21

Kaoran spent five days insulting a pillow.

The pillow belonged to Vela, the healer in Luzmer. It was stuffed with stiff wool and smelled of camphor. Kaoran blamed it for every pain, the position he had to lie in, and an insect that never appeared.

“It’s a recovery tactic,” he explained.

Isolde changed the bandage on his back.

“The pillow looks intimidated.”

“It will be when I can lift my arm.”

His collarbone remained immobilized beneath crossed bandages. Two ribs were fractured. The third had turned out to be bruised. Vela allowed short walks around the room and forbade horses, fights, and “decisions that require falling off a roof.”

“She’s too specific,” Kaoran said.

“She’s met her patients.”

They hid in a net-drying shed on the glass canal.

The brigades changed the watch twice a day.

The commission searched seventeen houses, detained Eren for three hours, and confiscated the copy he had prepared for the inspection.

In the official report, they entered it as the original book.

The real names traveled with Lenda toward Caleryon, Arkhe, and Bren.

The port council kept Tarin’s statement.

The Guard tried to withdraw it. Twelve copies were already circulating.

On the sixth day, a boy drew an ash figure on the drying shed’s door. It wore a firefighter’s shirt and carried a ladle. Beneath it, he wrote in crooked letters: FIRE LISTENS TO THOSE WHO SAVE.

Isolde found the drawing on her way back from the market.

“Now I have a ladle,” she said.

Kaoran looked at it from the window.

“Eda has better posture.”

“Two working hands too.”

“The legend will give them back to you.”

“It’s changed my height three times already.”

The market offered new versions every morning.

Isolde bought bread, bandages, and the fruit Vela managed to make Kaoran eat.

One day, she stopped beside a couple discussing the price of two cups.

The woman slipped an arm around her companion’s waist as he searched for a coin; they ended up laughing at something Isolde barely heard.

She thought about being that close to someone again.

The desire came before a face and left her surprised beside the stall.

For years, Darian had occupied even the idea of a shared table.

Isolde chose a cup for herself, made of green clay, with a handle wide enough for her fingers.

She carried it to the drying shed wrapped in her apron.

Kaoran asked whether the market sold pillows too.

She set the cup on the table and laughed with an ease she had wanted for days.

One song told of a woman born inside a mine. Another claimed the warrior had lost her name by giving it to a dragon. A boatman insisted she had been traveling for a hundred years and appeared when the bells fell silent.

Luzmer’s baker sold flatbreads with a gray mark. He gave part of the money to the families from L-4. The Guard banned the drawing. The next day, each flatbread bore a different smudge.

“This helps the wounded,” Isolde said.

“It also turns your face into anyone’s,” Kaoran replied.

“That part helps the route.”

“What part worries you?”

Isolde broke open the bread. Inside was a strip of paper with two prisoners’ names and a copy’s destination.

“The part I don’t know yet.”

She found it that afternoon.

Three men entered the market in gray cloaks, with ash on their foreheads. They bore a flame drawn inside a circle. The first announced that the nameless warrior demanded food so she could keep freeing villages. The second collected coins. The third showed his sword to anyone who hesitated.

The vendors handed over bread, fish, and six crowns.

Isolde watched from a rope stall.

“The commission pays a hundred for each of them,” Tarin whispered. “I can call the brigade.”

“First we hear where they’re taking the food.”

They followed the men to an empty house. Inside were four sacks, two weapons, and a list of businesses. No relief route. No wounded people.

Kaoran waited in the drying shed. Isolde had promised to avoid confronting anyone alone. She had brought Tarin, Sura, and two vendors who had chosen to recover their goods.

They went in through the front door.

“The collection is over,” Isolde said.

The man with the sword saw her dark apron and the bandage on her left hand.

“This belongs to the woman of fire.”

“Did she ask you for it?”

“Her signs are all over Luzmer.”

“The people of Luzmer drew them.”

“Then the people pay.”

The second man picked up a knife. Tarin blocked the exit. Sura came in through the yard.

“Give back what you collected,” Isolde said. “Then you’ll answer to the stallholders for every threat.”

“Who are you to order that?”

The question waited for a name.

Isolde left the space empty.

“One of the people who came to recover the food.”

The man attacked.

She deflected the sword with her short blade. Her left hand braced her forearm with the strap. She turned her body and pinned the man against the table. The second raised his knife. One of the vendors threw a net over him. Sura caught the third in the yard.

