Chapter 47 - The House With Blue Shutters

Dalis disliked the infirmary, which didn't make him unusual, but his reasons were ones Halwen hadn't heard before.

"I can hear every examination."

"Your hearing isn't impaired."

"No."

"Then that would follow."

He looked at the curtain between him and Oren, behind which somebody was asking the injured man to move his foot, and Oren was swearing.

"I spent six weeks in a room like this after the summoning. Every day someone came to the bed beside mine and said he was improving. Every day I waited to hear whether they'd say it to me."

Halwen put down her board. "What would you prefer?"

"Somewhere I can sit without being examined accidentally."

"The storehouse office has a stove."

"And a provisioner," I said from the doorway.

Halwen looked at me. I moved my papers.

He spent the next afternoon by the stove while Hester joined Dain in the kitchen without anyone arranging it; she'd seen work and gone to it, and by evening Ressa had spoken to her about wages. Dalis asked Pell for a writing board and the two of them talked signal notation for an hour in terms I understood one at a time and not at all together. When I came back he'd copied his service dates onto one page. No testimony. No appeal. An employment history.

"I can still keep a return book," he said. "I'm not asking you to find me something."

"I had not offered."

He looked relieved. Then embarrassed. "People have been offering. Since Bracken."

The story had gotten to the watch before he'd recovered from the journey. The bell. The smoke. The injured ex-soldier who'd remembered something useful. People wanted to be kind. Kindness, here, usually turned up carrying a task.

"I told Pell I'd explain the signal marks. I didn't say I could run the whole line."

"I will tell anyone who asks to speak to you first."

"Thank you." He went back to his page. Then: "And don't call me the man who saved the relay."

"I have not."

"I heard the kitchen."

Dain's voice was carrying down the passage. I wasn't going to be the one correcting her description. I could tell her he hated it.

Pell brought a letter from Ilyen. The fragment hadn't reached her yet; she wanted its service history, especially any cleaning or heat treatment. I'd recorded what the quartermaster knew. Pell had found something else.

"The donor office and the survey archive used the same list. The withdrawal returns. Bracken's closure inventory went through the regional office. That's how Ilyen found the marker. And the donor clerk found Dalis because discharged signal personnel were being asked where final pay should be sent before those offices closed."

The same corridor being emptied. Its instruments and its people finally showing up in accounts because the buildings that held them were about to stop existing.

"So Bracken was where the records had become current."

"Not the only place they checked. Just the place both answers came from."

I put that in the cover letter.

Ressa came after the meal and put the Harrow invitation on my desk.

"Are you willing to come without representing the households? You advise us privately. If the chair asks for your account of the survey, you give it. Otherwise I speak for Rookstead. No commitments. No supplementary papers submitted without asking."

"Yes."

"Pell keeps the master file. You get copies of what you need."

A minor precaution. It hurt anyway. I could feel the urge to get defensive warming up. I left it unemployed.

"I want your help," she said. "I also want to know what help I'm receiving before it becomes something done in my name."

"That is reasonable."

"I wasn't asking you to certify it."

The preparation needed less brilliance than patience. I split the agenda by who could actually refuse each proposal. Harrow could deny market entry. The crown could restrict export and withdraw troops. The wardens could close unsafe crossings. Carriers could pick another road. Householders could refuse to pledge property. None of them could make the others' obligations vanish by saying urgent. The notebook looked less impressive when I was done. It would be easier for Ressa to use.

Aoi came in with a sheet of ruled paper.

"I'm going. Isera wants to compare the donor symptoms with something she's seen in field healers. People with persistent exhaustion after forced mana work. That's what she said. I asked." She put the sheet down. "I also want a passage rule for patients. We nearly lost three people at that bridge while everyone was deciding which side owned the road."

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"Ressa should see this."

"She has."

Of course she had.

"Where's Dalis?"

"Hester found them a quieter room near the west stair."

"Is he coming?"

"No."

"Good. Everyone keeps asking him for his story." She took her page back. "I'm asking for the road to carry people who don't want to be useful first."

She went to find Halwen. I stayed at the desk until Pell came to ask whether I meant to surrender the lamp before midnight.

Harrow had prepared rooms for the conference. Not enough rooms. Apparently that was tradition.

The lodging house had blue shutters, a narrow staircase, and a landlady who sorted guests by whether she thought they'd break the furniture. Orra got the room by the stairs. Ressa and Aoi shared the attic. I got the eaves, and a bed designed for a shorter diplomat.

Tamasin was in the corridor when I brought my pack up. She'd arrived ahead of us. For a moment we blocked each other. Then she stepped aside.

"Your room leaks at the western corner."

"You have stayed here?"

"Twice."

"Thank you."

She went down. I put the records on the eastern side. There were kinds of knowledge I didn't get from her anymore. The location of a bad roof was still available.

Dinner was late because the secretary had ordered for thirty and thirty-eight had turned up. The landlady blamed the secretary. The secretary blamed the delegations. The kitchen blamed the fish. Warden Sevrin ate standing by the door because she expected to be called out. A crown road officer described the withdrawals to a Harrow councilor who kept interrupting to ask whether he wanted more mustard. Halric's steward complained his room overlooked the stable; the landlady said the horses hadn't complained about him yet.

I was enjoying myself more than I'd expected.

