Senn took us to a bakery.
Aoi objected.
Senn said, “You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yes. People keep saying that before they fall over in my office.”
She ordered tea and four filled buns.
I paid before discovering that one of the buns cost considerably more than the others because it contained imported sugar.
Progress: I knew which coin to use. Failure: I had developed opinions about confectionery tariffs without tasting the confectionery.
Senn chose a table near the oven. Warmth reached through my coat.
For a while, Aoi held the cup without drinking.
“Where?” she asked.
“Bell Quarry.”
“How far?”
“Half a day by the upper road. Longer in bad weather.”
“Is he still there?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer struck harder after the hope.
Senn continued quickly.
“Vale took him to the quarry cottages. His sister keeps a house there for injured workers. I saw him again a few weeks later when I brought forms for compensation claims.”
“You saw him twice.”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
Senn considered.
Aoi watched every movement of her face.
“Thin. Walking. Angry.”
Aoi almost smiled.
Then did not.
“Angry at who?”
Senn looked into her tea.
“Most of us, I think.”
Kaito had refused to sign a return-of-service statement. Senn had brought it because the military book still described him as assigned. She explained this without defending herself.
“I thought correcting the record would help.”
“What did he say?” Aoi asked.
“That correcting it would tell them where he was.”
“And you left it wrong.”
“I left it unresolved.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Senn saw.
“There is a difference.”
“I have spent the morning appreciating several.”
She broke her bun.
“People assume every blank space in a register is carelessness. Sometimes someone has decided not to fill it until they understand who will read it.”
“Risky.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked at Aoi.
“Because he asked me whether I could guarantee they wouldn’t send him somewhere else.”
“And you couldn’t,” Aoi said.
“No.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
So Senn had failed to obtain the signature. Filed the incomplete form beneath an unresolved classification. Returned to work.
No dramatic refusal. No confrontation with the ministry. An unfinished entry that had left a frightened boy outside somebody else’s list.
I took a drink. The tea was good. That seemed worth noticing.
Aoi wanted to leave immediately. Our driver wanted the axle repaired.
The axle was in a stronger negotiating position.
We found the cart at a workshop near the eastern bridge. One wheel had been removed. A broad, bearded man in a leather apron knelt beside it, tapping the hub with a short hammer.
“Tomorrow,” he said before we spoke.
“We need it today,” Aoi answered.
“So does everybody.”
“Can you work faster?”
“Yes.”
“Then--”
“It won’t be repaired.”
I approached the wheel.
He looked at my boots.
Then my hands.
“No.”
“I have not proposed anything.”
“You were about to touch it.”
An unfairly accurate assessment.
I gave him the name Dain had written.
He stopped tapping. Slowly, he looked up.
“Who gave you that?”
“Mistress Dain.”
His expression changed to that of a man hearing distant hoofbeats while holding stolen silver.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“A moving reunion, even at this distance.”
He stood.
“Tell her I don’t owe her the full amount.”
“Perhaps write it down. I am reluctant to improvise before an expert.”
Aoi sat on a crate. Her face had gone pale again.
The smith noticed. He glanced at the discarded crutch beside the wall, then at her.
“Someone get the girl a chair.”
“I have a crate,” Aoi said.
“Then get her a better crate.”
His apprentice obeyed.
The smith introduced himself as Gerren. The debt concerned a mill fitting commissioned before Dain’s village emptied. He had taken a deposit, completed half the work, then sold the iron to pay for his furnace roof after storm damage.
“An admirable sequence of explanations,” I said.
“She’d have got it.”
“Before or after the roof?”
He rubbed his jaw.
“Where is she?”
“Rook’s Watch.”
“That place still standing?”
“Yes. It requires a smith.”
“No.”
“I have not offered terms.”
“I’ve heard the road.”
“So have I. It was unpleasantly close.”
He looked at Aoi’s bandages. Then back at the cart.
For a while he said nothing. I let him work.
Hammer. Turn. Inspect.
