Chương 6: Still Hasn't Learned

The new one crossed the yard toward her, pack half-strapped, both hands free, and she watched him decide, again, that today might be the day she let him. She let him get close. Let his hand drift toward her ears, same as it always went. Then she bit him. Not hard. Just enough.

"Ow — ok, fair." He was laughing when he pulled his hand back, easier about it than he'd ever been the first few times.

"Guess that's goodbye, then." She didn't know what the word meant. She only knew the shape of his voice when he said it, softer than usual, like it cost him something small to get out. Garr was by the gate already, checking packs like he did before every big group went out, hands moving over straps and buckles like he could catch a problem just by touching it. He didn't look up when she came to sit near his boot.

"You," he said, not surprised.

"Figured you'd show." She sat and watched him work. He tugged a strap on Thorn's pack, grunted approval, moved to the next. When he reached the new one's pack he pulled harder, testing it twice.

"This one's loose again." He looked past the boy at Thorn.

"Third time I've said something."

"I fixed it."

"You fixed it wrong." Garr yanked the strap tight himself, cinched it down until the leather creaked tight "There. Now it's fixed." The new one flushed and mumbled something that wasn't quite a thank you. Garr clapped a hand on his shoulder, once, the same way he did to everyone before they walked out that gate, and moved on down the line without another word. The group gathered slow, same as any group ever did, someone always missing a glove or a water skin at the last second.

Ren came out to see them off, arms crossed against the morning chill, saying nothing to anyone in particular. Flint shouldered his own pack among them, rope coiled proper over one shoulder, and paused beside her.

"Don't go wandering off again," he said, mostly to himself, eyes on the gate rather than on her.

"I mean it this time." He reached down without looking, scratched behind her ears once, quick, like he didn't trust himself to linger on it, and fell in with the rest. She looked up in time to see the group standing straighter than before, though she'd missed whatever had caused it. A few of them traded looks she didn't have a name for.

Someone barked something short and sharp, and the whole line snapped straight all at once, boots together, backs stiff, mock-serious for exactly as long as it took Thorn to break first and start laughing. The rest of them went with him, the stiffness dissolving into shoves and someone knocking someone else's helmet crooked. Garr didn't join in, but the corner of his mouth pulled, same as it did whenever he was trying not to let something show.

The new one crouched down in front of her one more time, careful this time, no reaching.

"Let me pet you properly when I get back," he said.

"I'm not giving up on that, you know." She held still and let him look at her, since that seemed to be what he wanted. Then he stood, shouldered his pack, and the group moved toward the gate together, boots falling into the same easy rhythm they always found once they stopped thinking about walking and just walked. She watched them go from the yard, low to the ground, until the gate swallowed the last of them and the street outside took the rest. The hall was quieter after that.

Not empty, never empty, plenty of the guild's people were always out on some job or other, same as any day, but quieter in the way it got when one particular group was the group missing. She noticed it in her paws first, the extra distance between one table and the next, nobody to step around anymore. [SYSTEM] Territory: The Guild Hall Registered members: 220 The number sat at the edge of things, unmoving. It had nothing to do with the empty tables, nothing to do with anyone she could see.

She didn't know what it meant. She only knew that some part of her had gone very still reading it, the same stillness that came before a sound she hadn't placed yet. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Groups went out and came back short all the time. She'd seen it before, more times than she'd ever bothered counting, chairs going empty and staying that way. This wasn't new.

It had just never sat in her chest like this before, small and cold and impossible to shake off. The days blurred together after that. Nothing happened that was worth telling apart. She slept on the beam. She hunted the mice that had gotten bold in the pantry since Bram stopped chasing them out as often. One night she went looking for the warm spot by the kitchen fire and found Bram still up, long after the hall had gone quiet, scrubbing a pot that was already clean.

Sleeves shoved past his elbows, rag going hard and fast, always over the same spot. He hadn't noticed.

"I'll go up when this is done," he muttered, not turning around, not really talking to anyone. She sat down where she was and watched him. He kept scrubbing long after the pot was already clean, the rag squeaking over metal that had nothing left on it to clean. Ren came in not long after, a stack of papers under one arm, already halfway through a sentence about the city lord, and then noticed who else was in the room.

