Chapter 61: A Place at the Table

Anja was waiting on the wrong side of the receiving station.

The keeper had told her twice that her father would arrive by road. She had listened politely, asked whether the bread set aside for him was covered, and gone back to watching the river.

Lisbeth saw her from the wagon: a thin girl perched on a mooring stone, her knees drawn up beneath a borrowed coat. At a distance she might have been mistaken for a lanky human adolescent. Then she stood, and the scale of the bucket beside her became apparent.

Hadrun made a sound behind Lisbeth.

She raised her hand to halt the horses.

Anja turned toward the creak of the harness. For a moment she looked directly at her father without seeming to understand what she saw. Her gaze traveled over the wagon, the blankets, the bandage at his neck.

Then she ran.

“Wait,” Lisbeth began, because Hadrun was already trying to climb down.

Bruni stepped forward and offered an arm. Between them, they got Hadrun onto the grass just before his daughter reached him.

She struck his chest hard enough to hurt.

He did not make a sound about that.

Lisbeth moved away, drawing the keeper with her. There were questions to ask about the cough, provisions to arrange, a perfectly serviceable wheel to inspect. Behind them, Hadrun was saying his daughter’s name over and over, while Anja held fistfuls of his coat as though she meant to anchor him to the earth.

Bruni remained close enough to catch either of them.

After a while, Lisbeth heard the girl ask, “Did you get lost?”

Hadrun’s answer came slowly.

“Yes, little riverbird.”

“I stayed where the boats came.”

“I know.”

“They wanted me to go.”

His voice broke.

“I know.”

Leaving took longer than arriving.

Anja would not release her father’s sleeve while Lisbeth examined her. Hadrun sat on the wagon step and endured the tugging without complaint. When Lisbeth asked the girl to breathe deeply, he did it too.

“Only one patient at a time,” she told him.

Anja looked from her to her father and almost smiled.

The cough needed warmth, rest, and watching. The girl had been hungry often enough that the keeper’s generous meals had become a source of anxious planning: bread hidden in her bedding, half an apple wrapped in a handkerchief, careful questions about when the next pot would come off the fire.

Lisbeth helped her pack every piece of food she had saved. There would be time to explain abundance once Anja had experienced enough of it to believe her.

Then came the other children.

A little boy with a linen patch over one knee clung to Anja’s coat. Two sisters brought her a crooked braid of reeds. Anja knelt to speak to them, promising nothing until she had looked toward the keeper and asked where they would be going.

“Westmere, if their aunt is found there,” the woman said. “We sent the description yesterday.”

Anja absorbed that with a seriousness Lisbeth disliked seeing in someone so young.

“Will you tell me?”

“I will.”

Lisbeth gave the keeper the address of the receiving office in Concordia. Beside it she wrote her own name.

When they finally climbed aboard, Hadrun produced the wooden dragon.

“A girl sent this,” he said. “For you.”

Anja turned it over carefully. One wing bore the shine of much handling.

“Does she want it back?”

“She said it was yours.”

The girl held it against her coat, then leaned into her father’s side. A little later, when she thought the wagon wheels covered her voice, she asked whether he knew about her mother.

Lisbeth kept her eyes on the road.

“Yes,” Hadrun said.

Anja began to cry again. This time there was no running, no astonished laughter tangled in it. Hadrun bent over her as far as his wounds allowed, and Bruni walked beside the wagon with his enormous hands closed at his sides.

They stopped early that evening.

Nobody suggested making up the lost miles.

In Concordia, Lexander was discovering that a piece of brass could cause more argument than a damaged bridge.

The gate wardens stood in a loose circle around a table. On it lay a practice token, a sealed authorization, and a message copied from Uriah’s account of the Hall of Accord.

Caldris had come through that morning. Thesra remained in Greykeep to assist with the work following the counting-room rescue. Nobody proposed pulling every useful person away from the same problem at once.

“The officer’s command carried force,” Caldris said. “We should assume a frightened or injured keeper might find it difficult to refuse.”

Thor folded her arms.

“So the second keeper closes the gate.”

“Unless the second keeper is standing beside the first,” Atreyu said.

Both wardens looked toward the paired desks at the entrance to the court.

Lexander followed their gaze.

They had placed the desks together because it made checking travelers easier. Papers passed from one hand to another. Disputed names could be settled without shouting. A sensible arrangement, until someone considered a voice capable of compelling everyone who heard it.

“Separate them,” he said.

One of the wardens frowned. “We’ll lose sight of each other behind the gate housing.”

“Then we move the desks somewhere else.”

The Castellan spoke through the court grille.

“I can report disagreement between instructions. I cannot yet promise to recognize every authority another god may impose.”

