Against The World

Chapter 64 — What the Water Left Behind

By morning, the ink had dried.

I stood beside the desk longer than was necessary, reading the first line of the letter without quite meaning to.

You would like her.

There were several pages beneath it now. More than I had expected to write. Somewhere between describing Evelyn’s habit of stealing the warm side of the bed and trying to explain what it felt like to hear people call me king, I had stopped worrying about whether writing to Caroline was foolish.

It probably was.

I folded the pages anyway.

Behind me, the bedclothes rustled.

“If you’re about to begin working,” Evelyn murmured, “I should warn you that your wife objects.”

“My wife was asleep.”

“She was hoping you would come back.”

I looked over.

One eye had opened above the blanket.

It was a compelling argument.

I put the letter in the desk drawer and returned to bed.

Evelyn shifted closer as soon as I lay down, tucking her cold feet against my legs with the confidence of a woman exercising an ancient royal privilege.

“That is cruelty,” I told her.

“You left.”

“To cross the room.”

“And yet.”

For a little while, there was nothing to do except hold her.

The pale morning light reached the foot of the bed. Somewhere beyond the windows, a cart rattled over the courtyard stones. Greykeep was waking around us, full of people who would soon need decisions about timber, grain, wages, roads, and the hundred other things that apparently became urgent the moment one wore a crown.

Evelyn traced a finger along my wrist.

“Did you finish it?”

“For now.”

She nodded against my shoulder.

“Where will you keep it?”

“The drawer.”

“That seems a good place.”

I had expected to feel embarrassed discussing it in daylight.

Instead, I kissed her hair.

“Thank you for staying.”

Her hand closed around mine.

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

At breakfast, Mary’s rat attempted to steal a piece of toast larger than its head.

Mary watched the effort with the solemn interest of a military commander assessing a difficult river crossing.

“You could help him,” I suggested.

“He needs challenges.”

“He needs a smaller piece of toast.”

“He’s growing.”

“He appears to be growing sideways.”

Mary drew the plate closer to herself, plainly unwilling to expose a member of her household to further criticism.

Across the table, Melody laid down a stack of papers.

There were two piles. One she pushed toward Evelyn.

The other she placed beneath her own hand.

Naturally, I looked at the second.

“What is that?”

“Nothing requiring your attention.”

“It has my name on it.”

“A common coincidence.”

“Melody.”

“Your Majesty.”

Evelyn became very interested in her tea.

I looked between them.

“This is about my birthday.”

“It may concern a date,” Melody said.

“I asked for something small.”

“And you are getting something small.”

“How small?”

“Relative to the kingdom.”

Mary’s rat finally conquered the toast. He dragged it backward across the table, stopped when it caught against a spoon, and looked offended.

I understood him perfectly.

Before I could pursue the matter, a messenger arrived with mud on his boots and an apology already forming.

“From Bellcross, Your Majesty.”

I set my cup down.

The message was brief. Meltwater had backed into the lower planting ground overnight. The villagers had opened the drainage ditch, only to find the water rising again before dawn.

No homes had flooded.

Yet.

Evelyn read over my shoulder.

“How much seed is already in?”

“Enough that we should go and look,” I said.

Melody was already gathering the relevant papers.

Mary broke off a corner of toast for the rat.

“I’ll come.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

That settled that.

The transit system had spoiled me.

There had been a time when visiting another settlement meant losing most of a day to the road, arriving with a sore back, and spending the return journey wondering which part of the carriage had developed a personal hatred of me.

Now the longest delay was finding someone who knew where my boots had been put.

We reached Bellcross while the morning mist still clung to the furrows.

The lower fields shone with standing water.

A dozen villagers were working along the drainage ditch. Their trousers were soaked to the knee, their spades black with mud. One man was arguing with another about whether digging deeper would help.

Neither sounded convinced.

The woman who came to meet us had a smear of dirt across her forehead and a ledger tucked beneath her arm.

“We had it running at midnight,” she said after the greetings. “By first light, it had stopped again.”

“Where does the ditch empty?” Evelyn asked.

The woman pointed toward a low rise beyond the field.

“There’s an old stone culvert under the lane. We cleared the mouth yesterday.”

We walked down to it.

Water slid sluggishly between the exposed stones, carrying straw and bits of root. Beyond the lane, the ground sloped toward a narrow stream.

There should have been enough fall.

Even I could see that much.

“Castellan,” I said quietly.

His voice answered from the crown mark.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Do you have the old drainage plans for Bellcross?”

A pause.

“I possess the survey from the settlement’s last registered expansion.”

“How old?”

Another pause.

