Borrowed Levels

Chapter 16: The Net Mender

They spent the first night in a boat shed that smelled of tar and dead fish.

Ilyra sat in the corner with her knees drawn up and her rings pressed against her mouth, watching the door. Pip had fallen asleep against a coil of rope, one hand still wrapped around her bow. Hesk kept watch at the window. Dara paced.

"We can't stay here," she said, for the fourth time. "Auditors check every boat shed in the harbor by morning."

"Then we need a better place," said Ren.

"With what money? Everything here costs Notes, and we don't have any."

Ilyra lifted her head. "I know someone."

Her someone turned out to be a seventy-year-old woman named Granna Oss, who lived at the end of a crooked alley in the Weavers' quarter, in a house built entirely of salvaged ship timber. She opened the door with a netting needle in her hand and looked at Ilyra for a long moment.

"You're thin," she said. "Come in. Bring your friends. They look like drowned cats."

The house was tiny and warm and crowded with nets. Rows of them hung from the ceiling beams, mended in different colors, and the whole place smelled of wax and woodsmoke. Granna Oss gave them bread, then soup, then a look that said she was waiting for the real story. Ren told her a version of it that left out the Ledger.

She listened, nodding slowly, and went on mending a net.

"The Treasurer's people were here yesterday," she said. "Asking about a girl with silver rings. I told them I hadn't seen her. I'm an old woman and my eyes are bad."

"I'm sorry," Ilyra whispered. "I didn't want to put you in danger."

"Child. Everyone in Calloway is already in danger. Some of us just have the manners to admit it."

They stayed in the loft. In the morning, Ilyra explained her power over breakfast, in a quiet, steady voice, with her bread untouched.

"It started when I was fourteen. A man fell off the pier and I grabbed his hand. Something went out of me, and into him. He climbed out like it was nothing. He lived, and I almost passed out."

"You lent him strength," said Dara.

"Yes. And he gave me something back. I didn't understand it until later. I got a Note in the mail with his name on it. Three days."

"His days."

"His days." Ilyra turned her ringed hands over. "The Treasurer found me a month after. He said I had a gift. He gave me a house and a salary in Notes, and my mother cried with joy. Then he started bringing me his champions."

"And you lent them power for years," said Ren.

"Whole seasons of it. They'd win, and they'd pay me in time, and then Lord Mael took most of it as a tax." She stared at her hands. "I think I gave away eleven years of other people's lives before I understood what the money was."

"You didn't know," said Ren.

"I should have."

"I borrowed years from people's lives too, once. I didn't understand it either."

She looked at him for the first time without fear. "Does it get easier?"

"No," he said honestly. "But you get better at deciding who it's for."

That afternoon, they tested the link.

It was Pip's idea. She asked whether Ilyra could lend something small, just a flicker, so they could see how it felt. Ilyra hesitated, then touched Ren's hand. A cool pulse went through him, like a drink of cold water, and his tired legs steadied.

The Ledger stirred.

[ LENDER LINK DETECTED. ] [ SOURCE: VANCE, ILYRA. ] [ NO PAYMENT RECORDED. ]

Ren blinked. "It says you aren't charging me."

"Because I'm not," said Ilyra, and flushed. "I don't want your days. Nobody gave me a say in it before. I'd like to choose."

"You can choose," said Dara. "That's the whole point."

Outside the window, a crier was walking the alley with a handbell and a roll of paper, announcing the day's notices. Ren caught only part of it. A reward. A name. A face sketched in black ink that looked unmistakably like Ilyra.

Granna Oss closed the shutters.

"Whoever gave you that letter from Veyra," she said, without looking up from her net, "you should go and see them. Today."