The Same Cloth

Chapter 37: What Remains

Silas had spent years waiting for the Hollow to speak to him again.

Now that it had, he found he preferred the silence.

His name came from deep within the open gateway, spoken in a voice that sounded uncomfortably close to his own.

“Silas.”

Behind him, Darian’s fire dimmed.

Lance crouched against the cavern wall, his ruined hand pressed to the place where the valley’s renewed barrier had burned him. White lightning crawled between his fingers.

Silas straightened.

“The bloodline has matured,” he said. “The entrance is open. I have done everything required.”

Something scraped across stone beyond the darkness.

“You have opened a door.”

The reply was quiet.

Silas waited.

“Bring him through it.”

“The boy is protected.”

“Yes.”

“The elders have changed their wards. His wives—”

“I know.”

For the first time, Silas wondered how much the thing within the Hollow had learned while he had been unable to hear it.

He glanced toward Lance.

“I have weapons carrying the powers of his parents.”

“And you sent them to touch a boundary stone.”

A cold pressure settled against his teeth.

Silas forced himself to remain still.

“I was testing the defenses.”

“You warned them.”

Darian made a low sound behind him.

Silas turned, grateful for something upon which to direct his anger.

“Be silent.”

The fire leaking from Darian’s mouth flared.

For an instant, his twisted face changed. His jaw trembled. His fingers dug into the stone beneath him.

“Mother.”

The word was barely recognizable.

Silas stared.

Then he lifted one hand, and the dark markings beneath Darian’s skin tightened.

Darian collapsed.

From beyond the gateway came a soft, interested breath.

Leo hit the training ground shoulder first.

The air left his lungs in a painful rush.

A wooden staff touched the center of his chest.

“Dead,” Tomas said.

Leo stared up at him.

“You said we were beginning slowly.”

“We did. That took almost a minute.”

From the edge of the practice circle, Seraphine folded her arms.

“You looked at Catherine when you heard her stumble.”

“She fell.”

“I sat down,” Catherine corrected.

Leo turned his head.

His wife sat comfortably on a low bench, holding a cup of water.

Celine pressed her lips together.

“Don’t laugh,” he warned.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Her shoulders betrayed her.

Tomas offered him a hand.

Leo accepted it and rose with a groan.

The elders had gathered them shortly after breakfast. Marcus had taken over the morning’s administrative work, Elara had claimed Noctis, and Edran had informed Catherine that anticipating an exercise did not excuse her from participating in it.

So far, the morning had mostly involved discovering how many ways the three of them could get one another killed.

Leo rushed toward either wife whenever an attack came close.

Celine spent too much strength trying to place a barrier around everyone at once.

Catherine followed possible injuries so intently that she sometimes lost track of the ground beneath her feet.

Their individual abilities had improved enormously.

Together, they were exhausting themselves.

Tomas stepped back.

“Again.”

Leo wiped dirt from his cheek.

This time, when Seraphine sent a narrow ribbon of flame toward Celine, he held his position.

Celine lifted one hand.

Space bent.

The fire passed through the place where her shoulder had been and struck the sand behind her.

“Good,” Tomas said.

Then his staff cracked against Leo’s shin.

Leo swore.

“Less admiring,” the elder added.

Celine lost her battle with laughter.

By their fourth rest, Catherine had stopped smiling.

Edran noticed before anyone else.

“What are you following?”

She sat with both hands wrapped around her cup.

“Too much.”

“Be specific.”

“Leo’s left leg gives way in one possibility. Celine’s barrier collapses in another. You step forward, but sometimes Tomas moves first, and then—”

Her breath caught.

Edran tapped his staff once.

Catherine flinched.

“Where are your feet?”

She frowned.

“On the ground.”

“What is beneath your right heel?”

She shifted it.

“A pebble.”

“Your left hand?”

“The cup.”

“Is it warm?”

“No.”

“Listen to your husband.”

Across the circle, Leo was arguing that striking the same shin repeatedly ought to count as personal hostility.

Tomas replied that protecting it once would settle the matter.

Catherine let out a shaky breath.

The crowded possibilities eased.

Edran sat beside her.

“You keep trying to find a future in which no one gets hurt.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“For many years, I did.”

She turned toward him.

“What happened?”

“I became so occupied with preventing tomorrow’s pain that I was poor company for the people beside me.”

Catherine lowered her eyes, an old habit that had survived her blindness.

“Yesterday I felt people suffering.”

“I know.”

“What if I could have learned where they were?”

“You were standing beside a stream with no knowledge of what was causing the vision. Reaching farther might have taught you something. It might also have left you unconscious.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she asked, “How do I know when to stop?”

“We practice stopping while the choice is easy.”

