6 #2

Bruma reared. Isolde held the rope and moved toward her good side. The mare came down with a jolt that shook the plow.

“Another line,” Kaoran said.

“The ditch is close.”

“The water isn’t here yet.”

They opened a second furrow. Isolde felt the fire in every scar. She could enter it and try to master it again. The first attempt had worsened the blaze. She kept the core closed and worked with earth, water, and strength.

At last the ditch overflowed onto the field. Water covered the main line. A cloud of steam hid the hillside. She and Kaoran beat out the last pockets with blankets.

The fire died at noon.

Half the barley remained intact, along with a black strip and a wet edge that smelled of bitter soup. The barn still stood. Four roof shingles were burned. Bruma had lost hair along one side. The hens had scattered into the woods, and a goat was missing.

Kaoran sat beside the irrigation ditch.

His eyebrows were singed, and an open blister marked his right hand. Isolde had a burn on her palm, mud to her shoulders, and blood on her knee.

The sword remained where it had fallen. Its metal held a faint glow.

Isolde walked toward it.

“Leave it,” Kaoran said.

“I have to put it out.”

“It’s cold already.”

“It’s still responding to the vein.”

“Then I’ll move it with a shovel.”

Isolde stopped.

“I can touch it.”

“You’ve lost feeling in your palm again,” Kaoran said. “Let me move it.”

“The blade reacted. You didn’t tell me it could carry fire to the vein.”

He looked at the black strip beginning in the yard.

“I should have checked before giving it to you.”

“You hit my scar.”

“Yes. I should have stopped the bout when your shoulder dropped. I saw you insist and kept going.”

Isolde waited for the part where he returned the accusation. Kaoran lifted the shovel and checked the metal’s temperature from a distance.

“I opened the core,” she said.

The old man stopped moving.

“I wanted you to move away. Then I tried to draw the fire back and carried it to the second furrow.”

She could remember both moments. In the first, a sword was still in her hands, and there was room to release it. In the second, Bruma was already battering the stable door. The difference kept her from taking refuge in a single explanation for the fire.

“How much have we lost?” she asked.

“We have to measure it.”

Kaoran slid the shovel beneath the guard and left the sword on a distant slab. Then he took out two stakes and a rope.

They walked the perimeter of the fire. Isolde recorded steps, width, and depth.

The blackened area covered nearly two-fifths of the field.

They had lost winter food, spring seed, and straw for the animals.

The ditch would need repairs. The plow had a bent blade.

Four young trees at the edge were burned to the roots.

Kaoran added the quantities at the table.

The money in the chest would cover some of the grain. Taxes had tripled the price, and Enna was dividing her stores among other families. Isolde noted what they still owed Doven.

“We can work in the morning and train in the afternoon,” she said.

Kaoran pointed to the broken ditch.

“The winter grain needs water before we sow it.”

“I need to know when I can try again.”

Kaoran turned the book so she could see their stores.

“When we finish repairing the channel and have seed. I’ll work on the ditch. I suggest you separate what can be saved from the field. If your hand is worse tomorrow, we change tasks.”

“And the sword?”

“It stays on the slab until we know how it carries heat. We’ll check together before the next exercise.”

Isolde looked through the window at the field. A goat was still missing; the seed she had counted with Kaoran when he gave her the key had burned in less than an hour. She closed the book, leaving the page marked.

“I’ll start beside the wall. The water got there first.”

She went out to find a basket.

The work began before the ground cooled.

She separated burned ears from those that still held grain.

Every stalk stained her hands black. Kaoran tended Bruma and went into the woods to find the animals.

He returned with the hens and one goat. The other appeared beside the oak at dusk, covered in soot and offended by the world.

For six days they cut, winnowed, and stored what they salvaged. The harvest filled less than half the barn. Isolde calculated rations. Two people could survive the winter if they reduced bread, sold a goat, and traded work for oats. Visitors, emergencies, and journeys fell outside the reckoning.

“The house always keeps something for whoever comes,” Kaoran said.

“This year it can’t.”

“Then we’ll find another way.”

“You said we had to pay for the damage.”

“Closing the door on a wounded person won’t bring back the barley.”

Isolde divided the stores into four parts: food, seed, animals, and aid. The fourth was small. Kaoran accepted it.

Repairing the ditch meant lifting stones, cutting roots, and rebuilding two sections of channel.

