9 #2

“Do the shifts let you work the plot?” Isolde asked.

“They change their hours when they know I need them. If a collector comes, it always looks as though I’ve let the crops go to waste.”

“Have you thought of leaving Nydel?”

Mella turned toward the river.

“My husband is buried here. The two of us rebuilt that ditch after every flood. My daughter has just had a baby. I need to be able to stay.”

Isolde drew the plot beside the river.

“What do you need to work it?”

“Two hands during sowing. A wheel for the ditch. Seed they won’t later charge me for as a loan.”

“Who could help?”

Mella named three neighbors. One had a sick child. Another worked nights in the laundry. The third owed money on his horse. Each was available at different hours.

Isolde wrote times beside the names.

“If someone arranges two mornings’ work and finds the wheel, would you agree to share part of the harvest with other homes?”

“We already do.”

“How many?”

“Five. Six when there’s enough.”

The map grew around a plot Caleryon’s records classified as a taxable unit.

Mella took the sickle.

“You talk like the people in the palace,” she said.

Isolde stilled her hand.

“I’ve worked for administrators.”

“It shows. You’ve written Rina’s hours without noting she has a sick child. She’ll need to leave if he gets worse.”

Isolde opened the sheet. She added the warning and called Mella before she walked away.

“Can Enna see him?”

“If she leaves the mine before they close the street.”

Isolde marked both times. She had made similar lists with Darian, bent over a table where a seal promised someone would obey the next day. He had brought her lamps and copies. They had talked about continuing together. Now she had a wheel, a fever, and a door that would close before help arrived.

“I’ll come to the plot in the morning,” she told Mella.

The woman pointed out where the mud would be firmest. Isolde drew it before the charcoal broke between her fingers.

Sava appeared as the sun touched the rooftops. She carried a basket of wet uniforms and walked with a bent back. She passed the stall without looking. A strip of blue cloth fell from her hand.

Isolde picked it up.

Three knots closed one end.

“This comes from Caleryon,” she said.

Kaoran examined the thread.

“Do you recognize it?”

“Aelyn and I used it as girls. Three knots meant a door was still open.”

Nydel’s network connected to someone inside the palace. Isolde gripped the cloth.

“I could send her an answer.”

“You could.”

“She’d know I’m alive.”

“Yes.”

“I need to know the message’s route.”

They followed Sava at a distance. The miner entered the laundry, left the basket, and emerged through a side door with clean clothes.

A young woman received another blue strip in the alley.

Then she passed through an inn’s kitchen, gave bread to a carter, and hid another thread beneath the basket handle.

Isolde counted five hands before the signal left Nydel.

Each could be arrested.

Isolde could leave a sentence Aelyn would recognize. She had spent months imagining the reply: a joke about the silence, a question about her wounds, the anger her friend had every right to feel. She rested the charcoal against the back of the paper.

At the inn, the young woman with the thread picked up a basket and called for a child to move away from the wheel. Isolde had counted five hands that far. Any of them would have to explain where they had received her name if the message was intercepted.

She wrapped the charcoal again. She put the intact thread in the waxed bag and waited for the carter to leave the street.

Several hours remained before the carts departed. Kaoran packed up the stall and took the basket to the mill tavern. The room was full of workers between shifts. It smelled of wet wool, onion, and coal. A woman served broth from a pot set on bricks.

Isolde chose a table from which she could see both doors. The edge of the wedge had begun rubbing her heel. Beneath the table, she adjusted the insole with the small knife. When she left, she would put more weight on the stick; Sela Renn could be tired after a day’s work.

At the next table, four men shared a pitcher. One had his left sleeve folded and pinned to his shoulder. Another had two fingers held together by a copper splint.

“You came back from Cendral,” Isolde said to the man with the empty sleeve.

The man stopped drinking.

“Who’s asking?”

“Someone who’s heard too many versions.”

“Then buy a round, and I’ll give you another.”

Kaoran placed two coppers on the table. The tavern keeper filled the pitcher.

The man was Joren Fell. He had belonged to Morna’s company and lost his arm when a platform fell during the retreat. His companions got him out before Darian’s guards closed the passage.

“The mourning notice says the princess freed something beneath the mountain,” Isolde said.

“The notice was written by someone far from the mud.”

“What did you see?”

Joren drank. The voices around him lowered a fraction.

