The White Net

The White Net was an inn only when the river allowed it.

In summer, its lower room served fish stew and weak beer to carriers. In winter, water sometimes entered through the back door and the furniture moved upstairs. Its owner kept the best chairs light enough to carry and the worst ones chained where they could be found again.

Ren had chosen it because three ordinary routes met there and none belonged entirely to the Hall.

Ada arrived after two days of river travel and short, muddy walks around damaged landings. Cal's arm had been cleaned and bound by an experienced healer in a riverside village. He could move it, but the effort showed in his face when he thought no one was looking. Ysra slept much of the journey. Tomar complained about every boat they used, which Pella said was a reliable sign of health.

Perrin was waiting in the inn yard.

He saw Ysra first.

“Aunt!”

She held out her good arm. He went into it with none of the careful dignity he'd practised at the quarry. Ada watched him become fourteen again for a few breaths and felt something inside her loosen painfully.

Nessa sat on a bench with her wrapped wrist in her lap. Toll was feeding crumbs to a duck that had clearly negotiated this arrangement before. The other released workers had begun travelling towards their own homes with help from local carriers. Ren had kept the youngest three at the inn until she could be sure of a safe route and an adult escort who actually intended to take them where the papers said.

“You're late,” she told Ada.

“We had complications.”

“So I hear. Quarry House has sent a description of its stolen guests to every road post with a working pen.”

Ysra looked at her.

“Ren.”

“Ysra.”

Years stood between the two names. Ada could almost see them: work done together, work regretted separately, arguments no one had finished because leaving had seemed easier than staying in the same room.

Ren took the records from Ysra before she could drop them.

“Sit down,” she said. “You can be difficult after you've eaten.”

For the next hour, the inn became ordinary. Someone brought bowls. Pella helped Tomar settle near the stove. Cal changed his bandage behind a screen with the healer's instructions written plainly beside the clean cloths. Perrin told Ada about the journey from the quarry, including the parts where Toll had asked the same question every quarter-mile and Nessa had answered differently each time to remain sane.

Ada listened. She had wanted the rescue so fiercely that she'd forgotten what would follow it: people still hungry, hurt, tired, needing somewhere to sleep after they were no longer prisoners.

At dusk, Ren spread Neris's capacity schedule across the upstairs table.

The room changed.

Tomar came over with his ferry books. Ysra took the chair with the best light. Cal set the official survey notes beside the current figures. Pella closed the shutters without making the room entirely dark.

Ada read the date at the top of the final schedule.

Twenty-one days until the Rebinding.

Three weeks sounded like a long time to someone waiting for a letter. It sounded like almost nothing to people who needed to persuade a country to change the roads it depended on.

Ren traced the western bearing allocation.

“This isn't reconciliation,” she said.

“What is it?” Ada asked.

“A permanent emergency.”

The new figures did not merely tidy old mistakes. They increased the guaranteed capacity of the central spines while fixing peripheral districts into loads calculated from incomplete records. Where local anchors failed, neighbouring bearing lines would absorb the strain. The capital's receiving routes would be protected first.

“Can it hold?” Cal asked.

Hald's question, in a different voice.

Ren looked at him.

“Some of it. Long enough for the first reports to say it works.”

“And after that?”

Tomar opened a ferry book to a page darkened by years of use.

“After that,” he said, “the people whose reports take longest to arrive will begin arriving even later.”

Ada looked downstairs through the gap beside the stair. Perrin was helping Toll make a boat from a scrap of wood. Nessa was arguing that the mast was too tall. Their voices rose into the room where adults measured how easily places like theirs could be made unreachable.

Ada put both hands on the table.

“Then we make another plan.”

Ren looked at her numb thumb, then at the papers.

“Yes,” she said. “And this time we begin by counting everyone who will pay for it.”