The fight ended without fire.

The merchants took an inventory. Two crowns and a basket of medicines were missing. The men had spent some of the money on wine. They agreed to three days of work repairing the pier in exchange for the families dropping armed robbery charges. The decision belonged to those who had paid.

“The nameless warrior has no collectors,” Tarin told the market.

“How do you know?” a vendor asked.

“Because no one has signed her drawings.”

An old woman raised a marked flatbread.

“The mark pays for bandages.”

“Then the baker answers for the money, and you know where it goes,” Isolde said from the crowd. “An anonymous figure keeps no accounts.”

“She has no right to forbid them either,” the old woman replied.

That was true.

The baker opened the flatbread ledger. Every payment had an amount and a delivery. The families chose three witnesses to review it. The drawing stayed in use. The men in cloaks lost their argument.

Isolde returned to the drying shed.

Kaoran stood beside the table. His left arm remained bound. He used a new stick Tarin had ordered from a carpenter.

“Vela allowed ten steps,” Kaoran said.

Isolde counted the distance from the bed.

“You’d already passed ten before you reached the table.”

“Bring the chair closer.”

She put it to his right and waited for him to tell her where he needed help. Kaoran took a long time to sit down. When he had, he kept his hand on Isolde’s for a moment before asking for water.

“What happened in the market?”

Isolde told him. He listened without interrupting.

“A legend can hide you,” he said at last. “It can also speak for you, collect money, and choose enemies.”

Isolde left the market’s copy beside the glass. Kaoran made a mark beneath the work date and handed the pen back to her.

Isolde looked at the drawing of the ladle.

“The song can go on. I’ll intervene when it hurts someone.”

“You’ll have to decide which harm is worth revealing your presence.”

“I’ve spent three years training for that question.”

“Now a whole kingdom is answering it at once.”

Kaoran closed his eyes. The conversation had tired him more than walking to the table.

Isolde adjusted the pillow behind his back.

“Apologize,” she said.

“To you?”

“To it.”

Kaoran looked at the wool with contempt.

“It has work ahead of it.”

* * *

The stories followed the copies’ routes.

In Arkhe, the workers painted a gray cloak on the fence at pier five.

In Arvek, the chain link turned bell received a strip of cloth without a name.

In Bren, the children acted out the rescue again. This time, the role of the warrior changed after every line.

Another version circulated in Arkhe. The song said the warrior had burned a Skarde ship and driven out all the northern merchants.

Three porters used the lyrics to smash fish stalls.

Thalos published the actual manifests: the ship had sailed under the seals of the commission and Varek’s companies; no crew member from Skarde appeared on its lists.

In Bren, two men collected protection money in the name of the eight women who had used the alias. Neira gathered the families, opened the village accounts, and forced the men to return the money. Then she wrote on the market door: No ash collects without an amount, a destination, and witnesses.

In Nydel, Sema turned the sentence into a sheet of five questions.

Who receives the help?

Who keeps the account?

Who can refuse it?

Where does the task end?

What way out does each person retain?

The sheet reached Luzmer inside a sack of charcoal.

Isolde read it beside Kaoran.

“It looks like a civilian version of Kaor-Sai,” she said.

“The part about falling down a slope is missing.”

“Markets have stairs.”

“Then it will survive.”

Other news came from the coast. A preacher claimed Rheskan obeyed the woman and would punish anyone who refused her requests. He had painted a kneeling dragon on the temple wall.

Isolde felt the rage before she finished the sheet.

“He’s using Rheskan as a threat.”

“The legend needs simple symbols,” Kaoran said. “A dragon with a will of his own complicates the drawing.”

“Then we complicate it.”

Isolde wrote an account of Arkhe, the mines, and the coast. She described three occasions when Rheskan had chosen a different target, another when he had flown away, and one when he had refused to approach the plates.

She avoided explaining the bond. The last line read: The red dragon signs no human orders.

“That reveals someone has been close to him,” Tarin said.

“Thirty people saw each scene.”

“Who signs it?”

Isolde looked at Sema’s sheet.

“Each witness adds the place they saw. No one signs the whole thing.”

Tarin took five copies to the port. Eren added Luzmer. Tesa wrote Arvek. A fisherwoman from Arkhe added the lighthouse. The versions agreed on Rheskan’s autonomy and differed in minor details.

The preacher lost his threat when the temple children painted the dragon standing, looking in the opposite direction from the warrior.