Chapter 34- What Was Left After Paying Everyone

The first person we paid cried.

I had prepared for complaints. This proved considerably more difficult.

Her name was Ista. She had spent eleven nights helping Halwen with the wounded, changing bedding, carrying water, and sitting beside men who woke believing they were still under attack.

Pell counted her wages onto the table. She looked at the coins. Then at him.

“That’s too much.”

He checked the entry.

“No.”

“I only--”

“Eleven nights,” he said. “And four days.”

Ista pressed her lips together. I became extremely interested in the receipt.

After a moment, she picked up the coins. Carefully. As though they might be withdrawn if handled with too much confidence.

“Do I sign?”

“If you can.”

“I can make my mark.”

Pell turned the paper toward her. She made it. Then she stood aside, wiping her face with the heel of her hand.

The next person approached. He immediately disputed his total. I was almost relieved.

---

Paying wages took two hours.

The work had been completed over days, under different arrangements, while the watch changed around everyone involved. A man who had agreed to repair a stair in exchange for meals now wanted the cash equivalent. Pell had written three round coppers beside a day of ordinary labor, with meals entered separately. The skilled repairs kept their individual rates. Another had been promised wages but preferred grain because his wife trusted food more than silver.

We honored both where the records supported them. Where the records did not, we asked witnesses.

Once, Dain informed a man that if he intended to claim three days of work, she would appreciate hearing how he had performed one of them while asleep behind the kitchen. He accepted two.

Pell kept the disputed entries separate. I had taught him that. He was already doing it more neatly.

By noon, the payment table had emptied the treasury box and populated the courtyard with small plans. Ista intended to buy shoes. Baret wanted a proper saw. Two sisters argued over whether their combined wages should purchase cloth or a goat.

The goat was not present to offer its view.

I watched the coins move from hand to hand. At the castle, money had been something given to make us leave. Here it had names attached. Most of those names wanted things we did not yet have anyone selling.

“We need a market,” I said.

Pell looked up.

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“We have a kitchen.”

“An excellent observation. Unfortunately, Ista cannot wear soup.”

He considered the courtyard.

“Traveling traders might come if we tell them when.”

“Yes.”

“And if there are enough buyers.”

I looked at the empty treasury box.

“For approximately six minutes, we have buyers.”

---

Aoi found me counting what remained.

She sat opposite without asking.

“You look ill.”

“I have discovered that earning money is an inefficient method of possessing it.”

“How much left?”

I showed her.

She whistled softly.

“That bad?”

“Not bad. Committed. A useful distinction made primarily by people trying not to panic.”

The wages were paid. The next grain delivery had its advance. Gerren had received part of what we owed him.

Halwen’s account waited. That was the problem.

The infirmary needed clean linen, oil, soap, bitterleaf, and copper binding wire for preparing its crown dressings. Most could be bought through Stonecross. Bitterleaf had become expensive enough that Halwen had underlined the figure twice.

“Can we grow it?” Aoi asked.

“Eventually.”

“Find it?”

“She says it grows in the old reed beds below the north weir.”

Aoi looked at the map beside the ledger.

“How far?”

“Half a day.”

“What lives there?”

“An unusually sensible first question.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

I gave her Halwen’s list.

She read it, then folded the paper.

“I’ll ask her.”

“You are not volunteering to fight something.”

“I’m volunteering to ask a physician about a plant.”

“With you, these categories have become alarmingly adjacent.”

Aoi stood.

Then paused.

“Did you pay yourself?”

I looked at the ledger.

There was no entry.

“You worked,” she said.

“I had food and a room.”

“So did some of them.”

“I can defer--”

“Then write down that you’re deferring it.”

I looked up.

She held my gaze.

“Otherwise you’ll start thinking they owe you for being generous.”

It was a thoroughly unpleasant thing to hear. Especially because I could see exactly how I might do it.

I drew the ledger closer.

“An advisory role continues to suit you.”

“No. It suits you that I keep doing it for free.”

She left before I could answer.

I added two entries. Mine. And the hours she had spent teaching safe lifting, grip breaks, and how not to stand behind a frightened animal.

She could refuse the payment if she wished. I would not make the work disappear first.

---

The idea of a market survived contact with Dain.

Barely.

“Where?”

“The yard.”

“Which yard?”

I looked around.

She followed my gaze with theatrical patience.

“The one full of wagons, wounded men, laundry, and Gerren’s opinions?”

“Outside the west wall.”

“Then you need stalls. A water point. Someone checking weights. Someone stopping people from selling a boiled rag as medicine.”

“Halwen could--”

“Halwen is occupied preventing actual people from dying.”

I waited.

Dain took the paper.

“Every sixth day,” she said. “Morning only. No traders sleeping inside without paying for space. Food stalls downwind of the privies.”

“An ambitious standard.”

“Start high.”

She added three more conditions. Pell would post the accepted measure. The first market would charge no stall fee. Afterward, fees would depend upon whether the traders actually sold anything.

“A trial,” she said. “Not another thing we declare permanent because you found a spare board to write on.”

I accepted the paper.

Outside, the sisters were still discussing the goat. One of them had begun arguing that a goat could eventually purchase cloth. I suspected she would win.

---

Halwen approved the reed-bed expedition. Not an expedition, she insisted. A collecting trip. Those involved were to remember the difference.

She selected Nessa, a lean soldier with close-cropped sandy hair who had gathered bitterleaf before. Gerren provided a cutting hook. Dain supplied a sack, waxed cloth, and instructions not to crush the roots beneath anything heavy.

Aoi received permission to go on the condition that she used no full-body bracing unless somebody was actually about to die. She listened without arguing.

That concerned me more than an argument would have.

Orra assigned a second soldier to remain with the cart.

I asked whether I should stay at the watch. She looked at the medical bill. Then at me.

“You’ve spent three days indoors.”

“A condition I have generally found survivable.”

“You need to see where the things you purchase come from.”

I had no reply that did not make me sound exactly as sheltered as she intended.

We left the following morning. Behind us, Pell nailed the market notice beside the gate. He had written the letters large enough to be read from the road. A little crookedly.

I said nothing.