Chapter 190: You Knew?

(Alash Vortex POV)

Once it was properly light, I stopped pretending I might still sleep.

I had lain awake rehearsing a conversation once before, in Sanctuary. It hadn’t improved with practice, and I didn’t recommend it.

My eyes felt as though someone had sanded them. The pull behind my breastbone had settled overnight into something smaller and duller, like a bruise you only notice when you press it.

The book lay closed on the table where I had left it. I opened it.

On one page there was a line to Penelope with no name under it. The third letter was true when I wrote it. Two pages further on was this week’s report for Theoran, which was meant to be considerably longer than usual and so far consisted of the date.

Between them, a whole night’s work came to nine words and a date.

I had asked the System about Daphne at three o’clock, and again at five, in case three o’clock had been wrong. I asked once more now.

’Daphne.’

[The vessel connection with Daphne Spinster is unchanged. It was also unchanged at five o’clock, and at three.]

’I was checking.’

[I am aware.]

I had spent the rest of the night sorting, which is the kind of work I avoid on principle. Sorting leads to lists, and lists lead to doing things.

Every version of the conversation I tried in the dark came out smaller than the truth. Daphne had told me it would. I hadn’t believed her, and I’d spent until dawn finding out she was right.

She had waited on a stair, and across a table, and on a ridge with a whistle going. Last night she had stood in a doorway and chosen to wait again rather than hear me do it badly.

I wasn’t going to make her come and fetch me.

I got up. Dream Haven lay along the bed, white and patient, and I picked it up out of habit and stood there holding it.

If I took it, I would sit on it. If I sat on it, sooner or later I would lie down on it, and anything I said lying down would come out smaller.

I put it back.

[You have left Dream Haven behind.]

’I know.’

[You have not left it on purpose before.]

’Then write that down as well.’

[I am recording it.]

***

I knew where she was before I opened my door.

I didn’t have to try. Since the ridge, the other four had sat at the edge of my attention like the walls of a dark room. Daphne’s was the nearest: her own room, three doors down.

That was all it ever told me. It couldn’t tell me what mood she was in, or what she was going to say. Last night I had been grateful for that. This morning I’d have given a good deal for a hint.

Her door opened before I reached it.

It worked both ways. She had felt me coming down the corridor.

She was dressed, and her wrists were wrapped. Her face was doing what it always does, which is nothing anybody can use.

"You didn’t sleep," she said.

"No."

"You’ll make it smaller."

"I spent all night trying," I said. "It won’t go any smaller than this."

She looked at me a moment longer. Then she came out, closed the door behind her, and walked past me down the corridor.

"Not here," she said, without turning round.

She took the back stairs and crossed the corner of the courtyard. The kitchen smoke was going straight up into a still sky, and two of Renn’s men by the well were pretending not to watch us.

She went up the steps to the inner wall. My chest let me know what it thought of the steps. I didn’t let it slow me down much.

Somewhere along the wall walk, the others went faint behind me. A few paces later I couldn’t find them at all.

I looked at Daphne. She had stopped exactly there.

She had chosen the distance as well as the place. She had worked out for herself how far the thing reached, as I had, by watching people leave. Nobody had told her that either.

It was a stretch of wall between two towers, with steps down at either end, and from where she stood she could see both. The nearest sentry was a small shape on the far tower, close enough to keep Renn happy and too far off to hear.

Daphne put her back to the parapet, folded her wrapped wrists, and looked at me.

I stayed standing. On the ridge I had sat up to say this. Standing, on no sleep and without a pillow, was worse in every respect and probably correct.

"At Merrow’s," Daphne said, "you told me something had happened. To me."

"Yes."

"You said you didn’t do it. You said you hadn’t used Healing Bond, and you didn’t know what it was."

"Yes."

"I believed you."

"It was true."

"I know it was true," said Daphne. "Then you spent eight days trying to tell me something else."

Eight days. I hadn’t counted the days. I had only counted the times.

There was a short way to begin and a long one. I had tried both in the dark, and the short one was better.

"It didn’t happen and stop," I said. "It’s still there."

She didn’t move. "What is?"

"A connection. Between you and me."

The wind came along the wall and lifted the loose end of one of her wrappings. She didn’t look at it.