“Old enough that comparison with present conditions would be advisable.”

Evelyn glanced at me.

“He’s learning diplomacy.”

“He’s spending too much time with Melody.”

A faint projection appeared above my hand: lines of streets, field boundaries, and watercourses. Several buildings stood where there were now only grassy humps.

The ditch before us continued beneath the lane.

Then it turned.

I looked toward the rise.

“That isn’t a hill.”

The woman frowned.

“It’s always been there.”

“Part of it has,” I said.

According to the survey, the rest was the collapsed bank of an old millpond.

We followed the ditch until the water disappeared beneath a tangle of roots. Beyond them stood the remains of a retaining wall, its upper stones fallen inward.

Someone whistled softly.

“Well,” said one of the villagers. “That would do it.”

A younger man immediately drove his spade into the packed earth.

“Wait,” Evelyn said.

He stopped.

She pointed to the map.

“If that was a pond, where does the water go when we open it?”

Everyone looked downstream.

Through the bare branches, I could see the pale shape of a newly repaired footbridge.

Beyond it were cottages.

The young man slowly withdrew his spade.

We sent runners first.

Then we found ropes, poles, and two people who understood moving water considerably better than I did.

Being king, I was discovering, involved a great deal of locating the person who actually knew what they were doing.

By midday, the work had acquired order.

The stream crossing was closed. Livestock had been moved from the low meadow. A temporary channel was being cut so the trapped water could be released gradually.

I carried stones until a broad woman with a shovel informed me that standing in her way did not count as assistance.

Evelyn heard.

Naturally.

For the next quarter of an hour, every time our eyes met, she smiled.

Eventually I joined the line passing baskets of spoil away from the channel. It was difficult to interfere with an entire operation while holding a basket, though I suspected Melody would have said I could manage it with sufficient determination.

Mary stayed near the villagers recording what had been damaged and which households had seed in the flooded ground.

Her rat remained tucked inside her cloak.

Apparently he had standards regarding mud.

An older farmer worked beside me, taking each basket with hands so thickly callused they scarcely seemed to notice the cold.

“Didn’t expect you to come out yourself,” he said.

“Neither did I, when I woke up.”

He gave a brief laugh.

We passed another basket.

“Will there be a charge?”

“For what?”

He looked toward the workers opening the channel.

“For this.”

I almost answered too quickly.

Then I noticed that the people nearest us had gone quiet.

“How was it done before?” I asked.

The farmer shrugged, but there was nothing casual about it.

“Depends who collected. Road work might be charged to the village. Water trouble charged to the fields. Lose the crop, still owe on what you ought to have grown.”

“And if you couldn’t pay?”

He took the basket from me.

“Usually paid somehow.”

Across the ditch, Evelyn had stopped speaking with the woman carrying the ledger.

She had heard.

I set down my empty basket.

“Repairing the main drainage will come from the reconstruction fund,” I said. “And the flooded plots will be inspected before anyone calculates what they owe.”

The farmer watched me carefully.

“What about seed?”

“We’ll record what was planted and what can still be saved. If seed needs replacing, we’ll arrange it.”

“Loan?”

Evelyn stepped closer.

“We won’t decide that while people are standing in a flooded field,” she said. “First we establish the loss. Then we make sure the replacement terms don’t leave a family hungry after harvest.”

That mattered more than anything I could have promised in a grand voice.

The farmer looked from her to me.

Then he nodded once and picked up the next basket.

The others returned to work.

A few minutes later, he began telling me about his granddaughter.

It felt like progress.

The first release of water was less dramatic than I had expected.

There was a thick sucking noise, followed by a rush of brown water through the narrow cut.

Everyone watched.

A man stationed downstream raised his arm.

The channel was holding.

We widened the opening a little.

Water poured through, dragging loose reeds after it. The flooded field began to lose its mirror shine at the edges.

One of the children cheered.

Then several adults did.

I had stood in ancient halls while hidden mechanisms woke at the touch of my hand. I had watched gates open across impossible distances.

For some reason, seeing a muddy furrow emerge from six inches of water was nearly as satisfying.

Beside me, Evelyn let out a breath.

“What?” I asked.

“I was imagining telling those people we’d restored half a castle and still couldn’t keep their beans from drowning.”

“That would have weakened the speech.”

“Considerably.”

The old retaining wall needed proper rebuilding. The culvert would have to be examined, and the lower channel cleared before another heavy rain.

But the immediate danger was passing.

People began talking about tomorrow’s work instead of tonight’s flood.

That was when one of the men at the broken wall called for us.

“There’s something in here.”

I turned.

