Forty Nine: Overdrawn

"He was too open to it when it broke." A voice reached him through the murk of his thoughts. "He described it as...as a swelling pressure."

A rumbling response from a voice he dimly recognised.

He opened his eyes and coughed, rolling over to spit as his throat filled. Jordan found himself leaning over the side of a bed. Someone had put a bucket there, and his own blood-flecked spit already swilled in the bottom of it, though he didn't remember waking up.

"Am I dying?" he croaked. He was sure there wasn't meant to be blood in it.

"No." Yddris's voice came to him as if from a distance, even though Jordan could feel his tutor right behind him. "You overdrew, through no fault of your own. The fact that you held back against it probably saved your life." Jordan coughed again, and disturbed something that had crusted under his nose. He wiped it with a finger and it came away flecked with dark red. "Your insides still had a rough time of it, but you'll recover."

Feeling several decades older than he was, Jordan rolled back into the bed with a groan. In a chair beside his bed sat his tutor. He had been talking to a tall Unspoken woman who stood at the end of his bed – Cara, that was her name.

"How do you feel, Thorne?" she asked.

"Like I've been hit by a truck," Jordan muttered. The two Unspoken exchanged a glance, and he foggily remembered that they wouldn't know what a truck was. "Or like a Listener used me as a kickball." He grunted, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. "I felt better than this after the Gift appeared."

"It doesn't surprise me," Cara said with a small, sad chuckle. "You took the brunt of the rune net's collapse very hard."

"If you'd shown that kind of sensitivity in lessons I might have taught you how to avoid this. Or at least not get hit so hard," Yddris muttered. "Done now, though. First on the lesson plan after recovery, mind."

"Are you going to make me sit up a tree again?"

"That's a different lesson," Yddris said. "And as yet you've not shown much aptitude for it."

"Yddris," Cara said reprovingly.

"It's okay, he's right." Jordan produced a watery chuckle that made his head throb. He leaned back on the pillow, and with every moment he was awake he became aware of something else that ached. It was as if the collapsing net had forced itself through every cell of his body on its way past, scorching as it went. "Is the net fixed now?"

"Still working on it," Yddris replied. "It was the biggest one, encompassing the whole site. It'll take a day or two, but everyone has been moved further in while the work's done."

Jordan blinked and nodded, eyes gummy with exhaustion. "Did you get them?"

"Almost," Yddris said, after exchanging another glance with Cara. "And then the net collapsed. That was bad enough, and then I checked in on you."

"He was halfway back before Henrik even set off," Cara said. Yddris fidgeted, grumbling something unintelligible, and Jordan stared down at his bedsheet.

Nadiya interrupted the awkwardness with her entrance. She swept inside carrying Jordan's cloak bundled under one arm, freshly laundered. In the other she carried a tray with a cup and a bowl on it, both gently steaming. The contents of the bowl, when she put the tray down on the bedside, looked familiar.

"So Nika uses your recipe," Jordan said without enthusiasm. Nika had had him on the same slops for several days after he had been kidnapped by Marick what felt like a lifetime ago. The details of those days of recovery were fuzzy now, but the taste of the mixture was still fresh in his mind. Nadiya gave an amused chuckle.

"Actually, I use his. He is a very gifted physician. I should hope that he will take over my infirmary when his time comes to settle here, and teach more Unspoken in the art of medicine."

"Steady on," Yddris muttered, sounding disgruntled by the whole line of conversation. Jordan knew Nika's aptitude for medicine hadn't come from Yddris. "He hasn't even had an apprentice yet."

"I am not in my doddering years quite yet, either," Nadiya replied tartly. "I merely conjecture for the future of our Guild."

"I will leave you to it, now that Thorne is awake," Cara said. Jordan thought he detected a thread of fondness in her voice. "Call me back if there are issues. I must go and check on our warders' progress."

Nadiya also left them alone, with stern instructions to eat the slop while it was still hot. Scowling, Jordan moved the tray into his lap and pushed his spoon around the bowl without enthusiasm. His throat hurt from the scorching he'd been dealt and his head pounded more persistently at the smell rising up from the bowl. He lifted a spoonful, sniffed at it, and then stuffed it in his mouth before he could change his mind. He grimaced and put the spoon down.

