On the seventh morning, Rowan took the lower path with Avel’s directions folded beside Thane’s note. She had kept copies of three drawings and would send an account once she had followed the inland connection from her side.
The country opened gradually. Firs remained on the steeper slopes, but broader trees gathered where the hillside eased. He passed coppiced stands, worked fields and fences with gates worn by regular use. The protection branched toward houses and wells, sometimes following a seam of rock he could see from the path, sometimes disappearing beneath ground he would need permission to examine.
Over the next three days, his drawings acquired names beside places. He waited at garden gates and learned which crossings served the nearest households. At a millrace, the line met his moonlight with a cool, yielding movement that persisted after the water settled. He marked it beside the fields supplied by the channel.
People remembered alterations that appeared in none of the accounts he carried: a spring that had failed, a yard that had flooded, an anchor moved before the present house was built. Rowan set those memories beside what he could test. He began drawing the households and their approaches on sheets of their own, so a person looking for a working would also know whose gate they needed to open.
On the ninth evening, he found a lodging used by travelers coming down from the farms. There was a bed, a meal he did not have to cook, and space beneath the eaves to clean his boots. A small conjured lamp lit the bedside shelf. He turned it toward the coverlet and spread the drawings beneath it, putting them in order before sleeping. The earliest pages smelled of smoke. One corner had stiffened where rain reached it; another bore a thumbprint beneath the raised bridge.
On a final page he listed the inland branch, the joining beneath the ravine, the animal routes he had not followed. Winter remained a question for those who worked here through it.
He placed that page first and wrapped the packet.
By morning his shirt was dry, his boots had lost most of their mud, and the lodging keeper had given him directions into Glenndan. Rowan repeated the last turn back to her before leaving.
The river spread around low islands as he followed the final reach. Reeds stood in quieter water, and fields rose beyond them toward houses and scattered trees. To the east, the mountains continued south in wooded slopes and bare shoulders of stone. He had seen them through gaps in the forest for days. Here he could begin to understand how the settled ground lay against them.
The road carried more people now. An empty cart passed him going uphill. Two walkers turned away toward a crossing, leaving him to follow the broader street between houses close enough to shade one another. He loosened a strap where the pack rubbed his shoulder and looked for the turn the lodging keeper had named.
A loaded cart was coming through the junction. Rowan stepped beneath a broad tree to let it pass. The driver raised a hand. One wheel crossed a shallow run of water set into the street, and the horse slowed while the cart rocked behind it.
There was a stone seat around part of the trunk. He lowered his pack onto it and sat.
The shade cooled his face. Leaves moved above him, and water ran beneath a slab near his boots before emerging beside a garden wall. Across the street, a woman stood in an open doorway with a cloth folded over her arm, speaking to someone inside.
“Then leave it there. I’ll find it.”
The cart passed. Rowan remained where he was.
A short lane rose between the houses opposite. Sun reached its upper end, where a gate stood open beneath another tree. A child came down carrying a pot in both hands. Someone called from behind the gate to use the handle; the child continued carefully, elbows held out, until the pot reached the doorway.
Rowan looked along the lane again.
He would like to draw this place. The pale wall above the water, the uneven rise of the paving, the shade beneath the tree. If he came back later, the light would have moved across the seat.
He rested his hands on his knees. No one needed anything from him here. He had no reading to take, and the cart had been gone long enough that he could no longer hear it. For a few moments he let himself sit without finding another reason.
Then he lifted his pack and resumed the directions. At the next turn, he looked back to be sure he would know the tree again.
Thane’s door stood open.
A long table occupied most of the room within. Books and folded sheets filled the shelves; nearer the door, a shallow tray held keys, a broken buckle and several small pieces of carved stone. Thane stood at the table beside a younger warden, his salt-grey head bent over her drawing.
Rowan waited until they looked up.
“From Cresting Pass?” Thane asked.
“Rowan.”
“Come in. Put your pack on the bench.”
The younger warden gathered her pages, but Thane held one beneath his hand. “If the lower ground won’t take them, come back,” he told her. “Don’t spend the morning finding a worse way to finish.”
She gave him a brief smile. “I know.”
“Good. Tell them before you leave.”
She nodded to Rowan on her way out. Thane released the sheet and came round the table to offer his hand.
“Vessa’s letter arrived by the road.”
“I came more slowly.”
“I hoped you would.”
Thane brought water and pushed a chair out with his foot.
Rowan set down the two packets. He gave Thane Cresting Pass’s account first. Thane checked that Vessa had the full copy, then set it aside for later reading.
