35 | Three Days

Word came on the Wednesday, and it came the way everything in Greyfen came, which was through a woman with ink on two fingers who had no idea how much of the town ran through her father's shop.

Soren had gone in on the cart with Vesper's letter. He came out of Vail's yard at noon with the clerk's signature in his shirt and something wrong in the shape of the place, and it took him three streets to work out what it was.

Nobody was at the weighbridge.

<<Loraine: Note the yard.>>

I've noted the yard.

<<Loraine: In eleven visits that bridge has never once been unmanned during trading hours. A grain factor who cannot weigh cannot sell.>>

The blue door opened before he knocked, which meant Iyla had been watching the road.

"They took him Saturday," she said.

"Petrin?"

"Saturday morning, out of the yard, four of them. They didn't hit him and they didn't shout. They walked him up the market road with a hand on his elbow like he'd asked them to." She shut the door.

"Nobody's seen him since. Vail's been weighing his own grain for four days and he is terrible at it."

Soren stood in a shop that smelled of dried mint, ink and something sharper underneath.

"The girl," he said.

"That's why I've been standing at that window since Monday."

Iyla went behind the counter and came back with a folded square of paper, and Soren noticed that her hands were not steady and that she was extremely annoyed about it.

"Her name's Wren. She's nine. She's been in the house on Cordwainer Row on her own since Saturday. I've taken her food twice, and the second time there was a man sitting on the wall opposite eating an apple, and he was still there an hour later."

Loraine.

<<Loraine: They are not holding her. They are watching her, which is cheaper and works better. As long as she is sitting in that house, Petrin says whatever they want him to say, and every person on the river road who might have talked can see precisely what happens if they do.>>

And Brannick.

<<Loraine: Brannick Sallow said "not the girl, I am not an animal", and he meant it, and he also put a man on the wall opposite. Both of those are true at once, and I would like you to hold on to that, because you are about to want him to be simpler than he is.>>

"Soren." Iyla put the paper down. "I know what you're going to do."

"Do you now?"

"You're going to do something insane, and I'm going to be the person who told you about it, and I have had four days to think about that and I have not enjoyed one of them."

"Then why'd you tell me?"

"Because I would rather be the person who told you than the person who didn't," Iyla said. "Which is a horrible thing to find out about yourself on a Wednesday."

Soren picked up the paper. It was a rough plan of Cordwainer Row drawn from memory, with a cross on one house and a second cross on the wall opposite.

She had drawn the wall to scale.

"You measured this."

"I paced it." Iyla folded her arms and glared at a shelf. "Don't."

...

He did the arithmetic on the cart home and did not like any part of it.

Four days. I'm 8th Stage and most of a Stage short of 9th. The pill gets me one. That's 10th by Thursday if nothing goes wrong.

<<Loraine: Something is going wrong.>>

Something's going wrong, Soren agreed.

Petrin's been in a tannery since Saturday and there's a nine year old on Cordwainer Row eating whatever Iyla can carry past a man with an apple.

<<Loraine: And?>>

And I can't be in two places.

<<Loraine: Correct. So choose.>>

Loraine.

<<Loraine: I am not going to make this easier and I am not going to make it harder. You have four days, one pill, one draught that puts you on the floor, a wall you have to break with your teeth, and a girl on Cordwainer Row. Choose, and then live in the choice.>>

<<Lilith: Lorain—>>

<<Loraine: No. He does not get a system that tells him what the right thing is. That is the entire arrangement. We make offers. He decides what kind of man he is.>>

The cart went over the bridge.

I'm not choosing, Soren said.

<<Loraine: You do not have—>>

I'm doing both, in the same three days, and I'm going to be somewhere with a door.

He turned the folded paper over in his hands.

Loraine. What does Vesper feel if I'm eleven miles away for three nights?

<<Loraine: Alive. Calm. Distant.>>

And what does she do about it?

<<Loraine: Something.>> A pause. <<She does something, and I cannot model what, because for nine nights that mark has told her everything is normal, and on the tenth it will tell her that her property is in another town. There is no version of that woman who receives that information calmly.>>

Soren's lips broke out into a grin, an odd light in his dark eyes.

Good.

<<Loraine: I beg your pardon?>>

She's been getting a reading that says nothing's wrong for nine days and she doesn't believe it. It's making her worse. He put the paper inside his shirt. So let's give her something to actually be frightened of, and let's make sure it's the wrong thing.

...

He found Marda in the scullery and told her that Hask needed a second man at the labour estate for the Thursday load and had asked for him by name.

Marda looked at him for slightly too long.

"Did he now" she said.

"He did."

"Hask has never asked for anybody by name in his life. Hask does not know anybody's name." She went back to the pot.

"Meaning you made quite the impression, owe him something enough for him to remember you buy name...or..."

Marda didn't finish her train of thought, just quickly closing her mouth.

She turned back to look at Soren, her gaze was calm, tired and had a glimmer of something her underneath before she turned back to her pots.

"How many days do you need? To help him out."

"Three days."

"Three days, is it?"

"Yes please," Soren said calmly.

"Mm." A long pause, and the spoon did not stop moving.

"If her ladyship asks, I'll tell her exactly what you told me, in exactly those words, because that is the only part of this I am willing to do."

She didn't miss a beat even while she spoke, but he could see her hands trembling.

"That's more than I asked for."

"It's less than you needed," said Marda, "and we are both going to pretend otherwise."

Soren thanked her and left, walking over to the feed store to collect a shash of crowns he had hidden, where he met someone waiting.

Ottilie was waiting by the feed store with a bundle in her arms.

Bread, a set of clothing, and the small knife from the wash house that nobody had ever counted.

She handed it over and did not say anything at all.

"You didn't have to..." Soren said, his tone a little dumb founded and slightly touched.

"I know, but though you might need it." Ottilie replied with a faint nod.

"You don't want to know where I'm going?" Soren said.

"No."

"Ottilie."

"If I don't know," she said, "then I'm not lying when I say I don't."