Thane had brought a fishing rod.
Rowan saw it before he saw the man, its pale tip showing above the bank where the lane dropped toward the water. He had come out early enough to have the path to himself. His book was inside his coat, a short piece of charcoal wrapped with it. Nothing else had needed carrying.
Thane looked up when he reached the bend.
“You found me.”
“I wasn't looking.”
“Better still.”
The line lay beneath a leaning tree. Thane had chosen a flat stone near the bank. Rowan crossed to another farther out, finding its dry middle with his boot, and sat on his folded coat.
“That's the better place,” Thane said.
“You could have taken it.”
“I might want to stand before the meal.”
Rowan laughed and took out his book. The morning lay in strips along the water, pale where it caught a ripple and deep beneath the roots. He opened beyond the faces, past the little lanes he had brought home, and held the clean page against his knee.
Thane watched him for a moment.
“Should I move?”
“You're behind me.”
“I could come into it.”
“Then I'd have to begin again.”
“I'll stay.”
He turned toward the line. Rowan made the first marks where a root came clear of the bank. He liked the way the water divided around it, the near side bright and the farther one almost lost. He left more of the page empty than he would have done when he first came down the river.
Thane let the line drift out and drew it back. Steps passed along the lane above them, slowing beside his visible cloak before continuing.
“Did you tell anyone where you were going?” Rowan asked.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“The people who needed to know.”
Rowan looked round. Thane's mouth moved.
“I can hear myself.”
He smiled and returned to the page. On the opposite bank a bird landed, put its head down and thought better of the water. It went higher along the root before trying again. Rowan put it in where it had first stood. He knew it would be gone before he finished, and drew it anyway.
Thane rose at last and began winding the line. There was no fish.
“Was there meant to be?” Rowan asked.
“Eventually.”
“Will you come back?”
“Tomorrow, if I like. Or somewhere else.”
Rowan put away the charcoal and crossed back, landing firmly. He held the rod while Thane folded his things, then handed it back.
“I thought you'd gone farther.”
“I don't need to begin with far.”
They climbed to the lane. At its upper end, Corren had stopped to speak to someone at a gate. He saw the rod, finished his sentence and came toward them.
“Have you used it?”
“A little.”
“Did the fish notice?”
“Not yet.”
Corren looked pleased. “I could come tomorrow.”
“You'd tell me where to put it.”
“You might catch something.”
“Then I'd have to do something with it.”
“You could give it to Edda.”
“I'd have to catch two.”
Rowan left them deciding how large the fish would need to be. He had time before the afternoon's meeting and meant to spend some of it at the shop. Thane called after him before he turned.
“Bring that drawing.”
“It's not finished.”
“I wasn't going to ask it to do anything.”
He lifted the rod by way of farewell. Rowan went down the lane with the book inside his coat, the morning still caught behind its cover.
Soren had opened both front windows. A broad frame stood between them, throwing its light against a piece of cloth rather than out into the street. From outside Rowan could see several different colors laid beneath it, their edges held clear of one another.
Soren stood back from the counter. A woman beside him lifted the darker cloth, lowered it and tried the next.
“It's too blue,” she said.
“That's the cloth.”
“It wasn't in my room.”
“Your room has the other light.”
“Then why have I brought it here?”
“To choose which you want.”
She looked between the two pieces. Soren rested his fingers against the nearer fitting. The light warmed, taking a little of the blue out of the pale cloth without turning the other yellow.
The woman put both down.
“That.”
“In the front room?”
“And the passage.”
“You only brought the front one.”
“Then I'll come back.”
She gathered her cloths and went out looking satisfied. Soren covered the fitted frame before turning to Rowan.
“You look as though you've been somewhere.”
“The river.”
“For work?”
He shook his head.
Soren looked at the book beneath his arm. “Good.”
Rowan laid it on the counter. Somebody was moving things in the back room.
“You'll be here later?”
“Upper lane this afternoon,” Soren said. “Before they fill the room with things I'll have to climb over.” He brought a folded note. “Noma sent this.”
Rowan opened it. The man in the house below her yard would let them look. He wanted to be there when they came; he had things inside that people always thought were meant to stay.
“Which things?”
“Noma says his bench.”
“We know about that.”
“We haven't seen it.”
Rowan pictured the door they had not opened, the room behind Noma's pale window.
