The infirmary had once been a storeroom.
This remained obvious.
Shelves lined the walls above the beds. Someone had covered the sacks nearest the stove with sheets, perhaps under the impression that flour became more medical when concealed.
The woman with the physician’s bag cut Aoi’s sleeve from wrist to shoulder.
I stood beside the bed, holding a basin.
It was an occupation for which recent experience had prepared me.
“Name?” she asked.
“Aoi.”
“Age?”
“Seventeen.”
“Gift?”
“Holdfast.”
The woman’s hands stopped briefly.
Then continued.
“How many impacts?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many after the first failure?”
Aoi looked away.
The woman exhaled through her nose.
“Of course.”
She pressed two fingers beneath Aoi’s ribs.
Aoi’s hand closed around the blanket.
“Broken?” I asked.
“Not displaced. Possibly cracked. Bruising certainly. Her shoulder is strained, her mana is empty, and she has done something deeply foolish with her left knee.”
“I held,” Aoi said.
“Yes,” the woman answered. “I can see the consequences.”
She introduced herself as Halwen only after ordering me to fetch clean water, a second blanket, and someone strong enough to move the unused bed away from the damp wall.
Apparently names came after proof of usefulness.
I approved, until she included me in the assessment.
“Can you lift that end?”
“Yes.”
I could.
Briefly.
She found someone else.
Rook’s Watch contained sixty-three people.
I learned this from a board nailed beside the kitchen, not through any particular display of intelligence.
Nine soldiers.
Fifty-four civilians.
The number had been corrected so often that the wood beneath it was scraped pale.
Children played beneath a staircase, flicking carved discs toward a crack between two paving stones. A woman patched trousers beside the well. Two men dismantled a cart under the direction of a third who appeared to have supplied nothing to the enterprise except increasingly detailed criticism.
A fortress, evidently, was capable of developing a neighborhood.
The tower smelled of onions and old smoke.
Inside the gate, the stones had been whitewashed to make shadows easier to see.
Along the wall stood pots of the black-smelling substance that had driven the grenn back. Several were empty.
I noted that.
Then I made myself stop noting things for long enough to carry water where I had been told.
Aoi was asleep when I returned.
Halwen checked the warmth of the basin with her wrist.
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“Outside.”
“I can remain quietly.”
“Can you?”
I went outside.
Berden stood in the passage.
Without the spear, he looked less like a rescuer and more like a man who had not slept enough for several years. His beard had been trimmed with an instrument not designed for the purpose.
“She asked for me?” he said.
“Yes.”
“By name.”
“You introduced yourself with it. The connection was not demanding.”
He accepted that without irritation.
I disliked him a little less.
“How does she know me?”
“She knew Kaito.”
The name altered him.
His shoulders did not move. His face barely changed.
But the hand hanging at his side closed slowly.
There were things I might have learned from Insight.
I did not use it.
Not because I had become unusually virtuous. Because a man deciding whether to speak required fewer pressures, not more.
Berden looked toward the infirmary door.
“Is she going to live?”
“Yes.”
He nodded once.
Then he walked away.
I let him.
For the moment.
The watch commander found me beside the kitchen.
Captain Orra was broad across the shoulders, grey at the temples, and missing the smallest finger of her left hand.
She carried two bowls.
One she gave to me.
“Eat.”
“I appreciate the welcome.”
“You’ll appreciate the stew less. Eat anyway.”
It contained barley, onion, and several pieces of meat too small to identify.
I followed my established policy.
She leaned against the wall.
“Dain says you’re a lord.”
“Mistress Dain has promoted me in my absence.”
“Are you?”
“Solvane of Aurelheim.”
“That somewhere east?”
“Considerably farther away.”
She watched me over her bowl.
“Fine. I’ve got room for one injured girl and one lord who carries water. I haven’t got room for a court.”
“A court would have objected to the stew.”
“So would anyone with better options.”
I took another mouthful.
She had anticipated that objection efficiently.
“How long have you been waiting for relief?” I asked.
“Twenty-three days.”
“Your report reached Dunbarrow four days ago.”
“That was the last report. Not the first.”
“And supplies?”
“Some.”
“Enough?”
She looked at my bowl.
I set it down.
“Finish it,” she said. “Starving guests doesn’t improve the arithmetic.”
