## Chapter 425 — No Decisions Yet

Lethira's final judgement of the day remained in the room after she said it.

Good day.

The words required no improvement.

She stayed on the edge of the bed for a while with her boots on the floor beneath her and her bow resting safely against the wall. Afternoon had begun surrendering the window to evening. The strip of sky above Merrowford's roofs was still bright, but the room itself had softened into shadow except where light caught the new edge of her Guild tag on the small table.

The old one lay beside it.

Lethira reached for both.

The new tag still irritated her slightly. Its wood was pale, its corners sharp, the Merrowford branch mark clean enough that the cuts still looked recently made. **B** sat beneath her name with bureaucratic confidence, while the reverse carried the restriction that allowed her to take local work through C-rank until somebody suitably senior decided she remained capable of being the person the archive claimed she had once been.

The old tag was better. Not because it proved more. Because it had already been used.

Her thumb passed over one rounded edge. Scratches crossed the face without obscuring her name. One corner had a shallow dent she could not place. The old Guild mark had darkened along with the wood until it looked less stamped onto the object than worn into it.

She had forgotten she had reached B-rank. That remained faintly embarrassing, not alarming. A century contained enough years for an administrative promotion to become less memorable than the work which had produced it. Lethira could recall the branch official now, once the old record had forced the memory loose. She could remember being annoyed by the assessment and Aelira finding that annoyance much more entertaining than the promotion itself.

She could not remember what she had eaten afterward.

Probably something.

Life was rude that way.

Lethira set the tags down again.

Beside the bed, her travelling pack contained three photographs of Ian's house and garden, each carefully protected between flat sheets. Somewhere among her things was the smooth river stone she had picked up that afternoon without knowing whether she wanted it for any reason beyond the fact that her hand had liked its shape.

She found it in one pocket: flat, grey-brown, one side paler where water had worn it more evenly. No magic. No great history. No Guild record.

Lethira turned it between her fingers and smiled.

The day had accumulated objects almost accidentally. A new tag because an old professional life had turned out still to exist. Three photographs because Ian wanted her to know what lay outside the study she had once seen through an impossible doorway. A stone because the river had put it somewhere she could reach.

She preferred the stone's paperwork.

Downstairs, the Reed and Wheel was moving towards dinner. Footsteps crossed the passage outside. A door opened, then shut. Somebody laughed near the stairwell. From below came the muted scrape of furniture and, a little later, the first smell of cooking fat and onions.

Lethira's stomach noticed before dignity could interfere.

She put the stone beside the two Guild tags.

Tomorrow already had enough shape. Breakfast. The Guild board. One job, if something on it felt worth doing.

E or D would be easy. C was available now if the work suited two people and did not depend on Ian pretending to possess experience he did not have. Lethira had no particular desire to prove the B on the new tag. The senior assessment could happen later, or never. Merrowford contained more work beneath C-rank than they could complete in the remaining two days even if they made the exceptionally poor decision to try.

She wanted another small problem. Not necessarily sheep. Preferably not another sheepdog attempting independent flock acquisition, although Moss had established a high standard.

Something real. A road marker somebody needed checked. An animal where it should not be. A delivery whose difficulty had survived long enough to justify paying strangers. Perhaps a creature Ian could finally watch her shoot, provided the creature had independently earned that outcome and Ian remained where she told him to stand.

The thought made her smile.

She picked up the new tag once more.

"B-rank," she murmured.

The title felt absurdly grand in the plain room.

Her eyes shifted towards Ian.

"Tomorrow, I think we choose something that looks useful before it looks interesting. Then, if it also turns out interesting, we may regard that as excellent administrative fortune."

Lethira stood and stretched. The road and river walk remained lightly present through her legs, enough to make the movement pleasant rather than necessary. She rolled one shoulder, then gathered her hair behind it.

The room had two more nights left in it. That knowledge felt unexpectedly comfortable.

No journey had to resume in the morning because they had once imagined a journey. No inn reservation had become a commitment to finish Merrowford before leaving it. They could take another Guild job tomorrow and spend the following day doing nothing. They could walk half a mile and decide the river was more persuasive. They could discover that every posting on the board involved sewage, aggressive poultry or five days of travel in the wrong direction.

The road would survive disappointment.

Lethira looked towards the door, then back at Ian.

"I'm hungry. Do you want to go downstairs with me, or should I heroically investigate dinner alone?"

"Is that even a question?" Ian stood and got ready for dinner. "Do you want to return your old tag to home? Wouldn't want it to get lost or damaged. Just a thought."

Lethira's smile sharpened at the first answer. "Good. I was concerned I might have to undertake dangerous independent work."

Then her attention returned to the old tag.

The suggestion was immediately more sensible than she wanted to admit.

She picked it up and ran her thumb along the rounded edge. The thing had survived decades of being carried, stored, forgotten and apparently remembered only after a Merrowford clerk produced written evidence that Lethira had once cared enough about Guild rank to argue about it.

That did not make the wood fragile. It did make carrying it around unnecessary.

The new tag was the one she needed now. Its sharp edges and current branch mark belonged to this journey. The old one had already done its work twice: once long ago, and again today by proving that the archive entry and the woman standing at the counter belonged to one another.

Lethira glanced towards her pack. There were already three photographs in it she would be unhappy to lose. Adding an irreplaceable piece of her own history merely because it had become newly interesting seemed like the sort of decision she would criticise in somebody else.

"Annoyingly sensible." She held the tag between two fingers. "I don't think it is especially delicate. It survived me when I was considerably less careful with equipment than I am now. But I don't need it here anymore."

A small smile accompanied the admission.

"And I would be angry if I lost it because I suddenly decided an object I ignored for decades had to travel everywhere with me. Yes."

Then, because yesterday had established exactly how much precision could matter when impossible power touched ordinary belongings, she added the terms before sentiment could make them vague.

"Back where it came from. The actual tag, unchanged. No cleaning, no repair, no better box, no rearranging my things to give it a place of honour. It may return to being neglected with dignity."

Lethira held the old wooden tag out towards Ian.

"Please put it back."

Ian replied, "You may wish it back, either to exactly from whence it came, or wherever you wish."

Lethira looked at the old tag in her hand.

The change itself gave her nothing visible to examine. No light gathered around the wood, no interface announced a new permission, and nothing tugged at her fingers. She simply understood, from Ian's words and the mechanism behind them, that the choice now belonged to her.

That made her pause longer than the convenience deserved.

"Wherever I wish."

Her eyes narrowed slightly at the tag.

A cupboard would be safer than wherever she had abandoned it before. A drawer in her room would be easier to remember. She could probably put it beside the copy of *Until Replaced*, or somewhere deliberately chosen among the small collection of things that had acquired importance through Ian and Earth.

All of those would mean changing where it belonged because she had rediscovered that she cared about it.

Lethira smiled.

"No. Exactly where it came from."

The wish was simple: the same place, the same position, among the same belongings, without anything else moved or altered to accommodate it.

For a moment the tag remained against her palm.

Then it was gone.

Lethira opened her hand and looked at it from both sides, apparently unwilling to let omnipotence escape without at least one redundant inspection. Her thumb rubbed across the place where the rounded edge had rested.

"That is disturbingly convenient."

She glanced towards her pack. Nothing there appeared to have shifted. The photographs remained where she had protected them. The river stone and new Guild tag were still on the table. Whatever part of her home had received the old tag had done so far beyond anything she could verify from Merrowford.

Yet the choice had felt different from Ian simply retrieving it for her. She had decided where. The mechanism had obeyed that destination and nothing more.

Lethira's expression softened.

"I like that better."

She picked up the new tag and slipped it into the secure place among her current travelling things. Its pale wood belonged here: current registration, current road, current scratches still waiting to happen.

"The old one can go back to being forgotten until I am eighty years older and another clerk asks an inconvenient question. Assuming I remember where I put it by then."

She looked at Ian.

"And before you become pleased with yourself, this does not mean every forgotten object in my life has become eligible for miraculous retrieval. It means one object came here because I deliberately asked for it, and went back because I deliberately asked for that too."

The distinction apparently satisfied her enough that she left it there.

Dinner smells had become considerably harder to ignore.

Lethira fastened her belt, checked the new Guild tag once by touch and reached for the door.

"Now. If we delay any longer, the terrifying B-rank adventurer may be defeated by hunger before reaching the stairs."

Ian followed her downstairs, holding her hand where the route permitted.

Lethira accepted it without comment at first. Her fingers settled between his naturally, the gesture already familiar enough that it no longer needed to announce itself. At the stair turn they separated for three steps; at the bottom, where the corridor widened, she found his hand again before either of them entered the common room.

The Reed and Wheel had become properly busy.

Several tables were already occupied by people Ian recognised only as categories from the previous evenings: road travellers, merchants, labourers, people whose clothing had acquired enough dust to explain why they were eating before speaking much. A pair of Guild-looking adventurers sat near the wall with a rolled map between their bowls. Someone at the far end had ordered fish and was losing an argument with the bones.

The innkeeper saw Lethira and Ian come down together. Her attention paused briefly on their joined hands, then moved towards the available tables.

"Same corner is free."

Lethira glanced at Ian. "We have acquired habits."

She led them towards it.

The route between tables required their hands to separate twice. Each time Lethira took his again when there was room, until they reached the corner and she finally released him to pull out her chair.

She looked at the seat, then at the room, and deliberately chose the one which gave her the less useful view of the entrance.

The movement was small enough that nobody else would have noticed.

Lethira noticed.

Her mouth tightened in satisfaction as she sat.

"Still an inn. Still not guarding a prince."

The innkeeper arrived before the old argument could develop further.

Tonight's choices were barley stew again, roast chicken with roots and onions, or river fish served with a sharper green sauce than the previous evening. There was also a thick bean dish with bread which, according to the innkeeper, had begun as tomorrow's lunch and become tonight's option because somebody had made too much.

Lethira considered all four with the seriousness she usually reserved for tracks.

"Chicken."

The answer came after genuine thought.

Then she looked at Ian.