“Tomorrow?” Soren asked.
“I can.”
“Before the afternoon.”
“You have somewhere else?”
“So do you.”
“I haven't agreed to it yet.”
Soren put a hand flat against the counter. “What are you agreeing to?”
Rowan looked up.
“I know what Thane wants. What do you think he means by it?”
He had been expecting another question about when he would come back. This one made him set the note down.
“Being there. Knowing who's needed, who can go. Taking the work he can't keep leaving beside his own things.”
“And this?”
Soren touched the book.
“Mine.”
“I know. Where does it go?”
“With me.”
“You find time for it on the road. I'd like it not to have to wait until the town's finished with you.”
Rowan looked at the covered frame. Soren knew how work followed someone home.
“The work won't be done,” Rowan said. “I took it out this morning.”
Soren smiled a little. “Then keep doing that.”
“I intend to.”
“Tell him.”
“He's seen.”
“That's different.”
Rowan nodded. It was. Thane had wanted him to bring the drawing, not asked him to leave it behind. The harder part might be believing that invitation when other people began waiting at the door.
He put Noma's note inside the book.
“I want to see the house.”
“So do I.”
“And I'd like to look at somewhere we could build.”
Soren's hand stopped against the edge of the cover.
“You hadn't said.”
“I hadn't thought about what I meant.”
“You'd like to make it?”
“I'd like to know we could choose where things went. The door, the windows. A place for a tree that hasn't already grown too close to something.”
Soren looked toward the street. A cart passed, its driver watching the narrow gap between his wheel and the open step.
“I'd like to live there before I've spent a year working on it.”
“We wouldn't have to do it all ourselves.”
“We wouldn't.”
“I don't mean another shop,” Rowan said.
“Then we should say what we do mean.”
Rowan leaned against the counter.
“A garden. Somewhere I can see it from the table.”
“A table for eating?”
“Yes.”
“Not beneath a shelf of things we've promised someone.”
“No.”
Soren turned the note so it lay between them. “I'd like a door people use because they've come to see us.”
“People will still ask.”
“Of course they will. I might tell some of them to come to the shop.”
Rowan laughed. Soren's expression eased.
“And I want to hear you moving about when I'm making something,” he said. “Just not have to stop whenever you need to get past my bench.”
“We have that upstairs.”
“We do.”
“Keep the upstairs rooms,” Rowan said. “For the work.”
“That was my thought. And come home when we're finished with it.”
Somebody moved in the back room. Soren listened, then called that he would be there in a moment.
“Tomorrow we'll look at what's there,” he said. “After that, we can ask about a place to build.”
“Both.”
“Both. Without promising anyone either.”
Rowan left Soren to his customer, went upstairs to change his damp cuffs and took the river drawing to Thane's.
Olan stood before the wall, speaking to Est. Phia had chosen the chair beside the window and was reading something that made her turn back to its beginning twice. Jeren was not there. A message lay beside his empty place, naming the time he expected to come.
Thane had put away the fishing rod. Rowan could see it through the inner door, leaning where somebody would have to move it before taking the longer things from the store.
“You brought it.”
He held out the book. Thane opened to the marked page and stood with it in both hands.
“That wasn't there when I looked.”
“It was. You were looking at the line.”
Thane smiled. He turned the book toward Phia. She put down the paper and came to see the root, the water and the small bird that had gone higher before drinking.
“I know that place.”
“Apparently everyone does,” Thane said.
“You could go farther tomorrow.”
“Corren's coming. He'll tell me where.”
Olan came round the table to look. He stayed with the page longer than Rowan expected, then closed the book and put it beside the chair Rowan had taken on the first afternoon back.
“Keep that clear,” he told Thane.
“The chair?”
“The morning.”
Thane nodded. Rowan sat where he could reach his book without laying it beneath the work.
When Est finished her note, Thane asked the stores woman to leave the inner door open so people could see they were speaking.
“I want to stop being the first person everything is brought to. Not next year. Now.”
“All of it?”
“Enough that leaving the room means I've left the work with someone. Not hidden it until I get back.”
“With me.”
“If you'll have it.”
Rowan looked at Phia, Olan and Est. He had taken mornings and gone out when people needed him. The work was still here.
“I want to,” he said.
Thane's shoulders lowered slightly.
