Chương 129: Chapter 128 – What Nobody Says

The infirmary smelled of vinegar and clean linen, one low lamp burning by the cot where Marcus slept sitting mostly upright, propped on pillows that made his color look worse than it probably was now. Priya sat in the chair beside him, one hand resting loose over his, and didn't look up when Ant and Rebekah came through the door.

"He's fine," she said, before either of them could ask.

"Sleeping, not unconscious. I've had to remind myself of that every few minutes for the last hour, so you'll forgive me if I don't sound entirely convinced yet."

"We wanted to explain properly." Rebekah pulled the door shut soft behind them.

"You didn't let either of us get a word in earlier, and you deserve better than a half answer shouted across a field."

"I don't think I do, actually, but go on." Ant kept his voice low, mindful of Marcus sleeping three feet away.

"Rebekah's Kithren, Lem. He's a support-type. Water-aligned, healing skills bundled in, though it's not something we advertise, not since the last clan we were with started treating him like a resource instead of a person the moment they found out."

"He was with the anteater the whole patrol," Priya said, flat, not buying it for even a second.

"I watched him not be there, Ant."

"He came in fast, once things went wrong. Faster than you'd have noticed, given everything else happening at the same time."

"Stop." Priya said it gently, but it landed with enough weight that Ant actually did. She looked between the two of them for a long moment, and whatever had been sitting on her face since the fight finally eased into something warmer.

"I don't need the story. I don't want the story. Whatever you did, whatever it actually was, you did it to save Marcus, and he's alive right now because of it. That's the only part of this I care about."

"Priya, I..."

"I'm not finished." She smiled, small and real, the first easy thing Ant had seen on her face since the fight.

"For whatever reason you want to keep this quiet, I'll respect that. You don't owe me an explanation for saving someone I love. As far as I'm concerned, I saw nothing. There was a bandage, and then there was Marcus, walking. That's the whole of what I remember, and it's the whole of what anyone else is going to hear from me." Ant didn't trust his own voice for a second.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Just don't make me regret it." She looked back down at Marcus, thumb moving once over his knuckles, and when she spoke again some of the lightness had crept back into her voice, more herself than she'd sounded all evening.

"Now go away, both of you, before he wakes up and asks why the room's full of people whispering about him like he's already dead. He'll never let any of us hear the end of it." They let themselves out into the cool of the yard, stars just starting to show over the wall, and Rebekah didn't say anything until they were well clear of the infirmary door.

"That went better than either version I had ready," she said.

"You had a version where it went worse."

"I had three. I'm choosing not to share them with you tonight." She bumped her shoulder against his, brief, grounding.

"Go sleep. You look like you've aged five years since breakfast." Three days passed without word from Ben, without word from Corlan beyond a nod across the yard, and Ant had almost let himself believe the whole business had settled into the same kind of nothing the first two days after Ben's recognition had, when a runner found him at morning roster with an order that named him specifically and nobody else on his usual patrol.

"Vortex assignment," the runner said, already moving on to the next name on the list.

"Report to the west gate at first bell. Full gear, not patrol kit." Rebekah's eyebrows went up when he told her.

"That's fast."

"Corlan said he was passing the report up. I didn't think it would turn into an actual assignment this quickly."

"Neither did I, which is exactly why I don't like it." She was already reaching for her ledger, some instinct in her wanting to have something in her hands while she thought.

"Watch yourself out there. Whatever this is, it isn't random, not with your name pulled out on its own three days after Corlan started talking about you to people who matter."

"It's a vortex clear. That's all it is."

"It's a vortex clear that somebody specifically decided you should be part of, which makes it a test dressed up as a chore." Rebekah closed the ledger without having written anything in it, which told him more than the words did.

"Who else is going?" The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Corlan. And apparently Ben, though from the sound of it he only ended up there because he was standing close enough when the ask went out."

"Ben doesn't get put on things by accident." She said it plainly, no drama in it, just a fact she expected him to already know.

"Watch him more than you watch the fight. The fight isn't going to be the dangerous part of your morning." The west gate had four people waiting when Ant arrived, gear stored and retrieved through the small black door only he could see, Mahkir at his side wearing Copper's dull, ordinary coloring like it had never been anything else.

Corlan stood near the front, his boar already dozing in the morning sun, and beside him, arms crossed, watching Ant cross the yard with an expression that gave away exactly nothing, was Ben.

"Didn't expect you," Ant said, aiming for casual.

"Didn't expect to be here either." Ben's voice was easy, pleasant even, nothing in it that matched the way his eyes tracked Mahkir's every step.

"Corlan asked for a third pair with vortex experience. I happened to be standing closest when he asked."

"Convenient."

