Anet waited while Rowan came through the gate, then turned uphill without taking the path he had drawn. “We go round this side.” He followed her along the fence. The other way crossed a planted bed before reaching the next gate. From below, he had mistaken the clear strip between its rows for a path.
“I thought you came through there.”
“I do when I’m picking. You wouldn’t want someone arriving with a load to try it.” She stopped at the end of the fence. “This is where they turn.”
Two low stones marked an opening wide enough for a person carrying baskets. Beyond it, the ground rose toward a small building whose roof he had seen from the road. Anet took her cloak from her arm and put it on. The shade remained cold beneath the hedge.
“Who uses the building?” he asked.
“Both houses. We keep things there until they’re taken down. Sometimes people come up from the farther fields and wait for the others.”
She showed him the stone bench beneath the eaves, then pointed across the track.
“There, when the bench is full.”
Rowan looked toward the hollow. The ground seemed dry. Old leaves lay gathered behind a root, and the bank kept off most of the wind.
He put down his pack before taking a reading.
The building’s protection answered through stone beneath the nearer wall. With ash at his palm, he could follow its course around the bench and along the worn approach. Farther out, it turned back toward a picket below the hedge. The hollow lay beyond it.
Darkness had collected beneath the root, thin where it met the outer ground and closer within the folded bank. One reach pressed toward the pale edge. The protection held it there.
Anet was watching his face.
“Not that place?”
“Not today. The working ends before it.”
She looked across the track. “It was clear last time someone read it.”
“When?”
“Before the last cutting. I can ask.”
He left his hand open, taking no more of the connection toward him. She came beside the bench but did not follow his gaze as though she could see what he saw.
“Can I keep them out of it?”
“Put something across the approach. I’ll mark it with you. They can wait here while we find out whether the old reading covered the same ground.”
She brought a spare hurdle from behind the building. Rowan helped set it across the opening, leaving the route between the fields and bench clear. He showed her where the held edge lay, using the bench and nearer gate as marks she could recognize without his sight.
He took another pinch of ash and spread it where the protection met the root. Moonlight gathered over his knuckles as he drew a short shield outward, overlapping the held edge rather than moving it. The green light faded from ordinary sight when he released the working, but its presence remained clear through the ash. It would keep that approach covered until someone came to examine the deeper course. The hurdle told people where to stop.
“Tell the two houses,” he said. “If someone has been sitting there and felt anything wrong, send word.”
“To you?”
He looked at the building whose roof had been a shape above his road drawing. “To Thane’s room. Tell them which place. Bren and I will leave the account there.”
Anet nodded and went to the nearer house while he drew the approach. He kept his reading beside the point where he had stood, adding the root and a flat stone beneath it. The dark reach had gathered between those two. He could find them again.
When she returned, she had the householder with her. He had never seen anyone read the hollow. The warden who came before the cutting had checked the building and the way up from the road. Anet listened, then looked across at the hurdle.
“I heard there was a clear place to wait.”
“There is,” the man said. “This one.”
Rowan put that beside the other account. No one had knowingly sent people beyond the protection. Anet had extended a sensible piece of news to the other dry ground nearby.
They agreed when he could examine the farther household anchor. Anet showed him the gate back to Bren’s junction.
By late afternoon he had drawn both houses, the shared building and the approach under the hedge. Anet took a copy of the safe waiting place. She looked at the hurdle before they parted.
“I’ll tell them why it’s there. Otherwise someone will decide it’s waiting to be put away.”
“Thank you.”
“Will it always need to be there?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She considered the space, then moved the hurdle enough to make its purpose harder to mistake.
Bren was waiting at the farther junction when Rowan came down. He had the drying-room account beneath his cloak. The householder’s reading agreed with his; the new joining had carried evenly while the trays were brought in.
Rowan showed him the hollow. Bren knew the building, though he had last reached it from the road.
“I’ll come with you next time. We should take the reading from here as well.”
He marked the opposite bank. Rowan added it without joining the two positions on the page.
They walked back together. At Thane’s room, Bren left the drying-room comparison while Rowan put Anet’s building beyond the two houses. It was not a new settlement. It had been there through all the years represented in the accounts; no one had put its shared use beside the path.
He added Anet’s name to the directions in his smaller book. Uses the farther way herself. Will move a barrier rather than trust people to understand it. Then he wrote the two household names below hers.
Over the following days, Rowan joined circuits that had looked separate from town. One householder had left years before; the woman now living there knew the working from a different door.
