Chapter 40: Sinbound
The boiler still radiated heat in uneven pulses, the metal ticking as it cooled. Beorn stood with the ledger in his hand and focused on Aestrith.
She had not moved since saying it. He reviewed what he knew about Tam. His last memory of the girl was the morning he had sent her home a while ago. She had been pale, with a dullness in her eyes that suggested more than fatigue.
The way she walked was odd back then. Specifically, the way she placed her feet on the stone had required too much attention, as if maintaining balance demanded conscious effort. At the time, he had noted the problem and set it aside as noncritical. He had not returned to it.
She had resumed work at some point. He also recalled, imprecisely, that she and her sister had relocated to the workers wing under the expanded housing arrangement during the district operations. He could not remember the timing.
"I sent her home a while ago," he said. "She was pale, I assumed sick." He paused, considering the failure in his follow-through. "I haven’t checked on her since."
Aestrith watched him briefly. Then she reached for his arm and pulled him toward the door without discussion.
"Is that necessary?" he said. "Words exist. You have use them."
She did not slow. He checked her expression, recognized the urgency in her eyes, and stopped himself from another sarcastic remark.
They moved through the secondary corridor into the working section of the citadel, then through the administrative passage and into the office. She closed the door behind them.
The temperature dropped noticeably, the air carrying the scent of old paper. The daylight entered through the east window in a flat, diffuse direction. His charcoal from the previous session remained at the desk’s corner, undisturbed.
He set the ledger down, clearing his hands.
Aestrith positioned herself at the far side of the room. She did not sit, which indicated this would not be a casual explanation.
"What do you know," she said, "about my kind."
He stopped for a second, surprised by the question, and went through the information available on his memories.
"About the taboo," he said. "The belief that Sinbound cause disasters by existing and by use of their power, and that most people believe you are to hunt or enslave them." He paused, checking completeness. "Their abilities vary. That is the extent of it."
"And how does a person become Sinbound."
He tested for any knowledge and found none, nor a working hypothesis.
"I don’t know."
"Good," she said. The tone indicated simple correction.
She remained still for a moment. He inferred this was not something she had talked before, her lived experience without hiding anything. He respected the moment she needed to gather her thoughts.
"It starts as illness," she said. "Or it appears to. The person gets sick in a way that does not respond to treatment, because it is not actually a sickness. The body is adapting to something that it never had before."
She paused, trying to think how to word the explanation. "At that stage, there is nothing to use, the ability. The sensation just accumulates."
"Toward what," he asked, identifying the missing endpoint.
"Toward a release." She did not hesitate. "Tales of burnt villages, ground breaking apart, rivers flooding. Those events happen when the power accumulating inside a person goes over what their body can contain, all at once and without control."
He kept his focus on her.
"Some die before that release," she said. "The accumulation surpasses what the body can handle, but there is no discharge. Those resemble more a disease."
"And the release is what people remember," he said. "The disasters attributed to them."
"Yes."
He reached for the quill. Instead of sketching, he began annotating the margin, mapping cause and effect in sequence.
"Can it release gradually," he said. "If the issue is accumulation without an outlet, then a possible solution is to introduce an outlet before failure."
She watched him write. He could see her trying to understand his terminology, comparing it against her own understanding.
"The ones who survive," she said. "The ones who learn to live with it. They use their powers regularly."
A brief pause as she checked memory. "From what I have experienced, and from others I observed afterward, continued use prevents the buildup from reaching a breaking point."
"That checks out, logically speaking" he said. He looked up to confirm it. "An exhaustion valve."
She focused on the term. "I don’t know that term."
"A designated release point," he clarified. "If it exists, the pressure won’t reach enough to a discharge."
"Yes," she said. "That matches what I have seen."
He set the quill down, having established a working theory.
"The onset phase," he said. "Before the ability... awakens, so to speak. It is indicated by paleness, impaired mobility, vision impairment. There’s probably more."
He matched her gaze. "Those are the indicators."
She considered that. "Yes. Those are the symptoms."
He picked up the quill again and wrote a single line, refining the theory. She watched without interrupting.
"The ones who attempt suppression," he said. "Who try to hold it back."
She maintained eye contact, waiting.
"They do not remain stable," she said. "By preventing the outlet does not slow the accumulation. And when release occurs, it is total."
She exhaled. "The people who hunt Sinbound believe they are preventing disasters. In practice, they are causing them."
He noted that conclusion without responding.
Dunvarre had records about verified disasters attributed to Sinbound, sufficient to keep the fear across generations. He had previously considered the ethical ambiguity.
Now he had a mechanism. The causality inverted. The policy generated the outcome it claimed to prevent, consistently, over time. He chose not to expand further. The political implications could be addressed later.
He looked down at his notes. They were less structured than his diagrams, but the theory was intact. The cause and consequence without spatial mapping. He reviewed them for consistency.
This was actionable knowledge. She had presented it without filtering, without attempting to control his reaction, without softening the implications. He did not state that aloud.
"How long does it take," he said. "From onset to resolution, one way or the other."
"It varies. Sometimes weeks." She glanced toward the window, thinking.
"I don’t know exactly how long mine took. I had no reference when it began."
He held the quill without writing, then set it down and shifted focus back to her.
"Do you think Tam is awakening," he said.