For the next fortnight, Rowan left the longer holds to people who had agreed to make them.
At first he found himself reaching before remembering that agreement. Once, beside a field stone, he had the ash at his palm before Bren said his name. He put it away and took out the drawing instead. There was work he could do while someone else followed the deeper binding, and work that became clearer because he was no longer trying to carry both parts at once.
He still read the lines. He waited for an answer without strengthening it merely to make it feel familiar, then rested between positions. By the time his wrist moved freely again, he had begun writing the effort beside the conditions rather than treating it as something that concerned only him.
Phia came to the hollow with them. The darkness still lay beyond the held edge, and the hurdle remained across the apparent resting place. She drew moisture from beneath the roots, letting it bead along Rowan’s shield. The droplets spread until the protection held a broader, steadier curve around the approach. She left the deeper course undisturbed. They followed another return through the lower field, gathering enough of its older arrangement to choose their next comparison.
Other work continued. Tavin brought accounts from the outer houses; Est found the person who remembered a path beneath a newer garden. People began arriving at Thane’s wall expecting Rowan to help them.
He ate with Corren, who no longer came to the gate expecting a reason for the visit. On evenings when there was light, Rowan took his smaller book out instead of another field sheet. A man carrying baskets stopped beside him once and asked whether he meant to put the whole street in. Rowan showed him where the drawing ended. The man pointed to a doorway he had overlooked.
He found a place where he and Soren could eat, and went there once himself before deciding it would do. The tables stood beneath a covered yard; food came from a room behind it. There was shelter from the wind without losing sight of the evening.
Word of Soren’s return reached him while he was finishing an account with Bren. The person who brought it had seen the cart outside the shop. Rowan put the last reference on the sheet and asked Bren to leave it for Thane, then went into the street.
Soren had been gone most of three weeks. It was nearly six since Rowan arrived.
The cart had brought back tools and the wrapping that had covered the new frame. Soren was loosening the straps of a box when Rowan came through the door. He looked tired in the ordinary way of a man who had been traveling longer than he wanted to, his clothes creased where he had slept in them.
“Was there anything I should have brought?” Rowan asked.
“A place for this.”
Rowan moved the wrapping aside and helped him lift the box onto the bench. Inside lay fittings from the older frame, each wrapped separately. The new piece had stayed at the yard, working beside the first.
Soren took out one of the fittings, turned it over, then put it down again.
“Tomorrow. I don’t need to know tonight.”
“I’ve found somewhere to eat.”
“Then you’ve used the time well.” He looked down at his shirt. “I’d like to wash first.”
He led Rowan through a side door to the stair. Above the shop, a room opened onto the lane. There was a table near the window, a chair pushed beneath it, and books stacked beside a lamp. Another door stood partly open beyond. Soren left him by the table while he went to wash.
Rowan had not been upstairs before. He looked down on the street, surprised by the height, then sat where Soren had indicated. A half-finished drawing of a fitting lay beneath a clean sheet. Beside it were notes in Soren’s hand and two pieces of charcoal worn too short to use comfortably.
He kept his hands off the papers.
Soren returned with damp hair and a different shirt. At the door he glanced back toward the table.
“You can look at those another time. I left the one that didn’t work underneath.”
“I wasn’t going through them.”
“I know. I’m telling you that you may.”
They went downstairs. Soren locked the shop and joined him in the street.
The covered yard had room near its inner wall. When the food came, Soren ate more than Rowan expected and asked for another portion of bread.
“You’ve been on the road,” Rowan said.
“We ate. I would simply rather have this.”
He leaned back when he had finished, looking around the yard.
“Good choice.”
“I tried it first.”
“Thorough of you.”
“I wanted to be sure it was open.”
Soren laughed. “A useful improvement on our first breakfast.”
Rowan told him about the weeks he had missed. There was more to tell than he had expected when Soren left: people he knew well enough to call on, work he had arranged with others, the visits that had begun because somebody wanted him to look at their ground. He included Mare’s treatment and the changes he had made afterward. Soren listened, asking about the people whose names he knew. They were different acquaintances from his own.
