Kaito asked to speak to Aoi without me. A remarkably sensible request.
I took my breakfast outside.
Bell Quarry had become busy while I slept. A man with a wooden brace on his leg supervised two children feeding chickens. Someone was sharpening tools beneath an awning. Farther along the shelf, a woman carried washing toward the spring with a basket balanced against her hip.
None of it resembled the place where a Hero ought to be hiding. That was probably why it suited him.
Leth found me examining a broken handcart.
“Don’t.”
“I was looking.”
“People who look at broken things eventually offer advice.”
“An unfair generalization.”
She handed me a bowl. Breakfast was thick porridge with chopped apple. There was butter melting in the middle. I regarded it with immediate respect.
“You’ve somewhere to be?” she asked.
“Stonecross. A witness’s transfer is stayed for five days. We have used two.”
“The soldier.”
“Yes.”
“You like him?”
“No.”
Leth sat on the wall.
“Useful answer.”
“He left Kaito there.”
“He also kept the order.”
“Yes.”
She watched a chicken escape beneath a gate. The children pursued it with enthusiasm disproportionate to their effectiveness.
“You can dislike a man and still need him alive,” she said.
“I am discovering that my social life here will require considerable flexibility.”
Leth ate a spoonful of porridge.
After a while, she said, “My brother’s coming this afternoon.”
“Vale?”
She nodded.
“You’ll want to speak to him.”
“If he is willing.”
“He’ll be willing. He likes hearing himself tell a story.”
“A competitive field.”
“Then try listening first.”
Aoi emerged near midmorning. She carried the field book.
Kaito followed with a stack of tally boards beneath one arm.
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Neither looked cheerful. Neither looked as though the conversation had failed.
“We’re making copies,” Aoi said.
“All of it?”
“No,” Kaito answered.
He put the tally boards on the table outside his cottage.
“The signal times. The equipment list. The entries about the door.”
“Not the personal pages.”
“Not those.”
“Of course.”
He watched me for a moment.
Then nodded toward the table.
“You can help.”
The book smelled faintly of smoke. Some pages had stuck together near the binding. Kaito separated them himself, using the back of a thin knife.
We copied slowly. Aoi read the Japanese notes where they clarified a time or an event. Kaito supplied translations for the record. I asked about ambiguities, and twice he corrected my attempt to make a sentence neater.
“That’s not what I wrote.”
“It preserves the meaning.”
“It sounds more certain.”
I looked at the line. He was right. I crossed it out.
The finished statement distinguished what he had seen from what he had assumed. A light across the river. A repeated warning. Directions consistent with the service path.
No claim about who had sent them. No claim that the person across the water belonged to an army.
Aoi checked that paragraph twice. I suspected she was checking me as much as the wording. Reasonably.
When we finished, Kaito signed the copies but kept the book.
“Will the examiner accept these?”
“As documents you have voluntarily supplied,” I said. “She may want to question you.”
“I’m not going into her office.”
“Then we ask whether she will take your evidence elsewhere.”
“And if she won’t?”
“Then we return with the evidence she is willing to receive.”
He sat back.
I asked whether the ink needed more sand.
Vale arrived driving a cart full of limestone chips. He was Leth’s older brother, broad across the face and narrow through the shoulders. He wore his hat indoors until she removed it from his head.
“Guests,” she told him.
“I can see that.”
“Then behave as though you can.”
He looked at me.
“Another injured one?”
“Only in scattered places.”
Vale laughed. Leth sighed.
Apparently we had made a poor first impression together.
He told his part while eating stew. He had found Kaito beside the old lime road, attempting to stand whenever he heard wheels.
“Thought I’d be another patrol,” Vale said. “First thing he asked was whether I had soldiers with me.”
Kaito looked down.
Vale continued without making the memory tender.
“Leg was infected. Fever. He’d been walking on a boot full of blood because he reckoned taking it off would mean not getting it back on.”
“He was right,” Leth said.
“I didn’t say it was sensible.”
“Did you see the station?” I asked.
“No. Saw where he came out onto the road. Didn’t go looking for whatever had chased him.”
“The light across the river.”
Vale’s spoon stopped.
Kaito looked up.
“What about it?”
“Do you know who might occupy that bank?”
“There’s a flood house. Old river works. Used to be three keepers.”
“Used to?”
“One died. One left. Last I heard, Mera still had the place.”
“Which side of the river is that considered?”
Vale frowned.
“The other.”
Aoi made a small sound into her cup.
I accepted the correction.
“Which government?”
“Depends who brought a map.”
Leth reached for the bread.
“The flood house sits on a stone island when the river’s high. Both banks claim it when the sluices need opening. Neither claims it when the roof needs fixing.”
Vale nodded.
“If somebody showed him the upper path, they knew the waterworks.”
Kaito stared at him.
“You could have told me.”
“You asked whether anyone was coming after you. You didn’t ask who was good with lamps.”
The room became quiet.
Vale looked between us.
Then set down his spoon.
“I should have thought of it.”
Kaito rubbed his thumb over the edge of the table.
“Maybe.”
No one attempted to improve the answer.
After supper, Kaito went to the shed and returned carrying a narrow wooden box. He placed it in front of Aoi.
Inside lay the signal lamp. The metal housing was blackened. One shutter had been repaired with wire. Its glass was cracked but intact.
“I kept it out of the salvage return,” he said.
I looked at him.
“The ledger lists a lamp.”
“Vale surrendered the station’s spare. I carried this one.”
A discrepancy.
One that would matter.
“Tell the examiner,” I said.
Kaito’s expression tightened.
“Yes. I will.”
Aoi touched the repaired shutter.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“Give it to whoever answered me.”
“At the flood house?”
He nodded.
“If somebody’s still there.”
“You want us to go?”
“I want you to ask.”
She looked at him.
He took a folded sheet from his pocket.
A letter.
“I wrote this. I don’t know if they can read it. Or if it’s even the right person.”
“We can find out.”
Kaito sat. For the first time since our arrival, he looked embarrassed rather than guarded.
“I don’t want every part of this to be about them.”
The officers. The order. The men who had left him.
Nobody needed the list.
Aoi placed the letter inside the lamp box.
“All right.”
Kaito nodded.
Then he looked at me.
“You’re going back to the watch?”
“After Stonecross.”
“Leth says you’re opening the road.”
“Attempting to keep it open.”
“There are people here who can work. They can’t all lift stone anymore.”
I glanced toward the main cottage.
“Clerks?”
“One. Me. Not yet.”
“Carpenters?”
“Two. One’s good at repairs. The other says he’s good at everything, but Leth makes him do laundry.”
“An unusually rigorous hiring process.”
Kaito almost smiled.
He gave me a list. No names without permission. Skills. Restrictions. What each person could manage.
I read it. Then folded it carefully.
“I can take this.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
We left the following morning. Kaito walked with us to the cart.
Aoi stood beside him for a while without saying anything.
Then she hugged him. Carefully at first. Less carefully after that.
He held her as though he had forgotten whether he was permitted.
I occupied myself with the luggage. There was an excellent quantity of it.
When Aoi finally stepped away, she was crying again. So was he.
“I’ll write,” she said.
“Don’t send it through the military.”
“I know.”
“Or the castle.”
“I know.”
“And don’t come back injured worse than that.”
She laughed.
“No promises.”
He did not laugh.
She saw.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll try.”
Before climbing aboard, she took his hand.
“You don’t have to come with us.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
We drove away slowly. Kaito remained beside the road until the bend hid him.
Aoi sat with the lamp box on her lap.
After a mile, she asked whether I could find the handkerchief in her pack.
I found it.