The innkeeper did too.

Lethira's expression shifted.

"Choose carefully. I possess historical evidence concerning theft from my plate."

The older woman at a nearby table was not the same one who had reviewed the fish the night before, but she looked over anyway.

Lethira noticed and lowered her voice.

"Merrowford remembers."

"Chicken also, to reduce chances of theft." Ian smiled. "or make evidence hiding easier."

Lethira stared at him, then turned to the innkeeper.

"Two chickens."

The innkeeper's expression did not change, which suggested either admirable professionalism or considerable experience with people who believed ordering the same meal would solve relationship problems.

"Anything to drink?"

Lethira chose water and whatever mild herbal infusion the kitchen already had hot. She waited until the innkeeper moved away before returning her attention to Ian.

"Evidence hiding. So your response to being caught stealing food is not reform. It is procedural improvement."

She folded her hands on the table.

"I should have expected this from someone who spent yesterday inventing an international textile industry rather than admitting his shirt came from somewhere impossible."

A smile finally escaped.

"Although I admit identical meals make prosecution more difficult."

The common room moved around them while they waited. One of the adventurers near the wall flattened part of the map with a cup and received an immediate objection from her companion. A man at another table was telling somebody about a damaged wheel with the intensity normally reserved for betrayal. From the kitchen came the smell of roasting skin, onions and something sweet enough in the roots to survive the savoury fat around them.

Lethira leaned back.

Her thumb rubbed once against the side of her forefinger where Ian's hand had been during the walk downstairs, an unconscious continuation of contact rather than an invitation to analyse it.

"I think I like this inn."

She looked across the room.

"Nobody has asked why an elf and a foreign human share a room. Nobody has decided my bow means I want work while eating. The woman downstairs gives useful information and appears willing to let travellers remain incomplete stories."

Her gaze returned to Ian.

"And the food has so far justified its existence."

The chicken arrived on broad plates with browned onions, roasted roots and bread for the juices. Each portion had been cut from a larger bird rather than served as an identical arrangement, which immediately weakened Ian's proposed evidence strategy.

Lethira inspected both plates.

"Oh dear. Mine has more breast meat. Yours has the better piece of crisp skin."

Her eyes lifted slowly.

"We have recreated motive."

She cut into her own chicken. The skin crackled beneath the knife. Steam escaped from the meat, carrying rosemary-like herbs and the richer smell of rendered fat. Lethira tasted one piece and gave a small approving nod before starting on the roots.

For almost a minute, she behaved impeccably.

Then her fork crossed the centre of the table.

It stopped above Ian's plate.

Lethira looked at him.

"Evidence is easier to conceal when guilt is shared."

Her mouth curved. She had not yet touched the food.

"May I steal some of your skin?"

"Only if I may have some of your breast."

Lethira's fork remained suspended over Ian's plate.

For half a second, the sentence passed through the perfectly ordinary context in which it had been offered.

Chicken. Dinner. An exchange of food.

Then the other interpretation arrived.

Her eyes lifted to his. The colour reached her ears first.

"That was either extremely unfortunate wording," she said, very evenly, "or evidence that your judgement has deteriorated since the bath."

The fork still hovered over the crisp skin.

Lethira glanced down at her own plate, where the larger piece of breast meat sat with complete innocence, then back at Ian.

"Fortunately for you, context provides a defence. A weak one."

She cut a generous piece from her chicken and placed it at the edge of his plate. Only then did she take the crisp section of skin she had negotiated for, transferring it to her own with exaggerated care.

"Fair exchange."

She ate the stolen piece. The crackle rewarded her immediately.

Lethira closed her eyes for a moment, then pointed her fork at Ian.

"Acceptable. Both the skin and the arrangement."

She returned to dinner with an expression of deliberate composure. It lasted perhaps three bites.

Then she looked at the piece she had given him.

"I should also record that you asked permission before taking some of my breast. Very responsible."

The effort broke at the edges. She lowered her gaze to the plate while a quiet laugh escaped.

Two people at the neighbouring table had no idea what had happened. Lethira seemed grateful for that.

When she recovered, she ate another piece of chicken and shook her head.

"This relationship is going to make ordinary nouns difficult. Breast. Bedding. Heat. Grip."

Her eyebrows rose as the list became progressively less defensible.

"No. I am stopping."

She drank some water.

For a little while they simply ate.

The matching meals prevented further theft from becoming materially necessary, although Lethira still inspected Ian's plate once when he reached the onions before she did. Outside the windows, the last evening light faded from the street. The common room grew warmer as bodies, lamps and the kitchen replaced the sun.

Lethira relaxed with it.

Tomorrow's Guild board existed somewhere beyond the meal, but she did not look as though she wanted to discuss it yet. The new B-rank tag remained upstairs. So did the photographs, the river stone and the rest of the day's small evidence.

Here there was chicken. And Ian. And an herbal drink which had arrived tasting considerably better than the bitter morning version.

Lethira took another sip and looked suspiciously into the cup.

"This one is good. Either the kitchen has improved dramatically since breakfast or this is something entirely different."

A third sip followed before she decided she did not care enough to investigate.

Her attention returned to Ian. The earlier flush had faded from her ears, though amusement remained.

"I am beginning to think identical meals were a tactical error. With different food, at least we had a legitimate reason to negotiate. Now we are simply inventing opportunities."

"What's mine is yours ...."

Lethira's expression changed before Ian continued. The words were light enough to belong to dinner, to chicken traded across a table and the small purse of Guild coin upstairs. They also carried considerably more weight than the food deserved.

She looked at him for a moment.

"Careful. You possess substantially more *mine* than most people who say that sentence."

Her mouth curved.

"And I have already demonstrated that I am willing to buy your trousers."

She took another drink and let the larger interpretation remain where it was rather than forcing it into a declaration about whatever they might eventually become.

Ian hesitated.

"Can I ask about.. money?"

Lethira lowered her cup. The pause before *money* made her immediately suspicious that he was not merely asking what tonight's chicken cost.

"Of course. What about it?"

"I.. don't think I understand how it works here, but I don't have any. I guess you've a lot given your time alive. I quite like not paying and being treated though, but, I don't want you running out or anything."

Lethira's expression shifted as he spoke. The first part amused her. The second made her look more carefully at him.

"You have made two assumptions. First, that living a long time automatically makes someone wealthy."

A small smile.

"It mostly gives you more time to spend money."

She took another drink before continuing.

"I am not poor. I have work. I have been in royal service for a very long time, I have done Guild work when it suited me, and I have had fewer expensive ambitions than some people I know. But I did not leave home carrying everything I own. That would be an extraordinarily bad travelling habit."

She glanced towards the ceiling, roughly in the direction of their room.

"I brought travel money. Enough that choosing a good inn, buying you clothes and paying for a private bath do not concern me. The Guild reward was amusingly small. It was not financially necessary."

Her eyes returned to him.

"So you do not need to worry that every time I buy dinner we move one meal closer to destitution."

The humour softened.

"But I understand why you asked. You arrived here with no local coin because there was no sensible reason for you to have any. Then I started paying for things because I already did."

She considered him.

"And you like it. Quite openly, apparently."

Her gaze dropped briefly towards his new black shirt.

"I also like treating you. I liked buying your clothes. I like paying for this room. I liked buying lunch with our very impressive sheep fortune. That does not mean I want you unable to buy anything without me."

The distinction was practical rather than defensive.

"If we keep travelling, we should probably decide what you want to do about money. You could earn some through Guild work as my aide if the contract pays that way, or we can ask how an unranked companion is normally handled. You could register eventually if you actually want to, although I don't think needing spending money is a good enough reason by itself."

She paused.

"And I assume you could create coin. I would prefer you not do that casually."

No accusation accompanied it. Just the experience of someone who understood that currency worked because other people accepted its scarcity and provenance without having to wonder whether reality itself had started minting competitors.

"If you want local money, there are probably less strange ways. But for now?"

Lethira reached across the table and rested her hand over his.

"You are not costing me more than I want to spend. And if you quite like being paid for..."

Her gaze flicked towards the earlier exchange of chicken.

"...in kind, apparently, I am not currently suffering."

She smiled.

"So what part don't you understand? The coins themselves, what things cost, how people earn them, or whether your very old elf can afford to keep you?"

"I think there are copper pieces, and maybe silver pieces. I imagine there's something like 100 copper or 1000 copper is 1 silver? are there gold pieces?"

Lethira nodded at the first part, then shook her head at the numbers.

"Copper, yes. Silver, yes. Gold exists as coin too, but you are trying to make it much tidier than it is."

She reached for the small purse she had brought downstairs and loosened its cord beneath the table rather than scattering money where half the common room could watch a foreigner receive his first lesson in currency.

A few coins came into her palm.

Most were copper: worn, differently aged pieces with marks Ian could not read unaided. One was larger than another without being proportionately more valuable by any obvious visual rule. Among them sat a paler silver coin, thinner and more carefully struck.

Lethira separated it with one fingertip.

"This is the part you will dislike. There is no single rule everywhere saying one hundred copper becomes one silver and one hundred silver becomes one gold. Kingdoms mint coins. Towns accept other people's coins. Merchants weigh things they do not trust. Old coins remain in circulation long after somebody changes the official standard."

She pushed two different copper pieces beside one another.

"These are both copper. They are not necessarily the same value merely because your language gives them the same metal."

That seemed to please her more than it would please anyone attempting accounting.

"Merrowford is used to travellers, so ordinary shops are not going to make you understand three kingdoms' coinage before selling you bread. For small things, people know the common local pieces. For larger amounts, silver becomes more convenient. Gold is for amounts where carrying the equivalent in copper would make your trousers considerably less attractive."

A pause.

"And probably fall down."

She looked at Ian's belt as though assessing the structural risk.

"You would not normally pay for dinner with gold unless you wanted the innkeeper to become suspicious, annoyed, or suddenly responsible for finding a great deal of change. So your model is broadly right: copper for small everyday money, silver for more, gold for much more. But do not memorise an invented conversion and then confidently offer somebody one thousand copper because you have decided arithmetic outranks the person actually selling you something."

