Chương 53: Good Night Climbers

In other runs, she had told me more. The circumstances varied in the details humans insisted were important, but she had always been searching for her parents. That search had made almost any offer of help worth considering. The stuffed animal and its red scarf were the only clue she had. I had given them to her, and now they were somewhere inside the pack beside her knee. She had closed that compartment carefully when putting her things away.

I remembered her doing the same thing in other places, with different bags, some of which had barely held together. I pitied her when I thought about those bags. She had searched and been abandoned so many times that I could remember the order in which she would explain it. Sometimes she defended the people who had left her before admitting what they had done. Sometimes she was angry enough to give me their descriptions, as though I might be able to find them. She had been spared remembering any of it.

This was the first time for her. I kept having to remind myself of that while she sat across the fire, pressing a hand against her side. Someone claimed to have seen her parents. Someone knew a route or a place where names were recorded. That had been enough to bring her along. I had learned how little certainty an offer needed to contain before she accepted it, and how long she would continue believing it after the person making it had become difficult to defend. This Petra had told me none of that.

I could have asked which promise brought her here. Instead, I watched her shift her hand lower, trying to find somewhere comfortable to rest it. Her fingers caught a fold of her tunic and held it against her.

"Did they lead you away from the main route?" She looked up quickly.

"Why?"

"It happens."

"Yes," she said after a moment.

"We went farther in."

"Did they explain why?"

"They said it would be quicker." I nodded before considering how that might look. She was still watching me, waiting for something beyond the question.

"Was it?" I asked.

"We didn't get where we were going." That was usually enough. The depth of a floor mattered. Humans who treated a floor number as a reliable measure of danger tended to learn the distinction after they had already gone too far to retreat comfortably. The ghouls I had faced near the beginning would have destroyed parties like hers. The World-Eater belonged farther beyond anything they could reasonably survive. I tried to picture Petra drawing that bow against it and stopped before the image became useful.

Judged by the numbers alone, none of it made sense. The bottom I had entered was the top of the Inverted Spire. I understood the reversal well enough to navigate it, but saying it aloud offered very little help to someone deciding whether to follow a stranger through a passage. Then there were the regimes, which made comparisons between travellers even less reliable.

"Were you following a route for your regime?" Petra's eyes moved toward the opening.

"That was what I was told." I waited while she adjusted the bow across her lap.

"We were supposed to stay within the first." Regime one gave way to two, then three, and the divisions continued. Two travellers could occupy the same floor and come within reach of entirely different problems. An account of somebody surviving a particular route meant little without knowing the conditions under which they had entered it. I rubbed a piece of ash off my thumb. It lodged beneath the nail instead.

I scraped at it while considering whether her former companions had understood those conditions any better than she did. Lady Livia had described the Spire as infinite. I still did not believe her. I could accept that I had failed to find its end. Infinitude was a considerably larger claim, and she had offered it with an ease that made me want to ask her to prove it. There were plenty of things she said easily. Petra shifted beside the fire.

"I thought they knew where they were going."

"They may have." She stared at me. I should have left that unsaid. Knowing a route did not imply any intention of bringing every companion safely through it. She had supplied enough evidence of that without requiring me to point toward the conclusion. I put my hand down and left the ash beneath my nail. Mimir turned his eyes toward her.

"So they dumped ye." Her fingers stopped moving on the bow.

"They left me behind."

"Aye, that's what I said. Go taking every offer laid at your feet, lass, and any passing scoundrel will find a use for ye." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"You don't know what they told me."

"I can make a fair guess." She looked at me instead.

"That head of yours talks a lot." I shrugged and threw the remaining stick into the fire. It landed across the other wood, leaving one end outside the stones.

"He is wise. You should listen to him." Mimir opened his mouth, but Petra was already moving her pack farther beneath her bedding.

"I heard him," she said. I pushed the end of the stick into the fire. Neither of them spoke while I did it. There had probably been a better response available to me, though I could not find one that would improve matters now. Repeating myself would only establish that I had heard her too. Petra offered the food packet once more before putting it away. I declined, and she folded it closed without insisting. I watched how tightly she rolled the empty end around what remained.

By nightfall, she had checked her arrows and placed the bow within reach. She lay on her side, changed position, then settled with her pack beneath her head. One hand remained against her ribs for a while before she drew it under the blanket. I stayed seated against the stone. Mimir had become quiet beside the fire. His eyes were closed, though that had never been a reliable indication that he intended to stop participating in a conversation. For a while, Petra's movements kept drawing my attention.

Each time she shifted, I looked over, expecting another question or an attempt to rise. Eventually her breathing settled. I waited through several more breaths before moving my staff off my knees. The fire required very little attention. I separated one piece of wood from the others so it would burn more slowly, then rested the staff beside my leg. The slope beyond the opening remained empty, and everything I knew to be moving on this floor was far enough away to leave us alone.