When Rowan asked about the yard, Soren spoke less of the frame than the people using it. One man wanted every moving part within reach. Another kept putting a load beneath the lowest setting. The person who persuaded them to try it where it would usually stand had finally given Soren an afternoon in which the work resembled his tests.
“They’d have kept me another week if I let them,” he said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’d finished what I went to do. And I wanted to be back.”
Rowan was glad he had chosen this place. Soren could leave the road and the fittings behind for an evening; across the yard, the street was beginning to empty, and neither had to be anywhere else.
They walked home by the river. At the turn toward Soren’s shop, he asked Rowan to come up after work the following day.
“I might have put the box away by then.”
“I’ll see.”
The box was still there when Rowan returned. Soren had moved the fittings onto a board by the wall, leaving room for two chairs at the table. He brought out the drawing he had promised, with its crossed-out attempts beneath it.
The second attempt at one fitting was worse than the first. Rowan pointed to the shape.
“That one looks as though it would bite.”
“It nearly did. I kept my hand out of the way.”
Rowan laughed. Soren turned the page until the crooked shape faced him, then put it beneath the others. They ate upstairs, and Rowan stayed while the light left the lane.
Over the following weeks, their evenings began to acquire arrangements. Some days Soren met him after closing; on others Rowan came upstairs when the circuits brought him back to town. They left word when work changed a plan. Rowan still kept his field things at the lodging, where he could prepare an early departure without clearing space on Soren’s table.
One evening Soren asked him to meet in the broad street beyond the crossing. Rowan arrived while a woman was tightening the strings of her instrument. People had pulled benches against the walls, leaving room between them.
Soren stood near a doorway speaking to Edda. She had a shawl folded over one arm and was fastening something at her sleeve. Corren sat at the end of the nearest bench, looking up at the sky between two roofs.
“I thought we were walking,” Rowan said.
“We can,” Soren told him. “I’d like to stay for a little first.”
Edda finished with the sleeve and took her place beside Corren. “There’s room here when you’re tired of standing.”
Rowan smiled. He put his folded cloak beneath the bench and sat while Soren remained against the wall beside them.
The woman tried a few notes, adjusted one string and began again. A second player took up the tune. Soren tapped a finger against his own folded cloak.
As the light thinned, Soren turned the small frame fixed above their doorway. A soft glow spread along the wall, stopping short of the players’ faces. He turned back toward the players without interrupting the tune.
“You know this one?” Rowan asked.
“Parts of it.”
“Enough to sing?”
“Not enough to improve it.”
He sang a little anyway, quietly, then stopped when the tune went somewhere he had not expected. Corren continued beneath his breath for another line.
Rowan looked at him.
“It had that turn when I knew it,” Corren said. “I’d forgotten what came after.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“A long way west. We stayed until they finished because the person giving us a room wouldn’t go home before then.”
Edda leaned forward to look past him. “He still tells it as though he was made to sit through music.”
“We had a long day ahead.”
“Then you should have enjoyed the one before it.”
He smiled without disputing her. Rowan watched the players carry the tune into a part none of the three seemed to know.
After the second tune, Edda rose and drew Soren away from the doorway. He gave Rowan his cloak and went with her into the space between the benches. The steps were familiar to most of those joining them. Soren missed one turn and recovered on the next, laughing with her.
Corren moved along the bench to give Rowan room for the cloak. Neither spoke while the next tune began. Rowan could see the crossing through a gap in the people, but stopped following who went across it.
When Soren came back, his hair had loosened at the temples.
“Would you?”
“Not that one. I’d put someone into the bench.”
“We can stay here.”
He sat where Edda had been and took his cloak. Corren rose to join her at the edge of the dancing. Rowan watched them go, then remained beside Soren for the next tune.
Someone carried bread along the wall. Soren bought a piece and divided it between them. They stayed until the woman began putting her instrument away. On the walk back, Soren tried to remember the unexpected turn in the first tune. He hummed it twice, differently each time.
