Episodul 147 · Close Enough

— You could have helped with the shirt, Tesa told Maxim.

— I drove him home.

— Your truck carried him home.

— Fine. Thank the truck. Never complains.

— I’ve heard it start, Soles said. It complains.

Tesa was still smiling when she reached for the cloth with her recovering hand and changed hands before she picked it up.

— First morning supervising us, Maxim said, and he’s already through the ceiling.

— I told him to stay where he was, Tesa said.

— That’s what you tell people at the gym, Soles said. Right before you hit them.

— Then you should’ve stayed put. I’d have hit you for less damage.

Krista laughed, briefly and without covering her mouth, and Maxim turned on her.

— And I suppose you’re writing the report.

— Done. I put you down as helpful. And the slab as broken.

— You’re enjoying this.

— A little.

They gave him a clean shirt. Tesa rolled up the torn one instead of shaking it out in the kitchen. Maxim found the broom. Lucky watched from the doorway until the small white pile had been taken outside, and did not come in after it.

Then they sat down. Nobody had suggested leaving.

— It got bigger, Soles said. Not after I touched it. Before. The first time I used the weight to keep walking, it brightened. When I pushed harder, it gave back harder.

— And when we walked in to pull you out? Tesa asked.

— Nothing, Krista said. It didn’t throw us.

Soles set his mug down carefully.

— Then it isn’t the closeness. It’s the pushing. I was feeding it.

Don’t force a seized bolt. I’d have told any apprentice that, and then I went and put my shoulder into one.

Krista took a pencil from the shelf and drew a short line on the back of an envelope, a square beside it for the pillar, then the places where they had stood. She rubbed one mark out with her thumb and moved it closer to the doorway.

— At the water we could stand beside it, she said. Here, their men couldn’t even put a sheet over the crack.

— This one’s smaller, Maxim said.

— It looks smaller, Krista said.

— A small crack in a dam is worse than a big hole in a fence, Maxim said after a moment. The water’s got somewhere to push, and it pushes all day.

Maxim’s answer was a small nod toward Soles’s swollen elbow.

Krista circled the line. She did not write an explanation beside it.

— We don’t know what happens when we cut this one, she said.

Every eye in the kitchen went to the jacket on the other chair. Maxim’s was the first to come back to the table.

— Then we find out what we can before he tries another ceiling.

— Without feeding it, Tesa said.

Soles nodded. His right hand had begun to shake. He laid it flat on the table. Krista put her own hand down beside it, not on it, close enough that he could see the two side by side and feel stupid about which one was shaking. She left it there until it stopped.

Krista looked at the envelope, then pushed it away.

— I don’t know why I said it like that.

For a moment Soles thought she meant the crack. Then she looked at the jacket.

— The slab, she said. I hadn’t decided to lie. I just knew what to say. Even when he asked if we’d checked. The answer was there.

— You wanted them off our backs, Maxim said.

— I did. But I usually have to think.

She turned the pencil over between her fingers.

Soles thought of the words she had used at the gate. All the useful parts were true. The lie was where the man would put his next question.

Better than I lied at the gate, Soles thought, and did not like that he was grading it.

— You think it was him? Tesa asked.

Krista did not answer at once.

— I don’t know, she said. I was the one who said it.

She put the pencil down.

— And they may be back sooner than I wanted.

Soles leaned back and found the one position his hip allowed. He was tired enough to close his eyes, but when he did, he saw the thread widen in front of his hand.

He opened them again. Krista was watching him.

— Leave the cup, she said. I’ll make fresh.

He let her. There was still dust on the jacket, lodged along the seam above the pocket. He hung it on the back of his own chair, close to the wall, where he could get to it with his left hand.

He had just settled back against it when a man said:

— Leave it there.

The voice came from beside his chair. Soles turned. A dark sleeve was coming out of the wall above the baseboard; the rest of the man was already in the kitchen. His heel cleared the plaster without a sound.

Soles stood too quickly. His hip struck the table, and his right arm pulled against his stomach. The mug tipped. Tesa caught it with her good hand.

The man looked at the jacket.

Nobody had knocked. Lucky was still in the doorway, facing the street. He turned when Maxim moved, then began to growl.

Maxim put himself between the man and the door. He leaned on the table to spare his ankle. Krista stayed on the other side of Soles, one hand beside the pencil.

— Don’t move toward him, Tesa said.

She was speaking to Soles. Her eyes stayed on the visitor.

He wore a dark coat, buttoned high. There was nothing on it Soles could read: no badge, no stitched name, no mark of an office. He had taken off one glove. The bare hand hung open beside his leg.

Soles tried to hold his face in mind. He could see it plainly enough. When he looked down at the hand, he could no longer have said much about the face.

At the temple, he had felt the Hunters inside the stone. Later, he had felt them in walls and pillars before they came out. There had been a change in how the weight rested, something pressing where nothing should have been.

This Hunter had been close enough to touch his chair.