Rem woke to the smell of toasted bread and fennel.
The ceiling in Livesey's house had a stain shaped like a rabbit that refused to leave. He stared at it for three breaths, counted his ribs, and decided they felt like furniture that had been moved back where it belonged. His head ached in a slow circle behind the eyes. Heat pooled low in his chest, not fever, not pain, something like a coal remembering fire.
He dressed, padded down the narrow stairs, and found Livesey already at the stove. The old man wore an apron that had collected more stories than stains. The kettle murmured. Sunlight came through the window in squared pieces and made the jars on the shelf glow like captured tea.
"You look like a human," Livesey said without turning. "Which is a relief, because I was pricing curtains."
"Keep the receipt," Rem said. "I feel good. Headache, small. Heat in the chest." He tapped his sternum with two fingers. "Feels like I swallowed a candle."
Livesey set a pan on the counter and walked over, eyes sharper than any instrument in his bag. "Sit."
Rem sat. Livesey stood behind him and, without ceremony, pressed two fingers under the occipital ridge, then the hinge of the jaw, then the inside of the collarbone, then three points along the spine. Quick, precise touches, as if he were playing a piece he had composed long ago. Rem felt his skull ease as if a hand inside it had stopped clenching. The heat in his chest thinned to a line he could ignore.
He exhaled. "What did you just do?"
"Tricked your body into remembering its job," Livesey said. He returned to the stove. "You have wires crossed. I uncrossed three."
"How did you know those were the ones," Rem asked.
Livesey slid a plate in front of him. Eggs cut with herbs. Bread scattered with salt. A mug that smelled like fennel and lemon peel. He lifted his own mug and squinted at Rem over the rim. "I have lived more than three times your age. I have experienced a lot of things."
"So you are old," Rem said.
"So I am useful," Livesey said. "Eat."
They did. The kitchen made the quiet noises of a place that believed in mornings. Cutlery clicked. The kettle sighed. Outside, the street negotiated with carts and boots and the first impatient hawkers setting up their stalls.
Rem chewed, swallowed, and felt the simple pleasure of warmth go down and choose to stay. "I kept thinking about the dungeon," he said. "About not being the porter for once. It was a good feeling. Not easy. But good."
Livesey put his fork down and studied him the way doctors study weather. "You are allowed to feel that."
Rem nodded. "Still have a headache."
"Drink," Livesey said, indicating the fennel tea. "And do not try to name heat that is not ready to be named."
Rem drank. The bitter softened to sweet. The warmth in his chest settled a little more, like a cat choosing a windowsill.
"I need air," he said. "A walk."
"I was going to throw you out anyway," Livesey said. He rummaged in a drawer and came up with a small leather purse, heavier than it looked. He tossed it with the easy accuracy of habit. Rem caught it one-handed.
"There is a silver and a gold," Livesey said. "Go to Madame Luo in the market. I placed an order last week, oils and plants, now ready. Pay and bring it back. The second gold is in case you find something that looks like it wants to live here. Or for you. Do not buy a hammer."
Rem weighed the purse. It felt like permission. "You can count on me."
"I do," Livesey said. "It is a failing of mine."
Rem finished his plate and cleaned the cup. Livesey pretended not to notice the way he dried it with precision and put it in exactly the same place it had been before. The old man's eyes softened a fraction anyway.
"Back before lunch," Rem said.
"Back when you are back," Livesey answered, which was the same thing said differently.
The street was already awake. Morning vendors called to each other in accents that argued cheerfully. A woman with a basket of green onions walked past like a small parade. Two hunters in battered coats compared scars as if they were recipes. Children played a game with a rock and a chalked grid. The sun had decided to be generous. The air kept its edge so no one would get lazy.
Rem walked into the market and the market recognized him. Livesey's reputation arrived five steps before he did. People nodded the way people nod at a known quantity that has never broken a promise. A bread seller pressed a small heel into his hand and said, "For the doctor," then amended, "For you, but tell him I tried."
He chewed and smiled with his mouth full and kept moving.
Madame Luo's stall smelled like the inside of a patient garden. Dried leaves in glass jars. Oils in stoppered vials. Bundles of roots tied with red string. Madame Luo herself looked like a wind had carved her and left her satisfied with the result. She wore a shawl that changed shades of blue when it moved.
"Rem," she said, and the name sounded like something she had counted and found correct. "You are late."
"The dungeon misbehaved," he said.
"They do," she said. "Tell Livesey he owes me a story for this order. Money is less good than stories when the bones are cold."
