Chapter 136 — "Signal Dead"

The fourth one came round the shoulder of the rock being extremely quiet about it.

"There’s a fourth," said Eren, from the ledge, conversationally.

"THE BRIEF SAID TWO."

"The brief said up to two."

"WHY ARE YOU SAYING IT LIKE THAT—"

"Because it’s a legally important distinction and I want it on record before you throw someone."

She threw someone.

Afterward, Mira sat down on a rock without appearing to have decided to.

"Four."

"Four."

"I want to have a conversation with the person who wrote that brief."

"You’d like a conversation with everyone."

"I would like one conversation with one person," said Mira. "It would take under a minute. I’ve been drafting it since Tuesday."

Seraphina found she was missing a glove.

She looked around for it in the way you look for something you already know is gone, didn’t find it, and announced to nobody: "I’ve lost a glove."

"You’ve lost four gloves this year."

"I’ve lost three—"

"Four."

"The one in the river doesn’t count, that was taken—"

"By a river."

"By a current, Mira, there’s a difference, I didn’t misplace it, it was removed from me by force—"

Eren came down off the ledge in a way that did not involve climbing, which she had stopped asking about somewhere in the second year.

He crouched, took her bare hand, turned it over, looked at the knuckles.

"Mm."

"It’s fine."

"It’s split."

"It’s fine."

"It’ll be worse tomorrow. Then I’ll say something tomorrow, and you’ll be annoyed tomorrow." He was already wrapping it. "So I’m being annoying now. Spreads the cost."

"That’s not how cost works."

"That’s exactly how cost works. I’ve thought about it a great deal."

"When."

"Continuously."

They made the ridge before dark. Mira said stop, so they stopped, by an arrangement nobody had ever agreed to out loud and which had held for two years.

Mira was asleep in eleven minutes.

Seraphina timed it. She always timed it. It was the closest thing she had to a hobby.

"Eleven," she said.

"That’s slow for her."

"That’s very slow for her. Something’s on her mind."

"Four men were on her mind."

"Four men were on her mind this afternoon, this is a different — you’re doing the thing."

"I’m feeding a fire."

"You’re feeding a fire badly."

"I’m feeding it at my own pace."

"You’re putting the wet ones on FIRST—"

"I like the sound they make."

"THAT’S NOT A REASON—"

"It’s my favourite reason," said Eren, and put another wet one on.

She sat back against the rock with her wrapped hand on her knee and looked out at the pass.

Grey folds going down and away. No lights anywhere.

That was the point of out here.

Signal dead, the briefs called it. The devices stopped working past the second ridge — something in the rock, or the altitude, or whatever it actually was that nobody had ever bothered explaining to a student. You went in. You did the work. You came out. Anything sent to you in the meantime sat at the relay until you got back.

Four days in. Nine out.

She’d stopped noticing that a long time ago.

Which was, she thought, exactly the problem.

"Two years," she said.

"Since what."

"Since the first one. The border thing. Ost and the — all of it."

Eren fed the fire another wet log.

"Feels longer."

"It is longer, that’s what two years means—"

"It feels longer than two years. Those are different." He watched the log hiss. "Ost writes to me, you know."

She sat up.

"Ost writes to you."

"Every few months."

"About what."

"His life," said Eren. "At length. He’s stationed east. He’s engaged. He’s told me about it in four separate letters and each version is slightly more impressive than the last, and I’ve never once corrected him, and I consider that the most generous thing I do."

Seraphina put both hands over her face.

"He’s upgrading his engagement—"

"By the fourth letter she’d saved a horse."

"FROM WHAT—"

"He hasn’t specified. I’m waiting. I think the fifth letter is where we find out about the horse."

The fire cracked. She looked at it for a while.

"They changed the rule two years ago," she said.

"Mm."

"Missions were fourth-year. Everyone knew that. It’s been fourth-year since the academy opened."

"And then it wasn’t."

