Chapter 191: Keep Them Apart

(Alash Vortex POV)

She didn’t say it loudly. Daphne never says anything loudly, and she has never needed to.

"No," I said.

"You decided when I’d find out about my own body."

"Yes. I thought I was being..."

I stopped. Careful was the word I had been using on myself all week. Out loud, on that wall, it sounded like something you say about stairs.

"Yes," I said again.

She unfolded her arms and looked down at her wrists. She turned one of them a little, as though she could see through the linen to whatever was underneath.

"At Merrow’s it didn’t matter much," she said. "Something had happened and you didn’t know what. I could live with that. I did."

She let that stand for a moment.

"Then the gold came."

I didn’t say anything.

"It came under my feet," said Daphne. "It took my core up two stages without asking. It took something of mine I’ve never told anyone and put it into four other people." She stopped, very briefly. "My Gravity went off on its own. I don’t do anything by accident."

"I didn’t know the gold would come to you," I said. "I didn’t know it would come to anyone but her."

"I know you didn’t."

"Elizabeth didn’t say yes to that either. She said yes to an hour and a bond. That was all I knew to ask her about."

"I know that too." Her voice didn’t change. "She said yes to the part anybody understood. I didn’t get to say anything about any of it."

She looked back at me.

"And I stood on that platform not knowing I was already tied to you. You knew. I didn’t."

"I don’t know whether knowing would have changed anything."

"Neither do I," said Daphne. "That’s the point. I never will. If you’d told me on the stair, I’d have known what I was standing on. I’d have had that, at least."

There wasn’t an answer to that. I didn’t go looking for one.

I knew what she meant by something of hers. For a few seconds on that platform, I had sat at a scarred table in a long room that smelled of soap, inside her. She had stood in a forest inside me. Neither of us had asked to.

I didn’t mention the table. It was hers. If she ever wanted to talk about it, she would, and if she didn’t, it would stay where she had always kept it, as far as I could manage that.

She didn’t mention the forest. Afterwards, on that platform, she had looked at me as though she had been struck, and one of her hands had come up a little way and stopped. Whatever she had meant to do with it, she hadn’t done it then, and she didn’t now.

"You know what it’s like," she said. "Having it taken."

"Yes."

That was all either of us said about it.

"I wish it hadn’t taken what it took from you," I said, "and handed it round to the rest of us. I didn’t know it was coming, and I’m not going to tell you I did."

She waited.

"But the rest is mine. I knew there was something in you that neither of us chose, and I decided by myself when you’d get to hear about it. I’m sorry for that."

Daphne didn’t tell me it was all right. I was grateful. It wasn’t, and if she had said so I’d have known she was lying, which would have been a first.

She looked out at the courtyard for a while.

"I heard you," she said.

I didn’t ask for more.

When she turned back to me, I knew what was coming, because it was the question I would have asked.

"The ridge," she said.

"Yes."

"I’m not asking whether you were right. You were. If we’d held, she’d probably be dead. Renn said so." She said it plainly, as something she had already checked. "I’m asking how."

"Not from the whistle."

"No. The whistle didn’t say a name."

"It told me which end of the ridge," I said. "I already knew who."

The System hadn’t said her name either. It had told me a vessel was in danger, the one I hadn’t bonded, and I had done the rest with a whistle and a map. Every piece of that was a piece Daphne couldn’t have.

"How?" she said.

I had known that was coming too. It didn’t help.

"The same place I know the other thing from."

Daphne went very still.

"The same place as Merrow’s."

"Yes."

She was quiet for a long time. I watched her lay the two things side by side, as she had in the doorway last night, and look at what was underneath them.

"Which you won’t tell me."

"Which I can’t tell you," I said.

I had been leaning on that word for years. Renn had already tested it once, and it hadn’t held up as well as I’d have liked.

"Won’t, probably," I said. "I don’t know how to tell anyone without telling them a great deal more, and I don’t know what that would do."

"Is it dangerous?"

I thought about the countdown in the corner of my status, and the thing that had come through Elizabeth’s walls joint by joint.

"Yes," I said. "So is not knowing it. I haven’t worked out which is worse."

"So you’re deciding. Again."

"Yes," I said.

She tilted her head a little.

"On the ridge, you said trust me."

"Yes."

"I did. In one breath."

"I watched you do it."

"And you can’t trust me with this."