Then Deputy Receiver Fenn came in and apologized for nothing. Plum sleeves. Polished seal chain. Enough scent to compete with the fish.

"Friends," he announced.

Three people near me got less cheerful.

He oversaw conference payments, lodging accounts, local contributions, and certain receiving functions for road supplies. A position from which a man could be useful in many directions. Fenn had chosen expensive buttons. He worked the room touching shoulders and remembering names just slowly enough that the effort looked like a compliment. At Tamasin, he stopped.

"Still trading, then."

She kept cutting her bread. "Yes."

"Good. Resilience. One hates to see a setback become a habit."

Orra shifted beside me.

"Do you need something, Fenn?"

"Only the pleasure of seeing everyone assembled."

"Then keep moving. There are people behind you."

He smiled and moved. I'd come in determined not to make every unpleasant man interesting. Fenn was making it easy.

Ressa got the delegation accounts before the second course.

"Attendance charge. Lodging charge. Winter-road contribution." Then: "Priority docket charge. Did we request priority?"

"The deputy receiver's office has placed the restoration settlements in an expedited category."

"At whose request?"

"I couldn't say."

"Then remove it. Bring the authority if it cannot be removed."

I looked at my plate. The conversation needed nothing from me. That was both hard and pleasant.

Aoi spent dinner beside Isera talking fast enough that I lost the thread. Recovery, exertion, the difference between depleted mana and a body that no longer tolerated replenishment. Then Isera said something that made Aoi laugh and deny it. Later Aoi told me she'd been accused of treating her own recovery schedule as a suggestion written for less determined people.

"I can see why you objected."

"I didn't ask."

She carried two cups of tea up to the attic. I stayed below. Isera was still at the table, sorting her notes into piles only she could follow, and I'd been carrying a question since the first time I watched Halwen unwind a bandage.

"Halwen's crown dressings," I said. "Would they work here?"

"Here, they're very good linen." She didn't look up. "The working belongs to the western crown. It reaches as far as that crown reaches and stops where it stops. Harrow keeps its own arrangements. On my side of the river we had dressings of our own, and yours were linen there too."

"So a cut closes faster on one bank than the other."

"A little faster." She tied a pile with string. "A little is a great deal when it's your cut."

I stood by the table longer than the answer needed. A line on a map decided how quickly a wound closed, and somewhere a crown was the reason the line was there. I wanted to know what it took to be one.

I was on my way to the stairs when I heard Tamasin at the front desk finding that her lodging sum had changed since she arrived. A compulsory store-verification fee, for merchants seeking recognized participation in the route.

"Show me the approved schedule."

Fenn patted his case. "Tomorrow. Tonight, I'm trying to save you the delay."

"Then tomorrow."

"You understand that unresolved accounts can affect access to the commercial session."

"I understand you keep saying things you won't put on a receipt."

His smile went. For a second he looked younger. Meaner. Then he saw me by the stairs.

"Lord Solvane. A word?"

I didn't want one. That had stopped being a good enough reason.

He took me to an empty side room with a map over the hearth, its border painted with fish, and closed the door most of the way.

"I hear you are no longer conducting the village's external business."

"I am attending as an adviser."

"Temporarily, naturally." He lowered his voice. "The conference will be crowded. Many petitions. Some more viable than others. Rookstead has influential friends. It also has a reputation for creating work."

"That is what settlements do."

He smiled like we'd shared a joke. "I can make sure your medical-passage proposal is heard before the supply exemptions close."

"At what price?"

"A contribution to the conference's discretionary expenses."

"Recorded how?"

"No need to trouble the formal accounts with every small courtesy."

The room got wonderfully simple. No hidden moral argument. No starving soldiers waiting on the proceeds. A man wanted money because he controlled a doorway.

I let Insight settle on him while he talked. No wrong note anywhere. He meant every word. That had stopped telling me what I needed to know.

So I gave him something to read instead. I let my eyes go to the door and back, the way people do when they're checking who might overhear. I knew what wanting to be let into a room looked like on my own face. Corvane had shown me.

"How much?"

He named it. Big enough to hurt a village. Small enough that a merchant would resent it rather than sue.

I let the silence go on.

"I would advise against consulting too widely," he added. "These arrangements depend upon trust."

"I shall remember that."

"Good. Bring your answer before the morning bell."

I went upstairs, took one clean sheet, and wrote the conversation down while I still had the words. Then I knocked on Ressa's door.

She listened without interrupting. Aoi sat on the bed behind her holding tea she'd forgotten to drink.

"Did you agree?"

"No."

"Promise anything?"

"No."

"Suggest we could pay?"

"I asked the amount."

"Write that too."

"Already done."

Over Ressa's shoulder, Aoi raised her eyebrows at me, very slightly. I gave her the smallest nod I could manage. He'd meant all of it.

She looked at me a moment longer than the answer needed. "What are you going to do?"

Ressa looked at the schedule. "Find out which part he actually controls."

Several plans arrived in my head at once. I asked instead: "Do you want me there?"

"Yes. But I speak."

She folded my account under her disputed invoice and turned to Aoi. "Who put the medical item on the agenda?"

"Isera submitted it through Sevrin's office."

"Good. We ask them first."

Aoi stood. Ressa caught her sleeve. "Tomorrow."

"They're still awake."

"So is Fenn. We have a written schedule. It will survive the night."

Aoi sat down again, reluctantly. I went to my room.