A smile.

"For the next few days, you can simply ask me what something costs until the amounts begin to feel normal. And if you want, tomorrow I can give you a small purse of your own. Though I warn you, once you possess money, I may occasionally allow you to pay for things."

"Maybe I should register at the guild and earn some that way. Although it doesn't really matter. I can obviously just create whatever is needed in an emergency, but the act of earning might be nice." Ian paused. "I am the earner in my world, i've worked since i was 17 -- i know here people start doing things at 14 or whatever, but 17 was young, most are 19-21 i guess. I've always managed to earn well, not rich well, but more than I really need, without enough to stop working. So, it's nice to be the kept one."

That last phrase changed Lethira's expression.

Not badly.

Her eyes narrowed with interest, then the corner of her mouth lifted.

"The kept one."

She repeated it once, tasting the wording with considerably more amusement than suspicion.

"I think I like that more than *servant*."

Her hand remained over his for another moment before she withdrew it to finish the last of her chicken.

"And seventeen sounds young to me because nearly every human age sounds young to me. But I understand what you mean. In your world, you began earning earlier than most people around you, and then continued doing it for a substantial proportion of your life."

There was no attempt to convert his forty-seven years into elven equivalence.

"So perhaps being the person who is bought dinner, given a room and dressed by an older woman is novel."

Her smile sharpened.

"I can see the appeal. I am also doing very well at keeping you. You have clothes, food, lodging and no obvious signs of neglect. Your boots remain your own contribution."

The humour faded into something more practical.

"But I don't think you should register because you feel you ought to start paying me back. I invited you to travel with me. I chose the room. I chose to buy your clothes. I like treating you. If we spend enough that it becomes inconvenient, I will tell you."

That was apparently sufficient accounting.

"As for earning Guild money... that I understand. Not because we need it. Because you did something this morning that belonged to the world we were standing in, and then the Guild put your name on the work and paid us for completing it."

Her eyes returned to him.

"You were only an aide, but you still walked the road. You listened. You helped think about Moss without deciding his future for everyone. You were there when the sheep came back."

A small smile.

"And you contributed several valuable observations concerning the enormous reward. If registering makes more of that available to you, it might be worth doing."

Then she lifted one finger.

"But we ask what registration actually means now. We don't assume you begin at E because Thomas did something vaguely similar a very long time ago. We ask the clerk what they test, what you would be claiming competence in, and what obligations come with the tag. And you do not demonstrate omnipotence."

That required no elaboration.

"If they ask whether you can fight, you answer truthfully about what *you* can do without turning the Guild hall into a philosophical emergency. I suspect 'moderately fit middle-aged traveller with excellent boots and access to an experienced B-rank elf' is not a standard category."

She looked at him for a few seconds. The phrase *kept one* was clearly still entertaining her.

Then her expression softened.

"I also like that this is nice for you. If you spend most of your other life being the person whose work pays for things, then you don't need to perform that role here merely to prove you still can. You know you can. I know you can."

The smile came back.

"And I have coin. So enjoy being kept for a little while. But tomorrow, if you still want to register, we can ask."

Her eyes stayed on his.

"Do you want a Guild tag because you want work that is yours... or because some part of you is already uncomfortable receiving this much?"

Ian held his hands up. "no no, i like it. and you've said you can afford it, that's all i needed for that"

Lethira's expression relaxed immediately.

"Good."

No further examination followed. She had asked because the distinction mattered; he had answered it. Apparently that was sufficient.

"the guild work is interesting, but might be amusing. the problem is, i have no combat experience or adventuring and i don't understand this world at all. but i can also defeat anyone and anything instantly, unless i don't use that power, then i will be hiding behind you possibly distracted by the rear view." Ian smiled.

Lethira stared at him.

The serious part of his problem survived for perhaps two seconds before the final clause destroyed her composure.

"The rear view."

She sat back slowly.

"I am trying to consider the professional development of an inexperienced adventurer, and apparently his principal field hazard is his instructor walking ahead of him."

Her gaze moved over his face, then down towards the table as she recovered.

"This does explain why you were so attentive while tracking the sheep. Although, in your defence, I did explicitly tell you to remain behind me."

She raised one finger before he could be blamed for anything else.

"A tactical error."

Ian continued. "i am not sure there is a middle ground, but it might be fun to try a bit, with your tutelage."

That changed her again. Not dramatically. The teasing stayed in the corners of her expression, but something pleased settled underneath it.

"My tutelage. I like that considerably more than I should."

She picked up her cup and drank while apparently deciding how seriously to take the proposition.

"The middle ground is actually the easiest part. You don't register tomorrow."

There was no finality in the sentence, only sequence.

"You remain my unranked aide for a while. The Guild already permits that on suitable work. We choose low work where your lack of experience is inconvenient rather than lethal, and I teach you the things your impossible power doesn't teach you."

Lethira counted them without turning the list into a curriculum.

"Where to stand. When to stop moving. How not to destroy tracks before I have looked at them. Which questions to ask before deciding you understand a problem. When an animal is frightened, guarding something or preparing to attack. When three people on a road are merely three people on a road."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"And perhaps how to remain professionally functional while following an elf. Advanced material."

She leaned back in the chair.

"Combat can wait. If something genuinely dangerous happens, I am not going to manufacture a lesson by pretending you should fight it with skills you do not have. I handle what I can handle. You do what I tell you. If the situation exceeds me and you decide to use your power, then that becomes a different kind of problem."

Her tone remained practical.

"But I don't think your ability to make a monster cease being a problem means you already know how to adventure. Most adventuring is judgement before violence anyway."

She looked towards the two Guild adventurers near the wall. One was still arguing over the map, now with a third person involved. Nobody had produced a weapon.

"You saw that today. The dangerous version of the sheep problem would have been deciding the dog was a predator because that was the first explanation available. Or walking straight into the shelter because the animals were alive. Or putting a rope around Moss because a lead sounded useful."

There was no criticism in the examples; each had simply been a choice they had considered and then refined.

"You listened instead."

A little pride entered her expression.

"That is teachable. Possibly."

The teasing returned.

"Your attention span remains under investigation."

Lethira took another bite of chicken, giving herself time to think.

"As for the absurd half of your problem... if you can defeat anything instantly, then yes, there is a strange line somewhere between *helpless foreigner hiding behind the elf* and *reality itself has decided the encounter is over*. I don't think we need to solve that line before breakfast."

She set the fork down.

"Your power can remain an emergency tool rather than your adventuring profession. You don't need to pretend you don't possess it with me. You also don't need to make it the answer to every task merely because the Guild would be impressed by a man whose stated speciality is 'yes.'"

She seemed to enjoy the imaginary registration form.

"Name: Ian Kirk. Rank: none. Experience: one stolen-sheep contract. Skills: walking, listening, inappropriate observations concerning contractor's rear aspect. Emergency capability: administratively unhelpful."

Her expression became solemn.

"I think the clerk would resign."

Her laughter was brief. When it faded, Lethira looked at him more quietly.

"But if you really want to learn, I would enjoy teaching you. Not because I want to turn you into a warden. You cannot acquire my life by following me for a month, and I don't want you trying to imitate me."

Her hand crossed the table and found his.

"But I can teach you enough that when I say *stop*, you understand why later. Enough that eventually you notice the thing before I point at it. Enough that you can walk through this world without either relying on omnipotence or requiring me to keep you alive every minute. And if after some of that you still want your own Guild tag, we ask what the current registration process actually requires."

She smiled.

"Perhaps you will become E-rank Ian Kirk, terrifying scourge of mildly misplaced livestock. Perhaps you will discover you prefer being the B-rank elf's kept aide. I admit that option has advantages."

She released his hand only long enough to finish the last piece of chicken.

Then, almost casually, "Tomorrow I'll choose work that gives you something to learn."

Her eyes met his again.

"And I will try to remember that if I tell you to stay behind me, I have accepted certain foreseeable consequences."

"Lets do some more adventuring then." Ian reached over and squeezed her hand. Then he tried to steal an onion while she was distracted.

Lethira's fingers closed around his in answer.

"Good."

The response was simple enough to leave the decision where he had put it. Tomorrow could contain another notice board, another problem that already existed, and whatever useful amount of mud Merrowford considered educational.

Ian's free hand moved towards her plate.

Lethira was still looking at him.

His fingers reached the onions.

Her eyes dropped.

There was a very small silence.

Then Lethira tightened her hand around his. Not enough to hurt. More than enough to make escape from the social consequences unlikely.

"Ian Kirk."

She looked at the onion caught between his fingers, then at his face.

"We ordered identical meals. You have your own onions."

She glanced at his plate to verify the evidence. Several remained.

Lethira looked back at the stolen one.

"This is no longer hunger. This is criminal inclination."

"Guilty."

Lethira gave the stolen onion one last look, then released his hand and let him keep it.

"At least you confess quickly."

Ian's next question changed her expression.

"I have been surprised how little comment has been made about you, or you and I... is that just the place? if we went north or south might that worsen?"

Lethira glanced around the common room before answering. Nobody nearby appeared particularly interested in them. One traveller looked briefly towards her ears as he passed, but his attention continued to the empty chair beyond.

"Partly Merrowford. This is a trade town close enough to the Woods that seeing a Wood Elf is worth noticing, not stopping dinner over. Merchants come through. Demi-humans come through. Adventurers arrive with people stranger than either of us. Southbank is even less impressed by unusual pairs."

She looked at Ian's locally made clothes.

"And you stopped looking like a hole had opened in reality and thrown out a human."

That had plainly helped.

"As for us... I expect people have noticed."

She considered their joined hands, the shared room upstairs and the amount of time they had spent walking close enough to make their affection reasonably obvious.

"Some probably think we're lovers already. Some may think I hired you. Someone may have invented something much stranger. Merrowford has always been talented at that."

Then she became more thoughtful.