Lexander glanced at Caldris.

“That is an honest limitation,” the god said. “Keep it.”

They spent the next hour moving furniture, measuring sight lines, and discovering that the most promising position blocked the passage needed by loaded stretchers.

Thor carried the desk back again.

“Once,” she told Atreyu. “Choose where you want it once.”

“We are choosing.”

“You are exploring.”

A young warden laughed before remembering who had spoken.

Thor looked at him.

“Quite right. Help him explore with a measuring cord.”

The test failed because Lexander was convincing.

They had agreed on an ordinary exercise. No divine force. No frightened travelers. A few guards, an empty cart, and a royal demand made while the gate was preparing to close.

Lexander stepped into the court just as the warning bell sounded.

“Hold it,” he said. “I need that wagon through.”

The junior keeper reached for the brass control.

The senior keeper caught his wrist.

Then both men looked at Lexander.

It took less than a breath. It was enough.

“Stop,” Caldris said.

The court settled into an uncomfortable silence.

The younger man’s face had gone red. “Your Majesty, I understood—”

“You understood that I gave you an order,” Lexander said. “And we have spent your entire service expecting you to obey those.”

He looked at the paper they had written that morning. It was brief, clear, and nearly useless while everyone in the court still believed their king might punish them for following it.

He took the keeper’s pen.

Beneath the closure rule, he wrote that the authorized keepers could refuse any demand to interrupt a closure, including his own and Io’s, until the cause had been checked. He signed it, then called for copies to be entered with the council’s standing orders.

They ran the exercise again.

This time the senior keeper lowered the lever while Lexander was still speaking.

The light between the gate pillars folded inward and vanished.

For a heartbeat the man looked as though he expected thunder.

Thor nodded approvingly.

“That,” she said, “was an excellent door.”

Io read the new order after luncheon.

“You could have asked me before volunteering my dignity,” she said.

Lexander looked up sharply, then saw her mouth.

“I was certain it would survive.”

She signed beside his name.

“Mine will. Yours may need tending.”

He leaned back in his chair. From the adjoining room came the steady clack of wooden blocks and Julian’s voice explaining that a staircase needed somewhere to end.

Garrick disagreed with him.

Carol offered what sounded like a second staircase as a solution.

“Evelyn is here?” Lexander asked.

“With Rysa. Lisbeth sent her notes before leaving, and we’re comparing the children’s growth.”

He glanced toward the sound.

Io set down the pen. “Come.”

They found the floor occupied by a town of remarkable ambition. Julian sat among its buildings, while Elowen sorted long blocks from short ones. Ignatius was attempting to fit a square beneath an arch. Seraphina held a small cloth doll in the crook of her arm and watched Carol arrange a roof.

Evelyn sat beside the window with a page of measurements. Rysa had abandoned her chair in favor of the rug.

“No one is being examined just now,” she said as Lexander entered.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You looked prepared to.”

Io smiled and sat beside Evelyn.

Lexander lowered himself onto the floor. Immediately, Garrick gave him a block and assigned him a task without explaining it.

He watched the boy’s hands. Watched his own son turn the square, discover why it would not fit, and try another opening. A few months ago, Ignatius had needed help sitting steadily. Now frustration crossed his face in a way Lexander recognized from men trying to repair clocks.

Then the block slipped. Ignatius looked at it, looked at his father, and held up both arms.

Lexander gathered him close.

Across the rug, Rysa met his eye.

There was much she could have said. She waited until Ignatius had settled before speaking.

“Their bodies are getting ahead of some of their habits. They need you to remember both.”

Lexander kissed his son’s hair.

“That part I can manage.”

They discussed the rest while the children played.

Garrick and Carol’s mimicry remained distinct from the First Flame carried by Seraphina and Ignatius. Time spent around the gods complicated every observation, but neither Rysa nor Evelyn would turn that into a simple claim that one visit had caused one change.

They had measured growth. They had noticed patterns. They still had questions.

“I don’t want to keep them apart because we’re frightened,” Io said.

“Nor do I,” Evelyn replied. “I would like us to stop filling every good afternoon with another visit, another lesson, another room full of people.”

Lexander thought of the nursery latch, the puddles, the ruined pear.

“Quiet mornings,” he said.

“And regular meals,” Rysa added. “They are learning very quickly how interesting adults become when persuaded to forget the time.”

Julian, who had been listening, looked down at Garrick.

“You said your mother had moved luncheon.”

Garrick became deeply occupied with the staircase.

Evelyn shut her eyes for a moment.

Carol patted Julian’s wrist. “We had apples.”

“That explains everything,” Io murmured.

They agreed to share measurements and sleep notes, to watch for pain or unusual exhaustion, and to let the children enjoy one another without treating every game as a demonstration.