There was a ledger tucked beneath her arm.
She noticed me noticing it.
“Don’t offer advice until you’ve seen the privies,” she said. “Everybody arrives with a plan for the wall. Nobody arrives with a plan for sixty-three people’s shit.”
A formidable selection criterion.
“I will bear that in mind.”
“Do.”
A bell rang at the gate.
Orra straightened.
Not an alarm this time.
The soldiers on the wall were looking west.
“Expected?” I asked.
“No.”
She passed me her empty bowl.
I acquired it before realizing what had happened.
By the time I set both bowls down, she was already crossing the yard.
The arriving party consisted of four mounted guards, two wagons, and a woman in a dark green riding coat.
She did not wear jewelry beyond a signet.
The leather over her boots was marked with dried mud. Her horse was tired. One glove had split at the thumb.
None of these things prevented the courtyard from rearranging itself around her.
People stood.
A man near the well removed his cap.
Captain Orra did neither.
“Lady Veyr.”
“Captain.”
The woman dismounted.
She handed her reins to a guard, looked at the repaired gate, and then at the empty smoke pots beside it.
“How many?”
“Sixty-three.”
“Your last return said fifty-one.”
“Twelve more arrived.”
“So I see.”
It was difficult to object to the words.
Something in their arrangement invited it.
Lady Veyr’s gaze passed over the courtyard.
Paused on me.
Continued.
“The grain?” Orra asked.
“Conditional on the transfer.”
The yard had become very quiet.
Orra’s jaw moved.
“We should speak inside.”
“We should.”
Lady Veyr took a document case from her saddle.
As she passed me, her eyes dropped to my bandaged thumb.
“You were on Dain’s wagon.”
“Yes.”
“Was the animal alone?”
“One we saw.”
A small pause.
She looked at me again.
“Good answer.”
I could not tell whether I had been complimented or inspected.
Then she followed Orra into the tower.
Aoi woke near sunset.
Her first words were, “Where is he?”
Halwen, who had clearly expected this, opened the door.
Berden entered carrying his cap.
I moved toward the corridor.
Aoi caught my wrist.
“Stay.”
Berden looked at my hand in hers.
Then at the floor.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Finally Aoi said, “You came back.”
“Yes.”
“Kaito didn’t.”
“No.”
“Did you see him die?”
Berden’s grip tightened on the cap.
“No.”
Aoi tried to sit up.
Pain stopped her.
“Then why did they tell me--”
“I don’t know what they told you.”
“Don’t do that.”
Her voice was suddenly so hard that even Halwen looked up.
“Don’t make me ask the right question for every piece.”
Berden stood without moving.
Then he said, “We left him alive.”
Aoi’s fingers dug into my wrist.
I did not withdraw it.
“Where?”
“The old toll house beyond the river road.”
“Why?”
“We had orders to establish a signal station. He was to hold it until the second party arrived.”
“Did the second party arrive?”
Berden shook his head.
“How do you know?”
“Because I went looking for it.”
This time it was my attention that sharpened.
He looked at Aoi.
“I was told to leave him there with three days’ food. Told the signal crew was behind us. On the way back, I found the road-master’s register. No crew had been booked. No cart. No equipment.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked.”
“After that.”
“I was confined until morning.”
“After that.”
His voice thinned.
“I was sent here.”
Aoi stared at him.
“You left him.”
“Yes.”
It would have been easy for him to explain duty.
Threats.
The impossibility of knowing at the time.
He did not.
That was the first thing about him I respected.
Aoi released my wrist.
“Get out.”
Berden nodded.
At the door, he stopped.
“I kept something.”
She did not answer.
“A copy. Not the whole order. The countersign and the route amendment.”
“Leave it,” she said.
He placed a folded packet on the stool.
Then he went.
Aoi looked at it for a long time.
I had questions.
Who had countersigned. Whether the route had been changed before departure. Whether Berden’s confinement had been recorded. How the document had survived inspection.
I could almost feel the sequence arranging itself.
Aoi turned toward me.
“Not tonight.”
I closed my mouth.
“All right.”
Outside, the kitchen bell rang for supper.
Inside, Aoi began to cry without making a sound.
I sat where I was.
There was nothing theatrical about it.
I could find no useful thing to do with my hands.