18. An Understanding Not Understood (Patreon)

Update: Unlocked for all patrons.

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Milo comes downstairs yawning to find the inn’s staff preparing for the day.

“You’re up early,” Wahid says. “Hold a jot, and I’ll get you something to eat.”

“Anywhere’s fine,” Safi says, motioning to the empty room.

The elevator door opens with a ding, and when Noor hops out, Safi reaches behind the bar for her cart. She wheels over to Milo’s table. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Milo feels fuzzy and not quite awake.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Noor says. “I should’ve warned you about the General. That he’s a busybody.”

“Hmm?”

“Shh… here he is,” Noor says with a nudge.

The General waves as he comes downstairs and walks towards the kitchen. There’s a pole in the crook of his arm, and Milo wonders if he should wonder where he’s going with it.

Tea. I need tea. As if Milo’s thoughts worked magic, Wahid appears with a kettle and a bowl of mashed grains mixed with warm milk. For Noor, he has a pair of hard boiled eggs, which she tucks into a pouch.

“Right, off I go,” she says before departing.

“She was in a good mood,” Wahid says.

Safi looks up from cleaning the bar. “You know Merein the Tinker?”

“The one with the ugly son?” Wahid asks.

“He’s not that bad,” Safi says.

“You haven’t looked closely enough,” Wahid says.

Safi laughs. “Maybe so. Anyway, Merein lost her mallet yesterday—her lucky mallet—and Noor expects a generous reward for finding it.”

The tea does its job and wakes Milo up. “I have to go to the hospital,” he says to no one in particular. He starts to rise, but Wahid sits him back down.

“Finish your breakfast first,” Wahid says. “You don’t want me thinking you don’t like it, do you?”

“But Hallon—”

“Will wait for you,” Wahid says, “so you might as well eat.”

Milo hasn’t had anything since yesterday afternoon, and the grains do look good, the numbers shimmering with butter and honey. He finishes the bowl in less than a minute.

Wahid is pleased. “I do love people who know how to eat.”

Safi snorts, but doesn’t say anything.

Milo asks, “Can I go now?”

Wahid nods. “You may. And if you see Rahima, that’s Dr. Rugaam, let her know a package has arrived for her.”

“I will.”

Outside, the sun is just starting to peek over the city wall, brightening the tips of the tallest buildings. Left, Milo thinks, retracing his steps from yesterday.

People are already on the street heading to work or market. Two giant men pull a water tank on wheels. Milo stops to admire the handiwork of the pump they use to fill the rooftop cisterns.

A woman stands on the corner with a steaming kettle. People around her drink small glasses of tea mixed with cardamom. “10 dirham,” she says. A tenth of a dinar—Milo’s tempted but keeps walking.

The next corner has an old man selling pastries from a pushcart. His face is lined with wrinkles, his right eye cloudy. He notices Milo looking at him and smiles, showing gaps in his teeth. “Good morning, young man. Would you like some atayef?”

Milo smells honey and cinnamon and comes closer. “What’s that?”

The man is surprised. “You don’t know atayef? Why, every mam that can make it, makes it for their little ones.” He looks Milo up and down. Milo’s not sure what he sees, but the old man decides to break one of the pastries in two. “Here,” he says, offering a piece. The other, he eats himself.

The pastry is soaked through with honey, baked crisp on the outside but spongy inside and filled with cinnamon and walnuts. One moment it’s in Milo’s hands and the next he’s licking his fingers.

“Now, that’s atayef,” the man says, as if making a point.

“Delicious.”

“That’s right,” the old man says, “and there’s more if you want. Only a 25 dirham a piece.”

Milo buys one from the old man, and it doesn’t last half the street. He almost goes back for another, but he feels guilty about already wasting too much time. The rest of the journey is uninterrupted, mostly because Milo keeps his head down and his hands in his pockets.

At the hospital, he finds Hallon as he left her—unconscious, her face bruised purple and black, with none of the aliveness that he’d grown so quickly accustomed to. He pulls the stool closer, takes her hand in his, and waits patiently for her to wake up.

###

People move at the edges of Milo’s consciousness. Someone—the probability is 98.78 percent that it’s a nurse—brings him a bowl of plain soup, which he eats. The room darkens, a light turns on. The light turns off, and another light in the hall replaces it. A slim figure in a wheelchair sits by the open window. Milo registers that she’s been there for twenty minutes and thirty-five seconds, and he pauses the flow of calculations to see who it is.

The innkeeper, the doctor—Rahima Rugaam looks out the window at the night sky.

Milo puts the equations in order before tucking them away. His body is stiff from sitting too long, and he stretches, arching to loosen the kink in his back. His left arms aches, just above the elbow.

