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"All right."

He went back to training.

I watched him move.

There was nothing theatrical about the way Silas fought. Every strike was controlled, every breath measured, and all of that strength stopped exactly where he intended it to stop. Watching him, I remembered the way he had carried my bag without asking, slowed his pace on the stairs, and carried me through the forest in his mouth without leaving so much as a bruise.

When he finished, he came over and sat at the far end of the bench, leaving enough room between us for another person. Then he took a small block of pale wood from his pocket along with a narrow carving knife.

"Thank you for the salve," I said. "And for the other thing."

He kept his eyes on the wood. "Don't know what you mean."

"Of course not."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It was barely anything, but I saw it.

His knuckles were scarred, and his fingers looked far too large for delicate work, but there was nothing clumsy about the way he handled the little knife. Thin curls of wood gathered between his boots as he worked, gradually cutting some small shape out of the block.

"What are you making?"

"Don't know yet."

"You're the one carving it."

"Wood knows before I do."

I looked at him. "That sounds suspiciously philosophical."

"It isn't."

The next morning, I brought two mugs of tea.

Silas looked at the second mug and then at me.

"I made too much."

He accepted the obvious lie without comment and drank it exactly as I had made it, strong and without sugar.

After that, it became a habit neither of us ever acknowledged.

I sat on the bench while he trained. Sometimes I brought tea. Sometimes, when the stone was cold, he pushed his folded sweater toward my end of the bench without saying anything. There were mornings when we barely spoke at all, and somehow the silence never felt awkward.

"Archive?" he asked once.

"Still hiding things."

"Figures."

"Pit?"

"Still hitting things."

"Figures."

That earned me another almost-smile.