Rem laid a gold and a silver on the counter. She counted without touching. She packed a canvas sack with wrapped bottles and bundles, each one snugged into place so they would not argue on the walk home. She added a small tin without marking it down.
"For the headache," she said.
"You did not see me yet," he said.
"I see the way your eyes sit in your head," she said. "You are in debt to sleep. Take a spoon of this and argue with no one except your pillow."
He thanked her, hauled the sack onto his back, and let the straps settle across the familiar line on his shoulder. The weight was honest. He liked honest weight.
He could have taken the fast way back, through the small streets where the price of onions and the gossip of the week traveled at the speed of breath. He did not. He cut left into the city center, where stone buildings pretended not to listen, and the Association's flag snapped in a wind that must have been paid for.
He walked because the blue of the sky seemed to mean it. He walked because the sacks on his back made him feel like himself. He walked because there was a thread of curiosity, thin and insistent, that tugged him down the wide street past where he usually turned.
When he reached the square in front of the Hunter Association, he stopped and let the square reach him back. Hunters moved in groups and alone, in coats patched with pride and in suits that looked like they were allergic to dust. Voices overlapped in a working noise that told him the world kept choosing to be alive.
He thought of Evelyn then. Of cold hands on his back, precise and calm. Of the way she had said stay as if the word were a tool. He had not thanked her. He made a note in a part of his head that did not lose notes.
Maybe I can become a hunter one day, he thought, and then the thought refused to pretend to be far away. It stepped forward and looked like now.
The Association doors opened for him as if they had been waiting for a decision. Inside, the main hall was a kind of storm that stayed inside its jar. Bulletin boards bristled with contracts. Tables were islands of schemes and rumors. A clerk argued with a hunter in a tone that said both of them liked arguing.
Rem went to the main counter. The woman behind it wore a smile that fit her face and a badge with a name he remembered but did not say out loud. She looked up and her smile widened.
"Oh, Rem," she said. "How are you doing. I heard about the last dungeon."
"It was intense," he said. "I came out on my feet."
"Barely, from what I heard," she said, and the tease did not hide the relief. "Do you want your balance from the last two runs. I can have it counted by lunch."
"Not now," Rem said. He set the sack down at his feet. "I am here for something else."
Her eyebrows rose. "All right."
"I am thinking of becoming a hunter," he said. "I want to take the exam."
The clerk froze, then laughed, then stopped when she saw his face did not move. She leaned a fraction forward. "You are serious."
"Very."
Her colleagues leaned in from either side, drawn by the sound of a conversation becoming interesting. One of them whispered, not very quietly, "The F rank porter from the sealed raid," and the other whispered back, "The one who nearly died."
Rem kept his voice level. "I am not interested in being a porter anymore."
The clerk looked at him the way a person looks at a bridge with a sign that says Closed and a crowd gathering anyway. "It is possible," she said. "You need to pass the basic exam first. There is a fee. One gold."
He thought about Livesey's extra coin. He thought about the way the old man had tossed the purse without saying why. He thought about the heat in his chest and the way the city had looked brighter this morning without changing anything.
"Of course it costs a gold," he said, and the corner of his mouth tilted. "That old man knew what I had in mind."
He set one gold on the counter. It rang like a small bell that felt good about itself. "Sign me up."
The clerk took the coin and put it in a tray with a practiced click. "You seem determined."
"I am," Rem said.
"Next session is tomorrow morning," she said. "Eight o'clock. You will need a basic physical check here on arrival. If you pass, the practical begins at nine. Room A for the written, Yard Three for the field. Bring nothing sharp. Bring shoes you can run in."
Rem nodded. "Tomorrow is fine."
She slid a small paper token across the counter. His name was written on it in neat letters and the Association stamp had not quite dried. "Keep this. Do not lose it."
He tucked it into his pocket and shouldered the sack again. The weight settled like agreement.
"Good luck, Rem," the clerk said. "And try not to make me regret encouraging you."
"I will do my best," he said.
He turned and took in the hall for another heartbeat. Hunters laughed the way people laugh when they are not sure they will get to laugh again tomorrow and choose to anyway. Someone slapped a friend on the back hard enough to count as a medical test. A contract pinned to the far board fluttered in a current of air that seemed to have come from nowhere.
Rem stepped outside. Sun spilled over the square. He adjusted the strap, squared his shoulders, and set a pace that was not fast but did not wander.
At the corner, he looked up. The sky had kept its promise of blue. A bird cut it in half and kept going.
"Tomorrow," he said, and for once, the word sounded like a plan and not a hope.