"Since when?"

"Since Merrow’s courtyard. That’s when I found it." I made myself be exact, because she would be. "I was healing your hands. You’d just told me to let go. It was already there when I found it, and that’s why I stopped."

"You stopped," she said slowly, "and stared at me."

"I’d just found out."

"Found out what, exactly?"

"That you were already tied to me somehow," I said, "and I hadn’t meant to tie you."

"Tied how?"

"I don’t know what it is. I know a few things it isn’t."

She waited.

"It isn’t Healing Bond. You didn’t recover any faster. I watched the escort healer work on your wrists that night. His healing did what healing does, and that was all. Nothing passed between you and me. With Healing Bond there’s an hour where your body does its own healing faster. Sorel saw it in Elizabeth and me afterwards. You never had an hour."

"I’d have noticed an hour."

"Yes."

"So it isn’t that," said Daphne. "Then how do you know it’s anything?"

I had answers ready for that one. I could say I’d felt it under my hands. Healers feel all sorts of things under their hands, and nobody can check. It would have held for a week.

"I know," I said. "I can’t tell you how I know."

Daphne said nothing.

"I had easier answers ready," I said. "None of them is true."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"You know it’s still there," she said. "Today."

"Yes."

"The same way."

"The same way."

She didn’t like it. She didn’t throw it back at me either. I watched her set it down beside her, where she could pick it up again later.

"What does it do?"

"Nothing I’ve been able to see. It doesn’t let me into your head. Before the ridge, it never told me where you were. If you’d walked out of a room, I wouldn’t have known which way you went."

"And now you would."

"Now all five of us would," I said. "That started on the platform, for everyone. I don’t know whether the thing from Merrow’s has anything to do with it. It might. It might be something else altogether."

"Can it be taken off?"

"I don’t know. Theoran said the bonds can’t be removed. This isn’t that kind of bond, so I don’t know that either."

"When did it start?"

"Before I found it. Whether that was a minute before, or that morning, or when you said cover me, I can’t tell you."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Did you do it?"

I had answered that once already, in a room at Merrow’s, too fast. I had been sure then.

"At Merrow’s I told you I didn’t," I said. "That was too quick. I didn’t do anything on purpose, and I didn’t use Healing Bond. I’m certain of that much. But I don’t know what made it, so I can’t swear that nothing I did had a hand in it. Or anything either of us did. I should have said it that way the first time."

Daphne looked at me the way she had in the courtyard while Sorel was telling her to sit, measuring something she hadn’t decided how to use yet.

"That’s a worse answer than last time," she said.

"Yes."

"I like it better."

She looked away from me for the first time, out over the courtyard. Below us a boy was hauling water, and somebody else was shouting at him for spilling it.

"On the stair you opened your mouth," she said, "and told me you’d stand very still."

I didn’t argue.

"At the table you said tomorrow. On the ridge you got two words out."

"Four times," I said.

She turned her head.

"You’re missing one. After the stair, I decided again at my door that I’d tell you after the signing. You weren’t there for that one."

"You counted," said Daphne.

"Yes."

"And kept going."

I nodded.

She was quiet. When she spoke again, she spoke carefully, as if handing me something she wasn’t sure I deserved.

"The ridge was the whistle."

I could have taken it. It was even mostly true.

"The whistle stopped me," I said. "Then we stood at that wall holding for a minute, and nobody was going anywhere, and I could have finished. I didn’t, because you were watching the lookout and I wanted you listening properly. That part was me."

"So all four were yours."

"Three and a half."

She didn’t smile. I hadn’t expected her to.

"Why?"

I had two reasons. I had been turning them over all night to see whether either of them was any good.

"At first I wanted to understand it," I said. "I thought if I could tell you what it was, that would be better than telling you it was there and I had no idea. I kept thinking I’d know more in a day or two."

"Did you?"

"No."

"And at the table?"

"At the table, it was the best night any of us had had since Merrow’s. Elizabeth was laughing with her elbow on the table. Sophie and Tomas were trading songs and ruining both." I made myself finish it. "I wanted you to have one night where nothing was wrong."

Daphne looked at me.

"That wasn’t yours to want for me," she said.