Chapter 98 – What He Could Keep

The core spent two nights in Rook's cupboard.

Kai knew because he asked her after each breakfast. By the second morning she had begun answering before he finished.

"Still there. Nobody's touched it."

She sounded amused rather than impatient. He had expected someone to need it more urgently, or a trader to offer something the clinic could use. Rook had told the other guards it was his share. The agreement had survived the next day's problems.

The roof was closed again. Beck and Inez had fixed wire mesh inside the damaged opening and screwed a sheet of salvaged metal over it from outside. Rain came overnight, and a volunteer checked the new patch with a bucket ready. In the morning the bucket was dry.

June's reply arrived with the bread delivery. Elise had been cross about the delayed visit, then concerned enough to dictate a list of questions. Nia answered the one about the creatures before she answered the one about whether the porridge had improved.

Kai listened while Tomas changed the dressing at his waist. The examination was shorter than the last. Later, when the bed was raised, Kai managed the movement without needing it stopped halfway.

He noticed that before he thought about the core.

***

Mara arrived after the morning round. The request had gone out the day before, explaining what Rook had brought and what Kai wanted to attempt. Ruth had arranged cover with Priya and the other healer again. Mara came with the crew bringing back the clinic's empty containers, which gave her until they were washed and loaded.

She had written questions on the back of Kai's message.

"First," she said, sitting beside him, "why this one?"

"Because it's here, and because nobody has to go looking for it."

"That's a reason to keep it. Why use it?"

He had spent yesterday trying to put that into words.

"What I can do gets weaker. After the light, sometimes I can't find the warmth at all. Rest brings some of it back, but I don't know what I'm resting. If I can take a little from a core and keep it near the wrist, I want to see whether it gives me something I can use."

Mara looked at the dark line along his left arm.

"You don't know that it will stay there."

"No. That's why I don't want it in my hand."

Kai told Mara the order of the first contact: the core trapped his fingers, and the heat kept climbing after he lost hold of it. She checked Tomas's note from the night before.

"If it climbs again?" she asked.

"Tomas rolls the table away. If I stop answering, he does it without asking."

Sayegh joined them and checked that Kai still wanted to try. She would watch his breathing and arm while Mara recorded what he said he felt. No one would put the core against his skin or change the ordinary treatment already helping him.

Kai looked at the cup beside his bed, then at his supported hand. "Start as far away as I can notice it."

***

They used the service room, after Rook checked the repaired roof and told the watch what they were doing.

Nia stayed in the ward. She asked Kai to tell her what happened without making her extract it from Tomas later.

"Including if nothing happens," she added. "You leave that part out when you're disappointed."

He promised.

The transfer went more easily than the last one. Beck had left the spare stretcher at the clinic after bringing in the yard patient. Its repaired wheel ran straight now. Tomas and two volunteers moved Kai using the same support arrangement, then left him with Mara and Sayegh in the quieter room.

Sana would join them afterward if there was a reason to test the light. Kai had asked her not to spend her strength waiting with it on.

Rook brought the bowl from the watchroom and set it on a narrow wheeled table. Under the lid, the core looked just as it had two evenings ago. Its pale thread turned inside the dark surface when she shifted the dish, though Kai could not tell whether the movement was only a trick of the window light.

He kept his eyes on it while Tomas rolled the table nearer.

"There," Kai said, well before it reached his hand. "I can notice it. That's enough for the moment."

Tomas stopped. Mara marked the floor beside one wheel with chalk.

The sensation was sharper than Sana's light, a small point of pressure rather than a rounded surface. His own warmth lay faintly near the heel of his palm. He had not practiced that morning, but poor sleep had left it harder to follow than he liked.

He described both sensations. Nothing moved past his wrist.

"Farther away now," he said.

Tomas rolled the table back. The pressure faded until Kai could no longer distinguish it. They waited there while Sayegh asked him questions he could answer without thinking about his arm.

The core was small. He kept noticing that. The first had not looked large enough to do what it did either.

When Tomas brought the table back to the chalk mark, Kai waited with his eyes open. He could feel the core again, but the warmth in his palm stayed thin.

Looking at the object did not fill him with anything by itself.

"A little closer," he said. "Stop before the table reaches the support."

Tomas moved it a few inches. The dish now sat beside Kai's left fingers, across a gap a little wider than the strip of paper they had used for Sana's light. His hand stayed on the padding, palm turned partly inward. No part of the dish touched him.

The pressure sharpened.

Kai closed his eyes. His impulse was to reach out as he had toward the light, pushing until he met resistance. He began, felt the warmth collect, and stopped before pressing.

"What's changed?" Mara asked.

"I was about to do the thing I already know. I don't think that's what I want."

He unclenched his jaw and breathed out, waiting for the pressure to change.

A thread of heat seemed to cross the gap and catch along the heel of his palm.

He could not follow its whole length. One moment there was pressure beyond his skin; the next the familiar warmth had become thicker, distinct enough that he did not have to search for it.

"Move it away."

The table rolled at once.

