Chapter 138: Before It Moves I

By late morning on Friday, I had written a page and a half of Selene’s assignment.

Channel recovery under sustained load. Four pages. Due tomorrow.

"A page and a half," Penelope said.

We were halfway down the path to Ferran’s yard, with the rest of Sanctuary strung out ahead of us in a loose, noisy line that Cedric kept trying to straighten.

"Nearly halfway," I said.

"Three eighths."

"Nearly halfway."

She looked at me the way she looks at schedules that are wrong in ways she has already fixed, and let it go.

Practical core cultivation was still suspended. Selene had spent the morning replacing it with theory, which had mostly meant Selene drawing channels on a board and then looking at them as though they had personally let her down.

Ferran’s lesson had not been suspended.

As far as I could tell, nothing had ever happened to one of Ferran’s lessons.

At the fork, someone had strung a rope across the northern path and hung a notice from it. The notice said the Gallery was closed for inspection and that students were not to go up, and it said both things twice, in case anyone had missed them the first time.

"Darius went up again," Roland announced, to nobody in particular. "Before breakfast."

"What’s he looking for?" said Cedric.

"He’s measuring something."

"Measuring what?"

"If anyone knew," said Roland, slightly wounded, "I’d know."

I looked up the northern path the way I look at most things, briefly, and kept walking.

Greywall was already in the yard.

All thirty-seven of them, spread across the sand in the loose, deliberate way of people who had been told to wait and were now waiting as slowly as possible.

A good number of them looked up when Sanctuary came through the gate.

A good number of them looked at me.

I had gotten used to that since Wednesday. I had been examined three times, by two academy healers and by Lena, and pronounced entirely fine by all three, and people still looked at me the way you might look at a shelf you had once watched fall down. Not unkindly. Just checking.

Daphne Spinster was standing a little apart from the rest of Greywall, which was where Daphne usually stood.

She didn’t look at me.

Nadia did.

As far as I had ever been able to tell, Nadia did every part of running Greywall that involved talking, which was most of the parts. She looked at me. She looked at Daphne. Then she leaned in and said something to Daphne that I couldn’t hear from the gate.

Daphne didn’t react in any way I could see.

That appeared to be the whole conversation.

Seventy-four students was a great many students for one yard. I have always believed most rooms hold about thirty more people than they need. I found a patch of sand near the back and sat down in it.

Professor Ferran arrived last, reading.

He was a thin man who always looked as if he had been interrupted in the middle of something more interesting than whatever he was about to do. He walked to the center of the yard and stopped there without looking up from his notes.

"Five," he said. "Four."

That seemed to be the greeting.

"You all know what your attributes are good at. Somebody told you. It’s written on a sheet somewhere." He turned a page. "It’s the least useful thing about you."

A few people in Greywall glanced at each other. Sanctuary didn’t. Sanctuary had heard a version of this before, with Brightvale.

"Whatever your attributes do badly, someone will eventually find out. I’d prefer you found out first. The quickest way is to stand next to somebody who does it well." Another page. "Pairs are on the post. One of yours, one of theirs. Equipment’s laid out. By the end of the lesson, each of you tells me one thing your partner’s attribute can do that yours can’t. One thing. Specific. If you tell me it’s ’different,’ I’ll assume you slept."

I had been planning to sleep a little. I adjusted my plans.

Roland reached the post first, because Roland reaches anything with information on it first, and read it aloud, because Roland reads everything aloud.

"Cedric, you’re down the far end. Lena, middle. Ashwin, you’ve got Lucan." Somewhere in Greywall, a boy I knew mostly by sight lifted a hand so Ashwin could find him. "Mira, wherever Mira feels like, probably. Penelope..." Roland squinted at the sheet. "Nadia."

Across the sand, Nadia’s head came up.

So did Penelope’s.

They looked at each other for a moment, the way two people do when they have just realized they work the same job.

Something passed between them. I didn’t know what it was, but I had a strong impression it was going to make my life more difficult.

"Alash," Roland read, and stopped.

He looked at the sheet. He looked across the yard at Daphne. He looked at me.

"Huh," said Roland.

That was apparently all Roland intended to say, which, coming from Roland, was nearly a speech.

Several people in Sanctuary looked at me. Several people in Greywall looked at Daphne. Nadia looked at Penelope, with both eyebrows.

I yawned.

"Who’ve I got?"

Ferran was passing behind the post on his way to somewhere else. He didn’t look up.

"Healing and Barrier, minor Gravity," he told his notes. "Blood and Gravity. Opposite builds, one attribute in common. You’ll get more out of each other than out of anyone else in this yard."

He turned a page and kept walking.

Nobody had asked him.

I had Gravity.

Level three. Not much, but mine. I knew what it felt like. I knew, roughly, what it did. I had used it enough times to be fairly sure I understood it.

So this would be half a lesson.

Half a lesson is my favorite size of lesson.

I was still deciding whether I needed to stand up when Daphne arrived.

She didn’t hurry. She crossed the sand in a straight line, the way she crosses everything, stopped in front of me, and looked down.

From somewhere behind her, not nearly quietly enough, Nadia said, "First again."

Daphne closed her eyes.

Not for long. About as long as it took to decide not to turn around.

I had spent two days getting very good at not hearing things. I didn’t hear that either.

Ferran had left equipment at every patch of sand: a stack of flat iron practice discs, a few clay tiles, and at every second patch, a drop post. Ours had one. It was a wooden upright about twice my height, with a pulley and a catch at the top, an iron weight on a rope, and a cord you could pull from the ground to release it. You put something breakable underneath. You tried to keep the breakable thing from breaking.