When Seraphina grew upset because her doll would not sit upright, Io helped her prop it against a cushion. No one asked her to do anything with flame.

Later, Evelyn remained while Julian and Elowen took the older twins to choose a book. Io brought out fabric for the next set of clothes, and the two women argued pleasantly over whether extra length could be hidden in a hem without making a child trip over it.

Lexander left them laughing about sleeves.

He had come to value the sound almost as much as any report from the western road.

Hadrun’s wagon reached Concordia the following afternoon.

There was no reception at the gate. Lisbeth had requested that very firmly. A groom directed them toward the field shelter, where the carpenters had enclosed another wall and fitted a door wide enough for its occupants.

Anja stared at it from beneath her father’s arm.

“For us?”

“For now,” Hadrun said.

Her face changed at the last two words.

He noticed. “Until we decide where we want to live.”

She looked toward the city walls, then back at him.

“Together?”

His hand covered hers.

“Together.”

Inside, Bruni had arranged two sleeping places, though Lisbeth suspected one would go unused for some time. There was a low table, a basin, clean blankets, and a shelf with an empty bowl.

Anja put the stones in the bowl one by one.

Nine small knocks sounded through the room.

Hadrun watched until she had finished. Then he sat down rather abruptly.

Lisbeth was beside him at once. The journey had cost him more than he had admitted. Anja saw the movement and went rigid.

“Just tired,” Hadrun said.

“Then let us help,” Lisbeth told him.

She kept her tone ordinary while she checked the wound and his breathing. Anja stood close enough to touch his knee. When Lisbeth asked her to fetch the cup, the girl moved with immediate relief.

By the time Lexander and Io arrived, Hadrun was resting, and Anja had begun asking Bruni whether the roof leaked.

“Not now,” he said.

“Did it?”

“Once.”

“What happened?”

“Fixed roof.”

She considered him, then nodded. A satisfactory account.

Seraphina recognized the dragon before she noticed the girl holding it.

She pointed from Io’s arms. Anja looked down at the toy, then drew it a little closer to her chest.

Lexander felt Io pause beside him.

“Your dragon?” Anja asked.

Seraphina nodded.

“I can give it—”

“For you,” Seraphina said.

Anja’s fingers eased around the wooden wings.

“Oh.”

Ignatius slipped his hand from Lexander’s and approached the bowl of stones. He inspected them with the silent concentration of an expert called to assess a collection.

“River,” he announced.

“Yes,” Anja said.

“Wet?”

“Not anymore.”

He appeared disappointed.

She selected a flat green stone and showed him the pale stripe across it. In another minute they were sitting together beside the shelf, while Seraphina leaned down until Io set her on the floor as well.

Hadrun watched from his bed.

Lexander pulled up a stool.

“She’s here,” the giant said quietly.

Lexander nodded.

“She keeps looking to see.”

“So do you.”

Hadrun looked toward the children again. Anja was showing Seraphina how the dragon could stand on two stones without falling.

After a while he said, “I’ll tell your people what I remember. The yards. The roads.”

“When you’re rested.”

“There are more fathers.”

“I know.”

Hadrun reached toward the table, where a scrap of packing paper lay beside a bowl of broth.

“One thing now.”

Lisbeth, listening from the doorway, began to object. Then she saw what he was doing and brought him a piece of charcoal.

He drew three strokes meeting above a square.

Lexander studied the mark.

“On the collar?”

“Under the leather. On the iron that held the wheel too.”

A maker’s stamp.

Hadrun set down the charcoal. His hand was shaking.

Lisbeth took the paper away before he could offer anything more.

“That is enough for today.”

Atreyu recognized it.

He did not recognize it immediately, which made the moment worse. He turned the paper twice, frowned, and called for the quartermaster responsible for the eastern stores.

The woman arrived with an ink stain on her cuff and an expression of restrained annoyance at being interrupted during inventory.

When she saw the drawing, she stopped.

“Venn’s foundry,” she said.

Lexander looked at Atreyu.

“Where?”

“Eastern industrial quarter,” the commander replied. “They supply wagon fittings. Mill axles. Some of the brackets used in the new receiving sheds.”

For a moment the room seemed to contract around the little scrap of paper.

Thor had returned from the training yard and still carried her practice hammer. She leaned closer to the drawing.

“Could someone copy it?”

“Yes,” the quartermaster said. “And iron gets sold twice, three times. A stamp won’t tell you where a thing went after it left the furnace.”

Lexander nodded.

“Then we establish what left the furnace.”

Atreyu sent for the recovered collar and the wagon fittings, which remained outside the city under guard. They would examine the actual metal, compare the mark with honest purchases, and take a magistrate to the foundry in the morning.

