Episode 260 · Truce

The surveyor kept his cup between his knees while Krista laid the copied sheets on the kitchen table.

Soles took the chair beside the door. Maxim remained standing behind him; Tesa sat beside the table, facing the door. The baker put the bread down.

Krista covered the dates with her fingers.

— Are these your signatures?

The surveyor pointed to the first.

— That one.

She uncovered the dates. He read them, then pushed the second sheet away.

— I was down there. I couldn’t have signed that.

— Did you ask the detachment for new rope?

He shook his head before she finished showing him the request.

Krista marked the copies. Soles had expected another careful answer. Instead they had a living man denying the papers that had helped hide him.

— Why didn’t you report when you came out? he asked.

The surveyor rubbed a thumb over the cup’s rim.

— I got as far as the bridge. Then I heard the water. I thought I’d forgotten something below. I went back to look.

He tried to smile.

— I still don’t know what.

Soles waited while Krista asked about the way out. The man described steps joining the mill channel; her pencil followed his finger across the sketch. He had climbed them more than once. Between those climbs he had found himself back below, unable to say clearly why he had gone.

The baker rested a hand on his shoulder and left it there.

— That’s enough for now.

Soles wanted the rest. The man’s thumb was bleeding where he had worried the skin beside the nail.

— Can we come back? Soles asked.

The surveyor nodded.

A woman came in carrying a notebook under her arm. She stopped when she saw the papers, then set her bag beside the stove.

— Halloran?

The baker turned.

— They asked him. He said yes.

So the baker had a name. The woman seemed to accept the answer, though she stayed beside the surveyor.

She introduced herself as Zora. Krista recognized the name before Soles could place it.

— The river readings. We read your notebook.

— Then you’ve had more use for it than the detachment.

Soles remembered the house, the bowls by the radiator.

— Did you go into the place they gave us?

Zora’s hand tightened on her bag.

— With Halloran. He was taking bread.

— Mina’s bowl?

She nodded.

His mind went back to the platform, Mina heavy in his arms, and the kitchen prepared for her before they arrived.

— How did you know?

— I didn’t. Varren told me about your dogs. About her being old. I hoped you’d bring them.

He had searched that room for another way someone might have entered. She had bought a bowl on a guess.

— You could have left a note.

— Yes, she said. I should have.

The latch lifted behind him.

Soles stood before the door opened fully. Varren stopped outside, one hand still on it, as if unsure he would be let in.

— I saw you follow Halloran, he said. Let me come in.

Maxim moved beside Soles.

— You’ve just had a go at his arm. Ask from out there.

Varren released the latch. His eyes went past them to the surveyor, then to the papers.

— Is he all right?

— Ask him, Tesa said.

The surveyor nodded. Varren waited for the answer, though his hand remained close to the door.

Soles stepped outside. Maxim followed him onto the narrow sidewalk; Krista and Tesa stayed at the open doorway. Varren backed away far enough to give them room.

— You ran, Soles said.

— You grabbed me.

— I wanted to talk.

— Then talk.

Soles could still feel Varren folding his arm with almost no effort. He wanted to try again, properly this time, with the others ready. Behind Krista, the surveyor was watching through the doorway.

He let his right hand hang open.

— The detachment has written him off. They’ve put a date on every door down there. You’re keeping people beside something that’s spreading.

— They were here before the dates.

— They won’t be afterward.

Varren glanced toward the river.

— You tried to close it on Thursday.

— Yes.

— That afternoon they started getting worse. Noct couldn’t keep his place in a sentence. Halloran heard things inside the oven.

Soles remembered the retreat, Tesa’s crushed hand, the rope straining through his own hands.

— You think I did that?

— I saw what was left of the opening after you pulled at it. Smaller. Shaking.

He spoke as if the rest followed from that. Soles could believe the change without accepting what Varren wanted it to mean.

Krista came out onto the sidewalk.

— Show us.

Varren studied her.

— I can take you below.

— We choose what we touch, she said. And you tell us what you’ve done before we get there.

For a moment his attention settled on Soles alone, familiar and expectant. Soles shifted so Krista stood beside him.

— All of us, he said.

— All of you.

Tesa joined them.

— I’m coming too. Don’t offer to leave me upstairs.

— I know you are, Varren said.

Maxim looked toward the bridge.

— Bram’s expecting us at the mill tonight. Our ropes are ready.

— Keep that way open, Krista said.

Varren agreed to meet them there after dark. He would go down with them and show them the chamber beneath the river. The others would stay above.

Soles watched him accept each condition. A place, a time, witnesses. He could tell the detachment where to wait.

Varren seemed to reach the same thought.

— And when we come back up?

— You leave with us, Soles said.

— In whose custody?

— Neither side takes a prisoner on this trip, Krista said. Is that what you’re asking?

— Yes.

Soles felt the folded order inside his coat. He thought of the names the man in gray had kept off the page, and of Krista making him say the threat again at their table.

— Then you leave free, he said. Until we’re out and clear of the mill.

— After that?

— After that, we haven’t agreed to anything.

Varren held out his hand.

Soles left it there.

— You heard me.

— I did.

From inside, Halloran asked whether the surveyor wanted the window shut. The man said to leave it open.

Varren lowered his hand.

— After dark.

He walked toward the bridge. This time Soles stayed beside the doorway and let him go.