Episodul 264 · The Hunter's Plan

By Tuesday morning, Krista had arranged beds at the reception center. Soles stood at their kitchen window, with Maxim and Tesa waiting at the table, while she finished the call. Across the street, a cleaner was putting a seven beneath yesterday’s eight.

The woman at the center had answered again after breakfast. She could take people from the riverside houses; someone could stay with anyone who was confused or frightened. She had asked for warning before they brought them.

Krista put down the phone.

— We can visit before anybody agrees to stay there.

— Good, Soles said. They need to see what we’re offering.

Maxim had brought the van round. His keys lay beside the drawing of the chamber, on the spot where Varren had stood holding the pale blade.

Soles moved them. He needed the others to see the whole problem before they went out.

— Getting people across the bridge won’t stop this. We need to close it before those men go in.

He put his dark blade beside the drawing. The chain settled across the paper.

— With this alone, I’d be cutting blind again. With his beside it, we could see the strands.

— See them, Krista said. We still don’t know what cutting them does.

— I know.

Tesa pulled a chair round and sat facing him.

— So what’s the part you haven’t said?

Soles rested his hand beside the blade. Last night he had tried to think of a way to make Varren understand. Every version ended with the same question, and he already knew the answer.

— If he won’t help, I mean to take it.

Maxim stopped turning his cup.

— You’ve tried taking his arm. I was there. And his collar.

— Then we don’t build the plan around me being stronger than him.

— Or all of us being stronger, Tesa said. You haven’t seen him try.

Soles remembered how easily Varren had folded his elbow at the bakery gate, and held his whole weight one-handed over the fall in the race, without seeming to try. Down in the chamber, the slit had been behind him. A fight there could put any of them into it.

— We give him room to leave, Soles said. We ask for the blade. If he keeps it, we need him away from the opening before anybody goes near him.

— He can leave through a wall, Krista said.

— Yes.

Saying it made the plan look as thin as it was. He had a weapon he couldn’t use carelessly, against a man he couldn’t hold, beside people he was trying to spare.

Tesa reached across and moved the chain off the drawing.

— We need a way to get somebody hurt out of there. Before we need a way to win.

Maxim touched the line leading back to the mill.

— Bram stays at the top again. If he’ll do it. And this time we tell him what we’re going back for.

Krista turned to a clean page. They worked through who would hold the way out and what would make them abandon an attempt. Soles could offer no safe way to take the blade yet. They left that space empty.

For today they could offer a ride, beds, and somebody who would listen. That much was ready.

Soles put the blade away and handed Maxim his keys.

❦

They went to the bakery together later that morning. Halloran was carrying bread from the oven; the surveyor sat at the kitchen table behind him. Soles waited until the tray was down before asking whether they could talk.

Halloran listened while Krista described the center. The surveyor’s eyes stayed on the keys in Maxim’s hand.

— I could come back? he asked.

Soles wanted to say that was what they were trying to prevent.

— We aren’t locking you in, he said. You can look at the place first.

— Varren says moving won’t help.

— We don’t know how much it’ll help. We can have someone stay with you while we find out.

The man rubbed his hands together. Soles waited for an answer. Halloran put a loaf beside him, and he bent over it, breaking a piece from the end.

— There’s a woman two doors down, Halloran said. She’s been asking about transport since Sunday. Her husband can’t manage the steps. The truck people told her to have him outside.

Maxim turned toward the door.

— Well, that sounds like our level of medical expertise.

— You drive, Tesa said. I’ll ask about the steps.

The woman recognized Soles before he could introduce himself. She was the one who had read the ten on her door and shut it again. Now a bag stood beside her boots, packed so tightly that a sleeve hung out beneath the straps.

They explained where they could take her husband. She fetched his coat.

The stairs were narrow but straight. Maxim and Tesa carried the chair from the bedroom to the landing, then lowered it one step at a time while Soles held the door clear. At the bottom the man caught Maxim’s sleeve.

— Mind the footrest.

Maxim stopped. The footrest had caught against the frame. He eased it free, and they carried him out without touching the warm grate beside the step.

No power. Soles heard the man’s breath in the cold air and the woman telling them which bag held his medicine. They could still do this much.

Krista called the center before they left. Tesa rode with the couple; Maxim would bring her back after they had helped them settle.

Soles watched the van reach the bridge. One household. Along the street, the sevens went on beyond the next bend.

Halloran came out carrying the woman’s second bag.

Soles took it from him.

— We’ll bring it on the next trip.

— I’ll tell the others, Halloran said. About the beds. They can ask me where you are.

Soles gave him the center’s number too.

His own phone lit up before Halloran went inside. A message from the man in gray asked when they would resume the search for Varren.

Krista read it beside him.

— What do you want to tell him?

The chamber’s location was already in their report. The blade, too. Their way of reaching it would have to stay between the people who were going down.

Soles put the phone away.

— Let’s speak to Bram.