Jeren read the letter a second time before he put it down.
The carrier brought it with the morning's civic messages, more than six weeks after the report went out. The softened fold and edge stain had left the writing untouched.
The report and later copies had arrived. Isker's account was entered beside Iven's independent evidence. The foreign men's route and practice had gone to people who might know more; other landing Tellers had been asked for comparisons. Jeren was to send further word of the five inland and keep the different encounters separate.
Whoever read the pages had read them properly.
The covering sheet called the whole matter island disorder.
Jeren set a finger beside the two words. They made a convenient heading. A boat had come from the islands; men there had taken money; people on the mainland had been frightened and hurt. Someone looking for the next account would know where to begin.
Someone else might stop there.
He drew a clean sheet toward him, then turned over the covering page. Nothing on the back.
He rose with both palms on the table. His pale hair had slipped loose over one shoulder; he put the tie aside and brought the clay board to the window. Under his broad hands the old ridges softened and settled smooth.
On a page beside it he put the dates from the reports. He had been to the nearer landings himself. For the farther places, he had the accounts of people who had walked or sailed between them. He drew those routes into the clay with one finger, stopping where the record stopped. Low edges rose beneath the touch of his other hand. A little pressure gave the channels space; another held the places apart so that they did not become one confused cluster beneath the window light.
He placed a dark stone at the island landing, an old tablet fragment at the orchard and a flat chip at the farm. The men and their numbers stayed on the page. It was easier to think when distance had somewhere to be.
For a long time in another part of his life, people had expected him to tell them what the ground would let them do before they put armed men on it. He had learned to say which slope he knew and which one he had only been told about. He had also learned how quickly a useful distinction disappeared once someone had drawn a single line round the whole of it.
He had left the army. He had not found a reason to forget that.
Jeren moved the farm chip farther from the landing. The clay held the new space. He had stopped letting the landing stand in front of everything else.
There was a knock at the door. He covered the clay and went to answer it.
Est stood outside with two pages and a folded cloth over her arm.
“Has the carrier gone?” Est asked.
“Other end of town before he leaves.”
“I was hoping not to go there.”
She gave him two pages: a corrected household name and an arrival day, both people he knew.
“I'll take them. You've come here; I haven't gone anywhere.”
Est put her folded cloth on the chair. Something warm lay within.
“Mare's,” she said. “She sent enough to be inconvenient.”
“She knows where I live.”
“So do I.”
He unfolded a corner. Est took the smaller piece before he could offer it and looked at the letter beside his clean sheet.
“Have they answered?”
“They've received it. They're asking the right people to look at the parts we couldn't answer here.”
“Rowan will want to know.”
“I'll take it round.”
He read the two lines that mattered to her, including the request for separate accounts.
“He kept them that way,” Est said.
“He did.”
They finished a piece each; Jeren put the rest on a plate. Est took back the cloth before he could put it under anything.
“A journey saved.”
“You've just given me one.”
She smiled and went out ahead of him.
At Thane's wall Rowan listened to a woman who knew her path but not why her sister had named another. He asked which day the sister came through. She left with the name she needed and a clearer idea of their different journeys.
Jeren waited by the table. Thane was away; nobody stopped in the doorway before going to Rowan now.
“The capital's answered,” Jeren said.
Rowan came round the table.
Rowan read the letter standing, his book held beneath it. The line between his brows eased at the comparison request.
“They'll look farther along the route.”
“They've written to the landing Tellers. I'll send Adra and Iven copies.”
Rowan put it beside his book. Pale dust marked his cuff; he saw Jeren looking.
“The house.”
“Soren went up before opening,” Rowan said. “I was coming this way.”
Jeren glanced at the direct route beyond the window.
“A different way,” Rowan added.
“So I see.”
Rowan turned the covering sheet to put it beneath the letter. Jeren set two fingers against its edge.
“I'd like to keep that.”
He looked down at it.
“Island disorder?”
“A useful place to file a quarrel about a boat. Less useful for the thing you went to see.”
“I didn't go to see foreign men.”
“No. That's another reason to call it what it became.”
Rowan looked at the letter again. Jeren could see him putting the difference into words.
