Chapter 41
The salle was empty when Astra’s Mark reached through the building.
I was rewrapping the grip on a practice stave. The leather was old, split at one edge, still useful but only if the hand holding it knew where not to press.
The strip went slack in my fingers.
Cold stone and burnt sugar reached me first.
Ashford.
I set the stave on the rack before my hand could close around it hard enough to break something that did not deserve the break.
Astra’s Mark answered him.
The salle held its shape: wood, chalk, old oil, the honest smell of bodies learning impact.
The air did not.
My Mark answered from under my sleeve, heat pulling tight beneath the linen.
Astra’s Mark came after: cold air, wet ink, and the metallic brightness of a storm that had not broken yet.
Her.
Then green apple cut through.
Marsh.
I closed my hand around the strip of leather and held it until the need to move became a thing I could stand beside instead of obey.
Desire came first.
Jealousy followed.
Recognition arrived last and found the place in my guts where discipline had been standing guard.
Ashford was with her. Marsh felt it. I felt it. Somewhere in the upper north corridor, a covered basin was failing to keep the room from knowing what the Marks knew.
I walked to the center line of the salle.
The center line had been redrawn since Astra’s class.
I saw her feet there anyway: crossing it badly, then better, then badly again because fear and anger both taught the body to lie about balance.
I looked at the line until I stopped seeing the door to Ashford’s rooms.
It didn’t really work.
Three minutes later, Marsh appeared in the doorway empty-handed and unsmiling.
“You felt it,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Is it done?”
“No.”
Relief crossed his face first.
He hated that I saw it.
“Good,” he said.
I glanced at him and watched his mouth tighten.
“I know,” he said. “I know. I’m an ass.”
“She chose him.”
“That’s why I’m an ass.”
“She chose him, and he didn’t force the rest of us out. At least not yet.”
Kieran looked away.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“Not really.”
“Excellent. It doesn’t.”
The Pull shifted again.
Kieran’s hand jerked toward his right shoulder.
He stopped it halfway.
Too late.
Silver-green light bled through his shirt, high on the right side.
I had seen Marks answer before.
I had not seen one answer like a wound.
It didn’t spread like an answering Mark should. It stayed caught there, bright and wrong, as if his shoulder had trapped it.
“Marsh?”
“Don’t ask. You don’t want to get involved in my issues.”
I looked at the light.
Then at him.
“There’s something wrong with it. Your Mark.”
His mouth curved without humor.
“Very good, Instructor.”
“It hurts you.”
“Everything hurts someone.”
“Kieran.”
That got his attention.
His smile thinned.
“Yes, it hurts,” he said.
“My Mark answered too.”
“I figured.”
“Then we are both having a poor evening.”
He laughed once. It wasn’t a sound with humor in it.
“I came here because I knew you would say things like that.”
“You came here because you were going to go to her.”
His face told me the truth before his mouth could improve it.
“So were you,” he said.
I looked at the center line. “I thought about it.”
Kieran snorted. “Right.”
“But I stayed here.”
“So did I.”
“For now.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
A pipe clicked in the wall.
Somewhere above us, a footstep crossed the ceiling and stopped.
Marsh looked toward the upper corridors.
Then the Pull hit again.
This time there was no mistaking it for pain.
Astra’s pleasure came through the bond as pressure under the ribs, heat in the blood, a body feeling desire.
Kieran turned away so fast his boot scraped the floor.
I looked at the rack of staves and tried to block the sensations from my mind.
There were some doors a man had no right to stand at, even when the Mark dragged him close.
“Quill will know,” Marsh said.
“Not from the basin.”
“From us.”
“Only if we give him something to see.”
He looked back at me.
“She isn’t in pain,” he said.
“No.”
“She isn’t afraid.”
“No.”
“She chose him.”
“For now.”
Kieran’s face tightened.
“And if she keeps choosing him?”
“Then she keeps choosing him.”
“If she closes us out?”
