Chapter 5 — Something Wrong

WELSH — The Novel (Coda's Perspective)

— The Dream —

It starts the way it always starts.

The world after. No people. No cities. Stone gone soft at the edges, flowers coming up through all of it, and me in the middle, not afraid.

Then the flowers stop.

Not wilting. Stopping — the way a sound stops. The light drains upward out of the sky. And I'm somewhere else.

There's no ground. I'm standing anyway. In every direction there's a grey-gold nothing, like the colour behind your eyelids when you press on them.

There are two of them.

Shapes like people, if you decide they're people. One taller. One with something moving around it that might be a cloak. They're facing each other, and they've been facing each other a long time — you can feel it the way you feel an argument in a room you've just walked into.

Except this one hasn't stopped. I'm inside it.

One of them has already turned to go.

Silhouette 1: "Where are you going?"

Silhouette 2: "Away."

Silhouette 1: "We're not finished."

Silhouette 2: "Every fix leaves a scar."

Silhouette 2: "Look at it. Look what we've mended."

Silhouette 1: "Seven holds it. Six won't."

Silhouette 2: "Then let it fall differently."

A pause with a whole conversation inside it.

Silhouette 2: "I've made up my mind."

Silhouette 2: "Goodbye, old friend."

And it goes. Not walking. Not vanishing. It goes the way a word goes when you stop saying it, and the not-sky closes over the place where it stood.

The other one stays there a long time.

Silhouette 1: "…"

Silhouette 1: "I have to tell the others."

Then it turns around.

And looks at me.

I woke up on the floor.

Not in the bed — on the boards beside it, on my hands, blanket half pulled down with me. The window was grey at the bottom. The house was silent.

Coda: "Ah — my head hurts."

I sat back against the bed frame and waited for it to stop pulsing behind my eyes.

Coda: "A dream? But I can't remember…"

And I couldn't. That's the strange part. I woke up on the floor with my heart going like something trying to get out through my ribs, and there was nothing behind it. No garden. No anything. Just the feeling you get when someone's said your name in the next room and you're not sure you heard it.

I've never once failed to remember the garden. It's the only dream I have.

I got the stone off the sill and ran the form three times in the dark, because I couldn't sleep and there was nothing else to do with my hands. Reach. Ask. Return. It stayed cold.

By the time the window went blue I'd stopped trying.

Coda: Something was in there.

Coda: And it took it with it.

— Lantern Row, morning —

I had a headache through breakfast. The dull kind behind the eyes that makes the light off the pans too much.

Maren: "You look grey."

Coda: "Headache."

Maren: "Sleep?"

Coda: "Had a dream. Can't remember it right."

Maren: "Happens. Eat."

I ate. It was good. My head hurt.

And it was true, which is the only reason I said it.

— The Courtyard Steps, before first hour —

Elan had been standing in Rook's yard with his eyes shut for four days.

Before school, after school, and for part of an hour when he was supposed to be in Edren's room. Rook hadn't told him to. He'd asked, and she'd said if you like, which from Rook is close to enthusiasm.

Elan: "I felt something yesterday."

Sable: "You felt a cart."

Elan: "It might not have been a cart."

Sable: "It was a cart. You said 'something's coming' and then a cart came."

Elan: "That's sensing."

Wick: "That's hearing."

He was too pleased to be insulted. He's been like this since the red paper, and the annoying part is that it works on you — I'd spent an hour before dawn on my bedroom floor, and by the time they'd finished arguing about the cart I'd nearly convinced myself it was nothing.

Sable: "You look like you haven't slept."

Coda: "I slept."

Sable: "That's not what I said."

She waited. Sable waits; it's the most effective thing about her.

Coda: "Bad night. I woke up on the floor with a headache."

Elan: "That's just falling out of bed."

Wick: "With no memory of falling?"

Elan: "That's also just falling out of bed."

