Chapter 143: — "Nineteen Names"

The problem with nineteen names, it turned out, was that Eren refused to write them down.

“Just — put them on paper.”

“No.”

“Eren.”

“If it’s on paper it can be taken,” said Eren, from the back of the cart, with his eyes shut. “If it’s in my head it can only be taken with the head, and I’ve become attached to the head.”

“We are four days from Kestral—”

“Four days is a long time.”

“You’re going to forget—”

Eren opened one eye.

“Petrin Vaux,” he said. “Ossen Mard. The younger Mard, first name unknown, referred to twice as the boy and once as that idiot. A woman called Hesk who is either in Tallen or supplies to Tallen, unclear, the accountant said it badly. Someone called only the widow, which came up three times and made Halven change his voice—”

“Stop.”

“—Corran Vey, who is dead, which they mentioned as though it were recent and inconvenient—”

“Stop, Eren—”

“That’s six,” said Eren, closing his eye again. “There are thirteen more. I can do them in the order I heard them or alphabetically, and I want you to understand that the alphabetical version took me most of yesterday.”

Mira, driving, said nothing for a while.

Then: “Do the alphabetical one.”

“Absolutely not, it was agony—”

“Do the alphabetical one.”

They stopped the first night at a roadhouse that had four rooms and gave them two, and the argument about who got which lasted forty minutes and produced no useful outcome.

“You’re in with me,” said Mira.

“I’m in with him—”

“You are not in with him.”

“We’ve shared a tent—”

“You’ve shared a tent on a ridge under mission conditions,” said Mira, “with me four feet away, and this is a roadhouse in a town, and I’m not having this conversation.”

“There’s no difference—”

“There is an enormous difference,” said Mira, “and the fact that you can’t identify it is the exact reason you’re in with me.”

Eren, from the doorway, with total serenity: “I’d like it on record that I’ve said nothing.”

“Noted.”

“I’ve been a model of restraint—”

“You’ve been silently smiling at a wall for four minutes.”

“That’s restraint,” said Eren. “That’s what restraint looks like. You should see the unrestrained version, it’s much worse and it involves the word shawl.”

He was still in the dress.

That was the other thing.

Not by necessity — the necessity had ended somewhere around the fourth street out of Vellmark. Mira had brought a bag with his own clothes in it and had said so, twice, and had put the bag on the cart in a visible place.

The bag remained on the cart in a visible place.

“You could change.”

“I could.”

“There’s a bag—”

“I’m aware of the bag.”

“You’re going to be extremely cold in that.”

“It’s warmer than trousers,” said Eren.

Silence.

“I’ve told you,” said Seraphina, “that this is not—”

“It is significantly warmer than trousers, and I’ve had eleven days to form a view, and I’d like everyone to stop pretending this is a mystery.”

Mira, without turning round: “It’s the layers.”

“It’s not the layers—”

“It’s the layers, Eren. There are three of them. You’re wearing three garments and you think it’s the shape—”

“It is absolutely the shape—”

“It’s the layers.”

“IT’S THE SHAPE,” said Eren, “and I’d like it formally noted that I’ve said so, and that in six months when I say it again nobody’s going to remember I said it first.”

The trouble started on the second afternoon and it started, as trouble often does, with a man being helpful.

They stopped at a village well.

Seraphina — still in the grey coat, because it was a good coat and she was not carrying it in a bag like an idiot — went to water the horse.

And a farmer leaned on the wall and said, conversationally:

“You’d be the North Aldera lad.”

The world went slightly quiet.

“…I would.”

“Thought so.” The farmer nodded. “My cousin’s at Vellmark. Told me about the business in the square.”

Behind her, Seraphina heard Mira stop moving entirely.

“Did he.”

“Terrible,” said the farmer, with enormous relish. “Grabbing a girl in the market. Everyone talked about it for days.” He looked her up and down, unhurried, entirely unbothered. “You’re a horrid little bastard, aren’t you.”

There was a pause.

“…Yes,” said Seraphina.

“Thought so,” said the farmer again, satisfied, and went back to his bucket.

She got back to the cart and sat down and said nothing for about a mile.

“You handled that well,” said Mira.

“I said yes.”