Rowan stopped asking for the person named in the account before asking who was home.
He saw Corren one evening and found the trial plant beside the barrel. Its new leaves looked better than the old ones. Edda would not let either of them claim more than that. Rowan stayed while she brought a basket through the gate, then helped Corren shift the cord she had put down for the next planting.
At Thane’s wall, people brought their own ground to his table. Rowan learned to leave space for them. Del came to ask after the lane picket; when Rowan mentioned Anet’s building, Del asked about the people using it before looking at its marks.
Six days after the first walk, Rowan went back to the hollow with Bren.
The hurdle remained across its approach. Anet had tied a strip of pale cloth where someone coming from the fields would see it. No one had reported feeling unwell; she had asked at both houses, and the bench was still being used.
Rowan read from the same place beneath the eaves. The root and flat stone remained clear across the track. The prepared edge held where he had drawn it. Beyond the short shield he had left against the held edge, the dark reach came farther out from the folded bank. The shield remained seated; more was pressing against it.
He released his altered sight and examined the ordinary ground before taking it again. No part of the bank had fallen. The hurdle had not shifted the path. Bren checked from the opposite side, then came to stand where Rowan had made his first mark.
“It presses nearer here,” he said. “I can feel it coming against the held course.”
“Could you feel it from there?” Rowan indicated the farther bank.
“Less clearly. It still holds.”
Rowan put today’s reading beside the first. Bren had found the change too; Rowan’s aching hand could not explain it.
Bren looked toward the two houses. “We’ll tell them the barrier stays. I want someone who knows this older reach to see both readings.”
“Phia?”
“She followed the mill’s return with you. I’d begin there.”
They went to the houses before continuing down the field course. Rowan did not ask Anet to keep the place empty without explaining what they had found. She listened, then gave them the name of someone who came up from the lower fields at dusk.
“He might not see the cloth.”
Bren went to find him while Rowan followed the nearer connection toward the field anchor.
Its stone was sound. A fine binding had drawn loose from the worn cut; the deeper anchoring held. Rowan brought moonlight into his hand to reseat the surviving thread.
He took ash into the cut and held the joining lightly. At first it settled where he expected. As he drew the last part toward its seat, the returning pressure took more of his attention. He waited, checked the adjoining edge and continued. The thread steadied beneath his fingers.
When Bren returned, Rowan had seated it. They tested from both sides. The small joining held without his hand; nothing at the hollow suggested that repairing this part had removed the pressure beyond it.
He let the moonlight go.
The ache crossed his wrist when he lifted the notebook. He shifted it to the other hand. While Bren spoke to the householder, Rowan tried to finish the repair drawing and found he could not turn the charcoal as he usually did.
He stopped before spoiling the line.
“I need to have this looked at,” he said when Bren returned.
“Your hand?”
Rowan nodded. “I can give you the positions. I’ll finish the drawing later.”
Bren held the sheet while Rowan pointed. He put the last marks in himself, then took the packet beneath his cloak. They had already read enough that day. They went back by the road rather than following the next branch.
Rowan left the pressure comparison at Thane’s room, with the two positions kept distinct. He told him that Bren had checked today’s reading, and that he would ask Phia to look at the older course. Thane took Anet’s household names while Bren gave him the word from the people using the building. The mill note lay open beside them. Thane entered the hollow beneath it, naming both readers and the days they had been there. Rowan added where he had seated the shield on the first visit and what it had held today, so the next comparison would include that change.
Afterward Rowan went to Mare’s shop. She had seen him read a working before the strain became this persistent. He wanted someone who could look at his hand and understand what he had been doing with it.
There were two people at the counter. He waited clear of them until Mare had put away a folded packet and the second customer left.
“Your hand?” she asked.
“It’s been worse since this morning.”
She looked at the way he held it against his cloak. “Come through here. You’ll have somewhere to rest it.”
The room behind the shop had a small table beneath its window. Mare moved a bowl from the nearer side and drew out a chair. Rowan put his arm down carefully while she washed her hands.
“When did it first trouble you?”
He thought back past the drying room and the readings at the mill. “Before I left Cresting. After a small joining round a root. It eased then.”
“And since?”
He told her which work had brought it back, and how long it stayed after he released the hold. She listened while examining the wrist, asking him to move only enough to show where the pain caught. When he reached the part about today’s drawing, she took his hand beneath the fingers and brought it back to rest.
“Leave that movement for now.”
“Is it the work, or the way I’m holding it?”
“I want to look at both. Tell me about the joining this morning.”