"North could be worse. The farther you go into strongly human kingdoms, the more likely an elf travelling closely with a human becomes something people want to categorise. In some places they may decide I control you. In others that you own me, protect me, employ me, have been enchanted by me, or are doing something socially inconvenient by wanting me."

Her expression flattened slightly.

"I have heard all of those before."

She did not linger there.

"Far north, around places shaped by crowns, bloodlines and human authority, I would expect more attention than here. Whether that is still true everywhere now, I don't know. Towns change. South is less simple. Trade roads tend to see more kinds of people because trade is practical. Some towns care much more about whether you can pay, follow water law or honour a contract than who shares your bed. Others are perfectly capable of being prejudiced while also charging you fairly."

She ate the onion.

"So yes. It may worsen."

Then she looked directly at Ian.

"But I don't think we should choose our road by searching for places where nobody will look at us. I would rather know where we want to go, then deal with whatever people there actually think."

Her gaze dropped briefly to the onion he had stolen.

"And if someone becomes unbearable, I will attempt to remember that you are still under instruction and therefore not permitted to solve social discomfort by deleting the town. Though you may continue stealing vegetables under supervision."

Ian gazed off to the side in thought, a more serious look on his face.

Lethira noticed the change almost immediately. The amusement left her face without becoming concern. She did not rush to fill the silence or soften whatever had caught Ian's attention.

Her fork went down beside the plate.

For several seconds she simply watched him looking away, giving the thought room to finish becoming whatever it was going to become. The common room carried on around them: conversation from the next table, a cup placed too firmly on wood, someone crossing towards the stairs.

Lethira reached across the table and rested her hand lightly over his.

No squeeze this time. No teasing.

Just contact.

"I'm listening."

"I am thinking of Lord Maeric Voss, from Crownholt. He was the worst, under the King's instruction, to Thomas."

Recognition came slowly, not of the man himself but of the unfinished conversation upstairs.

"Voss."

She said the name differently this time, attaching it to something real.

"The one you meant before."

Her expression tightened. Ian had now given her one more piece: not merely somebody somewhere inside Crownholt's machinery, but the person he judged the worst of those acting directly against Thomas under the King's authority.

Lethira did not pretend that was enough to know the man.

"What did he do?"

"He forced Thomas to perform for him, a very comfortable prisoner I guess, kept Isha nearby but refused to let him talk to her. Only write letters. He is the main contributor, I would say, to him nearly breaking, and having to escape through the fake-death he did. This is my perspective of course. Thomas refused to reveal significant power which prolonged it. But maybe he was just doing what the King had said, in a very efficient way. The intimate details are obviously between Thomas and Isha, but dozens of people there will have seen it, so whilst it isn't public, it's not just between those two."

Lethira listened without interrupting.

Her expression changed most at the separation.

"Nearby, but not allowed to speak."

She looked down briefly at the table, thinking through the shape Ian had described rather than reaching immediately for judgement.

"I can see why that would work. Keep Thomas comfortable enough that imprisonment can be called hospitality. Keep Isha close enough that he knows she is safe, but make access to her something controlled by somebody else. Give him paper so nobody can say they silenced him."

Her mouth tightened.

"And if he refuses to show them what they want, the arrangement simply continues."

She looked back at Ian.

"I don't know Voss. I don't know what orders he received, what he believed Thomas represented, or what he thought would happen if he failed. But *efficiently carrying out the King's instructions* does not make him absent from what he did. The King can be responsible for building the cage. Voss can still be responsible for becoming very good at keeping someone inside it."

She let that sit.

"And Thomas hiding his power complicates why the confinement lasted. It doesn't make the confinement his fault."

Her gaze sharpened slightly.

"What worries me is that you are thinking about him now. Not remembering him. Thinking about him."

Ian continued, "So you can easily say the King is accountable, but that doesn't let Voss off the hook -- the execution and methods, the process, gradually breaking him over weeks.. that was him."

He paused.

"I keep thinking if I should, do something."

Lethira's hand remained over his.

She did not answer immediately. The common room continued around them, indifferent to a man at one corner table considering what unlimited power permitted him to do to someone in Crownholt.

"Yes. I thought that was where you were going."

She left the acknowledgement there for a moment.

Then, quietly, "What does *something* mean?"

"That's the problem. I don't even know if Thomas wants justice, or revenge. I don't want to ask him, who the hell would want all *that* dragged up. My relationship with Isha is probably not great enough to ask her. But then, what would I do? Kill him? Bend reality so he is expelled from his job? Cause his trousers to fall down every hour for the rest of his life? This comes back to the central problem of no restrictions on my will being made real. Well, apart from one restriction now: you." Ian smiled.

Lethira's mouth moved at the final sentence, but she did not let the smile answer the rest.

"That restriction protects me. Not Voss."

She left her hand where it was on his.

For a few moments she looked down at their plates rather than at Ian. Dinner had become almost incidental. A piece of onion sat near the edge of her plate; his earlier theft suddenly belonged to a much easier category of wrongdoing.

"I think there are several different questions hiding inside *do something*. Whether Voss deserves consequence. Whether Thomas would want consequence. Whether Thomas would want *you* to provide it. And whether you want to hurt Voss because you care about Thomas."

She paused there.

"The last one may be true even if all the others remain unanswered."

There was no reproach in it.

Lethira withdrew her hand only long enough to take a drink.

"I don't think you need to ask Thomas whether he wants revenge simply because the question has occurred to you. You are right that asking can itself impose something. Especially if he has built a life in which Voss is no longer present."

She set the cup down.

"But that also means you don't get to turn Thomas's suffering into permission. You know your account of what happened. You know enough to be angry. I know much less. Neither of us knows what Voss is now. Whether he still holds office. Whether the King rewarded him, discarded him, punished him, or whether time has done something neither of us knows about."

Her fingers touched Ian's again.

"So killing him now would be an answer to a question you have not actually asked. The trousers are harder to condemn philosophically."

The joke survived for only a breath.

"But even that is you choosing punishment because you can."

She looked directly at him.

"I think before you decide what Voss deserves, you should decide whose need you are trying to satisfy. If the answer is yours, that doesn't automatically make it wrong. But it makes it yours."

She let the room fill the silence for a little while: plates, voices, someone near the bar asking for more bread.

Then Lethira asked, "When you imagine doing something to him, what do you actually want to feel afterward?"

"Justice". "I am not enraged and demanding revenge. If I was that angry... the hidden Crown Deep that is the source of wealth for them would not be there one day. And Voss would be dead. And the King deposed." Ian looked towards her plate. "Then I would eat your onion."

Lethira stared at him.

The onion survived perhaps half a second as the dominant problem.

Then her mouth twitched.

"I appreciate learning where vegetable theft sits in the hierarchy."

She pulled the remaining onions fractionally closer to herself anyway.

The humour faded without disappearing entirely.

"What you just described is useful. Not because I approve of destroying Crown Deep, killing Voss or removing a king because you're angry. Because you can imagine doing all three, and you know that isn't what you're asking for."

She considered him for a moment.

"Justice is harder."

There was no grand pronouncement in the way she said it. If anything, she sounded mildly annoyed by the fact.

"A dead Voss is simple. A humiliated Voss is simple. A ruined king is simple. Knowing what consequence fits what they actually did, what they knew, what authority they possessed and what happened afterward is not."

She picked up one of the defended onions and ate it.

"And destroying Crown Deep because the crown profited from it would also affect people who never imprisoned Thomas. Miners. Workers. Families. Whoever now depends upon whatever the place has become. Unlimited power makes punishment easy. It does not make judgement automatic."

She looked back at him.

"But I believe you when you say you want justice rather than revenge."

That was given without demanding he prove the difference again.

Lethira's fingers moved across the table and rested beside his rather than over them.

"If you ever act on this, I think the first thing you need is not a punishment. It's knowledge."

A beat passed.

"What became of Voss?"

"Let me ask the machine, one moment"

Lethira nodded. She did not fill the pause with another warning. Ian had already understood that knowing what had become of Voss was different from deciding what should happen to him.

Her hand stayed near his on the table while she waited.

Around them, dinner continued. Someone near the counter asked for bread. A chair scraped across the floor. The onions on Lethira's plate remained temporarily safe.

Her eyes stayed on Ian.

"All right."

Ian handed Lethira a parchment, in Elven, that had not been there before. It contained the machine's account:

> • You’re right if you mean his ultimate fate: nothing states that Maeric Voss
>   was killed, punished, dismissed, exposed or otherwise removed. He appears to
>   remain Lord Comptroller after Thomas and Isha escape Crownholt.
>
>   What is stated:
>
>   - Voss is appointed Thomas’s handler, controls Thomas and Isha’s separation,
>     movement, correspondence and assessment, and directs Thomas into Crown Deep
>     utility work (chapters/chapter142.txt:455).
>
>   - He recognises Thomas’s psychological decline but continues the work under
>     closer review and approves increasingly deep surveys (chapters/
>     chapter150.txt:267).
>
>   - Voss is not present at Load Descent Twelve when Thomas stages his death.
>   - After the collapse, he seals the assessment house, restricts disclosure,
>     orders separate interviews and considers death, survival and escape without
>     reaching proof (chapters/chapter152.txt:773).
>
>   - He helps convert the uncertainty into the official “missing, presumed dead”
>     account. He briefly imagines having made a different choice weeks earlier,
>     but simply returns to work (chapters/chapter153.txt:211).
>
>   - He personally gives Isha the report and implements the council’s decision to
>     release her because, without Thomas as an asset, detaining her creates
>     diplomatic cost without benefit (chapters/chapter153.txt:253).
>
>   - He is notably absent when Isha leaves the gate; Arliss witnesses her
>     departure instead (chapters/chapter153.txt:567).
>
>   - There is no evidence Voss ever learns that Thomas survived. Later prose only
>     says he may suspect broadly because uncertainty is his habit.
>
>   So his endpoint is essentially: alive, still in office, politically
>   unaccountable, and left with an unresolved suspicion. His lack of punishment
>   fits the arc’s point that the harm came through lawful institutions and
>   reasonable procedure, not a villain who could simply be defeated.

