The Ward's Letters

The ridge path climbed through orchards whose fruit had already been picked, leaving ladders against bare branches and sweet rot in the grass.

Ada's blister hurt less after Pella showed her how to loosen the boot around it without letting her foot slide. The lesson was delivered with no tenderness and considerable competence. By afternoon, Ada had stopped thanking her every ten steps.

Cal walked behind the mule, reading the slope ahead. Away from the Hall, he seemed less certain about how to stand and more willing to be useful. He carried water without waiting to be asked. He also tried once to correct Pella's estimate of the next shelter from the map.

She let him finish.

Then she pointed to a landslide that had taken the marked turn halfway down the hill.

He folded the map and followed her.

They reached an abandoned charcoal shelter before dark. The roof held. The floor was dry enough. Pella found an old hearth and made a small fire from the fuel they had carried rather than stripping wet branches from the surrounding trees and hoping enthusiasm would make them burn.

Ada sat with her boots off, watching steam rise from her socks. Cal stood outside for a while, looking north.

When he came in, he held a folded letter.

“From your father?” Ada asked.

“My sister. It was forwarded to the posting house at Salt Steps.”

“You didn't mention it.”

“I hadn't read all of it.”

Pella looked up from the pot. “How long is it?”

“Longer than the permitted version.”

He unfolded the sheet. Between the formal lines, smaller words had been added in a different ink. Ada leaned closer only when he turned it towards her.

Iva was sixteen. She wrote about a horse that had bitten a visiting official, a roof leak their father kept ordering people to inspect without asking whether anyone had repaired it, and a brother named Marek who had become unbearably serious since being given responsibility for a northern storehouse.

At the bottom, the handwriting changed.

Father says the grain agreement may bring you home for winter. I don't know whether he means a visit or properly. I didn't ask in front of the secretary.

Cal stared at the line.

“The grain route,” Ada said.

“Yes.”

The fire shifted in the hearth.

“If he supplies the capital quickly enough, they reward him with you.”

Cal's mouth tightened. “That is one way to say it.”

“Is it wrong?”

“No.”

Pella stirred the pot more slowly.

Ada thought of the twelve miles on the church approach and felt anger rise before she could arrange it fairly. Bren's bearers had paid, in part, for a governor's hope of bringing his son home. That did not make Cal responsible for the request. It did not make the request innocent either.

“Did you know the agreement involved your return?” she asked.

“I knew my father was negotiating. I didn't know the terms.”

“Would you have asked?”

He looked at her across the fire.

“I don't know.”

It was an ugly answer, honest enough that she could not easily strike at it.

He folded the letter along its worn lines.

“When I was younger, I thought if I behaved well enough, they'd let me go. Then I thought if I became useful, I'd be harder to keep. Then I understood those were opposite strategies and neither belonged to me.”

Ada watched him put the letter inside his coat.

“What do you want now?”

“To stop being a condition in someone else's sentence.”

Pella gave a quiet snort. “A modest ambition.”

Cal smiled, briefly.

They ate lentils and hard bread from the same pot. Afterward, Pella went outside to check the mule and the path. Ada stayed by the fire, repairing a loose seam in her bag. The needle was small, and the dim light made her squint.

Cal held the lamp closer.

“Thank you.”

“I'm allowed to be useful in limited ways.”

She looked up. His face was warmer in the firelight, the careful court expression loosened by tiredness. For a moment, she saw not a governor's son or a witness she might need, but a young man who had spent too many years learning which desires could be spoken aloud.

The thought unsettled her.

She looked back at the seam.

“Perrin always pulls the thread too tight,” she said. “Then he complains that sewing makes holes.”

Cal smiled. “Does he know you're coming?”

“No.”

“What will he say?”

“Probably that he had everything under control.”

“And will he?”

Ada's hand stopped.

“I hope he hasn't had to learn that quickly.”

Cal said nothing. He kept holding the lamp until the seam was finished.

Later, when the fire had burned low, Ada lay awake listening to the wind move through the broken shutter. Pella slept near the door. Cal lay on the other side of the hearth, one arm over his eyes.

Ada wondered whether he was asleep or simply tired of being seen.

She turned towards the wall before the question could become something more dangerous than curiosity.