Ch. 114 Even If You Don't

Chapter 114: Even If You Don't

Three days after Dorran sailed, Jerrit asked for a piece of chalk.

I found him outside the infirmary with a slate across his knees.

Evin sat beside him, wrapped in a blanket and watching a beetle negotiate the edge of the step.

“Mary gave me paper,” Jerrit said. “But I keep changing things.”

“What are you drawing?”

“The cisterns.”

I sat down.

He turned the slate toward me.

A hill.

Several roofs.

A square reservoir above the lower village.

Lines connecting them.

“This is where the storm broke the wall,” he said. “But the water had been escaping before that.”

“Through the masonry?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I repaired the outside two summers ago.”

I looked at the drawing more closely.

“Would you show Eleanor?”

He hesitated.

“I don’t know if I’ve remembered everything correctly.”

“She’ll ask.”

That seemed to concern him.

Then Evin said, without looking up, “Father remembers walls.”

Jerrit smiled at the slate.

“All right.”

Eleanor brought Aldren.

Aldren brought questions.

By the time we reached the workshop, Jerrit had acquired a larger board, two colors of chalk, and an audience he plainly had not expected.

He stood beside his drawing while Eleanor studied it.

“This wall?”

“Yes.”

“Stone?”

“Faced stone. Rubble inside.”

“And this channel?”

“Older. Cut into the hill.”

She pointed.

“Does it run beneath the road or beside it?”

“Beneath.”

“Are you certain?”

Jerrit nodded immediately.

“My uncle worked on the culvert.”

Eleanor looked at Aldren.

Then back at the board.

“What did you use to line the repairs?”

Jerrit told her.

She frowned.

“Who supplied it?”

“The estate store.”

“The same mixture for the outer face and the water side?”

“Yes.”

Eleanor set down her chalk.

“Well,” she said. “That didn’t help.”

It was not enough to decide how to repair the cistern.

It was enough to decide what someone should examine.

Eleanor marked the places.

Aldren wrote the questions.

Jerrit corrected the height of one wall and added a stair he had forgotten.

As he worked, his voice changed.

He stopped apologizing before every answer.

He began saying things like, “No, that part is sound,” and, “You would have to approach it from the east.”

I knew those words.

I heard them in our workshop every day.

When they finished, Eleanor asked whether he would be willing to help prepare the inspection notes.

“Paid,” she added, before he answered.

Jerrit looked at her.

“I haven’t agreed to stay here.”

“I’m asking you to work on a drawing.”

He glanced toward me.

I nodded.

After a moment, he turned back to the board.

“The overflow is wrong,” he said.

Eleanor handed him the chalk.

Sive found a different problem in the receipts.

She came to Mary’s office with three pages and a look I was beginning to recognize.

Mary moved her inkstand.

I remained very still in the chair beside the window.

“This household paid here,” Sive said.

She placed one receipt down.

“Then the same amount appears as unpaid on the next account.”

Mary leaned closer.

“An error?”

“Perhaps. But it happens again.”

A second page.

Then a third.

The charges had been copied from one list to another.

Payments had not always followed them.

Some debts might have been inflated through carelessness.

Others might have been inflated deliberately.

We could not yet tell which.

Mary asked whether Sive would write out how she had reached the figures.

Sive looked toward the shelves.

“May I use your table?”

“Yes.”

“And someone check me afterward?”

Mary pulled up another chair.

“I will.”

Evelyn heard both accounts at supper.

The drawings.

The receipts.

Jerrit’s careful corrections.

Sive’s request that someone check her work.

Our children lay on the rug beneath Helena’s watchful eye.

Garrick had caught his fish by the middle and appeared dissatisfied with how little of it would fit into his mouth.

Carol watched him.

My wife set down her spoon.

“We should ask the others what they know.”

“We have.”

“About leaving. About the debts.”

I waited.

She glanced toward the nursery.

“What did they do before all of that?”

The question stayed with me.

A mason.

An account keeper.

A fisherman.