Lethira accepted it by reflex, then paused with the sheet between both hands.

The material itself received only a brief inspection. Whatever process had produced it mattered less than the fact that Ian had asked for information and brought the answer to her rather than quietly acting on it.

Lethira began reading.

She reached the bottom and did not immediately look up.

Her thumb remained against the edge of the parchment.

Then she went back, not to the conclusion, but to the second point.

She read it again.

*He recognises Thomas's psychological decline but continues the work under closer review and approves increasingly deep surveys.*

Her mouth tightened.

The source markers the machine had originally attached meant nothing to her as places in the world. She understood what they were in context: references inside the written record available to Ian's machine, rather than witnesses she could question herself.

That distinction did not make the content weightless.

Lethira read the line about Thomas's handler again. Separation. Movement. Correspondence. Assessment. Crown Deep.

Then the part after the collapse. Control of disclosure. Separate interviews. Turning uncertainty into the official account. Releasing Isha when she ceased to be useful as leverage over an asset who was presumed dead.

Lethira lowered the parchment slightly.

"That is worse than merely obeying efficiently."

Her voice stayed quiet.

She looked once more at the text.

"He noticed Thomas deteriorating. And his response was closer review."

There was no anger in the way Ian had described anger earlier. Lethira's expression had instead become very still.

"He saw the method was breaking him and treated that as information about how to continue administering him."

Her eyes moved down the parchment.

"And afterward he understood enough to imagine that he might have chosen differently."

She tapped that line once with a fingernail.

"Then went back to work."

The common room made the parchment stranger. Someone two tables away laughed loudly at something involving a spilled drink. The innkeeper passed carrying empty plates. A door opened behind the counter and released a stronger smell of bread from the kitchen.

Nothing in Merrowford knew that Lord Comptroller Maeric Voss had just been examined from outside his reality over dinner.

Lethira looked at Ian.

"I would still not call this complete evidence. It is your machine's account of the record. I cannot question Voss. I cannot question the King. I cannot ask the people who worked under him what they saw."

Her gaze returned to the page.

"But it answers the first question well enough for me."

He had not suffered obvious consequence. More importantly, the institutional shape Ian had described was not merely his emotional interpretation. The machine's account placed Voss repeatedly inside the decisions which maintained that shape.

Lethira folded the parchment once, carefully, without yet deciding whether Ian intended it to remain after the conversation.

"I don't think justice begins with making his trousers fall down."

A faint movement at the corner of her mouth acknowledged the earlier possibility.

"Unfortunately. I also don't think it begins with killing him."

She rested the folded parchment on the table between them.

"The thing that troubles me most is not that he was cruel. It is that he may not have needed to be."

Lethira looked towards Ian.

"He could recognise Thomas was failing under what they were doing and still describe the next step as assessment, review, deeper work, procedure. That sort of person can do enormous harm without ever needing to think of himself as someone who harms people."

Her hand returned to Ian's.

This time she closed her fingers around his.

"If you want justice, I think you need to decide whether you want to punish Maeric Voss... or whether what bothers you is that he apparently got to finish doing all of that and remain Lord Comptroller as though the system had worked."

Her eyes stayed on Ian.

"Those are not quite the same problem."

The paper disappeared.

"No, but the machine is generally accurate at past reality retrieval. It will have included Voss's internal thoughts. Hopefully you can understand now why I occasionally think i should do something, but the something is hard."

Lethira looked at the empty place where the page had been.

"Yes. I understand."

This time the answer came quickly.

Her fingers remained around Ian's hand.

The additional detail changed the weight of what she had read. Not because an internal thought automatically became innocence or guilt, but because the brief moment in which Voss imagined having chosen differently was no longer merely somebody else's interpretation of his behaviour. If Ian's machine had recovered the past accurately enough to include what the man had actually thought, then Voss had recognised an alternative.

And continued living with the one he had chosen.

Lethira's eyes narrowed slightly.

"That makes the line about returning to work uglier. He did not need somebody years later to explain that another path had existed. Some part of him already knew."

She let go of Ian only to pick up her cup.

"But yes. The *something* is hard."

Her gaze moved briefly across the room. Men and women ate, argued, paid, left. Somewhere in another kingdom, perhaps Maeric Voss still sat behind a desk with titles, responsibilities and people waiting for his decisions.

Lethira looked back at Ian.

"If he were standing here threatening Thomas now, the answer would be easy. I would stop him."

A slight pause.

"But this happened. Thomas escaped. He survived. He has another life. Voss apparently continued with his. So whatever you do now cannot prevent what he did."

That seemed important enough not to soften.

"It can punish him. It can expose him. It could perhaps remove his authority so he cannot do something similar to another person. You could make him understand exactly what he did, if your power allows that without rewriting who he is. Or you could make him suffer."

She looked directly at Ian.

"Those may overlap. They are not identical."

For a while she said nothing more.

The onions had gone cold.

Eventually Lethira nudged one absently with the side of her fork.

"I think I would be tempted too. If somebody had taken Aelira, kept her near enough that I knew she was alive but denied me access to her, worked me until I began breaking, noticed that I was breaking and decided the correct response was better observation..."

Her jaw tightened once.

"I would not become philosophical about the person responsible."

She left the imagined version there.

"But I also would not want somebody else deciding years later what justice for me should look like without asking. And that is the part I think you are caught on."

Not whether Voss deserved consequence. Whether Ian had standing to choose it.

Lethira's hand returned across the table and covered his again.

"You can do almost anything. So perhaps one of the few useful limits left to you is admitting when you don't know what the right thing is."

A small smile appeared, tired rather than amused.

"Which is inconvenient. Omnipotence apparently does not even spare you uncertainty."

She looked towards the remains of dinner.

"I don't think you need to decide about Voss tonight. You learned something. You told me why it bothers you. He will remain wherever he is for another evening."

Her eyes came back to Ian.

"And if tomorrow we spend six hours investigating a missing cart wheel while Lord Comptroller Maeric Voss continues being morally unsatisfactory somewhere far away... I think reality can endure the delay."

Her fingers squeezed his.

"I understand why you think about it now. And for the record, if you eventually choose justice, stealing my final onion will not be included in the sentence."

"I could find out what is going on with him, I don't need to leave here, he would never know. If he's been fired that would be something. Shall I?" Ian paused. "I'm not asking for permission as such, just advice from someone whose opinion matters hugely."

That last part reached Lethira more visibly than the question had.

Her eyes stayed on him for a moment. Then she looked down at their joined hands.

"Yes. I think you should find out."

She did not make him wait for the qualification.

"Not because I think you owe Voss an investigation before deciding whether you're allowed to dislike him. And not because I think learning more will necessarily produce a clean answer. But right now we are discussing a man as he existed when Thomas escaped. If he was dismissed later, stripped of authority, prosecuted, disgraced, retired into irrelevance, or spent the following years doing something entirely different, that matters."

A small pause.

"If he is still Lord Comptroller doing exactly the same work, that also matters."

Lethira considered the mechanism more carefully.

"And if he will never know you looked, then asking what became of him is not itself a punishment. I would keep the first question narrow. Is he alive. Does he still hold office. What authority does he have now. Has anything consequential happened to him because of Thomas, Crown Deep or the way Crownholt handled that whole affair."

Then she looked directly at Ian.

"I would not begin by reading every private thought he has had since. You already know your machine can give you too much. More information is not automatically better information."

Her fingers tightened gently around his.

"So yes. Ask."

A faint smile appeared.

"And thank you for caring what I think. Though if the answer is that Lord Comptroller Maeric Voss has somehow spent the time since then running a charitable home for injured puppies, I reserve the right to become extremely annoyed with reality."

Ian produced another parchment from nowhere and handed it to Lethira. It was written in Elven and carried a brief continuation from the last recorded events to the current fantasy-side day.

Lethira read that Voss had remained Lord Comptroller after the collapse. No dismissal. No formal discipline. No public reckoning for what had been done to Thomas. Crownholt's internal response had treated the loss principally as the failure of a strategically valuable programme and a Crown Deep disaster, not as wrongdoing committed against a prisoner who had been called a guest.

Her expression hardened slightly.

Load Descent Twelve had been removed from routine survey use. Crown Deep itself remained an active state concern.

Voss had changed something afterward.

Not enough to make Lethira's face soften.

The parchment described harder review points around prolonged strategic custody. A handler responsible for extracting value from somebody could no longer, by himself, keep approving progressively harsher conditions once that person showed serious deterioration. Voss had accepted, privately and procedurally, that Thomas's separation from Isha and the continuing descent work had gone on after the damage was visible.

He had not apparently named that repentance.

He had called it better administration.

Lethira stopped there.

Her eyes remained on the sentence for several seconds.

"Of course he did."

Quietly.

She went on.

Voss had remained effective. Politically useful. Protected enough that the disappearance of an extraordinary human under Crown authority had not ended his career. To the government around him, he had managed an impossible strategic problem, contained the aftermath of a catastrophic loss and released the surviving Wood Elf before her detention became a diplomatic liability.

No trial. No exposure. No restitution.

But neither had he simply repeated himself unchanged.

Later Crown Deep work had become more cautious. Voss had grown less willing to solve uncertainty by pushing increasingly valuable people farther into it. No later case was known to have reproduced the exact combination imposed on Thomas: isolation from the person closest to him, controlled correspondence and progressively deeper compulsory work while deterioration was already recognised.

Lethira read that paragraph twice.

Then came the present.

**Maeric Voss remained alive.**

**He remained Lord Comptroller of Crown Necessities.**

His influence was still considerable, though he delegated more routine Crown Deep work than he once had. He had never been punished for Thomas. He had never obtained proof that Thomas survived.

And somewhere beneath years of administrative work, he had never entirely believed that the collapse explained everything.

The suspicion had faded into an unresolved historical file rather than an active hunt.

Lethira reached the end.

She did not immediately put the parchment down.

The common room seemed louder after it: somebody laughing near the counter, cutlery against a bowl, the innkeeper discussing tomorrow's breakfast with a traveller who apparently intended to leave before dawn.

