## Chapter 474 — After the Road

By the time the kettle began to steam, Mirelen had taken her boots off and found a small tear in her sleeve.

She sat at the scarred table in the front room with the shirt across her knees, wearing a spare from her pack while Lethira lent her needle and thread. The front-room window stood open to the sound of the stream. One branch scraped faintly against another outside, and the two bows they had carried all day rested where they had been put away near the door.

“I thought you were going to leave that until morning,” Lethira said.

“I was. Then I put my finger through it.”

Mirelen held the sleeve up. The new tear sat beside an older repair whose thread had faded almost to the colour of the cloth. She unpicked part of the old seam so the new one would have something sound to hold to.

“That shirt is getting thin.”

“It’s comfortable.”

Lethira let the matter go. Mirelen had defended worse pieces of clothing for longer.

They had eaten in Merrowford after the road sweep and walked home without hurrying. Now tea occupied the table, Mirelen’s boots waited by the door and the day had settled into the part where nothing else needed completing.

Lethira went through to the kitchen for another cup. The front door opened.

Ian came through it, pleasantly surprised to find Mirelen there, and walked into the kitchen. He bent to kiss Lethira on the cheek.

“Hello, Mirelen. How are you?”

Mirelen looked up, keeping the needle safely away from the cloth.

“Hello, Ian. Very well, thank you. We’ve been out with a road crew today.”

Lethira smiled at the kiss and carried the cup back through to the table.

Mirelen returned to the seam. “Greybacks near the cutting. Three other adventurers with us. Good company, fortunately. We stayed for a drink afterward.”

“Half the woodland seems to have followed you home,” Lethira said.

Mirelen looked down at the leaf caught against her trouser cuff. “I thought I got all of it.”

She removed it and set it beside the sewing rather than dropping it on the floor.

“It was good to get out together,” she added. “Usually when I finally catch her at the settlement, one of us is leaving again.”

“How did the other party members react to having two such experienced Wardens present? I’d be relieved.”

“Dessa seemed relieved,” Mirelen said. “She’d already been one of the people followed out of the cutting, so she knew there was something real there. I don’t think she expected both of us.”

She pushed the needle through and drew the thread taut.

“Senn was more excited than relieved. He’d worked with Wardens before, apparently, but never two at once. He was disappointed he missed me crossing the fallen tree.”

“He was reloading,” Lethira said.

“I was not going back to do it again for him.”

Mirelen bent over the sleeve again, pulling the new seam flatter with her thumb. The road party had evidently survived both the greybacks and the Wardens’ opinions.

“Tavian mostly wanted to know whether two Wardens would make the rest of us impossible to argue with,” Lethira added. “Then Dessa moved the position I suggested because the footing was poor.”

Mirelen nodded. “One pace. Loose stone under the shield side.”

“I liked that. You do not always find out how someone works until something is coming at them.”

“Those two handled their greyback neatly. I’d work with them again.”

Mirelen set her cup down beside the repaired sleeve. The account had moved from the fight itself into the more ordinary question of what kind of work she chose to attach herself to.

“Have you done ranked Guild work before, Mirelen?”

“A few times, alongside Guild parties,” Mirelen said. “Usually when their work overlapped one of our patrols. I’ve spent much more time on Warden circuits and teaching.”

She set down the cup she had been holding between stitches.

“I’ve generally joined the work rather than taken the contract myself. That was the arrangement today too. Brannock accepted Lethira’s recommendation and entered me as an attached Warden.”

Lethira refilled her own cup.

“I’d work with those three again,” Mirelen continued. “Though I’m having a late breakfast tomorrow. I came here for a visit, and somehow Dawnleaf had me at the gate before I’d properly finished waking up.”

“She is a cruel taskmaster.” Ian smirked.

Mirelen laughed, holding the needle clear of the sleeve.

“Don’t encourage her. I’m trying to secure a late breakfast.”

“You were quite keen when you read the notice,” Lethira said.

“I was quite keen in the afternoon.”

Ian sat down with them and drank his tea.

For a little while the room settled around the three of them. Mirelen finished the last stitches, slipped her hand into the sleeve and spread her fingers beneath the repair. The cloth held, although the new seam pulled it slightly out of shape.

“It’ll last,” she decided.

“For how long?” Lethira asked.

“That depends on whether you continue arranging work involving fallen trees.”

Mirelen folded the sleeve once, hiding the newest repair among the older ones.

“You crossed the tree voluntarily.”

“Yes. That is why I’m blaming you.”

Mirelen folded the repaired shirt and noticed one of the house plans left beneath a small weight at the other end of the table. She drew it closer.

“What is this?”

“Our ground floor,” Lethira said.

Mirelen rotated the parchment.

“It looks much less comfortable from above.”

“That was my first impression.”

The furniture marks had made the drawing recognisable without making it elegant. The scarred table occupied its actual place. Chairs sat at slightly different angles around it. Kitchen storage crowded one side in practical blocks rather than neat symmetry.

Mirelen found the table on the plan and looked down at the real one beneath her elbows.

“You even put this thing on it.”

“It would have been difficult to omit.”

“You could have improved it.”

Mirelen tapped the drawn table with one fingernail, as though the parchment might still accept better furniture by argument.

“That would rather defeat mapping.”

Mirelen considered one chair mark which had been left slightly crooked.

“This one appears to have suffered.”

“That was not entirely my fault.”

Lethira did not elaborate. Mirelen’s eyes moved briefly towards Ian and then back to the parchment. She let the unexplained chair remain unexplained.

Instead she traced the route from the front door towards the kitchen.

“I like this.”

“The map?”

“The house. The map makes me notice where you have to walk around things.”

She indicated the table.

“You’ve put the largest object directly where everyone wants to cross the room.”

“We eat at it.”

“I didn’t say it was wrong.”

Ian chuckled and let them carry on.

The conversation wandered through Southbank Lower, current shops Lethira had noticed on recent visits and several streets Mirelen had only ever used as ways to somewhere else. From there it moved, without any clear decision, into old Warden stories.

Mirelen supplied one about a winter circuit where a repair to her snowshoe had squeaked for most of an afternoon.

“The snowshoe worked,” she said.

“It announced us to everything within half a valley.”

“Nothing attacked.”

Lethira’s expression said the memory had been louder than Mirelen’s defence.

“Because it heard you coming.”

Mirelen folded her arms. “That still counts.”

They moved on to a younger Warden who agreed with every instruction quickly enough to make Mirelen suspicious that none of his opinions were surviving contact with seniority.

“He is competent,” Mirelen said. “That is what makes it irritating. If he were simply frightened, I could work with frightened.”

“Put him with Sairen,” Lethira said.

Mirelen stared at her.

“That would produce an opinion.”

“It might produce several.”

“Better.”

Mirelen considered it seriously enough that the joke became a possible plan.

At some point Lethira brought more hot water to the table. Mirelen accepted another half cup, then reached again for the ground-floor plan.

“What is this?”

“Pantry.”

Mirelen traced the next block on the plan with one finger.

“And this?”

“Outside store.”

Mirelen looked towards the actual kitchen.

“You need more shelves.”

“I know.”

“You have room.”

Lethira set her cup down and looked towards the wall Mirelen had in mind. The space was real; so were three other unfinished household decisions already competing for it.

“I know.”

“You could put—”

“I know where shelves work.”

Mirelen stopped.

A moment passed.

Then she smiled.

“There she is.”

Lethira pointed two fingers at her. “You are a guest.”

“Yes.”

“That condition can be reviewed.”

Mirelen returned the parchment to the table with exaggerated care.

“I will refrain from reorganising your pantry until morning.”

“That is all I ask.”

The room had darkened while they talked. Lethira lit the lamp and turned the wick down once the flame steadied. Mirelen looked towards the open front door.

“You leave that open often?”

“In weather like this.”

“No insects?”

The lamp flame shifted in the small current from the doorway.

