Aoi tried to stand.
Pain caught her halfway.
I reached for her arm.
She pushed my hand away, then caught it before I could withdraw.
“When?”
The word came out thin.
Senn turned pages.
“I need the date.”
“Was he alive?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Aoi,” I said.
She looked at me as though she had forgotten I was there.
Senn found the page.
“Eight days after the assignment began.”
Aoi sat down.
Her hand remained around my wrist.
Eight days.
The relief had supposedly been due after one.
The food had been issued for three.
Kaito had survived at least eight.
I looked at Berden.
He had one hand against the wall.
No one spoke to him.
Marret drew the ledger closer.
“Explain the entry.”
Senn pointed.
“Equipment recovered from Sedge Toll. One signal lamp. Partial shutter assembly. Field stove. Empty oil vessels. Civil salvage claim.”
“And the claimant?”
“Edris Vale. Licensed carrier.”
“Where is Vale?”
“Working the lime road, last I knew.”
“Did he bring Kaito here?”
“Yes.”
Aoi leaned forward again.
“Here?”
“To the freight yard.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Senn looked directly at her.
“He asked me not to.”
Silence.
There it was.
The answer that ought to have been reassuring and managed not to be.
Aoi’s grip loosened.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Why?”
“He thought they’d send him back.”
Marret asked Senn to sit.
The clerk obeyed reluctantly, as though taking a chair might make her account more official.
It would.
That was the point.
Senn had seen Kaito in the freight yard eight days after the assignment.
He was thin, feverish, and wearing a carrier’s coat.
He had been brought down from the old quarry road by Edris Vale, who submitted the signal equipment as recovered crown property.
“He said there had been an animal,” Senn told us. “At the station. Something trying the shutters after dark.”
“A grenn?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What did he do?”
“Stayed above the stairs. Burned the furniture when the oil ran low.”
Aoi’s face tightened.
Senn continued.
“Vale found him on the road two mornings later. He’d left when it was light. Tried to reach the next post.”
“Did he know there was no next post?” Berden asked.
Senn looked at him.
“No.”
Berden lowered his head.
The examiner made a note.
Aoi stared at the open ledger.
“Why didn’t he come back for me?”
Senn’s expression softened.
“He asked about you.”
Aoi looked up.
“He asked whether the castle had sent anyone to look for him. Whether there had been notices. Whether you were still there.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t know where you were. I told him no missing-person notice had come through my office.”
Marret’s pen stopped.
“Was there one afterward?”
“No.”
“Did you check?”
Senn nodded.
The examiner wrote.
I watched the page fill.
No notice.
No relief.
Equipment reconciled through salvage.
A living person missing from the military account.
The evidence had become more serious without becoming simpler.
“Where did he go?” Aoi asked.
Senn glanced at Marret.
The examiner saw it.
“He is not the subject of the recall order.”
“Not yet.”
The room grew quiet.
Senn seemed to regret the words.
Marret did not reprimand her.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
The military book marked the station equipment reconciled.
The commercial book explained why.
Vale had surrendered salvage. Its assessed value had been charged against the district transport account. The original deployment account was then closed with a reference to the replacement entry.
*Charge entered elsewhere.*
Aoi looked at the phrase.
“That’s all it meant?”
“For this expenditure,” Marret said.
She underlined the qualification.
The phrase had frightened us because we did not understand it.
Understanding it did not remove the rest.
Someone in the military office had received confirmation that equipment from a supposedly functioning station had returned as salvage.
The station was not functioning.
The assigned Hero had not been accounted for.
No search order followed.
Marret turned to Berden.
“When you were told the retention had been reconciled, had this return already been entered?”
He gave the date.
Senn checked.
“Yes.”
The examiner sat back.
For the first time, she looked tired rather than merely busy.
“That,” she said, “is an answerable question.”
I waited.
She continued.
“Who reviewed this return, what account of the missing custodian accompanied it, and why the disposition closed without a personnel finding.”
It was not the sentence Aoi wanted.
It was one that could travel through offices without dissolving into accusation.
I could see the value.
I wished it did not take so much effort to reach.
Marret called for a fresh sheet.
Berden’s transfer would be stayed for five days.
The military office would be required to produce its disposition record.
Senn’s statement concerning Kaito would be taken separately.
His present location, if known, would not be included in the copy sent to the office under examination without a specific further order.
I looked up.
“You can do that?”
“I can avoid circulating irrelevant private information about a civilian witness before establishing whether he is required.”
“He is a Hero,” I said.
“He is a person.”
She blotted the page.
“His service status can be argued after we locate the oath they claim he took.”
Aoi’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
I suspected she would remember the sentence for a long time.
So would I.
The examiner looked at Senn.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“I know where he went.”
“Tell his friend privately. If she chooses to approach him, that is not a military instruction.”
Senn nodded.
Marret turned toward us.
“You may ask him to give evidence. You may not tell him that I have promised safety from every consequence of doing so.”
“I won’t,” Aoi said.
The answer came immediately.
Marret studied her.
Then nodded.
Outside the office, Berden stopped by the stairwell.
“I’ll wait here.”
Aoi looked at him.
“You can come downstairs.”
“I meant--”
“I know what you meant.”
He held his cap.
She looked at it for a moment.
Then at his face.
“He was alive when she saw him.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
Aoi drew a breath.
It shook.
“I don’t forgive you.”
Berden nodded.
“But I don’t want you taken back before this is finished.”
He looked up.
She had already turned toward Senn.
We went downstairs.
At the counter, the man with the chicken was still arguing.
The tax official had acquired an egg.
This appeared to have strengthened his position.