The boat's owner meant to go home before the light left the channel.
She told Rowan while nesting empty baskets on the table. The smallest caught against a crooked piece of wood. She took it out and tried again.
“I've been trying to leave since the meal.”
Rowan stood clear of the table. He had come ready to ask whether the boat could stay beside the captured ones until somebody knew where each belonged. In the house, that had seemed a small thing to ask. Here the woman was looking toward a boat she had tied herself, carrying baskets she had agreed to return.
“Which way would you go?”
She pointed down the channel, away from the roots where the men had landed.
“As far as the little house. Their landing's this side. I needn't cross.”
“Will you come back?”
“Not tonight. I live there. My daughter lives here.”
Her daughter came from the workroom and took the upper basket.
“Leave these till tomorrow. I can bring them.”
“Who's going to be here when Tirra starts the load again?”
She set it down harder than she needed to. Rowan looked toward the channel, clear as far as the bridge. The watchers could see its nearer approach, not every turn beyond.
“I'd like you to wait until Adra's seen where they went.”
“You said they went the other way.”
“They did. I don't know whether someone is coming behind them.”
The woman put her hands against the table. They were broad across the knuckles, a little swollen where the fingers bent.
“Then nobody can go anywhere.”
“What's your name?”
“Gret.”
“Rowan. Would you show me the turn from the bank?”
She looked at her daughter. “Bring the top one. It won't sit straight unless somebody holds it.”
They went down together. Gret walked ahead, her daughter behind her with the crooked basket. Rowan followed without taking it from either of them. At the bridge, Gret pointed along the near bank. Her landing lay short of the bend, beneath a roof just visible where the trees thinned. From the upper yard he had taken it for part of the next farm.
“There's someone there?”
“My son. Unless he's come looking because he thinks I've sunk.”
Phia came down from the tank while they stood there. She listened to Gret, then walked far enough along the bank to see past the moored boats.
“I can go with you as far as that landing,” she said.
Tavin could see the prisoners from the yard; Hal stood beside him. Rowan stayed to wait for Adra.
Gret's daughter brought the baskets down. This time Rowan took the lower end while they settled them aboard. Gret placed the crooked one where it would not catch her knee and put her hand against the bank before sitting.
“Don't let her take you farther,” her daughter told Phia.
“I have somewhere to come back to.”
The woman smiled reluctantly. Phia stepped aboard, and the little boat eased from the bank without Gret having to push beneath the baskets. Gret kept the paddle across her knees, watching the line of the water ahead.
They stayed in sight until the roof hid them. Her daughter waited even then. Rowan left her at the bridge and went back to the yard.
Hal had laid the frame across two stools. Each time he tightened the cord, the cracked piece twisted. Tavin watched without taking his eyes from the bench for long.
“Have you wood for a brace?” Rowan asked.
“In my shed, if I had time to go home.”
“What have they got here?”
Hal looked at him as though the question should have been answered before he reached the stools. Tirra's father, seated beneath the joined roofs, pointed with his spoon.
“Offcuts. Under the covered end.”
Hal fetched three offcuts. Rowan turned the crack toward the light while Tirra's father warned him not to tie it the way Hal had been trying.
“I wasn't going to,” Hal said.
“He was.”
Tavin smiled. Hal tried each piece against the break, chose the plainest and asked Rowan to hold the frame while he cut it to fit.
The knife worked against the grain with a soft, regular sound. Rowan took ash into his hand and brought a little moonlight beneath the split crosspiece, holding its ends level while Hal tried the new wood. He could keep the shape steady without putting his fingers where the blade needed to go. Hal cut another shaving and pressed the brace against it.
“There.”
“You want it lower.”
“I want it there.”
Rowan moved the light where he pointed. Hal bound the brace firmly on both sides of the break, then set the knife down and tested it with both hands. When he nodded, Rowan released the working. The frame held its new shape.
Hal lifted it from the stools and pushed his knee against the crosspiece.
“It'll carry.”
“As much?”
“Enough.” He looked toward the house. “She'll send less until I mend it properly.”
Tirra had come out while they worked.
“I'll send what needs sending. You can tell me when you've enough.”
He raised the frame to his shoulders. The new brace showed pale against the older wood. He shifted it once and let it rest where he had worn it before.
