Chapter 38 - The Weight the Bridge Could Bear

Tamasin offered us work two mornings later. Actual work. A fee. A task. No language about destiny. I found the clarity refreshing.

She wanted the old eastern lane inspected as far as Harrow Market, a river town past the abandoned toll roads. If light wagons could use the crossing, her caravan saved nearly two days.

"You have guards."

"I have guards paid to protect cargo. Sending a loaded wagon to discover the bridge is gone is an expensive survey."

"And you expect me to determine the state of a bridge."

"I expect you to take Gerren's apprentice, who can. And if the road works, I want terms with Rookstead. You can inspect what I'm asking you to price."

East. Beyond the place we knew. I looked at the map longer than I needed to. Past Harrow the paper simply stopped, a clean edge where the mapmaker had run out of road or nerve, and I caught myself wondering whose name would go on the next sheet.

Aoi wanted to come. I asked whether she wanted paid work or an excursion.

"Both."

She held up a folded note. Halwen's permission: travel, ordinary exercise, limited defensive skill use. No prolonged bracing. No repeated heavy impacts. Aoi had underlined the first two. Halwen had underlined the last two. I admired the balance.

Orra assigned Nessa and one soldier alongside Tamasin's route specialist, Merik. Gerren sent his apprentice with the shortened arm, whose name I finally learned was Tor, along with six separate instructions all beginning with some version of if someone tells you it is probably sound.

Pell stayed. Not reluctantly. "Bring back measurements. Not impressions. Those don't tell us how wide a wagon can be."

I had raised an excellent critic. It had happened faster than I'd planned.

At the gate, Aoi examined the fee receipt.

"Look at us. Taking a quest."

"A survey commission."

"A paid job from a merchant to inspect a dangerous road."

"I refuse to improve your terminology merely because the description is accurate."

Merik, checking the elk's harness, smiled without looking up. The crown stayed at the watch. I'd considered bringing it, then pictured explaining its role in a bridge inspection. Some decisions get easier when you say them out loud.

The lane went through Rookstead first. Two roof frames against the sky. A woman planting along her cleared plot. Ressa at a boundary peg with Pell and an old man who remembered exactly where the orchard used to end, and a neighbor who remembered differently. We left before anyone could ask me to arbitrate.

Woodland after that. For the first hour, pleasant. Birdsong. Pale leaves. Then a tree across the road, and the world resumed its habits.

By midday: two blocked drains, one usable spring, and a stretch where the old paving had survived a century of neglect. Tor got almost cheerful.

"Good base."

"Can we use it?"

"After clearing."

"How much clearing?"

He looked down the road. "A lot."

I wrote that down less elegantly.

We ate at a ruined shrine. Its figure had no crown and held no weapon, just a bowl in its carved hands with fresh river stones in it. Merik left a piece of bread on the ledge.

"Your god?" Aoi asked.

"No. Someone keeps the place."

Tor had pickles from Leth. He handed a letter to Aoi from Kaito, and she moved off to read it, and I ate my bread and didn't look. When she came back her face was complicated but calm.

"He said I'm allowed to enjoy things."

"An impertinent instruction."

"Yes." She took another pickle. Chewed. Then pointed the next one at me. "Use it on me."

"Use what?"

"Your thing. The lie thing. I say three things, you tell me which one's wrong."

"Insight costs mana."

"You're just sitting there. What else are you spending it on?"

It was a game. I told myself it was research, because that made it cheaper.

"I can't whistle," she said. "I won a calligraphy prize in middle school. I hate pickles."

The first went by clean. The third cracked like a bell with a flaw in it before she'd finished the word. That part I'd expected. The second was stranger. Not the crack. Something duller underneath it, a string a hair out of tune.

"The pickles are a lie," I said. "And the prize is... not quite."

She stared at me. "It was an honorable mention."

"That's what it sounded like."

"That is so creepy." She looked delighted. "Again."