"And then it wasn’t, and nobody said why, and I’ve never asked because you don’t ask Kestral why."

"You’ve got a theory."

"I’ve got a theory I’ve never said out loud."

"Say it out loud."

She didn’t, for a moment.

"There were thirty of them," she said. "Crossing north-west. Two years ago, on the rise."

"And?"

"And four riders came up that road who’d been moving before the notification went out."

Eren said nothing.

"They didn’t change the rule because of a policy review," she said. "They changed it because somebody needed more people out there."

The fire cracked again.

"That’s a good theory," said Eren.

"Is it right."

"It’s a good theory," said Eren.

Thirty-one, she thought later. Thirty-one of them since.

Some short. Some not. The eleventh had run nineteen days and ended with the three of them coming down the pass in silence, and nobody had discussed it since, and nobody was going to.

And somewhere in the middle of the thirty-one, the letters had stopped.

She went at that deliberately, because it had been sitting there getting heavier for a long time.

She hadn’t decided to stop. There was no evening where she’d decided.

What had happened was: she’d come back from nine days, and there had been three at the relay, and she’d read all of them and been too tired to answer, and thought tomorrow.

Then gone out again in four days.

Come back to five.

Read them. Too tired. Tomorrow.

And somewhere in the four-day turnarounds and the nine-day silences and the thirty-one of them stacked end to end, the tomorrow had stopped arriving — and she hadn’t been present for the moment it stopped. By the time she looked up it had been two years, and there was nothing she could write that wouldn’t have to start with I’m sorry it’s been two years.

Which was a sentence she could not make herself write.

So she hadn’t.

So it got longer.

So the sentence got worse.

I didn’t forget them.

She checked that, hard, the way she checked everything now.

It held.

She hadn’t forgotten Daren. She thought about the bench roughly weekly and had never once written the words tell me about the bench since the first time.

She hadn’t forgotten Rowan, who’d sent two letters she’d read four times each and not answered.

She hadn’t forgotten Tax, and there was a specific bad feeling attached to Tax that she did not look at directly.

And she’d seen Fell twice at the lower market in four years. Both times he’d nodded at her from a distance. Both times she’d nodded back and neither of them had spoken.

He’d be writing to Rowan monthly. Rowan didn’t let arrangements lapse.

And whatever Fell wrote would say nothing — because Fell didn’t know anything.

Nobody knew anything. That was the entire point.

You do not name the work. You do not name the ground. You do not name who you went with, or what came back with you, or what didn’t. Whatever the situation. Whoever’s asking.

Kestral had been clear about that in a way Kestral was rarely clear about anything.

So Fell would write she is well, she is training hard, month after month, because it was all he had.

And Rowan — who could get the whole shape of a thing out of a number — would read two years of identical reports and know something was being kept from him.

He’d be right.

She’d do it anyway.

"You’re doing a thinking slow," said Eren.

"I’m sitting down."

"You can do a thinking slow sitting down. It’s mostly shoulders."

"That’s not a real—"

"It’s extremely real. I’ve got a chart."

"You do not have a chart."

"I have a chart in the way I have a tally," said Eren. "Conceptually."

She looked at the fire.

"It’s been two years," she said. "Since I wrote to anyone."

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

"Two years is a long time to not do a thing you’re going to do."

"I might not do it."

"You’ve got it in your coat," said Eren.

She went completely still.

"You’ve had it in there about two years," he said, to the fire. "You check it’s still there roughly twice a day. Left hand. Usually when you stand up from something."

The wet log hissed.

"I’ve never asked what it is," he said. "I’m not asking now."

He put another wet one on.

"But you’re going to do it," he said, "so you may as well be honest with yourself about the timeline."

She sat there with her split hand on her knee and did not answer him — and across the fire Mira, who had been awake for approximately four minutes and had elected not to mention it, kept her eyes shut and her breathing even and filed the entire exchange for later.