Chapter 145: — "Three Roads"

He got as far as the stable before Daren caught him.

That was the first attempt and it was, in retrospect, the worst planned thing Kael had done in eighteen years. He had no supplies, no map, no coat beyond the one he’d stood in all day, and a horse that had been ridden the previous afternoon.

“Put the saddle down.”

“Move.”

“Put the saddle down, Kael—”

“Daren, move.”

“It’s midnight,” said Daren. “It’s midnight and you’ve eaten nothing since yesterday and you’re going to ride north on a horse that did eleven leagues on Tuesday. To where. Say it out loud. Say the name of the place you’re riding to.”

Kael stood there holding a saddle.

“Say it,” said Daren.

“North.”

“North where.”

“I’ll know when I—”

“You won’t,” said Daren. “That’s the whole thing. That’s the entire problem. You don’t know which road she’s on and you can’t check all three because they diverge, Kael, they go three different directions and by the time you’ve done one the other two are eight days behind you—”

Kael put the saddle down.

Not gently.

The second attempt was better and happened at fourth bell the following morning.

He had supplies. He had the good horse. He had, in his coat, a folded thing he had been working on for approximately four hours in the dark, which turned out to be a route.

He got to the crossing before Tax landed on the pommel.

“Turn round.”

“No.”

“Turn round or I’ll wake the entire road.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Tax opened his beak.

“Tax—”

“I have,” said the crow, “a considerable voice, and I have been extremely restrained with it for eighteen years, and I want you to think very carefully about the next thing you say to me.”

Kael sat on a horse in the dark at a crossing.

“She could be under a mountain,” he said.

“She could.”

“You said that fast.”

“Because it’s true and I’m not going to lie to you at a crossroads at four in the morning,” said Tax. “She could be. So could a great many people. And you riding north with a folded piece of paper does not move her out from under it.”

“It moves me—”

“Yes,” said Tax. “That’s what it does. That’s all it does.”

The third attempt was the one nobody forgave him for.

He did it properly.

He waited two days. He was pleasant. He ate. He went to the storehouse three roads east on the Wednesday and did the session and did it well, and Daren went home that night in a considerably better mood than he had been in for a week.

And on the Thursday morning Kael came into the kitchen, leaned on the doorframe, and said:

“I need you to do something for me.”

Daren looked up.

And Kael did the third one.

It worked for about eleven seconds.

Daren got as far as “of course, what do you—” before something crossed his face, and then something else, and then he put the bread down very slowly on the table.

“…You just did the thing.”

“I asked you a question—”

“You did the thing, Kael.”

“Daren—”

“You leaned on the doorframe,” said Daren, and his voice had gone somewhere Kael had never heard it go. “You leaned on the doorframe and you did the third one and you did it at me.”

“I need to get north.”

“THAT’S NOT—” Daren stopped. Pressed both hands flat on the table. “That took eight months. I sat in a storehouse for eight months. Tax sat on a beam. We did that so you could — so that when she came back you could—”

He stopped again.

“And you used it to get a horse,” he said.

Kael did not answer.

There was nothing available to say and he had known that before he’d walked into the kitchen, and had walked into the kitchen anyway, and would think about that for a long time afterward.

Tax found him in the yard an hour later.

“He’s gone home.”

“I know.”

“He didn’t take the bread.”

Kael closed his eyes.

“That,” said Tax, “is the worst thing you have ever done, and I want to be precise about it, because you’ve done a number of things. You have killed people. You have lied to the whole of a household for a year. And this is the worst one, because it was aimed at the only man who has ever been unconditionally on your side, and you used a tool he made for you.”

“I know.”

“Do you.”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you do it,” said Tax.

And Kael said, to the yard:

“Because it was the only thing I had that might work.”

Rowan arrived on the Friday.

Nobody had sent for him. He came into the front room with the specific unhurried certainty of a man who has already assessed a situation from a distance and has arrived with the answer in his coat.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Rowan—”

“Sit down, I’ve been riding since yesterday and I’d like to do this once.”

Kael sat down.

Rowan put a map on the table. Not a good map — a merchant’s map, hand-corrected, with four different inks on it and a coffee ring in the top corner.

