Chapter 672: Things Worth Taking

Loccy knelt beside her travel bag while the pile around it grew taller than the bag itself.

A pastry tin, the chess set, two cushions, a spare blanket and her favorite mug all waited for a place.

’It all fits if I sit on the bag and nobody asks me to lift it.’

Then her ears twitched, finding a second, smaller pile tucked against the far side of the bag.

A cushion, a plum, a wooden duck and a folded drawing sat there in the same careful order.

Nyra peeked around the doorframe while her attendant waited in the corridor behind her, pretending not to watch.

"You copied me," Loccy squeaked, ears springing straight up.

"You copied first."

"That’s not how copying works!"

Nyra stepped inside and nudged her plum closer to the pastry tin, "It works if you go away for a long time."

Loccy’s bluster drained out through her nose, and she sat back on her heels to look at both piles properly. The child’s version held only things worth carrying, while hers held everything that made a room feel like a room.

"Okay, deal time," she announced, pushing one cushion toward the wall, "I keep the tin and the board, the cushions stay, and the blanket stays too."

"And mine?"

"Your duck guards my cushion until I get back, that’s a real job, and the plum..."

"Plums don’t keep," Nyra sighed.

"Then we eat it right now, obviously."

They split the plum on the floor with juice running down both wrists, and the attendant laughed from the corridor.

Vella appeared behind the attendant with a ladle still in hand, studying the bag with open suspicion.

"If you can’t carry it at a run, it isn’t coming," she reminded them, tapping the strap with the ladle.

"It’s mostly pastries!"

"Then it’s mostly not coming."

’Pastries weigh less than cushions, so technically she just agreed with me.’

---

Ferra caught her on the stairs with a hand axe, its handle banded with newer wood below the head.

"Your man wants to toss this," the smith grumbled, shoving it under Loccy’s nose, "since there’s a fresh kit order and new steel coming."

"Is the new steel bad?"

"New steel’s fine, but this head took three seasons of my work and somebody fitted this handle properly when the old one split."

Loccy turned the axe over and found the joint, neat and tight where two different hands met in the grain.

"So it’s two people’s work now," she murmured.

"Two people’s work, one tool, and I’m not burying either of them in a scrap bin, damn it."

"You could just say you love it."

"I could also throw you down these stairs," Ferra growled.

She snatched it back and stomped downstairs, still swearing at a decision nobody was making anymore.

Loccy stayed on the step while yesterday’s station strip came back to her, small and stubborn under Ferra’s lamp.

’Somebody kept another person’s work alive out there, and that’s why Ferra keeps staring at the bloody thing.’

---

The market smelled of fried dough and smoke, and Rumi was already chewing before anybody reached the first stall.

"Skewers," she declared, waving two of them like trophies, "eaten hot, right here, as the gods intended."

"The gods intended you to carry something that survives a week," Nari drawled, tapping a string of smoked sausage.

"You sound like Vella."

"Vella sounds like me, I said it first."

Loccy pried the tin open and bit into a honey pastry, "Ten silver says those skewers die before the next stall."

"No bet," Nari snorted, "I’ve watched her eat."

The sisters bickered down the row with tails swishing in opposite directions, one hungry now, the other planning for later. Loccy watched their baskets fill with completely different food, and found the difference oddly comforting after so many shared fights.

Nyra stopped at a stall of jars and pointed at the smallest pot of clover honey on the shelf.

"For the house," she said, cupping it with both hands, "for the ones who stay behind and keep the garden."

Hajin crouched to pay the stall keeper from his own pocket, ruffling Nyra’s hair on the way back up.

"Good pick, that’s the most sensible thing anyone’s bought all morning, including me!"

"You bought nothing," Loccy pointed out.

"Exactly, flawless record, undefeated, nobody touch my purse."

[ HearthKeeper: The kid bought a present for the people staying home, I’m not crying, you’re crying. ]

[ Seoul_Tactician: Rumi eats now, Nari packs for later, same litter, completely different stomachs. ]

[ IronVanguard: Loccy is still clutching that pastry tin like it’s a war trophy. ]

He walked beside Loccy past the cloth sellers, glancing at the route list folded in his hand.

"So which part of the road do you actually want to see?" Hajin asked, nudging her shoulder with his elbow.

"Not the ancient mystery part, I mean you, what are you looking forward to?"

She blinked at him, then at the tin, then at the hills beyond the market roofs.

"Animals," she admitted, ears tipping forward, "herds, real ones, the kind that go somewhere every year without anyone telling them."

"And somewhere flat and wide with no walls, where I can run until my legs give up instead of the street ending."

He stared at her for a moment, then dug out a charcoal stub and scratched a line through the paper.

"There goes the ruined lookout tower," he muttered, scribbling beside the crossed line, "grass flats past the ford instead, you get one whole afternoon to run."

"Wait, really?"

"Really, and if you trip over a herd I’m laughing first and helping second."

Loccy flushed to the tips of her ears and hugged the tin, wordless for a whole three steps.

’He changed the plan for me, for running, not for any destiny or rank, just running.’

---

An Alder runner caught them at the fountain with a sealed letter from the road guide, sent through Eirwen’s people.

Hajin broke the seal, and his easy mood dropped away while he read the second paragraph twice.

"There’s a fort upstream on the old road," he said quietly, "and it charges passage in labor instead of coin."

"Labor as in work?" Rumi asked around her skewer.

"Labor as in people, as in they grab whoever can’t pay and put them to... shit, forced labor, that’s what it says."

Rumi stopped chewing, and Nari’s hand closed over her sausage string without a word.

Hajin crushed the letter’s edge in his fist, "Those bastards put a price on people and called it a road toll."

"We’re going anyway," Nari said, already checking the knot on her basket.

"Obviously we’re going, I just wanted to swear about it first."

Loccy pulled the honey pastry from her mouth, wrapped it in its paper, and set it back inside the tin. She pressed the lid down until it clicked, then held the tin against her stomach and looked up at him.

"Does it stop people leaving too?"

"Letter doesn’t say," he answered, folding it along its crease, "but I’m going to find out, and nobody gets kept there."

She nodded once, and the knot in her chest loosened when his jaw set like that.

[ ashley(mod): Forced labor at a river fort, noted, waiting for more from the guide before anyone guesses. ]

[ TacticalNerd: He’s not even angry yet, that’s the scary part. ]

[ ShadowMage44: Grass flats are still on the list, he kept her afternoon. ]

The others drifted back toward the fountain, and Loccy opened the tin again once the street felt steady.

She leaned her head against Hajin’s arm while she chewed, and he let her stay there without a single joke.

"You’re getting crumbs on my sleeve," he mumbled anyway.

"Fifty silver says you don’t brush them off."

’Ordinary things first, then forts, and none of this gets taken away from us.’