Chapter 239 The Performance
POV: Tom | St. Thomas site, all levels
The building has been compromised at the structural level, which is what happens when you conduct a raid across four simultaneous floors of a building that was abandoned six years ago and which has been maintained by one obsessive researcher rather than by any institutional maintenance program, and the compromised structure has been communicating itself to me through the ward system for the past twenty minutes, which is the ward system's specific way of telling me that the thing I have been holding together is not going to hold together much longer without additional input.
The additional input I can provide is the fae ability that has been consuming my body from the inside for four years and which has a year left in it if I am careful, which is what the healer told me in February, and which has considerably less than a year left in it if I use it at the level that holding a compromised building together for the time it takes everyone to get out requires.
I have known this was a possible version of tonight since we started planning the raid two days ago, which is long enough to have made the peace with it that making peace with things requires, and I have made the peace with it in the specific way that I make peace with things, which is by looking at it directly and deciding whether it is acceptable and deciding that it is.
The wards I have been running since entry have been doing two jobs simultaneously, which is the standard ward architecture for facility entry of this kind, the first job being to keep the building's presence off the Covenant's detection systems and the second being to manage the structural load on a building that was not designed for the kind of activity it has been experiencing tonight. The first job I can release now because the Covenant knows we are here regardless, the Queen's arrival made sure of that, and releasing the first job frees the energy for the second job, which is the one that matters.
I expand the structural wards to cover the full building, all four levels, the ancient asylum at the bottom and the sublevels above it and the main facility above those and the ground level above that, and I feel the expansion in the specific way I feel all large fae magic, which is as the thing it is consuming, which is me, my body's specific resources, the finite reserves that the healer measured in February and which are being drawn down now at a rate that the healer's estimate did not account for because the healer's estimate assumed being careful.
I am not being careful.
Cormac finds me at the sublevel access at one fourteen, which is the moment the building's structural sounds have become audible to someone without ward awareness, the specific creaking and settling of load-bearing elements that are managing more than they were designed to manage.
"Tom," he says, and he says it with the quality he uses when he has assessed a situation and does not like the assessment.
"Everyone out," I say. "All levels. Now. Take the children and the chamber and get everyone through the morgue passage and out the east side."
"What about you?"
"I'm holding it," I say. "While everyone gets out."
Cormac looks at me with the expression that means he is doing a calculation and the calculation is not producing a result he wants. "How long can you hold it?"
"Long enough," I say.
"Tom."
"Long enough for everyone to get out," I say. "Which is what matters. Go."
He grabs my arm, which is the Cormac version of refusing to accept a thing, the physical objection of a person who does not have a verbal one ready. "Don't be stupid. There's another way. There's always another way."
"I was dying anyway," I say. "The fae magic has been taking me for four years and it has about three months left in it on a good day and this is not a good day." I look at him with the directness that I have been using for three years with the people in this coalition, the directness that is the other side of having a limited amount of time and knowing it. "This matters. Lucia matters. The children matter. This building staying up for the next six minutes while they get out through the east passage matters." I pull my arm from his grip, gently, the way you remove yourself from the grip of someone who is holding you out of love rather than malice, which requires gentleness rather than force. "Go."
Cormac looks at me for a moment that has the specific quality of moments that both people involved know they will carry for a very long time, and then he goes, because the children are already moving through the east passage and Callum is behind them with the chamber and Isla is being carried by two of Alteroni's guards and Dante has the last of the hybrids and the building is communicating through my ward system that six minutes was an optimistic estimate and five is more accurate.
I stand at the sublevel access and I hold the building with everything the fae magic has left, which is enough, which is exactly enough, and I watch the last person clear the east passage entrance and I hold for another thirty seconds beyond that because thirty seconds is the margin and the margin matters.
The building settles. It settles the way buildings settle when the thing that has been holding them stops holding them, gradually and then completely, and the sound of it is large and the dust that comes through the wards before the wards stop being something I am maintaining is thick and the dark is the dark of a space that is becoming a closed space.
I am thinking about Ash and the fae gate keys and the conversation in the Den's back room and the specific quality of a thing arranged to continue after you are gone, and I am thinking about thirty years of thieving and twenty years of Silas and three years of Callum's coalition and what it means to have spent the last of the time you have on something that matters.
The last thing I am aware of is the ward system releasing, the specific sensation of a large thing being put down, and then the specific quiet of a thing that has been carried for a long time finally not being carried anymore.
I do not let go before everyone is out.
That is the only thing that matters.