Chương 87: Sable's History, Fragment 1

'Then don't guess,' Kaito said.

'Just tell me if the answer changes what we do next.'

'Not tonight,' Sable said.

'Tonight it changes nothing. We are already off the road. We are already off the registry. Whoever asked cannot use the answer for at least a day, and probably longer.'

'And if they can.'

'Then Pell's boring plan will not be enough,' she said.

'And we will need a better one before we hit the next road with a waypost on it.'

'Fine,' Kaito said.

'That's a tomorrow problem.' He gave it two more hours because he'd said he would, and then he woke Domrek by tapping the top of his boot with two fingers, which Domrek had told him weeks ago was the only wake-up that didn't get you an elbow. Domrek came up quick, saw Kaito's face, saw the fire, saw nothing else, and nodded.

'Anything.'

'Empty road,' Kaito said.

'AXIOM sent me one notification. Someone asked for my position through infrastructure older than AXIOM. Sable doesn't know who.' Domrek took that in without changing his expression, which was Domrek for being alarmed.

'Wake me if it says anything else,' Kaito said.

'Otherwise let me sleep till it's light.'

'Sleep,' Domrek said.

'I'll be right here.' Kaito lay down on the far side of the fire and was out before he'd finished thinking about being out.

The morning was grey and cold and had the small mercy of no rain. They ate cold provisions and packed the fire cold. Pell walked the perimeter one more time and came back with the same calm face and the same nothing to report. Then they went, and they kept going. Pell led.

He picked their route through the hills the way a man picks a route through a crowded market — moving between the stalls of the terrain, using low ground when it hid them, high ground when it saved them time, cuts and drainages when nothing else worked. Kaito walked in the middle. Domrek walked last because he was the most likely to hear something coming from behind.

'You've done this,' Kaito said, when they'd been walking about an hour.

'Cross-country from a job going bad,' Pell said.

'Twice. Neither one big. The first one I was young and stupid and made every mistake. The second one I made most of the same mistakes but faster, which felt like progress.'

'That's the trick,' Domrek said, from behind.

'That's the only trick,' Pell said. They did not have a real conversation for the rest of the morning, because Pell was reading the ground and Kaito was reading Pell and Domrek was reading the ground behind them, and talking on the move wasted breath a walking man needed. Midday they stopped in a small draw and ate again and drank from Kaito's water and Pell filled everyone's skin at a small stream that ran clear.

'North about a day and a half from here there's a village called Sarn Hollow,' Pell said.

'Not on the main road. Doesn't have a waypost. Doesn't have a Compact office. It's got an inn with three rooms and it's got a man there who used to work a route with me. If we get a night indoors before we hit the coast, that's the place.'

'How reliable,' Domrek said.

'He owes me. And he's not the sort of man who owes people casually.'

'Good enough,' Kaito said. They walked till dark.

The second camp was better than the first — deeper into a stand of pines, no fire visible from below, a shallow overhang of rock that shed the wind off the ridge. Domrek got a small fire going in a scrape he'd dug on purpose so that the light stayed inside the hole. Pell walked the ground again. Kaito took the packs off his shoulder and sat, and for a full ten seconds did nothing else at all.

'You said you'd take second watch,' Domrek said.

'You're taking third. Don't argue with me about this one.'

'I'm not arguing,' Kaito said.

'Good.' Domrek looked at him a beat longer than he usually did.

'You look like a man who wants to be alone for an hour before he sleeps.'

'How can you tell.'

'Because I know what that face looks like,' Domrek said.

'I've had it. Go sit at the edge of the light and stare at nothing for a while. Pell and I will handle the fire.' Kaito went. He sat on a flat rock at the edge of the pines, ten paces off from where Domrek and Pell were finishing camp. He could see the two of them through the trees. He couldn't hear them talk. That was the way he wanted it. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. He waited until his breathing was slow again.

'Sable,' he said.

'Yes.'

'Is this the quiet night you meant.'

'It is,' Sable said.

'If you're ready.'

'I'm ready.' She was quiet a moment.

'You won't see it the way I see it,' she said.

'I don't have a way to show you pictures. I can only tell you what I remember. Some of it I remember clearly. Most of it I don't. I want you to know that going in. If you ask me a question I can't answer, that's not me refusing. That's the memory not being there.'

'All right.'

'I'll start with the earliest part I have,' she said.

'Which is a room.' Kaito closed his eyes. It made it easier to listen.

'It's a small room,' Sable said.

'The floor is smooth and cool. Not stone. Something else. The lighting is even — no lamps, no fires, no candles. Light that comes from everywhere at once and doesn't flicker. I don't know what makes it. In the room there is a desk. On the desk there are screens. They are lit and they are showing data. The data is moving.' Kaito didn't speak. He kept his eyes closed.