Lethira read the present-day lines once more.

"Alive. Still Lord Comptroller. And he changed the procedure."

There was no satisfaction in the observation. Neither was there contempt for the change simply because it was insufficient.

She sat with that contradiction.

"He learned."

The word sounded almost reluctant.

"Not enough to call what he did what it was. Not enough to surrender the office that allowed him to do it. Apparently not enough for anyone else to make him answer for Thomas."

Her eyes moved again over the section describing later safeguards.

"But enough that someone else may not have been broken in exactly the same way."

Lethira lowered the parchment to the table.

For several moments she said nothing.

Then she gave a short, humourless breath.

"That is annoyingly inconvenient. If he had learned nothing, I think I would find him easier to hate. If he had been punished, perhaps you would have found the justice you were looking for already."

Neither was true.

Instead there was a man who had done serious harm, remained powerful, escaped accountability and nevertheless altered his conduct because somewhere inside the machinery of his office he had understood that the previous method had failed catastrophically.

Lethira looked back down.

"I don't think becoming better at the work afterward pays Thomas anything. But I also don't think it means nothing."

Her fingers rested along the edge of the parchment.

The earlier question—*do something*—had become harder rather than easier.

Finally she looked at Ian again.

"What does this make you want to do?"

The parchment disappeared.

"Well, briefly I thought about asking it to tell me what you were like as a horny young Elf" Ian grinned, briefly.

Lethira stared at him.

The expression arrived in stages: comprehension, disbelief, then the narrow-eyed look of somebody deciding whether a century of accumulated dignity could survive one sentence.

"No. Absolutely not."

Then her mouth betrayed her.

"My past self has endured enough without being subjected to external historical research for your entertainment. And if your machine possesses any account of my youthful romantic judgement, it may continue possessing it very privately."

Her ears had coloured despite the firmness of the ruling.

Lethira sat back.

"Also, *young Elf* covers an offensively large period of time."

The joke had done its work. Ian's grin faded.

"i don't know, i hadn't actually thought of asking the machine these things. this is more power again without any clue how to use it" Ian sighed, and rested his head in his hands.

Lethira watched him for a moment.

Then she moved her chair closer. Not enough to turn the common room into a private chamber. Enough that her knee touched his beneath the table.

Her hand settled against his forearm.

"I think that may be the important part. You didn't think of it."

She glanced towards the place where the parchment had vanished.

"You have had this ability to ask reality questions, apparently with answers that can reach into the past and even people's thoughts, and it had not occurred to you to use it this way until tonight."

Her fingers moved once against his sleeve.

"That doesn't make you foolish. It means the power is larger than the habits you have built around it."

Lethira looked at him with a seriousness that did not attempt to become reassurance.

"And I don't think you need to discover every use merely because the use exists. You asked about Voss because you were already troubled by whether doing nothing was right. The answer gave you more information and less certainty."

A faint smile touched her mouth.

"That may be healthier than a machine which always tells you what to do."

The room continued around them.

Lethira did not ask him to lift his head. She did not tell him the problem was solved.

After a while, she shifted her hand down and threaded her fingers through his where they rested near the edge of the table.

"You are allowed not to know what to do with all of it. And tonight, at least, you have successfully resisted using omnipotence to investigate my adolescent libido."

A beat.

"Your judgement remains uneven, but there are signs of improvement."

Ian lifted his head and held her hands with his. "Thank you." He paused. "And thank you for taking this all so calmly, Isha would ..."

He stopped, not sure what to say.

"thank you."

Lethira's hands turned within his until she was holding him back.

"You don't have to finish that."

She glanced down at their joined hands, then up again.

"I don't know what Isha would do with this conversation. And you don't seem certain either. So we can leave her out of the sentence."

Lethira squeezed his hands.

"As for calm..."

Her eyes shifted briefly towards the place where two impossible parchments had appeared and vanished over the course of dinner.

"I have learned tonight that you can inspect the past, recover thoughts from people who never spoke them, discover what a powerful man is doing without him knowing, and potentially punish him without leaving your chair. I am not calm because those things are small."

The distinction remained there without another speech growing around it.

"I'm calm because you keep showing me the frightening parts before deciding what to do with them. And because when you don't know, you say you don't know."

A pause.

"I prefer that to certainty from someone who can make certainty real."

Then her mouth curved more fully.

"Also, you have spent the evening contemplating justice, unlimited power and the privacy of my younger self while stealing vegetables from me. It makes sustained awe difficult."

She leaned forward and pressed a brief kiss to his knuckles before sitting back.

"You're welcome, Ian."

"I have no idea what the time is or even how time works here."

Lethira blinked, then looked towards the windows. Outside, full daylight had gone. The common room lamps were doing most of the work now, and dinner had thinned from people arriving hungry into people lingering over cups or preparing to leave.

"Here? Time works mostly by being inconveniently ordinary."

She freed one hand from his long enough to gesture vaguely towards the town beyond the wall.

"Merrowford has bells for useful parts of the day. Markets open. Gates change staffing. Kitchens decide when you are too late to demand fresh food. People with appointments probably care more precisely than I do."

She glanced around the common room.

"I haven't been counting the bells tonight. So I can tell you it is evening. We have eaten dinner. It is properly dark outside. It is not especially late. If you want an exact number, I don't have one."

Her fingers settled back into his.

"And if you mean how time here relates to your world..."

Lethira gave him a look.

"You are asking the elf who has watched you disappear for an unknown amount of your time and return after an equally useless amount of mine. I believe the technical answer is: badly."

She leaned slightly closer.

"Do you need to know the time for something?"

"I was just curious it felt a more mundane and yet interesting question. like coin."

Lethira smiled.

"I understand. Those may be better questions than the enormous ones."

She glanced around the common room again, as though seeing its lamps, cups and thinning tables through his unfamiliarity for a moment.

"Coin. Bells. When people eat. How an inn decides morning has begun. Which shops close early. Whether people here count an hour the same way people do elsewhere. I know the practical answers because I grew up with them. I don't usually have to explain why a bell belongs where it does in a day."

Her eyes returned to him.

"And you know things about your world that way too. You knew what underwear to buy without understanding that I would find the elastic interesting."

A faint smile.

"Perhaps that is part of travelling properly. Discovering which completely ordinary things stop being obvious when another person looks at them. I like those questions."

A beat passed.

"They are considerably less dangerous than asking whether you should depose a king. And so far, coin has produced fewer ethical difficulties than onions."

"does this world have gods? and do they really exist, or, does no-one really know?"

Lethira considered that longer than the question's simplicity suggested.

"We certainly have religions. Humans worship gods. The Sun Father is one of the larger ones in this part of the world. Priests have temples, teachings, rites, arguments with other priests and considerable confidence about what their god wants."

Her mouth curved faintly.

"None of which proves the god."

She glanced towards Ian.

"Dwarves have their own sacred traditions. Different peoples understand spirits, the world and whatever lies behind magic differently. Wood Elves have lived beside spirits for longer than any history I know, but a spirit existing does not make every story told about it true. Some spirits are plainly creatures of mana. Strange ones, sometimes intelligent ones, but still things we can encounter."

Lethira rested her hands around the cup.

"I have never met a god. I have never met anyone whose account convinced me that they had. Holy magic exists. That much is undeniable. Thomas could do things which priests would happily describe as divine. The Hero machinery exists too, and some of it is older than anyone who understands it. Whether that means a god made it, gods made it, people made it with knowledge we lost, or something else entirely..."

She shook her head.

"We don't know."

The uncertainty seemed entirely comfortable to her.

"So yes. Gods exist as belief, worship and institutions. Whether there are actual beings behind those beliefs? No-one has proved it to me."

Then her mouth curved.

"Which I suppose is especially awkward now that I am having dinner with a man who can alter reality and insists he isn't one."

"If they exist, we should go meet them."

Lethira stared at Ian for a moment, then laughed. Not because she thought he was joking. That was the problem.

"You say that as though we've just discovered there may be a particularly good bathhouse beyond the next hill."

Her amusement lingered while she considered the proposition properly.

"Most people spend their lives deciding whether gods exist. You have apparently moved directly to arranging an introduction."

She glanced towards the dark windows.

"If they do exist, I have several questions before *meeting them* becomes the obvious next step. Where are they? Do they want visitors? Are they beings we would even recognise as people? Did they make this world, or merely acquire followers in it? Are they responsible for anything attributed to them?"

A beat passed.

"And if they are responsible... I may not be polite."

The possibility seemed to interest her rather than frighten her.

She leaned back in her chair.

"I admit I would like to know. Not enough to ask your machine to invent a god for us. And not enough to accept the first impressive creature that appears and calls itself one."

Her eyes met his.

"But if there is something real behind the religions of this world—something which already exists independently of you—then yes. I would want to see what happens when Ian Kirk knocks on its door."

She paused.

"Preferably after breakfast."

"100% after breakfast. But I think it would be *interesting* and from what my world's mythology of many-gods, or even one-god, says, they are rarely pleasant. i think i might find them finding out what i am, also *very interesting*."

Lethira's smile became slower.

"Yes."

She looked at him with renewed consideration, as though turning the proposed meeting around and discovering that the strange part might not be the god.

"I had been imagining us finding something ancient and incomprehensible, then deciding whether it deserved the title. I had not properly considered its perspective."

The thought plainly entertained her.

"If there is a being somewhere which has spent ten thousand years receiving prayers, frightening priests and allowing kings to claim its favour, I would very much like to see its expression when you explain that you can rewrite reality and have recently chosen to use that ability for laundry."

A small laugh escaped her.

"Especially if it believes *it* is omnipotent."

Lethira picked up her cup, discovered it nearly empty and put it back down.

The humour did not entirely leave her face, but she became more thoughtful.

"Though I would not assume power makes the meeting safe merely because yours is greater. If gods exist, they may know things we don't. They may be old in ways that matter. Or they may have rules, places or relationships with this world which are not solved by asking which of you can do the larger impossible thing."

She shrugged lightly.