They laughed. I laughed. And somewhere under the laughing, something turned over — the way a word you've been hunting all morning surfaces when you've stopped looking for it.

Grey-gold. A colour with no light in it.

That was all. One colour and nothing attached to it, and then it was gone again.

— Edren's Classroom, first hour —

The seven circles were still on the board. Four days and he hadn't cleared them, which he always does.

The short line running off the ring was still there too.

He was teaching the founding of the Convocate. I heard almost none of it, because I was looking at that line, and while I was looking at it the second piece came back.

Two shapes. Facing each other. Standing on nothing.

I sat up so fast the desk moved.

Coda: That was last night.

Coda: That was in it.

I went after the rest of it the way you go after a name. Pushing. Nothing came. The harder I looked the further back it went — and I know exactly what that is, because I've been doing it every week in Venn's room for a year. Reaching for something that isn't there.

Edren: "Coda. The founding year."

Coda: "I don't know, sir."

Edren: "No. You don't."

He went back to the board without making anything of it, which from Edren is worse than being made an example of.

— Venn's Spell-Practice Room, second hour —

The stones were back on the desks.

We were on incantation forms — the words themselves, out loud, in rows. We've recited them since we were eleven without being told what we were doing. Now we knew they were addressed to something, and the whole room said them differently, and a few people went red about it.

Mine did nothing. Four days since the gold paper and my stone is as cold as it ever was.

Venn stopped at my desk near the end.

Venn: "Explain the error."

Coda: "Same as always."

Venn: "Humour me."

Coda: "I say the words. I look for the memory. There's nothing to look at. Nothing goes out, nothing comes back."

Venn: "And the gold?"

First time she'd mentioned it.

Coda: "The Headmaster says aptitude isn't power."

Venn: "The Headmaster is careful, and correct, and I respect him enormously."

She crouched down level with the desk. She does that for about three people in the school.

Venn: "When you look inward, you told me you see it. See what?"

And I opened my mouth to say nothing and what I nearly said instead was two shapes standing on nothing, and I had no idea where the sentence had come from.

Coda: "Nothing, Magister. Just open."

Venn: "Mm."

— Rook's Training Yard, third hour —

Rook had the class on the wall for paired trials. Gatehold, stone only. Elan and a boy called Tam in the dirt, Rook in the middle with her practice sword loose in one hand, like a walking stick.

I was between Sable and Wick, tired enough that the yard had gone slightly unreal, watching dust hang in the light.

And it came back. All of it. Not in pieces this time — the whole thing at once, the way your foot finds a step in the dark.

The grey-gold nothing. The two of them facing each other. Where are you going. Away. We're not finished. The one who went out like a word you stop saying. The not-sky closing over the empty place. I have to tell the others.

And the turn. The turn at the end, and the looking.

I was sitting on a wall in a training yard in the afternoon, and I was also standing on nothing, and both of those were happening.

The dust went down.

All of it, at once. Not falling. Settling — straight down, like the air had forgotten to hold it. Tam's conjured stone dropped mid-flight and thumped into the dirt.

Everything got very clear and very quiet.

Elan lowered his sword.

Elan: "Wick. What did you —"

Wick: "That wasn't me."

He was looking at me. Not at the yard. Not at Tam. At me, from twenty feet, with something on his face — and Wick's face is a shut door, so anything on it at all is loud.

Rook was already moving.

Rook: "Nobody casts. Hands where they are."

She walked the yard once, slowly. Looked at the dirt. At the dropped stone. At the air. Then stood still in the middle of it like someone listening through a floor.

Rook: "Who reached?"

Nobody spoke.

Rook: "I'll ask once more. Then I fetch Magister Venn, and it stops being a question in a yard. Who reached?"

Coda: I didn't reach.

Coda: I remembered something. And the yard did that.

I didn't put my hand up.

It wasn't fear. Or not only. It was that I didn't know if it was true, and if I said me and I was wrong I'd have handed them something I couldn't take back. And if I said me and I was right, then everyone in that yard learns it the same afternoon I do.

