The builder arrived with a piece of bread in one hand and the folded note in the other.
“Which of you drew it?”
Rowan raised his hand. She gave him the note, finished the bread and looked through the gate.
“I'd have known if you'd brought the drawing.”
“Why?” Soren asked.
“You'd have shown me that first.”
Her name was Maud. Kelm had found her the afternoon they asked, and she had come to the shop the next morning to arrange a time. Two days later, Rowan stood beside Soren with the small book in his pocket and the ground before them wet from rain. The stone where Soren had sat was dark along its upper face. Water gathered beneath the gate before finding its way toward the lane.
Maud stepped over the water, broad soles marked with old earth above the fresh mud. She pushed loose hair back with her wrist.
“Kelm says you want a house.”
“We'd like to know what we could make here,” Rowan said.
“Then I'll have your picture.”
He took out the book. Maud looked at the page without taking it from him, then moved until she could see the tree behind his shoulder.
“That's a good tree.”
“Keep it,” Maud said. “People change their minds when they discover where the branches go.”
She gave Soren her coat and walked the wall's base and old path before joining Rowan where he pictured sitting. The tree stood beyond his imagined window, branches reaching across its upper edge.
“And where does he sit?”
“I hadn't got to the chairs,” Rowan said.
“You have now.”
Soren came over. He stood on the other side of the little space Rowan had left for the table, turned toward the gate, then shifted until he could see the tree too.
“Here,” Soren said.
“You'll both want the window.”
“We could have more than one,” Rowan said.
She smiled.
She asked where they slept, where they worked and what they brought home. Soren told her about the rooms above the shop. When she asked whether he meant to move his work, he answered at once.
“No. The room's right for it.”
“And yours?”
“Stays there,” Rowan said. “I'd want somewhere to draw here. Not another room to work in.”
Maud looked again at the book.
“A place to leave it open?”
“Yes.”
“That's easier than a room.”
She made them walk through the house they wanted. Rowan started from the gate. By the time he had opened an unseen door, crossed a room and come to the table, Soren was standing where he had put the wall.
“I was coming from the back,” Soren said.
“You'd have to go round.”
“With something to eat?”
Rowan moved the door.
“How many round the table?” Maud asked.
“Four,” Soren said. “Without moving everything. More when we mean to.”
She drew the ground on a narrow board, leaving Kelm's way clear, and marked the tree and higher wall.
“We'll find what this sits on before we ask it to hold your roof.”
Rowan crouched beside her. She marked a cross where water had gathered beneath the gate.
“That gets dealt with first.”
“It drains toward the lane,” Rowan said.
“I want it there before it comes through your front door.”
Soren sat on the stone to look at the board. Maud put it across her knees.
“One floor would give you what you've asked for. A second gives you more ground outside, but more stair inside. You can see that house from here. The roof would have to let their light past.”
She pointed to a window beyond the wall. A woman had opened it while they talked and was shaking a cloth into the air.
Rowan had drawn the roofs because he liked the line of them. Now he looked at the room behind that particular window.
“We could keep this end low.”
Maud nodded. “That's what I'd do.”
They moved the rooms on her board. Soren wanted the sleeping room away from people passing the gate. Rowan wanted the door to open into somewhere they could put down a coat without laying it over a chair. Both wanted a way into the garden that did not take them through the place they slept.
Maud tried two shapes. The second kept the table facing the tree and the smaller room beside the lane. Soren pointed to an unused corner.
“A cupboard?” Rowan said.
“You can buy it later.” Maud rubbed it away. They laughed.
When Maud had something they could both understand, she turned the board so that they faced it from the lane. The house occupied less of the ground than Rowan had expected. A little space remained between its side and the tree, enough to walk into without turning sideways. The table had two windows. They were not quite where he had put them.
He liked hers better.
“Could we do that?” Soren asked.
“We could build it. I'll need the ground opened in three places before I tell you what goes beneath it. Then I can give you an amount for the work, with the materials set out beside it.”
“And time?”