“I want to be here. To hold the work together, not only take a part away and bring it back when I've finished.” He put his hand beside the book. “And I want to go out when that's the work I should be doing.”
“Yes,” Thane said.
“I won't know every answer.”
“Neither does he,” Phia said.
Thane looked at her. “I've tried to leave that out of the introduction.”
“We can do it better this time.”
Est laughed. Olan's mouth moved, though he said nothing.
Rowan smiled, then looked directly at Thane.
“I don't want people to believe nothing happens until I've looked at it. They've got wardens and healers. Their households know what they need. I can help them find each other. I can't be all of them.”
“Then don't offer to be,” Thane said.
“You'll have us when you're away,” Est said. “We haven't waited for permission to answer the door.”
“There's a difference between coming to you and sending everything through you,” Olan said. “I'd like us to keep it.”
Rowan nodded.
“The wardens bring what reaches beyond a station or household,” Thane said. “The Circle has its work, the healers theirs. People who don't know where to begin can find out with you.”
“I want to be able to spend a day somewhere else without having left half a dozen people waiting for my return. I'd like to visit places where the welcome doesn't begin with what's gone wrong since I was last there.”
“Where?” Rowan asked.
“Cresting, before too long. There are people I'd like to see.”
“You'll tell them I've settled?”
Thane smiled. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
He said it without looking round the room for the answer. Phia's face softened, then returned to its usual attention.
“Then I can tell them.”
“When?” Est asked.
“After I've fished with Corren.”
“You said now.”
Thane laughed. “So I did.” He turned to Rowan. “Ask your questions while I'm here. Then let answers come from someone else for a few days. And don't hand it all back because I've opened the door.”
Rowan nodded. That would be harder for both of them than agreeing here.
Jeren arrived while Est was asking which people in Cresting he meant to visit. He put his case beneath the table, took the empty place and listened long enough to hear Thane answer without changing the subject.
“You've done it?” he asked.
“We've begun,” Thane said.
Jeren looked at Rowan.
“Yes,” Rowan told him. “I've said I'll take it.”
“Good.”
“I'll tell people who ask,” Jeren said, leaving his case shut. “And find you here when I need you?”
“Usually. I'll leave word.”
“Where somebody can find it.”
“That too.”
“I won't send a notice every time I leave,” Thane said.
“I wasn't offering.”
Olan drew the inner door mostly to when the stores grew noisy.
“There's something I'd like to keep working on,” Thane said.
“Your map?”
“The one I haven't got.” He looked at the joined sheets, then at the others.
“Not just the wall. I'd like a place beyond here to know when we've learned something that changes its way home. And for us to hear before somebody has walked two days with a question already answered at the other end.”
Jeren touched the closed case with one hand. “Who would be using it?”
“That's where Rowan thought we'd begin.”
Rowan looked toward Est. “We know who comes here. We don't know what they'd recognize if they were looking at another part of it somewhere else.”
“Some would want the road,” she said. “Some would want the household at the end.”
“And some would ask who'd changed it,” Olan added.
“They should,” Phia said.
Thane nodded. “I'd like all of you to think about it. I'll have time to listen without somebody waiting behind the person speaking.”
“You can have time to do some of it,” Jeren said.
“I intend to.”
“I'll ask Adra when the next word comes,” Rowan said. “What she'd want to know while someone was still on the road.”
“And ask somebody who doesn't keep a station,” Est said.
“Gret,” he said, smiling before he meant to.
Phia laughed. “She'll tell you.”
“I believe she would.”
Olan reached for the paper Phia had been reading when Rowan arrived. Beneath it lay the signed comparisons from Anet's hollow. He brought them beside Est's notes.
“These can go with the Circle's messages,” he said. “I'd like the people beyond here to look at what we've seen.”
Phia put her earlier account on top. The two positions were marked, the deeper pressure and the held edge kept clear of one another. Rowan recognized the place where Bren had added his reading. It was strange to see the ground he remembered lying flat beneath the hands of people who had stood there with him.
“When shall we go back?” he asked Olan.
“I'll speak to Anet. I'd like enough of a morning to stay without making her wait for something else.”
“I'll come.”
“I thought you might.”
Est drew out a clean cover. Olan added the question he wanted answered, and Phia read it before putting her name beside his. They were asking whether the pressure matched anything observed elsewhere. The account went into the Circle's outgoing packet with the visits and readers named.