“The nurses were worried about you,” Dr. Rugaam says.

“They needn’t have. I was just thinking.”

“I know,” she says, turning towards him. “I’ve also been thinking. This is the room where my husband died.”

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

“Yes, me too.” Dr. Rugaam doesn’t say anything else, lost in her own thoughts, but then she smiles to herself, the equations bitter. “We can’t have what’s already lost, can we?”

“No, we can’t.”

The words set her model into motion—she turns on the room’s light and takes off a glove to feel Hallon’s pulse. Dozens of fine, white scars are etched into the back of her hand, running from her fingers to her wrists.

“Your friend is stable,” she says, putting the glove back on. “Remarkably so. She’s healing at an astonishing rate. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in a Blessed Blue.”

To Milo, Hallon looks weak and not like herself at all.

“That said, it’s unlikely she’ll be able to walk or use her arms again. There’s also a good chance she’s suffered some brain damage, as well. I know I’m being direct,” Dr. Rugaam says, “but I thought you’d rather know the truth than some wished-for fantasy.”

“Always,” Milo says. His mind needs facts in order to calculate accurately.

Dr. Rugaam wheels back to the window. “The two of you are something of a puzzle. Karam’s told me your story, but I’m wondering if I should kick you out of the Standing Goat anyway.”

“You can’t do that. You made a deal.” Milo’s seen evidence of the importance of deals first hand—in the ones with Karam, with Armin and Marid, and the people on the street coming to agreements over tea and food and handshakes. No Town thrives on deals; the observation is integral to the predictive model he’s building.

Dr. Rugaam smiles. “Yes, I did, but I refuse to do anything that jeopardizes the safety of the people I care about.”

“We’re a danger to you?”

“Aren’t you? Look at all the trouble you’ve already caused. You’ve inconvenienced me, my family, and my business. Who knows what my son and Wahid are doing in my absence. And this,” she gestures around her, “is the last place I want to be. I’m not a doctor anymore, but good luck telling the staff here that.” She sighs. “I’ve grown soft. Have to watch that. And you have secrets. Dangerous secrets.”

Milo’s stunned. “You know about my work on time travel?”

“This is no time to be funny,” Rahima says, frowning. She wheels to the door to check if the hall is empty. “I know you’re an unmarked Yellow and that your friend is Null, which is—which is a mystery in itself—but I don’t want to get sidetracked. No, I just want peace and quiet for me and my family, and if the Civil Order people find us sheltering unregistered Gloop, they’ll punish us the same as you.”

Milo rubs at his elbow. The probability is that she tested him while he was lost in his calculations. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’re strangers here and don’t have anywhere else to go. We’d leave if we could, but—” Milo gestures to Hallon, helpless in bed.

“That’s unfair,” Rahima says, looking down at her hands. They clench and unclench. The equations drift unmoored, taking on the faded, wavering quality of someone caught by memory. “I—all right—I won’t say anything. About you and your friend. I’ll even let her lodge at the Goat, but you can’t stay there. She won’t cause any trouble in the state she’s in, but I’m not sure about you.” Her equations solidify. “Do we have a deal?”

Milo is stuck without options again, but at least this way Hallon will have shelter. “Deal.”

“Good. She’ll be released tomorrow,” Rahima says. “I’ll make arrangements for her to be taken to the inn.”

“So soon?” Milo asks.

“The hospital needs the bed,” Rahima says. “I’ll take good care of her. You needn’t worry.”

“I won’t then.”

Rahima looks at him. “You’re taking this well.”

That surprises a laugh out of Milo. “Am I? I don’t feel like it. But what can I do except keep pressing on?”

He’s determined to survive this hardship, like all the others he’s faced. They’d called him Bad Luck Rabbit in school for good reason, although living as a homeless criminal in a strange city in an alternate universe is a first. Milo wonders if he should feel proud of the milestone.

“Funny,” Rahima says, “but I think we understand each other.”

Which is funny, because Milo doesn’t feel like he understands anything, but he nods anyway and that seems to make her feel better.

“Come,” she says. “You can’t stay the night here, and we’ve already stretched the rules for visitors too much.” Rahima surprises him by putting a hand on his arm. “Instead, in exchange for being an accomplice in my escape from this place, you will have the honor of escorting me home.”

“I will?”

“Yes, you will,” Rahima says. “And I will look the other way, while you stay the night at the Goat. But only one night. Is that understood?”

“Understood.” Milo breathes a sigh of relief. Not cast off yet, he thinks.

“Then let’s go,” Rahima says. “It’s been a long day for both of us.”