“It won't be today.”
“No,” she said. “It won't.”
Hal lowered it and Rowan brushed the shaving from his knee.
Adra came through the upper gate with a man carrying bedding and a water skin. She looked across the two captives and the channel before joining Rowan.
“Jast,” she said, indicating her companion. “From the station. He's staying with Tavin.”
The man put his things beside the bench, where neither prisoner could reach them, and spoke quietly to Tavin. Adra waited until the warden had answered him.
“I've left the upper gate at Kadan's with one of the household wardens. The two from the shore know where we are.”
“Sira?” Rowan asked.
“Resting. Dera's arguing about the tally. Kadan wants the lower door opened before somebody decides it has to stay shut forever.”
“Phia's gone with Gret to the nearer landing,” Rowan said.
Adra smiled. “She'll have wanted to go home. Show me what you've found.”
Adra examined the drawing beneath the roof. The packing store's lower door showed the old way round the end; a new path had been added to the same sheet.
“They changed the fastening before the last heavy load,” she said. “Someone's brought an older drawing up to date. Not all of it.”
They crossed the upstream footbridge. Rowan showed where he had found the rods and where the man had knelt. Adra crouched beside the flattened grass. Its edges had dried; the ground beyond remained green.
“A larger patch than at the roof,” she said.
“There was more beneath his hand. That's what I saw him touch; I don't know what else he took up.”
She looked across at the water.
“You could see what Phia put across.”
“They kept moving the rods while he watched her.”
“And these?” She indicated the words on the sheet.
“Already there when I picked it up.”
Adra read them aloud. “Water held here. More than one reader.”
She looked toward the workroom. Tirra's father had come out to take the late sun, the little boy beside him holding both pieces of his cup. There was nothing in either figure that would tell a stranger how much of the farm they understood.
“They asked Kadan about the people,” she said. “Not just the loads. He thought they wanted to know who could open the lower door.”
“He might still be right about that.”
“And there might be more they wanted.”
Rowan nodded. He had watched the hands, the rods and the sheet while blades came through a different entrance.
“Keep the original here,” Adra said. “People who know these turns should see what was actually drawn. Send checked copies to Thane and Iven.”
Rowan made them before the light went, copying even the crossed-out path and uneven distances. He added the day, finding place and witnesses. Adra checked the sheets and wrote on their backs who could place the uncertain buildings. Phia returned from Gret's landing while they worked, stopping to reassure her daughter before seeing Edrik's hand.
Edrik drank awkwardly from the cup Jast had brought, keeping it clear of his bound wrist. Rowan asked Adra to hear him in the workroom, apart from Veth.
Jast took Veth to the far end of the joined roofs, out of hearing of the room. Tavin brought Edrik through. They sat with the door open and enough distance between the chairs that the man could rest his hand without leaning toward either warden. Adra took the place beside the table. Rowan laid the little page with Isker's name before her.
“You gave me this name,” he said to Edrik. “Is that what you called him, or what somebody told you to call him?”
The man looked at the page. “It's what they said.”
“Who?”
“The people waiting.”
“At the lower landing.”
“Yes.”
Adra wrote the answer without repeating it. Edrik watched her pen, then looked at Rowan.
“Will he be asked?”
“If Iven can find who you mean.”
“I didn't go to the station,” Edrik said. “He'll ask why I didn't see the keeper. We weren't taking it to the keeper.”
“That goes with it.”
His shoulders settled, though he did not seem relieved.
“The man with the rods,” Rowan said. “Did you travel with him before that day?”
“Some of the way.”
“From where?”
He looked toward the door. Veth was out of sight from this chair, but Jast's voice came through as he asked Hal to move the frame clear of the passage.
“Farther inland. Before the water.”
“In the Kingdom?”
“No.” He rubbed one heel against the other boot. “That's where I come from. Not the islands. We'd been on the road before we met him. He had the packet then.”
Adra asked him to describe the journey. He could name the places where he had slept more readily than the roads between them. Rowan knew none of the farther names. The nearer ones belonged to the country beyond the Kingdom's inland approaches; Adra recognized two and asked him which came first. He answered without looking toward the door.
He had not seen where the packet came from or who supplied the money. Rowan wrote both answers without asking him to enlarge them.