He reached for the second packet.
Rowan untied it. “The river approach.” He placed the limits page on top.
Thane read the limits page before opening the drawings. He followed the references without asking for an explanation.
At the raised bridge, he drew the earlier view of the ledge alongside the crossing.
“This is the higher route?”
“The part I followed.”
Thane traced it to the spur, where Rowan’s line stopped. “Could a crew bring a bearing through here?”
“On foot. I wouldn’t bring an animal beyond that point until someone has walked the rest.”
Thane set the views together. “I’ll find someone who can follow the joining beneath it. How long have you been making accounts this way?”
“The drawings, for years. Not the whole route together.”
Thane moved on. Houses and wells began appearing beside the lower anchors. At one field he stopped and read the household account beneath Rowan’s marks.
“I know this reach. Who remembered the earlier course?”
“The people at the house. They showed me where the old well stood.”
Thane looked from their account to Rowan’s reading. “Most reports give me one of these.” He tapped the line, then the note beneath it. “I need both.”
“I can do that.”
“I know.” Thane drew the next sheet closer. “Now I know where it may be useful.”
Rowan sat back. His shoulders had begun to stiffen as the warmth reached them, and he shifted the chair closer to the table.
“Do you want the river approach kept together as a circuit?”
“Possibly. I haven’t decided.” Thane laid the household sheet beside the bridge. “People already work parts of it. I won’t redraw their duties because you happened to arrive by their path.”
Thane gathered the sheets, handling the damp corner carefully.
“Leave this with me for three days. I’ll compare it with what we have and speak to the wardens whose reaches you crossed. Then we’ll discuss what comes next.”
“What do you want from me before then?”
“Find your way around. Meet a few people. Vessa sent you a list?”
Rowan brought it from inside his cloak. Thane read down the names.
“Corren will want to know you’ve arrived.”
“I haven’t seen him in years.”
“He’ll still want to know.”
“And the Circle?”
“I’ll send word to Est. She can find a time.” Thane returned the sheet. “Leave the report here unless someone asks for it.”
Rowan folded the list. “Vessa told me not to arrive asking everyone to report.”
“Then listen to her.”
He smiled at that. Thane stood and took a key from the tray beside the door.
“Come. I’ll show you where to put the rest of it.”
They walked through town at an easier pace than Rowan had entered it. Thane pointed out the river crossing, then stopped beside a cart to ask whether a promised load had arrived. Rowan waited while the driver explained where it had been left. Thane listened, gave him a different place to take the next one, and continued.
People greeted him without interrupting what they were doing. At one doorway he lifted a hand; at another he paused to hear a few words too quiet for Rowan to catch. None of it resembled the station yard, though he recognized the work of keeping track.
“You’ll find people bringing you things that have nothing to do with your circuit,” Thane said as they turned into a quieter lane.
“Because I’m a warden?”
“Because you’ll be standing there. Find out what they’re asking before you tell them whose responsibility it is.”
“Do you manage to?”
“Some days.”
The lodging had a side entrance opening onto a small yard. Thane led him up a short stair to a balcony with many doors. He walked to the third and turned the key carefully.
“The window catches after rain. Lift it from the middle.”
The room held a bed, a chest, a washstand and a table beside the window. Two hooks stood behind the door. Afternoon light reached across the floorboards, and from below came the scrape of something being moved over stone.
Rowan set down his pack.
Thane put the key on the table. “Use it while it suits you. If you find somewhere else, tell me where you’ve gone. Three days. Earlier if something needs you or me.”
At the door, Rowan stopped him. “There’s a page missing from the old bridge account. I marked the reference. If you have a copy, I’d like to see it.”
Thane nodded and went downstairs.
Rowan washed before unpacking. Once the dirt was off, he found the rubbed place beneath his shoulder and a bruise above one knee whose origin he could no longer remember. He changed his shirt, hung the damp one behind the door, and put the things that needed drying near the window.
The room grew quieter as the yard below emptied. He could hear water running into a bucket, then footsteps carrying it away.
His notebook had travelled apart from the finished sheets. He took it out and set it on the table. There was still charcoal in the small wrapping, though he would need more soon.
He opened to a clean page.
Ordinarily, after a handover, he would check the pack and put it in order for the next departure. There were buckles to clean and a strap that needed another stitch. They could wait until after he had eaten.
He closed the notebook and took it with the charcoal, then picked up the key.
He wanted to find that tree again.