“Yes.”

“That seems like a poor arrangement.”

As if to support her, something small flew through the doorway, circled the lamp once and disappeared towards the kitchen.

Mirelen watched it go.

“Excellent system.”

Lethira got up and closed the door.

“That problem is solved.”

“Remarkably efficient.”

The conversation slowed after that. Mirelen’s cup emptied. She collected the repaired shirt and stood, stretching one arm overhead before draping the cloth over it.

“I am going upstairs before you give me more ideas which require paperwork.”

“That sounds wise,” Lethira said.

When Mirelen had disappeared upstairs, Ian leaned towards Lethira.

“We could”—he cleared his throat—“remember we have some salted bacon and eggs in the pantry for a nicer breakfast, if you wish.”

He attempted to look innocent, rather than mischievous and omnipotent.

Lethira watched him.

“Salted bacon and eggs.”

She glanced towards the pantry.

“You are suggesting that we have somehow possessed those all evening without either of us mentioning them.”

Ian’s expression did not improve her opinion of the situation.

A smile began at one corner of her mouth.

“I see.”

She leaned a little closer, lowering her voice unnecessarily now that Mirelen was upstairs.

“Then tomorrow morning I shall make absolutely no enquiries into the provenance of breakfast.”

Her shoulder rested against his.

“And if Mirelen asks, I expect you to maintain that face.”

A few portions of salted bacon and eggs appeared on the table, wrapped like ordinary local produce.

“Is this OK?”

Lethira opened one corner of the bacon parcel, inspected the cut and cure, then checked the eggs.

“Yes.”

She folded the wrapping closed again.

“This looks ordinary enough that I’m willing to cook it without feeling that breakfast has become another experiment.”

Her eyes lifted to Ian.

“And considerably more convincing than the face.”

Ian put the food in the pantry. Later, he and Lethira retired to bed and slept until morning.

---

Morning entered the house through pale strips of light and the smell of frying bacon.

Mirelen was already at the front-room table, her hair tied back loosely and the repaired shirt on again. A mug stood between her hands. In the kitchen, Lethira began turning the bacon in the pan; they talked through the open doorway.

“You said bread,” Mirelen observed.

“I changed my mind.”

Mirelen looked towards the eggs waiting beside the range.

“You changed it considerably.”

“Yes.”

The answer was delivered with enough composure that Mirelen stared at her for several seconds before her gaze shifted towards Ian.

Lethira kept her attention on the pan.

“Do not involve him. This is breakfast.”

Ian held both hands up.

“Breakfast is outside of my stated authority.”

Mirelen looked from him to Lethira and back again.

“A remarkably convenient jurisdiction.”

Lethira turned the bacon once more and said nothing. That silence did considerably less to defend her innocence than she seemed to think.

Mirelen took another drink.

“I withdraw my complaint about bread.”

“You never complained about bread.”

“I was preparing to.”

Lethira divided the food between three plates without attempting anything decorative and brought them through to the table with bread alongside.

Mirelen inspected her breakfast.

“This visit has improved overnight.”

“Careful,” Lethira said, sitting down. “You’ll encourage the household.”

Ian tucked into the bacon and eggs with enthusiasm. They were among his favourites.

Mirelen noticed after a few bites.

“You appear to have strong opinions about this breakfast for someone with no authority over it.”

“He has strong opinions about many things beyond his jurisdiction,” Lethira said.

“I’m learning,” Mirelen replied.

The bacon disappeared quickly from all three plates. Mirelen preferred hers with bread dipped into the remaining egg yolk, while Lethira ate without much ceremony and reached for another slice before the first was finished.

For a while breakfast displaced conversation. The front room filled with the scrape of knives against plates, the smell of hot fat and the soft morning noise coming through the open window. Outside, the stream was louder than it had seemed at night.

Mirelen eventually sat back with the last piece of bread in one hand.

“I may revise my late-breakfast demand.”

Lethira looked at her.

“Earlier?”

“No. More breakfasts.”

“That is not how mornings work.”

Mirelen ate the last corner of bread with the satisfaction of someone proposing reform from a position of full stomach.

“It could be.”

Ian raised a hand.

“I agree with Mirelen on the philosophical concept of multiple breakfasts.”

Mirelen pointed at him with the last corner of her bread.

“There. A second opinion.”

“From the man who has just declared himself outside breakfast jurisdiction,” Lethira said.

“That does not prevent philosophical contribution.”

Lethira reached for the bread, choosing food over constitutional argument.

“It should.”

Mirelen considered this, then shook her head. “No. I think breakfast is exactly the sort of subject on which people without authority become most confident.”

Lethira looked between the two of them and gave up trying to conceal her amusement.

“Fine. You may both believe in as many breakfasts as you like.”

She reached for the bread.

“I am still only cooking one.”

Ian reached over and squeezed Lethira’s hand.

“That was lovely, thank you.”

Lethira turned her hand beneath his and squeezed back.

“You’re welcome.”

Across the table, Mirelen finished the last of her tea and looked towards the window. Morning had brightened over the trees, and the stream beyond them flashed occasionally between the leaves.

“I suppose,” she said, “that if I demanded Southbank Lower yesterday, I should eventually make the effort to put boots on.”

“Eventually,” Lethira agreed.

Mirelen settled more comfortably into her chair.

Neither woman moved.

Ian eventually got up, cleared the table, dealt with the rubbish, returned the unused bacon and eggs to the pantry and washed the dishes. Lethira took a cloth and dried beside him.

The kitchen was warm from the range. Lethira pushed the window wider before reaching for the next plate. For a while there was little conversation, only water moving in the basin and the soft clink of crockery being put away.

Mirelen finally left her chair and went upstairs for her belt pouch. When she returned, she collected her boots from beside the door and sat to put them on, running a thumb over the eased leather inside one heel before pulling it into place.

“I want to look at cloth while we’re there,” she said. “Enough for another shirt. Preferably something I won’t have to patch immediately.”

“We can do that.”

Mirelen nodded and bent over the second boot. She had stopped defending the old shirt, although she was wearing it again.

By the time the dishes were finished, both boots were laced. Lethira hung the drying cloth near the window and fetched her bag. Mirelen opened the front door, letting sunlight fall across the hall.

“You two lovely ladies have a nice time in town.”

“We will,” Lethira said.

She kissed Ian’s cheek before following Mirelen outside.

Beyond the doorway, sunlight warmed the path and caught the dew still clinging to the grass beneath the trees. Mirelen waited while Lethira settled her bag, then the two of them took the lane towards the road.

---

They had left late enough to meet people coming back.

A woman with two empty baskets passed them near the turning. Farther on, a cart carried sacks, a small child and a man asleep with his hat over his face. The driver raised a hand as the Wardens stepped aside. Mirelen watched the child trying to push a finger through a hole in one of the sacks.

“He’ll have grain in his shoes before they get home.”

“He may consider that a successful journey.”

The road into Merrowford was dry underfoot. They walked easily, sometimes side by side and sometimes with one falling behind where traffic narrowed the space. Mirelen asked about several places they had passed the previous evening. Lethira knew some of the answers. At others she slowed to look with her, discovering that a shed she had repeatedly walked past held a cooper’s stock rather than animals.

By the west gate, the morning rush had thinned. They continued towards the river and crossed into Southbank Lower by the lower bridge. A loaded barge moved slowly beyond the nearer buildings, its crew small against the stacked cargo. From below came the knock of wood against wood and a shouted instruction which had to be repeated before anyone acted on it.

Lethira was accustomed to using the bridge as a way through. Mirelen wanted to see what lay on both sides of it.

Southbank was busy in a closer fashion than the central market. Shopfronts leaned towards the street beneath upper rooms. Outside one doorway, a rack held coats cut with openings and folds which would have looked misplaced on a human body. A customer was trying one on while the seller rearranged the fabric around the base of his tail. Beside them, two baskets of old fastenings had been sorted by size.

