Chương 86: The Wrong Hour

On Thursday the twelfth of February the drain in the yard was still swallowing Tuesday's rain, and you could hear it from the kitchen with the window shut.

"The yard's gargling," said June, around a mouthful of toast, with her books already under one arm, because she'd worked out years ago that Peg couldn't tell her off and laugh at the same time. Peg was at the sink with her back to them. Abe went past the money tin over the kettle, and past the calendar on its nail with the green letters on it big enough to read from where he was standing, and got the milk. He had been sitting on a question for two days.

On Tuesday night he had finally told Peg what happened to the world when he trained, and she had believed him, and it had seemed stupid ever since not to ask her the same thing back.

"Peg." He said it to her back.

"What's your Talent?" The washing-up went quiet. June stopped chewing. Peg turned around with the plate still dripping and looked at him. Then she laughed, once.

"Two days," she said, to June.

"I had money on a week."

"You did not."

"I always know where I am," Peg said to Abe, and turned back to the sink.

"That's it. That's the whole thing. I know where I am, and how far it is to anywhere else, and which way. I've never been lost. Not ever, not even as a kid."

"That's a good one," Abe said. He was surprised how much he liked knowing it.

"It's the least useful thing anybody in this city has ever been given, love." She set the plate on the rack.

"Every street in Calder, and I always know exactly where I'm standing. So does the milkman. He lives here too."

"Make her do the thing," said June.

"No," said Peg, to the sink.

"She can tell you how far it is to anything. Eyes shut. Standing anywhere."

"Five hundred and ten yards to the sea wall," said Peg, "and that's all you're getting, because it's ten after seven and some of us work." She dried her hands and took her coat off the hook next to the calendar without looking at either one.

"I'm on until six," she said.

"June?"

"Home after school. Gill's coming to do French verbs and eat everything we own."

"Abe?"

"Blades," Abe said.

"Tench got the hall." He got his bag up off the chair.

"I'm supposed to be at Riddell's as well. He'll have to have me next week." Peg stopped with one arm in her coat.

"Blades," she said.

"On the one afternoon a month they can afford to put anybody back together." She got the other arm in.

"Mind yourself."

"He's the last person in that room who needs minding," said June.

"I know exactly which person in that room needs minding," said Peg, "and so does the woman they pay to sit next to the mats. Eat something before you fight anybody." The whole year knew by lunchtime, because Ottley told anyone with a face. Tench had gotten the hall for the Thursday. He had not managed to get it once in all of January, and getting it now meant what he'd promised was finally happening: the blade afternoon, the first one since the rule changed, one a month for as long as the money held. Mrs.

Amery was already in her folding chair at the end of the mats when they came in, with a flask and a paperback, being paid by the hour. Ottley was first to the rack. He'd been first to the rack every blade day since December, and being made to wait two months had not improved him.

"One bout a pairing," said Tench.

"Mrs. Amery is here for the afternoon and the afternoon isn't long. If you're not fighting, you're watching somebody who is, and you can learn more losing with your eyes than winning with your mouth, Ottley."

"I didn't say anything," said Ottley, who hadn't yet, and the year laughed. Ada Bewley was third to the rack and first to stop talking. She'd asked Tench which afternoon it would be every week since January, until the asking was a joke with its own timing, and now that the afternoon was here she wasn't spending one minute of it on jokes. She called Abe out before half the room had partners, like she had every week since the order went up, and it went like it always went.

She was back on the bench with her water bottle inside a minute, telling Nita what she was going to do differently next time. The board hung by the fire door with its ten tags, the same ten names since January, DOLAN at the top. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Abe worked through the line Tench gave him and watched the rest between turns. It was the best afternoon the year had had since the summer.

Naylor lost twice and described both losses to anyone who'd listen, loudly, with actions. Sefton put Lena Ward on the boards and then spent the rest of his bout teaching her how to do it back to him, and on the third try she did, and the hall made more noise about that than about anything else that afternoon.

"Again," said Ward, from the floor.

"I want to do it again." A boy off the back bench came off the mats holding his wrist at a new angle, and Mrs. Amery stood up, put it back in front of everybody in about ten seconds, and was reading again before he'd finished saying thank you. At half past three, Croft called him out.

"Dolan." He said it across the hall.

"Get one." The room turned around like one animal. Croft was standing on the center mat with a practice blade in each hand, and he was grinning.

"You won't fight me on a Tuesday, and fair enough, I said I wasn't giving it away in a school gym for nothing." He threw the second one and Abe caught it out of the air.

"This isn't nothing." Tench looked down the hall at Mrs. Amery.

"Am I watching this one properly?" she said.

"You are," said Tench, and she put her paperback face down on her knee. Abe stepped on and set his feet, and the four seconds started. They didn't finish. Abe took the inside, took the wrist, and Croft's wrist wasn't where it had been. He'd moved it the smallest possible distance, like you move a cup so a drawer can shut.

