Lady Veyr invited me to breakfast.
The invitation came through a boy carrying two cups and the obvious hope that someone might drop food.
I was washing dried mud from my coat in a basin.
At least this time I understood the equipment.
“Her ladyship says you may join her in the officers’ room.”
“Does she?”
The boy nodded.
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
“An exemplary invitation.”
He looked at the wet coat.
“She said you didn’t need the crown.”
I stopped rubbing.
Apparently someone had been talking.
The officers’ room had a narrow table, four chairs, and a window facing the supply wagons.
Lady Veyr sat with a ledger open beside her plate.
Captain Orra stood by the hearth.
There was bread, soft cheese, and one boiled egg.
The egg was on a separate plate.
Lady Veyr followed my glance.
“For your companion. Halwen asked.”
“You are well informed.”
“I brought food into a hungry place. People have been making requests.”
She gestured to the empty chair.
I sat.
Without the riding coat, she looked younger. Perhaps thirty. A little grey showed in the dark hair above one ear.
“Solvane of Aurelheim.”
“Lady Veyr.”
“Baroness of the Lower Fen, acting keeper of the north road, and apparently responsible for every person the crown has forgotten between here and Dunbarrow.”
“A crowded title.”
“The second half is not on the seal.”
She broke her bread.
“I received a notice about you yesterday.”
Corvane.
Of course.
“What did it say?”
“That an Otherworlder claiming foreign sovereignty had been granted liberty to travel.”
“Claiming.”
“It was carefully written.”
“I recognize the author.”
“I thought you might.”
She passed me the bread.
I waited for the trap.
It proved to be bread.
An encouraging start.
“What do you intend to do here?” she asked.
“My companion is injured.”
“That explains why you remain. Not what you intend.”
“I have not yet decided.”
“Good.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“People who decide before seeing the problem are exhausting.”
Captain Orra made a sound near the hearth.
Lady Veyr ignored it.
She turned the ledger toward me.
“Here is the problem.”
Columns.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Weights of grain. Cartage. Lamp oil. Fodder.
And, beneath them, a line describing the transfer of Rook’s Watch and its remaining stores into the custody of the Lower Fen.
“You are buying a fortress.”
“No.”
“Then I have misunderstood the assignment of custody.”
“You have misunderstood the word buying. I am being asked to assume a ruin, a road that consumes carts, and sixty-three people who eat every day.”
“In return for?”
“The right to close the watch once its residents have been evacuated.”
Orra turned away from the hearth.
Lady Veyr continued eating.
There was the disagreement.
Not whether the place was starving.
What survival would require it to surrender.
“Where would the residents go?” I asked.
“My estates have room for twenty-two. I have arranged transport west for the rest.”
“Into the capital.”
“Eventually.”
“With what food?”
“Seven days’ provision.”
“And after seven days?”
“After seven days they would be alive somewhere other than this tower.”
A correct answer.
An incomplete future.
Both could be true.
“The watch protects the road.”
“The watch currently requires the road to protect it.”
Orra spoke.
“If we close, there’s nothing between the forest and Dunbarrow.”
“There are already grenn in Dunbarrow.”
“And there will be more.”
“Then give me men to hold this place.”
“I have nine.”
“You had fourteen in your first request.”
“Three dead. Two on crutches.”
“I know.”
The words came sharply enough to stop Orra.
Lady Veyr set down her bread.
“I read the returns, Captain. All of them.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then she looked at me.
“There is no villainous omission waiting to be discovered in the margins. I have more people asking for food than fields producing it. If I commit these wagons here, I must tell another village why its ration has been delayed.”
I studied the ledger.
She had not brought me in to be impressed.
She wanted a witness.
Preferably one who would repeat that her decision had been reasonable.
“Why invite me?”
“Because the yard is already calling your companion a Hero. By noon, someone will decide that means the watch can be held indefinitely.”
“She cannot stand without help.”
“I gathered that.”
“You intend me to say so.”
“I intend you not to encourage a belief that will get people killed.”
I took a piece of bread.
Chewed.
Swallowed.
It bought enough time to avoid answering from irritation.
“What exactly does the transfer permit?” I asked.
Lady Veyr tapped the document.
“Read.”
She had written a competent agreement.
That was the trouble.
Food unloaded upon signature. Evacuation begun within three days. Abandoned tools and livestock inventoried. The watch’s remaining supplies transferred to her officers for distribution.