Mirelen slowed at a tray of needles.

“You have needles,” Lethira said.

“I have one good needle. You lent me another last night.”

She chose two, testing their eyes against the light before paying, then tucked them into a piece of folded scrap where they would survive the day.

A little farther on they found a current cloth-and-tailoring shop with bolts stacked deep along the wall and repaired field clothes hanging near the back. Mirelen ran two fingers along the edge of a heavy grey-green piece, then lifted a corner to judge its weight. Lethira found a softer blue beside it and held the two together.

“The green,” Mirelen said.

“I hadn’t asked.”

“You were about to.”

Mirelen explained what she wanted to the shopkeeper: cloth for a field shirt she intended to make herself, stronger than the one she wore without becoming heavy enough to resent under a pack. The woman showed her two close-woven lengths and left her to compare them in the window light.

Lethira watched the decision become unexpectedly difficult.

“You’ve worn that one until there’s almost nothing left of it. I didn’t realise you were so particular.”

“I am particular. That’s why I keep wearing it.”

The answer silenced her.

Mirelen chose the heavier cloth and asked for enough extra to make future repairs. The shopkeeper measured it, cut it and folded it into a parcel.

While she worked, Lethira returned to the blue cloth. It would make a pleasant shirt for wearing around the house. Most of her current clothes had been chosen with weather, pack straps or a bow in mind. This was softer.

Mirelen noticed.

“That one is for you, then.”

“Possibly.”

“Decide while we’re here. I’m not walking back from the bridge because you spent the whole way thinking about it.”

Lethira laughed and asked for a second length.

They left with two parcels and matching thread.

They had intended to wander towards the little square. A display of second-hand books delayed them.

The shop held more stock than its narrow frontage suggested. Some books were well bound. Others had been stitched into plain covers or wrapped in cloth to keep their pages together. Mirelen found a thin brown-covered volume of stories written in Common and took it towards the window.

“Anything good?” Lethira asked.

“A woman has discovered that the man her sister intends to marry is already married. She’s gone to find the first wife.”

“What does the sister think?”

Mirelen turned the page carefully; the paper was thin enough at the lower corner to show how many hands had done the same.

“She hasn’t told her yet.”

Lethira read over her shoulder. Mirelen reached the bottom of the page and waited while Lethira caught up before turning it.

The first wife proved less helpful than expected. She knew exactly where her husband had gone and was pleased that someone else might take responsibility for him.

They stood at the window through another page before the seller cleared her throat.

“Are you buying it?”

Mirelen looked up, caught.

“How much?”

The answer made her inspect the binding. She considered how badly she wanted to know what happened next, then paid.

Outside, she put the book away before Lethira could ask to see another page.

“That is for later.”

“You stopped in an awkward place.”

“Yes. So did you.”

The small square was partly occupied by children and partly by baskets belonging to nearby stalls. A girl had arranged pebbles along the rim of the dry fountain in a pattern another child was trying to copy. Neither was satisfied with his version.

They bought hot food from a stall—smoked river fish, a folded grain cake with beans and sharp pickled roots—and found a place along the fountain’s edge where they were out of the children’s way. Mirelen balanced her cloth parcel on her knees. Lethira moved hers once when a boy nearly stepped on it while arguing about the pebbles.

For a while they ate and watched the square.

A delivery arrived at one stall. The seller counted something twice and sent the young carrier back with part of the load. At the next doorway, a woman hung out a newly finished coat and immediately had to take it down when the breeze blew it into a customer’s face. The children’s game developed a rule which seemed to exist solely to prevent the youngest from winning.

Mirelen finished first.

“I’m glad we came this way.”

“So am I.”

After a little while, Mirelen took out her new book.

“We’re meant to be seeing the town,” Lethira said.

“We have. It’s still there.”

She shifted the cloth parcel between them, making room for Lethira to lean closer. They read two more pages while the square continued around them.

The walk home took them by different streets, a fletcher’s bench, repaired pans and the lower bridge again. Neither bought anything else. By the time they left the gate, the sun had moved far enough to lengthen the shadows beside the road.

They carried their parcels without hurry.

Mirelen had the book in her hand for the first part of the walk, then put it away when a passing cart raised dust.

“How often is he actually here?” she asked after a while.

Lethira glanced at her.

“That did not take long.”

“He is not here. It seemed wasteful.”

“There is no schedule. Sometimes several days together. Sometimes we both have other things to do.”

They stepped aside for a cart where the verge narrowed, then fell back into pace once it had passed.

“And when he is away?”

“I do the things I did before I met him.”

Mirelen nodded.

“You make that sound obvious.”

“It is obvious.”

“Yes. That does not stop people becoming foolish.”

Lethira gave her a look.

They walked another stretch before Mirelen asked, “Does he snore?”

Lethira stared at her.

“What?”

“You were looking as though the first question was too serious.”

“Usually not.”

Mirelen adjusted the cloth parcel under one arm as they walked, apparently satisfied to have replaced one intrusive question with a useless one.

“Useful.”

“Why?”

“It isn’t.”

Lethira shook her head and kept walking.

At the holding they carried the cloth upstairs and spread both lengths across the guest-room floor. Mirelen unfolded her old shirt over the grey-green fabric. Years of repairs had distorted it slightly. One side seam curved where the other did not, and the shoulder had been patched twice in different thread.

“You cannot use that as though it is still the shape it began as,” Lethira said.

“I know.”

“You appear to be using it as though it is still the shape it began as.”

Mirelen shifted the old shirt half an inch and smoothed the shoulder patch flat.

“I am remembering around the repairs.”

“That sounds suspiciously like something a poor tailor says.”

Mirelen looked up.

“Do you want to make your own shirt?”

Lethira went to fetch one of hers.

When she returned, Mirelen had marked the first shoulder and was adjusting the line by eye rather than following the old garment exactly. Lethira laid her shirt over the blue cloth and spent several minutes persuading the sleeves to lie flat.

Mirelen watched her.

“What does he do that annoys you?”

Lethira stopped cutting.

“You wanted questions,” Mirelen said.

“I did not.”

“I wanted questions.”

Lethira flattened the blue cloth with her palm before trusting herself with the knife again.

“That is different.”

“It usually is.”

Lethira looked down at the cloth again.

“He worries ahead.”

“How far?”

“Sometimes years.”

Mirelen waited.

“Sometimes decades.”

“Ah.”

“And he can take something uncertain, think about every way it might become painful, then start trying to solve the pain before it exists.”

Mirelen’s hands slowed. She had seen a smaller version of that herself when he had tried to manage Lethira’s future grief rather than let Lethira decide what she would want.

“He still does that?”

“Less.”

Lethira cut another few inches.

“And he forgets what he has already told me when too much is happening.”

“That seems reassuringly ordinary.”

“It can be extremely irritating.”

They cut the first pieces.

Mirelen was faster. Her knife followed the marked line in controlled strokes, leaving a clean edge with little wasted cloth. Lethira took more care around the shoulder curve. The blue material shifted more easily under her hand.

“Marriage?” Mirelen asked.

Lethira nearly cut through the wrong side of a cuff allowance.

She stopped.

Mirelen did not smile.

“No.”

“I know you are not married.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Mirelen set her knife down rather than risk answering while either of them was cutting.

“I was asking whether you intend to be.”

Lethira put down the knife.

“We have not planned it.”

Mirelen waited.

“I do not know.”

“That is allowed.”

“I know.”

Mirelen’s mouth shifted.

“Just checking.”

“You are becoming intolerable.”

“I have been away. I need to fit a great deal into one visit.”

Lethira picked the knife up again.

“I am not against it. I also do not feel as though owning a house together means every other possible commitment becomes the next task.”

Mirelen nodded. “That sounds like you.”

“Do not sound surprised.”

“I have known you for more than a century. Surprise remains available.”