She stopped in the doorway, took in the scene, and sighed, the flat look of someone who'd had this exact argument before and lost it every time.

"Bram."

"I'm nearly done."

"You said that an hour ago."

"I was closer to done an hour ago than I thought." He didn't look up. The rag kept moving over a pot that had already been clean. Ren set the papers down on the counter, not gently.

"You know the pot doesn't actually need you to love it this much."

"Somebody's got to feed this whole hall tomorrow, and that starts with a clean pot."

"They'd survive a slightly less spotless pot, Bram." That got him to stop, finally, rag still in hand, like he hadn't fully decided whether to be offended. Ren didn't wait for him to decide. She crossed the kitchen, took the rag out of his hand without asking, and set it down out of his reach.

"Bed. The pot isn't going anywhere. Neither is tomorrow." He grumbled something about getting ahead on things, but he went, wiping his hands on his apron the whole way out, muttering about people who didn't understand a kitchen needed tending same as anything else. Ren watched him go, then let out a breath bigger than the moment needed. She dropped into the chair by the banked fire and reached for her papers, then didn't open them, just sat with them in her lap. Amber jumped up beside her.

"You're warm," Ren said, arm settling around her without seeming to notice she'd done it.

"I don't know why that helps. It just does." A pause, dry: "Don't tell my father I said that. He'd find a way to tax it." Amber pressed her head under Ren's chin. Ren's shoulders dropped an inch, some of the stiffness going out of them, and for a while neither of them moved, the fire low and the papers still unopened in her lap. Later, Amber passed Flint's corner on her way to the beam and slowed without deciding to. Still empty. It would be a while yet.

The hum came back some nights, faint, more like a held breath than the wrongness under the city had been. It pulled at her same as before. She went as far as the gate once and sat with it a long while, tail curled tight, looking at the dark road beyond. She didn't go through. She'd learned that lesson already, and paying for it twice held no appeal. [SYSTEM] Territory: The Guild Hall Registered members: 213 The words surfaced again on their own, same as before. The shapes inside them had changed.

She looked at them a moment, the way she looked at anything that moved without a reason, then let it go. There was nothing to smell, nothing to touch. Nothing worth more than a glance. She found Garr in the yard that evening, standing at the fence line with his arms crossed, looking at nothing. That was how she knew there was something he didn't want to look at instead. The light was going orange and low, the kind of evening that used to mean packs going out or coming in. Not tonight.

She crossed the yard and sat by his boot. He didn't startle, just glanced down and grunted something that wasn't quite a greeting.

"Quiet out here," he said, like the yard had done something wrong by being empty. He rolled a shoulder, the kind of stretch a man does after standing too long in one spot.

"Used to be I couldn't stand in this spot without somebody wanting something from me. Now look at it." She sat with him, watching the same dark stretch of road he was. He crouched down slow, knees cracking, and scratched behind her ears, eyes still fixed somewhere past the fence. He didn't say anything for a while. Just scratched, slow and absent, a man doing something with his hands so he didn't have to sit still with the rest of himself. She headbutted his hand anyway.

He stayed crouched a moment longer than the scratching required, like standing back up was going to cost him something. When he finally did, he pressed a hand to the small of his back and let out a long breath, the kind that carries a whole tired day behind it.

"Should hear something soon," he said, mostly to the fence.

"Always do, by now." He didn't say what soon meant. He wasn't the type to explain himself to anyone, let alone a cat. He turned back toward the hall, boots scuffing slow across the packed dirt, and she fell in a half-step behind him the way she sometimes did, not quite following, not quite leading either. At the door he paused, hand on the frame, and looked back out at the yard once more before going in, like he expected the gate to have changed while his back was turned. It hadn't. He went inside anyway.

She didn't follow him all the way up. She took the beam instead, the warmth of the flue rising up through old wood, and let her eyes go heavy over the quiet hall below. Dishes clinked somewhere in the back. A chair scraped. Ordinary sounds, all of them, the kind she'd stopped noticing years ago because nothing about them had ever meant anything. She was on the beam, half asleep, when the gate opened wrong. Too loud, too fast, voices piling over each other, boots dragging instead of walking.

She was down before she'd fully woken. Blood was already in the air by the time she reached the floor.