Chapter 78: What Cain Knows

Thale stayed the night.

Not in the main buildings—she'd declined the offered space and set up a small camp outside the east gate, which River respected. A senior Rider officer spending the night inside a settlement that opposed her organization would have been strange even in a context this complicated. Thale understood the shape of things.

In the morning she came to the south gate to leave.

River was there.

"The meeting," River said. "Tell Cain I need six days to consider it. I'll send a runner."

Thale looked at her. "Six days."

"Six days," River said.

Thale looked at the Station's walls, the way she'd been looking at them since she arrived—assessing, cataloging, building a picture to carry back.

"He'll wait," she said.

She rode south.

---

She spent the morning alone.

Not hiding from the question—she'd thought through it enough that she knew the shape of what she was deciding. This was different. This was standing with a decision long enough to feel which direction it was already going.

Her parents.

She knew almost nothing. They'd died when she was seven. Her grandmother had given her the facts—the fire, the eastern settlement, the timing. She'd given her the feeling too: something in how she said it, a flatness that River had recognized even as a child as the flatness of grief that had been processed into something manageable but hadn't gone away.

She'd been told they died in the eastern settlement fire.

She'd never asked who set the fire.

She'd never asked because her grandmother had never made it a question. It was a thing that had happened. The Wastes had fires. The Wastes had raiders. People died in the eastern settlement fire.

But Cain had information about her parents.

Information he wanted to share directly, not through Thale, not as leverage.

She thought about what kind of information that would be.

She thought about the outline of it. The shape of the thing she'd been not-asking.

---

She found Marcus in the common hall doing what he'd been doing for three days: a low-impact assessment circuit of the Station, moving at the pace Lia had authorized, checking the things that had always been his to check. The watch positions. The supply storage. The structural integrity of the east wall, which had a section Ramos had been watching.

He looked better.

Not well—she wasn't going to tell herself he looked well. But better than the gray of a week ago. Something in the quality of the breath.

She fell in beside him.

"The meeting," he said. He knew about Thale; he'd been briefed yesterday.

"I'm considering it," she said.

"I know," he said. "You're walking it out."

She looked at the east wall—the section Ramos had been watching, a twelve-meter stretch where the original foundation was showing stress fractures. Cosmetic for now. Would become structural if left another winter.

"He has information about my parents," she said.

Marcus stopped.

She looked at him.

He went very still. The kind of still that meant something had landed differently than expected.

"What kind of information," he said.

"I don't know," she said. "Thale didn't know specifics." She held his gaze. "But she said it wasn't leverage. She said—specifically—that he said it was something I had a right to know."

Marcus looked at the east wall.

"Information about the fire," she said.

He breathed.

"Or about who set it," she said.

He held still.

She looked at his profile. The ten years she'd known him. The way he carried information about his past the way everyone in the Wastes carried it—not shown, not discarded, just held.

"You know something," she said.

He looked at her.

"I know many things," he said. "About the eastern corridor, about the settlements before the Riders came through, about—"

"Marcus," she said.

He stopped.

He held her gaze for a long moment.

"I was on the Riders' eastern patrol," he said, "fifteen years ago. I ran the route between the Karrow valley and the eastern settlement cluster." He paused. "I know what happened to settlements in that area. I know what the Riders did to settlements that were—" He stopped. "That were in conflict with Cain's interests."

She held very still.

"My parents," she said.

"River," he said.

"Were they in conflict with Cain's interests," she said.

He looked at her.

She looked back.

"Yes," he said. "I believe so." He held her gaze. "I don't know the specifics. I was on route patrol—I wasn't involved in the policy decisions. But the eastern settlement in that period—there were settlements that Cain's command considered threats. Not military threats. Information threats." He paused. "Settlements that had documentation about the Overseers. About what the Collapse was."

She held that.

Her parents had documentation about the Collapse. About what it was.

The same thing she'd been distributing.

"How long," she said. "How long have you known that."

He looked at the wall.

"I knew the eastern settlement was targeted by Cain's command," he said. "I didn't know who was in it. I didn't know—" He stopped. "When I met you, seven years old, moving through the valley. When you told me your name." He paused. "I recognized the name. Your mother's name was Nakamura. She ran a documentation network in the eastern cluster."

She looked at him.

She counted the years.

"You've known for twelve years," she said.

He held her gaze.

"Yes," he said.

She breathed.

