WAYFARER: CLAIM THE UNCLAIMABLE

Sio noticed the change, but Arch’s attention had already returned to the reason he’d come.

”There is something about Sio’s Scar I don’t understand,” Arch told Mira. He pulled a chair out but stayed behind it rather than sitting. ”The response I felt when I examined him isn’t behaving like his Claim, and Sio doesn’t recognize it as the creature’s reaction either. I have records and equipment at home that may help, but I don’t want to keep moving him through Nexus departments while everyone takes turns testing theories.”

Mira understood what he was approaching and drew a slow breath. ”You want him staying with you.”

”For a few days. Fern and Caspian have already kept today’s anomaly from going to Central. Until I understand why a Vessel recognized him and why his Scar can’t be seen, I want the people involved limited to those we trust.”

She rubbed her thumb along the table edge while processing that. ”This morning he left to collect something for me. Since then I’ve learned a Vessel attacked him, he made the first Claim we’ve waited nineteen years for, he somehow developed a Scar that shouldn’t exist, and you’ve walked back into my life asking to take him somewhere else. I need you to understand why I’m not immediately comfortable with that.”

”I do.” Arch’s voice had lost much of its dry edge. ”I’m not asking you to stop worrying. I wouldn’t believe you if you said you could. I’m asking you to trust me with him while you’re worried.”

Mira held his gaze.

”Would you stay with him yourself?”

”Yes.”

”Can he contact me whenever he wants?”

”Of course. And anything involving the Nexus goes through me. Nobody examines him there without me present, and his classification stays local while I investigate.”

Her next question came more quietly. ”What happens when another Vessel comes looking?”

Arch answered without hesitation. ”It deals with me first.”

The certainty in his voice seemed to matter more to Mira than another explanation would have.

She looked toward Sio after a long moment and found him making a poor attempt at neutrality.

Mira knew him too well for that. ”You can stop pretending you’re undecided for my sake. You’ve been looking at Arch the same way you used to look at travel catalogues when you were twelve.”

Sio surrendered the performance. ”He knew Dad. He may know what’s happening with the Scar, and his wall is covered in routes through all five continents. I’m aware those reasons aren’t arranged according to sensible priority.”

A reluctant smile reached her. ”Knowing your priorities are terrible doesn’t make them better.”

”It’s the beginning of improvement.”

”You’ve been at the beginning for years.”

Sio rubbed the back of his neck. ”I do want to go. I don’t want you sitting here worrying about me, but I also don’t want the next person who understands more about my condition than I do to be another Vessel trying to put me through a wall.”

That removed the last trace of humor from her face.

Mira reached up and adjusted his collar around the bruising. ”A few days, then.”

Her acceptance came with the weight of someone agreeing because every alternative frightened her more.

She turned to Arch. ”I’m trusting you because I remember who you were to Silas and because he trusted you when both of us were younger and considerably more foolish. Sio calls me every day. I know before you take him anywhere outside your home, including the Nexus. And nobody turns my son into an interesting problem that gets passed from one specialist to another.”

Arch listened without interrupting. ”He stays under my supervision. Anything the Nexus needs comes through me first, and I’ll keep you informed. When I’ve learned what I can, I bring him home myself.”

Mira kept her eyes on him. ”Don’t make me regret remembering you as someone I could trust.”

Something old moved behind Arch’s expression. ”I won’t.”

Sio went to his room before either of them found another reason to reconsider. He packed lightly, spare clothes, his notebook, charger, toiletries and the small travel booklet he’d been reading before the last two days made everything in it feel strangely ordinary.

While closing the bag, he realized he still had no idea where Arch lived.

Ordinarily, asking for the district would have solved that problem. Arch had connected his study directly to both the Nexus and Sio’s kitchen within the same afternoon, which made conventional directions feel inadequate.

When Sio returned, Mira had already begun wrapping food.

He set the bag near the table and watched her add another container. ”Arch owns food, right? I saw enough shelves to suggest somebody there understands civilization.”

