9

Isolde entered Nydel with black hair, a cork wedge in her right shoe, and the name Sela Renn.

Doven had cut three pieces before finding one that altered her gait without twisting her good knee. They secured it beneath the insole. Isolde set her toe down first and carried a stick to take some of the weight.

The real injury was in the other leg. She would have to watch both throughout the day.

Kaoran walked behind her with a basket of knives to sharpen. They had altered his beard with flour and ash, though he still looked like the same old man who had been buying salt in Nydel for fifteen years.

“Your disguise needs more work,” Isolde said.

“Yours needs fewer opinions.”

“Rovan Bale knows your face.”

“He also knows I live in a house he’s just searched. Hiding would confirm I have something useful.”

“You do.”

“Today you’re a bad-tempered sharpener’s apprentice.”

“That hardly limits my performance.”

The road emerged beside the mill. Six weeks had passed since the fight in the pass.

The house remained under irregular surveillance.

Kaoran and Isolde slept at the northern post and returned at night to tend the animals.

Enna had stopped coming up. Messages traveled as marks on trunks, turned stones, and tools Doven returned with a number of notches.

The last blade had borne four.

Four carts left Nydel every night.

Isolde needed to see them.

The market filled two streets and the square. Food stalls stood near the fountain. Tools lay beside the smithy. A fenced passage led to the mine office, where workers showed a token before entering.

On Caleryon’s maps, Nydel was a black dot beside a coal seam.

From the road, Isolde counted thirty-two people waiting for bread.

There were older women, children, and three men with mine dust on their clothes. A barrier separated the line from the fountain. Each family received a loaf after showing its registration mark. Those without one could buy at three times the price.

“Look at their feet,” Kaoran said.

Isolde looked.

The miners’ boots were wet, though it hadn’t rained. They came from the lower gallery, where groundwater covered the floor. Two children wore clogs dusted white. They had crossed from the lime kilns. A woman had red mud on her hem; her route passed through the confluence depot.

“They’ve mixed the shifts,” Isolde said.

“Why?”

“So everyone collects food at the same time.”

“And what does that allow?”

“They can count them. It also leaves fewer people in the galleries during distribution.”

Kaoran set the basket on the ground and spread a cloth. The first customer arrived before he finished arranging the stones. She was a woman with a kitchen knife so worn that its edge had lost its curve.

“Two coppers,” Kaoran said.

“You charged one last month.”

“Last month I had a house.”

The woman looked at him.

“They say the Guard found blood on your hillside.”

“The Guard finds what it brings.”

“They also say you were hiding Iria.”

Isolde bent her head over the whetstone.

“Iria owed money,” the woman continued. “That makes her guilty of many things.”

“Did you know her?” Isolde asked, making her voice deeper.

“I saw her once. Tall, blond hair, and one white eye.”

Kaoran coughed.

“Others say she was red,” the customer added. “Hair and hands. She burned twenty men at the mill.”

“The mill is still standing,” Isolde said too quickly.

The woman looked toward the building, then back at her.

“They burned the mill too, according to a carter from the south,” Isolde added, lowering her voice. “That’s where I come from.”

“In the south, they turn a goat into an army when they sing.”

The customer paid one copper and two onions. Kaoran accepted. Isolde returned the knife with an edge that could cut light.

During the first hour, they heard six versions of Iria Thennar.

One insisted she was Kaoran’s daughter. Another made her a spy for Skarde. Two miners said she had set fire to the office to erase the debts. The building remained whole, but that detail had little force against a useful story. A carter swore the woman had scales on her back.

No one mentioned Isolde.

The heir’s death appeared in a different kind of story.

A vendor offered clay medals bearing the Valarys flame. Families placed them on the graves of those who had fallen in Cendral. Near the fountain, a scribe charged to add names to a mourning list. The sheet began in large letters: ISOLDE VALARYS, SACRIFICED FOR CALERYON.

Isolde read it from the stall.

Her name took more space than the forty-seven beneath it.

“How many bodies came back?” she asked the bread seller when she went to buy a loaf.

“Twenty-nine.”

“The list has forty-eight names.”

“The rest were lost in the river or left beneath the mountain. The princess is at the top because she was a princess.”

“What did she do?”

The woman wrapped the bread.

“Depends on the crier. The first said she saved the frontier. The next claimed she released the dragons and then surrendered. My brother-in-law came back from Cendral missing two fingers. He says the regent’s men closed the retreat and the heir tried to open it.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I believe him when he wakes screaming.”