“I saw Isolde Valarys order the route opened for the wounded. I saw her dragon break a net that was killing men on both sides. I saw the regent close a door while she was still inside.”

“Did you see Darian give the order?”

“I saw his colors at the door. I heard his captains. Then I woke in a cart, and everyone said he had saved Cendral.”

The man with the splint looked toward the entrance.

“Joren.”

“The soldiers know I’m missing an arm. They can come check.”

“You have a daughter in the bakery.”

Joren gripped the pitcher. A truth’s value changed when family was nearby.

Isolde lowered her voice.

“If the heir appeared tomorrow, what would you do?”

“Ask why she took so long.”

The answer struck harder than an accusation.

“She could be injured,” Isolde said.

“We all are.”

“The regent controls the Guard.”

“That’s why the question matters.”

Joren looked at the empty sleeve.

“Then I’d tell her my men didn’t die to put another noble in the same chair. If she comes back for the crown, she can keep going. If she comes back for the people left beneath it, I’ll show her the door they closed.”

Kaoran watched Isolde over his bowl.

“Do you think she’s alive?” she asked.

“I think the river gave back no body. Hope costs little when no one asks you to use it.”

“The regent would say keeping her alive in stories prolongs the war.”

“The war keeps collecting taxes with her dead.”

The tavern keeper set down three dishes. She had heard the conversation.

“My sister wants her back,” she said. “I want my children to grow old. If both can happen together, I’ll light a candle. If it takes another battle in our streets, I’ll shut my door.”

Isolde picked up the spoon and set it down again.

She wanted to ask Joren for time to heal, show him the hand that could barely feel the bowl’s rim.

His daughter worked in the bakery they had just mentioned.

If Isolde said her name here, he would have to decide what to do before going back to see her.

She moved the mourning notice aside to make room for the dishes. The tavern keeper still had her hand on one, waiting for someone to take it.

“Is there talk of other survivors?” she asked.

Joren mentioned Morna, seen to the east with six soldiers.

A carter also spoke of a woman escorted toward Vayren; he had heard her called Maelia, though no one could explain who had recognized her.

Isolde noted where the rumor came from and left her western map unmarked.

Near Arkhe, fishermen swore they had seen a red shadow flying over the sea at night.

Rheskan.

Isolde avoided looking at Kaoran.

“A wounded dragon?” she asked.

“One wing dipped lower than the other,” the man with the splint said. “The port paid to keep the fishermen quiet. That got the story to three provinces.”

Isolde added Arkhe to the map. The mark lay in the direction of the carts and the salt-laden bond she had felt in winter.

A song began beside the hearth. Two miners beat cups against the table while a woman kept time with her foot.

The words told of a princess sleeping beneath the river and a dragon guarding her name.

The melody changed from verse to verse. In the last, the princess woke and found the gates of her own city closed.

“That part is new,” Isolde said.

“Songs grow where official notices tear,” Joren replied.

A guard entered the tavern.

The music immediately changed to a harvest song. Joren hid his empty sleeve beneath his cloak. The tavern keeper set a dish before the soldier and took payment before he sat.

Isolde watched fear move every body: who lowered a voice, who approached an exit, who kept talking to cover the others. She added those positions to the paper.

The guard looked at her dyed hair and continued to the hearth.

As she left, Isolde placed the rest of her bread beside Joren.

“If the heir returns,” he said, “tell her the map has changed.”

“Why do you think I could speak to her?”

Joren pointed to the black stains the dye had left behind her ear.

“I think a sharpener’s apprentice asks too many questions.”

Isolde held his gaze.

The veteran took the bread and turned to his companions. He had chosen to keep a suspicion to himself. She added it to the cost of the visit.

They waited near the kilns until dark. The four carts gathered in the mine yard. The first carried crates marked red. The second held stone under tarps. Fifteen workers with shackled ankles climbed into the third. The fourth appeared empty.

Isolde hid beneath a low bridge as the column left.

The empty cart creaked too much.

She waited for it to pass and touched the wood. The floor was warm. A false bottom concealed something that reacted with the veins.

The post’s dog began barking.

Soren Tyre raised a lamp. He was a tall man with white hair at the temples. Two guards went down toward the bridge.

Isolde slipped into the stream. Water reached her waist and pushed her left leg. Kaoran hid on the other side of a pier.

“I heard something,” a soldier said.

“Rats,” the other replied.

Soren didn’t move.

“Rats don’t make a tracking dog bark.”