Lethira threw a small scrap of blue cloth at her. Mirelen caught it and put it beside the other offcuts.

They worked for a while without talking.

When the initial cutting was done, they carried everything downstairs. The scarred table proved far better suited to sewing than the guest-room floor. Mirelen put the book safely beyond the cloth. Lethira heated water, and soon two cups stood between the piles of thread.

Mirelen threaded one of her new needles.

“Does he always call you beautiful?”

Lethira’s needle stopped.

“Not always.”

“Often?”

“Yes.”

Lethira pulled another length of thread through the needle and tested the knot.

“Do you like it?”

Lethira resumed sewing.

“Yes.”

Mirelen nodded.

“That was disappointingly simple.”

“Would you prefer I object so you can investigate?”

“No. I wanted to know.”

A few minutes later Mirelen asked, “Does he actually like being your aide?”

Lethira laughed.

“Far too much.”

“That part I believed.”

“He likes the ridiculous version of it. Being lowly. Calling me *my Lady*. Pretending I have captured him.”

Mirelen’s eyebrows rose.

Lethira pointed the needle at her.

“That is all the detail you are getting.”

“I had not asked for more.”

“You were going to.”

Mirelen pushed the needle through the grey-green cloth and concentrated on pulling the thread through without tangling it. Her expression did not support the denial.

“I was considering whether I needed to.”

“You do not.”

Mirelen bent over her seam, pleased with herself.

The tea cooled.

After another stretch of work she said, “Aelira told me something about him once.”

Lethira looked up.

“She said his mistakes can have unusual consequences.”

“Yes.”

“She was very careful not to explain what she meant.”

Mirelen watched Lethira’s face rather than the needle for once, looking for whether the wording itself had been wrong.

“Aelira usually has a reason for being careful.”

Mirelen waited.

Lethira pushed the needle through the blue cloth.

“If you want more than she chose to tell you, ask Ian.”

Mirelen considered that, then nodded.

“All right.”

The matter stayed there.

Elsewhere, Ian had spent part of their absence in the Lifegiver’s garden. He completed one more bed by hand, reducing the working debt by one, and kept the visit brief. Part of the point had simply been to give Lethira and Mirelen time together without him occupying the room.

By the time he returned, the two women had abandoned sewing temporarily for the book and taken their tea outside near the stream.

“Hello, I’m back,” Ian shouted from inside the house.

Lethira looked up from the page.

“We’re outside.”

Mirelen kept one finger between the pages while Lethira collected the cups. They returned through the back door together, bringing the cooler smell of water and leaves into the kitchen.

The half-made shirts still occupied the far end of the front-room table. Mirelen went through and put the book beside them.

“We bought cloth,” she said. “Neither shirt is finished, and the first wife in this book is almost certainly lying.”

“She is definitely lying,” Lethira said.

“You were less certain ten minutes ago.”

Lethira put the cups down beside the wash area, then joined her and gave the closed book a suspicious look.

“I have reconsidered.”

Mirelen pulled out a chair. Lethira glanced towards Ian.

“She has also spent part of the afternoon asking questions about you.”

“About both of you,” Mirelen corrected.

“You asked whether he snores.”

Mirelen settled back in her chair, showing no embarrassment at all about the evidence against her.

“That was relevant to both of you.”

Lethira stared at her.

Mirelen smiled and sat down.

“Depends on whether my network of spies gives me a full and comprehensive report. And, for the record, I only snore when her hair attempts to assault me.”

Mirelen looked at Lethira.

“Spies?”

“No.”

“Very convincing.”

Lethira began winding the loose blue thread again, deliberately refusing to lend the joke any more authority.

“There is no network of spies.”

Mirelen’s attention returned to Ian. “That sounds exactly like what the person managing the spies would say.”

Lethira ignored her.

“And my hair has never assaulted him.”

Mirelen glanced at its length.

“I can see how there might be a dispute over territory.”

“That is because you are encouraging him.”

“I am examining the evidence.”

The joke lasted another moment. Then Mirelen’s expression settled.

“Aelira told me something about you once.”

Lethira’s hands stopped on the thread.

Mirelen noticed but continued.

“She said your mistakes can have unusual consequences. She was very careful not to explain what she meant, and I was careful not to invent an explanation for her.”

Her gaze remained on Ian.

“So what sort of mistake was she warning me about?”

“I sometimes try and solve a problem without understanding the consequences of my actions, this can be unfortunate sometimes. But, I think I’m learning.”

Ian glanced at Lethira.

She met the look but did not rescue the answer for him. One eyebrow lifted slightly before she returned to winding the loose blue thread around two fingers.

Mirelen listened without interruption.

“That describes most people I have ever met.”

She picked up one of the grey-green shirt pieces and checked the seam they had started earlier.

“Aelira would not have bothered warning me that you sometimes exercise poor judgement.”

“Would it be a problem if they were that unusual?”

Mirelen considered the question.

“If *unusual* only means strange, probably not.”

She rested her forearms on the table.

“If it means I could make an ordinary decision around you without understanding a risk that matters, then yes. I would prefer enough warning to make my own judgement.”

She paused.

“Can one of your mistakes put somebody in danger when you never intended to endanger them?”

“I think generally I try to keep people out of danger, sometimes emotions are harder to protect.”

Mirelen’s expression shifted.

“Yes. They usually are.”

She tapped one finger once against the table.

“But that still sounds ordinary. Was Aelira warning me that you sometimes hurt people’s feelings?”

Ian looked down at his hands.

“I have done that, not with intended malice.”

Mirelen drew the thread through the cloth.

“That still is not what Aelira warned me about. I have hurt people without meaning to. Lethira has. Aelira certainly has. None of us requires a special warning attached to our mistakes.”

She looked back to Ian.

“So what can happen when *you* get something wrong that cannot happen when I do?”

Ian looked at Lethira, wanting her permission even if he did not need it.

She caught the look immediately.

For a moment she held his gaze. Then she gave a small nod.

“You can tell her about you.”

Her eyes moved once towards Mirelen and back.

“Anything that belongs to somebody else stays theirs.”

Mirelen said nothing. She waited.

“I have power, but none of the knowledge that typically comes with power. So using it carries a risk of unintended consequences.”

Mirelen’s eyes narrowed slightly in concentration.

“That makes more sense.”

She looked once towards Lethira, then back to Ian.

“When you say *power*, do you mean magic?”

“You rank magic up to a theoretical SSS here, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Mirelen said. “E through A are the ranks people actually use often enough to be useful. S, SS and SSS belong to the far end of the scale—Heroes, anomalies, old records. Not ordinary Warden work.”

She watched him.

“Are you telling me I should think of your power as somewhere on that scale?”

“Beyond SSS, yes.”

Mirelen did not answer at once.

The room seemed quieter for it. Somewhere outside, water moved over stone. Inside, the half-made shirts lay forgotten across the far end of the table.

She looked at Ian for several seconds, then at Lethira.

Lethira did not smile. She only gave the smallest confirming nod.

Mirelen sat back.

“All right.”

There was no awe in it. If anything, she looked more wary now that Aelira’s warning had acquired shape.

“When you say *beyond SSS*, what does that actually let you do?”

“I would offer to demonstrate, but I don’t want to damage or hurt anyone. If you want to see, we could go somewhere safer.”

Ian paused.

“Or, we can avoid spectacle of course.”

Mirelen’s gaze sharpened.

“If the demonstration requires somewhere safer than your own house, then no.”

She was a Warden before she was curious.

“I do not need you to prove it by breaking something. Give me one example instead.”

Ian sighed.

“I can do anything.”

Mirelen did not move.

For a few seconds her face gave very little away. Then she looked towards Lethira, plainly checking whether the statement had surprised her.

It had not.

Mirelen looked back to Ian.

“Anything is an inconveniently large answer.”

Her hand left the edge of the table and settled in her lap.

“Does *anything* include changing what somebody thinks or wants?”