He placed a smooth stone in her palm.

“For the next exercise, you will follow only the moment immediately ahead. Each time your attention wanders farther, describe this stone to me.”

Catherine ran her thumb across it.

“That sounds tedious.”

“It is exceptionally tedious.”

She smiled despite herself.

“Leo will enjoy that.”

“Leo will be busy learning that his wives can avoid a stick without his assistance.”

Celine’s difficulty proved harder to laugh about.

The first time Tomas asked her to open a passage behind Leo, she managed it.

The second time, her knees shook.

By the third, she had gone pale.

Leo caught her elbow.

She stiffened at once.

“I’m fine.”

“I know. Sit down.”

“I can finish.”

Her spatial mentor, who had spent the morning quietly adjusting the practice wards, approached from the far side of the circle.

“You finished two attempts ago.”

Celine looked at him.

“Your control deteriorated after the second passage,” he continued. “The third taught you nothing useful.”

Frustration burned in her face.

“I used to be able to do more.”

“You recently gave birth.”

“I’m aware.”

“And you are recovering while feeding a child whose appetite appears to challenge the household stores.”

Catherine made a sympathetic sound.

Celine glared in her direction.

Her mentor remained unmoved.

“Today, you will work seated. Small openings. No greater than the width of your hand.”

“How will that help against something that broke through our wards?”

He picked up a wooden practice knife.

“Leo. Throw this at the target.”

Leo glanced at Celine, then accepted the knife.

He threw.

Her mentor moved two fingers.

A tiny opening appeared in the knife’s path.

Another opened beside the target.

The knife struck from the side.

Celine watched closely.

“You don’t need to move your husband across the field every time he attacks,” the old mage said. “Sometimes you need only change where his hand can reach.”

Leo looked at the embedded knife.

Then at Celine.

She was already holding out her hand for another.

They broke for lunch when Elara arrived carrying Noctis.

The baby’s displeasure had preceded her through the courtyard.

“He wants his mother,” she announced.

Celine rose immediately.

Noctis quieted the moment she took him.

Elara looked offended.

“I have been walking with you for half an hour.”

His attention remained firmly on Celine.

“Ungrateful little prince.”

“You called him the sweetest child in the valley this morning,” Leo said.

“He was asleep.”

They settled beneath the covered walkway while the elders discussed the wards.

Catherine leaned against Leo’s uninjured side.

“How is your leg?”

“I may have to replace it.”

“With something that blocks?”

He turned toward her.

She smiled serenely.

Celine laughed, then winced and adjusted her position.

Leo moved a cushion behind her without comment.

For a while, they ate and listened to the ordinary sounds of the compound.

Somewhere near the kitchens, Marcus was explaining that an emergency reserve of flour still needed to be recorded before someone baked with it. A child ran past carrying a slate. From the workshops came the rhythmic strike of a hammer.

Catherine’s fingers found Leo’s.

“Our daughter laughed like that,” she said softly.

Celine looked up.

“Yesterday?”

Catherine nodded.

“When she looked at Noctis.”

Leo remembered the young woman’s face.

The resemblance had frightened him almost as much as it had delighted him.

“I keep wondering what her name is,” he admitted.

“Perhaps we should choose something terrible,” Celine said. “Then see whether she comes back to complain.”

Catherine laughed.

“Don’t threaten our daughter.”

“I’m her aunt. I’m entitled to embarrass her.”

Noctis released a contented sigh against his mother.

Celine looked down at him, her expression softening.

Then Catherine said, more quietly, “I don’t want to spend every day waiting for the part our older selves warned us about.”

Leo squeezed her hand.

“Neither do I.”

“Then after training, we have supper together. Without maps on the table.”

Celine nodded.

“And Tomas can tell you what you did wrong tomorrow.”

From several paces away, Tomas said, “That may require an early start.”

Lance’s wife came to the council room that afternoon.

Her youngest son accompanied her as far as the door.

Leo had been reviewing patrol reports with Marcus when he saw them.

He stood.

The woman’s gaze moved across his face.

“What have you found?”

Marcus set down his papers.

“Please sit.”

She remained standing.

“There are people saying lightning was seen near the northern farms. My husband and Darian vanished before the beast wave. Now the elders are sealing the roads.”

Her fingers tightened around one another.

“I have spent months wondering whether I should mourn them.”

Leo glanced toward the doorway.

Her son stood very still.

“Come in,” Leo told him.

The boy obeyed.

Leo waited until they were both seated.

“We found traces of true lightning and phoenix fire at one of the boundary stones. Catherine heard Silas during a vision. She believes two people were being hurt.”

The woman’s mouth trembled.

“Do you think it was them?”

“We don’t know.”

“Would Silas have reason to keep them?”