"What did Cara mean, I was too open to it?" he asked. Yddris paused in flicking his pipe around his fingers –Nadiya had likely forbidden him to smoke inside. Jordan could have done with a cigarette himself in that moment, rather than green slop.

"You have to be pretty tuned in to detect an impending collapse from that distance away," Yddris said. "But you open that channel in one direction and it can easily come back the other way. I should've guessed that you were sensitive back when we were out on the Barrens." He fidgeted in his chair. "Unspoken who we refer to as sensitive are more attuned to changes in the current. It can also manifest as an aptitude for identifying astral signature, which you have."

"Like Astra?"

"No. Astra's abilities would have been present from the point of manifestation, and she reads the current. Astral-sensitive Unspoken grow into the skill through exposure, and you're only detecting changes. Not reading what it says. You wouldn't have any better idea of what a Listener you just killed had been doing than I would, but Astra would be able to tell you where it came from and what it was there for, if she chose to." He paused. "But both of you are more likely to be laid out by something like this happening, yes. She's in the bed over there." Yddris pointed across the ward.

"Is she okay?"

"She couldn't see for a few hours and has slept like the dead since she got here. She'll recover, though."

Jordan processed that over several more grim mouthfuls. He didn't think Nadiya had told him to eat it hot for any medicinal purpose; as it cooled even a little the mixture became steadily more gelatinous. "How does it get more sensitive through exposure?"

"Remember when we talked about the length of time with the Gift? Your body becomes more reliant on it over time?" Jordan nodded. "Well, over time more sensitive Gifted open a few more channels than most, usually once they start gaining some control. You can close them once you know they're there. But you are far from unique in it, boy, there are plenty of Unspoken who deal with the same difficulties."

"It would kill me, wouldn't it?" He wasn't sure what forced his long-unsaid fear to the surface – pain, or exhaustion, or maybe the fact that his connection to his magic was even deeper than he'd feared. "Trying to get back through a portal."

Yddris was silent for a long time. Jordan wondered if his tutor thought him stupid for not having let that hope go after all this time. Jordan didn't think he would ever be fully rid of it, no matter how impossible it looked. It hadn't even been a year yet. All the same, with every passing day the Gift seemed to entangle itself further within his body, sinking claws deep into his brain. It hadn't even been a year, and he could no longer remember what it was like not to feel Nictaven's current pulsing in the back of his mind.

"You know the answer, don't you, boy?" Yddris finally said, very quietly. "You can feel it."

Jordan nodded, mute. He set the tray aside, not caring if Nadiya made him eat more later. Even if, by some miracle, they found a portal home, it was unlikely that he would be going anywhere. He took a deep, shuddering breath that ached with the pain brought on by his Gift. Though his thoughts lodged on the idea and stayed there, he forced himself to change the subject. "Do you think Nika will make it for Koen's ceremony?"

"If there was a chance, it's dashed now," Yddris said, accepting the change without comment. "It's been moved forward. We need qualified hands, we need them now. And the Guildtown is likely to go on high alert after these intrusions."

"When is it now?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"As soon as he's finished helping with the net repairs. There's nothing he can learn in brown that he can't learn in black, and it allows us to schedule him on patrols separately from Hap. We don't have enough warders here to have more than one on a shift if we want all our bases covered."

"I don't want to miss it," Jordan said, suddenly aware of every ache and pain. He wasn't sure he'd be able to get out of bed when the time came.

"Better eat the rest of that goop, then," Yddris said, faux-cheerful. "Bottoms up, boy."

-

He slept for most of the intervening time. A lethargic malaise had settled on him, separate from his physical aches and pains. He couldn't go home. Even if he found a way, he couldn't leave. Grace would go without him. He didn't know why such an unlikely scenario hurt so much, when there was every chance that both of them were stuck. He couldn't think how Marick would ever pull off making a portal – he wasn't even Gifted, and the only person with the Gift currently in the Devils was Jordan himself. When he tired of cycling those same thoughts around for the thousandth time, he went back to sleep in retreat from them. He was so exhausted that his nightmares didn't follow him there.