I opened my mouth to tell her it wasn’t about trusting her. It was a good sentence. I’d used versions of it for years, and it had always worked, because nobody wants to be the one who makes it about trust.

It wasn’t true, so I closed my mouth again.

"I trusted you with my back," I said. "I’d do it again this minute. I haven’t trusted anyone with this. I’m not offering that as a reason. It’s only what’s true."

"Does anyone know?"

"No."

"Nobody."

"Nobody."

I had never said that aloud before. It came out sounding worse than I had expected, and lonelier, and I hadn’t meant it to sound like anything.

Daphne didn’t soften. I had half expected her to, and I think I’d have liked her a little less if she had.

"Then that’s your choice as well," she said.

"Yes."

She breathed in and let it out slowly, and looked at the far tower for a while.

"You were right on the ridge," she said. "If you said trust me tomorrow, I’d go."

"Daphne..."

"I’m not finished."

Then, for a moment, she seemed to have lost the rest of it. I had never seen that happen to her. She frowned at the parapet as though the sentence had gone over it.

"It isn’t the same," she said at last. "Following you. And believing you’ll tell me things. I’m going to keep them apart."

"That’s fair."

"It is fair," she said, and looked away.

The sentry on the far tower had turned to walk the other way. Somewhere below us a door banged, and a voice I was fairly sure belonged to Sorel said something short and sharp about blankets.

Daphne straightened up off the parapet.

"If you see something wrong in me," she said, "you tell me. A change. Something odd when you’re healing me. Anything in my body. The same day, not when you understand it."

She had worded it carefully. I owed her the same care back.

"Anything I see in your body," I said. "The same day, whether I understand it or not." I made myself go on. "That isn’t the same as everything I know."

"No," she said. "It isn’t." She went straight on, before either of us could do anything with that. "And you don’t try anything on me to find out what it is. If you want to try something, you tell me what, and then I say."

"And if you’re bleeding?"

"Then close it," said Daphne. "Ordinary healing. Ask after."

"And anything that isn’t ordinary?"

"You ask first. If there isn’t time to ask, you answer for it after." She looked at me. "To me, as well as to the Headmaster."

"That’s reasonable."

"I’m a reasonable person. People keep forgetting."

I waited for the next thing. It seemed obvious to me what it would be. Everything. From now on, everything you know about me.

I didn’t know what I would say to that. I had been afraid of it for most of the night.

She didn’t ask it.

"You’re not going to ask me for the rest," I said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you’d say tomorrow," said Daphne.

That went in under my ribs and stayed there.

"I’m not going to say tomorrow again," I said.

"Good."

"I don’t know when. That’s the true answer. I don’t know when I’ll be able to say any of it."

"That’s better than tomorrow," she said, and I thought she meant it.

She looked down into the courtyard, toward the infirmary door.

"Sorel," she said.

"What about her?"

"She said there was something in Elizabeth she couldn’t see. If there’s something in me as well, she should be looking."

"She may not find anything."

"Then she writes down that she looked and didn’t find it."

It was the kind of thing Elizabeth would have said: true on paper as well as in the room.

"I’ll tell her," said Daphne. "Not you. I’ll tell her you say there’s something connecting us that isn’t Healing Bond, and that you can’t explain how you know. You’ll be there, in case she asks you something I can’t answer."

"And if she asks me something I can’t answer either?"

"Then you tell her you can’t," said Daphne. "In front of me."

That was fair too. I suspected it was also the point.

"She’ll have to put it in her relay to Theoran."

"Then she will. That’s her work." Daphne started toward the steps. "What I say to the Headmaster myself, I’ll decide."

At the top of the steps she stopped, and for a moment I thought she was going to say something else: that it was all right, or that it wasn’t, or anything at all that would tell me where I stood.

She didn’t. She went down, and I followed her.

Halfway across the courtyard, the others came back one after another, like windows lighting up in a house. James was somewhere near the stables. Sophie was near the kitchens, which at this hour meant breakfast. Elizabeth was exactly where Sorel had put her.

At the infirmary door Daphne stopped, and I nearly walked into her.

"Alash."

"Yes?"

"You look terrible."

"I haven’t slept."

"I know," she said. "Sorel’s going to notice, and I’m not covering you for that one."

She went in ahead of me. She didn’t look back to see whether I was following. She knew where I was.

I followed her in.