"Very." Ben smiled, and it didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. Corlan clapped his hands once, brisk.

"Entrance-tier vortex, half a day out, flagged three days ago and nobody's gotten around to clearing it yet because everyone competent's tied up on the ridge patrols. Should be Weak-tier the whole way through, maybe a Core if we're unlucky, nothing that should trouble four capable fighters and their Kithren." His eyes landed on Ant longer than the moment strictly needed.

"Consider it a chance to show me I wasn't wrong about you in front of an audience that isn't just me this time." The walk out was quiet at first, four humans and three Kithren strung loose along the road with the entrance-tier vortex still half a day off, and Ant had almost let himself settle into the rhythm of it when Ben fell into step beside him without asking.

"You don't talk much," Ben said, conversational, like it was an observation about the weather.

"Not much worth saying most days."

"Corlan seems to think otherwise. Or at least he thinks there's something worth saying that you're choosing not to." Ben kept his eyes on the road ahead, hands loose at his sides, nothing in his posture that read as an accusation.

"For what it's worth, I don't much care what a man's hiding, so long as it doesn't get anyone out here hurt. Plenty of people carry things they'd rather not talk about. I've got a few myself."

"Is that meant to be reassuring?"

"It's meant to be honest. Reassuring's your business, not mine." Ben glanced sideways, brief, unreadable.

"You fought well against the sicklebacks. Better than well, if half of what's going around the yard is true. I just find myself wondering where a level six farm boy from a folded clan picked up moves like that, and I haven't come up with an answer I like yet."

"Maybe there isn't one worth liking. Maybe I just got lucky and you're reading too much into it."

"Maybe." Ben let it sit there a moment, unresolved, then shrugged like the whole conversation hadn't mattered either way.

"We'll see." He didn't say anything else for the rest of the walk, and Ant found the silence somehow worse than the questions had been. The vortex itself sat in a shallow crater half a mile off the road, the air around it faintly wrong the way vortex sites always were, a pressure behind the eyes that had nothing to do with weather.

Corlan led them down into the entrance tier without ceremony, and the first cluster of Weak-tier Wraithkin rose out of the dark within minutes, shadow-violet things with too many joints, easy prey for anyone who'd ever cleared a vortex before.

Mahkir killed the first two before Ant had fully drawn his blade, and had to stop himself killing the third the same way, forcing something clumsier instead, a swipe that took two attempts where one would have done, a growl of genuine frustration buried under the performance of effort. This is worse than the badger, Mahkir said, tearing into a fourth Wraithkin with visibly more restraint than the fight required. At least the badger had opinions. This is like being asked to lose a fight against a puddle.

Just get through it. I am getting through it. Slowly. On purpose. Against my every instinct as a predator. Corlan's boar handled its share competently, nothing flashy, and Corlan himself fought like a man doing a job he'd done a thousand times, economical, bored even.

Ben fought differently, sharper than his easy manner in the yard suggested, Talonstrike a coiled, banded weight at his side that took down its targets with a controlled violence that said the tiger could have cleared the whole entrance tier alone if Ben had let it. He didn't watch his own fight closely. He watched Mahkir's.

Halfway through the cluster the shadows past the last kill thickened instead of thinning, drawing together into something denser, something starting to hold together instead of scatter, and for three long seconds it looked like the residue was going to knit itself into a Core right there in front of them.

"Positions," Corlan called, sharp, already angling to flank whatever was forming. It never finished. The half-shaped thing shuddered once and came apart into ordinary residue, too little mass behind it to hold together into anything worth the name, and Corlan let out a breath that had real relief underneath the professional calm.

"Would've been a story to tell if that had gone the other way," he said, dry, already moving to check the last stragglers.

"Good instincts, all of you, positioning up before I finished the word." [Ant HP: 88/88.] [Mahkir HP: 80/80.] [Mahkir: 14, 680/32, 000 to Level 9.] [Ant: 950/15, 800 to Level 13.] They cleared the entrance tier inside twenty minutes after that, no second tier flagged, nothing else forming in the dark to complicate the return trip. Corlan called it early, satisfied, and the walk back out into daylight had the loose, easy feeling of a job finished clean.

"Good work," Corlan said, to all of them and none of them in particular.

"Filed and done. I'll have this off the board by evening." Ben said nothing on the walk back either, same as he'd said nothing the whole way in, same as he'd said nothing for three days before that. He watched Mahkir shake blood off his claws with the same flat attention he'd given the fur along his jaw two weeks ago, tucking it away behind a face that gave up nothing, and fell into step half a pace behind Ant for the rest of the road home.

Whatever conclusion he was working toward, he clearly wasn't ready to say it out loud yet, and Ant couldn't decide which was worse: the waiting, or whatever came after it stopped.