Legendary Beast Tamer: Every Beast I Raise Makes Me Stronger

Chapter 51: WHAT STOOD UP

The thing that stood up in the band of quiet was a woman.

Plain coat. Nothing on it. She stood like someone in a seated row who had somewhere to be.

She did not push out toward the aisle. She did not sit back down. She faced the stone. She faced Nyx. Six rows of people sat around her not knowing the row had gone quiet.

She stood in the quiet she had made. She looked down at the small dark thing on the squared stone as the dog in the cut had looked at Miasma. Checking a thing against a thing she carried.

There. That’s it.

Marsh said everyone in one room. That’s the room standing up out of the room.

It didn’t behave wrong enough for three tiers. It behaved wrong enough for Nyx. And Nyx faced it through a wall of people before I crossed the line.

She did not do anything. She stood and she looked. That was the whole of it. That was the part that put the cold down his back worse than a thing that moved would have.

A thing that moved was a thing the yard could see. A woman standing up in a tier was a woman standing up in a tier. The panel did not look at her. The rail did not.

The nineteen-year proctor at the gate, his hand on the Hearthcat. Aiden could not tell from the stone whether he saw her or not, and that was the same as not knowing anything.

The centre proctor’s voice came flat across the yard.

"Handler. The engagement was given. Walk it across the line."

He didn’t see it. Or he saw it and it’s not on his slate.

Either way the slate has no column for a woman standing up.

The only two things in this yard that know what’s here are on my shoulders and the stone.

Nyx had not moved.

It stood square where he had put it down. It did not look at the burned line. It did not look at the panel. It did not look at him.

It looked up into the tier at the woman in the plain coat. Level. Fixed. Total. It was not going to walk. The thing it was doing was the only thing it had ever done. Its whole attention on the one wrong thing in the room, and it would not let go.

The yard’s flat light lay on the tiers the same everywhere, on four hundred coats and the rails in front of them, and made no exception anywhere a man could point to.

Aiden gave it the press for forward.

Low, off his hand, the press Miasma answered and Nyx sometimes answered. It did not answer it. It did not break the look.

He let the hand fall. Some instruments read absence better than touch.

A week of a method for Miasma. Zero days of any method for this.

The thirty-second window covers three meters. The rail is twenty feet up. The one ability I have doesn’t reach her.

It won’t cross the line. It’s doing the cut. It’s doing the corner.

There is no press that pulls it off a thing it holds.

The yard waited. The breath went short. The woman stood in her band of quiet and let the not-moving go on. It was telling her more than movement would.

The breath found its early stop and sat there. He gave the yard nothing. Four years of being watched by streets that wanted a reason had built the skill before he had a use for it. The body as a closed shop, lights out, nothing in the window. He kept his hands loose at his sides, where four hundred coats could see them being nothing. In row six the watcher took the nothing and kept it.

Then Miasma came off his shoulder.

He had not pressed her. He had not pressed anything that could be pressed for this.

She came off the shoulder on her own, as she had at grate fourteen. She did not go to the burned line. She did not go to the panel. She did not go to the woman in the tier.

She went to Nyx.

She crossed the squared stone in the open light. In front of the panel. The rail. Three silent tiers. The woman who had stood.

Small then larger. She put herself down on the stone beside the small dark shape, square to the same thing it was square to. The line across nothing made again. Here. On the assessment ground. In front of all of them.

The yard made a sound. Low. The sound a crowd made when a thing on a floor did a thing the slate had not asked for.

The centre proctor came forward off the table.

"The Venomspine was not engaged." He was not flat now. He was a man whose engagement had been given and not taken. "Handler. Recall it. The unknown beast was directed alone. Recall the Venomspine or the demonstration is forfeit."

Recall her. Off that. She has done this exactly twice and both times it was this.

I recall her now, I pull my own beast off the one thing she has told me with her whole body. For a slate.

He did not recall her.

He stood on the mark the Hearthorn boy had stood on with both beasts off his shoulders. He did the only thing that was his to do in a yard that took everything else. He did not perform.

He stood there and let it be true. His beasts had found a thing the panel could not see, and he was not going to drag them off it to put a clean mark on a board.

"Forfeit," the centre proctor said. He had the slate up. "Field Provision admit, Vell. Demonstration not—"

He did not finish it.

The Hearthcat at the gate screamed.

It was not a sound a Hearthcat made at a beast.

Aiden knew the sounds beasts made at beasts. This was the sound a beast made when what it had been watching stopped being something it could only watch.

The nineteen-year proctor’s hand was not on its head anymore. The cat was off the gate stone and low and facing the tiers. The proctor was not reaching for it.

He had turned. Off the list. Off nineteen years of reading the part worth reading.

He was looking up into the band of quiet in row six where a woman in a plain coat had stood up, and was not there now.

The same body that had stood up in row six. The same body that had not pushed past a single knee to get here. And it was here.

That’s the part. Nobody moved for her. Six rows of people and not one of them shifted a coat. The body went through them like the lamp goes through Nyx.

She was looking down at the squared stone. Not at Aiden. Not at the panel. Not at the proctor or his screaming cat. She was looking at the two beasts on the open ground who had found her through a wall of bodies before he walked the line. They were looking back. Both of them. Square. The way they had only ever looked at one kind of thing.

Renn said it takes both. The bond confirmed, the collector takes the source and the tamer.

It spent a week drawing this room. It came down a hole to put eyes on Miasma once. Quiet. Before the day everyone watches.

This is the day everyone watches. It walked to the rail to do it in front of them. Fourteen years and it has never done that.

The thing it can’t put a heading on is standing next to the thing it can. It has to see them together to write the line.

The yard did not know yet. The tiers did not know. The panel had a slate half-written and a forfeit half-said. The Hearthorn boy’s name was still drying on it.

For one breath only four things in the yard knew what had come to the rail. A screaming cat. A turned proctor. Two beasts on a line. And a lamplighter who understood, too late, that they had not been failing to cross it.

They had been holding the door the whole time.