31 #4

The inspector marked the sheet. Farel gave her another sack when the soldiers left, and she went back to work until the group departed.

At the eastern crossroads, Lenda traded the permit for a basket of roots and a green cloak.

Isolde moved the letter and seal to the pocket and sewed the order into the new hem.

The gatherers spread out, searching for fever bark and surna leaves.

Copies of the evidence traveled among dried roots, divided between their baskets.

On the third day, they found Erel beside a stream. He had a fever and a swollen ankle. His crew had gone on to keep a patrol from shutting down the gathering. The boy tried to stand when Lenda spoke to him and fell to his knees.

Isolde helped him sit. Two red lines ran up from a wound beneath his heel.

“We have to get him to the rest house,” Lenda said. “The patrol will pass before we arrive.”

They cleaned the wound with the water they could heat and asked two gatherers to carry the baskets. Erel walked between Lenda and Isolde. His weight pulled at the cut on Isolde’s leg; she changed sides when she felt the bandage grow wet.

The captain stopped them halfway along the path.

“You have an extra person.”

Erel raised his worker’s token. Lenda showed the permit and pointed to the bundles bound for Caleryon’s apothecaries. The man recorded the token number and demanded a statement about the wound.

“We can give it at the rest house,” Isolde said. “There’ll be a healer there.”

The captain sent a soldier with them. The woman who received them signed in front of him, asked Lenda to hold a lamp, and kept Erel with her. Isolde waited in the doorway until she heard the boy answer to his name.

They left several hours later, with a clean bandage for her and a green thread with two knots: Aelyn was still free. The laundries’ entrances remained open.

On the fifth day, they left the baskets beside a pond.

Lenda took two aprons from a barrel and set Isolde to scrubbing sheets.

Her damaged fingers let go of the cloth when the cold bit.

She tried holding it against the stone with her forearm; Lenda showed her where to fold it so the current would help.

One sheet bore four blue triangles and a dark stain. The woman in charge checked her tablet.

“Commission infirmary. Below ground. Each mark indicates a floor.”

Lenda noted its origin in the laundry tally destined for the fourth thread. Isolde finished washing the sheet and folded it twice before the corners came right. At nightfall, she received an entry permit.

Mira Ordel. Widow. Thirty years old. Oven district.

“I’m twenty-five,” she said.

The woman held the permit beside the poster nailed up near the washing place.

“That’s the age they’re looking for.”

Isolde folded the paper. The word widow lay beneath her thumb.

For years, she had carried in her body the absence of a man who was still alive.

Now she also remembered his mouth beside the pond, the warmth of his hand when she could still choose to believe him, and the weight of his fingers at Halver.

She wished that someday a hand on hers would again bring an invitation she could accept.

Lenda gathered the last sheets.

“Can you go on?”

Isolde let go of the paper to take half the pile.

“Yes. Show me where we put these.”

On the seventh day, a town crier presented the conductors as volunteers cared for by the kingdom. A woman asked about Rian Dorna. Another gave the name of a family from Neraval. The crier tried to continue as voices added dates and destinations.

Lenda and Isolde went on with the laundry cart. Across the square, two guards had begun recording who spoke. Lenda would look for a relay to warn the families before the next search.

On the night of the eighth day, they received a red button, a white thread, and an apple seed. The Council was still in session. The fourth thread still had three rooms; Lenda’s family remained off the arrest lists.

“I’ll go as far as the laundry,” she said. “Then I’ll decide again.”

Isolde checked the wax inside its case. The mountain’s profile and the silver line remained intact. The transport order was still sewn into the hem. She settled the seal’s case beside the letter and smoothed the edge of her cloak.

Rheskan passed over the road, so high they could barely see the color of his wings. He circled once and continued east. Isolde then received the image of the door Ydrael held from his prison. She kept a hand on the cloth until the stone faded from her awareness.

She had traveled for nine days.

On the last morning, the capital’s towers appeared above the plain. The white gates gleamed in the sun. Blue patrols covered the bridges. Smoke from bakeries, workshops, and kitchens rose behind the walls.

Aelyn was there.

Ardan was there.

So were Darian and Varek.

Ydrael’s key waited beneath her old rooms.

Isolde put away the letter and Cael’s seal. She adjusted her green cloak and took her place beside the laundry cart.

The people along the route recognized the ash on her boots and made room.

The nameless warrior took the road to Caleryon.