“You’ve changed it,” Rowan said.
“Then we’ll have to hear it properly next time.”
By the ninth week, Rowan had begun leaving a clean shirt upstairs. He had brought it after a wet afternoon and needed it before going out the next morning. Soren put a hook behind the door for his cloak; the shirt hung there until he wore it again.
His field things remained at the lodging. There were people expecting him in different parts of the Glenn, and he had begun choosing his days by more than the circuits alone. Some journeys brought him back early enough to eat with Corren; others left him glad of the room and the water at the washstand. When he told someone where he meant to be, they could usually name another person he would pass.
On a day with no circuit arranged, he went to the landing alone.
He had tried drawing a boat from the path and found that the rail hid most of its shape. Down on the landing, he could put the bow in properly, though he had to move whenever someone brought a load. He stayed until the last baskets were aboard, marking the boat’s waterline before it went out.
Then he walked farther along the river. At a place where the path rose above the bank, he sat until he had used the light on another page.
Soren was still working when Rowan came back. A customer stood at the counter with a pair of small frames, explaining where each needed to hold. Rowan lifted a hand from the doorway and continued toward the lodging. He had clothes to wash and an account to finish. He did both before changing his shirt and going back.
Upstairs, Soren had pushed his drawings to one end of the table and was cutting a loaf. He looked toward the bundle beneath Rowan’s arm.
“You could leave more of that here.”
“I have enough hanging on your door.”
“I meant to make room for it.”
Rowan put down the shirt. His notebook could fit beside Soren’s papers, but the field sheets would cover most of the remaining table.
“For the clothes?”
“And the rest. If you’d like to live here.”
The knife remained beside the bread while Rowan looked at him.
“I’d like to live here with you. I haven’t decided how long I’ll be in the Glenn.”
“I know. I’d still like you here.”
“And I go out early.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Soren smiled, but waited.
“I need somewhere I can leave the work open,” Rowan said.
“So do I. There’s another room beyond the stairs.”
He took Rowan along a short passage to the rear of the house. The room was smaller, with a narrow window above the yard, a bed against one wall and a table piled with wrapping, a spare board and two empty boxes.
“I’ve been keeping things here until I decide where they go. There’s more space than it looks.”
Rowan could see how the table would fit beneath the window. His pack would stand beside the bed, where he needn’t move it when someone passed. He went to the window and put one hand on the ledge.
“I could work here.”
“And there’s a bed. I’ll keep my room. You needn’t clear your papers because I want to read something at the table.”
From the yard came the sound of a bucket being filled. The room was quiet enough to hear it over the voices in the street. When Soren traveled, Rowan would still come back through the shop door and find his own things here.
He turned. “I’d like to bring them.”
“Then we’ll clear it.”
They began the following evening. Some boxes went to the shop; Soren sorted the papers himself before choosing what to keep. Rowan took the wrapping downstairs and brought back a broom. They stopped with the table beneath the window and enough space to open it without leaning across anything.
Rowan tried two field sheets on the table.
“Will that do?” Soren asked.
“Yes.”
“Leave them.”
He did.
The move took most of the tenth week, between work and people who already expected him. He brought the pack first, then his spare clothes and the small supplies he had kept dry through the journey. Soren gave him a key. Rowan returned once more for the things he had left at the lodging and found a short piece of charcoal beneath the chest. He put it with the others.
On the last morning, he cleaned the room, checked behind the door and returned its key. He left his new address with the lodging keeper, then stopped at Thane’s on the way back. Bren was there with an account from the upper households. He handed it to Rowan while Thane wrote down the address.
Soren had gone out to see the customer’s two workings where they stood in her house. Rowan let himself in and went upstairs. His field sheets lay on the new table, sunlight reaching their nearer edge. He shifted the chair clear of it and put away the last bundle of clothes.
He would meet Bren at the road after midday. There was time to eat first.
He took the smaller book down to the landing, leaving the field sheets open. On his way out, he put the new key in his pocket and pulled the shop door shut behind him.