Chapter 96 – A Hand’s Breadth

By the time Sana arrived, Kai had talked himself into trying twice the distance.

Then she put the stool beside his bed, and he remembered how little he had actually done.

"Same place as yesterday," he said.

She glanced at Tomas. "Has he been asking you to move the furniture?"

"Only the cup."

Tomas took the drinking tray away and unfolded yesterday's notes. Sana had slept after her watch. Kai had slept in shorter stretches, but breakfast had stayed down, the dressings were done, and Sayegh had agreed to ten minutes before the morning transfers began.

He found the warmth sooner this time. It lay near the heel of his left palm, faint enough that he could lose it by listening to someone speak. He let Sana finish describing where her arm rested before closing his eyes.

The light felt separate from it.

He waited until he could attend to both, then eased outward during an ordinary breath.

"There," Sana said.

He let go before she could say more.

When he opened his eyes, she was watching him rather than the light.

"You stopped it sooner."

"I meant to."

Tomas made a mark on the page. Kai had expected to feel pleased. Instead he wanted another attempt so badly that he had to remind himself Sana was still holding the light.

"A little farther," he asked. "Not double."

She moved the stool back. Tomas laid two fingers across the gap she had added, then drew their width on the paper so they could find the position again.

Kai could still feel the light. Reaching toward that sensation brought the warmth to his palm, where it thinned without meeting anything.

He waited for one more breath.

"Nothing from me," Sana said.

"I know. Bring it back."

She did. He rested while Tomas checked the support under his shoulder. On the final attempt, the near side of the light flattened again. Kai kept it that way long enough to finish breathing out, then drew his attention back toward his wrist.

The light rounded out.

His fingers had not moved. He had done less than he wanted, but he knew which part had worked.

Sana put out the light and shook her hand once.

"That's a useful distance to remember," she said. "Don't make me guess it next time."

Tomas measured the successful gap with a strip torn from the edge of the notes. He wrote on it before putting it with the page.

Kai watched the little piece of paper disappear into the fold. From his resting fingertips to the near edge of the light: roughly a hand's breadth. He could locate the light farther away than he could affect it. Yesterday those had been the same question in his head.

"Does it tire your hand?" he asked.

"Keeping the light does. What you do feels like someone pressing a thumb into it. I have to hold it steady."

"I thought you weren't resisting."

"I'm trying not to. I'm also trying not to drop it. You'll have to live with that until I learn the difference."

That was fair. He had been thinking of her as the person holding a target, when she was having to learn something too.

They stopped there. Sana took the stool away, and Tomas brought back the cup.

Kai drank without asking anyone to hold it.

Across the aisle, Nia was dictating a letter. The desk volunteer had read back three sentences about how she felt before Nia interrupted.

"Leave the middle one out. She asked about breakfast. Tell her what I had."

"Porridge?"

"She'll want to know if I ate the raisins."

Kai looked at his own empty bowl. He had given his to Tomas.

Nia caught him looking.

"Don't help."

He smiled around the straw and nearly lost it.

***

Beck came for one of the stretchers late that morning.

The yard had a patient who needed the clinic, and the water cart was still a poor way to carry someone with a damaged leg. He brought Inez and a bundle of clean sheets to replace the ones that had stayed with Kai and Nia.

Ruth had splinted the patient's leg and was staying with her until the stretcher was ready. Beck said they had time to check the wheels before collecting her.

"We need the better wheel," Inez told Tomas. "The other one's pulling left again. I'll look at it before we leave."

She found Kai watching from his raised bed and held up the sheets.

"Ruth says you owe her laundry."

"Tell her I've been thinking about it every day."

"She said you'd say that."

Beck waited until she had gone to examine the wheels before leaning closer.

"She's pleased you're here. Ruth, I mean. The address helped."

Kai had known they received the messages. Hearing that was different from knowing a piece of paper had arrived.

He asked about the yard. Beck told him which shutter was working, who had found a hand pump, and how people now queued with containers before dawn. There were still blue directions over the eastern passage. They had painted a broad white arrow on the wall pointing to their own water queue instead.

"People can read both," Beck said. "We tell them where ours goes."

Kai pictured the mess with its thin mattresses and the way Ruth had knelt beside his hand. He wanted to send something besides another account of what hurt.

"There's something I can show you," he said.

Then he looked toward the cupboard and stopped himself. Sana had left for the yard. The warmth near his palm was almost gone.

"Not right now. I'll send the notes."

Beck followed his glance to the folded pages.

"Mara's already talking about it. Quietly. She told Ruth she'd seen you do something, not just heard you describe it."

Kai rested his head against the pillow. He hadn't expected that to travel back so quickly.

Tomas returned with Sayegh. She looked at the working stretcher, then at Kai's bed.

"You asked about getting away from this ceiling. We can try a short spell in the side room while they're here to help. It's on the same floor. No standing."

Kai looked past her at the doorway. He had seen it every day without knowing what was on the other side.

"How short?"

"We'll see what you tolerate. You tell me before it becomes a contest."

Nia wanted to come. The spare stretcher's wheel had already been taken apart, so Sayegh promised to look at another time for her rather than make a bad transfer work out of politeness.

"Tell me if there's anything worth seeing," Nia said.

