Chapter 148: — "Cuckoo"

They stayed in the road for a while.

Nobody came past, which was fortunate, because by any reasonable measure the two of them looked like the aftermath of something.

Eventually she said, “My trunk’s at the coaching inn.”

“…What.”

“The cart went ahead. I walked the last two miles.” She was picking gravel out of her palm. “There’s a trunk and two bags sitting in a yard at the crossing with nobody watching them, and if I don’t collect them today someone will, and I’ve carried some of that four hundred miles.”

Kael looked at her.

“You’ve been back an hour.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been back an hour and you’re doing logistics.”

“I’ve been doing logistics for six years,” said Seraphina, standing up, “and I’d like you to understand that it’s the only reason I’m still upright.”

He walked with her.

Not close. There was a foot of road between them the entire way and neither of them adjusted it, and both of them noticed.

She kept looking at him sideways.

“Stop it.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’ve looked at me eleven times.”

“You’ve grown hair, Kael—”

“That happens to people.”

“Not to you, you had — you had a fringe, you had a fringe your entire life, you used to have to move it to see things—”

“Yes.”

“So why—”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “later.”

Which was, she noted, the first time in years he had ever answered a question by promising to answer it.

She heard him before she saw him.

They were coming down the second row of stalls and a voice she had heard every day for six years said, at volume, to strangers:

“—which is why the cuckoo is the only honest bird in the northern hemisphere.”

Seraphina stopped dead.

“No.”

“What.”

“No.”

“The others build,” the voice went on. “The others build, they invest, they take on obligations they cannot meet. The cuckoo looks at the situation and makes a decision—”

She went round the end of the stall.

There was a crowd. A small one, but a real one, and in the middle of it, holding a wicker cage with two entirely unbothered birds in it, was Eren.

“Ah,” he said. “There she is.”

“Put the cage down.”

“This is her,” Eren told the crowd. “This is the one I mentioned.”

“You mentioned me—”

“Twice,” said Eren. “At length.”

It took four minutes to extract him, which she considered fast.

“Why are you here.”

“Cuckoos.”

“Eren—”

“There’s a market.”

“There’s a market four hundred miles from where you’re meant to be.”

“I’m not meant to be anywhere,” said Eren, with total serenity. “That’s the entire condition of finishing an academy. Nobody has told me to be anywhere for eleven days. I’ve found it disorientating and I’ve compensated with birds.”

“You came south.”

“Four days behind you. I stopped at Tallen because there was a man there who wanted to argue about hedges.” He adjusted the cage. “You went first. So I came after. That’s the whole of it, and I’d rather not deliver a speech about it in a market.”

“Where’s Mira.”

“Gone east. Home.” Something crossed his face and went. “She got a cart, said I’m going east, said write to me, then looked at me for a long time and said write to me again. Which is the most emotional act that woman has ever committed. Then she went, and I stood in a road holding a bag.”

They got as far as the coaching inn yard before Eren noticed.

He had been talking. He had been talking continuously for some time about the man who wanted to argue about hedges.

And then he stopped, mid-sentence, and looked past her.

Kael was standing four feet away with her trunk already on one shoulder.

“…Ah,” said Eren.

“Eren, this is Kael. Kael, Eren.”

“Ah,” said Eren again.

“Stop saying ah—”

“It’s a sound. It’s the sound of a man in a yard.”

Kael set the trunk down.

“I’ve got the bags.”

“You haven’t got the—” Seraphina turned. He had the bags. Both of them. “When did you—”

“While you were extracting him.”

“That was four minutes—”

“They were in the yard,” said Kael. “Nobody was watching them.”

Eren looked at the trunk. Then at the two bags. Then at the man who had acquired all three in under four minutes without being asked and had not mentioned doing it.

“That’s very efficient,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“That’s remarkably efficient. Almost aggressive.”

“It’s a trunk,” said Kael.

“It’s a statement,” said Eren.

The contest started about eleven minutes later and neither of them ever admitted it had started.

It began with Eren buying her something hot from a stall she had walked past — which he had always done, which was six years of habit, which he did without breaking stride or asking.

She took it without thinking.

Kael watched that happen.

Kael watched her take it without thinking, from a hand she wasn’t looking at, in a rhythm that had clearly been established a very long time ago and had never once needed discussing.