"Why didn't you tell me," she said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Because you were seven years old," he said. "Then ten. Then fourteen." He held her gaze. "Because the right time—" He stopped. "I've been waiting for the right time and I know that's a coward's answer."

She stood with it.

The east wall. The stress fractures in the foundation. Things that were cosmetic and would become structural.

"What else," she said. "What else do you know."

"The Sanctuary," he said. "River, the Sanctuary—"

"What about the Sanctuary," she said.

He breathed.

"Your parents founded it," he said. "That's what my Rider intelligence suggested, fifteen years ago. That the Sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest—the rumored settlement—was established by the same network that was running the documentation east. Your mother's network." He held her gaze. "If that's true, then the Sanctuary isn't a rumor. It's—it's their work. And whatever is there, whatever documentation survived—"

She held up her hand.

He stopped.

She stood in the main hall of the Station and she looked at the walls.

She breathed.

"Okay," she said.

She said it the way you said things you were going to have to say out loud multiple times before they became real.

"Okay," she said again.

He waited.

"I'm going to meet with Cain," she said.

He held her gaze.

"I need to know what he knows," she said. "Whatever it is, I need to know it before I can—" She stopped. "I need to know."

"The risk," he said.

"Is real," she said. "And the alternative is not knowing. And I've been not-knowing for twelve years." She held his gaze. "I'll take the meeting."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She looked at him.

"I should have told you," he said. "Before now. Regardless of the timing." He held her gaze. "I'm sorry."

She held that.

She looked at him—ten years of road time, the eastern circuit, the cache retrieval, the cough that had started in February and was still there but quieter now under Lia's treatment.

She thought about what it cost him to have held this for twelve years.

"We'll talk more," she said. "When I've had time to—" She paused. "When I've had time."

He nodded.

She turned to go.

Then she stopped.

"Thank you," she said. "For telling me now."

He didn't say anything.

She walked out.

---

She told Cal that night.

Not all of it—the parts she could say out loud and the parts that were still moving in her chest. He listened the way he listened, the complete attention without commentary.

When she stopped, he was quiet for a moment.

"You're going to take the meeting," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"I'm going with you," he said.

"I know," she said.

He held her gaze.

"River," he said.

She looked at him.

"What Cain knows about your parents," he said. "He's held it for fifteen years too. Whatever his reason for telling you now—he has one." He held her gaze. "It's not simple."

"I know," she said. "None of this is simple."

He looked at her.

"Okay," he said.

She leaned against him—not falling, just letting his weight hold some of hers. He put his arm around her and she let herself be there for a moment.

The mountains outside. The spring dark.

Her mother's name was Nakamura and she'd run a documentation network in the eastern cluster and she'd founded the Sanctuary.

She breathed.

"Sleep," Cal said.

"I know," she said. "I'm going to."

She lay still in the dark, his arm around her, and she thought about the Sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest and what it would look like to walk into a place her parents built and find whatever they'd left there.

She didn't sleep for a long time.

But she lay still.

That was enough.

---

In the morning she started the training session with Kael and at the end of it Marcus came out to watch.

He stood at the edge and watched the boy run the falling exercises, the recovery sequence, the first defensive form River had introduced three days ago.

When she called the end of the session, Kael went to drink water. Marcus moved to her side.

"He's good," Marcus said.

"He doesn't hold onto the fall," she said.

"You said the same thing to me once," Marcus said. "About you."

She looked at him. "No I didn't."

"No," he said. "I said it about you. To your face. You were fourteen and furious about it."

She looked at the boy at the water.

"He's not furious," she said.

"He had different damage," Marcus said. "You were furious because you'd been told your whole life to hold on." He paused. "He had the opposite problem. He had to let go of a lot by force."

She looked at Kael.

Twelve years old. Brown hair, thin, wearing clothes that fit better now that Efrain had found him a proper kit.

She thought about what he'd let go of.

"The meeting with Cain," she said. "I need you here when I go."

"I know," Marcus said.

"You're not arguing," she said.

"No," he said. "I'm not."

She looked at him.

"The treatment," she said.

"Is doing what it's supposed to," he said. "Slowly." He looked at Kael. "I'm not going anywhere, River. That's not what I said about dying—I said I wasn't afraid of the math. I didn't say I was going anywhere fast."

She held that.

"Good," she said. "Because I need you here."

"I know," he said. "That's half of what I need too."