Chaska arrived with a parcel under her arm and stopped so abruptly that Lilt bumped her between the shoulder blades.
The sandray spread her leading fins, got herself turned in the gateway, and gave an indignant flutter.
“Sorry,” Chaska said, without looking at her. “Ysabet. What is that?”
“Eating my rent, probably.”
Pip sat in the laundry shelter with a lump of damp clay between its forefeet. The potter had given Ysabet a sack of clean trimmings and a thorough description of his mule’s character. She had agreed to examine the animal the following afternoon, provided he did not tie its ears together again in preparation.
Chaska put the parcel on the bench. “I leave you alone for one evening.”
“You’re allowed to do that.”
“I know. Usually you buy cabbage.”
Lilt settled on the paving beneath the bathhouse wall. Chaska checked the edge of the sandray’s harness before turning back to the shelter.
She crouched outside the hurdle.
Pip stopped chewing.
Chaska lowered her chin. Her first swift look had become a series of smaller ones: feet, body, eye, food. She had learned something from all those visits with Lilt, though she would have disliked hearing it announced.
“That’s a lot of knees,” she said.
“Six working legs. I haven’t counted every joint.”
“Does it have a name?”
“Pip.”
“Does it know?”
“Too early to say.”
A mouse’s tail slipped from beneath the fold at Pip’s chest.
Chaska’s mouth opened.
“Yes,” Ysabet said. “That too.”
She told her about the night while Chaska took a folded drawing book from her satchel. It was a cheap book, the pages rough and crowded with rooflines, harness fittings, the shape of an unfamiliar bridge. Several delivery addresses occupied spaces between the drawings.
Chaska chose an empty corner. “Hold still, Pip.”
Pip moved the clay behind the crate.
“A professional objection,” she said, and drew the crate first.
Ysabet brought her notes. By daylight the old bill looked less like a record of remarkable events than evidence that she needed to sell something. Chaska read it with her brows drawn together.
“You didn’t look inside the fold before?”
“No.”
“So the lining could have been there.”
“The hairs could have been. The rim was thinner. I’m sure of that much.”
“Draw it now.”
“I draw like a drowned hen.”
“Then tell the hen to sit down. I’ll do it.”
Ysabet fetched another bucket. Chaska sat with the book balanced on a knee and sketched while Pip ate. She drew the legs first, getting their different angles right with quick corrections. Ysabet had expected laughter at the loose hide and sideways mouth. Chaska frowned instead when one foot disappeared behind another.
“Would you come this way?” she asked it.
Pip stayed where it was.
Chaska tilted the book. “Fine. I can invent the back end. Nobody who buys my maps will be surprised.”
“What did you bring?” Ysabet asked.
“The parcel? A replacement clasp for Mara. She paid the smith to make it and the smith’s nephew took it to the wrong baths.”
“There are no other baths in Bent Reed.”
“There used to be. He’s learned some history.”
Beside the wall, Lilt shifted into a brighter patch of sun. Chaska glanced over at once. The sandray’s left gliding edge quivered, then settled.
“Rubbing?” Ysabet asked.
“No. She’s annoyed I stopped.”
“You’re sure?”
Chaska looked at her.
Ysabet nodded. “All right.”
She went to cut more of the clay into pieces small enough for Pip to lift. It was easier to work with a wire than a knife. She braced the lump against a board with her right palm, stretched the wire between her left hand and the hook at the bench, and sliced.
When she carried the pieces over, Pip retreated beneath the shelf.
She put them down and moved back.
It emerged.
The next time she approached, she kept her eyes lowered. Pip watched her right hand. She had curled the useful fingers around the loop of the wire, holding it away from her trousers.
It backed into the shelf’s shadow again.
Ysabet stopped.
She set the wire on the bench. She had to ease the loop past her stiff fingers. Chaska had put down her pencil.
“What?”
“I’m checking.”
Ysabet crouched outside the enclosure. She laid her right forearm along her thigh and let the hand open as far as it would. Two fingers stayed bent at their old angles. The others relaxed; the thumb fell outward.
Pip’s eye appeared past the crate.
She waited.
A foot followed. The creature moved to the water dish, drank or touched the surface with the plates inside its jaw, and remained there.
Ysabet brought her thumb inward.
Pip withdrew half a pace.
She opened the hand again. It stayed still.
“Could be the tool,” Chaska said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Could be either.”
“Yes.”