As the next morning wore on, the sounds of activity outside the infirmary steadily grew. Yddris had gone out some time in the night, presumably to resume his patrols. He hadn't heard anything from Astra's bed, though with Astra that often meant little.

He tried to rustle up some enthusiasm for Koen's sake as he forced himself into full wakefulness. Sitting up proved a slow and painful task, but he didn't feel as raw as he had the previous night. Spots of blood on his pillow betrayed another nosebleed while he slept, and it still felt as though spikes had been driven into his temples, blurring his vision around the edges.

"Are you decent?" Koen's voice beyond the curtain made him jump. His senses felt frayed and he hadn't noticed the other apprentice approach.

Jordan grabbed his cloak off the bedside and slipped his arms through the sleeves, pulling the hood up. It wasn't exactly infallible cover, but he didn't have enough willpower yet to get dressed.

"Just about," he croaked. Koen slipped inside as if hounds were after him and drew the curtains quickly shut again.

"You sound dreadful," he said, perching on the end of the bed.

"You don't sound too fantastic yourself," Jordan replied. Koen also had the low, husky tone of a man with a pounding headache, and the tremble of one with a daunting job to do. "Are you okay?"

"Absolutely am not." Koen gave a beleaguered chuckle and rubbed his face with both hands. "I'm shit-scared. I thought I had a few more weeks."

"I did too," Jordan said, trying to keep his tone jovial for Koen's sake. "I'm afraid your present's going to be late."

Koen laughed again, though it was pained. "I'm sure it's mostly lack of sleep. I've been on the nets for the last several hours. They kicked me off after I was told my induction was moved up cuz I kept screwing up the sequence."

"After the ceremony we'll nab a beer barrel and hide in Thirris's garden with it," Jordan said. "I think we could both use it."

"Well, that's a foregone conclusion," Koen said. He sighed. "I wish I didn't have to do it with this headache. I have a blind spot still, right...here." He waved his hand off towards the corner of the cubicle. "Shimmery little fucker won't leave. Still, I seem to have fared better than you did."

"I'm sensitive, apparently," Jordan muttered, then lower, "Heard that one before. Many times."

"Doesn't surprise me. You picked up astral signature really quickly." There was a grin in Koen's voice as he added, "Harkenn might have accidentally stumbled across Yddris mark two."

"If I wasn't scared my organs will crumble to ashes if I move too much, I would hit you for that."

"You pick up some Unspoken skills really fast, you're onto blades already, and you're constantly driving Nika spare. You are Yddris."

"At least he doesn't have to remind me not to make myself puke."

"You smoke the same stuff, you drink the same stuff..."

"I've never brought a pub roof down, either!"

"You..."

"What are you doing?" The curtain opened to reveal Astra standing there, her cloak wrapped around her much like Jordan's was. Her bare legs were pale and covered in dark markings. If a non-Unspoken woman had been standing in front of him stark naked Jordan would probably have felt less intrusive. He kept his eyes trained on her hooded face as he spoke. "I'm distracting Koen by shaming him."

"I'm making the case for Yddris and Thorne being secret doubles of each other."

Astra looked between them for a moment, and then almost imperceptibly shook her head. She let the curtain fall back into place, and as she crossed the ward she said, "You two should get ready. They just lit the fire."

If sitting up had been hard, dressing was a whole other ballgame. Koen helped Jordan out of the bed and into the small side room of the infirmary where the bath was. He washed superficially, unable to bear much more – though his skin looked unblemished, the warm water felt as though it washed over open burns. Then he dressed while sitting on the chair beside the tub. By the time he finished he was out of breath.

He staggered from the washroom. Koen was gone, presumably drawn out by some necessity of the ceremony, but Astra sat on the end of her bed on the opposite side of the ward, and outside the door was a wheeled chair.

"Nadiya left that for you," Astra said softly, without looking at him. "Yddris or Henrik will come and push you in a bit."

Jordan settled into the chair, torn between embarrassment and relief. He supposed in a place like this there was no reason to be ashamed of the rune collapse affecting him so badly, but wasn't it just a reflection of his lack of progress that he hadn't been able to cope? His grip tightened on the arms of the chair, but with a deep breath he forced himself to relax them. Astra padded past and closed the washroom door behind her.

