Chapter 10: What I Owe

Rowan looked down at the circular.

“Then that’s where Dain should begin.”

I had prepared myself for an argument. His agreement left me standing with my mouth slightly open.

“You’re not going to ask me to go back?”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

The answer came so quickly that shame followed it.

“There’s an injured man.”

“Yes.”

“And families near the eastern road.”

“Yes.”

I looked toward the doors. Beyond them, the courtyard lamps shone on wet paving stones. Somewhere outside, a horse shook its harness.

“What if something happens because I stayed here?”

Rowan placed his hand on the edge of the table.

“You told them the foundation needed replacing?”

“Six times.”

“And left instructions?”

“In the wardhouse.”

“Then Dain can ask for those. You don’t have to decide anything else tonight.”

I studied his face, searching for the disappointment I knew how to answer.

He looked tired.

There was dried mud on his sleeve and a shallow scrape across one knuckle. He had spent the afternoon waiting for a road we could not reopen. Now another pack wanted the man responsible for his own unfinished wards.

“You can’t send him,” I said.

“Not before the orchard is secure.”

“Father won’t like that.”

“I expect he won’t.”

For the first time, I wondered how often Rowan had disagreed with him before I arrived.

---

Dain read the circular over supper.

He had brought it to a small table near the kitchen, where Owen was attempting to separate a dumpling from the bottom of his bowl.

“Instructions in the wardhouse,” Dain said. “Which ledger?”

“The red one. At the back.”

“Recent?”

“I updated them before the festival.”

He reached for a pencil.

“What would you need?” I asked.

“Copies of the inspection entries. A map. The account of the breach.”

I stared at the last item.

“An actual account,” he added. “Not a request to come and make it stop.”

Owen finally freed the dumpling.

“Very technical request, that.”

Dain ignored him.

“I can assess whether there’s anything useful to tell them from here. If not, I’ll say so.”

“I could draw the eastern footing.”

Both men looked at me.

The words had escaped before I considered them.

I knew the buried supports. I knew the ground beneath the gate. I could put them on paper in less time than it would take to finish supper.

Dain set down his pencil.

“Is the drawing in your ledger?”

“Yes.”

“Then eat.”

I looked at my bowl.

The stew had begun to cool.

---

Afterward, I helped him locate the relevant entries from memory.

Only the locations.

I did not draw a replacement map or volunteer to travel. I told him where I had recorded the support measurements, which pages held the drainage notes, and where Adrian could find the suppliers’ names.

Dain wrote the request in his own hand.

Rowan sent it with a rider that evening.

Neither included my name.

I watched from the entrance as the horse crossed the courtyard. Once it passed through the gates, the darkness swallowed the pale patch above its tail.

“They’ll know,” I said.

Rowan stood a little behind me.

“Dain asked for records any wardkeeper would need.”

“I know.”

Still, I felt exposed.

I had spent years making myself available. A knock, a bell, a raised voice, and I came.

This time, a request had arrived and I had remained where I was.

My body seemed unable to understand that the consequence had not happened yet.

---

I did not sleep until well after midnight.

Whenever I began to drift, I saw the eastern marker cold beneath the trees. Then Tomas’s empty chair. Then a man I had never met lying beside the gate with blood beneath his hand.

At last, I got up and sat at the desk.

The room key lay beside my wages.

I moved it between my fingers, feeling each small tooth.

“I could help,” I whispered.

Nothing answered.

“I don’t know whether I want to, or whether I’m frightened not to.”

The warmth beneath my ribs stirred.

No words came with it.

I rested my hand there until my breathing slowed.

Then I opened the blank notebook I had bought with my boots.

Until now, I had used its first page to record the price of the boots and the coins remaining in my pouch.

On the next page, I wrote Tomas Fen.

I sat looking at his name.

Then, slowly, I began to write what I remembered.

---

He had been at the northern markers two days before the festival.

There was a tear in the cuff of his patrol coat. He had asked whether binding thread would hold it better than ordinary cotton.

Only if you want the sleeve stiff enough to stand on its own, I had told him.

He laughed.

I remembered that precisely.

I remembered the little paper bag of chestnuts he put beside my tools.

I could not remember whether I thanked him.

The pencil stopped moving.

I tried to force the rest of the morning back into focus. Had he mentioned the festival? A changed watch? An errand for Celeste?

No.

Or perhaps he had and I had been measuring current, half-listening.

I put a line through the question I had started to answer.