People who had spent years learning the place we were trying to understand.

“We’ll ask,” I said.

Evelyn nodded.

Then leaned down to retrieve our son’s fish after he threw it beyond Helena’s knee.

The following afternoon, we met the families in Orselle’s lodging house.

We brought maps and paper.

They brought arguments.

The upper spring was farther east than Pell had drawn it.

The southern road had been widened.

The old ferry landing could still be used, except after heavy rain, when it became a place one particularly expressive woman described at length.

Mary did not attempt to write that description exactly.

A man who had maintained roof tanks explained which households collected rainwater.

A woman who made barrels told us where sound storage casks could be bought.

Rona named two people who had cared for the sick when the village healer ran out of supplies.

By the end, our map had acquired so many corrections that Mary began a clean copy.

Jerrit stood beside her.

Sive checked the names.

Evelyn sat with a woman describing the path children used to reach the upper farms.

I looked around the room.

We had come to ask about an island.

For the first time, I could imagine people living there.

Dorran had warned us not to expect him quickly.

The crossing depended on wind.

So did the return.

Still, I found myself asking Tamsin for news before there could reasonably be any.

On the second occasion, she looked at me.

“I’ll send it.”

“I know.”

“Even if you don’t ask.”

“Yes.”

She was kind enough not to mention it a third time.

Instead, she handed me a harbor account that needed my attention.

That occupied me for nearly an hour.

I suspected the choice had been deliberate.

Our next lesson with Aurelia took place beside the garden channel.

Water moved through a narrow stone bed beneath the trees.

A fallen leaf turned slowly in a little hollow near the bank.

Evelyn knelt to look at it.

I remained standing beside Aurelia.

“Could I make the wells on Veylan drinkable?”

She studied me.

“By doing what?”

“Taking the salt out.”

“Can you distinguish it within the water?”

I looked down at the channel.

“I don’t know.”

“Then begin there.”

She held out her hand.

A small bowl appeared.

Inside was clear water.

“Some things in this bowl belong in your cup. Others would make you ill. Can you tell me which?”

I reached with my senses.

Coolness.

Weight.

Movement.

Something finer beneath it all that slipped away when I tried to isolate it.

“No.”

Aurelia nodded.

I disliked how relieved I was that she did not ask me to pretend otherwise.

“Could you teach me?”

“Over time, perhaps. But water that looks clean may still be dangerous. You would need more than the ability to move it.”

I looked toward Evelyn.

She had risen and was listening.

“The healers could help us learn what to look for,” she said.

“Yes,” Aurelia replied. “And people who know wells, springs, and soil.”

I thought of Jerrit at the workshop board.

The roof-tank keeper.

The woman who made barrels.

For several breaths, I said nothing.

Then I asked, “What can I practice now?”

Aurelia pointed to the channel.

“Move some of it without bringing the mud.”

That was harder than lifting a bucket.

The channel bed shifted when I pulled too sharply.

Brown water rose around my first attempt.

Evelyn stood downstream and watched the sediment travel.

“Too much at once,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“Try from the surface.”

I did.

A narrow ribbon of water lifted.

Clear at first.

Then a little silt twisted through it.

I lowered it again.

Aurelia sat on the low wall and let us work.

Evelyn used a small curve of force to keep the disturbed water from spreading into the clearer pool beside us.

I drew from that.

This time, the ribbon remained clear.

We guided it into an empty basin.

Aurelia examined it.

“Better.”

“Drinkable?” I asked.

She looked at me.

“No conclusion yet.”

I nodded.

This time, I meant it.

A message arrived on the twelfth day.

It came aboard a coastal trader that had met Dorran’s vessel at Veylan.

Arwen’s handwriting occupied most of the page.

The apprentice had added several neat lines at the bottom where she had run out of room.

Mary brought it to council immediately.

I read the opening aloud.

We arrived safely. Tell Nessa the assistant she recommended is useful and should not be permitted to become vain about it.

Evelyn smiled.

Then I continued.

They had been allowed to land.