The baker pointed to a basket hidden beneath the table.

“This costs one if you have a mark. Three if you don’t.”

Isolde paid three.

“You could register,” the woman said.

“We leave tomorrow.”

“They all say that. Then winter comes.”

Isolde returned with the loaf. On the back of the paper, she had drawn the line, barrier, fountain, and hidden basket. She marked the wet boots and lime dust with different symbols.

“You forgot the price,” Kaoran said.

She added one and three.

“What are you drawing?” a boy asked.

He was about eight and carried a broken wooden sword. A younger girl followed him in a sackcloth cloak.

“A map,” Isolde said.

“Nydel goes there.”

The boy pointed to the center of the sheet.

“Where do you live?”

“On Forge Street.”

Isolde gave him the charcoal.

“Draw it.”

The boy drew a line behind the mill, crossed two houses, and finished beside a square.

“The door was here,” he said. “They took it off to burn it.”

“Who?”

“My mother. We owed coal, and the house was cold.”

The girl tugged at the cloak.

“Play.”

The boy raised the sword.

“I’m the regent. You’re the dead princess.”

The girl climbed onto a crate, spread her arms, and fell onto a heap of straw. The boy pointed with the sword.

“Now the river carries her away.”

She rose laughing.

“Again.”

Isolde planted the tip of her stick between two paving stones. The boy waited for his sister to climb onto the crate again. Isolde was still inside the market, a loaf under her arm.

“Does she always fall?” she asked.

“If she comes back, she wins and the game ends,” the boy said.

Kaoran handed him a piece of wood.

“Make her a bridge.”

The boy placed the board between two crates. The girl crossed without falling. Then she attacked the regent with a spoon, and both ran off.

“Court maps don’t include burned doors,” Isolde said.

“Or games.”

“They’ve been playing that since Cendral.”

Kaoran kept watching the children. The little girl had left the board on the crate and now demanded a turn with the sword.

Isolde drew the bridge beside Forge Street. The charcoal tip trembled when she reached the edge.

At noon, Doven left the smithy with eight knives. He laid them on the stall and looked at Isolde’s black hair.

“My customer expects good work,” Kaoran said.

“My customer expects your apprentice to stop nicking them.”

Isolde examined the first. The edge had an uneven curve from years of use.

“This needs to lose half a finger’s width of metal.”

Doven recognized her voice. His eyes moved to the left glove. Then he pointed to the forge.

“The wheel is free.”

They went in separately to avoid attention. Doven kept the door open and hammered a bar while they spoke.

“Bale has returned to Caleryon,” he said. “He left twelve men and an assistant named Soren Tyre. They search carts at all three exits.”

“Four leave at night?” Isolde asked.

“Two carry stone. One carries workers. The fourth goes to the new gallery and returns empty.”

“Empty according to the sheet?”

“According to the weight. The wheels leave deep marks going out and almost none coming back.”

“Then it unloads outside Nydel.”

“Or before the checkpoint.”

Doven struck the bar. A spark fell between them.

“The Guard closed the old entrance,” he continued. “Sava thinks they found Ydrael’s tunnel.”

“Ydrael is still holding up a gallery,” Isolde said.

“Does he speak to you?”

“When he wants.”

The blacksmith put down his hammer.

“The girl on Well Street hears knocks beneath her bed. Her father says it’s machinery. She says something answers from farther down.”

Isolde marked the house on the paper.

“I need to speak to Sava and see the carts.”

“Sava starts the afternoon shift. She’ll leave through the laundry to avoid the search.”

“Why the laundry?”

“The uniforms come down stained. The women cleaning them pass without tokens because Varek considers dirt free of secrets.”

Another mark entered the map.

“Food, water, clothes, work,” Isolde said.

“And fear,” Doven added. “Draw where people stop before they speak.”

Isolde looked around the forge. Two neighbors had passed the door, looked at the metal circle above the Guard post, and continued. She marked the angle from which they could see the booth without being seen.

“Who teaches them that?” she asked.

“No one. That’s why they all learn.”

A whistle summoned the next shift. The street filled with workers.

Isolde returned to the stall. The miners walked in groups of six and carried consecutively numbered tokens. There were women, men, and young people. The foremen checked hands and mouths as they left. They were looking for hidden stones.

An older woman stopped before the knives.

“How much to sharpen a sickle?”

“One copper,” Isolde said.

“I have salt.”

“That will do.”

The woman was Mella Ors. She farmed a plot beside the river. She had given half her harvest in tax and was losing another portion because both her sons worked in the mine.