"Or perhaps we find an extremely powerful creature with excellent publicity."

That possibility seemed equally acceptable.

Lethira reached across the table and took Ian's hand again.

"But yes. After breakfast, someday, if we can find a way to ask whether anything is actually there without creating the answer ourselves... I want to meet the gods with you."

She paused.

"Possibly from slightly behind you at first. I think I have earned that privilege after spending today teaching omnipotence how to follow sheep tracks."

"Would you want to join me, if I went?"

Lethira did not answer immediately. The question was simpler than the ones around it. No machine. No proof. No argument about what counted as a god. Just whether she wanted to be there.

"Yes. I would."

Her fingers closed more firmly around his.

"Partly because I would be curious. Partly because if something genuinely divine exists in this world, I have spent long enough living beneath whatever consequences it has chosen to leave unexplained. And partly because I would like to see you meet something you cannot dismiss as merely another human institution."

Her gaze returned to him.

"If we find nothing, we find nothing. If we find something powerful which turns out not to be a god, that is still interesting."

The smile sharpened slightly.

"And if we actually find a god... I am absolutely coming. I refuse to let you meet the creator of existence alone and then return with a summary."

"this sounds fun. tomorrow fun. for now, shall we go for an evening walk ? assume it's evening."

It was evening now, properly so. The common-room windows had become dark panes reflecting lamplight and movement back into the room.

Lethira smiled.

"Yes."

She released Ian's hand only long enough to gather the remaining coins and settle the meal. The onions had survived dinner with losses, but no further legal proceedings appeared likely.

When she returned to the table, she stood and stretched lightly.

"I would like that."

There was no need to make the walk useful. Tomorrow could contain Guild work, and some later day might contain the considerably stranger problem of finding out whether gods existed strongly enough to be visited.

Tonight only had to be Merrowford at night.

Lethira collected her cloak from the room before they left. She kept her knives at her belt but left the bow behind; they were walking familiar public streets near their inn, not beginning an expedition after dark.

Outside, the town had changed again.

Merrowford's daytime clutter had contracted into pools of light beneath doors and hanging lamps. Many shopfronts were shuttered. Others remained open just enough for late customers, workers finishing business, or people who had decided evening was the correct time to buy food they could have bought three hours earlier.

The air was cooler now. Smoke hung more noticeably without the day's warmth lifting it away, mixed with river damp and the last cooking smells from inns and houses.

Lethira stood just beyond the Reed and Wheel's door for a moment.

Then she reached for Ian's hand.

"Come on. No Guild board. No gods. No moral judgement of northern officials."

A small smile.

"We may attempt to remain ordinary for at least half an hour."

She started along Bridge Street at an unhurried pace, keeping close enough that their shoulders occasionally brushed when the street narrowed.

Merrowford after dark interested her differently from the town she had inspected on arrival. There was less temptation to compare individual businesses with memory when most signs had disappeared into shadow. Instead she noticed patterns: which corners remained busy, which alleys carried enough traffic to be comfortable, where lamps had been added since her earlier visits and where old stone still held the shape of routes she remembered.

At the little bridge they had crossed on their way to the inn, Lethira slowed.

Water beneath it caught pieces of lamplight from nearby buildings, breaking them into narrow shifting lines.

She rested her free hand against the parapet.

"This is better at night."

No historical comparison followed.

She simply watched the water.

A pair of people crossed behind them carrying baskets between them. Somewhere farther uphill, somebody was singing badly enough that several nearby voices joined in, apparently deciding volume might improve accuracy.

Lethira listened.

"It has not."

Her hand tightened around Ian's.

Then she resumed walking, steering them away from the busier market streets and gradually downhill towards the river.

"Lethira?"

She looked across at him immediately.

The riverward street had narrowed enough that they were walking close, hands still joined between them. Lethira slowed rather than stopping altogether.

"Yes?"

Her attention settled fully on Ian, the town around them briefly becoming background rather than destination.

"This time with you is a never ending bubbling stream of wonderful."

Lethira stopped walking.

For once, she had no immediate answer.

The lamplight from a nearby doorway caught the side of her face and one long ear, leaving the other in shadow. Her fingers tightened around Ian's hand. Colour reached her ears slowly enough that there was no pretending the cool evening air had caused it.

"That is..."

She looked down briefly, smiling in a way that seemed to annoy her by existing.

"Very difficult to tease."

Lethira stepped closer until their joined hands rested between them.

"I like that you keep saying things like that when I am least prepared for them."

Her eyes lifted to his.

"And I know you mean it."

For a few seconds she simply stood there with him while Merrowford continued around them. A door shut farther uphill. Water moved somewhere beyond the dark buildings towards the river. Nobody nearby knew that one sentence had stopped a B-rank Wood Elf in the middle of an evening walk.

Then her smile became warmer.

"My time with you has been strange, impossible, occasionally alarming, badly packed and increasingly difficult to explain. And wonderful."

Her thumb moved across his hand.

A smaller smile followed.

"A lot."

She leaned in and kissed him softly, then stayed close when the kiss ended.

"Come on, strange human. I want to keep walking in your bubbling stream."

Ian let her lead him onward.

Lethira did not choose the shortest route to the river.

That became apparent when she ignored the first street descending towards the quays and instead followed a narrower lane between older buildings. The road surface changed beneath them, packed earth giving way to irregular stone near a row of workshops already closed for the night. Most shutters were drawn. One doorway still leaked lamplight around its edges, carrying the faint smell of glue and cut wood into the street.

Lethira walked without hurry.

The town required less attention now that traffic had thinned. She still noticed corners and approaching footsteps before Ian had any reason to care about them, but the habitual awareness sat behind the evening rather than controlling it.

Their hands remained joined.

At one junction she slowed beside a low stone wall and looked down a lane that ended at darkness between warehouses.

"I think that used to reach the river. Or I am confidently remembering somewhere else."

The admission seemed to please her.

She continued without investigating.

Eventually the buildings opened.

The river appeared beyond a final row of sheds, broader at night than it had seemed during the afternoon. Merrowford's lamps did not illuminate it so much as break apart across it. Thin gold lines stretched and vanished with every movement of the surface. Farther upstream, a barge carried two small lanterns, one at either end, giving almost no indication of the size between them.

Lethira led Ian away from the working quay.

The path they had walked earlier was darker now, but not deserted. A pair of fishermen passed carrying baskets back towards town. Someone sat alone beneath a tree farther down the bank, smoking something whose ember briefly marked his face before darkness took it again.

Lethira kept walking.

The noise of the town gradually became something behind them.

At the place where they had stopped that afternoon, she did not stop.

She took them farther.

The path narrowed between the river and a line of low trees until the grass underfoot replaced most of the worn earth. Here the water was the loudest thing available, though even that was gentle: small movements against roots and exposed stones, the occasional soft collapse of an undermined edge.

Lethira finally slowed near an old willow leaning over the bank.

No building lights reached this far directly. Merrowford remained visible upstream as a loose collection of warm points, enough to show where people were without turning the river into scenery arranged for them.

She released Ian's hand only long enough to step down onto a flatter patch of grass.

Then she turned and offered hers again.

"This is better."

She looked towards the town.

"In daylight I keep trying to decide what I remember. At night most of the differences have the courtesy to become indistinct."

There was no sadness in it.

Lethira stood there for a while, her shoulder close to Ian's, watching a distant lantern move slowly along the opposite bank.

A night bird called once from somewhere behind them.

She glanced towards the sound automatically.

Nothing followed.

Her attention returned to the water.

"I used to think knowing a place meant being able to find everything in it. Now I think perhaps it means being able to come back after years and tolerate being wrong."

A faint smile appeared.

"The candle shop is allowed to become a tailor. Moss is allowed to steal sheep."

She looked sideways at Ian.

"And apparently I am allowed to return as a B-rank adventurer with an omnipotent foreign aide who needs lessons in currency and intends to investigate the existence of gods after breakfast."

Her smile widened.

"Merrowford has handled all of this surprisingly well."

She turned back towards the river.

For several breaths neither of them needed to add anything.

Then Lethira lowered herself onto the grass beneath the willow, choosing a place dry enough that tomorrow's trousers would not begin the day carrying half the riverbank.

She looked up at Ian, one knee raised loosely beneath her cloak.

"Come sit with me?"

Ian sat next to her, as close as physics permitted. He rested his hand on her leg.

Lethira looked down at it, then at the complete absence of space between them.

Her smile arrived slowly.

"I see."

She shifted just enough to make the closeness easier rather than greater, settling her shoulder firmly against his. Beneath Ian's hand, her leg was warm through the travelling cloth, relaxed but carrying the familiar underlying strength that never needed to advertise itself.

One of Lethira's hands came to rest over his.

She left it there.

The river moved below them in the dark. Upstream, Merrowford's scattered lamps stretched and broke across the water whenever the current disturbed their reflections.

For a while Lethira seemed content simply to sit.

Then she leaned her head against Ian's.

"This may be the least efficient position available. I like it."

Her fingers curled lightly around his.

The willow shifted overhead in a small movement of night air. Lethira watched the water for another few seconds before turning her face slightly towards him.

"You know, when you first suggested walking towns and staying in inns, I thought I understood what you wanted. I understood roads. Food. Getting tired. Finding rooms. Letting places be themselves."

Her thumb moved once across the back of his hand.

"I did not understand that I would enjoy having you beside me this much while absolutely nothing was happening."

She left the admission there, quiet enough that it belonged to the riverbank rather than a declaration requiring an answer.

Then her eyes dropped briefly towards his hand on her leg.

"Although *nothing* may be an imprecise description."

"i..." Ian turned to her, wetness in his eyes, a smile on his face.

For a moment he considered saying those three words.

He hesitated.

Did he really mean it?

The word carried too many meanings to use carelessly. Wanting her. Trusting her. Caring what she thought of him. Wanting more roads, more ridiculous meals, more evenings in towns he did not understand. The amount he cared had become larger than the uncertainty around the word.

He said it.

He meant it.

"i.. love you."

Lethira went completely still.

