On the fourth day of bed rest, I tried to stand up, and my wife appeared in the doorway before my second foot touched the floor.
I don't know how she does it. I have commanded scouts with less warning.
"No," said Noctavia.
"I was only going to look at the tomato."
"The tomato has a window." She crossed the room and pressed one finger to my collarbone, and I went back onto the pillows like a feather. "Look at it from there."
I looked. The bed had been turned. At some point in the night it had been rotated to face the glass, and out in the garden the little plant leaned on its stake with three yellow flowers and the stubborn dignity of something that had survived a war.
"You moved the bed."
"With you in it."
"I didn't wake up."
"You sleep like a log. A very heavy, very stubborn log." Her tail gave a small, tired flick. "Open."
A spoonful of soup arrived. It was extremely salty.
"Perfect," I said, with my eyes watering.
"You're lying."
"A little."
"Good," said Noctavia. She almost smiled. "Tell me when it's right. I'll use less."
That was the strange part of that week. A month ago she would have told me I had no taste and then eaten two bowls where I couldn't see. Now she asked what I wanted, and listened to the answer, and I didn't know where to put my hands.
I had opened the dictionary twice since the fight and found nothing to add. She just said things now. I was frightened. Please stay in bed. I'd like you to eat. Plain words, one after another, as if she had carried the whole dictionary out into the daylight at once.
I missed being insulted a little. I told her so on the third day.
"You're injured," she said.
"That's what makes it urgent."
"No."
I took it like a professional.
She read to me every afternoon. She hated it, and she did it anyway, which was how I knew.
The only book she had was the gardening manual. She read it in the voice she once used to sentence generals.
"'Chapter Six. On Blight. The leaf shall curl. The stem shall weaken. The gardener must not despair.'" She turned a page with great menace. "'The gardener must, however, remove the affected plant.' I will not be removing anything."
"It's a metaphor," I said.
"It's a threat."
Toby arrived halfway through the chapter, with Dumpling in his arms and a hen under one elbow, and climbed onto the foot of the bed without asking. Dumpling leaned out of his grip toward my ribs and clicked, very softly, at the line of gold stitches under my shirt.
"Gently," said Noctavia.
"It's saying hi," said Toby.
"It's saying hi gently."
Click, said Dumpling, and settled its round green head against my knee, as if it had been put on watch.
"Does it hurt?" Toby whispered.
"Only when I laugh."
"Noctavia is funny."
"I am not funny," said Noctavia, and her ears went pink. "I am reading about blight."
Clara stood in the doorway with a tray, watching all of us. She had taken to doing that, standing at a distance as if she were counting heads. But she set the tray on the table, and then, without a word, she pulled the chair up on the other side of the bed and sat down.
"Continue," she said to Noctavia.
Noctavia looked at her for a moment. Then she cleared her throat and continued.
I learned the rest in pieces, mostly from Toby, who has no sense of what is secret.
Valeria had landed on the second morning. She had come down very carefully, avoiding the tomato by a full stride, with the expression of a general who had been practicing. She had taken the three prisoners away. She had not asked a single question in front of the children.
"What did she say?" I asked Noctavia, on the fifth evening.
"That the Legion felt the sky go dark from forty miles away." Noctavia was rearranging the blanket, which did not need rearranging. "She was quite upset."
"Did she say anything about the men?"
A pause.
"One of them spoke to her before she took him," said Noctavia. "He said the Office doesn't lose. It waits."
"That's all?"
"That's all."
She didn't say anything else, and I didn't push. She had told me the truth, and she'd said it plainly, and I could see what it cost her. She doesn't hold things back from me anymore. She holds them very carefully, instead, and then puts them down in front of me one at a time.
"Vael?" I said.
"Gone." Her hand stopped on the blanket. "I looked. I looked for two days. He walked out of my roots like a man leaving a room."
"He's not going to forget us."
"No." She looked at the window. "He is not."
On the seventh day, I was allowed on the porch.
It took three blankets, a cushion, and a supervised walk of exactly eleven steps, which Noctavia counted aloud. She sat me in the old wooden chair facing the garden, with Dumpling in its pot beside me and the tomato a little way off, leaning gently against its stake. She sat on the step below me with her tea.
The evening was clear and cool. Somewhere down the road, a cart went by, and a dog barked once.
"I want to tell you something," I said.
"No."
"You don't know what it is."
"I know it'll be embarrassing."
"It might be."
She sighed. "...Go on."
I had been nearly asleep that night, but I'd heard it. I had been saving it for a week.
"You called me your love."
Her teacup stopped halfway to her mouth.
Her tail puffed to twice its size. Her ears went red, then redder, then a color I'd only seen once, on the Ashen Plains, on the hundred and thirteenth day. I watched her open her mouth to say You were dreaming, and I watched her not say it.
She put the cup down on the step. She folded her hands in her lap.
"Yes," said Noctavia. "I did."
I couldn't breathe.
"I meant it." She was looking at the tomato, not at me, but her voice didn't waver. "I'm not very good at the rest of it yet. I will say the rest when I can do it without my tail betraying me."
"Your tail is betraying you right now."
"I'm aware."
"It's very large."
"Elise."
"It's wonderful."
"I'm going to throw this cup."
I laughed, and it did hurt, and I didn't care. She turned around at last, scowling, with her eyes wet and her face scarlet, and I put my hand on her cheek.
"Say something mean," I whispered. "Just so I can recover."
She stared at me. For a moment I thought she'd refuse.
"You are," said my wife, very quietly, "the most hopeless fool I have ever married."
It went straight down my spine to the scar, and I laughed until Dumpling clicked in alarm.
We stayed there until the lamps came on in the kitchen behind us. Toby was setting the table. Clara was arguing with someone about the salt, and winning.
Noctavia had stopped talking. She had moved up to sit at my feet, with her head tipped against my knee, and I realized she was looking at the roof.
Not at the sky. At the crooked chimney, and the loose shingle by the eaves that she had been meaning to fix, and the narrow upstairs window of the room that used to be empty.
"They know where we live," she said.
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
"I'm not saying anything," she added, a little too quickly. "I'm only observing. A strategic observation."
"Okay."
"It's a very good house."
"It is."
"I like the chimney."
"I know."
Her hand found mine on the arm of the chair and held it. She didn't wait to be asked.
I looked down at the dictionary, which was open on my lap. I had been holding the pen for an hour. There was nothing to translate. She had said all of it out loud: I was frightened. I meant it. I like the chimney.
I wrote one line, at the bottom of the page, and shut the book.
"It's a very good house" means I'm already thinking about leaving it.
Down in the garden, the tomato swayed once in the wind, and didn't fall.