Ysabet left the tool where it was. There was no need to repeat an experiment whose result might be making a frightened animal more frightened. She took the remaining clay pieces in her left hand, delivered them one at a time, and kept the right open against her knee.
By the fourth trip, Pip had stopped retreating.
Chaska resumed her drawing. “You’ve been given instructions.”
“Reasonable ones.”
She settled by the hurdle, with her shoulder turned so she did not face Pip squarely. She tapped the brick beside her right hand twice with her left forefinger, then laid the right palm up on the low board.
Pip looked at the brick.
Ysabet waited. A fly landed on her wrist. She resisted the urge to slap it.
The creature went to eat a piece of clay.
“How long do you do that?” Chaska whispered.
“Today? Until my knee objects.”
“And tomorrow?”
“If it doesn’t seem to bother Pip, the same tap. The same hand.”
“Until it comes?”
“Until I know whether it wants to.”
Lilt shuffled across the paving and nudged Chaska’s elbow, making the book dip. The courier put a hand out automatically. Lilt raised her left leading fin. Ysabet watched the little pause before Chaska slipped her fingers beneath the edge of the harness.
“That,” she said.
Chaska glanced up. “What?”
“You waited for her.”
“She won’t let me near it next time if I rush.”
“An excellent teacher.”
Chaska scratched Lilt gently above the strap. The sandray’s eyes closed to slits.
Ysabet tapped the brick once more, twice, then left her hand still.
Pip raised its body from the clay. It took one step, stopped, and turned its eye toward Chaska. She bent over the page and drew a line so slowly that Ysabet could hear the drag of the pencil.
The next step brought Pip to the low board.
At this distance its skin showed fine grains embedded in the ridges, as if it had rolled through sand long ago and never quite shed it. The new pouch held its shape beneath the jaw. The mouse was hidden, but a small movement stirred the opening.
Pip lifted a narrow forefoot.
Ysabet forgot the fly.
The foot touched her smallest finger. Three cool toes rested on the twisted joint. She felt a light pressure, then something warm spread across her palm.
The yard slipped away.
She was still kneeling. She could feel the board through the side of her hand, the ache in her knee. Yet beyond those things stretched a breadth of empty ground so immense that her stomach lurched. There was no sun she could find. A pale distance lay beyond a surface she could not resolve into earth or stone.
Something dragged across it.
The sound reached her in separate strokes: a scrape, a heavy fall, a scrape. It might have been links striking one another. The intervals were slow and uneven. Each came from farther away than a sound ought to remain audible.
Warmth swelled against her ribs. For one impossible instant her hand seemed to have six separate points of contact with the ground.
Pip convulsed.
Ysabet snatched her hand back as the creature stumbled into the crate. Its little rear legs scrabbled, found the earth, and pushed. The crate struck the shelf post. From within the new fold came a thin, frightened squeak.
Chaska caught Ysabet’s shoulder.
The yard returned in pieces: the hurdle against her shin, the sour smell of old washing water, Lilt’s fluttering skin. Ysabet was breathing too fast. So was Pip, if the rapid lift and collapse of its hide was breath.
“Ysabet?”
She could not answer immediately. Her right hand had closed against her chest. The two stiff fingers pressed hard enough into her blouse to hurt.
She opened it.
Pip crouched behind the crate, its eye uncovered and fixed on her.
“What happened?” Chaska asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Was that a bond?”
“I felt something.” Her voice sounded dry. “It might have felt it too.”
Pip’s foot scraped the earth. Ysabet flinched, then held still. There was only that small sound, close at hand. The distant dragging had stopped.
Chaska loosened her grip. “Do you want water?”
“Yes.”
While she fetched it, Ysabet moved away from the hurdle. She sat on the ground with her back against the bathhouse wall and put her open right hand on her knee. The skin of her palm looked ordinary. No mark, no change in the old crooked fingers.
Chaska returned and placed the cup in her left hand.
Pip remained hidden. After a while the mouse pushed its nose out of the pouch, sneezed, and vanished again.
Ysabet drank. Some water ran down her wrist.
“Should I move the crate?” Chaska asked. “Give it more room behind?”
Ysabet looked at the gap beneath the shelf. Pip had room to turn, food within reach, a dark corner it had chosen itself.
“Leave it.”
Chaska set her book on the bench. She sat down beside Ysabet without reaching for the pencil.
A long time passed before a narrow forefoot appeared beyond the crate. It found a clay fragment and drew it into the shade.
Ysabet kept her hand on her knee.