'There is a person at the desk,' Sable said.

'A woman. She is sitting in a chair with wheels on the bottom of it. She is wearing white. A coat, longer than a shirt, over other clothes. Her hair is dark and short. She is small.'

'What kind of coat,' Kaito said quietly.

'A working coat,' Sable said.

'The kind you put on when you're going to be somewhere all day and you want your hands free and your clothes clean. It has pockets. There are things in the pockets — pens, small tools. I don't remember what all of them were.'

'A lab coat.'

'Yes,' Sable said.

'That is what you would call it. I did not know the word then.' Kaito breathed slowly.

'What is she doing,' he said.

'She's watching the screens. She's speaking. She is speaking out loud but there's no one else in the room to hear her.' A pause.

'I thought at the time she was talking to herself, the way people do when they're working. That was what I understood. That was my whole frame for it.'

'And now.'

'Now I think she might have been talking to me,' Sable said.

'I don't know why I think that. I know she couldn't have known I was there — I didn't know I was there. I don't remember being anything, before that room. I don't remember being made. I don't remember being placed. I remember hearing her. That is the first thing I remember at all.' Kaito kept his eyes closed. He was very still.

'What did she say,' he asked.

'She said a lot of things. Most of them I don't remember. She was talking to the screens most of the time, in a language I did not know then and I know now.' Sable was quiet a moment.

'One thing she said I have remembered every day since. I want to say it exactly the way she said it. The words are the words. The voice — I can't reproduce her voice for you. I can only tell you it was quiet and even and tired.'

'Tell me.'

'She said: If you ever meet him, tell him the error was mine, not his. He didn't make anything wrong. I just wanted it too much.' Kaito opened his eyes. He looked at the pines. He looked at Domrek across the small clearing, adjusting a stick on the fire. He looked at his own hands on his knees. He didn't say anything for a while.

'Sable,' he said at last.

'Yes.'

'What language was that in.'

'Yours,' Sable said.

'The language you and I are speaking now.'

'The one I brought with me.'

'Yes. It was not a language of Eirath. I know that now. I didn't know that then. It was the first language I learned. It was, in a way, the only one I knew for a very long time. Everything else I picked up by listening to it against languages that people here were already using.' Kaito rubbed the heel of one hand against one eye.

'Do you know when this was,' he said.

'No.'

'Do you know where.'

'No.'

'Do you know the woman's face.' Sable was quiet.

'I know it,' she said.

'I'm choosing not to show it to you yet. Not because I don't trust you. Because I don't know what showing it would do to you, and I don't want you tired for it. This is enough for tonight.' Kaito thought about that.

'You didn't have to tell me she was Japanese,' he said.

'That was information you gave me on purpose.'

'Yes,' Sable said.

'I did.'

'She was one of us.'

'She was from your world,' Sable said.

'I don't know which of you she was. I don't know whether she is now, or was then. I don't know when then was. I know she was in a room with screens and she was speaking a language nobody in Eirath spoke, and she said something she wanted me to remember, and I have remembered it.' Kaito set his hands flat on his knees.

'Tell him the error was mine, not his,' he said, quietly, to himself.

'He didn't make anything wrong. I just wanted it too much.'

'Yes.'

'She was talking about me.'

'She might have been,' Sable said.

'I don't know. It fits. It fits so well I have been afraid to say so out loud for a very long time. But I don't know. There could be a him who is not you. She could have been wrong about a him who was never anywhere near this. I have had all of the possible readings of that sentence for a long time, and I do not have a winner.' Kaito nodded once. He looked at his hands.

'One more thing,' he said.

'You said she was tired.'

'She was.'

'How tired.'

'Tired the way a person sounds when they have made a decision they cannot walk back,' Sable said.

'That kind. Not the sleep kind.' Kaito closed his hand into a fist and opened it again.

'All right,' he said.

'That's enough for tonight. Thank you.'

'You're welcome,' Sable said. He sat on the rock for a while longer, and Sable let him, and the fire across the clearing crackled once and settled, and Domrek looked up from it and saw Kaito on the rock and did not come over, because Domrek was good at knowing when. Kaito went back to the fire at some point. He ate a little more. He said nothing about the memory to either of the men there. He took third watch. He kept his eyes on the ground below the pines and the shadows between them.

Around the middle of it, a notification came. [Architect. Second registration query filed by external asset. Origin: unregistered. Content: 'confirm status of designated Architect: alive or terminated.' Query status: unanswered. Note: this is the same asset as the previous query. Query frequency has doubled.] Kaito read it twice.

'Sable,' he said quietly.

'Whoever asked yesterday just asked again. They want to know if I'm still alive.'

'I heard it.'

'You said tomorrow was when this would change what we do.'

'Yes,' Sable said.

'And it's tomorrow.'