Chapter 709: A Small Blessing in a Cruel Vault (2)
"Understood."
He lifted the twin sacs whole, round and ugly as secrets people pretend not to know. They went into a Slime cup that sighed and turned cloudy to say: don’t touch. He blotted the open flesh with neutral glaze, center to edge, never dragging bitterness toward sweet. He did not wash; he saved flavor where it belonged.
Salt came next. He dragged a cooled stone through clean ash, let a tiny drip melt under Crymber Frost’s breath, and rubbed it into the meat in small circles, like teaching a child to read a single letter very well. Mint-paper dusted on top. Glowcap broke under his thumb—wood and earth without mud. One pin of resin-seed for warmth. Enough. Not fancy. This was discipline, not feast.
Two tracks, because variety keeps morale.
For skewers, he oiled spear-haft rims with glaze until they shone without shining. Strips of meat went on with space between so heat could talk to each piece. He held the first over the ring and listened. Not looked—listened. The Anchor breathed. On the exhale he turned. The sizzle sounded like a page being turned in a quiet room. Correct.
For stew, bones and the edible offal went into the lidded stone. Root scraps added weight. Slime’s gasket seated with a soft wet kiss. Ember patted the crown twice. The stone began to hum a kitchen hum, not a war hum. A Hypnoveil shadowed the lid and folded the smell back into itself. The slot did not learn they were cooking. The world outside stayed hungry without knowing where to knock.
He stirred in powdered ironvine root at the slow boil and watched it thicken. Everyone would get a bowl. Not big. Honest. He counted the spoons under his breath and in his head. First ladle for the lich whose crown had not flickered once in the last watch. Second for the woman still under the rest veil. The rest would take turns on the count.
He took a breath and felt the room agree he could have it. He let it go and felt the room take it and do nothing rude with it. The small relief tasted like mint at the back of his tongue.
"Photoperiod?"
"Consolidate, then." He swallowed the small pride spike that wanted to push against that advice. Stubborn gets ankles broken. "Keep the scouts chewing the edges for anything that smells like up."
<Scouts continue. Random pauses in effect. Scurabon #3 still shadowing. Echo-Deacon shifted two rests earlier than projected.>
He nodded, set another strip to the heat, and flipped on the exhale. He tasted a corner with the tip of the knife. It was clean and river-bright. He exhaled and let his shoulders lower a notch.
He lifted the veil a finger-width and let the aroma wander back into the dark of the slot: herb-sweet, mint-paper clean, glowcap earth. The smell was not loud. It was confident.
Thalatha stirred under the veil. Her breath caught once like a horse deciding not to startle. Then she took the scent in, and something in her face eased, as if a door in her chest had remembered how to open without creaking.
He watched from the chair and didn’t talk. He liked when she arrived without anyone hauling her up by the elbows. The veil folded back the way a good blanket does when a hand finally pushes it.
She blinked. Her first breath was caution. Old training. Her eyes measured the slot, the veil, the hum at the door, the shadows where a knife could be if knives had decided to be stupid. Then her nose did something un-military. It turned a degree toward the little ring of stones. Her mouth softened at the corner against her will.
"What did you make?" she asked, voice too soft to carry past the chair, a little hoarse from sleep.
"Field austerity with manners," he said, and tried a quick smile that didn’t get in the way of serious. "Also known as ’please don’t punch me until after breakfast.’"
Her eyes gave him the kind of look that made rookies stand taller. Then it flickered into a smaller thing. Not quite a smile. Permission to exist.
He ladled the second bowl and passed it over. He did not let the spoon clack the lip. She took it, fingers steady. The first sip put warmth down her throat and into the place under the collarbone where cold likes to live. She kept her face neat, because she was who she was, but her shoulders loosened a little.
He pretended not to notice and noticed everything.
They ate in turns. The lich took their portion with a small nod that made the crown’s light look almost like gratitude. Skeletons had smaller bowls; they balanced them without spilling, which is a trick if you have no muscles. A beetle auxiliary parked itself exactly in the warmest airflow and acted like that was planned, which it was.
"Report," Thalatha said after two spoonfuls, business sliding back on like a scabbard over a well-oiled blade.