“I have a roof to finish first. After that, if the ground's kind to us, we could begin in a few weeks. The house would take months. You'd want it closed against the weather before you started choosing shelves.”
“Agree on the windows before I put them in,” Maud said. “Changing them afterward costs time. That's how we stay fond of each other.”
“I'd rather agree,” Rowan said.
She gave them a rough amount for the shape before them, named the work it included and showed them where she could not yet be certain. The ground might change it. The roof and its covering would be part of the first cost; fitting out every corner would not. They could have a house to live in before every last thing in it had been made.
Soren asked about water and the hearth; Rowan asked who would work with her and when they must make the next choices.
“I'll bring people who know their part,” Maud said. “You don't have to hold the other end of everything.”
“I can hold an end.”
“Have you nothing else to do?”
Soren looked down to hide his smile.
“Some,” Rowan said.
“Then do it. I'll tell you when I need you.”
She left the drawing with them. Kelm had said she could open the three places if they wanted her to look, and she would bring someone later in the week. Beyond that she asked them for no decision that morning.
At the gate, Soren gave her the coat.
“You've moved my door,” Rowan said, looking at the board.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Wait till you've walked through it.”
After she left, Soren held the board against the wall.
“I like hers.”
“So do I.” Rowan opened his book to put her door into his own picture.
They went back to Malk's that evening.
The second front window stood open, making the room broader. Malk uncovered a fragrant pot on the hearthstone.
“You'll stay for some.”
Over the bowls he told them about the bench at his sister's: a place for it, but a narrow turn before the door. He'd measured again that morning.
“Will it go?” Soren asked.
“It'll go. I'll have to take the legs off.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I thought I might have measured it wrongly.”
“We found some ground,” Rowan said, taking the bread.
Malk looked from him to Soren.
“Kelm's?”
“You know it?”
“I know most of the places he's thought of putting something.”
“We had someone look at it this morning,” Soren said. “We'd have to build.”
“You would.”
He took another spoonful before asking, “Is that what you want?”
Soren rested his hand beside the bowl.
“I think it is.”
Rowan looked at him. On the way here Soren had said the window could be wide enough for both of them. Until now, he had not said this.
“I like your house,” Rowan told Malk.
“So do I.”
“We don't want to keep you waiting while we decide.”
“You haven't. You're sitting in my kitchen.”
Malk leaned back, looking toward the passage.
“I've had a good deal of my life here. Somebody else will have theirs. If you've found a place you like, I'm pleased you came to see this one before you found it.”
They stayed until the pot was empty. When Rowan offered to help with the bench, Malk said he could take the lighter end when the time came. Soren asked which end that was.
“I'll tell him when we lift it.”
Outside, the lanes had begun to darken. Soren stopped beneath Noma's wall, where the tree from her yard reached over the stones.
“You said you thought it was what we wanted.”
“I do.”
“I don't want you waiting because I liked a picture.”
“I liked the picture too.”
“I want that place,” Soren said. “Maud's door, so we can come through with our coats and something to eat. A table where neither has to give up the tree. And somebody else building while I do my own work.”
Rowan smiled.
“I want you to come home while I'm still drawing.”
“I will.”
“And sometimes I'll come home while you're there.”
“You'll have to put the book down.”
“Sometimes.”
Soren took his hand. They walked up to Kelm's gate together. He had gone in for the evening, but the woman who answered called him from the back, and he came out wiping his hands.
“We've asked Maud to look at the ground,” Soren said.
“She told me.”
“If she finds what she expects, and the amount stays where she thinks it will, we'd like to buy it.”
Kelm looked from one to the other.
“The two of you?”
“Both,” Rowan said.
“Good. Come in. I'll show you which bit of the path I need to keep.”
They went in together.
Over the following days, Rowan learned how much a house could change while remaining the same shape on a board.
Maud opened the ground where she had marked it. One place gave her what she expected; another wanted more work. She showed them the difference before she covered it again. The woman working beside her knelt at the third opening and set her palm against its edge, listening while Maud told her what they hoped to put above it. When she had finished, she drew a line through the earth with one finger and asked for the hole to be made a little wider. Rowan held the spade until they were ready for him.