Thor set her practice hammer against the wall.

“If they are making those things here—”

“We find out who ordered them,” Lexander said.

Her expression hardened, but she nodded.

Outside the office, the evening bells began.

The stamp matched.

By morning, the magistrate had authorized inspection of the relevant stock and sales records. Atreyu took enough Watch officers to secure the countinghouse without emptying the streets around it. Lexander went with him. Thor remained near the gate court, available if either city called for her.

The foundry was already working when they arrived.

Heat rolled from the open doors. Somewhere inside, a hammer struck iron with steady, deafening blows. Men pushed a wheeled cradle of castings across the yard; an apprentice swept grit away from a drain.

The owner met them with soot on his forehead.

Master Venn was older than Lexander expected, broad across the shoulders and limping slightly on one foot. He read the order twice.

“Something we sold?”

“Possibly,” Atreyu said.

Venn looked at the soldiers behind him.

“Will my people be allowed to finish the pour?”

The magistrate glanced toward the furnace.

“How long?”

“Stopping halfway is how we kill someone.”

“Finish it. Nobody removes stock or records.”

Venn nodded once and shouted instructions into the building.

Then Atreyu unwrapped the drawing of the collar mechanism.

The foundry owner’s brow furrowed. He turned the page toward the light, covering part of it with his thumb.

“Hoist assembly,” he said. “Small quarry drum. We cast the lower housing.”

“And this?” Lexander asked, pointing to the curved iron.

Venn’s hand stopped.

For the first time, he looked closely at Lexander rather than the work.

“What was it holding?”

Lexander told him.

The order had been divided.

Venn’s foundry cast housings and wheel frames. A second workshop bored the sockets. The curved pieces had arrived from a merchant as stock to be fitted, described as retaining bands for irregular stone loads.

“Would that description convince you?” the magistrate asked.

Venn stared at the drawing.

“At the time, it did.”

His daughter kept the books. She brought them without being asked twice and laid out invoices covering the last six months. Halfway through the stack she stopped, went to a locked drawer, and returned with a fresh order.

“Due for collection tomorrow.”

Atreyu read it over her shoulder.

“How many?”

“Twelve assemblies. All paid in advance.”

The room went quiet except for the hammering beyond the wall.

Lexander thought of Hadrun trying to remember how many winters had passed. Thought of his hand opening so carefully around a child’s wooden cart.

“Where are they?”

Venn led them to the rear store.

Twelve iron housings stood on timber pallets, each polished where the controlling axle would turn. Without the bands and the chains, they looked almost ordinary.

The magistrate ordered the stock held. Atreyu stationed guards and began arranging interviews with the workers who had received the merchant’s deliveries.

Lexander stayed beside the nearest pallet.

He could destroy it. That would be easy. Every instinct sharpened by Hadrun’s wounds urged him to make the iron unrecognizable.

Instead, he looked at the delivery order again.

A collection time. A carter’s name. A destination written as a warehouse beyond the eastern tollhouse.

“Quietly,” he told Atreyu. “Have Mara watch the warehouse. Nobody follows beyond our reach without reporting first.”

The commander nodded.

Twelve empty housings waited on the floor between them.

For once, they had found the machinery before the prisoners were fastened to it.

That evening, Anja ate at the low table Bruni had helped build.

Lisbeth had brought another chair. Io had sent a pot large enough that no one would need to count the servings. On the shelf, nine river stones surrounded a wooden dragon with one polished wing.

Lexander arrived late and without papers.

Hadrun looked toward him with a question in his face. Lexander drew close enough to answer quietly.

“We found the maker. There is more to learn, but the next shipment is stopped.”

The giant closed his eyes.

Then Anja tugged his sleeve.

“You haven’t eaten.”

He looked at her, and some of the strain left his mouth.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

She pushed the bowl toward him with both hands.

Bruni shifted along the bench to make room for Lexander. The movement nearly carried the table with him, and Anja caught her cup, startled into laughter.

Hadrun laughed too, though it hurt.

Lexander sat down before anyone could turn his arrival into an occasion. Anja asked whether ravens truly belonged to him, because she had seen one stealing something from a soldier outside.

“I’m beginning to think I belong to them,” he said.

She considered this entirely plausible.

Beyond the shelter, Concordia’s bells marked the changing watch. Farther away, through the guarded gate, Greykeep was tending its rescued and searching for a way to reach those still confined beneath the Hall of Accord.

Tomorrow, Mara would watch an eastern warehouse.

Tonight, Hadrun broke a loaf in his hands and gave the larger piece to his daughter.

She inspected it, tore it in half, and put one half back beside his bowl.

“Enough for both,” she told him.