Day 73. Strength 27.0. Stamina 25.9. Agility 15.5. Intelligence 18.7.
I tried to tell her at 4:58 on Monday morning.
She'd come in early. She's never in before five. She came through the door at 4:52 with her coffee and went straight past the desk to the bench by the squat racks and sat down on the end of it, which is where she sits when she wants to talk, and she put the cane across her knees.
I came out from behind the desk. I'd got as far as standing in front of her. I'd got as far as "Coach, there's a thing I..."
She waited. She had the lid off the coffee and she was blowing across the top of it, and she didn't hurry me, which was worse than if she had.
And the front door banged, and it was Priya, three minutes early, because her youngest had woken her at four with a nightmare and she'd decided she might as well. She said all of that on the way to the rower. Then Wendell came in behind her, talking, and Hector behind him, not.
Coach looked at me. I looked at the rower.
"Later," she said.
"Later."
There was a later. There was a whole morning of later. I didn't take any of it, and I knew I wasn't taking it, and every hour I didn't it got heavier, like a carry when you've stopped noticing the clock.
* * *
What she'd come in early to say was the evening carry.
"It's gone," she said. "You can't do it at nine, you're in bed at half past. You can't do it at noon at home, you'll cook. So you do it here." She pointed at the floor with the cane. "Eleven to twelve. Before your ride. In my AC."
"The floors are at eleven."
"Hector will do the floors."
Hector, on the bench with his western, turned a page and said "Hm," which I've come to understand means yes, in Hector.
So at eleven I picked up the steel again. The morning block had gone at forty-eight minutes, which was one longer than Friday. The eleven o'clock block didn't go at all. The AC vent over the squat racks blew straight down every time I passed under it, and by the fourth lap I'd started timing my breathing to it. I walked it from 11:00 to 11:58, and at 11:58 my arm was tired and sore and nowhere near the edge, and Colby's car was in the lot.
I put the shield down.
Coach clicked the watch. She didn't write anything on the card.
"Nothing," she said. "For an hour."
"I know."
"Wednesday," she said, "we fix it."
* * *
Tom had moved the tables to eight o'clock.
He didn't say he'd done it for me. He just put it in the group thread on Sunday night, tables 8pm mon, contract board, and Ren put a thumbs up and Colby put three, and nobody asked why eight, because everybody knew why eight. Bed at nine thirty. Tom had moved a thing he'd held at nine since the night we named ourselves, so the bike guy could get home.
Colby drove me. He had a 2014 Civic with a cracked dash and a little hula girl on it who'd lost her head, and he talked from my house to Filiberto's about a video he'd watched where a guy built a house out of shipping containers. I sat with the shield across my knees.
"Back seat," said Colby, at a red light.
"I'd have to keep turning round to check on it."
He thought about that through most of the light. "Yeah, okay," he said. "I'd do that too."
* * *
The county contract board is the second tab in the DDA app, one over from the open board. Until that night I'd never been able to see it. You need to be a registered party.
Filiberto's at eight is a different place from Filiberto's at nine. There were families in it. A kid was under the next table looking for a dropped fork, and the TV over the counter had a soccer game on with the sound off.
Tom had his phone propped against the salsa so we could all see.
It's plainer than the open board. No pitches, no hundred and forty characters. Just a list. Portal ID, rank, monster, location, clear date, payment, bidders. Most of them were E's and up, five thousand and more, with eight or nine guild names under each one. There were six F's in the whole county, two thousand dollars each, and five of them had one bidder, the same guild, Desert Iron, which Tom said bids on every F it can see and then subcontracts all of them at forty percent.
"So we bid on those?" said Colby.
"We bid against Desert Iron," said Tom. "County gives it to whoever's got the better record. Desert Iron's got eleven hundred clears." He scrolled. "We've got one."
The sixth F was different. It had one bidder, and it wasn't Desert Iron.
NR-14 · F · Kobold · New River (Table Mesa Rd) · Clear date: 6 wks · $2,000Bidders: Copper Vale (pending)
Tom stopped scrolling. He sat back.
"Huh," he said.
* * *
"Copper Vale doesn't want F's," said Ren. "Sandoval said. They lose money on them."
"They don't," said Tom. "Unless it comes in a bundle." He touched the listing and it opened. No bundle. Just the one portal. "They don't."
I'd been reading the listing since he stopped. Not the top half. The history at the bottom, in small grey type, which you have to expand.
Listed: Feb. Awarded: Feb (private party, roster 4). Clear: not completed. Award withdrawn: Apr. Re-listed: Sept.
"It was listed in February," I said. "Somebody got it and didn't clear it. The award got pulled in April, and it's been sitting there since."
Tom looked at the history. "How'd you see that?"
"It's at the bottom."
"It's in grey at the bottom." He let it go. "Okay. So somebody tried in March and didn't finish."
March. New River. A kobold hole.
I had my phone out before I'd decided to. I'd written it in the notes app on Day 43 in Marguerite's shop, standing in front of a wall of armor, and I'd never looked at it since. Marisol Vega. 26. E-rank. Kobold, New River, March.
"Tom," I said. "The shield."
He looked at the shield on the bench next to me. Then at me.
"What about it?"
"Marguerite said it belonged to a woman named Marisol Vega. She was E-rank. She died in a kobold hole near New River in March. Her brother brought her gear in."
Nobody said anything.
Colby put his fork down. Ren took her straw out of her cup and laid it on the napkin, slowly, like it might make a noise.
Tom put both hands flat on the table. He looked at the shield again, the way he'd looked at the thermometer in the water.
"I knew her," he said. "A little. Not well. I did two Saturdays with her, open board, a couple years ago. She was good." He swallowed. "She was really good. She had a, she'd hum. In the tunnels. Under her breath. You'd always know where she was."
"I didn't know."
"How would you." He breathed out. "I heard she died. I didn't hear where. Nobody tells you where." He reached out and put two fingers on the shield's rim, the way you'd touch someone's shoulder going past them. "That's her shield."
"Yeah."
"Huh," he said again, softer.
* * *
He bid.
It wasn't a discussion. He looked at each of us, and Ren nodded, and Colby nodded, and I nodded, and he pressed the button and typed Two Pairs and our roster went in under Copper Vale's name, and the app said Bid received. Award: Wed, which was nine days off.
"We won't get it," said Ren. "Just so we've all said it. One clear against Copper Vale."
"Probably not," said Tom.
"So why..."
"Because I want them to have to look at our name." He put his phone away. "Somebody pulled that award in April and didn't say why, and now Copper Vale wants a hole they don't make money on. I want to be on the list."
It was 9:02. Colby stood up and jangled his keys at me.
Colby didn't talk on the way back. He turned the radio on at the first light and off again at the second. I went back into the listing on my phone with the shield on my knees and read the history again, the grey lines at the bottom. Roster 4. Clear: not completed. Four people went into New River in March, and the county wrote down that the clear didn't happen, and it didn't write down anything else.
One of them hummed.
I got into bed at 9:34. I lay there and looked at the ceiling and thought about Coach on the end of the bench at 4:52 in the morning, waiting, and the cane across her knees, and how I'd said "later," like it was a time.