So I sat on the wall with my mouth shut.

Rook stood in the settled dust a while longer. Then she picked up the dropped stone, turned it over, set it down.

Rook: "Again. Tam, reset."

The lesson went on. Wick didn't look at me for the rest of the hour, which told me more than if he had.

— The Courtyard Steps, after —

Elan went straight back to the yard to stand with his eyes shut.

Sable was writing. Wick wasn't eating an apple, which I noticed.

Wick: "You didn't say anything."

Coda: "There wasn't anything to say."

Wick: "Coda."

Wick: "I know what that felt like. It felt like the thing I did that I can't explain to anyone."

He turned the apple over.

Wick: "It came from where you were sitting."

Sable stopped writing.

Sable: "What came from where he was sitting?"

Wick held my eyes. Then he put the apple in his pocket and stood up.

Wick: "Nothing. Cart went past."

He walked off — and he'd just done for me exactly what I'd done for him over the black paper. Covered it with a hand without being asked.

Sable let the quiet run. She's good at that.

Sable: "I'm going to say some things. You don't have to answer."

Coda: "Sable —"

Sable: "Your stone has never gone warm. Not once, not ever, and nobody in our year has never."

She counted them on the cover of her notes without looking up.

Sable: "You saw a colour around a Warden that nobody else saw. Your paper went gold, which is twice in nine hundred, and Vey walked you out in front of everyone. And today the dust went down in Rook's yard, and Wick — who did that same thing in that same yard last week — looked at you."

I didn't say anything.

Sable: "I'm not asking what it is. I don't think you know."

Coda: "I don't."

Sable: "I know. That's the part that worries me."

She closed the notes.

Sable: "When you do know, I'd rather not find out last."

— Home, evening —

The shop was shut early. Third time this week.

The kitchen was warm, candles lit, table laid. Both of them sitting at it doing nothing — not cooking, not reading. Just sitting, with a book closed on the table between them, at the hour the shop should have been open.

They finished their sentence when I came in. Father said — which is what I said. Then quiet.

Aldric: "There he is."

Maren: "Sit. Eat before it goes."

I sat and ate. They asked about school. I said fine. Ma asked about Elan's yard business and I said he thinks he felt a cart, and Father laughed at that properly.

And the whole time I was looking at the book.

It was the old one. Resewn twice, the second time badly. The one with the ring drawn in the margin and then where are they? written underneath in a hand that pressed too hard.

I'd left it on the house shelf. It was on the table now, closed, between the two of them.

Coda: Ask.

Coda: Ask why the shop's shut. Ask what the book's doing down here.

Coda: "Father."

Aldric: "Mm."

Coda: "Is something wrong?"

Ma put her spoon down. Father looked at me over his glasses for a long moment. Then he told me the truth and not all of it.

Aldric: "Yes."

Coda: "With me?"

Aldric: "No."

He put his hand flat on the cover of the book. Not to move it. Just to have it there.

Aldric: "Not with you."

Ma picked her spoon back up, and we finished the soup.

I sat on the ledge after with the cold stone in my hands.

The city breathed. Not the ragged thing it had been the morning the wall came up — smaller now, and regular, the way someone breathes when a fever has broken and they don't know it yet. Two streets east the wall was whole again. The sand was still roped off.

Coda: One walked away. The one who stayed had to go and tell the others.

Coda: I couldn't remember it this morning. I can now.

Coda: That's not how dreams go. That's how remembering goes.

Coda: So whose is it?

I shut my eyes and looked inward the way Venn says to. The room with no walls, light coming from a direction there isn't one.

And for a second — not long — the room wasn't empty.

Something was standing at the far end of it, where the walls would be if there were walls.

With its back to me.

I opened my eyes fast enough that I nearly went off the ledge.

I went in through the window. Father had gone up. The book was still on the table, closed.

I looked at it for a while in the dark. I didn't open it.