The millkeeper had agreed to stop the wheel after the morning’s last sack. When Rowan arrived, grain was still running into the hopper. It was his seventh morning in the Glenn. Bren had asked Phia to meet them here, before anyone changed the watercourse. “That was meant to be the last one,” Bren said.
A man came down the steps from the loading door, brushing flour from his sleeve. “It was. Then she brought another.” He pointed toward two empty sacks hanging from the rail. “I told her you were coming. She said you wouldn’t want to come all this way and find nothing to eat.”
“How long?”
“Not long. Rell,” he added, offering Rowan a hand. “I know which of you I’ve kept waiting before.”
Rowan took it. “The wheel’s still running, then.”
“More slowly than it should. Come down to the water. She’s there already.”
Bren led him round the mill to the stone-sided pool below its wheel. Rowan recognized the step where he had read the working on his descent. It had met his moonlight with a cool, yielding movement.
Now he could see how high the water had risen. Its surface reached a dark mark along the stone, and a broken reed turned slowly below the outfall.
A slight woman crouched on the lower step. Her gray-streaked hair was braided and pinned clear of her collar. A basket stood above her on the dry ground, with a cloth tucked over something inside it. She lifted a hand as they approached, but kept her attention on the pool.
“Phia,” Bren said. “This is Rowan.”
“From the river approach.” She stood, using the rail without apparent haste. “I looked at the drawing you left with Thane. Have you brought the first reading?”
He took out the sheet. The damp corner had dried unevenly; the mill’s approach lay just above it.
“Ten days ago,” he said. “I couldn’t place the return beyond the lower field.”
Phia looked at the drawing, then turned it until the channel lay in the same direction as the water beside them. “You stood here?”
“On that step.”
“Good. Let’s begin there.”
Bren went down the channel while Rowan set his pack on dry ground. Hesta’s loaded cart had crossed the finished gate two mornings earlier. This was the first problem he had brought to an elder.
Rell wanted to lower the channel for a few days. The damp ground beside the outfall had been washing toward his field, and he needed to clear the outlet before the next rain. Bren knew the annual change. Rowan had found a connection crossing beneath the very place Rell intended to open.
He took ash across his palm and let the change reach his sight.
The pool darkened beneath its ordinary reflection. Rowan drew a small length of moonlight across his hand and found the joining where his first drawing placed it. At the turn toward the field, it drew harder against his fingers.
“There’s more against it,” he said.
Phia came beside the step. She did not ask to borrow the ash. Her hand moved just clear of the surface, following the water toward the outlet.
“Against which part?”
He showed her the turn. “The joining holds. There’s more against it beyond the bank.”
“Let me have the water first.”
Her fingers stopped above the turning reed. A brief, clean brightness gathered beneath them and passed down into the pool. Rowan saw it through the shallow water, but lost it where the stone hid the outlet. Phia shifted nearer the rail and looked downstream.
“It has too little room below,” she said. “I can find where it wants to go. It keeps coming back.”
“The outlet?”
“Part of it.” She lowered her hand. “I’d like to see what remains when Rell clears it.”
The wheel slowed behind them. Rell called from the upper platform, then came down with a long hook over his shoulder. Grain dust had settled along the back of his neck.
“If you need a different level, tell me before I lift the gate.”
Rowan released the moonlight. “Can you leave this one until we’ve looked below?”
Rell glanced at the water standing against the mark. “Not all afternoon. That bank won’t mend itself while we discuss it.”
“We won’t keep it here that long.”
They followed Bren to the lower side of the outfall. The channel narrowed between old stonework before easing into the field. Reeds had caught beneath a flat slab, packed together with mud and the ends of cut stems. On one side the water had begun to use a shallower way around them. Rell put the hook down and showed where he meant to lift the slab.
“This is the part I do every year. The rest has waited too long.”
“How far would you clear?” Rowan asked.
“To the bend. It used to run along here.” He indicated a wet hollow beside the current course. “I can still find the bed under it.”
Rowan crouched without bringing up his altered sight. The stonework ended well before the bend. Water had cut round a projecting root, leaving the old bed beside it nearly dry.
Bren was examining the bank above that root. “There’s a picket here.”
He brushed away the long grass, exposing a short length of worked wood seated against stone. Rowan could make out the cut along its inward face. A connection left it toward the field, farther from the present water than the account had shown.
“Have you moved that?” Bren asked Rell.
“No. I don’t touch it. I’ve cleared round it before.”
Rowan read from the stone rather than taking the picket in his hand. The cut joined the deeper working, but its finer reach came back toward the bend before returning to the field. Rell’s proposed channel would pass across it.
“The outlet can be cleared,” he said. “I’d like to follow this before you take the bed farther down.”
Rell looked along the damp edge of his field. “Then I’ll have to stop again.”
“You might.”
“I’d rather clear it while the wheel’s stopped.”
Phia had gone to the lower bend. She stood with her head slightly turned, listening to something Rowan could not hear. When he joined her, she pointed across the narrow run.
