Chapter 366: 366: The Net That Smiles
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The sun climbed. The dome’s shadow shifted. Miryam drank a little. The Friend drank a little less and then fell asleep with its head on her arm. Miryam rested her cheek against its ear and listened to its small breaths. She did not cry. Her face stayed dry and very stubborn.
She watched a beetle cross the sand line by line, each leg lifting like a careful thought, then vanish where the shade ended and the glare began. The mesh smelled of old water and reed sap.
When the wind changed it brought her the faint taste of salt and something like wet clay, proof that the nets had been soaked and cured in a marsh far from here. She counted her breaths to keep the worry small. She did it the way Kai had taught her, four in, hold, four out, hold, and she let her shoulders settle each time the numbers came back to one.
A scout adjusted a peg with slow hands, never jerking, never yanking, and she learned his rhythm and decided that if she had to jump, she would jump between his steps, not the others.
Mardek lay on his back beside the dome and watched a hawk draw circles until the circles were only the idea of circles. He told one short story about a boy who tried to drink the shadow of a well and got a mouth full of dust, and the men laughed in their throats, not with their teeth. Miryam did not smile, but she remembered the cadence.
The Friend twitched in sleep and made a sound like a hiccup. She put her palm over its ribs and felt the tiny drum inside. She whispered without words to the sand under the mat, asking it to remember her, asking it to keep her name until she could come back and press it into the ground with her own feet again.
The desert kept its own slow time.
High on the mountain, the day tightened into work. The first ring took the outer shelves and ledges and set tiny choke stones that would fall when touched and make a narrow place narrower.
They dusted those stones with crushed shells so they would not gleam when the sun shifted. Vexor and Shale carried wedges on their shoulders and spoke in short phrases that named distances and angles instead of fear.
Flint boiled the pitch in a shallow pan and brushed it into hairline cuts so the rock would split where Kai wanted and not where the enemy hoped. Needle moved along a parapet with a clay pot and a thin reed, painting small dots no bigger than a seed, sight marks for archers who might have to lose by scent and sound when dust rose.
The second ring checked railings that were not for safety but for aim. Lirien tuned the vent plates over the forges, tightening one hinge by a finger width so heat would not shimmer in a way that misled the eye. She filed a burr from a spear hook and listened to the metal sing when it was true.
Azhara ladled stew into bowls and told a joke about a rabbit who joined a monastery and forgot to stop talking, then slid mint leaves into a kettle for Luna without being asked, and tasted the broth and added a pinch of salt with the same care she used when she set traps.
Vel and Sha worked in a pair and bickered in a way that kept both of them awake. They threaded sling lines through stone eyes and argued about knots while their hands made the same knot every time.
The third ring stood around the sacred door like a quiet fence that had decided to be a wall if asked. Naaro stood at the nursery door and did not move when someone tried to hand her a cup. She would drink when the shift changed.
Not before. She counted the breaths of the sleepers and the shine of the cradles, and when a lamp guttered she lifted the glass and trimmed the wick with a nail and set it back without a word. Two young girls, the twins who were not mentioned for a while were brave, carried hot water past her elbows and did not slosh a drop. They are ready to fight.
Luna moved in the inner ring with a list and a calm face. She checked blankets. She checked lamp oil. She spoke to the older girls who were injured before but now healed enough to carry hot water and cool cloth. She did not ask to be sent out. She did not have to. The look in her eyes said she knew where she was needed and would not leave that ground. She set a small basket by the nursery threshold with dried fruit and a strip of salted meat for whoever relieved Naaro, and she smoothed the top of the basket as if smoothing a worry.
Skyweaver went to the high perch where Miryam liked to learn wind tricks. There was a small smooth stone there with a line of scratches that only a child would make and only a parent would count. The stone was warm. The scratches ended at a new number. It made Skyweaver smile for a breath. Then she turned and took watch again. She set his palm out to the wind and read it the way a reader reads a page, and when it told her nothing, she still listened.
The drums did not come closer fast. They came closer like men who do not fear what is ahead of them. The sound rode the heat at noon and the thin air in the afternoon and did not stumble when the light began to tilt.
Kai reached the tools alcove at last. He took his plates and his spear. He stood for a long breath at the mouth of the hall and looked at the desert. He let his mind be very quiet. He opened the small road. The scent of stone and oil fell away. He made a place in his head that was a still pool and set one picture on it. His hand, palm open, flat, and steady. He set it on the road and waited.
For a moment there was nothing. Then there was a square of shade. Then a smell that was not the mountain. Reed. Salt. Then the feel of a net with grit in it. Then the sense of a face very close that would not stop smiling. Then a small warm weight that was not fear and not joy. It was the weight of a friend asleep on her arm.