“First,” Tamsin said, “don't do that again.”
Jin looked at her.
“The part where your knee tried to go home without you.”
“Wasn't planning to.”
She took his knife, inspected the bend and put it out of reach on the gatepost.
“Good. We're already making progress.”
Garran sat on the step with his bound arm against his chest. Kessa had cut a pair of practice staves from fallen timber. She kept looking toward the road.
“We should follow him,” she said.
“He'd like that,” Garran replied.
“He has your sword.”
“And I'd like it back with my other arm still attached.”
She drove one staff into the dirt and turned away.
Siv came through the side door carrying a blanket and a little wooden horse. She stopped to pick plaster out of the horse's painted mane.
Jin reached for the blanket.
“I've got it,” she said.
He let his hand fall.
She looked toward the road, hugged the bundle against her chest and went to find her boy.
Behind Jin, wood struck wood.
Garran had taken one of the staves in his good hand. Kessa knocked it aside, stepped in and tapped his shoulder.
“Again,” he said.
She frowned at his bandage.
“I'm not asking you to admire it.”
The next exchange ended with his foot planted and her staff caught beneath his arm. He held it there, breathing hard, until Bram took the other end.
Jin watched them work out a grip Garran could actually keep.
Tamsin snapped her fingers near his face.
“Your problem's down here. His is being handled.”
Tamsin crouched beside the broken glass plate. She tipped it until a sliver of reflected sky moved across her fingers.
“One body,” she said. “Every trick costs it light and attention. The dark fold stays close. Get it off its ground, break the fans, and it can't hide the weight.”
“That's a generous amount of work before stabbing it,” Jin said.
“You can stab it now. As you demonstrated, the hard part is choosing where it is.”
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Bram returned with a flat slate from the old quarry trail. He dropped it beside them.
“Will this do?” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Heavy enough. Clean it.”
Jin reached for it.
Tamsin caught his hand.
“He can wash a rock. You can explain the other world.”
He explained while Bram scrubbed and Kessa listened. Earth. Gates. No natural monster EXP. His first fall. The fixed kitchen doorway. One object at a time.
Garran said nothing until Jin reached the phone.
“The little black mirror?”
“It's not a mirror. It keeps pictures. Voices too.”
Bram looked up.
“You could have taken a picture of the reel before throwing it.”
“I didn't have it yet.”
“Still would have been nice.”
Garran rubbed his forehead with his good hand.
Tamsin unwound copper thread from the inside seam of her coat. She set the slate between her boots and pressed the wire into shallow grooves she scratched with her knife.
“I mend joined patterns,” she said. “Normally two halves of something that broke. You brought two perfectly good halves of different things.”
“Can you join them?”
“Can you pay me?”
Jin offered the two coppers.
She stared at them.
“One for each world?”
“A balanced portfolio.”
“Keep them. You'll owe me a real fee if this works.”
“And if it doesn't?”
“I'll charge you for making me watch.”
She put the wired slate on level ground.
Garran stood and nudged Jin's heel onto it with his boot.
“Hold.”
Jin settled his weight, tested the stone and set Marked Step.
The crescent spread through the copper.
Tamsin watched it fade.
Three successful holds later, the wire retained a pale outline of Jin's heel.
She had him walk a short approach to the slab, record it and replay without the native hold. The copper lit under his arriving foot, then spat a white spark.
Tamsin hissed and shook her fingers.
“Doesn't like that.”
“Welcome to my professional life.”
Jin looked at the two traces in his window. One followed his moving weight. The other clamped the heel print to the slab.
COMPONENT CONFLICT RECORDED.
SYNTHESIS CANDIDATE: ROUTE REGISTER + MARKED STEP.
FOREIGN-FIELD DEPENDENCY UNRESOLVED.
Tamsin tapped the slate.
“Take that through. Stand on it there. Let your pattern record what fails.”
“It won't carry your field with it?”
“It carries scratches. If I could mail people a world, I'd charge more.”
Jin laughed once, without much breath.
She looked at his knee.
“And don't force the hold when it doesn't answer. I'm mending a pattern, not building you a spare leg.”
Garran picked up the practice staff with his uninjured hand and offered it to Kessa.
“We'll be ready.”
“To do what?” Jin asked.
“Our part.”
Kessa took the staff. She and Bram followed him toward the open yard, already arguing over where the glassmaw's real feet had landed.
Jin unclasped the tongue-pin and handed it to Tamsin.
He left the two coppers beside his bent knife.
Her next sentence lost its meaning halfway through.
He picked up the wired slate. Tamsin pointed toward the cedar, then tapped the heel outline once more.
At home, Jin put the slate on the kitchen floor.
The copper was dark.
He stepped onto it, let his weight settle and asked for the hold.
Nothing answered.
Then the wire snapped across the middle and scored a black line through the print.
Jin froze with one foot raised.
Behind him, Theo said, “Please tell me that isn't the deposit on a bigger kitchen.”