Croft had watched that opener come at him across his own yard every Saturday since November, and he had finally worked out what to do about it, and he was still standing there at the end of the fourth second with both feet under him. Nobody at that school had ever eaten the opener. The room knew it at the same time, and the noise came up off the benches like weather.

"There it is," said Croft, through his teeth.

"There's the famous four seconds. Now what?" The answer to that went on for a long time. It was nothing like the yard on Saturdays, where Croft talked the whole hour and stopped everything to fix Abe's elbow. This was the other Croft, the one with eleven years of a family form in his legs, and he came on in combinations he had never taught anyone. He worked Abe's blade out wide and came in under it, and Abe's feet got him out.

He feinted at the knee and went for the head, and Abe caught it on his own blade an inch from his ear. The third combination ended with a hit on Abe's shoulder that would have counted anywhere, and the room made a sound like a struck pipe.

"One," said Croft, and came again. Abe gave ground and hated giving it. Once around the mat, giving it. Halfway around again. Then his back foot found the line his father wrote, and he stopped giving ground, and the fight changed shape. Croft hit the stance three times, and it cost him a little more each time, and the fourth time Abe moved first. It ended with Croft flat on his back with Abe's blade against his collarbone, breathing like a man who'd carried a couch upstairs. The hall went up.

Ottley was standing on a bench. Ada had both hands on her head. Naylor was explaining to Amrit, at volume, that he'd seen the whole thing, as if Amrit hadn't. Croft sat up, looked at his own feet like they'd sold him something broken, and started laughing.

"Second exchange," he said, to the ceiling.

"Eleven years of that form, and I get past your four seconds, and I'm still on my back. That's brilliant. I hate it." He got up and shook Abe's hand and didn't let go of it.

"Saturday. We're taking that apart to see how it works." Abe was still getting his breath when the screen came up. SECOND MEETING · Adept Lv 1 → 2 The opener had cost him nothing. It never did. The level had come off the middle of the fight, the long ugly stretch after the four seconds ran out, when he had been going backward around the mat against somebody who would not go down.

"You've got a screen up," said Croft, from the floor.

"You have. Look at your face." He got an elbow under himself.

"Was that me? That was me. That one's mine." Danforth called him out at four, and it took four seconds, and the room was quieter about it than it had been about anything all afternoon. Danforth got up off the mat with his jaw set and did not put his hand out.

"Again," he said. To Tench, not to Abe.

"I'll go again."

"One bout a pairing," said Tench.

"Then put me back on the end of the list."

"The list is done at five and it's four."

"Then I'll pay for the healer's next hour myself." Danforth said it plainly and reached for his bag like it was already settled, and over by the wall Mrs. Amery looked up.

"No," said Tench.

"Why not? The limit's money. You said so yourself in January. Everybody in this room knows the limit's money."

"It is," said Tench.

"That's why." He picked the list up off the bench and held it out at arm's length, so the room could see how long it was.

"Every name on that gets the same afternoon. You buy an hour and it isn't an hour for the room, it's an hour for you. I've got Bewley on there paying for hers by getting put down every Tuesday since December." He put the list back.

"Sit down, Piers." Danforth sat down. He came over anyway a few minutes later, while Abe was putting his practice blade back on the rack.

"Another one, then. Some Tuesday. Whenever it comes around."

"Sure," said Abe. He said it the way you say sure to somebody holding a door, already half turned to the rack, and he heard it land wrong before he was finished saying it.

"You didn't even think about it," said Danforth.

"About what?"

"Whether you'd win." Danforth's voice did not go up.

"I have been at this since I was fourteen. You said sure like I'd asked you the time." Abe did not have anything to put in that. Danforth looked at him, and then he nodded, once, and walked back to the benches. At twenty after four they were racking the practice blades, and Tench had the list in one hand and was telling them about March.

"Same again in March. If anybody chips one before then, you bring it to me and not to-" The tide bells went. Every person in Calder knew what six o'clock sounded like. It was the same bell that rang the tides, and it was as ordinary as weather, and nobody in that hall had heard it at twenty after four in their lives.

"That's the tide bells," said Ada, to nobody, as if saying it could make it be six o'clock.

"It isn't six," said Naylor.

"Thank you, Naylor," said Ottley, but it came out flat, because he was listening too. The clock over the door said twenty after four. The bells kept on. Mrs. Amery was on her feet with the paperback shut and her flask already in her bag, and she was not looking at the windows, she was looking at Tench.

Tench stood with the list in his hand and his head turned toward the windows, and he'd stopped reading, and a room with forty people in it got quiet enough to hear the sound arrive in pieces off the wet roofs, ring after ring after ring. Six o'clock was a handful of rings and done. Everyone knew that without ever having counted it. Abe counted. He got to twenty, and the bells did not stop.