For a while the only noise was the gentle whoosh of Astra refilling the bathtub and the distant mutter of voices outside. Jordan wondered what this ceremony would entail, as no one had really explained the process to him. He guessed it was more symbolic than anything else, a switching of responsibilities from the tutor to the student. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he had to do the work of an Unspoken without Yddris there, and he shuddered. He didn't blame Koen for being nervous.

Yddris was the one to return and wheel him out into the main clearing. The thing rattled and bumped on the muddy ground, sending sparks of pain through his shot nerves, but it was better than walking would have been.

"You starting to feel any better?" Yddris muttered. The clearing ahead was thronged with Unspoken, though there was a note of tension in the air. It was tangible without having to consult his magic; the whole manner of the occasion was far more subdued than the celebration of the night they'd arrived.

"A bit." The most he could claim was that he didn't feel in imminent danger of death, but that wasn't saying much. The crowd parted as Yddris pushed him through, and Jordan kept his gaze firmly on his knees at the feeling of eyes on him from all over the clearing. He couldn't tell what anyone thought of him arriving this way. He wasn't much inclined to find out. Yddris parked his chair in the front row before the central fire, and the Guild had loosely arranged itself in a wide circle around it. Nearest the fire Koen stood talking with Hap. Astra slipped silently into the gap beside him and sat on the chair that someone had left there. She had at least been able to get there on her own two feet, but it gave Jordan some small comfort that he wasn't the only one getting the invalid treatment.

"Since he made such a fuss about it last night," Yddris said suddenly, "boy, this is Henrik. Henrik, this is my apprentice Thorne." He gestured to the Unspoken who had appeared beside him. "Is that to your satisfaction now, you crotchety old bastard?"

"Younger than you," Henrik retorted.

"By a single season."

"Makes all the difference." In the depths of the cowl, Henrik winked at Jordan. "That was quite a blast you took last night. Bet you're feeling pretty rough today, eh?"

"Doesn't start to cover it," Jordan mumbled, nodding a greeting in return.

"Thanks to your warning, we knew which net to head for straight away and who to evacuate first," Henrik continued. "Yeah, it hit you like a wagonload of bricks, but it helped. Appreciate the shielding service."

"You're welcome," Jordan said drily.

"Found him most of the way up a tree," Henrik said to Yddris. "Didn't think that would be on your lesson plan." He turned back to Jordan. "Did he tell you about the time he put a hole through Thirris's roof falling out of a tree?"

"No," Jordan said, already chuckling, as Yddris grumbled in annoyance.

"Less a hole, more a structural collapse," Thirris's voice said behind them. The old Unspoken joined them, Ren on his shoulder. She squeaked with excitement and jumped off into Jordan's lap, curling up there with her head on his chest.

"Hey trouble," he mumbled, smiling despite himself as he rubbed her belly. She closed her eyes to slits in pleasure. Astra reached over and joined in with stroking her.

"I spent two weeks rebuilding," Thirris continued, "and the apprentice who had shown such dexterous aptitude for a knife suddenly found himself a complete klutz when it came to using a hammer."

"I broke two fingers in that fall, old man."

"Such excuses. You shouldn't have been up that tree to start with." Thirris chuckled and turned to Jordan. Instead of asking him how he was feeling, which Jordan was grateful for, he added, "Cara brought her back to me after you collapsed. She's been whining for you all night, but Nadiya didn't want to risk her disrupting your sleep."

Considering that with the access to Thirris's garden Ren had made a habit of eating too much and puking up insect goo in the night, Jordan thought it had probably been wise.

He glanced up at another shifting of the crowd around them, and the Unspoken who walked into the clearing had a brooch glinting on her cloak – Cara. A hush fell. Koen and Hap stepped apart and stood to attention.

"It is unfortunate that we come to this from such dark circumstances," the Guildmaster said without preamble. "Yet that does not mean it cannot still be a joyous occasion. Koen, apprentice of Hap, please step forward."

Koen stepped forward.

"Are you ready to take the responsibility of the black cloak?"

Koen nodded, still mute. Jordan felt a spasm of sympathy.

"Then let us begin."