The supplies had reached the lower village.

Arwen had met the local healer.

The spring was still running.

There were sick people, but no single illness explained everything she had seen. Poor food, damaged water supplies, untreated injuries, and exhaustion had done enough between them.

She wanted more clean cloth.

Several ordinary medicines.

Someone who understood cisterns.

Eleanor held out her hand for the letter.

The next section concerned the harbor.

Dorran had been permitted to trade.

His passenger list had been inspected.

When he announced that he would carry families to the mainland, the harbor clerk demanded certificates showing that each person had settled any estate obligations.

Arwen had copied the wording.

Mary read it twice.

“Does the island’s ruler require this?” Garrick asked.

The letter answered part of that.

The order bore the seal of Lord Carven, whose estate controlled the upper spring road and several nearby farms.

It did not bear the seal of Veylan’s island council.

Dorran had requested a written explanation.

The clerk had referred him to the estate steward.

Arwen’s next sentence slanted across the page.

The steward has been difficult to find for a man whose instructions seem to be everywhere.

I put the letter down.

For a moment, I could hear the courtyard through the open window.

“Are they being held?” Evelyn asked.

Mary checked the final lines.

“The ship is free to depart. They’ve agreed on three more days while Dorran seeks an answer.”

“And Arwen?”

“Working in the lower village. She intends to return with him.”

I let out a breath.

Eleanor tapped the part concerning the cisterns.

“If I send someone, I want permission to inspect the actual damage. Not stand outside a wall while a steward explains it.”

“You’ll have that in the request,” Evelyn said.

Garrick leaned forward.

“And we address the council directly.”

“Through whom?” I asked.

“Tamsin may know a captain who carries their correspondence.”

Mary was already making the list.

A repair party.

Medical supplies.

A request to the island council concerning the departure restrictions.

Copies of the receipts, with the families’ permission.

We had enough to ask questions that someone would have to answer.

After council, I remained at the table.

Evelyn sent the last clerk away before sitting beside me.

“You want to go.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the map.

“So do I.”

I turned toward her.

“There are children there who need help. There are people being charged twice for water they can scarcely afford once.” She rested her fingertips beside the lower village. “I’m not asking you to feel less about it.”

“I know.”

“But Arwen is there now. Dorran has made a request. We should let them bring back the answer.”

I looked at the little inked harbor.

Then folded the map far enough that I could no longer see it.

“Three days.”

“Three days there,” she said gently. “Then the crossing.”

I closed my eyes.

She took my hand.

That evening, Jerrit’s daughter found me outside the infirmary.

Her name was Neri.

She had a slate tucked beneath one arm.

“Did the letter come from our island?”

“Yes.”

“Did they find my aunt?”

I knelt so she would not have to look so far up.

“Arwen says your aunt received the drawing.”

Neri held the slate more tightly.

“Did she like it?”

“She sent a message.”

I took the copied note from my pocket.

Rona had asked whether I would give it to her if I saw her first.

I read it aloud.

The tree has leaves now. Your mother’s cup is safe on the shelf. I have your drawing beside it.

Neri looked down.

Then wiped her nose with her sleeve.

“Can I keep that?”

“Yes.”

She took the paper carefully.

When she went inside, she carried it flat in both hands.

I reached our rooms before supper.

Evelyn sat on the rug with the twins.

Carol had rolled onto her stomach beside the cloth fish.

Garrick was watching the door.

He saw me.

His arms moved.

His face opened into a smile.

I stopped for half a breath.

Then crossed the room and knelt.

“Well,” I said softly. “Hello.”

He caught my finger as soon as I offered it.

Evelyn looked up.

“What happened?”

I told her about Neri’s message.

The tree.

The cup on the shelf.

She listened while Carol pushed against the blanket.

Then my wife reached for the folded letter we were keeping for our own children.

She did not open it.

Only held it for a moment.

Outside, the evening bell began to ring.

I lifted our son.

Evelyn gathered Carol.

Together, we carried them into the next room, where supper was waiting.