Her hand remained over his where it rested on her leg. The river continued moving below them. Somewhere upstream, a lantern shifted across the water and broke into fragments of gold.

She looked at Ian's face.

The wetness in his eyes seemed to affect her more than the words at first. Her own expression changed slowly, the usual readiness for humour nowhere in it.

"Ian."

She turned towards him as far as their closeness allowed and lifted one hand to his cheek.

For several seconds she said nothing.

Then her thumb moved gently beneath his eye.

"I love you too."

The words came quietly.

No qualification followed them.

Lethira's eyes had become bright as well. She gave a small, almost disbelieving smile, as though hearing herself say it had made something she had been carrying privately become newly solid.

Then she leaned forward and kissed him.

It was not hungry and did not become playful. She held his face in one hand and kept the other over his on her leg, staying close after the kiss ended until their foreheads rested together.

"I love you," she said again, softer this time.

A breath that might have become a laugh trembled instead.

"Apparently a lot was not the final measurement."

Ian embraced her tightly and held her. Not wanting to let go, he cried a little, joyful and happy.

For a moment Lethira only received him.

Then both of her arms came around him, closing with the easy strength he had learned to recognise without mistaking it for restraint. She drew him against her until there was nowhere useful left for the space between them to go.

Ian did not want to let go.

His face pressed against Lethira's shoulder. Her travelling cloak gathered beneath his fingers. The river moved on below them as if nothing extraordinary had happened beneath the willow.

Lethira held him through it.

One hand settled against the back of his head. The other stayed broad and warm between his shoulders. She did not tell him not to cry, or explain what the tears meant, or rescue the moment with a joke before it had finished being itself.

Her cheek rested against him.

"I've got you."

The words were almost lost beneath the river.

Ian's hold tightened.

Lethira answered in kind, enough strength in the embrace that he could feel how little effort it cost her and how deliberately she was choosing exactly this much.

Her own breathing had become uneven.

When Ian shifted enough to see her, there were tears on her face too.

That seemed to surprise her.

Lethira laughed once, very quietly, and wiped one away with the heel of her hand without releasing him with the other arm.

"Well. This is inconvenient."

Her smile trembled.

Then she stopped trying to manage her expression.

Lethira pulled him back against her and held him again.

"I love you."

This time the words were against his hair.

No teasing followed.

They stayed beneath the willow with the town upstream and the river in front of them, holding one another long after either embrace needed to prove anything.

Ian kissed her eyelids gently, one and then the other.

Lethira's eyes closed beneath the touch.

Then he kissed her lips.

She answered immediately, softly, her hand rising to the side of his face as the kiss lingered. Nothing in it hurried towards the intensity they had found in the bath. It belonged to the tears still drying on both their faces and the words they had finally said aloud.

When Ian returned to the embrace, Lethira folded around him again.

This time she settled more comfortably into the hold, one arm across his back and the other around his shoulders, her cheek resting against the side of his head.

For a while she said nothing.

The need for language seemed to have passed.

The river kept moving. Night insects worked somewhere in the grass. Merrowford remained upstream as a scattering of lamps, near enough to return to and far enough away that nobody walking its streets could see them beneath the willow.

Lethira's fingers moved slowly against Ian's back.

Eventually she breathed out.

"I think I am going to remember this place. Not because it was here before. Because this happened here."

She stayed against him for several more breaths.

Then a small smile touched her voice.

"And if that warehouse has swallowed the exact patch of riverbank I used to sit beside, it has finally been forgiven."

"why don't we buy it and live here."

Lethira went still inside the embrace.

Then she pulled back just enough to look at Ian properly.

For several seconds her expression was impossible to read. The tears had not entirely left her eyes. Neither had the happiness. Now surprise joined them, followed by the beginnings of something dangerously close to laughter.

"The warehouse?"

She glanced upstream, towards the buildings that had become little more than dark shapes around scattered lamps.

"You have known Merrowford for approximately two days, discovered that I once sat somewhere near this river, and your response is to acquire property."

Her mouth curved.

"Remarkably human."

But she did not dismiss the idea.

That was the more important change.

Lethira looked back towards the river. The place had been familiar to her once. It was becoming something new now: an inn she had never known, a Guild tag returned to usefulness, Moss and his stolen sheep, Ian beside her under a willow, and three words neither of them could take back without making them false.

Her hand found his again.

"I have a home. So do you. Somewhere I cannot even reach without you."

A pause.

"And I have work. Aelira. My people. Roads I still want."

Her thumb moved across his fingers.

"But... I don't hate the thought."

That seemed to surprise her enough that she laughed softly.

"A room here sometimes. A place that is ours when we come through. Somewhere we could leave things without carrying them back and forth like badly organised adventurers."

Her gaze returned to Ian.

"Living here is a much larger sentence. Did you mean it?"

"this land we're on now... or maybe a nicer spot just outside of Merrowford. maybe a place for us to call *our* home, even if we have other places to be and live."

Ian's voice softened.

"i'm a bit emotional now, this might be a terrible idea."

Lethira looked at him for a long time.

The humour which had begun around buying a warehouse disappeared.

Her hand tightened around his.

"No. I don't think it's a terrible idea."

That was not the same as agreement, and she seemed in no hurry to make it one.

Lethira looked across the dark river instead. The ground beneath them was only a patch of grass below an old willow, useful because it was dry and quiet and close enough to Merrowford to walk home from. Somewhere beyond the town were fields, farm roads, low hills and pieces of country neither of them had seen yet.

"A place that is ours."

She tried the words carefully.

"Not yours that I visit. Not mine that you appear inside. Ours."

The word affected her.

Lethira breathed out and leaned into him again, though this time she kept enough distance to see his face.

"I like that. Quite a lot."

She looked upstream towards Merrowford.

"But I don't want us to buy the first patch of land we fall in love beside while we're both crying."

The smile strengthened.

"That sounds like something people tell a story about twenty years later while explaining why the roof leaks."

Her thumb moved across his hand.

"If we mean it tomorrow, we can look. Not necessarily here. Somewhere near enough to Merrowford that we can walk into town. Far enough out that we have trees, perhaps some land, and nobody sharing the other side of the wall when you make an unfortunate comment about my breasts."

Colour touched her ears, but she continued.

"A place with room for your strange things and my ordinary ones. Somewhere I could leave a bow. Somewhere you could keep clothes without reality washing them because you only own two shirts."

A small laugh escaped.

Then she became serious again.

"I would not want it to replace my home in the Woods. And I would not ask you to abandon yours. But another home does not have to erase the others. I have lived long enough to know that one place does not have to contain an entire life."

For several seconds she was silent.

Then she looked back at him, and the happiness in her expression had become almost shy.

"I think I want to look for it with you."

She leaned forward and kissed him softly.

"Tomorrow."

A second, smaller kiss.

"After breakfast. Apparently tomorrow has become very busy."

"Building a home - check; Challenging the gods - check. to me that sounds like morning and afternoon sorted."

Lethira stared at him.

Then she laughed into his shoulder.

"Of course. Breakfast, purchase land, establish shared domestic future, locate the divine."

She considered the sequence with grave attention.

"We should probably leave enough time for lunch. And perhaps inspect the roof before confronting creation."

She drew back just enough to look at him, happiness still bright in her face.

"I think tomorrow may require some prioritisation. Which is unfortunate, because I want to do both."

Her expression softened.

"The home first."

Not because it was more important in any cosmic sense. Because it was theirs.

Lethira rested her forehead against his.

"We look. We don't have to buy anything. We find out what land near Merrowford even costs, whether foreigners can own it, whether Wood Elves can, what rights attach to the river, roads, trees, building..."

Her mouth curved.

"You know. The romantic questions."

Then the mischief returned.

"And after that, if we still have sufficient administrative stamina, we can investigate whether gods exist."

She kissed him once.

"An entirely reasonable day."

"Yes, now i think its time to retire. I am feeling tired and i want to go to sleep in your arms, but not if i'm going to slip into the river."

Lethira looked at the dark water below them.

"That would damage the evening considerably."

She stood first and offered Ian her hand.

"And yes. Come back to bed with me."

There was no teasing in the invitation beyond the warmth of her smile.

Ian took her hand, rose, and followed her back towards Merrowford.

The walk upstream was quieter than the journey out. Their pace had lost whatever remained of the day's purpose. Lethira knew the route now well enough that she no longer paused at every junction to compare it with memory, and Ian stayed beside her wherever the path permitted, their hands joined through the darker stretches between lamps.

Neither tried to solve tomorrow.

Land could wait until breakfast. So could gods.

Voss remained somewhere in Crownholt, morally unresolved and several kingdoms away. The Guild board would contain whatever problems people had pinned to it by morning. Somewhere beyond Merrowford, there might or might not be a patch of ground they would one day call theirs.

Tonight had already done enough.

At the little stone bridge, Lethira stopped only long enough to look at the broken reflections beneath it.

Then she continued.

The Reed and Wheel was quieter when they returned. A few people remained in the common room with cups or low conversation, but the dinner crowd had gone. The innkeeper glanced up as they entered, recognised two paying guests returning to a room they already possessed, and required nothing from them.

Upstairs, Lethira closed the door behind them.

The room was exactly as they had left it.

Her bow waited by the wall. The new Guild tag remained among her travelling things. Ian's photographs were protected inside her pack. Their boots came off near the door, followed by the ordinary small preparations of people who expected to sleep rather than begin another conversation simply because they were alone.

When the lamp was lowered, the bed accepted them with less negotiation than the bedroll had.

Lethira settled on her side and opened one arm towards Ian.

He went into it.

She drew him close, arranging him against her with the familiarity they had already begun acquiring: his head near her shoulder, her arm around his back, one long leg finding a comfortable place alongside his.

No pinning. No teasing. Only the embrace he had asked to sleep inside.

Lethira kissed his forehead.

"I love you."

The words still sounded new enough to deserve the quiet around them.

Her arm tightened once.

"Sleep."

Outside the window, Merrowford continued into night.

Neither of them slipped into the river.