Kai kept his attention near the wrist instead of chasing the new heat toward his elbow. It pressed a little farther, and he felt his shoulder tense in anticipation.

"Still there," he said. "Not at the elbow."

He eased back from it slowly. His breathing wanted to shorten. He let himself take the next breath before trying to say anything else.

The heat settled. It no longer seemed to be arriving.

Mara was watching his face when he opened his eyes.

"Did you stop it?"

Kai looked toward the table, now by the counter.

"You moved it. I don't know which part did what."

"Good. Don't write down more than that."

***

They waited long enough for the wash crew to pass the window twice.

The warmth remained around Kai's palm and wrist. It did not keep climbing. The wound along his waist still ached where the stretcher position pulled at it; his fingers remained curled as they had been before the table approached.

Sayegh checked him and found no reason to change the immediate plan, which was to stop using the core for the day.

Kai wanted another attempt. He could already imagine bringing it closer, keeping it there a fraction longer, learning whether he had pulled or it had simply spilled into him.

He told Mara.

"Write the question down," she said. "You don't have to answer it before I leave."

He watched her do that. The question would still exist tomorrow, even if the sensation did not.

Rook asked whether he wanted the bowl back in the cupboard.

"Yes. Could we look at it first, from here?"

She tilted the dish toward the window while Tomas stood beside her. The pale thread looked thinner in the window light, but they had no earlier measurement to compare it with. Mara noted what they thought they saw. Rook took the core back to the watchroom. The warmth in Kai's palm stayed.

Sana came in after changing places with the gate guard. She listened to what had happened, then asked whether they wanted the same small light.

"Once," Kai said. "The close position."

They used the paper strip and supported her forearm as before. Mara sat where she could watch the gap. Tomas watched Kai's hand.

The moment Sana made the light, he felt its rounded pressure beside the stronger warmth in his palm.

For a second he was so relieved to recognize both that he forgot what he meant to do.

Then he closed his eyes and eased outward.

"It's moving," Sana said.

He held the pressure through the end of his breath. This time the warmth did not immediately thin away beneath his attention. There was enough left that he could feel the difference between maintaining the push and adding to it.

He did not add to it.

"Stopping," he said.

He drew back. Sana confirmed that the light had rounded out again.

Kai opened his eyes while it was still burning. He could see the space between his supported fingers and her palm. His hand had contributed no useful movement at all.

"Did it go farther?"

"About the same," Mara said. "It stayed there longer."

Sana nodded.

"I could feel you holding it. Not just touching the edge and losing it."

Kai wanted her to leave the light on. He also knew he had asked for one attempt. He thanked her, and she let it go.

The warmth remained, reduced but easy to find.

***

Back in the ward, Nia listened without interrupting until he reached the part about the moving table.

"So Tomas stopped it."

"He took the source away. I might have helped by backing off. I can't call that stopping it myself."

"But you kept some."

Kai looked down at his left hand.

"I think so. Enough to use."

She rested her head against the pillow and considered that.

"Then tell him thank you before you start apologizing for needing the table."

Kai called Tomas over. The nurse had ink on one finger and a clean dressing tucked into his sleeve. He listened to the thanks, looked embarrassed and asked whether Kai wanted the cup put back.

Mara left one copy of the account with Sayegh and put the other in her bag. At Kai's request she underlined the timing: Tomas moved the core before the heat reached his elbow, and later Kai held Sana's light aside for a full breath. She recorded the warmth that remained, too.

When the water crew called her, Mara stopped beside the bed.

"No more today. You've got enough to pay attention to."

Kai agreed. He asked her to tell Ruth about the cup he could use without lifting it, as well as the light.

"She'll want to hear both," Mara said.

He slept after lunch. When he woke, his first thought was that he had missed something important. The ward was quiet, Nia was reading her latest letter with the page propped on a book, and Tomas was helping someone at the far end.

Kai let his attention settle near his left wrist.

The warmth was still there.

He did not push it, count it or ask for Sana. He took a drink, watched the afternoon sun move across the repaired ceiling and let himself have the rest of the day.

Before supper, Rook returned with her shield. She laid it on the empty chair beside his bed, inside facing him. The dent from the fight was visible even from that side.

"Sana says you can hold the pressure now."

"A little longer. Against her light."

Rook turned the shield so he could see the wooden grip and the iron rim.

"When I brace, the skill extends past this edge. That's what stopped the first hit yesterday. Well, two days ago. I'm losing track."

Kai remembered the pale surface beyond the shield and the brief pressure he had felt from her direction.

"You want to see if I can move it."

"I want to know if someone else can. The System tells me how much force it'll hold. It doesn't tell me what happens if the skill itself won't stay where I put it."

He looked at the shield for a long moment.

Kai studied the dent beside the iron rim. If the pale edge slipped away while Rook was taking a blow, the metal would take that blow alone.

"Not with anyone hitting it," he said. "And not today."

"Tomorrow, if the doctor agrees. I'll bring the stool."

After Rook took the shield away, Kai asked Tomas to add one more question beneath Mara's: could he move its pale edge while she held it steady?