Something went through him that he had not felt in years and did not enjoy at all.

Nine minutes later he came back from a stall she hadn’t seen him leave for with a pair of gloves.

“I don’t need—”

“Yours have a hole in the left palm.”

She looked at her left palm.

“That’s — how did you—”

“You’ve been holding your cup with the other hand since we sat down,” said Kael. “Take them. They’re the boiled wool, they’re not the good ones, you can lose them without minding.”

Seraphina held the gloves.

Eren, from the other side of the table, said nothing at all, which from Eren was the loudest available response.

Then he said, mildly: “She loses four a year.”

“I know,” said Kael.

Silence.

“…You know,” said Eren.

“She’s lost gloves since she was nine.”

That one landed.

Seraphina saw it land. She saw Eren’s face do something for about a third of a second — nothing anyone else would have caught, and she had been watching that face across a fire for six years — and then it was gone.

Since she was nine.

years of gloves.

I’ve got four.

Eren picked up the cage.

“He’s right,” he said pleasantly. “Terrible with gloves. Excellent with everything else.”

They kept going.

Eren knew how she took her tea and got it wrong on purpose so she’d correct him, which was a bit, which she had never once got tired of, and Kael watched her laugh at it and understood he did not have the bit and could not acquire one.

Kael knew the name of her mother’s dog.

Eren knew what she did with her hands when she was about to lie.

Kael knew she couldn’t sleep in a room with a door she couldn’t see.

Eren knew she counted things when she was frightened.

Kael knew she used to bounce when she was happy — and said so, once, quietly, at the table, and neither of them noticed that Seraphina stopped moving for a second when he said it.

By the third hour she had:

A pair of gloves. Something hot she hadn’t asked for. A cuckoo she had accidentally bought from a man who already owned it. A folded paper of dried fruit from a stall Eren had walked forty feet out of his way for. A comb, from Kael, for reasons he did not explain and which she did not press on because his ears had gone slightly wrong.

And two men sitting on either side of her being scrupulously polite at each other in flat level voices, neither raising his tone once, in what was rapidly becoming the most aggressive conversation she had ever been present for.

“You’ve been to the northern passes,” said Kael.

“Thirty-one times.”

“That’s a lot.”

“It’s an average number,” said Eren.

“Is it.”

“For the work,” said Eren.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Kael.

“No,” said Eren. “You wouldn’t.”

Seraphina stood up.

“Right.”

Both of them looked up.

“I’m going to the house,” she said. “My parents are in it. I haven’t seen them in six years. I’m going to walk there on my own, and I’m going to do that now, and I want both of you to hear the word alone and think about it.”

“I can carry—” said Kael.

“I can walk with—” said Eren.

“ALONE,” said Seraphina, and picked up the cage, and left.

They sat there.

The market did market things around them.

After some time Eren said, “six years.”

“Sixteen,” said Kael.

“I’m aware.”

“Then you’ll know it isn’t a competition.”

“It’s entirely a competition,” said Eren, “and we’ve both been playing it since the yard, and I’d rather we didn’t do the part where we pretend otherwise, because that part’s beneath both of us and it takes ages.”

Kael looked at the table.

“She takes things from you without looking,” he said.

“…What?”

“You handed her a cup and she took it without looking at your hand. She wasn’t paying attention. It was a — ” he searched for it — “a habit. She has habits with you.”

Eren didn’t say anything.

“I don’t have any of those,” said Kael. “I had sixteen years and then six without and every habit she has now, she built somewhere I wasn’t.”

Eren turned his own cup round on the table.

“She stopped mid-sentence,” he said.

“What?”

“When you said she used to bounce.” He wasn’t looking up. “She went still. For about a second. Nobody at that table noticed except me, and I’ve been watching her for six years, and I’ve never once got a second out of her by saying a thing about who she used to be, because I don’t know who she used to be. I’ve only ever had the one who arrived.”

He put the cup down.

“You’ve got a version of her that I will never meet,” he said, “and she carries it around with her, and it’s yours.”

The market went on.

“That’s the worst thing anyone’s said to me today,” said Kael.

“Yes,” said Eren. “I know. I’ve been sitting on it for three hours.”