“The man who crushed the green stem,” he said. “What did he use it for?”
“His working.”
“What working?”
“Looking. That's what he said he'd do.” Edrik moved his good hand toward the doorway. “At what she'd put across. He wanted the other man to set it down.”
“Does he always use something growing?”
“Something green. He brings it if he needs to. He can't work with nothing to take.”
“Is that your practice too?”
“I carry what he needs.”
Rowan wrote that answer as well. It belonged beside the rods, the changing grass and the words about readers. The men had tried to enter the stores, but another part of their work had been to watch what protected the place.
Edrik asked what would happen to him. His hand would be checked before any journey; his account would go to someone who knew the landing.
“And him?”
“He gives his own.”
“He'll say I told you what you wanted.”
“You don't have to give his answer first.”
Tavin took him out and brought Veth in while Jast kept the bench. Veth stood inside the door.
“I've said where we came from.”
Adra asked him to put it in his own words. He sat and answered in pieces: the bank, a boat, the deeper of the two in the channel. Rowan had seen him leave it for the upstream crossing.
“You came to the door with a blade,” Rowan said. “What did you expect to find?”
“Stores.”
“What were you meant to carry?”
“Whatever he asked for. You've already asked him.”
“I'm asking you.”
“Then write that I haven't told you.”
Adra did.
“Where is home?” she asked.
Veth looked at her for a long moment, then named a place Rowan did not know. Adra asked him to put it beside a larger one. The inland country he described lay beyond the Kingdom, as Edrik's did. He spoke about a market and a road that took too long when the river was low. He had not heard the other man's answers, and the smaller places he chose were different.
“You're writing that too?”
“You can tell me if I've got it wrong.”
He watched while she read it back. Once he corrected the sound of a name. Rowan changed it and asked how long he had been with the people in the boats.
“Since before the crossing.”
“To the island?”
“Before that. We weren't sent here to stay at the first place we reached.”
He would say no more about who had sent him. They did not put Edrik's account in front of him to make him repeat it.
Adra folded his account only after the ink dried.
“Iven can ask about the landing,” she said. “A name doesn't tell him where the packet began.”
Rowan set the drawing copy beside his observations of the rods and the consumed growth. Phia would add what she had seen.
“Thane needs these together.”
They finished as the lower yard began falling into shade. Adra had someone going to the marsh station before dark; the next morning's journey toward the Glenn could carry the packet on. She put her name beside Rowan's account of the place, Phia added hers to the part she had seen, and the message went with the man before supper. It asked Thane to have Jeren receive the civic questions and to send the observed workings to people able to judge them. The places the men named stayed with their own accounts.
The copy for Iven would go from the marsh. Adra wrapped it separately while the original drawing dried flat.
Tirra reclaimed the workroom for supper. Edrik and Veth had places beneath the joined roofs, far enough apart to speak without facing one another. Jast watched while Tavin ate before relieving him.
“Staying?” Tirra asked Rowan.
“Till morning.”
“Then move your papers. I need that end.”
He cleared it for the pot and brought bowls.
The load had not left. Tirra had sent word to the people expecting it, and two had come for the smaller things rather than wait until tomorrow. They carried them out in the daylight, arguing about whose bundle could sit above whose. The damaged stores door had a new fastening. Hal had put his frame beside it with the brace facing the wall.
The boy with the cup sat at the far end of the table. His mother had laid the pieces on a folded cloth, the handle separate because he kept wanting to try it. Now he put it in his lap while the food went round.
The woman took the handle from her son's fingers, set it against the cup and asked him to show her where the edge met.
He leaned close. She let him turn it himself.
Rowan passed the bread.
Across the table, Hal had begun telling Tirra's father why the new brace would hold. The old man listened, questioned the first knot and pointed out that nobody could see it with the frame turned to the wall. Hal fetched it rather than continue describing it.
Tirra put her elbow in the place he had left. “Now he'll be here all night.”
“He was staying,” Rowan said.
“I meant talking.”
Phia laughed. The sound reached Jast at the open doorway. He looked over, saw the frame and shook his head before returning to his watch. One of the bound men spoke quietly to him; he answered without turning the whole room toward it.
After the bowls were cleared, Rowan opened his smaller book. Hal stood beneath the roof showing the brace to someone collecting a load. A strip of evening remained between the posts.