Nadia and Penelope took the patch next to ours.

I was fairly sure that had been Nadia’s idea.

Daphne sat down across from me, cross-legged, and picked up one of the discs.

"Gravity," she said.

"I have that."

"I know."

"Level three."

"I know." She held out the disc. "Hand."

I held out my hand. She set the disc on my palm.

It weighed what a flat iron disc weighed. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

Then it weighed a good deal more, and my wrist dipped.

Then it weighed almost nothing.

Then it was an iron disc again.

She hadn’t moved. Her face hadn’t changed. She wasn’t even looking at the disc. She was watching my wrist, as if that was where the answer would be.

"You," she said.

Easy.

I reached for Gravity the way I always did, and pushed, and the disc rose off my palm and hung there, a finger’s width above my skin, trembling slightly.

Not bad, I thought.

"You’re pushing," said Daphne.

"It’s off my hand."

"You’re holding it up."

"That’s lighter."

"No."

The disc trembled. I could feel what it was costing me, a thin, steady drain, and I could feel my attention having to chase every small wobble to keep it level.

"If you hold it up," Daphne said, "you’re carrying it. If it’s lighter, nobody is."

I looked at the disc for a moment.

I let it drop back into my palm.

"Show me."

She did.

The disc didn’t lift. It didn’t tremble. It simply sat in my palm and weighed less, calmly, as though it had always weighed less and was faintly surprised anyone had thought otherwise.

Nothing about it was being held.

I tried again.

Not pushing, this time. Just lighter.

I reached for lighter and found push. I set push down, reached again, and found push again, being slightly more polite about it. It was like trying to move one ear. There was presumably a muscle for it somewhere. I had simply never been introduced.

"That’s Force," Daphne said. "What you’re doing."

"I don’t have Force."

"You’re doing it anyway." A pause. "Badly."

On the next patch of sand, where she had not been listening at all, Nadia made a small noise into her sleeve.

I considered the disc.

Level three in Gravity, apparently. And somewhere around level zero in knowing what Gravity was.

"Heavier is cheap," Daphne said. "Anyone can do heavier. Lighter costs more."

"And holding it still?"

"Still costs most."

"Why?"

"Because still isn’t one thing. The weight shifts. The rope turns. Air moves it." She turned one hand palm up, as if weighing the air above it. "I correct it, and correct it again. It adds up."

Somewhere at the back of my head, Selene’s assignment sat up and began taking notes.

I lay back on my elbows.

"I’ve always found holding still very cheap."

"You’re not holding still," said Daphne. "You’re lying down."

There didn’t seem to be anything useful to say to that, so I didn’t.

"Blood," Daphne said.

She took a pin from her sleeve, a thin steel one, and the nearest pairs went quiet in the particular way people go quiet when they’re about to see something they’ve only heard about. Two patches over, someone from Sanctuary found something very interesting to look at in the opposite direction.

Daphne pressed the pin into the pad of one finger.

A bead of red came up.

Then it kept coming, in a thread no thicker than a hair, and the thread lifted away from her fingertip and hung in the air between us, turning slowly, about as long as my hand.

"Mine," said Daphne, to no one in particular. "Not much. No."

Somebody behind me, who had clearly been about to ask something, closed his mouth.

She had answered those three questions a great many times, I thought. Probably in that order.

I looked at the thread.

It was bright. Brighter than blood usually was by the time anyone got a proper look at it, because by then it had usually been lying around. I had spent five years at a border looking at blood that had been lying around. This had been out of her for most of a minute. A thread that thin should have been going tacky at the edges already. It should have been darkening. It should have been doing every one of the things blood does when it finds itself outside a body.

It wasn’t doing any of them.

"Why isn’t it clotting?" I said.

Daphne looked up.

On the next patch of sand, so did Nadia’s eyebrows.

For a moment Daphne didn’t say anything at all, and I wondered whether I’d asked something rude.

Then: "It’s moving."

I waited.

"Inside. You can’t see it from there. It goes around." She turned her wrist a little and the thread turned with it. "Clotting starts where blood stops. So it doesn’t stop. The outside is the worst part. Air. Anything it touches. I keep the outside moving faster than the middle."

"And if you want it to clot?"

"I stop the part I want hard. And let it." She glanced at me. "Anything I make with an edge, I stopped on purpose."

"Cold?"

"It cools out here. Cold is thicker. Thicker costs more." A pause, as if she were checking that I was still following. I was. "Small cut, small amount. I don’t open anything bigger than a finger unless I have to. If I have to, it’s the arm. I pull slow. Pull too fast and the vessel..."

She pinched two fingers flat.

"Folds," I said.

"Yes."

"How much before you feel it?"

"A cup. Two, if I have to." She considered. "My hands go cold first. I stop there."

That was exactly the right place to stop. Most people didn’t know it was a place. I had met soldiers twice her age who found out where it was by falling over.

"Salt, after," I said. "And water."

"I know."

"A lot of water."

"I know."

She closed her hand. The thread stopped all at once, went dark and stiff along its whole length like something remembering it was supposed to be solid, and she caught the small red needle it had become between two fingers and dropped it into the sand.

On the next patch, Nadia had one hand resting on her knee and was counting something off on her fingers.

She reached the end of them, looked at her hand, and started over.

Penelope watched her do it. Then Penelope looked at Daphne. Then back at Nadia, and one corner of her mouth did something small and private.

I had no idea what Nadia was counting. It seemed to be quite a lot of something.