Isolde could carry weight with her right hand.

Her left guided the small pieces and tired quickly.

When the pain increased, she remembered the sword and continued until the limit began to compromise her posture. Then she said so.

“My hand needs rest.”

Kaoran changed the task. Neither treated the words as defeat.

Enna came up on the eighth day. She saw the field, Kaoran’s bandaged hand, and the sword on the slab.

“You’ve had an argument,” she said.

“The wind took part,” Isolde replied.

“The wind lives here and usually behaves better.”

Enna brought barley from three families who had received the tax lists. Doven sent a repaired blade for the plow. Teren contributed a sack of oats with a message: “For the back doors.”

Isolde put everything on the table.

“Did you tell them what happened?” she asked Enna.

“I told them the field burned and you were repairing it.”

“I set it alight.”

“You can tell them when we go down. Mella set that sack aside from her stores; Doven chose to work on the blade. Ask how much they can give next year before deciding for them that they need everything today.”

Isolde rested her hands beside the grain. Accepting it meant going down to the village with an explanation she was still finding words for. She could return every sack and keep her shame inside the house. Enna watched without withdrawing the basket.

She turned Teren’s message over. The second line read: Lera and Oren crossed the ford.

“I’ll keep some for whoever comes,” Isolde said.

Enna brought the seed container closer. They worked together, separating the quantities.

The winter grain came from a high village.

Isolde paid with two weeks’ work repairing stone walls on an abandoned farm.

She left before dawn, walked an hour, and returned at dusk.

No one knew her there. She used the name Mara and kept her scarf low, though the farmers asked few questions of a woman who could set stones all day.

The work toughened her hands. Her knee grew steadier on slopes. The scar still hurt when she lifted blocks, but Isolde learned to turn from her hips and carry the weight close to her body.

Kaoran didn’t touch the sword.

One afternoon, as they removed burned roots, Isolde found a piece of leather buried beside the wall. It was a broad strap, hardened by time, with a clasp designed to fasten to a saddle much larger than Bruma’s.

Kaoran took it from her hands.

“Whose was it?”

He wiped away the ash with his thumb.

“Thalyon’s.”

It was the first time he had spoken the name.

Isolde set down the hoe.

“A horse?”

Kaoran looked toward the mountains.

“A dragon.”

Wind crossed the burned stalks. Isolde waited.

“Was he bonded to you?”

“For many years.”

“You never spoke of him.”

“Some names need a safe place.”

Kaoran sat on the rebuilt wall. He held the strap in both hands. The burn on his right was beginning to close.

“I was twenty-three and had spent four winters on the frontier,” he said.

“Thalyon and I knew each other before we joined the army. We carried messages, brought people out of blocked passes, and took orders from men who drew those places without having set foot in them. He found the change in the wind before I felt the cold on my face.”

Kaoran tried to open the clasp. Dirt lay inside it. Isolde held out a twig for him to clean it; he took it without looking at her.

“What color was he?”

“Dark beneath the wings. Gray when it snowed. He had a white scale beside his right eye and hated bells.”

Kaoran’s voice had lost its usual roughness.

“What happened?”

“There was an oath of custody. I signed it without Thalyon knowing what I was accepting on his behalf. Then the men charged with enforcing it arrived.”

The clasp opened at last. Kaoran passed the leather through the buckle and closed it again, checking a fit that no longer held anyone.

Isolde thought of Ydrael beneath Cendral, the blue light around his neck, and the record of workers treated as figures.

“Did you obey?”

Kaoran folded the strap.

“Long enough for them to put chains on Thalyon.”

“Did he die?”

“I lost him.”

The answer closed off the detail and left the wound open.

“Is that why you left the Crown?”

“I left a rank, a house, and the idea that a seal could cleanse a decision. The rest took longer.”

Isolde sat beside him.

“Was Kaor-Sai his?”

“The first part came from watching him fly. He turned because the wind changed, descended because someone needed to escape a storm, and attacked when he had chosen the cost. It took me years to understand what he did naturally.”

“Dragons have strength to spare.”

“That’s why they can show how much a human order wastes.”

Isolde remembered the burning field. She had used fire to deny a fall. The flame had served no need beyond her pride.

“Were you still carrying that sword?”

Kaoran nodded.

“I could defend myself with it. I used that certainty to keep waiting. Thalyon wore the chains while I calculated which confrontation I could win.”