4 #2

“Do you really think you can hide her here?” she asked Kaoran.

“She’s present for this conversation.”

“I know. That’s why I’m speaking where she can hear.”

Isolde turned.

“You can speak to me.”

“Good. Do you really think you can hide here?”

“For as long as necessary.”

“Varek’s men have taken over a level of the mine. They’re recording the coal and the red veins. Doven says they’ll bring machines when the mud clears. There’ll be more soldiers on the road.”

“What are they looking for?”

“Confluence stone. They say it will reinforce the bridges at Cendral.”

Isolde looked at the veins in the house. Some days they answered with a warmth that reminded her of Ydrael; when she touched them again, she found still stone. She didn’t know how much came from the dragon and how much lingered in Cendral’s broken network. The new excavations could change both.

“I need to see the orders,” she said.

“They’re in the mine office.”

“I can reach Nydel.”

Kaoran shook his head.

“I can,” Isolde repeated.

“You’ve walked thirty steps in a new shoe.”

“Then teach me to walk farther.”

Enna picked up her basket.

“Teren will bring a copy if he can get into the office. He likes pretending to be hurt, and no one watches a man who complains so much.”

“Put him in touch with me,” Isolde said.

“With Iria?”

Isolde took a moment.

“With Iria.”

Enna went down toward the oak. Kaoran waited until the woman disappeared before putting away the herbs.

“You gave an order,” he said.

“I asked for information.”

“From someone risking her work and freedom.”

“Enna can refuse.”

“Did you remind her?”

Isolde lowered her eyes to the shoe.

“She knows she can.”

“In Caleryon, perhaps. Here she has seen your pendant and knows your name. To her, you’re still the heir, even hiding under the name Iria.”

“Enna knows how to argue with me.”

“She also knows what your surname meant. Ask her whether Teren knows the risk before you send for him.”

Isolde struck the table with her palm.

“Darian asked me to trust the decisions he made for me. You’ll have to put up with me asking about mine.”

Kaoran stepped away from the threshold. The path came into view between them.

“You can go down and talk to her. Take your stick. If you’d rather wait, she’ll be back in two days.”

The freedom to choose between those two small things infuriated her for an instant. She wanted to reach the mine office and demand the orders. She wanted to do it with a leg that could carry her anger all the way back.

“Sometimes I still wait for him to explain why,” she said. It came out quieter than she intended. “I know what he decided. I heard it. And I keep preparing questions for him.”

Kaoran laid the bunch of herbs on the shelf.

“I can listen to those questions.”

Isolde shook her head slowly. Over the winter, she had recounted the events at Cendral until her voice was gone. What Darian had asked of her beside the pond remained in a place she still feared bringing anyone else.

“I’ll speak to Enna when she comes back,” she said. “First I need to know what I can offer Teren.”

Kaoran sat on the other side of the table. He waited as she took a piece of charcoal and drew the first route.

Isolde looked at the hillside. She had followed complaints from the riverbank to the archives with Aelyn; she knew the space where an official could lose a name between two ledgers.

Once, she had had an escort to return and ask again.

Teren would go back to a gallery whose foreman could change his shift or take his brother.

She drew an additional exit and wrote the cost of the journey beside it.

“Doven made the shoe without knowing me,” she said.

“He knows Enna. He trusts her judgment. That has a cost too.”

“I’ll pay for the sickles.”

“The metal covers part of it.”

Sharpening the first sickle took her all afternoon. She gripped the handle with her right hand and guided the stone with her left. When her fingers failed, she used a strap around her palm. The repetition left a painful groove at the base of her thumb.

Kaoran prepared dinner in silence.

The work had been simple in Caleryon. Armorers handed over ready blades and took away the nicked ones. Isolde knew the sound of a well-tempered sword, but she had never had to hold the angle of a tool through a hundred passes.

When she finished, she tested the edge on a blade of dry grass. The sickle cut through without bending it.

“One,” she said.

Kaoran placed a dish beside her.

“Six to go.”

“I can count.”

“The spoons suggested otherwise a few weeks ago.”

Isolde threw the blade of grass at him. Kaoran caught it over the dish.

Two days later, Teren came up with the first stolen order.

The charcoal burner who had pretended to limp turned out to be a thin man of about thirty, with dark hair and an unsettling ease at entering other people’s property. He carried the document rolled inside his sleeve and had an ink stain on his chin.

Isolde received him in the lower chamber. She had put away the pendant and covered her hair with a scarf. Enna made the introductions.