Everyone receiving transport would be registered.
Everyone receiving land on her estates would accept three years of service against the cost of resettlement.
I looked up.
“Three years.”
“Seed. Shelter. Food until harvest. Tools. These have costs.”
“They do.”
“You object to repayment?”
“I object to calling it evacuation before mentioning that some of the evacuees will be entering service.”
“It is written plainly.”
“For those who can read it.”
Her eyes moved toward the window.
In the yard, a woman was carrying a sleeping child.
“Twenty-two places,” Lady Veyr said. “Voluntary. The others go west without that obligation.”
“Can the twenty-two choose to leave later?”
“With their debt outstanding.”
“And can they earn enough under your terms to discharge it early?”
She leaned back.
At last.
Not silence.
Attention.
“You have found the part you dislike.”
“I have found the part you expect them not to calculate until they have eaten.”
Orra looked at me.
I kept my eyes on Lady Veyr.
She did not flush.
Did not protest her generosity.
Instead she asked, “What do you offer them?”
I could have put the crown on.
It would have improved nothing.
“Nothing equivalent.”
“Then criticize accurately. I am offering a difficult choice. You are offering the pleasure of hearing it criticized.”
The sentence deserved to hurt.
It did.
I looked down at the agreement again.
There were other details.
The provisions manifest listed enough grain for considerably longer than seven days. Spare axles. Roofing nails. Two barrels of bitterroot paste.
Not simply an evacuation load.
“You brought maintenance supplies.”
“Road posts require maintenance.”
“You intend to retain the watch.”
“As a seasonal depot, perhaps.”
“Without the current inhabitants.”
“If it can be made economical.”
Orra went very still.
I looked through the window.
The guards had not begun unloading.
They were waiting beside wagons carrying roofing nails into a place their employer described as a ruin beyond saving.
A bluff could contain entirely true accounts.
It merely required arranging them properly.
“You are willing to keep the building,” I said. “You are unwilling to inherit its obligations.”
Lady Veyr’s gaze sharpened.
“Yes.”
A plain answer.
I almost liked her for it.
“What obligations?” I asked.
Orra answered before the Baroness could.
“The road charter.”
Lady Veyr closed her eyes briefly.
There.
Not victory.
A door somebody would have preferred left shut.
“The watch maintains refuge for road users during attack,” Orra said. “Water, a guarded enclosure, and three nights’ shelter. Longer at the commander’s discretion if the road remains unsafe.”
“And the villages depended on it.”
“Yes.”
Lady Veyr opened her eyes.
“The charter was funded by tolls from a road that no longer carries trade.”
“So you close the watch,” I said, “and reopen the same building without the charter.”
“If I do not, every abandoned settlement within twenty miles can demand support I cannot provide.”
“And the crown’s answer?”
“The crown has a war.”
We sat with that.
Outside, a child laughed.
It sounded offensively misplaced.
Then an idea began to form.
Not a speech.
A narrower thing.
“Captain,” I said. “You requested relief for fourteen soldiers.”
“Yes.”
“Supplies were calculated against the garrison.”
“Yes.”
“Not the fifty-four civilians.”
“They were told.”
“Verbally, or in an amended return?”
Orra’s expression gave me the answer.
Lady Veyr watched me.
“Careful,” she said.
I looked at her.
“That sounds like encouragement.”
“It isn’t.”
I turned the ledger back toward myself.
“If the civilians remain listed as dependents inside a military post, they are an expense the military has not authorized. If they become the registered keepers of a civilian road refuge--”
“They become my expense.”
“Unless the watch assigns them the right to collect its lawful toll.”
Lady Veyr stared.
Then she laughed once.
There was no warmth in it.
“From whom? The refugees?”
“No.”
“From the trees?”
“From the traffic that would use the road if the refuge remained open.”
“Traffic does not appear because you give a starving man a ledger.”
“Neither does it return after you remove the last place a carter can sleep behind a wall.”
I nodded toward the wagons.
“You brought spare axles.”
She said nothing.
I continued.
“You still expect traffic. Enough to want the depot. Enough to come here personally before the watch is formally abandoned.”
Her fingers rested on the edge of the document.
“Expectation,” she said, “is not grain.”
“No. But it appears to be worth two wagons of it.”
Captain Orra looked from her to me.
I had found something real.
Now I needed not to become intoxicated with it.