Against The World

Chapter 65: The Work Owed

Evelyn confiscated my gloves before breakfast.

I watched her place them beside my plate.

“I thought confiscation usually involved taking something away.”

“You have demonstrated that ordinary access is insufficient.”

“I know where my gloves are.”

“Yes. Now they are beside your eggs.”

I looked at the soft leather.

Then at the small bandage across my palm.

“I was going to wear them today.”

“Excellent. We agree.”

Across the table, Melody reached for the butter.

“An efficient meeting.”

Mary did not look up from her letter.

“Perhaps we should conduct council this way.”

“With eggs?” I asked.

“With the required action placed directly in front of you.”

I put the gloves in my coat pocket.

Evelyn smiled and passed me the toast.

Apparently I had been governed successfully.

The box from Bellcross occupied the center of the archive worktable.

Without the mud around it, it looked smaller.

Its softened wooden shell had been set aside, leaving the metal lining and the bundles that had survived inside. Ressa sat at one end of the table, copying an account while another clerk checked each line against the original.

Mary met us at the door.

“We have a name.”

“For the man who signed the inspection?”

“For the man who kept the box.”

She showed us a faint inscription on the lining.

Oren Pell. Works clerk.

“Dead?” I asked.

“We don’t know. His name disappears from the surviving local accounts eleven years ago.”

Evelyn bent over the table.

“Why would a works clerk hide receipts in a retaining wall?”

“The papers may tell us. At present, they only tell us that he did.”

Mary lifted a separate sheet.

“The stone receipt is genuine.”

I frowned.

“The stone never reached the culvert.”

“Some did. The supplier recorded the whole order leaving his yard. The surviving delivery note records less than half arriving at Bellcross.”

“And the rest?”

“Unaccounted for.”

Evelyn read the note.

“The final inspection certified the full amount.”

“Yes.”

I looked toward the neatly arranged papers.

Yesterday, they had seemed like the beginning of an answer.

Today, they were producing questions faster than Mary could copy them.

“Any connection to Voss?”

“Nothing established. We are sending the court clerk a description and copies of the relevant names, as requested.”

She tapped the labor receipt.

“This claim can be examined here. We needn’t wait for another court to decide whether these wages were paid.”

That, at least, was something we could do.

The widow came to Greykeep the following morning.

Her name was Hester Marr.

She brought her younger son, a narrow wooden chest, and the unmistakable expression of someone prepared to be told she had come to the wrong place.

Evelyn received them in a small room overlooking the courtyard.

There was tea.

There were chairs of the same height.

Mary had left the labor receipt facedown until Hester was settled.

“My husband was Daven,” she said. “His brother told you.”

“He did,” I replied.

“He meant well.”

There was enough warning in that sentence to make me listen carefully.

Hester laid the chest on her knees.

“I am not here to say he did twenty-three days because a paper says so.”

Mary’s pen stopped.

“How many did he work?”

“Twenty-one. He was home sick for two.”

Her son nodded.

“I remember. He tried going on the second morning. Mother put his boots outside.”

I glanced at Evelyn.

She maintained an innocent expression.

Hester opened the chest.

Inside were buttons, two folded letters, a ribbon, and a short strip of wood covered in small cuts.

“He marked his days,” she said. “One notch when he came home.”

Mary moved closer without reaching for it.

“May I?”

Hester handed it over.

Twenty-one cuts.

Some deep. Some hardly more than scratches.

“We’ll record both,” Mary said. “The account claims twenty-three days. Your evidence says twenty-one.”

“Will that cause trouble?”

“It means the account needs explaining.”

Hester considered that.

Then she drew out one of the letters.

“The second petition. They returned it.”

There was a mark across the bottom.

Claim previously satisfied.

I stared at those three words longer than I intended.

Evelyn’s voice remained quiet.

“Was any payment received?”

“Four days’ wages at the start. Nothing after.”

Mary wrote that down too.

Seventeen days still owed, if the claim was confirmed.

A manageable sum in a treasury book.

Hester described selling their second blanket that winter.