"Boss on a basilica loop," he said. "We’re shadowing, not courting. Day is shorter by seven percent. No exit yet. We took eight marsh-capys. Left two so the water doesn’t get lonely. Pantry will be fine for a few day-windows if we keep portions honest."
Her eyes measured him with that small, irritating accuracy he liked. "You did not wake me for the take."
"I asked the rest veil to buy you twenty minutes," he said. "Pre-agreement. Wake on cold or teeth. There were neither."
She held his look for three slow heartbeats, then let it pass. "Fine," she said, and the word had the weight of something accepted and put away cleanly.
He would have made a joke for someone else. For her, he let the quiet land.
"What about the door?" she asked.
"Rodion says save breath," he said. He didn’t say that the stone had felt like a living thing yesterday and he wanted to win it today just to prove he could. Pride makes noise. He left pride by the cookpot and kept only accuracy. "We practice the duet later so it doesn’t rust."
She nodded once. "We don’t stay here."
"No," he said. "We don’t."
The Lux ember ticked the way a patient does when pain is down to background. The slot settled into a rhythm that could almost be called normal, if you were the kind of person who liked to lie to yourself. Mikhailis wasn’t. He finished his bowl and wiped the spoon with a piece of mint-paper and tucked it away. He set aside two skewers for a watch-later and cooled the rest, then packed them in gel pockets Rodion opened with a soft sigh.
He checked the feeds again. The basilica loop drew a thin silver circle in his lens. The Deacon paused, turned its head like it could remember a face, then went on. It did not climb. It did not sniff. It performed for itself.
<Photoperiod: forty-one minutes to safe dark. Recommend consolidation and interior practice.>
"Copy," he said.
She finished the last spoon of stew and set the bowl back in his hands. She looked better with a little heat in her. Not healed. Corrected a fraction.
"Eat again," she said.
"Yes, Your Terrifying Magistrate," he said, mild. He took a quiet sip from the pot, because he was not stupid, and that made her say nothing in a way that meant she had heard the joke and forgiven him for it.
He leaned back a little in the chair, enough that his back learned the shape of the shield and agreed with it. The skeletons adjusted one grip without show. He let himself think of other rooms for one heartbeat—Lira’s neat hands putting vinegar on burned fingers; Serelith making a face like boredom and then inventing a new way to set a curtain on fire without anyone seeing; Cerys standing at a window with cold on her breath and no patience for men who thought they were interesting. The thoughts were quick and quiet, like birds that know not to land on new stone.
Later, he told the part of him that wanted a different sky. After out.
He set the bowl down. "We practice?"
She lifted a palm to the chair back. He matched it with his. Hold, hold, bite, slide, reset. It was simple, and it was not. The first cycle her jaw tightened. The second his breath almost ran ahead, then checked. On the third they arrived together. The shield warmed under both hands.
"Better," she said, as if to the door three corridors away.
He let himself grin a little. "We are a metronome with good posture."
Her eyes said don’t push it and also do that again.
They did it again. The chair liked it.
The Hypnoveil twitched at the mouth of the slot. The alarm hair did not rise; it only thought about it. Rodion wrote on his lens without needing to clear its throat.
<Scurabon #3 reports Deacon pause variance +0.4 seconds on the north transept. Correlates with resonance eel pulses. Avoid that lip on return.>
"Logged," Mikhailis breathed.
He let silence be the big thing in the room because silence pays for other things later. They stayed like that—hands on the chair, breath practicing—until the ember ticked a little softer and the stone decided it would keep them for at least one more small day.
He looked at Thalatha. She looked back at him, clean and sharp and a fraction less tired. He felt something unhelpful try to stand up in his chest. He told it to sit.
"Thank you," she said, and the words were for the stew and the veil and the twenty minutes he had stolen for her.
He bowed with his mouth and not his head because he had learned that once from someone who liked their neck left alone. "Please scold me later," he said. "When we are rude to a door and it opens anyway."
"Later," she said, and it sounded like a schedule, not a threat.
The maze exhaled. The day was already shrinking. They would not waste it. Not today.