Chapter 27 - A Road With Two Ends

A letter from Pell waited at the inn.

The first line was reassuring.

The stores remain secure.

The second was less so.

There are now seventy-nine civilians.

I sat down.

Aoi leaned over my shoulder.

“Seventy-nine?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Apparently they arrived.”

“That’s generally how it happens.”

I continued reading.

Three families had come from the lower road after hearing the watch was feeding travelers. One wagon crew had remained to repair its axle. Two injured soldiers had asked permission to send for their households.

Dain had accepted six laying hens against a grain debt. One hen had escaped. Pell had included this because he could not determine whether it belonged in the asset count.

I rubbed my eyes. Aoi was smiling.

“I see no cause for delight.”

“He wrote you about a chicken.”

“A financially significant chicken.”

The next page contained delivery figures. Those were better.

Lady Veyr’s factor had sent the first river shipment. The weights matched the revised measure. The grain was dry.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Orra had accepted Berden’s extended district assignment, assuming the examiner granted it.

Gerren had arrived. That last sentence stood alone.

Below it, Pell had written:

He and Mistress Dain have discussed the debt. We have moved the discussion away from the powder store.

I read it twice. Then I laughed.

Aoi looked at me. It surprised both of us.

We could return directly to the watch. It would be the sensible choice.

The depot was growing faster than its administration. Orra had soldiers to command. Pell was learning too quickly because we had left him no alternative. Dain could feed people, but she could not make a disputed army payment arrive by shouting.

There was also the lamp.

The flood house lay north of the return road, along a branch that followed the old waterworks. One day’s detour, according to Vale. Possibly more if the crossing was bad.

I sat with the map spread across the inn table. Aoi stood opposite me.

“You can go back,” she said.

“And leave you?”

“I have two escorts and a driver.”

“The escorts are assigned to Berden.”

“He’s coming back through the same district.”

“That does not transform them into an expedition.”

She folded her arms.

I looked at the branch road.

The watch needed us. Kaito had asked something of us. Neither obligation became imaginary because the other was inconvenient.

“We send word,” I said.

Aoi waited.

“Pell gets the amended order, an answer on the store count, and authority to purchase a second dry-storage lock within a fixed sum. Orra gets the route and expected return.”

“And then?”

“We take the detour.”

She studied me.

“What?”

“I was waiting for the part where you explain how finding the river keeper helps your trade route.”

I looked back at the map.

“It probably does.”

“Solvane.”

“But that is not why we are going.”

After a moment, she nodded.

Then she sat.

“Good. Because Kaito asked me. Not the depot.”

I wrote three letters. One to Orra. One to Pell. One to Lady Veyr’s factor confirming that no new service debts could be attached to the civilian food allocation under our existing agreement.

That last had not been reported as a problem. I preferred to keep it that way.

Aoi wrote to Kaito. She took considerably longer. When she finished, she sealed the page with plain wax from the inn’s candle.

No crest. No authority. Just a folded piece of paper she wanted to reach someone.

Senn arranged transport through Leth’s brother when he next passed Stonecross.

We paid the messenger for Rook’s Watch. I watched him leave with more anxiety than I had felt handing over sums several times larger.

Pell’s ledger now existed in a place I could not see. It would continue changing without me.

I suspected this was what delegation felt like when one stopped using the word decoratively.

We left at dawn.

Berden rode at the front of the cart. He had said little since the hearing. Aoi sat beside him for the first hour.

I could hear parts of the conversation. Kaito’s recovery. Leth. The quarry cottages.

She did not disclose the location more precisely than necessary. Berden did not ask.

At a fork marked by a weathered stone post, we turned north. The road descended through reeds toward the river. Water lay in channels on both sides, reflecting the pale sky. Old embankments divided the flats. In places, trees had grown through the stonework and lifted it apart.

We stopped where a section of causeway had collapsed.

The driver climbed down. Looked. Swore.

“A manageable repair?” I asked.

“For a bridge crew.”

“For us?”

“A manageable walk.”

The flood house stood beyond the broken span. A squat stone building on raised ground, joined to the far bank by a narrow footbridge.

A wheel turned slowly beside it. Smoke rose from the chimney. Someone lived there.

Aoi held the lamp box against her chest.

Berden studied the water.

“We can cross upstream.”

A voice called from the house.

“No, you can’t.”

A woman stood on the roof. She held a long pole with an iron hook at the end.

“Bank’s hollow.”

We looked upstream.

The ground appeared firm.

Apparently this was a recurring regional deceit.

“Who are you?” she called.

Aoi raised the box.

“We brought you a lamp.”

The woman did not move.

Then she said, “I haven’t asked for one.”