We didn't do it again. Four points was too much to spend on a road with a bridge somewhere ahead of it. But for the next mile I listened to Merik's directions and Nessa's warnings for that flat note, and wondered whether the thing I'd been using as a lie detector could be taught to hear the edges of the truth.

This story has been stolen from NovelPhoenix. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The old bridge showed up late afternoon. A narrow ravine, not the river. Stone piers, timber deck, several boards missing, water over dark rock below. Tor tied a rope round his waist before he went near it. Merik anchored the other end to a tree.

Tap. Listen. Move. He got to the middle and stopped.

"Fresh cut."

One of the supports had been sawn from underneath. Not all the way. Enough that weight might finish the job.

"When?" Nessa asked.

"Not long. Edges are clean."

We looked at the far bank. Trees. Old road. Nothing moving. Aoi's hand went toward her sword; Merik raised two fingers and we waited.

"Trap?" Nessa said eventually.

"Or somebody wanted the road closed," Merik said.

"If they wanted it visibly closed," I said, "they could have removed the deck."

Nobody answered. It had already occurred to them.

Then a cart wheel, slow and uneven, on the other side. Merik stepped forward. "Stop there!"

A thin horse came out of the trees, harness dark with sweat. A small cart behind it. A woman driving, grey cloak, hood down, short black curls, a narrow tired face. She saw us, saw the spear, pulled up short.

"Road wardens?"

"Survey party," I called.

"The bridge is unsafe."

"So are most things."

Her accent wasn't ours. Not so far off we couldn't understand her. Far enough that Nessa's grip shifted on the spear. The woman saw that and lifted both hands off the reins.

"I have three patients in the cart."

Halwen had made certain words hard to ignore.

"Fever. One broken leg. Nothing contagious, as far as I can tell."

"As far as you can tell," Nessa repeated.

"I am a physician. If I knew everything, I would have chosen another road."

"Can you turn back?" Aoi asked.

The woman looked over her shoulder. "No."

She pulled back part of the blanket. A small child. A bandaged leg beyond him. A third shape too still for comfort.

"We came from the eastern bank."

Nessa's face changed. Merik said something in a language I didn't know; the woman answered; his shoulders eased a fraction.

"She says the crossing behind her is under military inspection."

"Whose military?"

The woman heard. "Does it improve the bridge if I answer?"

"No."

"Then perhaps we start with the bridge."

Tor was already looking at the anchor points. Aoi looked at me. Not asking permission to care. Waiting to see what I'd do with three people who'd arrived from the wrong side of a war.

I put the notebook away.

"Tell us what you need," I said to Tor.

Tor didn't start by asking how brave anyone felt, which did wonders for my confidence in him.

"How much weight?"

"Too much," the physician said.

"Useful. Can the patients sit?"

"One can. One shouldn't. One will object regardless."

"Leave the cart for now."

He pointed at a line of stones under the damaged deck. "The old abutment holds. We put a lighter crossing there. One person at a time. Packs separately."

"With what?"

He looked at the boards under my feet. "Your road."

So civilization could occasionally be improved by taking part of it apart.

I carried boards. The first was heavier than I expected. The second was exactly as heavy, which felt like a failure of imagination on the world's part.

Across the ravine the physician climbed into the cart. A boy of maybe eight with a flushed face and an intense interest in us. A man splinted from hip to ankle. And a third patient, wrapped so completely I could only see a narrow face and one grey hand. Not a child. An elderly Vey woman with her hair braided close.

Merik spoke to her in his own language. Her eyes opened. She said something. His expression changed.

"What?"

"She says we're taking too long."

"An excellent sign."

The physician looked up. "She has been telling me that since yesterday. I'm Isera."

"Aoi. That's Tor making the bridge. Merik beside him. Nessa on the bank."

"And him?"

"Solvane."

Isera looked at the board in my arms. "Useful?"

"Occasionally," Aoi said.

I adjusted my grip and kept carrying.

The boy went first. Jori. He objected to the rope. He objected to leaving his shoes in the cart. He stopped objecting when Aoi explained that complaining would be easier from our side.

