expected to feel trapped.

Instead, he felt the cool wood beneath his palm and the warmth of his wife against him.

He kissed the side of her neck.

“We’re still missing curtains.”

“Rhiannon knows.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s an inevitability.”

He laughed.

She turned in his arms and kissed him properly.

Later, when they lay together beneath their own roof, Dinraal heard the river through the open bedroom window.

He listened until sleep came.

Far from Hearth, a light moved along a tunnel wall.

The woman carrying it kept one hand against the stone.

She had learned the route by counting steps.

Thirty-eight from the sleeping chamber.

Twelve past the broken pipe.

Then the corner where the voices became louder.

Behind the sealed door, someone spoke with her brother’s voice.

He had been dead for six years.

She kept walking.

At the next junction, a man waited beside a maintenance panel.

One of the four survey workers taken from Halden’s Reach.

He had found a loose fastener in the sleeping chamber two nights earlier.

Now he held it up.

A small piece of metal.

Enough, perhaps, to open something.

The woman shaded her light.

“Did anyone see you?”

He shook his head.

Together, they knelt beside the panel.

Beyond the wall, the voices continued practicing.