* * *
Fly satbeside the bed and watched his best friend breathe. The body did the work of living and nothing else. Chest rising slow, color holding, Twister's resonance laid over him, a protective shield.
Tex stood at the foot of it with his arms crossed, saying nothing, which from Tex was a full conversation.
Komodo came in without sound, the way he did everything. He didn't look at Fly or Tex. He looked at North, and he went still in a way Fly recognized, because it was the same stillness he fell into over a problem that wouldn't quit.
"He left a line out," Komodo said.
Fly came halfway out of the chair. "Say that again."
"This kid…strong as hell with roots that go deep." Komodo crouched at the bedside, his head tilted like he was listening to something under the floor. "He's anchored. There's a thread running off him into the distance, thin as wire and still holding. He didn't let go on the way out.”
“Anchoring?” Fly asked.
“Himself, and us.” He glanced up, and for once there was no calculation in it, just a tracker stating facts. "I've followed signatures across thresholds my whole life. I've never seen one a man held open from the far side."
"That's Than," Fly said, and it came out rough. "He always knows where he is."
"Then he's findable.”
“We can’t. Not yet. He specifically asked us not to, and when he digs in, he’s immovable.”
Komodo nodded. “Okay, that’s fair.” He rose muttering, “Fucking SEALs.” Took a soft breath, almost as if he were testing the air. “When that font opens the way you're all betting it will, that thread is something I can follow." He looked at North's still face a moment longer. "Tell me when. I'll bring your anchor home."
Fly didn't trust himself to answer, so Tex did it for him, quiet from the foot of the bed. "We'll tell you when."
Fly left North’s room, holding onto Tex’s words that there would be awhen, and Komodo’s statement that North was not only hanging on butanchoringthem. He had to stop for a moment and set his hand against the wall as fear washed cold in his gut. “Than…you’ve given so much. I won’t rest until you’re back here where you belong.”
He headed straight to Lechuza’s room. Everyone had been sorted out by Lechuza’s housekeeper. The woman had them all in rooms and beds with the efficiency of a well-run hotel. Fly’s body ached, and he wanted to move toward his own room.
The visions were the clues, but he didn’t feel vindicated or relieved. The waterfall, the courtship, the slow, unbearable beauty of two people loving each other across a devastating war. He'd stood inside those threads with the rest of them. But the last one, the glade, the night it all went to blood, he had only Flash and Lechuza's account of it, secondhand, and that was the one he needed. Whatever shut the font down lived in that vision, and he didn't have it.
What he had was the scar. The one he carried on his flesh was an echo of the one she had inflicted, the one that sat under the chakana, splitting open and weeping when the font reached for them. A five-hundred-year-old injury bleeding fresh was the way the Veil communicated. It was telling them the scar was the place where the connection broke.
When he knocked on their door, Flash answered, stiffening. “She’s exhausted.”
“I know and I’m sorry. I have to ask some questions.”
Flash nodded, letting Fly inside. She was sitting on the couch in her robe, freshly showered, her hair still damp.
"The blade," he said, crouching to her level. "The one from the glade. The one your…you used. Do you know what happened to it?"
Fear flashed in her eyes, and she looked away from him. "No." She frowned. “I can’t remember what I did with it after…” She leaned back, her face going white. “I’m so tired.”
"Okay," he said. It was clear she didn’t want to think about the weapon she’d plunged into the man Quri had loved. "Get some sleep."
The house went quiet by degrees, and Fly lay in the dark, and his brain wouldn’t stop running everything over and over in his head.
He gave up and went back to North’s room. His friend hadn't moved. Fly sat in the chair,reaching past North, down the gold, for the one voice that might still have answers.
Visionary.Aurelion came faint, frayed at the edges, a signal stretched too thin across too much interference.
"Has there always been a keyholder?" Fly kept it low, mindful of North, though he doubted anything reached him.
Yes.The word arrived like it had traveled a long way.Since the Weavers lost their hold on Chaos. They poured all their collective power into one bloodline, the holder the lock was built for.
"It's always been her." He already knew. He needed to hear it. "Hasn't it?"