The crossing looked temporary because it was. Boards along the surviving masonry, secured where Tor judged the load safe. Merik with the line. Nessa down on the stone guiding the boy's feet. Jori looked into the ravine and then at Aoi.

"You come."

"I'm here."

"Over here."

Aoi glanced at Tor. He nodded. She crossed slowly. No shining shield. No leap. Careful steps and a hand held out to a frightened kid. She brought him back with his fist in her sleeve, and at the near bank he immediately demanded his shoes. I fetched them on the next load.

He examined me. "Are you her servant?"

"For the duration of this operation."

He nodded like the hierarchy now made sense.

The injured man, Derren, had been awake the whole time, which made it worse. Isera explained. He asked for something to bite. She gave him folded leather. We moved him on the cart's backboard with the leg supported separately, and halfway across he cried out and my hands wanted to tighten.

"Don't lift," Tor said sharply.

I held where I was. Aoi stood on the lower ledge beside him, ready to steady. That was the plan.

Then a piece of old mortar broke under her boot. She dropped several inches. The board tilted.

Pale light round her arm. One brief brace. Not a full hold. She pressed the board back into line while Merik took the weight.

"Move," she said.

We moved. At the near bank she climbed out with Nessa's help. I looked at her shoulder. She saw.

"Not now."

I obeyed. Derren was breathing. Only when Isera nodded over the splint did I notice how hard I'd been holding my jaw.

Nemi, the elderly Vey, crossed last, after refusing to be carried until Isera described the alternative in some detail. Merik spoke to her during the transfer. She answered twice. He looked offended after the second.

"What did she say?"

"That my grip is poor."

"Is it?"

"No."

Nemi said something else. Merik exhaled.

"She says my mother would know."

"You know her?"

"No."

"An ambitious criticism."

Isera laughed for the first time and then sat down hard beside her patients, and for several minutes nobody asked anyone where they'd come from.

We couldn't bring the cart over. Tor said so with a finality I'd learned to respect. We recovered medicine, bedding, food, and the papers Isera kept under the seat. The horse could be led upstream to a ford, eventually.

Nessa came back from the eastern approach carrying a muddy board.

PASSAGE CLOSED. BY ORDER OF THE HARROW RIVER WARDENS.

Two nail holes where it had been hung.

"Found it downhill."

I looked at the bridge. The sawn support.

"Someone closed it."

"Someone hid the notice afterward."

Two acts. Possibly one person. Possibly not.

"I came through here twelve days ago," Isera said. "My wagon crossed."

"That doesn't answer it," Tor said.

She looked at him. Then nodded. "No. It doesn't."

There was no reason to invent a bandit plot when incompetence was available. There was also no reason to pick incompetence just because it was less frightening.

"Keep it," I told Nessa.

"I intended to."

We camped on the western bank. Nessa found a hollow above the road. Merik brought the horse round by the ford. Tor marked the failed crossing so the next traveler wouldn't find it under a loaded wheel.

Jori fell asleep against Nemi's shoulder. She complained about it until he was out. Then she didn't move.

"Where were you going?" I asked Isera.

"Dunbarrow, eventually. Somewhere with room before that. The infirmary I worked in was requisitioned. For soldiers, officers, stores, and a committee that needed somewhere dry to argue."

An institution I could picture.

"My patients were discharged. These three were not fit to go where they were told."

"So you brought them west."

"I brought them somewhere else."

Small correction. Important.

"Who might be following?" Aoi asked.

Isera looked at her papers. "The district physician's office may want the remaining medicines returned."

"Stolen?"

"Removed with patients whose treatment I had already accepted."

"That wasn't the question," I said.

"No." She met my eyes. "I left with supplies I was not authorized to take."

"How much?"

She told me. Enough to matter. Not enough to explain a dangerous road unless the people in the cart mattered more.

Aoi reached for the kettle. "More tea?"

Isera held out her cup.