I stopped thinking of it as manageable.

We did not settle the claim before lunch.

We did arrange for the surviving work ledger and two former laborers to be consulted that afternoon, and for Hester to stay in the guest rooms if the review ran late.

Her son looked uncomfortable at that.

“We can pay for an inn.”

“You’ve come because we asked you to help examine Crown records,” Evelyn said. “Your lodging is part of that expense.”

He glanced at his mother.

She gave a small nod.

At the door, Hester hesitated.

“If there is money,” she said, “must it be spent on the house?”

“No,” I answered.

“Or seed?”

“No.”

She held the chest more closely.

“The stairs hurt my knees. My eldest says I should come live with him. There’s a room on the ground floor.”

I waited.

“I’d like to bring a proper bed.”

“Then I hope you find a comfortable one.”

She studied me.

Then, for the first time since arriving, she smiled.

After they left, Evelyn sat beside me.

“What?” I asked.

“You didn’t offer to repair her stairs.”

“I nearly did.”

“I know.”

“She wants to live with her son.”

“Yes.”

I leaned back.

It was astonishing how often listening saved us an unnecessary building project.

The culvert required a necessary one.

Eleanor’s inspection arrived that afternoon, accompanied by a sketch that made the old repair look worse than it had from the surface.

The mouth had been faced with good dressed stone.

Behind it, loose rubble narrowed the passage.

Farther in, a displaced slab had trapped roots and silt until the water could barely pass.

“They repaired what the inspector could see from the lane,” Eleanor said.

“Or what he agreed to see,” Mary added.

“We’ll find out which,” Evelyn said.

Aldren indicated the temporary channel.

“This will carry the present flow while we rebuild. With labor and clear weather, four days for the main work.”

“What can I shorten?”

Eleanor looked at my hands.

I took the gloves from my pocket.

She grunted.

Then she tapped the sketch.

“The replacement lintel is too heavy for the crew to position safely with the equipment there. We can send a lifting frame, or you can help set it.”

“I can do that.”

“You can hold it while we check the bedding. Slowly.”

I nodded.

She rolled up the drawing.

“Good. Tomorrow, then.”

It was a remarkably satisfying thing to be given a task before anyone had to stop me inventing one.

The lintel arrived on a cart that had opinions about every rut.

By the time it reached the works, the temporary channel was running cleanly, the old culvert had been opened, and half the village seemed to know exactly where I should stand.

Fortunately, Eleanor agreed with some of them.

We used ropes to control the stone’s turn while I took its weight.

Magic gathered beneath my fingers, familiar and steady.

The lintel lifted clear of the cart.

There was a murmur behind me.

I moved it over the prepared supports, keeping it low.

“Left,” Eleanor said.

I shifted it.

“Your other left.”

“That was my left.”

“Then less of it.”

One of the workers laughed.

I adjusted.

The stone settled onto its bed with a muted scrape.

Eleanor checked one end. Aldren checked the other.

Nobody asked me to hold a mountain together.

Nobody screamed.

We lifted it once more to correct a thin patch beneath one corner, then lowered it for the final time.

Eleanor stepped back.

“That will do.”

I let the magic fade.

A young mason stared at the lintel.

“Wish we could do that.”

“So do my shoulders,” said the man beside him.

I peeled off a glove and flexed my hand.

For once, there was no new blister.

I decided to mention that to Evelyn before she asked.

Hester’s claim was confirmed the next day.

The two surviving laborers remembered Daven’s illness. An advance ledger recorded the four days already paid. No one could produce evidence that the balance had ever reached him.

The acknowledgment of full payment had been written by someone else.

That question remained open.

The unpaid wages did not.

Mary prepared the treasury order against the verified arrears provision and brought it to us before council.

“Seventeen days,” she said. “And reimbursement of the petition fee recorded on the returned letter.”

I signed.

Evelyn added her authorization.

Hester counted the money herself.

Carefully.

Her son started to help, then stopped when she moved his hand aside.

When she finished, she drew the little wooden tally from her pocket.