He drew the frame first. Not its dimensions. The angle at which Hal held it, one hand free while he argued, his body already making room for the weight that would go there tomorrow.
He drew the loosened hand more clearly. When Hal came for his cup, Rowan turned the page toward him.
The man looked at the frame, then at his own shoulder as though he might find it differently placed there.
“You've left out the new knot.”
“It's on the other side.”
“I can turn round.”
“I've drawn this side.”
Hal looked again. Tirra's father leaned nearer, the empty cup held against his chest.
“It looks as though he's carrying something.”
“He is.”
“Not in there.”
Hal went quiet. Then he smiled in the embarrassed way of someone pleased to have been seen and uncertain what would be asked in return. Rowan closed the book before he had to decide.
In the morning, the first small load went out before they did. Hal took the repaired frame with enough tied to it that Rowan could see the new brace bear. He stopped at the gate, adjusted the lower strap and raised a hand without turning all the way round.
Tirra watched the frame pass the cart, then took Rowan's hand.
“Use the front door next time.”
The scrape on her forearm was clean; flour marked her thumb.
Jast and Tavin were ready to stay. Adra would arrange the men's journey to the station when the landing work could take them, with Edrik's hand checked before they set out. Phia spoke to both wardens while Rowan fastened his pack.
Adra walked with them to the orchard. Kiri was tying the repaired shoe beside her father, leaving room for the sole to move.
“We're using the other door now,” she told Rowan.
Kadan smiled over her head. “You've word going?”
“Last night.”
“Good.”
Sira was inside with her foot raised, Dera beside her with the tally. They had not waited for Rowan to return before deciding what could go down to the packing roof. Phia stayed long enough to see how Sira moved, then came out while Kadan was telling him where the word from the shore had been left.
Adra kept the original for people who knew the approaches to examine. Rowan carried the checked copy.
“Where shall I send Iven's next question?” she asked.
“Thane's.”
They reached the marsh too late for the morning boat. The keeper put Iven's question and its attached account with the next outgoing work; meanwhile a walker could warn the nearer shore places named on the drawing.
Renik remained at the station. He had seen the local practitioner that morning, and someone had come to hear his account without the whole room listening. Rowan learned this from the warden, not from opening the door to ask it again. Vard had gone back to the work intended for him; the station had kept the men it needed before sending anyone to the island.
At the outer bench, a girl was making room beside her grandmother. The older woman's daughter had arrived by water the evening Rowan left for the orchard. They had stayed until the morning load; now they waited for somebody who had promised to take their heavier basket on his cart.
The girl saw Rowan first. She held up two fingers.
“We brought them back.”
He looked at the empty place beside her.
“The cups,” she said.
“I thought you would.”
Her grandmother looked at his pack. “You're going, then.”
“Home.”
“Good.”
She turned back toward the gate, where a cart could already be heard beyond the wall. Rowan left them waiting for it and went to find Phia.
They slept at the road roof that night. Their packet had passed that morning with a traveller going ahead of them. Rowan ate where Phia had left her bag and let the keeper find the bedding.
They reached the Glenn late the following day. Phia stopped at the broad junction, where a man was already lifting something broken to show her.
“You've somewhere to go?” Rowan asked.
“Several places. I won't begin with yours.”
She touched his forearm above the wrist and crossed to the man. Rowan went on to Thane's.
Jeren was outside, finishing a conversation with a woman carrying a folded cloth. He let her go before turning to Rowan.
“Your packet arrived earlier.”
“I thought it might.”
“You knew where to send it.”
He held the door while Rowan went in. Thane rose from the smaller table. He looked at Rowan's face, then beyond him to the lane.
“Phia?”
“Found something else to do.”
Thane smiled. “She's home, then.”
The checked copy lay on the table beneath a clean sheet. Beside it were the questions Jeren had begun, still in his own hand rather than copied for sending. Rowan recognized Isker's name without reaching for the page.
“Iven hasn't had time yet,” he said.
“No,” Jeren answered. “This goes with the account when it does. I want him to know which part needs his answer.”
“And the people who ought to hear about the working?”
Thane rested his hand beside the account of the frond. “They'll have what you saw. The original drawing's with Adra?”
“For now. She knows who can place the turns.”
