Blue Thread, Silver Scales

AilisThe first thing freedom gave me was another piece of bread.I distrusted it immediately.Not the bread itself. The bread seemed excellent. Coarse, warm in the middle, and large enough that I could smell yeast before the woman carrying the basket reached me.The problem was that she put it into my hand and walked away.I looked after her.No instruction.No expectation that I carry anything in return. No warning about crumbs. No one standing nearby to decide whether I had done enough work to deserve it.I waited several breaths in case she came back and explained the mistake.She did not.So I ate the bread.Apparently freedom involved considerably less supervision than I had expected.Tessa sat beside me beneath the canvas awning the Aedrathi soldiers had erected below the stronghold. She finished her portion before I had swallowed half of mine and glanced at what remained.I broke off a piece.“No.”“You were looking.”“I was not.”“You were.”“So were you before they gave it to

AilisTessa owned more than I did.I discovered this while she packed.Not substantially more.A second pair of stockings. A wooden comb with three missing teeth. A narrow strip of cloth she used to tie her hair.And a button.I picked it up.It was small, wooden, and worn smooth around the edges. A shallow pattern had been carved into one side, though I could no longer tell what it had once been.“What is this for?”“Nothing.”I turned it over.There was no thread attached. No scrap of cloth. Nothing suggesting it presently belonged to anything.“Then why are you taking it?”Tessa looked at me.“Because it is mine.”Oh.I put it back.That settled the matter completely.Someone from the supply wagons had given her a square of coarse sacking for her things. Tessa put the stockings inside first, then the comb, then the strip of cloth.Then the useless button.Because it is mine.“What will you take tomorrow?” she asked.I looked beside my blanket.Nothing.That answer seemed too immedia

AilisI knew one word in Aedrathi, and it became useful at breakfast.Someone near the courtyard entrance called, “Bren,”¹ and my head turned before I had decided to turn it. A soldier was carrying a basket of the same brown cakes we had eaten on the road.I stared at the basket, then at him. I had understood him. Nobody had pointed to anything or repeated the meaning in Veyrathi. I had heard the sound and known what it meant.Bren.The discovery pleased me considerably more than one word deserved.I accepted a cake when the basket reached me and sat beneath the awning to eat. Onion, cheese, browned dough. The same as yesterday.“Bren,” I said quietly.The woman sitting nearest me looked over.I stopped.Perhaps naming my breakfast aloud was not customary in Aedrath.Not long afterward, word came in Veyrathi that the southbound column would continue. I returned my borrowed blanket, gathered everything I owned, and discovered once again that gathering everything I owned required only on

AilisThe first thing I noticed about the market was that I understood it.Not the arrangement. That appeared to depend upon rules known only to the people who had arrived before dawn and claimed pieces of the square.But the words.Prices were shouted in Veyrathi. A woman complained that someone had bruised her onions. A man selling candles promised his burned longer than the ones three stalls away, which caused the man three stalls away to object loudly.I understood all of them.After days of Aedrathi passing around me without meaning, I had not expected ordinary rudeness to be comforting.I walked farther into the square.Vaelir antlers rose above much of the crowd. I had spent five years seeing them every day and rarely thought about them anymore, but here they were decorated differently from those at the stronghold. One woman had bronze caps fitted neatly over the tips. A younger man had dark red cord wound around the lower branches of his, while an older merchant had left his co

AilisLady Elianor had made matters considerably worse.I discovered this after supper.I had found the title pressed faintly into the worn brown cover before the light faded.The Distance Between Our Houses.A reasonable title.Lady Elianor was not behaving reasonably inside it.She had reached the feast, found Lord Carad there, and watched him dance with the daughter of a duke.Then she had gone outside to cry.I stared at the page.“You have known him for three weeks.”“What?”I looked up.Corren sat across the fire with a wooden bowl balanced on one knee.“Nothing.”“You spoke.”“Lady Elianor is foolish.”His eyes went to the book. “Ah.”“She has decided Lord Carad is the great love of her life because he spoke kindly to her beneath a tree twice.”“That was quick.”“Exactly. Now she is crying because he danced with another woman.”Corren ate another spoonful.“Did he promise not to?”“No.”“Did he promise her anything?”“No.”“Then perhaps she is foolish.”I pointed at him with the