Rowan watched Est close it, then put his river drawing back beside the chair.
Thane rose. For a moment Rowan thought that was the meeting finished. Then he brought his cup to the table and set it beside the place Rowan had chosen.
“Tomorrow they'll come to you.”
Rowan looked at the cup, then up at him.
“And if they ask for you?”
“Tell them where I am.”
“Fishing.”
“If Corren lets me.”
He held out his hand. Rowan stood to take it. Thane's grip was warm and ordinary, the same man who had greeted him with a packet still waiting to be read. He shook Rowan's hand once and let it go.
Olan was first through the door. Phia followed, pausing to tell Est where she would be the next morning. Jeren took the case from beneath the table. Est stayed long enough to ask Thane whether he had told the stores woman about Cresting.
“Not yet.”
“Then you should. She'll want to know which things you mean to take.”
“The rod.”
“Then tell her that.”
She went through the inner door, calling a name before Thane had decided whether to follow. He smiled at Rowan.
“You've still time to change your mind.”
“I haven't.”
“No.”
He looked around the room as though he were seeing where he would sit when he came back. Then he went to speak to the woman in the stores, leaving Rowan beside the table with the little book under his hand.
Bren came in before he had put it away.
“Are you going out?”
“Not yet.”
“I've spoken to Thane. He said I'd better speak to you.”
Rowan drew out the other chair. Bren remained standing.
“Tavin wants to come home.”
“Has he sent?”
“With the last account. They don't need him to sit beside those two all day now. Adra has people for the watch. He said he'd stay until she could let him go.”
“And she can?”
“If somebody takes the next part. The farther houses need visiting. They've been putting off things while the shore's been busy.”
“You'd go?”
“For a while. I'd like to see what he's been changing. He can come back and take my nearer work.”
“He already knows some of my nearer work,” Bren added. “I'll walk the first part with him if we meet coming through.”
“Tell Adra when you'd arrive. Let Tavin leave when she has what she needs, even if that means missing you.”
Bren nodded.
“And your households?”
“I'll speak to them before I go. The ones that need somebody sooner will know who to ask.”
Rowan smiled.
“I'd like him back,” Rowan said. “Not only because you've offered to go.”
“So would I.”
“Tell him that.”
Bren looked amused. “You can tell him when he's here.”
“I will.”
Bren would send to Adra and tell Rowan his chosen day before leaving. When he went, Rowan stood at the door.
Thane came from the inner passage carrying the fishing rod.
“I've found somewhere else for it.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
He paused at the door. Rowan moved aside.
“I'll walk as far as the turn.”
Thane nodded. They went out together, the rod upright between them until Thane lowered it clear of the overhanging branch.
At the crossing, Corren was waiting on the wall. He looked at the rod, then at the hour of the light on the stones.
“I said tomorrow.”
“I'm taking it home,” Thane told him.
“That's a start.”
“Do you intend to come every time I carry it?”
“You might catch something. I'd like to be there.”
Rowan left them laughing and went to the shop. Soren looked up from the counter.
“Well?”
“Tomorrow they'll come to me.”
“And tomorrow we're seeing the house.”
“After I've been there for the morning.”
“You said before the afternoon.”
Rowan stopped.
“I can ask someone to hold it.”
“You can tell them when you'll be back.”
Soren kept his hands on the counter. There was no anger in his voice, but he had not turned the mistake into a joke Rowan could step past.
“I'd like to come with you,” Rowan said. “Not fit it in if nobody arrives.”
“So would I.”
He left the book with Soren and went back to ask Est to cover the appointment.
“I'll be back after the meal.”
“Then I'll tell them.”
He thanked her and went home with enough afternoon left for his drawing.
Soren had set the room's light a little higher when Rowan came upstairs. It reached the end of his table without filling the window. The book lay open where Soren had put it, the root bright against the unmarked water.
“I've asked Est,” he said.
Soren nodded. “I've told Noma.”
“And after that, we'll ask about building.”
“Tomorrow that house. Then we'll ask about ground.”
Rowan drew out the chair. Below them, the shop door closed as the last person went into the lane. He picked up the charcoal and put the near edge of the water where he had seen it that morning.
Soren went into his own room to put away the things he would not need until tomorrow. Rowan could hear him moving beyond the doorway. For a while there was nothing either of them needed to say.