“Good.”
Rowan added what had happened since the packet left: the custody arrangements and where the island question was waiting. Est brought him the messages already received. Jeren had the hall to visit, Est someone waiting beyond the passage. Thane asked when Rowan would return.
“Tomorrow.”
“Morning?”
“After I've seen Soren.”
“Then after you've seen Soren.”
Rowan went home. At the shop, Soren was standing on a low stool, taking a frame from the upper shelf. He saw Rowan through the open door and stopped with both hands beneath it.
“Put that down,” Rowan said.
“I was about to.”
“I've time.”
Soren looked at him. Then he set the frame on the shelf, came down and moved the stool out of the way.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Something new had been set near the window to catch the evening light. Rowan walked far enough into the shop to see it, keeping his hand against the counter where Soren had stopped.
“I thought about the garden,” Rowan said.
“Which one?”
“Ours. The one we haven't got.”
Soren's face changed. He came nearer, his hand resting against Rowan's arm where Phia's had been, but staying.
“I asked Noma.”
“And?”
“She has things to tell us. When we're both there.”
Rowan nodded. Upstairs, his work would be where he had left it. The little drawing of the washing would come out of the pack with the other pages, and for once he knew which conversation he wanted before he opened them.
“I'd like to go.”
“We'll go.”
Soren glanced toward the open door, then turned the little slate beside it. Rowan followed him upstairs.
A week after Rowan came home, Iven's answer reached Thane's room.
The boat had lost a day to the wind. Iven had needed another to find the person Edrik meant. By then Rowan's first account had been read, the copied shore compared with the island's approaches, and Jeren had begun the report for the capital. He left a space for the answer rather than writing a conclusion into it.
Now he put Iven's sheets beside the account from the farm.
“Isker's there,” he said.
Rowan drew out a chair. Phia had come with her own copy; Thane stood beside her while Jeren read.
Iven had found the lower landing and a man known there by that name. A boatman remembered bringing three passengers on the rainy day Edrik described. He described the man carrying the long wrapping before Iven showed him the other account.
Isker had received money. Asked separately, he acknowledged being paid to leave particular arrivals out of the word sent to the station. He described the same handover and a packet whose contents he said he had not read. Iven had kept both accounts. He was asking who else had helped and had not written that every person at the landing knew.
Rowan read the last part himself. The reply had given them more than a name; it had narrowed the work still left to do.
“Put the passage beside it,” Thane said. “What the two men told you about coming here.”
Jeren already had it open. Edrik and Veth's separate accounts placed their homes in the same country far inland, beyond the Kingdom. The nearer part of each journey could be followed through places Adra knew. They had arrived from outside the islands, and the packet had come with them. Iven's witnesses now placed its delivery at a real landing on a day somebody else remembered.
“One paid arrangement,” Jeren said. “We can say that. We don't need to lend them everyone else's quarrel.”
Phia set down her sheet. “And put what they were looking at beside what they took.”
Rowan turned to the copied drawing. Water held here. More than one reader. The loads were marked, but so were the places where the visitors expected to meet a working or somebody who could read it.
“They were finding ways in,” he said. “Learning the people and what held the ground. Keeping a way open with money where they could.”
“Yes,” Thane said. “Give them that to act on.”
The consumption went into the report with Phia's observation and Rowan's. At the farm, the growth had changed beneath the practitioner's hands while he examined the protection. His companion had recorded the result. Edrik described a practice that needed material to take up; the rods, remains and marked page gave that account something more substantial than his word alone.
Jeren crossed out a sentence and wrote another. The report now named a foreign group reconnoitering the approaches and the magic used there, with paid help confirmed at one island landing. It requested attention to their route and those who had received them. It did not announce a war or claim the five who escaped had ceased to matter.
He read it aloud. Rowan changed one place where two different banks had become the same shore. Phia corrected the description of her own working. Thane named the people keeping the local watch and the replies still expected from them.
“Send it,” he said.
Jeren folded the finished pages. Rowan stayed while he addressed them, then took his empty cup to the inner room. Outside, someone was calling that the afternoon load had come early. Est went to ask whose hands were free.
The next morning, Jeren put the packet into the hands of the carrier taking civic messages toward the capital. Rowan watched the man close his bag around it and join the people waiting at the road.