Mira continued packing without looking up. ”I know Arch can feed himself. Your habits are the part I’m accounting for.”

”I’ve managed to stay alive for nineteen years.”

”With people reminding you to eat.”

Arch stood nearby with the expression of a man experienced enough to know involvement would only widen the argument.

Mira tied the parcel shut and pushed it into Sio’s hands. Her attention moved briefly toward the empty space where the morning’s package should have been. ”Was it completely lost?”

Sio winced. ”I had it right until the fight. Somewhere around being thrown across the street, I stopped keeping track of it. I can go back later and see whether anything survived.”

”You’re staying away from that street today.” Mira tightened the knot around the parcel as though sealing the decision with it. ”Whatever was inside can be replaced. I’m not testing whether the same is true for you.”

That left Sio without the joke he’d been preparing.

He hugged her instead.

Mira held him carefully around the bruising at first, then more firmly when she realized he wasn’t pulling away. The excitement of leaving with Arch had been easier while Sio’s attention was occupied by maps and unanswered questions. Standing there with his mother brought the last two days back into proper weight.

”Call tonight,” she said near his shoulder. ”And not when I’m already asleep because you forgot time exists while reading something.”

Sio drew back slightly. ”That happened twice.”

”Both times last month.”

”Recent mistakes shouldn’t receive extra weight.”

”That’s exactly when they receive extra weight.”

She straightened the strap of his bag and studied him another moment before reluctantly letting her hands fall. ”Go before I discover another reason to keep you here.”

Arch opened the kitchen door, revealing his book-lined study beyond it again, but he remained beside the frame instead of crossing immediately.

His attention stayed on Mira.

”I know what you’re trusting me with.”

Mira looked at him for a long moment. The history between them reached into years Sio could only guess at, back when Silas had apparently been travelling through continents beside the man now standing in their kitchen.

”Then remember he’s my son before he’s something strange you want to understand,” she said. ”He’s spent enough of today being scanned and questioned.”

Arch looked toward Sio, and when he answered, the words carried none of the professional distance he’d used at the Nexus. ”Learning who his father was changed the way I’m looking at this. I won’t forget who he is while I’m trying to understand what’s happened to him.”

Some of the tension left Mira’s expression.

”Bring him home.”

”I will.”

Sio gave her one last look before stepping through with Arch.

Back in the study, the maps immediately caught his attention again, though the questions attached to Arch had multiplied enough to compete with them now. He set his bag beside the chair while Arch closed the door and remained there for several seconds, one hand still resting on the handle.

The older man studied Sio with the same private concentration that had appeared after hearing Silas Eloran’s name.

Sio had spent the afternoon answering questions carefully enough to recognize when someone else was doing the same thing.

”You’ve been looking at me differently since I told you who Dad was.”

Arch removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, suddenly appearing more tired than he had at the Nexus. ”I’ve been remembering things I haven’t thought about in a long time.”

”Anything you’re planning to share with the person you’re staring at?”

A quiet breath escaped Arch that might have been amusement under different circumstances. He returned the glasses to his face. ”Eventually. Right now I don’t know how much of what I’m thinking belongs to Silas and how much actually tells me something useful about you.”

Sio understood the caution, which made it more annoying rather than less.

Arch moved toward the table and pushed Sio’s notebook across it. ”You’ve had enough people examining you for one day. Write down everything your System displayed around the time your Scar appeared. Use the exact wording wherever you remember it, and don’t remove something because you think it sounds ridiculous.”

Sio rested his fingers over the notebook without opening it yet. ”And that reaction when you touched me?”

Arch’s attention lingered on him.

”Tomorrow,” he said, though this time he didn’t use the word to dismiss him. ”Tomorrow I want to find out why something inside Silas Eloran’s son recognized me before we had ever met.”

That answer gave Sio plenty to think about and very little he could actually use.

He opened the notebook anyway.

Arch had questions he wasn’t ready to speak aloud. Sio had spent most of the day protecting several of his own, so he understood the instinct well enough to recognize it.

Understanding didn’t make him any less curious.