Finally he asked, “Who pays?”
“The depot has an army contract.”
“Promises?”
“Partly advances. Partly mint orders.”
“Whose mint?”
“River.”
He grunted.
Not interest.
Not quite.
“Furnace?”
“Needs building.”
“Roof?”
“Several options require repair.”
“Anvil?”
“You would bring yours.”
He looked around his workshop. At the blackened ceiling. At the cracked wall beside the bellows.
“What do they need first?”
“A rim for a measuring bucket.”
Gerren stared.
Aoi laughed. It hurt her. She laughed anyway.
I waited until she recovered.
“After that,” I said, “wagon repairs, mill fittings, hinges, nails, stove work, and whatever Mistress Dain decides you owe civilization.”
Gerren looked back at the wheel.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said.
“The cart?”
“Yes.”
“And the appointment?”
“I’ll think.”
That was as much as I was going to buy without money I did not possess.
We arranged rooms nearby.
Gerren lent Aoi a walking stick and pretended it was necessary to keep her from touching the repaired wheel. She accepted the fiction.
The inn had a tiled stove and a washroom with a wooden tub. I regarded the tub with gratitude bordering on political devotion.
Aoi went first.
I waited downstairs, writing to Orra. The hearing had produced a stay. Kaito had survived the station. We were going to Bell Quarry. The cart needed repair.
I added a warning that Gerren might arrive claiming Dain’s debt was smaller than advertised. Then I rewrote the entire letter because the first version sounded as though I were avoiding the subject of Kaito by discussing transport.
Writing to someone who knew me was becoming inconvenient.
Senn joined me before supper. She placed a folded paper on the table. Directions. A second sheet held an introduction to Vale’s sister.
“Her name’s Leth.”
“Does she know we’re coming?”
“No.”
“Will that be a problem?”
“She dislikes surprises.”
“A trait I am rapidly acquiring.”
Senn sat.
For a moment, she watched the innkeeper clear bowls from another table.
Then she said, “He might not want to leave.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at her.
She did not retreat.
“You’ve come from the castle with soldiers. You have sealed papers. Whatever you mean by it, that is what he’ll see.”
“The escort remains with Berden.”
“That helps.”
“Aoi is his friend.”
“That helps more.”
She pushed the introduction toward me.
“Don’t arrive already knowing what is best for him.”
I could have objected to the assumption.
Instead I folded the paper.
“When did you last receive word?”
“Eighteen days ago. Leth sent down compensation forms. He’d helped her put them in order.”
A boy trained as a Hero, arranging claims for injured quarry workers.
I wondered what his skill was. Then I wondered whether that was the first question I ought to be asking about anybody.
Senn stood.
“Tell him I didn’t give the military his location.”
“I will.”
“And that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She picked up her gloves.
“He’ll know.”
Aoi came downstairs with damp hair and wearing a borrowed shirt too large at the shoulders.
For one startled moment, she looked as though she had stepped out of an ordinary school trip. Then she eased herself into the chair with care, and the impression passed.
I handed her Senn’s directions. She read them twice.
“What if he doesn’t want to see me?”
The question was so quiet that I almost missed it.
“Do you have reason to think that?”
“He asked about me.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t come.”
“He was frightened.”
“So was I.”
I had no answer that improved the facts.
Aoi folded the paper along its existing crease.
“What if he thinks I stayed because I wanted to?”
“Then you can tell him.”
“What if I did?”
I looked at her.
She stared at the table.
“Not wanted to. I mean... after he disappeared, I knew something was wrong. I kept doing the training. Kept saying yes.”
“To stay alive.”
“I know.”
She had heard enough explanations. Perhaps she had supplied most of them herself.
I moved the plate of buns between us. She looked at it.
“Is this your advice?”
“It is the expensive one. I would prefer it did not go stale while we invent arguments with a man we have not yet met.”
Aoi stared at me. Then took it.
We ate supper early. She went upstairs.
I sat beside the stove until the innkeeper began putting chairs on tables.