Chapter 50 - The Man Who Asked Before Taking

Orra made the soldiers pack before she'd decided whether she was leaving. It was hard to watch.

Twenty days. By the second morning six equipment rolls lay open under the gallery. Men sorting buckles, straps, whetstones, and the little private things military inventories never anticipate. One had a glazed cup wrapped in three socks. Another was trying to fit a badly carved wooden horse into a regulation tool pouch.

"Separate parcel," Orra said.

"It'll fit."

"Then the horse will arrive lame."

He wrapped it separately. I stood by the quartermaster's chest with a list Pell had copied.

"Are you inspecting the departure?"

"No. Finding out what else leaves with it."

No weapons on my list. Keys. Signal instructions. Well-maintenance notes. The names of households whose members knew particular repairs. Beside each key I'd written who used it, because the inventory could only tell me where a key was supposed to fit. Orra read the list for a while and handed it back.

"Start with the keys."

The first key opened nothing. Its label said LOWER STORE. We had no lower store; the building had fallen in a winter storm before Orra took command, and the key stayed on the list because nobody had authority to strike it. The second key opened the armory and the west medicine cupboard. Halwen had a copy without being told it fitted the armory too. I took it to Gerren.

"You want new locks."

"Two that disagree with each other."

"That costs more than one that agrees."

"Yes."

The third key was for a box holding three sealed messages for neighboring posts. Instructions for use if the watch became untenable. I didn't ask to open them. I asked who'd hold them after Orra left. The soldier shrugged.

"The next commander."

"And if there is no next commander?"

He stopped sorting straps. We took that to Orra. She swore, added it to her departure report, and sent him back to work.

By midday I had six questions and no decisions to announce. It was the best morning I'd had in weeks.

Aoi found me by the signal shed.

"What's the project?"

"I am attempting to discover how many jobs are performed by whoever happens to know they need doing."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"And?"

"A distressing number."

"Sounds like school. The festival committee. Everybody thought somebody else knew where the extension cables were."

"Did somebody?"

"Me."

"Naturally."

She pointed at a name. "Why have you written Hester?"

"She knows which households can take overnight travelers. The old clerk's list is out of date. I am asking whether they want to be on the new one."

Aoi went quiet. "Where will the list go?"

"That depends what they permit."

She took the notebook. Space beside every household for conditions. Emergency only. Children. No animals. Ask first. Not to be copied beyond the watch. And at the bottom an empty section headed information withheld.

"What's that for?"

"So nobody later mistakes a refusal for an incomplete inquiry."

She read it again. Handed it back.

"All right."

Hester refused two names. I didn't ask which. She watched me make the entry.

"Does that cause trouble?"

"It means we plan without those beds."

"What if there's an emergency?"

"Then the people involved can decide at the time. We do not count them beforehand."

"Good."

Then she gave me three other names with conditions. One house could take travelers but not feed them. One, women and children only. One had room but an elderly man who needed quiet. I wrote the restrictions in bigger letters than the capacities. It looked untidy.

The practice yard had become a place where people laughed. Partly Aoi. Partly Nessa's new exercise: sacks of straw on poles, and the job was to get past the sack, grab a wooden token, and get back without being hit. Nobody was supposed to stop the sack. That part was slow to sink in.

Baret's eldest planted his feet. Nessa knocked him into the dust. Aoi crouched beside him.

"What were you guarding?"

"Myself?"

"And what was behind you?"

He looked. Empty yard.

"Try moving."

When Aoi's turn came, Nessa swung hard. Aoi ducked under, turned close to the pole, took the token off the ground. Nessa reversed. Aoi stepped inside the swing, caught the shaft for a beat, and let it pass. She was back at the line before I'd understood the second movement.

Clean. No pale flash. No hand going to a sore shoulder.

Nella cheered. Aoi picked up the pole and looked at her. "Your turn. I'll swing it slow."

Nella looked at the pole. Then at Nessa.

"Can Nessa do it?"

Aoi handed the pole over without a word and went to lean on the fence. Nella came through clean on the second try. Aoi clapped with everyone else, and louder than most.

Nessa looked pleased and hid it under a complaint about the speed of the exercise.

Sorel arrived on foot that afternoon with mud to the knees and a length of broken chain wrapped in cloth. She found Orra and put it in her hands.

"My ferry."

"Worn."

"Yes. That was the part I could diagnose. Who can close the ferry without being fined for obstructing the road?"

She saw my notebook. "Oh, good. The boy who writes down obvious things."

"Occasionally they become less obvious after an accident."

"Then bring your book. And someone who understands chain."

Gerren came out of the workshop at exactly the wrong moment. Sorel pointed. "Him." He tried to retreat. She was already walking.

We left the next morning. Aoi came because the mill settlements had asked about the patient-passage rules and because she wanted to see a working waterwheel before Gerren finished explaining ours. He found that offensive. I thought she was being realistic.

At the gate a courier gave me a letter with Ilyen's seal. The Bracken fragment had arrived intact; testing would proceed once its preparation history was checked. Then a paragraph about the throne. Still in the closed hall. The floor under it inspected through the cellar vault: nothing extended down from it. Moving it postponed because the lifting frame couldn't go in without disturbing the remaining circle.

She'd included rubbings of the arm carvings. Long-limbed figures. A procession. The worn space under the right hand where I'd gripped the stone. For a second the yard went away and I was touching that cold surface again.

Aoi leaned over my shoulder.

"Still there?"

"Yes."

"The oldest thing we own, and neither of us can get it out of the room."

"I have never established that I own it."

"Good. Imagine the storage charge."

I folded the letter. Then we went to look at Sorel's ferry.