He described the joining, its returning pressure and what Bren had tested. Mare asked when the ache began, then let him finish.
“There’s more pressure at one place than I read there last week,” he said. “Bren finds it too.”
“At this stone?”
“At the hollow above it. We read the same position. I haven’t followed enough of the deeper course to say what has changed.”
“Then keep those readings. Your wrist won’t account for what Bren found.” She turned his hand slightly, supporting its weight. “This can be treated. I’ll ease it before asking you to show me the hold.”
Her attention settled around the joint. Rowan felt warmth gathering beneath her fingers, followed by a gentler movement along the place that had hurt when he drew. A fine green light showed near her thumb, then thinned before he could follow it farther. She kept his hand resting on the table.
He felt the weight of his forearm against the wood, and how long he had been keeping it raised without a reason.
She asked him to move again. This time the hand opened without the same catch.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t test it by picking up everything you put down yesterday.”
He smiled, and she gave his wrist one final reading before releasing it.
“I can show you the hold,” he said.
“Briefly. I don’t need the whole field.”
Silver gathered between her hands above the table. He recognized the fine reach, though she had brought it into being without the ash he used to find it. Mare kept its ends seated within her own working and let him take only the small joining between them.
Rowan opened his hand beneath it. He held the thread as he had at the anchor, leaving enough room for its return. Mare watched his fingers, then the silver beyond them.
“Let it answer before you bring it closer.”
He waited. The contact was light. When it took a little longer to settle, his hand began opening farther.
Mare moved one of her fingers beside the thread. “There. Did you mean to take that up?”
He looked where she showed him. He had added to the hold before deciding whether it needed it.
“I was steadying the return.”
“It’s already seated.”
He released the addition. The joining stayed between her hands. His own moonlight still met it, but he was no longer carrying the extra pull through his wrist.
Mare let the short working fade. He kept his hand open for a moment, then lowered it to the table.
He looked at his hand, then thought of the drying-room connection, firm at Bren’s stone while his own hold had taken more than he expected.
“I knew where it seated. I kept giving it more until the return felt familiar.”
Mare sat opposite him. “You’ve been asking your wrist to carry that addition. I’ve treated the strain; give it time without another long hold. Look at what you’re taking up before you add to it.”
“I should have recorded the effort separately.”
“You can begin now. Keep Bren’s reading beside it. The pressure you both found needs its own examination.”
He rested the forearm where she had placed it. The hand was quieter than it had been for days. He had been attending to the strain as though it would ease whenever the next piece was finished; there had always been another piece.
“What do you get from the joining?” he asked. “When I hold it.”
“A close pressure where it should settle, then an edge reaching farther than the work asks for. That part feels pinched to me.”
He considered the word. He would have drawn it as a thread taken too tight, though the longer hold had not felt that way while he was making it. “Bren follows the deeper part more readily.”
“Then take him with you while you compare them. Phia may give you another part. I can look at a reading when you know what you want to ask.”
He glanced toward the shop, where the bell had sounded. Mare rose and looked through the doorway. She told the person at the counter she would be with them shortly, then returned to check Rowan’s hand once more.
“Come back if that movement catches again. You don’t have to wait until you can’t draw.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He stood without reaching for the notebook at once. She handed it to him with the strap placed in his other hand.
Outside, he opened to Mare’s page. The second face he had tried was still unfinished. Beneath healer and apothecary he added moonlight, then stopped with the charcoal above the paper. It was an account of one more thing she could do. He had begun to guess at others, but each time they met, some new aspect of her emerged. Beside the note he put the way she had kept his arm resting while he tried to explain the field. That he could remember without drawing.
He closed the book and went to find Bren.
They changed the next morning’s work. Bren would follow the deeper anchoring while Rowan compared the marked positions without strengthening the answer. Other help could take the longer holds while his wrist recovered.
When Rowan went out with him the following day, Anet was bringing a basket up from the road. She saw them at the gate and set it down.
“Will you need the hurdle moved?”
“Leave it where it is,” Rowan said. “We’re going to the bench.”
She went with them. At the building, Bren took the nearer anchor while Rowan stood on his first mark. He brought the working toward his sight, found the fine return and waited for it to answer.
His hand began to open farther. He stopped, let the added reach thin and looked again.
The held course remained clear. Beyond it, the dark reach pressed toward the root. He put that on the page, leaving his own hold out of the difference he meant to show Bren.
Anet watched while he drew, then moved his cloak farther from the edge of the bench. He had left it where someone arriving with a basket would need to sit.