Chapter 152: — "You"

He turned up on the windowsill at fourth bell the next morning like he had never been anywhere.

Seraphina was pulling her boots on. She looked up, saw a crow sitting on her own windowsill with its head tilted at an angle that had not changed in six years, and said:

“Oh, now you show up.”

“Morning.”

“Morning—”

“You’ve got a bird in a cage in the hall,” said Tax. “I’ve been in this house eleven minutes and I’d like that addressed before anything else happens.”

“Where the hell have you been.”

“Around.”

“You absolute rat.” She had one boot on. She stood up in it. “You festering, thieving, opinionated little — six years, Tax, six years and a week, and you’ve been around—”

“You’ve got taller.”

“DON’T CHANGE THE—”

“You’ve got taller and you’ve cut all your hair off and you’ve come home with a cuckoo,” said Tax, “which is a bird that puts its eggs in other birds’ nests, and I want you to sit with the fact that of all the birds available to you, you chose that one.”

She threw the other boot at him.

He did not move. It went past his left side by about four inches, which meant he had known where it was going before it left her hand, which had been true for six years and was somehow the most reassuring thing that had happened to her all week.

“You’re out of practice.”

“I am not out of—”

“You telegraph from the shoulder now. You never used to.” He resettled his feet. “Somebody’s taught you to throw properly, which has made you worse at throwing things at me, and I want them found and dealt with.”

Seraphina sat down on the bed with one boot on.

“I hate you,” she said.

“Mm.”

“I’ve hated you for six years. Continuously. I want you to understand it was daily.”

“That’s very good,” said Tax. “That’s an excellent commitment. Most people can’t keep a thing up for six years.”

Then he flew down, and landed on the bedpost, which put him at eye level.

And said, in an entirely different voice:

“You’re thin.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re thin and there’s a mark on your face and your right hand’s got two fingers that set wrong.”

“Tax—”

“And you’ve been home a week and you’ve not once sat with your back to a door.” He tilted his head. “I’ve watched. You stand in doorways. You did it in the hall this morning and you did it in the study last night and you don’t know you’re doing it.”

Seraphina looked at her hands.

“Everyone keeps noticing things,” she said.

“Yes,” said Tax. “That’s what happens when you go away and come back to people who never stopped looking at the place you used to be.”

He would not tell her where he had been.

She tried four separate approaches over the following hour, which was three more than she had ever needed on anybody, and got nothing.

“You were somewhere.”

“I’m often somewhere.”

“You were somewhere specific, you missed a week—”

“I’ve been extremely busy.”

“Doing what—”

“Things,” said Tax.

“You realise that’s the exact word he uses—”

“Who?”

“Eren. That’s his word. He says various and things and it means he’s not going to answer, and I’ve had four years of it and I refuse to have it from a crow in my own—”

“Who’s Eren,” said Tax.

Seraphina stopped.

“…You know who Eren is.”

“Do I.”

“Kael’s had a letter that mentioned him. years ago. I know Kael read it out—”

“Kael reads me a great many things,” said Tax, “and I retain the ones that concern me.”

Downstairs, Daren had arrived with bread and had gone into a state on seeing Tax.

“YOU’VE COME—”

“Obviously I’ve come.”

“YOU’VE NOT COME ALL WEEK—”

“I’ve been busy,” said Tax.

“You’ve been sulking,” said Daren. “That’s what this is. She got back and you weren’t ready and you’ve had a week of—”

“I have been busy, Daren.”

“You’ve been sitting in a tree somewhere having feelings—”

“I will take your bread,” said Tax.

“You wouldn’t—”

Tax took his bread.

It was, Seraphina thought, the best morning she’d had in six years, and she was aware of thinking it while it was still happening, which she had learned was rare.

Kael arrived at sixth. He did not say anything about the previous evening, and neither did she, and there was an eleven-second silence in the hall while both of them decided not to.

Then Tax said, “Your ears have gone,” and the moment collapsed entirely.

