Repair process. Serib leapt up, skipping many rungs and the ladder skidded along its rolling-railings. Her mind almost went blank counting beyond seven. To her eyes the jar’s contents were sweets. She turned and Shay’s good arm had managed to inject her bad arm. She seemed somewhere lovely, smiling gently between asleep and dreaming, clutching covetously the leather roll full of filling-needles. The broken grandclock watched everything.
∞
Someone was still thrashing outside, bashing on the door trying to get in. Countless voices. Serib did not understand how the door had locked itself back up again.
"Swords... if you can..." Shay groaned almost senselessly - surely her younger self had left with them.
Having seen Shay prepare earlier, Serib knew her friend would need new clothes and another disguise to continue. As though through a backstage she rummaged in the rear of the shop, grabbing these and those; opening one drawer full of spare eyes and lenses, another lined with sets of false teeth. She had the panicked feeling that one or two of everything would be best. Black robes. White bandages. Coats. Bed-soft gowns. Alas, she found no swords.
∞
Serib dumped props, some bandages and clothes on top of Shay as well, before dragging her back further towards the entrance to tunnels below. The opening she expected to see was not there at first until she fingered around the stonework on the floor, finding an invisible hoop to pull on and open the latch. Her hand vanished into the illusionary powder that now dusted her skin.
“Can you climb down?” Serib pleaded, grateful the way had not been locked by secret words she had never heard.
Shay, however, was still in some blissful oblivion.
∞
“Can you hold your head? Make a helmet of your arms.” Serib fussed over her, handling her arms into the correct place and putting the smaller props into a pouch.
The door to the shop was creaking almost open. Serib pushed Shay into the tunnels below. Out of luck or strange buried instinct, Shay landed almost on her feet, though giving her back a good whack on the curving wall, her arms still a helmet as there she lay. Serib hurried her way thudding down the ladder, forgetting to close the latch.
∞
Light shone thinly down into the tunnel from the shop above. She tried to gather the clothes and bandages that had scattered in the fall. She felt watched. As she looked up a shadow of a person threw the hatch sealed above, and deep was the stale dark around her. The safety of being seen and unseen.
∞
The lightning of her eyes was feint in such a black place. In a human tunnel she felt so far away from earth and sky. Not yet experienced enough as a shaman to feel the metal that once in the earth was strong and always will be. Shay spoke first in the dark:
“That has my heart thump-pumping… helping my dose kick-sick in.”
Serib happily followed Shay’s slurry voice until they were shoulder-to-shoulder in the inkiness. Shay put her arm around the little shaman, and Serib took that as a thank you.
“Good inkling with the props, too.” Her eyes saw what Serib’s could not in the nothing-light.
“Why would you not carry your medicine always?” Serib was cross. “There’s so many tricks and tools on your harness.”
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Shay handed the same syringe-roll of leather over to Serib, and the girl’s more relaxed arms struggled to lift it. It had not been this heavy before in the shop.
“Can’t plan for everything - lightness is an advantage in my professions.” Shay swallowed two sweets, before again corking the jar. “This is no ordinary wound, somehow. I’ve been spiked with something. Did you hear Panzjrah shouting about something similar back at the station? His weapons apparently tampered with…”
∞
Serib could hear Shay’s clothes rustling and then a twig snapping. A fiery light settled bright into a dimmer glow: a weird, gnarled branch in her hand that was luminous having been snapped. Sticky sap leaking everywhere.
“That’s better.” Shay fiddled with the harness under her clothes, filling holsters and emptying pockets.
The heavy 'medicine' kit and small sweet jar slotted nicely. The tea seeds thankfully were safe. She had other small tools Serib did not and likely would never recognise. The sweets rattled as Shay shifted around. Eventually, she removed her old costume and set about the task of bandaging her shoulder. The hefty medicine hindered every movement.
∞
“Do I need to clean it?” Serib offered, seeing Shay’s skin was a map of scars.
“If you can. Did your master teach you about Water, yet? That’d be a dream - maybe cleanse some of the poison out, or whatever it is that’s doing this to me.”
“Only Earth, but I can try?”
“You’re not filling me with confidence here…” The glowing branch faded, overthrown by the endless dark. “That’s far too soon!”
Shay was confused as Time rolled strangely; 'before' she knew exactly how long such branches lasted and now even their name was unknown to her.
∞
Serib could little see her friend, but she could smell the burnt-open flesh of Shay’s shoulder.
“Did I thank you for this?” She asked, feeling how painful it must be.
“You don’t need to.” Shay braced herself.
With a pause of concentration, water trickled from the nowhere of Serib’s fingers, and palms sooner as taps flowed harshly: Shay withstood the pouring long as she could before she reeled away grunting with a spasm, filling the tunnel with a yelp. The water was unbearably hot.
“I’m sorry, I can’t control it.” Serib felt the heat as vapour on her face in the dark, her power raw and rudimentary. She rubbed her hands on her robes to dry them, rustling sounds through the echoes.
“How-now is it so-oh hot? Maybe a good thing. These will do the rest.” Shay tapped on the jar of sweets. “Let’s see what we have…”
After bandaging her back and shoulder with Serib’s help, she began sorting through the clothes and asked: “Did you get yourself something new?”
∞
Serib immediately felt ashamed, still wearing her all too distinctive lightning robes. “I like these.”
“I know you do… you did well. Mostly important for me - hopefully Ersecutor can’t follow us… ‘here’. But if we are here, perhaps he can be as well. Tougher for you as he’s seen those robes.”
“It won’t matter, Woid will win.” Serib shared her certainty.
“Hopefully he’ll slip away if he has to - I don’t know how we’ll easily meet up with him again. Some of my equipment isn’t working since all this started.” Shay checked her harness in a sudden panic (despite already having checked), and then spoke normally, relieved: “We have the seeds; we’ll go see The Dam’e about your Lay’d Payn. See what's going on with these clocks.”
She took out a dark earpiece to discard, perhaps one of her tools that in timelessness had ceased to work. She spoke her secrecy into it just in case, alas there was no answer from its tiny form. She paused, slipping in a massive set of false teeth, totally altering her speech. Fixing the rest of her tools and contingencies together, she contemplated to Serib:
“This is not what I expected… I guessed we were in a loop of a sort. We’ve all known stories like that and thought this would be the same. When I was younger, after the funeral I found the shop had a few things missing because the door was open, but we left a thorough mess back there. Blood and everything else.”
Now that Serib had a think away from the rush of the moment, she really had spilt and dropped all sorts. However, what most pressed her was another riddle she repeated:
“’Constants the same and variables rearranged.’ Lay’d Payn told me that. We’re in a different version of the same Tayl, the one her enemy is making against her.”
Had it not been so dark, Serib would have seen Shay’s blank look before she said:
“What? Run that by me again…”