Episodul 235 · What We Can Check

Krista’s drawing showed the round floor, the broken stairs and the slab beyond the gap. Soles followed the edge with his finger until he reached the opening opposite the entrance.

— I don’t remember that opening.

— The mechanism opened it, Krista said. I thought it might give us another way out.

She described the pale passage beyond it. Tesa leaned forward.

— Low ceiling. Rough stone.

— That’s yours. Mine was straight.

Soles lifted his finger.

— You went through the same opening?

— Separately, Krista said. We could hear each other. I could see the room behind me while I was inside, but she couldn’t see me.

— I tried bringing her through mine, Tesa added.

Krista touched the place above her eyebrow.

— We established that she couldn’t.

— I did bring the hand back.

Soles smiled, then studied the two drawings. He had remembered the place as rooms they had all stood in together. Beyond that opening, the same patch of floor had become a different passage for each woman.

Krista showed him the four doorways. Three had been blank stone; the fourth held fragments of the card player’s life. Tesa had found the boxer in hers. Two signs had been lit on each occupied doorway.

— We copied the marks, Krista said. I’m comparing them with the inscriptions. Some strokes match. That doesn’t give me a translation yet.

— And down here?

He indicated the dark line beyond the doors.

She explained how the walls had divided beyond it, until she could no longer follow their shape.

— I came back.

Tesa tapped the edge of her own drawing.

— So did I.

Maxim moved his cup away from the notebook.

— Meanwhile, outside, it was Sunday.

Soles turned to him.

— The Sunday after I left?

— That’s when I found them.

The message Maxim had left came back to him. He had seen the name on his phone and put the call off.

Maxim told him about the search, the notebook outside the slab and the missing steps. Soles listened to how he had brought the ladder from the truck and used the rope to secure the crossing. He knew what a folded ladder could take, and how awkward it would have been to extend it while keeping a hand against the stone.

— You held the opening yourself?

— Until Krista got across. Then she took it.

Soles turned toward her. She was following the route on the page.

— We went in Friday night, she said. For us it was a few hours. Our phones said Sunday when we got out.

He remembered going into the temple after eleven and finding dawn outside.

— We lost hours the first time.

— This time it was longer, Maxim said. Enough to start wondering where both of them had gone.

Soles drew his hand back from the diagram.

— How many times had you been there?

Krista closed the cover halfway, keeping her finger between the pages.

— I’d been to the archives. Then the cave, as far as the slab. Tesa came with me the night the stairs broke.

— You said you were working.

— Sometimes I was.

He waited.

— Sometimes I used it as an excuse. I wanted to go back, and I didn’t want to argue about it.

He had been about to ask why she hadn’t told him. Tesa’s plate was still beside his; he remembered what she had asked of him over lunch.

— What were you looking for?

Krista opened the notebook again.

— Something I could establish for myself. After everything Varren told us, I wanted to know which parts we’d actually seen.

She spread the pages flat.

— I should have told you I was going.

— I’d have tried to stop you.

— I know.

Soles kept his hand beside the drawing.

— I should have listened first.

He could have left it there. She had told him before anyone made her. With the river, he had waited to be made.

— I knew, he said. The night before I left. There was mortar in the hem of your coat, the sand from under the bridge. I’d knelt in it.

Krista’s finger stopped on the page.

— You didn’t say anything.

— I wanted you to account for it. The way you made me account for the river.

— Why didn’t you?

— I’d have been doing it again. Looking, then using what I saw.

She held his eyes. Across the table, Maxim had stopped chewing.

— So we both kept something, she said.

— Yes.

— Then we’re square. Let’s not keep score after this.

Krista moved the notebook toward him. He took out his own phone.

— I’ve got something I need help checking.

He opened the photograph of the folded page. Krista enlarged it. Tesa shifted closer to read beside her.

Three names, a transfer number, the statement that no one had survived to be transferred. The space for a signature was empty.

— Who gave you this? Krista asked.

— A Hunter. He said those three were alive when he put them in the van. This was waiting when he got back. They wanted him to sign.

— Is that why he left the agency?

— That’s what he told me.

Maxim read the bottom of the page.

— So where did the people go?

— I don’t know. He told me to ask for the transfer log with that number. See where they sent me, and whether they’d let me leave with a copy.

Krista brought the number back into view.

— This gives us somewhere to start. It doesn’t tell us what happened to them.

Soles nodded.

He told them the rest of the warning: the agency trained and employed the Hunters, but hadn’t made them; the people he loved could be used to move him. Asked who could walk through walls, the man had said only those whose Fate was cut.

Tesa repeated the last words.

— Cut how?

— I asked. He couldn’t give me a better answer.

— That’s convenient.

— He was hurt. I couldn’t tell how much he understood, or how much he wanted me to believe.

Maxim put his cup down.

— If you ask the agency, they’ll know you’ve got this.

Soles had carried the page all the way home. He understood what he was putting on Krista’s table.

— I’m not asking you to walk into one of their offices.

— Good, she said. I wasn’t offering. There are three people here. We can start by finding out whether anyone has heard from them.

She drew her own phone closer.

— Send me the picture. I’ll keep my notes with it.

He sent it.

Maxim picked up his cup.

— Next time somebody goes missing, I want to know where I’m bringing the ladder.

— We’ll tell you before we go, Krista said.

Soles agreed. He left his phone on the table while she copied the transfer number and the three names. There was room for all of them on the page. She left space beneath each one.