Episode 34 · After the Bell

She came across the gravel as Soles tried to pull himself higher against the block.

He could not climb out fast enough. He could stay there and cover his head, or reach her before the next punch landed. He pushed off the stone toward her.

Her fist struck his raised arm. Instead of trying to stop it, he went with the blow and crowded into her, his right arm closing around her waist. The bandaged hand caught cloth but could not hold it. His ribs nearly folded him between them.

She set her feet and drove a forearm against his shoulder to turn him away.

For a moment he wanted to let go. Then the same weight he had felt beside Kerr’s pistol settled through his body. He stayed upright. It did not stop the pain. It let him keep moving through it.

The gap was beside him. He turned toward it with her caught against his chest.

She tried to step around him on the gravel. He drove another pace, forcing her to follow. One heel went into the mud. The other scraped for firm ground and slid after it.

Her breath broke.

The forearm against his shoulder lost its impossible weight. She opened her other arm for balance. Soles felt the space and struck beneath her ribs with his right elbow.

She folded. He pushed her against the block and let go, catching its top before his own legs failed.

For several seconds, neither moved.

She got up first, one muddy palm on the stone. Her guard rose again, but it was uneven. Her shoulders swayed with the effort of holding it. Soles had wanted her unable to hit him. Now she was, and the need to keep going had not left him.

He recognized that before he understood it.

— Enough, he said.

The word came out low and certain. Her hands dropped a little.

His right fist struck her nose.

He had seen her stop. There was time to know that much before the punch, and he had thrown it anyway.

She went down on one knee. Hands caught Soles’s shoulders from behind.

— Soles. Look at me.

Varren had come down from the path. He turned Soles away from her and stood close enough to block the sight of the white tape.

— Here. Look at me.

Soles looked.

A car passed on the road above them. He heard the tires on the wet surface, then his own breath. His fist was still clenched. Slowly, he opened it.

Varren let go.

The woman wiped her nose with her wrist and looked at the red tape.

— You hit after the bell.

— What?

— You don’t even know what that is. Of course.

She rose against the block, breathing through her mouth. She looked at Varren for longer than she had looked at Soles.

— His trainer?

— A friend, Varren said.

— You took your time.

Varren said nothing. Soles waited for an explanation too, but the woman had turned back to him.

— Tell Ivo to choose his messengers better.

— I didn’t come for Ivo’s messages. Kale was my father.

She went still. Blood reached her upper lip, and she wiped it away without seeming to notice.

— Then you should have stayed with the police.

She passed him and went toward the footbridge. The boards creaked under her steps.

A sudden irritation rose in him. He had not said she could leave.

Soles gripped the block until it passed. The king had expected a room to wait on him. That did not make the expectation his to obey.

Varren put a hand under his elbow.

— Come on. I’m taking you home.

— Why didn’t you stop her?

His friend looked toward the bridge.

— I thought you could get away from her. I was wrong.

— I asked you.

— I heard.

The answer did nothing for the anger. Soles pulled his arm free, made it one step up the slope and had to stop. Varren waited. Eventually Soles took the offered arm again.

They did not go straight home. His breathing hurt enough that Varren drove him to urgent care. Soles sat beneath a bright light while someone cleaned his palm and asked where he had been hit. He had to say it aloud: another fight, before the first injuries had healed.

The chest dressing was intact. The X-ray showed a cracked rib and nothing worse. They gave him instructions he had heard before and told him to come back if his breathing worsened.

When the nurse asked who would be with him overnight, Soles gave his cousin’s name. Varren stood beside the chair with both their coats over one arm. Neither corrected him.

At home, Varren settled him on the sofa with a glass of water and something cold wrapped in a towel. Maxim’s door upstairs was shut. Soles could not face waking him to explain another visit to the riverbed.

His phone lit on the table. He turned it over.

Varren stayed beside the sofa until Soles looked at him.

— You can go, Soles said.

Varren collected his coat. At the door he hesitated, then wished him good night. Soles watched him leave without offering to make it easier.

Later, sleep took him back to the garden.

The tree shone faintly above the gray ground. The soldier stood beyond his narrow leaves. Farther around the roots stood the king beside his broad leaves, one hand closed on nothing, and Elias bent forward as if over a page Soles could not read.

He did not approach any of them. He wanted somewhere to stand where no one could touch his ribs.

Near the far side of the trunk, a low plant caught the light.

Soles stopped. It had been a pale outline among the others. Now light lay along its stems, thin and close to the ground. He knelt and read the stone at its base.

Phenom.

No one stood beyond it. Soles touched a leaf with one finger. It held against him.

Beyond the plant, the ground turned white.