4 · The Price of Wheat

burned it,” Neris said.

The governor seized her coat.

“Be careful what you leave behind when you sing.”

She did not try to pull free.

“I am.”

The apprentice appeared before they left, his arm wrapped. He was missing two fingers. He had not cried in front of Teren since the operation. That morning he asked whether he would ever hold reins again.

The cleric said they would have to learn a different way.

“Who?”

Teren looked at him.

“You and whoever teaches you.”

The boy nodded, unconvinced. He did not want a phrase about learning. He wanted to know whether one day he could be angry about something else.

He returned the hook he had used to help pull out the courier. The iron was clean. His mother had scrubbed off the blood.

“Take it,” he said. “We have another.”

Teren wanted to refuse because it was heavy. Then he accepted. He tied it to his saddlebag and did not call it a keepsake or a sacred gift. It

would remain a tool.

Oren came out with an inventory of borrowed things. He listed blankets, rope, two horses and the cart. The hook was not included. The governor left a blank when the cleric pointed it out.

“The council didn't lend you that.”

The boy's mother watched from the corner. She did not say goodbye. Teren hesitated about approaching. She turned towards her house before he could choose. He had no right to demand a word that would let him leave with less weight.

Serik ordered his soldiers to protect the storehouse and obey Oren in matters of evacuation. The youngest asked whether they would receive other instructions from the depot. The paladin said they must record them and check them against the governor's.

“What if they don't agree?”

Serik thought of what he had been taught: a higher authority resolved discrepancies. Here, higher authority bore the name of the man whose depots had just appeared on the attackers' tokens.

“You protect the families first,” he replied.

It was

not a sufficient rule for everything. The soldier seemed grateful that, for once, no one pretended otherwise.

Elyen checked the mounts' hooves and the tension of their girths. Neris put a handful of flour in a dry bag. Not to eat: she wanted to keep the mill's smell before memory turned it all to smoke.

As they crossed the bridge, Lina raised a hand without smiling. Teren returned the gesture.

She did not lower her hand until the road turned behind the hazels.

They left at noon with the borrowed mounts and a small cart. Serik told his soldiers he would take the account of the attack to Bridgebasin. Two asked to accompany him. He left them guarding the flour. It was not yet disobedience; Teren recognised the effort it cost him to keep it on that side.

Elyen chose the high road. From there they saw Lindvale reduced to roofs, smoke and dark fields. The cemetery oak was still whole. Teren imagined Iven's coffin beneath its roots, the broken

fingers, the letter he had not finished. He had wanted to preserve the dead man's identity. Now he was carrying away even his words of love.

“I can deliver them to the person they were meant for,” Neris said.

He looked at her, surprised she had guessed.

“Do you know who it is?”

“No. But I know how to ask without announcing a secret to the whole village.”

They camped on the bank beside a fallen bridge. Elyen caught two fish with a patience that irritated Serik, until the elf showed him the insects crowding beneath the leaves.

“It's going to rain. If we cross now, it catches us on the slope. Here we have a roof.”

The rain came in slanting curtains. Each drop raised a different smell: road dust, bruised leaves, warm leather. Teren heard birds taking shelter above them and thought the world gave many warnings. The difficulty was deciding which to answer.

On the way, Serik had seen Elyen pull an iron thorn out of the

cart's wheel. The hunter held it on his palm, then put it away.

“What for?” Teren asked.

“To show my father, if I see him again.”

The hunter rarely spoke of his family. Teren knew only that he had left a post among the eastern wardens and sent money to someone who never replied. He had taken it for a reserved man's silence. Now he suspected a matter that had gone too long without finding its first sentence.

“He had them put there,” Elyen said. “To keep the High Bough clan's carts from crossing. They were charging them to use a bridge everyone had built. My father decided that if they wouldn't pay, they wouldn't use it.”

Neris picked up the thorn. Its point was shaped like a fishhook.

“That stays in a leg.”

“Yes.”

The gnome handed it back without comment.

Elyen explained that he had protested. He remembered how brave he felt doing it, how well he chose his words so everyone would hear. Afterwards, he left. The

thorns remained. Two families lost their horses, and a girl died in a cart that did not reach the healing post.

“You didn't know it would happen,” Teren said.

The hunter looked at the iron in his hand.

“I knew what a thorn did. I didn't want to think about the rest.”

The cleric stayed quiet. He had travelled with him for months, asking for routes and advice, and was only now beginning to know him. He wondered which parts of himself his companions would find tolerable only while they did not ask too much.

Neris came closer to the fire and stopped tuning her instrument.

“My grandmother sold songs about a woman who had sworn not to lie,” she said. “Sometimes she changed them depending on who paid. Hear all of them and you understand who that woman was much better than if you choose the cleanest one.”

Elyen gave her a weary look.

“Is that meant to comfort me?”

“No. It saves us starting a competition.”

Elyen was

the first to laugh. Serik sat beside Teren.

“If the chancellor did this, I'll bring him before the governor.”

“And if she knows?”

The paladin watched water filling the cart tracks.

“Then I'll have to learn to keep my oath without having it explained to me.”