I would not turn a wish into a memory.

By the time I put down the pencil, I had three pages.

Things I had seen.

Things I had heard.

Empty spaces where I knew nothing.

I tucked the notebook into the drawer and went back to bed.

---

The next morning, Nessa found me yawning over breakfast.

“Pain?”

“No.”

“Bad dreams?”

“A little.”

She sat beside me.

Across the room, two children argued over the last piece of toast until Hettie divided it with a knife.

“I wrote down the night Tomas died,” I said.

Nessa waited.

“Not all of it. I wasn’t there for most of it.”

“That sounds worth remembering when people ask you questions.”

I turned my cup between my palms.

“His sister was at the hearing.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“No.”

“Would you want to speak to her?”

I looked across the room again.

The children had stopped arguing. One slid a corner of toast onto the other’s plate when she thought nobody was watching.

“I don’t know what I could give her.”

“An honest account of what you know.”

“She might not believe it.”

“No,” Nessa said. “She might not.”

I let out a breath.

Somehow, I preferred that answer to a promise.

Before she left, I asked about the apothecary.

“The inquiry has gone,” she said. “We need to give it time.”

“And the bottle?”

“Locked away, exactly where we put it.”

---

I worked until midday without once offering to skip the meal break.

It seemed a ridiculous thing to notice.

I noticed it anyway.

Dain assigned me the map comparison. Owen took the corrected marker list to the orchard crew. The routine left too much room to think, but there was comfort in knowing what the work required.

When Rowan came in, I was checking an old measurement against the survey scale.

He placed a folded cloth on the corner of the bench.

“Your hand was shaking yesterday.”

I stared at it.

Bread. Cheese. Half an apple.

“I’ve eaten.”

“Good.”

He unfolded his own portion and pulled up a chair beside Dain’s desk.

Dain looked from the food to him.

“You missed lunch.”

“I was coming here.”

“That’s what I said.”

I bent over the map before either man could see me smile.

Rowan ate in silence while Dain explained which orchard work would be completed that afternoon. When the explanation became an argument about staffing, I kept my eyes on the page.

“You can’t have the same four men for the drainage and the watchtower,” Dain said.

“The watchtower roof is open.”

“Then the drainage waits.”

Rowan rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Until tomorrow.”

“If it doesn’t rain.”

I waited for the room to change.

For rank to settle the matter.

Instead, Rowan reached for a spare sheet and began rearranging the work list.

---

The rider returned in the afternoon.

I heard the horse in the courtyard before anyone reached the workshop. My pencil slipped, leaving a dark stroke across the margin.

Dain looked up.

“Something outside?”

“A horse.”

Owen glanced toward the closed window.

A moment later, someone knocked.

The rider entered carrying a leather case. It was wet along one edge, as though it had brushed a hedge on the way.

“Records from Vale, Master Dain. Captain Hale’s account and copies of the relevant entries.”

Dain cleared a place on the desk.

“Who copied them?”

“The steward. Lord Adrian added a note.”

My mouth went dry.

The rider handed him a second envelope.

“And there’s a captain waiting at the house. Came separately. Says she needs to discuss the report with you.”

Dain opened the leather case.

A page of my own handwriting lay on top.

For a moment, I thought they had torn it out.

Then I saw the copyist’s careful imitation of my headings, the measurements reproduced beside a smaller drawing.

They had found the instructions.

They could read them.

“Which captain?” Dain asked.

“Fen.”

The room seemed to contract around me.

Owen set down the tool he was holding.

Dain looked at me, then back at the rider.

“Tell her I’ll be there shortly.”

The man left.

I could hear footsteps crossing the courtyard, voices near the stables, a wheel turning unevenly beneath a passing cart.

Too much sound.

“Elara,” Dain said.

I looked at him.

“You don’t have to come with me.”

I knew that now.

It did not make the decision easy.

I thought of the notebook upstairs. Tomas’s name at the top of the page. The empty spaces I had left because I could not honestly fill them.

“Does she know I’m here?”

“Not from us.”

I rubbed the dark pencil mark with my thumb. It spread across the margin.

“If I see her, I’m deciding who learns where I am.”

“Yes.”

“And she may tell my family.”

Dain did not soften it.

“Yes.”

I set the pencil down.

My father had spoken for me at the hearing. Adrian had explained what I should confess. Celeste had told everyone what I meant.

Mara had heard all of them.

She had never heard me alone.

“I need my notebook,” I said.