“Iria needs to know what they’re looking for,” she said.

“Iria owes me a back door,” Teren replied.

Isolde opened the document. Varek’s seal appeared beside the regent’s. The order classified the extracted stone by color, temperature, and reaction to a flame. The red veins were to go to a depot in Arkhe. The blue followed a restricted route to Cendral.

“What does the mark beside the quantities mean?” she asked.

“Assigned workers,” Teren said. “They want twelve per gallery. If a family can’t pay the tax, an adult works off the debt.”

“For how long?”

“The paper says until the sum is covered. The office sets the value of a day.”

Isolde did the calculation. At the prices listed, a small debt could last months. A family without grain would pay in labor while interest grew.

“Why did you bring this?” she asked.

Teren looked at Enna.

“My brother is in the third gallery. Yesterday they told him he owed two seasons for the roof that fell in on his house.”

“They could imprison you if they discover the copy.”

“They could take me to the mine if I do nothing.”

“I can keep the document and look for a way to get the information out. In exchange, I’ll warn you if I hear of a search or a raid. That’s the limit of what I can do for now.”

Teren studied the stick leaning against the wall.

“Enna said you helped.”

“Enna knows what I want to do. You need to know what I can do today.”

The man rubbed the ink stain and spread it across his cheek.

“Reading is enough today,” he said. “Half the people in the mine sign with a cross.”

Isolde copied the quantities, routes, and names. Then she returned the original. Teren would burn any draft he couldn’t hide. Enna would take the figures to Doven and two trusted families. No one would use Isolde’s name.

When they both left, Kaoran stayed by the door.

“This time you asked,” he said.

“He chose a risk that already existed.”

“Yes.”

Isolde hid her copy beneath a floorboard.

“I want to learn Kaor-Sai.”

Kaoran folded his arms.

“You’ve already begun.”

“I want you to be my teacher.”

“That changes what I can demand of you.”

“It changes what I can demand of you too.”

“Say it.”

Isolde had considered the terms while sharpening the seven sickles.

“Explain the risk and give me time to decide when there is time. I want news of Caleryon, Rheskan, Maelia, and Ydrael as soon as it arrives. If you say an exercise is over, it ends for both of us. And if I say it, you let go of the weapon.”

Kaoran looked at her hand, closed around the charcoal.

“Agreed.”

“No oaths,” she added.

Kaoran nodded slowly.

“My terms: you’ll finish the tasks even when they bore you. You’ll tell me where it hurts before the pain brings you down. You’ll repair what you damage. Everyone taking part will know whatever risk we can explain. When a decision endangers other lives, you’ll have to hear objections.”

“And if I disagree?”

“We’ll argue.”

“And then?”

“Whoever pays the greater cost will choose.”

Isolde held out her right hand. Kaoran looked at it.

“We’ll repeat the terms whenever we need to,” Isolde said.

Kaoran shook her hand.

“Then tomorrow you start before dawn.”

“I already start before dawn.”

“Tomorrow you’ll have a reason.”

The reason was learning to fall.

Kaoran spread three sacks of straw over the least stony ground. Isolde expected a run, a climb, or a test of balance. He told her to stand with her back to the mud.

“Bend your right knee,” he said.

“I can do that.”

“Now let your body go down.”

“That’s called sitting.”

“If you find a chair during a battle, use it.”

Isolde lowered herself. Kaoran asked her to tuck her chin, turn her shoulder, and roll across her upper back. The first attempt ended with her elbow driven into the ground. The second struck her hip. On the third, her left foot was trapped beneath her body.

“Again,” Kaoran said.

“I know how to fall. I’ve been practicing for months.”

“You know how to reach the ground. I want you to be able to get up afterward.”

They repeated the movement until their clothes soaked up the mud. Kaoran removed one sack. Then another. Isolde learned to protect her weak hand, to let the air out when her body hit, and to direct the fall toward the side that could better withstand the impact.

At noon, they agreed on a moving sequence. Isolde began walking among the sacks; Kaoran pushed her as she passed him.

Isolde turned, caught his wrist, and tried to pull him down with her. Her leg went out of line. Both fell. Kaoran landed underneath, his face buried in a sack.

“You’ve paid for one fall with two,” he said into the straw.

“Yours was worth it.”

“That takes training too.”

For five days, they marked the practice area with a rope. Inside it, Kaoran could throw her off balance as she carried loads. Isolde agreed to each sequence and could stop it by raising her right hand. Once they crossed the rope, they left the exercise behind.