Thane had Rowan’s drawing open when he arrived. Beside it lay a shorter account in another hand, with the well marked closer to the house.
“Come round here. Did they show you the gate?”
Rowan set his notebook down. “Which one?”
“The one they’re using now.”
He read the added account. Water had taken the lower approach. A gate farther along the fence had been opened for the cart, leaving the old way to grow over.
“No. I came down from above.”
“Bren tested the well reach last week. You put the house and the branch together. Neither of you followed this.” Thane tapped the changed approach. “He’s waiting in the yard.”
Rowan looked across the table. His river sheets continued in other wardens’ hands. The bridge inspection was arranged despite the missing page.
“The inland account?” Rowan asked.
“Not back yet. We’ll put it beside yours when it comes.” Thane returned to the household drawing. “This is the job for now and I want you to begin here, then work outward. Follow the connections with the people who maintain them. Find out what lies between their circuits.”
“How far outward?”
“Through the entire Glenn, or until we decide otherwise. I want our mapping built out and managed.” He brought a larger sheet from beneath the others. Much of the lower valley had been drawn in; its branches ended at different places, some with names and some without. “You’ll walk the lines. Sometimes I’ll have a specific plan or need, and we’ll stretch the line walking that way. When we have enough of the path mapped, I have other plans for it as well.” He stopped talking and closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, his gaze flashed with power.
Rowan looked down at the map and followed one course from the river toward a cluster of houses. It met a mark that might have been a picket, though the account beside it called it a boundary stone. The marking had his initials on it. “I’ll need to meet the people living here too.”
“You will. Bren can show you the first grounds, but don’t let either of you answer for them.” Thane pushed the repair book nearer. “Arrange what you can. Bring me what needs more people, or a decision beyond your own work. Keep enough of an account that someone else can continue if you’re out.”
“And if their records disagree?”
“Leave the disagreement where we can see it until you know why.”
“Who keeps the whole drawing?”
“You, for now.” Thane looked toward the wall behind him. Two old maps occupied its middle, their edges hidden by smaller sheets pinned over them. “We’ll make room. I’d like to be able to find a house without taking three accounts off the wall. And I have ideas.”
The warden waiting beside the stores door had a coil of rope across one shoulder. He finished tying a small tool roll before offering his hand.
“Bren. Thane showed you Hesta’s page?”
“He did.”
“She’s been asking whether she can keep the gate. Best go while she’s there to tell us why.”
They left by the river crossing and followed the road above the low fields. Bren had worked this ground for several years. He pointed out the track they would take back, behind an orchard and over a rise before it joined the road again.
“That’s the cart way now,” he said. “Three sides of the field. They used to come straight up.”
The lower path had not failed all at once. Its ruts held water after the rest dried, then stayed wet long enough that the cart had to be unloaded to pass. Hesta had stopped using it before anyone changed the drawing.
“Would you reopen it?” Rowan asked.
“With drainage and enough stone, perhaps. She’d rather use the gate she has.”
Hesta was in the yard fastening a lid onto a basket. She looked up as they came through.
“You’ve come back.”
“With someone who knows this side better than I do.”
“We’re looking at the gate,” Bren said. “Have you time?”
“There is if you tell me whether to take this that way.” She lifted the basket onto a handcart beside the wall. One wheel was larger than the other, and the handles had been lengthened with new wood. “It should already be down at the road. He has other loads waiting.”
She pushed ahead of them while Bren stopped to read the anchor beside the house. Rowan took one handle where the path widened.
“It’s easier downhill,” she told him. “The empty cart comes back well enough.”
The gate opened beyond the well onto a narrow track. Outside it, two strips of boards crossed a shallow drainage cut before the ground turned downhill. Hesta stopped the cart inside the fence.
“We’ve moved them once. The first place was too steep.”
Rowan lowered his handle and looked beneath the nearer board. It rested on earth at one end and loose stones at the other. A wheel had pressed into the soft edge, leaving the stone beneath it tilted.
“Does it move when you cross?”
“A little. That’s why we put the stones in.”
Bren stood beside the anchor at the fence. “Holds here.”
Rowan took ash across his palm and followed the protection beneath the track. Hesta showed him an opening uphill; from the far bank he found it seated in a partly buried stone. Moonlight answered from both sides.