“Yes, apart from Lethira’s. I haven’t, and don’t.”

Mirelen’s eyes moved to Lethira.

This time the look lingered on the exception.

Lethira set the blue thread down.

“He asked for that to be impossible.”

Mirelen absorbed that in silence.

“So for everyone else,” she said, “the thing preventing it is you.”

There was no accusation in her voice. Nor was there reassurance.

“That is considerably more unusual than hurting somebody’s feelings.”

“Yes, it can be a burden. I prefer to do the washing up.”

Mirelen looked towards the kitchen.

“That is a considerable difference in scale.”

Lethira’s mouth moved.

“He is becoming quite competent at it.”

“I saw.”

Mirelen picked up her needle again. This time she actually made a stitch, drawing the grey-green thread through until the seam lay flat.

After another stitch, she looked up.

“One practical question, then. Does the power only do something when you deliberately use it?”

“Yes, but it can be applied in the future... or the past. Like ongoing protection, or something. There is no automatic response unless I’ve decided on a specific one.”

Ian paused.

“I appreciate that’s slightly complicated.”

“Slightly,” Lethira said.

Mirelen gave her a brief look, then returned to the seam in her hands. She made two more stitches before speaking again.

“So the dangerous part is not that the power lashes out when you are frightened or angry. You can decide something now which remains active later—or which applies earlier.”

Her brow tightened at the last part, but she did not chase the paradox.

“Is there anything like that active around me now?”

“No, just the protection for Lethira’s mind.”

Mirelen’s eyes moved to Lethira again.

“So not me.”

“No,” Lethira said.

Mirelen nodded once and returned to the shirt.

“That is useful to know.”

A few stitches followed.

Then Mirelen said, “If you can change the past, how do you know you have not already changed something and simply made the result look ordinary?”

“I perceive the linear actions, even if they do not apply in linear time. I think. I do not have a manual to tell me how this works. I’ve only done time once, it gave me a headache trying to work it out.”

He continued before Mirelen could answer.

“And, I don’t mind you asking. You have to understand I am, otherwise, just a normal human, I don’t understand the universe or how it works, I can just change it at will. This is also a big part of the danger.”

Mirelen stayed quiet.

The explanation appeared to trouble her more than the claim of power had. *Beyond SSS* was enormous, but it was still a direction on a scale she understood. A man able to change the world without understanding the machinery beneath the change was a different problem.

She found the next place in her seam and pushed the needle through.

“That explains Aelira better.”

Lethira let that stand. Mirelen did not ask her to supply Aelira’s private reasoning.

Mirelen drew the thread through, then stopped before the next stitch.

“When I was young, I once brought down a rotten branch because it was hanging over a trail. It was plainly going to fall eventually.”

Lethira looked at her.

“I remember this.”

“You remember the argument afterward.”

“I remember the bees.”

Mirelen’s mouth tightened.

“Yes. There were bees.”

She glanced towards Ian.

“I understood branches. I did not understand that branch well enough. My mistake could inconvenience a few travellers, make several insects furious and cause Dawnleaf to laugh at me for a century.”

“Longer, probably.”

“Apparently.”

Mirelen folded the edge of the cloth between her fingers.

“Yours can be larger because the tool is larger. The part I understand is that you can use the tool before you understand everything around it.”

She made another stitch.

“Have you ever changed something with that power and only afterwards realised you should have left it alone?”

“Yes, several times. And several times I don’t know if I should, or shouldn’t have. Then sometimes, it was a good idea.”

Mirelen nodded and let the uncertainty remain uncertain.

For a while only the sewing moved.

Then she glanced up again.

“What do you do when you are not doing impossible things?”

“Currently a gardener.” Ian smiled.

Mirelen looked at him for a moment.

“Currently.”

The word interested her more than *gardener*.

Lethira’s needle paused halfway through the blue cloth. Her mouth had already begun to curve.

Mirelen noticed.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t,” Lethira said.

“That is becoming a recurring feature of this visit.”

Mirelen looked back to Ian.

“Professionally, or have you merely spent enough time with a spade recently to claim the title?”

“Very much a labourer, not a professional. It pays well, though.”

Mirelen’s eyebrows rose.

“That is usually how professionals persuade labourers to keep lifting things.”

Lethira lowered her eyes to the blue cloth. The corner of her mouth betrayed her.

Mirelen noticed that too.

“What do they pay you?”

Ian began trying to calculate it.

The obvious route in his own habits was an hourly rate, until he remembered that Merrowford did not organise labour that way. A daily rate seemed more promising, right up until the Lifegiver’s garden complicated the meaning of a day. He tried instead to estimate how many completed beds had felt like a substantial working day and what the effective rate would be.

Mirelen watched the calculation visibly deteriorate.

Lethira lasted somewhat longer before amusement appeared.

“He is paid by the bed,” she said.

Mirelen looked at her.

“Garden bed.”

“I assumed.”

“Two heavy silver for each completed one.”

Mirelen stopped moving.

Her gaze went from Lethira to Ian, then back again.

“Two?”

“Yes.”

“For digging one bed?”

Mirelen stared at the table as though a more reasonable wage might be hidden somewhere among the sewing.

“Yes.”

Mirelen knew Merrowford money well enough not to require a lesson in what that meant.

“That is an absurd wage.”

“It is not a normal wage,” Lethira said.

“I don’t even use my power to do the work. That’s why I enjoy it.”

Mirelen looked at him as though this had made the occupation less explicable rather than more.

“You can make almost anything happen, but you spend your time digging beds by hand.”

“Yes,” Lethira said. “He also complains about stones.”

“They are objectionable,” Mirelen said.

Lethira’s needle paused above the cloth. The next name belonged to a much stranger part of Ian’s employment than the wage did.

“That is what the Lifegiver says.”

Mirelen’s attention shifted to Lethira.

“The Lifegiver?”

“A goddess,” Lethira said. “Life and growth.”

Mirelen looked between them.

“You are gardening for her?”

Ian glanced at Lethira.

“Yes.”

Mirelen’s needle remained suspended above the grey-green cloth.

For once, she had no immediate reply. Her eyes moved to Lethira instead.

Lethira gave a small nod.

“The Lifegiver herself.”

Mirelen lowered the needle carefully onto the table.

The information rearranged several pieces at once: the absurd wage, the uncertainty about time and Ian’s description of himself as a labourer.

“You are being paid two heavy silver a bed by a goddess.”

“Yes,” Lethira said.

Mirelen rubbed a thumb along the edge of the cloth.

“I thought the strange part of that sentence was the wage.”

“It remains strange.”

Mirelen looked at Ian.

“Does she know what you can do?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t use any power for the work either. It’s honest work, if a little generous.”

Mirelen sat with that for a moment. The idea of a goddess choosing to work without divine correction was strange enough without Lethira supplying the reasons behind it.

“That sounds like a very strange arrangement.”

“It is,” Lethira said.

Mirelen picked up her needle again but did not immediately use it.

“And she pays you to do the same work beside her. Why?”

“I needed to earn some money, but have no useful skills, and didn’t want to just will it into existence. So”—Ian blushed—“I could get Lethira a gift. That I earned myself.”

Mirelen’s eyes moved to Lethira.

Lethira had gone still over the blue cloth. She looked at Ian for a moment, then back to Mirelen.

“He bought the land south of the house.”

Mirelen blinked.

“The land.”

“And the recorded route across the lower town ground towards the river.”

Mirelen looked through the window towards the southern side of the holding as though the boundary might suddenly become visible from the front room.

“That was the gift?”

“Originally,” Lethira said. “He bought it in his own name because he was trying to surprise me. I asked him to go back and put both names on it.”

Mirelen looked at her.

“And he did?”

“Yes.”

Lethira pushed the needle through the cloth.

Mirelen was quiet for a few seconds, fitting the garden debt beside land she had walked across without knowing its history.