Beck and Inez brought the stretcher alongside Kai's bed. Tomas moved the cup, checked the wrist support and explained where each of them would lift. Kai could help by keeping his head where they asked and saying when his shoulder caught. He could not push himself across.

The first lift stopped halfway.

"Under the elbow," Kai said. "Something's pulling there."

They lowered him, shifted the padding, and tried again. This time he reached the stretcher without the hard catch at his shoulder. Tomas checked the banded right wrist before they moved.

The active pull was still there. It did not strengthen at the doorway. Kai had been waiting for it to do that, and only realized how tightly he was holding his jaw after they were through.

The side room had once been used for serving meals. A wide opening looked into the dining hall, and a second door led into a short passage to the kitchen. Its outside window faced a service court enclosed by the school's low brick wall.

There was a tree beyond the wall.

Half its branches were gone. A strip of foil hung from one of the remaining ones, lifting in the wind. Kai stared at it while Beck set the brakes.

"Not much of a view," Beck said.

"Leave me here a minute."

Tomas stayed. Inez went back to the damaged wheel, and Beck stood at the window with a shoulder against the frame.

From this angle Kai could see the courtyard gate, a stack of folding tables and two people taking down a torn awning. Someone laughed when the fabric dumped yesterday's rain down his back.

Kai had spent days hearing work happen without being able to see any of it.

He asked Tomas to raise the head of the stretcher slightly. They stopped before the position tugged at the wound along his waist. It was enough to see the top of the wall.

For several minutes nobody asked him a medical question.

***

The woman supervising the awning came in carrying a roll of wire. She wore a dark vest over a gray shirt, with a short spear slung behind her shoulder. Beck introduced her as Rook, who organized the clinic watch.

"Sana tells me you're borrowing her light," Rook said.

Kai glanced at Tomas.

"With permission."

"Good. She's wanted a reason to get out of sorting the lamp batteries for a week."

Rook put the wire on the counter and looked over Tomas's shoulder at the busy ward.

"I'm not here to make you demonstrate. Sana said it takes concentration. I need hers on the gate this afternoon."

"I won't ask her during a watch."

She nodded and started measuring the window frame with a piece of string.

Kai watched for a moment.

"Is something wrong with the window?"

"The mesh is loose. We're fixing the kitchen one too."

Through the glass, he could see Inez's reflection coming down the passage. She leaned beside Rook to look at the lower corner.

"That's been lifted," Inez said.

Rook stopped measuring.

Inez pointed out a clean scrape under the screws. The mesh had bowed outward at the bottom. It could have caught on something during the clearing work, but nobody remembered moving it.

Rook sent Beck to ask the kitchen staff and went outside to look from the court.

Kai waited until she had stepped away before speaking to Tomas.

"I felt something like this on the street when they brought us here. Beck saw what was moving after I spoke up."

"He told us."

Kai looked toward the window. "I don't feel anything unusual now. If that changes, I'll tell you."

"Good. We'll look."

Rook came back with dirt on one knee. A gutter bracket above the kitchen had been pulled free, and the wall beneath it carried fresh scratches. She had asked the gate watch to inspect the roof from across the court.

"Could be loose metal in the wind," she said. "Could be something using it to climb. Either way, nobody opens that kitchen window until we've fixed the cover."

The conversation turned to ladders. Inez rejected the first one they brought before anyone climbed it. Beck went to fetch another from the storage shed.

Tomas asked Kai whether he wanted to return to bed.

He did, though he disliked admitting it. His neck was tired, and he was starting to lean away from the left shoulder without meaning to. They lowered the stretcher head while they waited for Beck.

From the flatter angle, Kai could see a slice of sky above the kitchen roof through the service-room window.

Something briefly interrupted it.

He thought it was a torn edge of the awning until the dark piece drew back behind the gutter.

"Tomas. At the roof. Just above the kitchen."

Tomas turned. Rook was still by the counter. She crossed to the window and stayed to one side rather than putting her face against it.

"Where?"

Kai described the bracket with its loose end hanging down. While he spoke, a faint, unpleasant pressure spread along the outside of his left wrist.

He recognized enough of it to stop trying to track the sensation farther up his arm.

"I can feel something as well," he said. "I can't tell you how big."

Rook lifted one hand for silence.

A narrow jointed limb reached around the gutter. It gripped the brick below, leaving four pale scratches as it took weight. Part of a flat brown body slid into view under the edge of the roof.

Beck appeared outside carrying the ladder. Rook rapped on the glass and pointed him back toward the shed, then signaled to the gate.

He set the ladder down and moved without asking why.

"We're taking him back," Tomas said.

"Use the ward opening," Rook told him. "Keep the kitchen passage clear."

Inez and Tomas started the stretcher toward the ward opening. Kai could no longer see the roof, but Rook had already called two people in from the courtyard. One brought a crossbow. Sana came through the gate behind him with her spear in her hand.

Beck came back in from the court and caught up with them at the opening into the ward. He relieved Inez at the foot of the stretcher.

"Did you see it?" Kai asked him.

"I saw the leg. Rook's got eyes on the rest."

They wheeled him through. Nia looked up from her letter, saw their faces, and asked which way they needed her bed moved.