The working held. The lower stone shifted beneath his boot.
“Is the gate wrong?” Hesta asked.
“Not where we’ve tested it. These boards need better support.”
“So I can use it?”
“Not with that load. This end can go under a wheel.”
She looked at the cart beyond the fence. “I took it across yesterday. Alone.”
“It’s moving now. We’ll find you a better crossing.”
Bren lifted one board, exposing the wet impression beneath it. Firmer ground lay higher up.
Rowan dusted ash across his palm and took the established joining into his hand. A pale green sheen gathered beneath his fingers, with moonlight following the held course beneath the crossing. He kept the joining steady while Bren put the board aside, then let it return to its seat. Moving the crossing was simple enough; choosing where Hesta could use it was the difficulty.
“We could put it here.”
“Then I can’t turn into it,” Hesta said. “We tried.”
They left the basket inside the gate and brought the empty cart round by the opening she had shown them. Hesta tried the turn; the outer handle struck the fence. Starting farther down gave Rowan room, but put the lower wheel on the steep edge. The post shifted when he caught it to steady himself.
He backed out and returned the cart by the upper way.
“You were right.”
“I’ve had time to try.”
She began settling the basket into its bed again. Farther down, beyond the orchard, someone was waiting for it.
“We can help take today’s load by the longer way,” Bren said.
“He’s late already.”
“I know,” Rowan said. “We can help with it today. The gate still needs an answer.”
Hesta considered them, then pushed the cart toward the old track.
The longer way looked generous until the rise. Hesta leaned into the handles while both men helped lift the load over it. Rowan felt what she had been bringing down alone.
At the road, the man waiting took the basket and listened to her account of the boards. He had timber by his shed, enough width to replace the wheel strips and sound pieces for the supports beneath them. They examined it on their way back. He could move it with help the morning after tomorrow.
Back at the gate, Rowan found firm ground farther behind the loose edge. He stretched a cord toward it at an angle, then let Hesta bring the cart round. They moved the nearer end until she could turn without catching the post. Bren marked where it would need resetting.
He drew the angled crossing, the gate and the well path. Hesta corrected that last one. It joined behind the cart, where he had put a patch of empty ground.
“Can you leave this here?”
“I’ll make you a copy.”
They agreed on the morning after tomorrow, when the timber could come. Until then they would help her over the rise. Hesta put a plank across the closed gate, where she could see it from the house.
She asked them to eat before leaving. Bren unpacked what he had brought while she fetched bread and the remains of the morning’s cooking. Rowan washed at the barrel and sat on the low wall.
“You can put the lower way in too,” Hesta said as he finished the copy. “Just don’t show it open.”
He marked where the ruts had begun holding water. She pointed farther down, beneath the orchard.
“There was a spring there before my father put the bed in. He brought stone up every year.”
“Did it keep dry?”
“For a while. He wanted to try drainage next. Then we stopped bringing the cart that way.”
Rowan added the spring beside her account. No one had mentioned it in the sheets Thane had compared. Bren looked over his shoulder, then back toward the orchard.
“That explains where it stays wet.”
“I thought you knew.”
“I knew it stayed wet.”
Hesta took the copy inside. When she returned, she brought an older scrap of paper with her father’s rough marks for the bed and the spring. Rowan put it beside his drawing. The cart path crossed both.
They left with permission to copy the scrap, and a promise to bring it back with the tools.
On the way back, Bren chose the adjoining house for their next walk. At Thane’s room, Rowan left the gate arrangement and Hesta’s father’s scrap on the table.
Thane looked at the older scrap beside it.
“Hers?”
“Her father’s. There was a spring under the lower way.”
He read the note beneath the marks. “That isn’t here.”
“It is now.”
Thane smiled a little and went to the wall. He lifted a smaller sheet from the old maps, read its date and put it on the table instead of pinning it back.
“Begin here. We’ll keep what we haven’t joined beside it.”
Rowan spread a clean sheet beneath the cleared space. Bren pointed out the adjoining house while Thane pinned the upper corner. Rowan put in the road, Hesta’s gate and the well path, with room for the reaches beyond.
They stood back far enough to see the beginnings of it. Hesta’s house was small on the sheet. The closed gate beside it was smaller still, but someone looking could now find her route to the road, and know why she could not take it alone.
Rowan added her name before he put the charcoal down.