“So you owe a goddess dozens of garden beds because you wanted to buy Lethira land with money you had actually earned.”

She looked at Ian.

“Why land?”

“She liked the walk. And the stream. I thought it would be nice for her, for us.”

Mirelen’s attention shifted to Lethira.

Lethira kept sewing for another few stitches before she answered the look.

“I did like the walk.”

“And the stream?”

“Yes.”

Lethira drew the thread through and inspected the seam before looking up again.

“And the surprise?”

“Less straightforward.”

Mirelen waited.

“I liked what he had noticed. I did not like discovering that a substantial piece of land beside our house had become his alone because he wanted to surprise me.”

“It became ours.”

Mirelen nodded once.

The distinction seemed to satisfy her more than the romance of the purchase.

“So the gardening came first, then the land, then the paperwork.”

“More or less.”

“And now he is still digging.”

Mirelen glanced towards the southern window, where none of the expense or divine labour was visible from the table.

“Yes.”

Mirelen glanced towards Ian.

“How many beds do you still owe her?”

Ian told her the remaining balance: thirty-four beds.

“Yes, I am indebted to the goddess of fertility.”

Mirelen stared at him.

“Thirty-four.”

Lethira’s mouth curved over her sewing.

“It was higher.”

“That does not improve it.”

“It improves it by comparison.”

Mirelen looked down at the grey-green cloth in front of her, perhaps seeking assistance from something governed by ordinary arithmetic.

“So when you finish the thirty-four—are you actually finished, or will you keep going because you like being there?”

“I also want to be sure she’s okay. I think she’s a friend. She had a difficult experience, and I want to help her get through it.”

Mirelen’s expression sobered.

She made one more stitch before setting the needle down.

“A difficult experience for the Lifegiver sounds as though it may have been difficult for everyone nearby as well.”

Lethira did not disagree. Her attention remained on the blue cloth, but she had stopped sewing.

Mirelen looked back to Ian.

“What happened to her?”

“I think that’s then talking about someone else who isn’t here.”

Mirelen held his gaze for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes. It is.”

She picked up her needle again.

“That was farther than I should have followed it.”

Lethira resumed sewing beside her without adding anything. The matter closed there.

For a little while the conversation gave way to cloth. Mirelen worked along the side seam of the grey-green shirt, stopping once to turn the fabric and check how the pieces would hang together. Lethira’s blue shirt had begun to acquire a recognisable shoulder and sleeve.

Ian rubbed his eyes. The conversation had brought sad memories up with it.

“I’m going to go for a walk.”

He paused.

“Your questions were all fine, Mirelen. Don’t worry.”

Then he turned to Lethira.

“You may tell her anything about me you wish, if you’re not bored of me as a topic already.”

He bent to kiss her and whispered near her ear.

“I’d prefer not to get into the detail of my real body, the machine, however. Similarly Earth, Isha and Thomas may not be great topics.”

He used his power to ensure Mirelen could not hear the whisper, then straightened and left through the front door.

The latch settled behind him.

For a while neither Elf spoke.

Mirelen looked towards the door, then down at the shirt in her hands. The needle still hung from the last completed stitch.

“I did upset him.”

Lethira folded the loose blue cloth away from her elbow.

“You reminded him of something painful.”

“That is not quite the same thing.”

“No.”

Mirelen drew the thread through.

“He said the questions were fine.”

“Then believe him.”

“I do.”

That ended that part of it.

The afternoon had shifted while they talked. Sunlight no longer reached directly across the table, and the earlier warmth from the kitchen range was almost gone. Lethira went through, reheated water and made fresh tea.

Mirelen continued sewing while she waited.

When Lethira returned, she placed a cup beside her without interrupting the work.

Mirelen took a drink.

“I understand why Aelira warned me now.”

Lethira sat.

“More than you did this morning.”

“Considerably.”

Mirelen looked towards the closed door.

“I had assumed the answer would be dangerous magic. An unusual spell. Something outside ordinary Warden work.”

“That would have been simpler.”

“Yes.”

Several stitches passed.

Mirelen turned the grey-green cloth in her hands.

“What is it actually like?”

Lethira looked at her.

“Living with him. Not the impossible part by itself. All of it.”

Lethira considered the question.

“Most days? Less dramatic than this conversation.”

Mirelen waited.

“He comes home. We eat. Sometimes we go into town. Sometimes we take Guild work. He washes dishes and pretends that makes him my attendant.”

“That part has been thoroughly established.”

“He worries about things which have not happened. He occasionally forgets things which have happened. He likes brushing my hair.”

Mirelen’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Lethira ignored them.

“He is learning to braid it.”

“Successfully?”

“Once.”

Mirelen looked briefly at Lethira’s hair, perhaps trying to imagine the evidence.

“Then *learning* seems accurate.”

Lethira smiled and returned to the blue seam.

Mirelen worked another stretch.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“About the power?”

“Yes.”

The stream filled the pause beyond the open window. Lethira turned the unfinished sleeve once in her hands before answering.

“Because it was his to tell. And because if I had introduced him by saying *this human can change almost anything*, you would have spent the whole afternoon meeting the power instead of the person.”

Mirelen thought about that.

“I would have watched him differently.”

“Yes.”

“Probably his hands.”

Mirelen’s gaze dropped to her own hands, needle and thread between them, the ordinary tools making the contrast worse.

“He does not need his hands.”

“That would have made it worse.”

Lethira’s mouth moved.

“Probably.”

Mirelen sat back.

“Were you frightened?”

“Yes.”

The answer was simple enough that Mirelen looked fully at her.

“Not constantly,” Lethira continued. “And not because I thought he was waiting for an opportunity to hurt me. But when someone tells you they can alter minds, memory, the past, what a person wants—yes. Some of that frightened me. It still would if I treated the possibility casually.”

“You did not leave.”

“No.”

The steam from their fresh tea had thinned almost to nothing. Mirelen wrapped both hands around her cup without drinking.

“Why not?”

Lethira considered several answers and discarded the ones which sounded more complete than reality had been.

“Because being frightened by what somebody can do is not the same thing as deciding what they will do.”

Mirelen nodded slowly.

“And because by then you knew him.”

“I knew some of him.”

“That is a cautious answer.”

Lethira’s thumb moved once over the edge of the blue cloth.

“It is an accurate one.”

Mirelen accepted that.

Lethira picked up her sewing again.

“I know more now. That has not made the power smaller.”

“Has it made you less frightened?”

“About some things.”

She looked at the blue fabric between her hands.

“He made certain things impossible around me. You know that now.”

“Yes.”

“That matters. Other questions remain questions.”

Mirelen did not ask her to list them.

Instead she looked at the shirt she had attached badly earlier and began unpicking the sleeve.

Lethira watched for several seconds.

“You have removed more stitches from that shirt than you have added in the last hour.”

“Quality requires sacrifice.”

“You put the sleeve on backwards.”

Mirelen held the liberated sleeve up, examined it and refused to look embarrassed.

“That was the sacrifice.”

Lethira laughed and returned to her own work.

The harder conversation loosened without vanishing.

After a while Mirelen said, “What happens when you tell him no?”

Lethira looked up again.

“He usually stops.”

“Usually?”

“He is a person, Mirelen, not a trained hound.”

Mirelen’s mouth tightened with amusement, but she let the joke pass. The question underneath it was still serious.

“That was not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Lethira threaded another length of blue.

“He can argue. He can think I have misunderstood him. He can try explaining the same thing again when I already understood it the first time.”

Mirelen’s mouth twitched.

“That sounds familiar.”

“I have known several men.”

“I meant you.”

Lethira gave her a look.

Mirelen smiled and continued sewing.

“He also changes his mind,” Lethira said. “Sometimes immediately. Sometimes after he has gone away and worried at it for hours.”

“And when you are wrong?”

“I am never wrong.”

Mirelen looked at her.

Lethira held the expression for a moment.

