Chapter 39 - The Other Side's Bread

We didn't go on to Harrow. Not right away. The patients needed somewhere to stay, and the nearest suitable building was a toll shelter back along a branch road. Empty, Merik said. Stone walls. Spring nearby. He'd inspected the roof last year. I was learning how much travel depended on people remembering the condition of roofs.

Derren went on a carrier between two poles. We took turns. Tor couldn't take that load safely with one arm, so he led the animals and watched the road. Aoi walked with Jori, who'd decided she was a guard. Nemi rode the recovered horse and complained about the saddle, and Merik told her she could walk, and she told him rudeness hadn't improved since his mother's generation, and he stopped translating.

The shelter's door had fallen in. The roof held. That counted as luxury. By midday the patients had bedding and a fire and Isera had checked the water, the flue, the medicine case and the door, and finally sat down.

I put the map beside her. "Harrow Market is closer than Dunbarrow. Two physicians. Why not there?"

"The river wardens cooperate with both banks when it suits them. They may decide returning my supplies is less trouble than keeping my patients."

"Do they know you?"

"One does."

"Favorably?"

"That depends which of my letters he remembers."

A promising basis for diplomacy.

I told her what I proposed. Take her introduction to the physician she knew. Claim no authority she didn't have. No promise to hide the medicines if it came up. Ask what care could be arranged and on what terms. She listened. Then took a clean page.

"His name is Osric."

She wrote a sentence, crossed it out, and started again. I respected that.

Aoi stayed with the patients. I'd expected her to insist on coming.

"You need someone here who can help if the road turns ugly. Nessa stays too. I'm not proposing to become a fortification."

She took the commission from my hand and read the scope and gave it back.

"Don't promise Rook's Watch will take everybody before asking."

"I had not--"

"You were considering it."

I had been. Three patients. Then their dependents. Then whoever heard next. I'd already been composing the sentence.

"I will ask for options."

"Good."

She gave me bread wrapped in cloth. Isera's, from the eastern bank. Dark and dense, seeds pressed into the crust, a little sweetness under the sour. It was excellent. That only annoyed me because I could picture somebody in the capital being offended by the fact.

Harrow Market stood where two tributaries met the river. Not a fortress. Low walls anyway, built against floods and patched so often the different stone made bands along the base. Warehouses on the water. Stalls in the square. Three flags over three offices.

"Market council. River wardens. Customs house."

"Whose customs?"

"Today, Harrow's."

"And tomorrow?"

Merik looked at me. "You're learning."

The gate watchman read Tamasin's commission and brightened at her seal and then read the origin.

"Rook's Watch. Army traffic?"

"Commercial survey."

"Same road."

"Different account."

He sighed. Distinctions are less fun when you're the one at the gate.

Osric worked out of two rooms behind a bakery. He came to the door dusted with flour because the baker's daughter had run into him in the passage. He read Isera's letter, swore, asked where she was, asked how many and what conditions, and was calling for his assistant before I'd sat down.

"Can the cart reach them?"

"Not across the bridge. The western branch can."

"Then I need a driver who knows the old lane."

"Merik does."

Osric started packing. I'd prepared arguments. He'd made them unnecessary.

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"What about the supplies she took?"

He stopped. "What about them?"

"They may be claimed."

"They can submit a claim. I will tell them I have accepted the patients."

"Will that suffice?"

"No idea." He closed the bag. "Are you coming or shall I start?"

We hired a covered wagon. High price; not exploitative; high because the road was bad and the driver expected the axle to suffer. Tor found a cracked spoke before we paid, and the objection became a discount, and I watched with real satisfaction. Some competence is pleasantly legible.

While Osric collected bedding, Merik took me to the wardens. The clerk looked at the closure board we'd brought and his face tightened. It was supposed to be across the entrance. The crew had been interrupted.

"By what?"

A tall woman came out of an inner door with a roll of plans. Moss-green coat, black hair cut square at the jaw. Warden Sevrin. She asked exact questions: which support, how far through, where the notice lay, whether rope remained. She sent for the crew record and we waited, and I was starting to understand that waiting was usually the expensive part of asking properly.

The work order was real. The bridge had been judged unsafe. The crew had cut one support and withdrawn when armed riders appeared on the eastern road. The supervisor reported leaving a barrier and a notice. Somebody had removed them. Sevrin didn't know who and didn't pretend to.

"Could the crew have lied?"

"Yes."

Straight. I liked her immediately.

"Will you investigate?"

"Yes."

"Before another wagon--"

"I have already sent a closure team." She looked at me. "You are not the first person in the room to prefer travelers alive."

"Fair."

Her map had two other failed crossings marked farther north. "This road can reopen. Not by pretending it is already open."

"I am being paid to discover that distinction."

"Then earn the fee."

She gave me the closure order and a repair list. No promise of funding. Of course.