He was kneeling beside a dislodged stone, carefully pulling a dark wooden box from the exposed earth.

The box was small enough to carry under one arm.

Most of its outer wood had softened, but a metal lining had kept the contents dry. Inside were folded papers wrapped in waxed cloth.

No jewels.

No lost crown.

A collection of receipts, two maintenance orders, and a narrow account book.

I found myself almost disappointed.

Then Evelyn unfolded the first order.

Her expression changed.

“Uriah.”

The document authorized repairs to the Bellcross culvert.

The work had supposedly been completed years ago.

I looked at the collapsed wall.

“How thoroughly?”

She passed me the next sheet.

There was a receipt for dressed stone. Another for labor. A final inspection carrying an official seal.

Behind us, the older farmer made a sound in his throat.

“What is it?” I asked.

He pointed at the labor receipt.

“That’s my brother.”

“His signature?”

“His name. He couldn’t write.”

The page acknowledged full payment for twenty-three days of work.

The farmer stared at it.

“He petitioned twice for those wages.”

The field seemed to grow quieter around us.

Evelyn carefully laid the papers back in the box.

“We need the clerk handling the Voss hearing to examine these.”

“Does it connect?” I asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

Her answer was immediate and firm.

Good.

It would have been easy to see one dishonest account and begin fitting every grievance in the kingdom around it.

She looked toward Mary.

“Record who found it and where. And the names of everyone here who recognizes an entry. Separately, please.”

Mary nodded and opened her book.

I asked the workmen to leave that section of wall undisturbed until its position had been measured.

Then I turned back to the farmer.

“Is your brother still in Bellcross?”

He shook his head.

“No.”

I waited.

“Buried up by the chapel.”

There was no accusation in his voice.

I wished there had been.

“Does he have family here?”

“A widow. Two sons.”

I looked down at the box.

The money represented by those neat little lines had once been meals. Firewood. A patched roof. Someone’s winter coat.

“We’ll speak to them,” I said.

The farmer nodded, but he was no longer looking at me.

He was watching the water flow out of the field.

We returned to Greykeep with mud on our clothes and the box between us.

Melody took one look at our boots.

“I assume,” she said, “that Bellcross remains standing.”

“And draining,” I replied.

“An excellent combination.”

The papers went to the clerks under guard. Copies would be made before the originals were examined further.

The emergency repair expenses were entered against reconstruction funds, including wages for the villagers who had spent the morning digging.

I stayed until that part was written down.

Then Evelyn took my hand and led me away.

“You’re limping.”

“My boot is full of countryside.”

“That sounds serious.”

“I may need it removed by proclamation.”

She pushed open our chamber door.

“Sit.”

I sat.

She knelt before I could object and began working at the buckle of my boot.

“Evelyn—”

“Hold still.”

A surprising amount of Bellcross fell onto the floor.

We both looked at it.

“I’ll apologize to the staff,” I said.

“You certainly will.”

When the second boot was off, she sat beside me on the bench, shoulder pressed against mine.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then I said, “I keep thinking about that receipt.”

“I know.”

“It looked so ordinary.”

“They usually do.”

I rubbed my hands together. The skin across my palms had gone tender.

Evelyn took one and turned it over.

“You’ve got a blister.”

“A royal blister.”

“A foolish blister. There were gloves.”

“I was already holding a basket when someone mentioned them.”

She shook her head, but gently.

I watched her fetch a small pot of salve.

“Does it frighten you?” I asked.

She looked back.

“What?”

“The thought of having children here.”

She returned to the bench.

“Yes,” she said.

The honesty settled between us without hurting.

She worked the salve carefully across my palm.

“It would frighten me anywhere. Here, I would worry about the crown, and people deciding what our child ought to be before they could even speak. Somewhere else, I would find other things.”

“Probably fewer hearings.”

“Possibly more goats.”

I smiled.

Then she looked up at me.

“But I watched you stay until the workers’ pay was recorded.”

“That doesn’t make the kingdom safe.”

“No.” Her thumb rested against my wrist. “It tells me something about the sort of father you might be.”

I swallowed.

Outside, the evening bell began to ring.

“I’d like to find out,” I said.

Evelyn’s eyes softened.

“So would I.”

There was no need to decide anything more that evening.

I kissed her, and she leaned into me, careful of my sore hand.

Later, while she changed for supper, I returned to the desk.

I opened the drawer and unfolded the letter.

At the bottom of the final page, beneath everything I had already told Caroline, I added one more line.

Today she helped save a field, frightened three clerks, and took my boots off because my hands hurt.

I paused, smiling down at the paper.

Then I wrote:

I think you would have been friends.

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