The result changed the cost. It did not change where the table would stand.
That evening Soren brought the amount he could put toward the work, written on a scrap from the shop. Rowan put his own beside it. They had spoken in broad terms before; now they sat at his upstairs table with the figures Maud had given them and counted what would be left after they had paid for the ground and a house they could live in.
They could do it. They could not do everything else they had imagined at the same time.
Soren crossed out a little room that had appeared at the back of Rowan's latest sketch.
“I thought we could use it.”
“We can use this room.”
Rowan looked at the lamp and drawing things already within reach.
“Yes.”
He rubbed out the extra room. The house became the one they had chosen with Maud, not everything they might ever want.
They kept enough aside to live while the work went on. The shelves could wait. So could the long bench Rowan had begun to imagine beneath the garden window. When they took the board back, Maud listened, changed the place of one small cupboard and gave them the amount for the work they had actually asked her to do.
“And we stay upstairs until it's ready?” Soren asked.
“I won't have you under half a roof because you've brought your bed.”
They agreed. Rowan put his name beside Soren's and watched Maud add hers. The marks looked small for what they had decided.
Next day they showed Kelm the board and walked the ground again, keeping his access clear. At the new gate he asked whether they still wanted it, knowing they would hear the yard.
“Yes,” Soren said.
Kelm shook their hands.
At Thane's that afternoon a man waited with a folded page and a drink Est had brought. Thane was fishing with Corren. Rowan sat beside the man and listened until he could leave with a name to ask and a place to begin. Then Rowan added the change to the wall; he knew the household without searching for its door.
Est had left another page beside his book.
“From Adra,” she said. “It came in while you were out.”
He read it standing. Tavin was coming back. Bren had reached the marsh, and the two of them had spent a morning walking the places he would be taking over for a while. The households had seen them together. There was a line from Tavin at the bottom, asking Rowan to leave something worth doing for his return.
Rowan laughed and wrote back.
Olan came in as he was finishing. He had been speaking to Anet. Their separate account of the hollow had gone with the Circle's outgoing messages; the named readers beyond the Glenn would have their comparisons when the carriers reached them. He gave Rowan the copy they had kept.
“We'll go out with her when you're free,” he said. “She's chosen the morning.”
Rowan looked at the day Olan had marked, then at the place he had left for it in his book.
“I'll be there.”
“Thane wanted a larger wall before he wanted a different map,” Olan said.
“He might yet have both.”
“Not while he's fishing.” Olan went out smiling. Rowan put away the hollow account. When he looked up, Thane was in the doorway with Corren behind him.
“There you are.”
“I've been here.”
“I was speaking to Est.”
She looked up from what she was doing.
“Did you catch anything?”
Corren held out one hand. Thane looked at it with the air of a man betrayed by an old friend.
“It was bigger before he brought it back.”
“It wasn't.”
Est went to see. Rowan closed his book.
Thane stopped beside the wall. He took in the new mark and the page beneath Rowan's hand. For a moment he looked ready to come round the table. Then he put his hand into his coat instead and drew out a folded note.
“I've had word from Cresting.”
“When will you go?”
“Soon. They're already asking which day.”
“How long?”
“I haven't told them when I mean to come back.”
Rowan looked at him, then smiled.
“Good.”
They sat while Thane showed the part he meant to answer, speaking of people to see and stops along the way. Corren and Est argued about the fish. He did not ask whether the room would manage.
By the time Maud was ready to begin, Rowan had stopped turning toward the door whenever someone asked for Thane.
He still went out. One morning took him farther along a line than he had expected, and he came back with mud above both knees and a page of marks that would have to be moved before anyone else could read them. Another he spent with Anet and Olan at the hollow. He put that account where it belonged when he returned, beside the earlier readings. Soren had a customer wait long enough to see the new working in the light she would use at home. Mare sent something baked across with a child who arrived carrying half of it and a very good explanation. Phia came through the room while he was drawing and stood long enough to make him turn the page so that she could see.