I looked at the stave rack again because it was easier than looking at him and seeing the fear in his eyes.
“Then she closes us out. It’s her choice.”
For a moment, the salle was only wood and breath and the two of us learning how little wanting mattered.
Kieran looked toward the upper corridors.
“She can do that.”
“Yes.”
“I hate that.”
“So do I.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he crossed to the opposite wall and sat on the floor with his back against the wood paneling, left knee raised, right leg straight. His right shoulder stayed too still.
Now I knew why. Or at least I had an idea. It wasn’t the time to press him for the whole story.
I returned to the stave rack with the leather still in my hand.
It had creased where I’d held it too tightly.
I smoothed it once with my thumb and started again.
“Does Ashford know?” Marsh asked.
“That we felt it?”
“That she didn’t seal.”
“He’ll know.”
“Will he understand?”
“Yes. Ashford, of all people, will understand. He was built for this. He knows how the bonds work better than any of us.”
Marsh tipped his head back against the wall.
“If he is decent about this,” Kieran said, “that will be worse.”
“No doubt about it.”
“You could have argued.”
“I could have.”
“Terrible of you not to.”
This time the corner of his mouth did move.
Astra’s Mark pulled through the room again.
Harder.
I set the stave back down.
Marsh’s smile disappeared.
The three lines of it came through in order: Ashford first, cold and sweet; Marsh second, green and bright enough to hurt; mine last, leather and heat, held too long under the sleeve.
Astra’s Mark reached toward all three and chose none of us cleanly.
My first thought was not noble.
My first thought was that Ashford had touched her and still did not get to keep her for himself.
Then the thought passed, and shame came after it, late and deserved.
The Council would see danger in the open lines.
Marsh hissed through his teeth.
“She is going to make them furious.”
“She already has.”
“No,” he said. “I mean tomorrow.”
I looked at him.
For once, the joke was not hiding him.
“You know what happens tomorrow,” I said.
“They ask her to choose Ashford in front of everyone.”
“They ask her to make the other two of us disappear.”
Kieran looked at the floor.
“They can ask.”
He closed his eyes.
“If she comes to you,” I said, “do not make her prove she wanted you too.”
His eyes opened.
Green, bright, offended because the warning had found the place it was meant to find.
“I know that.”
“Tomorrow, remember it.”
His eyes narrowed.
“And you?”
I tied the leather tighter than I needed to.
“I’ll remember.”
He studied me.
I let him.
Marsh was clever in the way dying men became clever: impatient with easy lies, quick to notice where the truth had been hidden.
“You want her,” he said. “Not just because of the Mark.”
“Of course I do.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
Marsh nodded.
“Same. Tragic for both of us, probably,” he said.
I ignored his commentary and tied off the leather at the end of the stave.
The knot held.
My Mark quieted by a fraction.
Not enough.
Across the salle, Marsh watched my hands as if the knot had answered a question he had not meant to ask.
“She isn’t safer because we want her,” I said.
“No, she’s not.”
“But she’s safer if we can stand still when standing still is the thing required.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow will require something else.”
Marsh looked toward the door.
“Do you know what?”
“No.”
“That must be refreshing for you.”
“It isn’t.”
The Pull softened.
Not gone.
Never gone.
Only settled back under the skin, where a man could pretend it was a private wound.
Marsh rose too quickly.
His right shoulder seized.
He kept his hand at his side until the spasm passed, then walked toward the salle exit.
At the doorway, he stopped.
“If I go to her tomorrow, it will be because she asked.”
I looked at the chalk line on the floor.
“The same for me.”
He nodded, then he left.
I remained in the salle until the lamps along the wall burned low and the building’s night staff passed the door twice without looking in.
In the upper north rooms, Astra’s Mark had reached toward Ashford and kept the rest of us near enough to hurt.
Tomorrow, the Council would ask her to choose one answer.
Tonight, the best thing we could give her was the room to have chosen.