At the customs house, a familiar conversation at last. The schedule distinguished grain, salt, cloth, medicine, metal. It also distinguished origin. Western goods paid more under the current emergency arrangement.

"Because of the war?"

"Because their collectors charge ours."

I looked at the medicine rate. "That includes dressings? Physicians traveling with patients?"

He hesitated. Small. I waited.

"Personal treatment stores may be exempt when declared."

I took out a blank page. "Then I would like the declaration requirements."

His smile went away. He gave them to me. I didn't say I had a particular physician in mind.

Osric reached the shelter before sunset. Aoi stood too fast when the wagon came in and winced and I saw it and she saw me see it and neither of us said anything because Isera had already come out the door.

The two physicians looked at each other.

"You look terrible," Osric said.

"You've got flour in your hair."

"Yes. My patients throw it instead of stealing my medicines."

Isera laughed. Then put a hand over her face. Osric set his bag down.

"All right. Show me."

Derren could travel once his pain was managed and the splint reinforced. Jori's fever had eased. Nemi remained convinced everyone was exaggerating her condition to control her movements; Osric listened to her heart and told her she could complain from the wagon or complain while they carried her into it. She chose the first.

I gave Isera the declaration requirements.

"You found an exemption."

"I found a rule that appears applicable. The tariff does not resolve ownership. They can dispute that separately."

She laughed softly. "You talk like a clerk."

"I have worked very hard to become less entertaining."

Aoi made a sound behind me. I ignored it.

We split up. Osric and Isera to Harrow with the patients. Merik through the first hard stretch and back. Nessa until the transfer was done. I paid the survey's share of the transport from the agreed contingency, on the tailboard, and Isera signed for hers, and Osric countersigned.

Still, when the wagon moved off, Jori waved from under the cover, and Aoi waved back until the road turned. Then she sat on a stone. Tired. Pleased. Not entirely either.

"You stayed within the guard limit."

"Mostly."

"That is not a reassuring adverb."

"One brief brace. No repeated hits. Isera checked."

After a while she said, "Nobody asked me to join an army."

"A regrettably low standard for a pleasant journey."

"Still."

"Yes."

The survey report was not flattering. The route couldn't take regular freight yet. One bridge to rebuild. Two drains. Sections passable only in dry weather. The western branch could take pack animals and light carts, not Tamasin's proposed loads. Advantages: shorter, reliable water, a working market, physicians, salt and river goods without the military corridor. Costs: tariffs, repairs, security, uncertain jurisdiction. I wrote it all down and recommended a limited pack route before anyone tried wagons. Tor fixed the load estimate. Merik fixed the seasonal timing. Nessa added the closure.

Aoi read the part about Isera's patients. "What is this doing in the commercial report?"

I looked. Transport cost, relevant. Names and medical histories, not. I cut them.

We were all getting hard to write around.

Tamasin read it three days later. Professional disappointment by page two.

"No heavy wagons."

"Not yet."

She whistled at Tor's estimate. "The bridge is small."

"The ravine is committed to remaining beneath it."

The pack route interested her. Medicine. Fine cloth. Tools with high value for their weight. Letters. Not grain in any quantity that would feed a town, and we'd said so clearly enough that nobody could accuse us of hiding it.

"You got the current tariff schedule. Officially stamped."

"Yes."

She paid the balance without haggling.

"You brought back a bad road instead of selling me a good story. I'll pay for that."

While we'd been gone, Rookstead had held its first properly noticed vote. Ressa won. Not unanimously, which relieved her.

"I would have worried about the count."

I congratulated her. She handed me three household questions. Orchard rights. A boundary wall. And whether families without coin could commute part of their obligation through approved work without the richer households dodging every common task. A real problem, not one solved by making everyone feel heard. I asked when the next meeting was and wrote it down.

Aoi's letter from Kaito was waiting in the infirmary. He'd compared three failed return accounts and noticed the same material described under two names, one formal and one from a workshop supplier, which might explain why a later researcher thought an earlier result had been repeated when the component wasn't the same. Or it might mean nothing. He'd written that part himself.

"Has Ilyen seen it?"

"I'm sending it."

There was life in Aoi's face that hadn't been there when we opened the procurement account. Not reassurance. Work she'd picked. A person who answered her letters.

That evening a messenger came from the river warehouses with two notices from Veyr's factor. The military payment was delayed again; no more unrestricted advances. And Harrow's wardens were circulating a request for contributions to rebuild the crossings; several merchants were interested; the western customs office had noticed and wanted a review before regular traffic began.

One road cost too much because it existed. The other might be restricted because it could.

"Which problem first?" Pell asked.

Out the window the market board had been repainted. The blue ledger sat beside the brown one. The first repaired houses in Rookstead showed light.

"Grain."

The road could be argued tomorrow.