They ended up in the yard.

Daren on the wall with what remained of his bread. Kael standing. Seraphina sitting on the step with a crow on the rail beside her being appalling about everything.

“That coat’s finished.”

“It’s a good coat—”

“It was a good coat years ago. Now it’s a memory of a coat—”

“I paid for this coat with government money—”

“You paid for that coat with somebody’s money,” said Tax, “and it’s had a hard life since, and I’d like to know what happened to the left cuff.”

“A river.”

“A river—”

“There was a current,” said Seraphina, “and I’d rather not.”

“Right,” said Tax. “The academy.”

“What about it.”

“Six years. Start.”

“That’s not a question—”

“It’s the only question,” said Tax. “Everyone else in this yard has been asking you polite ones, and you’ve been giving polite answers, and I’ve listened to four of them this morning and they were all rubbish.”

Seraphina looked at the step.

“It was cold,” she said.

“Mm.”

“It was cold, and it was serious, and nobody there does anything for a reason that isn’t written down somewhere.”

“And?”

“And I was good at it,” she said.

That came out flatter than she meant it to. Kael, standing four feet off, did not react in any way that showed.

“How good.”

“Tax—”

“How good,” said the crow.

“Best in my year by the third,” said Seraphina, to the step. “By a distance. And I’ve never once said that out loud and I’d like to never say it again.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Daren said, “I like it.”

“Daren—”

“No, I’m saying,” said Daren, with his mouth full, “I’ve had six years of not knowing anything, and that’s the first fact anyone’s given me, and I’m going to keep it.”

She got twenty minutes of it.

Twenty minutes of a crow being unbearable at her in a yard while two men she had not seen in six days and six years respectively pretended not to enjoy it, and she would think afterward that she had not once, in the whole twenty minutes, checked where the doors were.

Then the gate opened.

“—so anyway,” said Eren, coming through it, talking already, “I’ve solved the problem with the hall window, and I want to say in advance that your father is going to hate the solution—”

He had the cage in his left hand.

He was mid-sentence. He was not looking at the rail.

“—because it involves admitting the architect was correct about one thing, which I’ve decided is survivable if we frame it as—”

He stopped.

Because the yard had gone wrong.

Not quiet. Wrong. In the specific way a room goes when one thing in it changes and everybody’s body notices before anybody’s mind does.

Seraphina turned her head.

Tax had not moved.

That was what she registered first, and it took her about a second to understand why it was alarming, and then she understood.

Tax always moved. Tax shifted, resettled, turned his head, adjusted his feet — constantly, endlessly, for six years, a small continuous fidget that she had never once in her life consciously noticed until it stopped.

He was absolutely still.

He was standing on the rail with his head very slightly lowered and both eyes fixed on the gate, and every feather on him was flat to his body.

“Tax?”

Nothing.

“Tax.”

Eren stood in the gateway with a cuckoo in a cage.

He had stopped mid-word. His face was doing nothing at all — not the deadpan nothing, the other one, the one she had seen perhaps four times in six years and had never been able to read.

Nobody moved.

Daren, on the wall, with bread halfway to his mouth, said, “…What’s—”

“Shut up,” said Seraphina, without looking at him.

Tax made a sound.

It was not a word. It was not any noise she had heard out of him in six years — not the roasting sound, not the laughing sound, not the flat one he used when something mattered.

It was small, and it came from somewhere in his chest, and it was the sound a thing makes when it has been surprised into the truth.

Then he said:

“You.”

One word.

Not a question. Not a greeting.

Recognition.

The yard did not move.

Kael’s head had turned. Seraphina was on her feet without remembering standing. Daren had the bread still halfway up.

And Eren — four hundred miles from anywhere he had any business being, with a bird in a cage and one hand on the gate — looked at a crow on a rail for approximately two seconds.

Then said, pleasantly:

“Sorry — do we know each other?”

Sorryyy for the late chapter today, my memnaaaass Hope you guys don’t mind hehe.

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