The town went on being larger than the part of it he had come to do.
Thane left on a clear morning, his travelling things beside him and Corren waiting to walk the first part of the road. Rowan found them beyond the crossing. Est had brought the bread Thane had forgotten, wrapped in one of her good cloths. She stood beside the bag while he made room for it.
He fitted it into the bag while Corren watched the road.
“He'll be wanting the meal before we've reached anywhere to sit,” Corren said.
Thane stood, settling the weight across his shoulder. Rowan could remember watching him come into the room for the first time, trying to put the man beside what he had already been told about him. He had got very little of it right.
“You're going the same way as the carriers?” he asked.
“As far as they want my company.”
“Somebody ought to warn them,” Est said.
Thane smiled and put out his hand to Rowan.
“I'll want to see the place when I come back.”
“There may not be much to see.”
“I meant to see you there.”
Rowan smiled. Thane held his hand a moment longer, then let it go.
“Enjoy it,” he said.
“I mean to.”
Corren lifted the smaller bundle. The two of them went up the road together, arguing about whether the place he had chosen to stop was as far as Thane remembered. Est stood beside Rowan until their voices had become too faint to follow.
When they could no longer hear them, Rowan and Est turned toward the room.
On the first morning of work at the plot, Soren shut the shop for a little while. Rowan had left Est at the table and told her where he would be. They walked up the lane carrying the board, though Maud had said she had her own copy.
Maud's people were waiting by the gate. The ground looked smaller with their things set on it. There were tools against the wall and timber laid clear of Kelm's way. Maud stood where the door would be, talking to the woman who had read the earth beside her. A cord lay between two pegs, drawn tight enough to show the first edge.
Soren stopped outside.
“We've brought it again.”
“I can see.”
Maud took the board and set it beside her own against the wall. Rowan looked for the tree. Its branches moved above the place they had left open for them.
“You'll have to let us begin,” she said.
He stepped aside. Soren moved with him, and the woman at the cord knelt to set a flat stone against the earth. Her palm rested on it. The soil beneath the nearer peg loosened, settling into the hollow Maud had already opened. She lifted her hand, looked along the line and told the other worker where to put the next stone.
They went round to the lower end, where the ground would remain a garden. From here they could see Maud's door as clearly as if the frame already stood. A man passing in the lane slowed, saw them and raised a hand. Soren answered. Farther down, somebody called Rowan's name.
Noma came through the gate with Malk behind her. He carried a wrapped parcel under his arm.
“He wouldn't leave it with me,” she said.
“You'd have opened it.”
“I might.”
Malk gave the parcel to Soren. Inside was the wooden wedge from his door, worn smooth along its lower edge.
“For when you have one.”
Rowan held it while Soren folded the cloth.
“Doesn't your door need it?”
“The people taking the house can make their own.”
Noma looked toward the pegs. “Which bit is this?”
“The room where we'll eat,” Soren said.
“And where will we sit?”
He pointed. Rowan watched Noma look from the empty ground to the tree. She moved a pace to her left, thought about it and nodded.
“That'll do.”
They stayed until Maud needed the space. Then Noma took Malk down to the lane, asking after his sister, and Soren stood beside Rowan with the cloth folded beneath his arm.
“I have to go back,” he said.
“So do I.”
Neither moved at once. The house was still a few pegs in the earth. It would be weeks before they had a wall to touch and longer before they could shut the door behind them. Rowan could see the work waiting at the table below, the rooms above the shop with their windows open, the path he would take when somebody needed him farther away.
Soren reached for the wedge. Rowan gave it to him.
“I'll leave this upstairs.”
“Where we'll find it?”
“I know where things are in my own room.”
“I meant later.”
“So did I.”
They went out through the gate together. Behind them, Maud called for the next stone. Ahead, the lane divided: one way to the shop, the other toward the room where Rowan's book lay open.
Soren turned toward his work. Rowan watched him go, then looked back once at the place beside the tree.
He knew the way home.