CHAPTER 6 #3
Rhyven set up a small route table under a freight awning.
Olyss was still behind.
Different seats.
Same pace.
Rhyven found herself checking the road every few minutes anyway.
At five twelve, Clinic Three arrived with the rear portion of Wave Two.
Olyss stepped down before the vehicle had fully settled into its bay.
They saw each other across the gravel.
Neither approached immediately.
Rhyven was answering a route question. Olyss was needed by a clinic aide. They worked within sight for fifteen minutes without pretending the distance was urgent.
That, too, felt like progress.
When they finally reached the same awning, Olyss handed Rhyven a cup of something warm.
“Coffee?”
“No. We have suffered enough.”
Rhyven drank.
Broth.
“Better.”
“I am a physician.”
“Apparently.”
Their shoulders touched because the table was crowded.
Neither moved away.
Rhyven said, “I meant what I said on the radio.”
“About Deryn deserving amnesia?”
“Before that.”
Olyss looked at her.
“So did I.”
Rhyven glanced at the route table, the radios, the people asking questions ten meters away.
“Still not the time.”
“No.”
“Does that frustrate you?”
Olyss considered.
“A little. But frustration is not an emergency.”
Rhyven laughed softly.
“Specific standards.”
“Exactly.”
They did not use the small pocket of relative quiet to finish the conversation.
Rhyven was surprised by how much that choice reassured her.
In the past she would have treated an available five minutes as a resource to exploit before it vanished.
Olyss seemed willing to let five minutes be five minutes: broth, shoulders touching, no demand that they solve the future because no one was currently calling their names.
A child ran past carrying a linked-circle card like a flag.
An older couple argued amiably over which shelter row they had been assigned.
Somewhere beyond the awning, Deryn was telling a driver that no, a hand-painted arrow did not authorize him to invent a shortcut.
The temporary town kept functioning around them.
“This is ordinary enough for me,” Olyss said.
Rhyven looked at her. “What is?”
“This part. Standing beside you while nothing dramatic happens for thirty seconds.”
The words tightened Rhyven’s throat.
“You have low standards.”
“Specific standards. We’ve covered this.”
“Right.”
Olyss nudged her shoulder, barely. “I don’t need a perfect first date to prove the kisses mattered.”
“I know.”
“Good. Because our options appear to be freight awning, wet gravel, and Deryn within gossip range.”
“Absolutely not.”
Olyss laughed.
Rhyven let herself enjoy the sound without converting it into a decision. Later still existed. That was enough.
They stood together until a count sheet arrived.
Before Deryn reached them, Rhyven checked the latest position board one more time.
The numbers no longer formed a single column.
They occupied separate lines for departures, arrivals, transfers, temporary holds, and people riding in vehicles different from the ones listed that morning.
It was ugly bookkeeping and better information.
She thought of the original count at Kethavere: eight hundred twenty-four.
A number simple enough to become sacred.
Every later change had made keeping that number honest harder.
People changed seats. Children rode with teachers.
Caregivers switched vehicles. Drivers swapped.
A patient moved into a clinic van for an hour and returned to a family car later.
The population stayed the same while the arrangement around it refused to.
“You are frowning at arithmetic again,” Olyss said.
“Arithmetic deserves supervision.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“It is not.”
Olyss’s shoulder touched hers once more. “Then perhaps let Deryn supervise some of it.”
Rhyven looked up just as Deryn approached carrying the count sheet.
Deryn spread it on the table.
“Wave Two arrival count matches,” she said. “Front of Three is checking now. Rear is still on the road.”
Rhyven nodded.
“And Wave Four?”
“Cleared Veylor. Last report had them forty minutes behind Three.”
“Passengers?”
Deryn checked another sheet.
Her finger stopped.
Rhyven saw the change immediately.
“What?”
“Departure count from the rear doesn’t match the current passenger relay.”
Olyss set down her cup.
“By how much?”
Deryn counted again.
Then a third time.
“One.”
Rhyven looked east toward the road disappearing into mist.
Eight hundred twenty-four people had left Kethavere.
For one suspended second, every lesson about uncertainty became harder to practice.
A discrepancy was not a missing person. Rhyven knew that.
Olyss knew it too. The number still hit the body before reason could catch it.
Rhyven put one hand flat on the table and refused to let urgency invent a story before they had facts, names, transfers, and one complete chain of travel between them now.
Somewhere between Veylor Field and Sereth Common, the rear count had become eight hundred twenty-three.