Then both of them laughed.

“That answer is much more reassuring,” Mirelen said.

“I have changed my mind too.”

“Reluctantly?”

Lethira threaded another length, buying herself half a second before conceding it.

“Sometimes.”

The conversation settled again.

Mirelen’s shirt had begun to take shape properly. One shoulder was closed, part of the side seam finished and the first sleeve ready to attach. She held it against herself, frowned at the length and put it back down.

“You said earlier that you do not know about marriage.”

“Yes.”

“But you bought a house together.”

Mirelen turned the shirt so the next seam lay flat across her knees.

“Yes.”

“And land.”

“Yes.”

Mirelen drew the thread tight.

“Do you expect him to keep coming back?”

Lethira looked towards the window.

“I expect him to want to.”

Mirelen waited.

“That is not the same as knowing what the future does.”

“No.”

“We have not promised each other every possible year.”

Lethira looked back at her.

“But I am not treating this as temporary.”

Mirelen nodded once.

After another minute she said, “You are different with him.”

Lethira’s expression sharpened slightly.

“Different how?”

“Not better.”

“Good start.”

Mirelen looked towards the two half-made shirts, then back at her oldest friend.

“You leave more things unfinished.”

That was not what Lethira had expected.

Mirelen continued.

“You used to decide what a thing was before you let it stay near you. A road. A person. A problem. You still do that with work.”

She glanced towards the half-made blue shirt.

“Less with him.”

Lethira was quiet.

“That may be because deciding what he is has become increasingly difficult.”

“Probably.”

Mirelen smiled.

“I am not sure *beyond SSS gardener indebted to the Lifegiver* is a recognised category.”

“It should remain unrecognised.”

“I agree.”

After a few stitches Lethira said, “You are different too.”

Mirelen looked up suspiciously.

“You bought a book in the middle of the day.”

“That is not character development.”

“You once walked six days carrying a book you had already finished because you refused to trade it for one you had not read.”

Mirelen’s suspicion deepened. She had clearly hoped this particular piece of history had been lost.

“It was a good book.”

“It was an agricultural ledger.”

“It contained useful notes.”

Lethira leaned back, waiting for the defence to collapse under its own weight.

“It contained turnip yields.”

Lethira waited, openly delighted now, while Mirelen searched for a defence more dignified than the obvious one.

“Turnips are useful.”

Lethira laughed.

By late afternoon Mirelen had attached one sleeve badly enough to remove it and start again. Lethira’s blue shirt remained several hours from completion. Neither seemed troubled.

The new book sat at the far end of the table.

Eventually Mirelen looked towards it.

“Do you think he will be out long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we have time for one chapter.”

Mirelen’s hand had already moved towards the book, undermining any claim that this was a carefully considered proposal.

“You said that before lunch.”

“And we still bought cloth.”

Lethira pushed the sewing aside.

“One chapter.”

Mirelen reached for the book.

Neither of them pretended to believe the limit.

They made it through rather more than one chapter.

The first wife continued lying, although now with enough consistency that Mirelen began defending her technique if not her decisions. Lethira objected that competent deception was not admirable merely because the other characters were slow to notice it. The disagreement lasted until the sister discovered a letter hidden inside a flour jar, at which point both women abandoned their previous positions and blamed the husband.

Mirelen closed the book over one finger.

“I did wonder whether you would stop travelling.”

Lethira looked at her.

“Because of Ian?”

“Because you seemed happy here.”

“That is a strange reason to worry.”

Mirelen closed the book fully this time. The question had outgrown the page she had been marking with one finger.

“Happy people still stop doing things they once cared about.”

“Yes.”

Lethira picked up her needle again.

“I might do less of some things. I am not going to walk every circuit merely because I have walked it before. But that was already happening before Ian. I am old enough to choose which work I still want.”

“So am I.”

“You bought another field shirt today.”

Mirelen glanced down at the grey-green cloth occupying half the table.

“That proves nothing.”

“It proves you intend to ruin another shirt.”

“That is tradition.”

Mirelen smiled and looked down at her own work.

“I wasn’t asking you to stay exactly the same for my convenience.”

Lethira’s hand paused.

“That almost sounded thoughtful.”

“Do not spread it around.”

“I would never damage your reputation.”

They worked on until the light began thinning towards evening.

The front door opened.

The smell reached the room first: hot pastry, browned butter and savoury filling.

Ian had returned with fresh pies bought in Merrowford. He had shortened enough of the return journey with a minor fold in distance that warmth still came through the wrapping in his hands.

Mirelen stopped mid-sentence.

Lethira looked up.

Her attention went first to the pies and then to Ian’s face.

There was a little redness around his eyes—not the swollen aftermath of sustained crying, but enough that watering eyes had plainly left some trace.

Lethira set the blue shirt down.

Mirelen noticed too and closed the book without comment.

Lethira’s expression changed, the amusement disappearing without becoming alarm.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I have pie.” Ian smiled. “I’m not sure what goes with pie, or what we have.”

“Will you have pie with me?”

Lethira watched him for another moment, then let the question about his eyes go.

“Yes.”

She pushed the half-made blue shirt farther along the table to clear space.

“We have bread, cheese, some pickled vegetables and whatever survived breakfast. But pie does not require an escort merely because other food exists.”

Mirelen had already moved the book out of danger.

“I also accept pie.”

Lethira glanced at her.

“That was not addressed to you.”

“I am a guest. I assumed hospitality.”

“You have become extremely confident about this household.”

Mirelen moved the book well clear of the warm parcels, protecting it with more care than she had shown for household hierarchy.

“Breakfast established precedent.”

That earned the beginning of a smile from Lethira.

Ian collected three plates and unwrapped the pies. He offered the choice to Mirelen first, then Lethira, and kept what remained for himself.

Mirelen chose the darker-crusted pie, which smelled strongly of onion and browned meat. Lethira chose the one with leek. Ian took the third.

Lethira returned from the pantry carrying cheese, pickled vegetables and a small dish of apples cut into wedges. Ian waited until she was back and seated before beginning to eat.

The pastry was still properly warm. Mirelen cut into hers and exposed dark meat, onion and thickened gravy.

She nodded once.

“Good choice.”

Lethira opened her own pie with the edge of her knife. Leek, soft cheese and herbs filled the centre.

“That was luck.”

“Good judgement,” Mirelen corrected.

“You selected by crust.”

She cut into it and let the steam escape before trying the filling.

“I selected successfully.”

Ian tucked in.

“Sorry for disappearing for a while.”

Lethira looked across the table at him.

“You went for a walk.”

She reached over and rested her hand briefly on his forearm.

“You came back.”

Mirelen cut another piece from her pie.

“And we had a book, two unfinished shirts and several arguments about fictional people. We were adequately occupied.”

Lethira withdrew her hand and picked up an apple wedge.

“Barely. She attached a sleeve backwards.”

“That occurred before he left.”

“It remained backwards for part of his absence.”

Mirelen gave her a level look and returned to her food.

The pies made further conversation unnecessary for a little while. Warm gravy soaked into pastry where Mirelen had cut hers open, and Lethira alternated between the leek pie and the sharper pickled vegetables. Ian’s own filling proved to be beef with root vegetables and enough pepper to remain noticeable beneath the crust.

At the far end of the table, the grey-green sleeve now sat correctly attached.

“It has recovered,” Mirelen said.

“I’m glad.”

While neither woman seemed to be looking, Ian made a little more gravy appear in his pie.

For several bites, nothing happened.

Then Lethira’s eyes dropped briefly to his plate.

She looked at the gravy, then at him.

Her expression remained perfectly neutral.

“You know,” she said, returning to her own pie, “most people solve that problem with a jug.”

Mirelen looked up.

“What problem?”

“Nothing important.”

Lethira took another bite, the corner of her mouth threatening to move.

Ian tried to look innocent.

Lethira watched the attempt for perhaps two seconds.