“Take your reading there.”
The step was muddy but firm. He crossed where Bren indicated and brought the joining toward his sight again. From this side, he could follow the return beyond the picket. It held close to the old bed, then seated beneath a larger stone in the bank. He marked the place on the drawing.
Phia watched him release it. “If he clears the reeds without turning the water, what do you expect?”
“Less pressure at the outlet. The joining may answer more evenly.”
“Then we can try that without taking the bend apart.”
They marked the slab as the limit: the packed reeds could come out without lifting the picket or turning the channel across its return. Rell would lower the supply, clear the outlet and bring the water back to the level Rowan had read.
“And the field?” he asked.
Phia looked along the shallower way the water had made. “It should take less through there when the outlet opens. We’ll watch it before you start the wheel.”
Rell went to lower the supply, with Rowan beside him. Bren made room on the bank for the reeds. As the pool fell, the damaged edge emerged beneath the grass. Rell came down to help draw out the packed stems. Mud clouded the water below.
Phia waited until the loosened material had passed, then turned her hand above the narrower course. Water rose from beneath the slab, carrying the packed mud and twisted stems with it. She divided the stream around Bren’s boots and sent the debris onto the bare bank. When she lowered her hand, the current settled into its cleared bed. Bren drew the last trailing stem ashore with the hook.
“Enough,” she said. “Bring it back slowly.”
Rowan raised the gate by the same marks Rell had shown him. The pool filled, then began falling into the lower run without collecting against the damaged edge. Rell stood at the slab to watch. Farther down, Bren lifted the cleared reeds out of reach of the water instead of leaving them where they could wash back.
Phia came up beside Rowan and shook a few bright droplets from her fingers. Below, the cleared water was already finding the outlet.
“The wheel?” he asked.
“Not yet. Let him see what this level does.”
They waited while the pool settled. Rell called that the water was keeping to the outlet. The reed Rowan had watched earlier had gone.
He returned to his first step. With the gate set as it had been, he brought the joining back toward his hand.
The pressure remained.
It did not follow the old eddy’s movement. The nearer edge held distinctly in its bed, but the finer course pulled through it toward the bend. He let the contact grow thinner, feeling for the point at which the return began. The effort had moved higher along his wrist than it did when he read from the farther bank.
“It hasn’t eased here,” he said.
Phia took the rail beside him. This time her hand remained still. She watched the water, then the field, with the same intent look Rowan had first seen below the mill.
“The water has,” she said. “The other movement hasn’t.”
“Can you follow where it begins?”
“Beyond this return. Not from here.” She looked at the drawing he held open against the rail. “Your first account gives the level?”
He found the mark he had made beside the stone. It was a little lower than the one they had used today. He showed Rell, who came up from the outfall and read it with his head bent close to the page.
“That was after I’d started the wheel,” he said. “It drops there while it’s running.”
Rell agreed to start the wheel after checking the open outlet. When he called from inside, Rowan waited for the water to fall to the mark on his first drawing, then read from the same step. The contact changed with the level; the harder return remained.
Phia confirmed the difference from below, then held his sheet against the wind while he added today’s level and the wheel’s movement. He kept the first reading beside it. The changed pressure had survived both the cleared outlet and the matched water level.
Rell returned from the wheel room. “It’s taking the grain properly now.”
“Keep it to this channel until we’ve examined the bend,” Rowan told him. “You can clear the outlet as we’ve done today. Leave the picket and the ground round it where they are.”
“When will you look?”
Bren came up the steps. They had spoken of the adjoining fields for the following morning; he could bring the run into that walk. Phia could meet them after midday. Rell asked them to tell his wife where they had put the marks before they left. She would be there when the water was lowered again.
They found Rell’s wife inside and showed her the marks. The last flour had been bagged; the mill would run tomorrow.
Phia took a small sack from the millkeeper’s wife and put it in her basket.
“For the baking?” Rell asked her.
“For someone who offered to bake if I brought the flour.”
“You could have had it when you came.”
“You were still grinding it.”
He glanced at the sack, then shook his head. “You might have said.”
“I was watching the water.”
Outside, she shifted the basket onto her other arm. Rowan offered to carry it to the road.
“Thank you. There’s room on this side of the drawing if you want a hand with that.”
He gave her the sheets and took the basket. The weight was less than the morning’s work had led him to expect. They walked beside the channel while Bren stayed to settle the next visit with Rell.
At the road, she returned the papers and took her basket. “I’d like the lower reading beside the other accounts when you’ve made your copy. There are people who remember this reach before the mill was altered.”
“The Circle?”
“Some of them. Others may know it too. I’ll ask who has walked it.”
He watched her take the lane back toward town. She stopped where two people were speaking beside a gate, set down the basket, and waited for room to join them. Rowan could hear her laugh, but not what had been said.
Bren came out carrying Rell’s hook. They took the road to Thane’s together. Rowan left a separate note with Phia’s comparison: the pressure remained after the outlet was cleared. The mill could work; the other movement still needed an answer.