For once, I was willing to leave the matter there. Several minutes passed before I checked the approach again. I had been watching a loose thread on Petra's blanket lift whenever she breathed against it. There was no practical reason to watch it. I let it occupy me for another moment. I was sitting on a floor of the Inverted Spire without preparing for something to reach us. Even in places I knew were safe, there was usually something to count or reconsider.

Now the party window remained closed, and I had no immediate reason to open it. I eased my injured arm into a position that hurt less. Petra slept through the movement. Beside the fire, Mimir had a small piece of jerky caught in his beard. I could tell him when he woke. The bandage pulled when I rested my wrist against my thigh. I slipped a finger beneath its edge, then stopped before loosening the work Petra had done. She had taken time over it while the floor was collapsing.

At the time, I had considered that an inconvenience. Her pack lay compressed beneath her head. There was very little inside it. The potion might have been her last. I had accepted it, checked what it restored, and moved on to another problem. The remedy could have been the last of that as well. She had used both on me while keeping a hand against her own side whenever she thought I was occupied elsewhere. I looked at the bow beside her blanket. Reinforcing it had been useful.

It still required someone strong enough to draw it and steady enough to aim. Petra was hurt. She was tired enough to have gone to sleep beside someone who had pointed a staff at her throat. I had treated her willingness to remain near me as evidence that the matter had passed. From where I sat now, with her supplies packed beneath her head, there were other explanations. I had agreed to take her with me. The party window made it seem a small arrangement.

It had required less effort than sorting ingredients into storage. Yet she was sleeping because I was awake, and if something entered the recess, she would need time to get up. If I died, she would— I pressed my thumb against the bandage and stopped there. I had no use for that thought at present. Death had already occupied enough of this run. There was a route ahead I understood, and I could make certain she had medicine before asking her to follow it any farther.

The silence lasted until another question returned, one I had postponed while pretending to be human in a corridor.

"Why Khronos?" Mimir opened one eye.

"Because ye made a poor enough impression before bringing religion into it."

"You told me to use that name."

"Aye."

"Instead of Aiōn." His other eye opened. He looked toward Petra before answering.

"Keep your voice down."

"I am."

"Then keep doing it. That name is looked upon poorly, lad."

"How poorly?"

"Poorly enough that I thought I'd spare us the discussion with the lass." I leaned back against the stone. Petra had drawn the blanket higher, but her breathing remained even.

"Why?" Mimir worked his jaw once before speaking.

"I don't know." I waited for the rest. He looked back at me.

"That was the answer."

"You knew what to tell me."

"I know a name folk don't care to hear. That doesn't mean I've a tidy account of how they came to hate it." There was something irritating about receiving a useful warning from someone who could not explain it. I had followed his instruction. I had raised both arms and made an ass of myself in front of Petra, and now the source of that performance lay beside the fire claiming the limit of his knowledge.

"Where did you hear that, then?" I asked.

"Heaven?" His mouth tightened. I should have allowed him to answer before adding anything. Instead, I looked toward the small piece of meat in his beard.

"Do they discuss it over meals?"

"Mind your tongue, ye pale little—" Petra moved beneath the blanket. Mimir's voice rose anyway.

"By the roots beneath the first throne, I'll have ye know there are powers that would pluck that insolent tongue clean out of your—" I reached over and held his jaw shut with a small pressure of mana.

"Quiet." His eyes widened. A muffled sound pressed against the force holding his mouth closed, and he glared at me with enough persistence that I checked my remaining mana before deciding how long to maintain it. Petra settled again. I waited, watching her, then looked down at him.

"She is sleeping." He tried to speak.

"I will let go if you lower your voice." His eyes narrowed. I took that as the closest agreement available and released the pressure.

"Do that again," he whispered, "and I'll spend the next century teaching ye what quiet truly costs."

"You can threaten me quietly. You have just demonstrated that."

"Go to sleep, Carlos."

"I can't." He studied me for a moment. I kept my hand near my knee, where he could see it, although I had no desire to spend more mana on his mouth.

"Then sit there," he muttered.

"Ye seem accomplished at that." He closed his eyes. I leaned back and tried to arrange what he had told me into something more useful than a warning. Aiōn was a name humans disliked. Perhaps other living beings disliked it too. I had no way to establish the extent from one interrupted conversation with Petra and a head that resented being questioned.

"Aiōn," I repeated beneath my breath. The name remained familiar in a way I could not make precise. I moved my lips around it once more, then stopped when Mimir opened an eye.

"I am eternal," I murmured. He gave me no answer. Perhaps it was a bad deity. Humans had enough of those in their accounts, and they disagreed freely about which deserved the designation. I could imagine a name surviving long after the reasons for hating it had become difficult to explain. That still left Lady Livia. She had said Aiōn without any of Petra's hesitation. There had been no correction, no warning about using the name around someone else. I could not remember her showing opposition to it at all.

I looked down at the bandage again. The loose edge had stayed tucked where Petra put it. Livia's willingness to speak was something I had been treating too generously. After all, she had shot me in the head twice.