“Yes,” Leo said.

He would not make that answer gentler by making it false.

Her son stared at the floor.

“If my father comes here…”

He stopped.

Leo waited.

The boy forced the words out.

“People will think we helped him.”

Marcus leaned forward.

“You have been here every day, working beside our people.”

“But if he—”

“Your father does not decide who you are,” Leo said.

The boy looked up.

For a moment, Leo saw again the student carrying blankets outside the school.

“You’ve already made choices he wouldn’t have made. We’ve seen them.”

His mother covered her face with one hand.

When she spoke, her voice was thin.

“I know what Lance did to your family. I know Darian followed him. I’m not asking you to let them hurt anyone.”

She looked directly at Leo.

“But if there is anything left of my son…”

Leo felt the weight of the request.

Across the room, Marcus remained silent.

“If we can bring him back safely, we will try,” Leo said. “I can promise you that much.”

She nodded.

It took her several attempts before she could thank him.

The afternoon’s final exercise lasted eleven seconds.

Later, Leo would remember those eleven seconds more clearly than the hours of failure before them.

Tomas attacked from the left.

Seraphine’s flame crossed from the right.

Leo felt the familiar urge to move in front of both wives.

“Stay,” Catherine said.

He stayed.

“Low.”

He lowered his hand.

Celine opened a narrow passage beside his wrist.

He sent a restrained pulse of lightning through it.

Across the circle, the pulse emerged behind Tomas and struck the metal disk fastened to the elder’s belt.

It rang sharply.

Tomas turned.

Catherine touched Leo’s shoulder.

“Now.”

He stepped forward as Celine folded Seraphine’s flame away from his path.

His palm stopped an inch from Tomas’s chest.

Silence settled over the circle.

Leo stared at his own hand.

Celine began to smile.

Tomas looked down at the faint light between them.

Then he nodded.

“There.”

Leo let the lightning fade.

“That worked.”

“Once,” Seraphine said.

Catherine lifted her stone.

“Smooth,” she announced. “Cold. Rather annoying.”

Edran smiled.

“Excellent.”

Celine sank back into her chair, breathing hard but still smiling.

Leo crouched beside her.

“We did it.”

She touched the dirt on his cheek.

“You stayed where we needed you.”

He looked at Catherine.

She stood with one hand resting on her staff, tired and pleased.

For the first time since the boundary stone, the warning from the future felt like something he could answer with work.

They nearly made it through supper without interruption.

Noctis slept.

Marcus had put the reports away.

Elara had just begun insisting that everyone take a second helping when a guard appeared in the doorway.

He stopped short.

“I’m sorry.”

Leo set down his fork.

“What happened?”

“The northern patrol found someone at the barrier.”

Tomas rose.

“Alive?”

“Yes, Elder.”

The guard swallowed.

“Burning.”

Catherine’s spoon slipped from her fingers.

Leo was already standing.

They reached the boundary after sunset.

The barrier cast a pale glow across the hillside.

Beyond it, a figure knelt in the scorched grass.

One arm was too long. Blackened growths rose along his shoulders. Fire pulsed beneath cracked skin, brightening with every labored breath.

The guards had formed a line well back from the ward.

None had attacked.

Leo stopped beside Tomas.

The creature lifted its face.

He would not have recognized Darian if he had passed him on a road.

But when the ruined mouth moved, something in the voice remained.

“Leo.”

Celine drew a sharp breath.

Behind them, Seraphine whispered a word Leo had never heard her use before.

Darian crawled forward.

The ward flashed.

He screamed and fell back.

“Don’t touch it,” Tomas ordered.

Darian’s head jerked at the sound.

For a moment, his eyes cleared.

He looked past Leo toward the distant lights of the compound.

“My mother.”

Leo moved one step closer.

“She’s safe.”

Darian shook violently.

Dark lines tightened around his throat.

Catherine gripped Leo’s sleeve.

“He’s fighting something.”

Darian drove his clawed hand into the earth.

Fire spilled across the grass.

The guards raised their weapons.

“Hold,” Marcus said.

Leo crouched, bringing himself level with the man beyond the barrier.

“Darian. Can you hear me?”

A ragged breath.

Then a nod.

“What did Silas do?”

Darian’s face contorted.

His mouth opened.

For one terrible instant, another voice seemed about to come out.

He struck himself across the jaw hard enough to fall sideways.

Celine flinched.

Leo’s hands curled into fists.

Darian dragged himself upright again.

“Don’t,” he rasped.

“Don’t what?”

His eyes fixed on Leo.

“Follow.”

The fires beneath his skin surged.

Darian screamed through clenched teeth, forcing out the rest before they could take his voice.

“He wants you inside.”

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