“You said yes and he believed you, which is the whole—”

“I said yes to being a horrid little bastard, Mira, and I said it immediately, and I’ve been thinking about how fast I said it—”

“Say more,” said Eren, from the back.

“NO.”

The suspicion arrived that night and it arrived from an entirely unexpected direction.

They were eating. Roadhouse, second one, worse food.

And Mira put down her spoon and said:

“Sevrid didn’t sign the approval.”

“We know.”

“Renna didn’t sign the approval.”

“We know, Mira—”

“I’ve been thinking about who did,” said Mira, “for eleven days, in a room I was paying too much for, with nothing else to do. And I want to say a thing out loud once and then I’d like us all to stop.”

Seraphina put her spoon down too.

“Say it.”

“Four attempts on Halven. All four failed at the approach. Every one of them warned by somebody who liked him.” Mira’s hands were flat on the table. “So on the fifth attempt, somebody decides not to send professionals. Somebody decides to send three students with a theatrical plan that got written on a floor in one evening, and to approve it in six hours, and to sign it with a name none of us recognise.”

Eren had stopped eating.

“Because students are deniable,” said Seraphina slowly.

“Because students are expendable,” said Mira, “which is a different word, and I’ve had eleven days with it.”

Nobody said anything.

“And it worked,” said Mira, “which is the part I keep getting stuck on. It worked. It worked beautifully. And I don’t know whether that means we’re extremely good or whether it means they now know that the thing that gets through the door is three children and a rock.”

Later, outside, Seraphina found Eren sitting on the cart step in the cold with the shawl round him.

She sat down. Left a gap. He noticed her leave the gap, which was new, and which he did not comment on, which was also new.

“She’s right,” he said.

“I know.”

“She’s right and she’ll never say it again, because she said it once and that’s how she does things.”

“I know.”

They sat.

“Do you ever wonder,” said Eren, “how many of these we’ve got left.”

“Twenty-nine.”

He turned his head.

“…You’ve counted.”

“Thirty-one so far,” said Seraphina, to the dark. “One year left. Call it fifteen or sixteen more, if it stays the way it’s been going. So no. I don’t wonder. I’ve counted.”

Eren looked at her for a long moment.

“You’ve counted the ones that haven’t happened yet.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the single most alarming thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yes,” said Seraphina.

They rode into Kestral on the fourth day, filthy and cold, with nineteen names in one man’s head and a cart that smelled of somebody else’s kitchen.

And at the gate, Renna was waiting.

Which never happened.

Renna did not wait at gates. Renna appeared in the middle of things and left before you’d finished answering.

She looked at the three of them. At the cart. At Eren, still in the dress, with the fringe grown out at the edges and a shawl round his shoulders.

Her expression did not change in any way that could be described.

“Sennick.”

“Sir.”

“Nice dress.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Renna turned to Seraphina.

“You threw a rock.”

“…Yes, sir.”

“At a house.”

“At a wall, sir.”

“At a wall of a house,” said Renna, “belonging to a man who moves money for people who kill people, while he was standing inside it, at two in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Renna looked at her a moment longer.

“Debrief at fourth bell,” she said, and turned to go.

Then stopped.

“Valois.”

“Sir.”

“The hair suits you,” said Renna, and walked off, and Seraphina stood in the gate holding a horse and had absolutely no idea what to do with her face.

She stood in the gate for slightly longer than she needed to.

“She said something,” said Mira.

“She said the debrief’s at fourth bell.”

“She said something after that.”

“She said the debrief’s at fourth bell,” said Seraphina, and led the horse through, and Mira let it go — which was itself a kind of comment.

Eren got down off the cart in the dress with the shawl round him and walked into a combat academy in full view of approximately sixty people.

Nobody said anything.

Not out of tact. Out of the specific institutional paralysis that occurs when sixty people simultaneously decide it is somebody else’s job to ask.

He got all the way to the east door before Torin appeared from nowhere, took in the entire situation, and said:

“…Is that new?”

“It’s borrowed.”

“It’s nice,” said Torin, with total sincerity.

“Thank you.”

“Where’d you—”

“It’s a long story,” said Eren.

“I’ve got time—”

“It’s a very long story,” said Eren, and went inside, and Torin stood in the yard for a moment with the expression of a man who had been denied something he would think about for the rest of the week.