Chapter 717: The People Beyond the Bend

Chapter 717: The People Beyond the Bend

"Leave it there. You’ll have half the bank in the water."

Leon stopped beside the fresh repair.

The voice came from beyond the bend, followed by a scrape and an irritated sigh. He moved far enough to see between two hanging branches. An older woman stood ankle-deep in the channel, holding a flat stone against her hip. On the bank above her, a young man had both hands around a clump of grass.

"I only meant to clear the edge," the young man said.

"And what’s holding the edge together?"

He looked down at the roots. After a moment, he let go.

The woman passed him the stone. Her gray hair was pinned beneath a faded blue scarf, and wet mud covered the knees of her trousers. There was a knife at her belt, a basket on the bank, and nothing about either person to suggest an expedition preparing to move on.

Leon watched her place a smaller stone beneath the one they had been arguing over. The young man steadied it without being told this time.

He waited until she climbed out of the water before stepping onto the open path.

"Excuse me."

The young man straightened so quickly that he nearly dropped the stone. The woman reached for her knife, then stopped with her fingers on its handle.

Leon kept his hands visible and stayed well clear of the beds.

"My name is Leon. I’m traveling with a gathering party. Is this your garden?"

"Mine to work," she said. "Where did you come from?"

"The southern ridges. I found the channel and followed it."

Her gaze passed over his dry boots, his clothes, and the path behind him.

"You didn’t open any of the gates?"

"No."

"Good. People see a little water and decide everything below it needs more." She took her hand from the knife. "What do you want?"

"To ask whether you trade. And, if you’re willing, learn where I am."

The young man glanced at her, visibly interested in the second part. She ignored him while she wrung water from the bottom of her trousers.

"Edda Fen," she said. "That’s Nerin. You can talk while we finish. Stand on the stones, though. The pale stems bruise easily."

Leon shifted onto the paved strip she indicated. Nerin carried their tools toward the lower beds, looking back twice before reaching them.

Their words reached him as easily as Harrowmark’s had. He could hear the unfamiliar sounds, yet he understood even the woman’s irritation over the damaged bank. Whatever made that possible was doing the same for her; she had answered without asking him to repeat himself.

Leon was grateful for it now. He could have frightened them off with a gesture he meant as reassurance, or bought something dangerous without understanding its use. He still wanted to know what was making the translation happen.

At the spring, Leon’s original body remained seated beside Loriel and Seraphine. He had gone still while following the conversation through his other body, one hand resting on the unfinished sketch.

"There are two people," he told them quietly. "A woman and someone working with her. I’ve introduced myself."

Loriel leaned closer to the drawing. "Ask about the pale ones when you can."

He nodded, then returned most of his attention to the garden.

Edda was checking the wooden gate he had examined earlier. She raised it to the middle groove and watched the water spread through the lower channel before moving on.

Nerin had begun replacing a forked support beneath one pale stem. He looked perhaps seventeen, with a narrow face, sunburn across his nose, and a badly mended sleeve. The thread holding it together was much brighter than the cloth.

"Is your party staying at the old quarry?" Nerin asked.

"No. We have a camp beside a crystal spring farther south."

"I haven’t been that far." Nerin pushed the support into the soil. "People have been coming down the eastern paths, though. More than usual."

"People you know?" Leon asked.

"Some. Others dress strangely." Nerin examined Leon’s coat, then seemed to realize what he had said. "Different from us, I mean."

Leon looked down at himself. He had grown used to Palace clothing. Apparently, that only made him an ordinary sort of stranger in one world.

"Yours is probably easier to work in," he said.

"It was, before he tore it," Edda said. "Nerin, check the next row." ℴℴ𝘮

The apprentice moved away, although he remained close enough to listen.

Edda knelt beside the dark-leaved plants and separated two stems. Leon could feel the spiritual energy within them, quiet and steady compared with the mineral growths he had collected. These had been given space, water, and time by someone who expected to return.

"What are those used for?" he asked.

"Most buyers want the roots. I keep some for seed." Edda pointed with the back of her knife. "The pale ones are reedlace. Different buyers, different preparation. If you’re looking for dried stock, I have a little."

"May I look underneath a leaf?"

That earned him a more attentive glance.

"Use the stick beside you. Don’t rub the coating off."

Leon lifted a leaf carefully. A fine pattern of branching veins showed beneath its pale surface. He studied it long enough to remember, then lowered it without touching the stem.

Edda watched his face. "You don’t know it."

"No. Someone with me knows plants much better than I do. She’d be annoyed if I brought her a damaged handful and asked what it was."

"She’s sensible, then."

He smiled. Loriel would probably like this woman, provided neither tried to reorganize the other’s garden too quickly.

Edda took a small cloth packet from her basket. Inside were several dried pieces of reedlace stem, cleanly split along their length. She let him examine one but kept the packet in her hand.

Its preparation was beyond his knowledge. He could judge the energy left within it, yet that told him little about how well it had been preserved or what a healer might actually want from it.

"I’ll bring her before discussing a purchase," Leon said.

"That would save us both trouble." Edda wrapped the packet again. "How many are with you?"

"There are eighteen in my field party. Four collectors."

"Four who know what they’re doing?"

"With minerals. They’ll listen if you explain the plants."

She considered that while checking another stem. Leon liked that she had asked about hands rather than swords. The number of people capable of protecting a harvest and the number capable of collecting one had proved rather different lately.

Nerin returned with a wooden pail and poured a little water over Edda’s hands. She rinsed off the mud, then passed it to Leon when he asked to clean the stick he had used.

He accepted. The cool water washed a smear of mud from his fingers.

Nothing here felt temporary. Even the pail had a replacement handle worn smooth where someone carried it. He had seen traveling camps with more expensive equipment and less evidence that anyone intended to stay.

They might have arrived years before us.

Harrowmark’s nineteen days no longer seemed a useful measure of anything.

"Is your settlement nearby?" Leon asked.

"Asterbank. Beyond that shoulder." Edda indicated the western hill. "You won’t see the roofs from here. The wind’s worse on this side."

"And you come out every day?"

"When the garden needs me." She looked toward the repaired channel. "More often when the bank gives way."

Nerin picked up the basket. "It was worse before she moved the upper beds."

"You weren’t here before I moved them," Edda said.

"My father was. He told me."

Leon looked from the young man to the neat beds beneath the ridge. "Your father works here too?"

"He makes drying screens," Nerin said. "I help when she doesn’t need me."

The answer came easily. No guarded glance, no attempt to work out what Leon wanted to hear. Nerin was explaining his family, and already looking as though he wanted to ask about Leon’s.

"How long has your family been in Asterbank?" Leon asked Edda.

She gave him a puzzled look. "As long as anyone bothers remembering."

"I meant, when did you enter this place?"

"The garden?"

"This realm," Leon said. "Through a gateway."

For a moment, even Nerin forgot his questions.

Edda lowered the cloth she had been using to dry her hands.

"I was born in Asterbank," she said. "So was my mother. Her mother taught her to grow reedlace in those lower beds."

Leon glanced at the rows again.

He had helped open a passage that the Palace believed led into a newly formed realm.

Edda was pointing out her grandmother’s garden.