“I suppose you need this now.”

“We have a witnessed copy,” Mary said. “Keep the original safely. We may ask to examine it again.”

Hester ran her thumb along the notches.

Then put it away.

She did not cry.

She asked whether there was a furniture maker in the lower market.

Evelyn gave her directions.

Merrow returned three days before my birthday.

Jalen came through the gate behind her carrying a parcel and looking as though he had slept badly in several different places.

I met them in the receiving chamber.

Merrow inclined her head.

“Your Majesty.”

“Welcome home.”

Her shoulders lowered a little.

Jalen held out the parcel.

“For Eleanor.”

I accepted it.

“What is it?”

“A hinge. The lodging keeper insisted the old one was sound.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

Evelyn laughed and embraced Merrow before the captain could turn the moment into a report.

Merrow looked briefly startled.

Then she returned the embrace.

There would be more hearings. The court had released them from attendance for now, with notice that either might be recalled.

Voss remained in custody.

The documents from Bellcross had reached the clerk. No connection had yet been found.

All of that could wait until they had eaten.

Merrow seemed grateful when I said so.

After supper, she found me beside the window.

Most of the others were still at the table. Jalen was explaining the hinge to Eleanor, who had begun drawing something on the back of an old envelope.

“He looked smaller,” Merrow said.

I turned.

“Voss?”

She nodded.

“I thought that would help.”

“Did it?”

“Some.”

She watched the courtyard lamps.

“I told him about the mountain road. The seven we buried. The children we carried.”

“Did he answer?”

“His advocate did.”

Her jaw tightened.

Then she let out a slow breath.

“But the clerk wrote down their names.”

Behind us, Beatrice called to ask whether Merrow wanted more stew.

Merrow closed her eyes for a moment.

“Yes,” she called back.

Then, to me, “I was hungry the whole journey home.”

“We have plenty tonight.”

She went back to the table.

I stayed by the window a little longer, then joined her.

The finished culvert passed its first inspection on the morning before my birthday.

Aldren’s message included measurements, water levels, and a detailed explanation of why the new passage should be cleared after heavy storms.

Below it, the woman with the planting ledger had added the crop assessment.

Some beans would need replanting.

Most of the upper rows had survived.

The replacement seed could come from the reconstruction reserve already set aside for damaged plots. Evelyn had worked through the figures with Mary and the growers, keeping the remaining emergency supply intact.

There would be no new debt against those households for the replacement.

I signed the final authorization.

Then Evelyn removed the next folder from my reach.

“That is enough for today.”

“It is not my birthday yet.”

“No. Today you are going to help me choose where to put everyone tomorrow.”

“I thought Helena had done that.”

“She has. We need to rescue your seat from between two people who intend to discuss customs duties.”

I stood immediately.

We found the supper room full of afternoon light.

The table had been extended.

Considerably.

I looked at Evelyn.

“Small?”

“Everyone here knows you.”

“That is a very flexible measurement.”

She took my hand and led me along the chairs.

Mary beside Melody. Garrick where he could speak to Alistair. Helena within reach of Beatrice, who had apparently agreed to sit for at least part of the meal.

Places for Merrow and Jalen.

Eleanor, Aldren, Eliza.

Others whose names had become woven through my days so thoroughly that I could hardly remember arriving without them.

At the far end, two chairs stood close together.

“Ours?” I asked.

Evelyn nodded.

“No one between us?”

“Absolutely not.”

I turned toward her.

For a moment, I thought about the letter upstairs.

About Caroline, and the birthdays I could remember, and the things I still wished I could tell her.

Then I looked back at the table.

Evelyn waited.

“I’m glad they’re coming,” I said.

“So am I.”

I drew her close and kissed her.

She smiled against my mouth.

“What was that for?”

“You put my chair beside yours.”

“I intend to keep doing that.”

I rested my forehead against hers.

Outside, someone began testing a fiddle.

The first note was terrible.

We both laughed.

Tomorrow, I would be twenty.

I was beginning to look forward to it.

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