“The landing was how they came through.”
“It was.”
“Not where they came from.”
Jeren nodded. Rowan let him take the sheet.
“Will you answer it?”
“This afternoon.”
“Do you need me?”
“You've already written what I need.”
He left the acknowledgment with Rowan. As he stepped back into the lane, he heard the next person come into the room and begin without asking whether they ought to wait for Thane.
At the far end of the town, the carrier was eating beside his bag. Jeren gave him Est's pages and waited while he put them with the messages for the returning journey. The household name was now written correctly on the outside.
Coming back, he went by Mare's.
She had the door open. Something was cooling within, too far from the edge of the table for passing hands. A bowl stood beside it, streaked with the last of what she had mixed. Mare was at the other end of the room, putting things away.
“Est returned the cloth,” she said without turning.
“I hadn't taken it.”
“She said that too.”
He went inside. The room smelled better than the road. Mare came round the table, looked at him and reached to turn the loose length of hair back from his face.
“There you are.”
“I've been here for some time.”
“Under all of that.”
Her fingers stopped near the darker roots. He had washed it that morning, but there was no persuading the new growth to match the pale lengths by washing it more carefully.
“You have the rinse,” she said.
“I do.”
“Are you keeping it for something?”
“I thought it might improve with age.”
“The bottle might.”
He laughed. She let his hair fall and went back to the table.
“Have you had your answer?”
“One of them.”
“A useful one?”
“Yes. Rowan knows; the other Tellers will compare the routes.”
“He was at the house this morning. Soren too.”
“At different times.”
“They'll wear a path to it before they put a door on.”
Jeren rested a hand on the back of the chair. When Mare bent for the bowl, he took it from the table and brought it to where she was putting the other things away. She gave him the space without stopping what she was doing.
She put a piece of the cooled baking into a cloth.
“For when you aren't here.”
“I've still got some of the last.”
“Then you can put them beside each other.”
He took it. At the door, she asked whether he would be home that evening.
“I mean to be.”
“Use the rinse.”
“I'll make a note.”
“Put it where you'll read it.”
He went back by the lower lane. From here his house showed its side first, the window open above a narrow strip of garden. He had chosen it for the ground and the light and stayed because the place around it had become his life. He knew who would be working behind the next wall and which voice would call if he left the gate open. He knew where to put the thing Mare had given him so that he would eat it before he went looking for another page.
Inside, he found the board where he had left it. He lifted the cloth. The clay had held the shapes, but the edge nearest the window had begun to dry. He dampened his fingers, laid his palm beside the island stone and let the working soften that narrow part without losing the channels.
He moved the covering sheet farther away from it. Then he wrote the answer.
He thanked the Teller and named the further accounts they would send. Adra and Iven would have copies; new sightings needed their place, day and source, so one man wasn't made into two.
Below that he asked for foreign reconnaissance as the heading, with island payment linked to it. The separately described inland origins, consumed material, observed measuring and interest in local workings belonged together. The islands had supplied a way in, not an established origin.
He read the paragraph once, removed a word and left the rest.
There were questions he could not answer. The captives had spoken about the people who travelled with them; the marks on the recovered drawing showed what someone had chosen to note. Neither told him who would find that drawing useful when it had gone farther than the man carrying it.
He added the question to his reply.
Jeren put the reply beside the outgoing messages, covered the clay and left the dates visible. In the morning he would see whether he'd missed anything.
For now, there was daylight in the garden.
He took Mare's cloth with him and sat where the wall still held a little warmth. Beyond it he heard someone moving along the lane, then two voices he knew. Soren said something too quiet to catch. Rowan answered, and the laughter carried farther than the words.
Jeren lifted a hand when they came past the gate. Rowan stopped to tell him what had been done at the house since morning. Soren said there was another stone now. Rowan looked at him.
“A whole row.”
“You can go back and count them.”
“I've just counted them.”
Soren smiled and rested his hand on the gate. Jeren offered them what Mare had sent. They took a piece each and stayed a little while, talking of the house, of Thane's journey and of who would be coming to the room the next day.
When they left, he kept his chair in the light.