I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities

Chapter 473: The Tell

Vane found her on the clock tower a little after sunset, legs hanging over the edge the way they always were, a bag of roasted chestnuts open beside her that she was clearly not going to offer him any of.

"You’re late," she said, not turning around.

"Late for what?"

"I don’t know. I just like saying it. Makes you feel guilty about something." She patted the stone next to her without looking. "Sit. You’re blocking my view of absolutely nothing, which is very rude of you."

He sat. The island spread out below them, lights coming on one by one across the hill, the ocean gone the color of a bruise where the sun had already dropped behind it. Somewhere down in the villas, Mara would be starting dinner about now, and Ashe would be arguing with Valerica about something that didn’t matter, and none of them knew he was up here, and that was sort of the point of coming up here in the first place.

"You could’ve texted," he said. "Instead of climbing all the way up a tower and hoping I show up."

"I didn’t climb anything. I’ve been up here since noon." She said it like that explained everything, which, with her, it usually did.

"You’ve been up here for six hours."

"Seven, actually. I lost track of the last one." She shrugged, unbothered. "The view gets better the longer you stare at it. Nobody tells you that. Everyone thinks it’s a five-minute activity."

"Isaac’s down at the east gate," she said, popping a chestnut into her mouth. "Arguing with a delivery driver about a crate. Sounds like it’s about his mother again. Poor boy."

"How do you know it’s about his mother?"

"Because it’s always about his mother." She grinned, wicked and easy. "Poor sweet frozen boy. Never stood a chance."

Vane looked out at the east gate, more out of habit than doubt. He couldn’t see it from here — the angle didn’t work, not even from the tower — but he’d learned a long time ago not to bother checking when Nyx told him something like that. She was never wrong about who was where. It was sort of her whole thing.

They sat for a while. She ate her chestnuts. He let his legs hang the way hers did, which always made him a little nervous and he never told her that.

"Oh," she said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter. "Actually — no. He’s not at the gate."

Vane looked at her.

"He’s in the library," she said, correcting herself easily, like it didn’t matter at all. "Huh. I could’ve sworn."

"You sure?"

"I’m always sure." She said it automatically, the way she always did, and then stopped, chestnut halfway to her mouth, and just sat there for a second like she was listening to something.

"Nyx?"

"Give me a second." Her voice had lost the teasing edge completely. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She wasn’t really looking at anything.

He waited. The wind moved her hair a little. Somewhere below them a bell rang for the evening meal shift and a handful of students crossed the courtyard, small as ants from up here.

"Library," she said finally, and the lightness came back into her voice like someone flipping a switch, though it took her a beat too long to find it. "He’s in the library. I was right the second time. First time I just — got the wrong door, I guess." She laughed, short, a little forced. "That’s embarrassing. Four years and I get a door wrong."

"That’s never happened before."

"It happens all the time, don’t be dramatic."

"Nyx."

"It’s a door, Vane." She threw a chestnut at him. It hit his shoulder and bounced off into the dark. "You’re allowed to get a door wrong. Even geniuses get doors wrong sometimes. Ask Isaac, he’s spent his whole life walking into the wrong room and blaming the room."

He caught the next one she threw before it hit him and set it down on the stone between them instead of eating it.

"You don’t get doors wrong," he said. "That’s the whole point of you."

She was quiet for a second. Just a second. Then she leaned her head sideways until it landed on his shoulder, easy and warm like it was nothing, like it happened every day, and looked back out at the lights coming on across the hill.

"No," she agreed. "I don’t. Usually."

"What happened."

"I don’t know yet." She said it plainly this time, no joke folded into it. "I will find out. I’m very good at finding things out, in case you hadn’t noticed." A pause. "You’re the first person I’ve told. Not because it’s a secret. Because there wasn’t anything to tell until about four minutes ago."

"Do you want help looking?"

"Not yet." She nudged him with her shoulder, gentle. "If it happens again, you’re the second call. I promise."

"Who’s first?"

"Me," she said, like it was obvious. "I get first crack at my own head before anyone else gets a turn. That’s just manners."

"That’s not how manners work."

"It’s how my manners work. I make the rules up here." She tapped her temple, then winced slightly, like even that small gesture had cost her something she hadn’t expected it to cost. She covered it fast — too fast — with another grin. "Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine. I’m always fine. It’s practically my whole brand."

He didn’t push it. He picked the chestnut up off the stone and ate it, mostly because it felt better than saying nothing at all, and she laughed properly this time, the real one, and stole the bag back before he could reach for a second.

They sat there a while longer, the two of them, the island going dark under them one street at a time. She told him about a couple arguing three streets down — she could feel them from up here, apparently, the specific unhappy shape two people made when they were fighting about something small that was really about something big — and made up increasingly ridiculous guesses about what the fight was actually about until he was laughing despite himself, and she looked pleased in the particular quiet way she got when she’d managed to make him laugh without trying very hard to do it.

"Married four years," she decided finally. "Fighting about a dog. It’s always a dog."

"You don’t know that."

"I know everything, Vane. Weren’t you listening earlier?"

"You got a door wrong an hour ago."

"One door. One." She held up a single finger, mock-offended. "You’re never going to let that go, are you. I can already tell. You’re going to bring it up in front of Mara at dinner and she’s going to write it down in that ledger of hers like it’s a historical event."

"Would she?"

"Absolutely she would. That child terrifies me a little. In a good way." Nyx pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, chin resting on top, and for a moment she looked younger than he usually let himself think of her as — not the four-year architect of the island’s every secret, just a girl on a rooftop who’d had a strange evening and wasn’t quite ready to go back down and pretend it hadn’t happened.

If something in her had actually cracked, just a little, just once, she didn’t let it show again for the rest of the night.

He noticed anyway. He always did, with her.