“Three roads south out of Varen,” he said. “Eastern, central, western. You know this.”

“Yes.”

“The eastern is fastest and it’s the one anyone sensible uses in spring.” He put a finger on it. “It’s also the one that’s shut, because the eastern is the one that runs the Vell shoulder and the Vell shoulder is what came down.”

Kael did not move.

“Which means,” said Rowan, “that anybody who was on the eastern road is currently sitting at Tallen or Marrow Cross waiting for it to clear, along with about four hundred other people, and the relay at Vell is under a hillside so none of them can send word to anybody.”

Silence.

“That’s not comfort,” said Kael.

“No. It’s information.” Rowan didn’t look up from the map. “Comfort’s not mine to give. Information is.”

“How long.”

“To clear a shoulder that size?” Rowan considered. “Three weeks. Four if it’s wet. And then everyone who’s been sitting at Tallen for a month comes down the road at once, which is its own problem, because you cannot get north through that. Not on any road. Not with any money.”

“So there’s nothing.”

“There’s waiting.”

“I’ve done five years of—”

“Then you’ll do four weeks,” said Rowan.

He said it without any particular sympathy, which was the only reason it landed.

The fourth attempt happened anyway.

Of course it did.

He went at second bell on the Sunday, on foot, out the back, with a pack — and he got eleven miles, which was further than anyone had expected, and he did it fast enough that by the time Tax found him he had crossed the county line.

The crow landed on a fence post and did not say anything for a while.

Kael kept walking.

“You’ll get to Marrow Cross in nine days,” said Tax, conversationally. “You’ll join four hundred people who are already there. You’ll be the four hundred and first. And then the road will clear, and everyone will come south, and if she’s among them you’ll meet her on a road somewhere between here and there, going in opposite directions, in a crowd of four hundred.”

Kael kept walking.

“Or,” said Tax, “you’ll stand at a gate.”

He kept walking.

“Kael.”

He kept walking.

“Kael.”

He stopped.

He stood in a field at the edge of a county with a pack on his back and did not turn around.

“I can’t do the gate again,” he said.

“I know.”

“I did the gate for eleven hours. I did the gate at sixteen — I stood at the bottom of a road at five in the morning and I didn’t go up it, because she asked me not to, and I have been standing in that exact spot ever since.”

Wind moved through the field.

“Five years,” said Kael. ” without a word. And now the road’s shut and there’s still nothing to do — there’s still no version of this where I do anything except stay where I am and wait for her to arrive—”

“Yes,” said Tax.

“That’s what I’ve been for,” said Kael. “That’s the whole of it. That’s what I am. I’m the thing at the bottom of the road.”

The crow flew from the post and landed on the top of the wall in front of him, which put them at eye level, which Tax did almost never.

“Turn round,” he said.

“Tax—”

“Turn round and I’ll tell you something I have not told anybody in five years.”

Kael turned round.

“I said, on a windowsill, four years ago, that she was alive,” said Tax. “You asked me how I knew. I didn’t answer. You stopped asking somewhere in the second year, which I appreciated.”

“…Yes.”

“I still know,” said the crow.

Kael stood in a field.

“That’s not—”

“That’s all you’re getting,” said Tax. “You’ve had years of me not explaining things and you’ve never once needed it before. Don’t start needing it now.”

He came back on the Monday.

Daren was at the house.

He had bread and he did not look up when Kael came in, and Kael stood in the doorway — not leaning on it, standing well clear of it, hands at his sides — and said:

“I’m sorry.”

Daren tore the bread.

“You did the third one at me.”

“Yes.”

“In my face.”

“Yes.”

“Eight months, Kael.”

“I know.”

Daren looked at the table for a while.

Then he said, “Sit down and eat something,” and pushed half the bread across.

Which was, Kael understood, considerably more than he had earned, and he sat down, and he ate it, and neither of them mentioned it again for a very long time.

He was at the gate the next morning at sixth bell.

Daren came at seventh, with bread, and stood four feet away facing the same direction, and said nothing.

Four weeks, Rowan had said.

Kael watched the bend.