The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 024: Mira Quill

Ethan let her take it.

He kept walking. The little hand slid under his tunic hem, found the leather cord, and tugged. The purse came free so softly he'd have missed it entirely if he hadn't been counting her breath. Two seconds. Three. The pulse at his shoulder pulled back, easy and quiet.

He turned and caught her by the wrist.

"Hey!"

She was small. That was his first thought. A thin girl in a patched green scarf, with a long dark braid and a smear of soot across her nose. Her wrist was all bone in his hand. She twisted like a cat, kicked his shin, and found out that his leg was a lot harder than it looked.

"Let go! I wasn't doing anything!"

"You're holding my purse."

"It's mine!"

"It has a hole in the corner," Ethan said. "I patched it with brown thread. That's my thread."

She stared at it. Then at him. Her brown eyes narrowed into slits.

[Mira Quill. Human. Level 11. True attitude: Desperate. Defiant. Hidden skill: Hush (Uncommon). Silences her own footfalls within ten meters.]

Hush. He stared at the line. So that was why he'd heard her breath but never her feet. He glanced at her left wrist, bare, and then her collar, and saw nothing. No awakener's mark. But a skill like that didn't come from nowhere.

"You're an awakener," he said quietly.

Her face went white.

"I'm not. I'm a scout. Let go of me."

"I'm not going to tell anyone."

"You can't tell anyone because it isn't true."

"Okay." He let go of her wrist.

She didn't run.

That surprised him. She stood there rubbing her arm with her purse-hand open and empty, shoulders high, looking at him as if he'd done something she couldn't work out. She was perhaps eighteen. Her boots were two sizes too big. Her coat had been mended with five different colors of thread.

"Why'd you do that?" she said at last.

"Do what?"

"Let go."

"You weren't going to hurt anyone." He picked up the dropped purse, shook out the coppers, and counted. "Seven, eight. It's not much."

"It's a lot." She said it sharply, then bit her lip. "To some people."

"Take it."

"What?"

He held out a handful of coppers. She looked at them as though they might bite. "You're a null," she said. "A Rank F. I saw your tag. You've got, what, a day's pay in your hand? And you're giving it away?"

"I'd rather you didn't starve."

"I'm not starving."

"Your stomach says otherwise."

It growled right on cue. She went red to the ears.

"I hate you," she muttered, and snatched four of the coppers, not eight, and shoved the rest back at him with a fierce little jab. "That's enough. I'm not a beggar."

"No. You're a very bad pickpocket."

"I'm a very good pickpocket! You've got eyes in the back of your head, that's all." She squinted. "You were watching me the whole way. I know you were. From the Yard. You saw me watching you. Why didn't you pick up the coin?"

"What coin?"

"The red-beard's coin. Hargo's, from Iron Heron. He threw it at your feet. You looked at it for a full minute and then you just walked off."

"It wasn't mine."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

"I get that a lot."

She made a sound that might have been a laugh. It cracked in the middle. She turned away abruptly and pulled her scarf up over her mouth, but not before he saw her eyes.

Don't pity her. He didn't. He knew too well what it was like to be pitied.

"Do you want some tea?" he said, instead. "There's an inn up the lane. The stew is cheap."

"I don't eat with strangers."

"Fine."

"I don't." She scuffed one toe against the cinders. "What's your name?"

"Eli."

"Mira." It was almost grudging. "Mira Quill."

They ate on the back step of the Rusty Ladle in the last red light of the day, with a bowl of stew between them because the innkeeper had grumbled but not stopped them. Mira ate like someone who had practiced doing it in a hurry. Ethan fed the Hunger with bread and cheese. The stew was thick and hot, and tasted of nothing.

She told it in pieces.

She'd come from the south, three years back. A village called Coldwater. Her mother had died young. Her older sister Lena had raised her, a quick-fingered, sharp-tongued girl who could mend anything and never once complained. When Lena turned eighteen, she'd awakened. A small affinity. Frost, just enough to keep milk fresh.

"They said she was lucky," Mira said, staring at the bowl. "A Warden came to the house. Polite. Wore a grey coat. He said all new awakeners had to attend a protective review. For their health. Just a day, he said. Tea and a few questions."

Ethan went still.

"She went with him on a Tuesday." Mira's voice was very flat. "I carried her bag to the road. She waved. That was fourteen months ago."

"She didn't come back."

"They said she'd been reassigned. To a Crown program. They said she was safe." Her hands tightened around the spoon. "I've written to the Wardens eleven times. They send back the same letter. I've looked in six towns. Greywatch is the seventh. They hold the reviews here for the whole frontier. There's a Warden office. I thought, maybe, if I could get close enough to see the books, I could find where they send them."

"And you?" Ethan said. "You're eighteen too."

She looked up sharply.

"You're an awakener," he said gently. "That's what Hush is. You're hiding."

"How do you know about Hush?"

"I look at people. It's a thing I can do." He kept his voice quiet. "I'm not going to tell. I promise. I just don't want you going near that review."

Mira's eyes were very bright and very hard.

"I'm not stupid," she said. "I know what they do. I know what the notice means. I've known since Lena." She set the bowl down on the step. "I only came here for her. If I have to hide, I hide. If I have to steal, I steal. I'm not going anywhere until I know."

Ethan thought of nine names on a roster. Of a tenth line with his own. Of Rhea on a cold quay at dawn, saying Ask Inspector Voss where Tobin Kessel died.

He didn't say any of it.

"There's a review in two days," he said. "I have to be out of town before then. So do you."

"I know."

"I need a contract that takes me away. A long one. A three-day haul or more."

"Out of the city?" She chewed on it, thinking. Then, slowly, she smiled, a lopsided, wicked smile that made her look about twelve. "Iron Heron's cook owes me a favor. They head up the Ashen Road at dawn. Six days, a supply run to the northern outposts. They need a porter. Their last one broke his leg."

"They'd take me?"

"They'd take anyone with two legs." She grinned wider. "I told you I was good."

Rhea heard it out in the room upstairs, standing with her arms crossed against the light of a single candle. Tomas sat on the bed with his chin on the old book and his eyes half-closed.

"Six days on the Ashen Road," she said, at last. "With a hunter party."

"It's out of town."

"It's also a risk." But she was already nodding, grudgingly. "Fine. I'll find work with the farrier at the east stable. Tomas will open his stall. Nobody looks twice at us there. You go. You come back before the Wardens finish counting." She paused. "Who is the girl?"

"A friend. I think."

"You think a lot of things."

"I do."

She rubbed her eyes. "Be careful, Ethan."

He lay down on the pallet that night and listened to the town breathe. Hundreds of pulses, all shapes, all kinds. He picked out Mira's among them, small and quick, somewhere down the lane. She'd said she would be at the gate at dawn.

At first light, he went out and found her sitting on the Ladle's step with her knees pulled up.

"Iron Heron leaves in ten minutes," she said. "You coming?"