“No.”

Mirelen’s attention moved between them.

“What did he do?”

Lethira pointed with her fork towards Ian’s plate.

Mirelen looked at the pie. Then at the gravy. Then back at Ian.

Understanding arrived slowly.

“You can do *anything*.”

She paused.

“And you used it for gravy.”

Lethira took another bite.

“This is much more typical than the conversation earlier suggested.”

Mirelen stared at Ian’s plate a moment longer before returning to her own.

“I think I preferred not knowing.”

Ian let them continue.

Mirelen lasted perhaps half a minute before looking at the plate again.

“No flash?”

Lethira shook her head.

“No light?”

“No.”

“No gesture?”

Lethira’s attention remained on her own plate, but the amusement in her face had not gone anywhere.

“Not required.”

Mirelen frowned at the gravy as though it had personally violated several useful assumptions.

“That is offensive.”

“To whom?”

“Magic.”

Lethira laughed.

Mirelen cut another piece from her own pie and considered the matter while chewing.

“I spent most of my life learning that power has signs. Mana. Movement. Preparation. Something you can notice if you are experienced enough.”

She pointed her fork towards Ian’s pie.

“That had none.”

“No.”

“And he chose gravy.”

Mirelen looked down at her own entirely conventional pie as though reconsidering what counted as a sensible use of power.

“Yes.”

Mirelen looked down at her plate.

“I am beginning to understand why Aelira’s warning was so vague. Any precise version would have sounded ridiculous.”

Lethira’s mouth curved.

The meal settled back into ordinary quiet. Outside, the light had gone warmer, catching the upper branches beyond the window. The room smelled of pastry, pepper and the sharp vinegar of the pickled vegetables.

Mirelen eventually reached for a piece of cheese.

“I think the strangest part is still the gardening.”

“Not the mind-changing?” Lethira asked.

“That is alarming. Alarming things are easy to classify.”

Mirelen bit into the cheese.

“A man who can change reality choosing to spend his time being annoyed by stones because he wants to earn money is harder to put anywhere useful.”

Lethira glanced towards Ian.

“And then secretly creates gravy.”

“That helps,” Mirelen said.

The pies gradually disappeared. The extra food did not. Mirelen had taken enough cheese to justify leaving the rest, and Lethira covered the remaining pickles again before they dried.

Ian tidied away the remaining food, dealt with the plates and cleared the useful space around the table while Lethira and Mirelen returned to their work.

Mirelen closed the book over one finger.

“You said shirts.”

“I said we should finish one thing.”

“And yet you reached for the book.”

Mirelen marked the page before surrendering it, unwilling to let virtue become inconvenient later.

“That was a moment of weakness.”

Lethira picked up the blue cloth and found the place where she had stopped. Mirelen settled the corrected sleeve across her lap, checked the seam from the inside and began working towards the cuff.

For a while their conversation stayed with the task. Mirelen thought Lethira had allowed too much cloth beneath one arm. Lethira disagreed, pinned it temporarily and proved that she wanted the extra room when she moved.

“You could have said that.”

“I did.”

“You said you wanted it loose.”

Lethira raised the pinned sleeve and moved her arm through the range she wanted, demonstrating the extra cloth instead of arguing it abstractly.

“That is saying it.”

“It is not saying *how* loose.”

Lethira drew the thread through and gave her a look which ended the tailoring dispute without resolving it.

Mirelen worked another few stitches.

“You really are staying here, then.”

Lethira looked up.

“At the house?”

“Yes.”

“I own half of it.”

Mirelen’s needle continued through the sleeve, but her attention remained on Lethira.

“I know. That was not quite what I meant.”

Lethira waited.

Mirelen took her time with the next stitch.

“You used to stay somewhere until the reason for being there ended. Warden circuit. Court. Contract. Visit. Even when you liked somewhere, there was usually another road already waiting.”

“That is still true.”

“Is it?”

Lethira considered the question.

She looked around the front room and through to the kitchen: the scarred table, the pantry door beyond, the window open towards the stream, the sewing spread across a piece of furniture which belonged to neither an innkeeper nor a royal household.

“I still intend to work.”

“That was not my question either.”

“You are becoming irritatingly precise.”

The old familiarity in Mirelen’s expression made it plain that this was not a new habit.

“I have known you too long to accept the first answer.”

Lethira set her needle down.

“I like coming back here.”

Mirelen nodded but did not treat the answer as complete.

“I have liked places before.”

“Yes.”

“This is different.”

Lethira looked around the room before answering, at objects whose importance came mostly from being used rather than displayed.

“How?”

Lethira’s fingers rested against the blue cloth.

“I do not arrive here as somebody’s guest. I do not have to decide how long I may reasonably stay before I begin imposing. If I leave for a contract, the house is still mine when I return.”

Mirelen glanced towards the kitchen shelves.

“And his.”

“Yes.”

“Does that ever bother you?”

Mirelen folded the next seam allowance between finger and thumb, keeping the question practical rather than dramatic.

“That it is his too?”

“That another person is part of the place you come back to.”

Lethira thought about it.

“Sometimes.”

Mirelen waited.

“Not because I want him gone. Because there are moments when I realise I cannot make every decision alone anymore.”

“That sounds dreadful.”

Lethira smiled.

“It can be.”

Mirelen’s mouth moved as well.

“I remember you being extremely good at deciding for everybody when we were younger.”

“I remember you ignoring me.”

“Exactly.”

They returned to sewing.

Mirelen completed several more stitches before saying, “Would you have bought a house without him?”

“No.”

The answer came easily.

“Would you have wanted one?”

“I do not know.”

“That answer I believe.”

Lethira glanced at her.

“I had places. The settlement. Rooms with family. Inns. Warden houses when I needed them. I never thought of myself as lacking a building.”

“And now?”

“Now I like this one.”

Mirelen nodded and turned the sleeve.

The room gradually acquired the quieter rhythm it had held before supper. Cloth shifted across the table. Thread tightened. Somewhere outside, a bird called twice from the trees and received no answer.

Mirelen eventually held up the grey-green shirt.

The sleeve was now attached correctly.

She examined the line from shoulder to cuff, turned it around and checked the inside.

“There.”

Lethira looked over.

“That is much better.”

“I know.”

“You could admit the first attempt was wrong.”

Mirelen turned the sleeve inside out to inspect the corrected seam.

“I removed it. That was the admission.”

Lethira considered this.

“Fair.”

Mirelen laid the shirt down again.

Then she glanced at Lethira’s blue pieces.

“You are not finishing that tonight.”

“No.”

“Good.”

Lethira’s hand nevertheless remained on the blue cloth, which made the agreement less convincing than it sounded.

“I might.”

“You will become impatient and make the other sleeve crooked.”

“I am perfectly capable of making it crooked while rested.”

Mirelen considered the blue pieces and, apparently, found the argument supported by evidence.

“That is true.”

Lethira reached for the book.

Mirelen caught it first.

“Absolutely not.”

“You bought it.”

“Yes.”

The book lay within Lethira’s reach. She put one hand on its cover and waited.

“Then read.”

Mirelen hesitated for only a moment before surrendering.

She opened to their marked page.

“The husband has returned.”

Lethira leaned closer.

“Already?”

“He appears to have made another poor decision.”

“That man is remarkably consistent.”

Mirelen began reading.

From the kitchen, Ian called, “Does anyone want”—he paused—“dessert?”

Mirelen looked up from the book.

“Yes.”

Lethira turned slightly in her chair.

“That answer arrived before you knew what it was.”

“I have already accepted mysterious breakfast and unexplained pie. I see no reason to become cautious now.”

Lethira looked towards the kitchen.

“What dessert?”

Ian brought through a tray and set it in the middle of the table: British fruit scones already cut in half, small dishes of blackcurrant and strawberry jam, local butter soft enough to spread at room temperature, Devon clotted cream, small plates and three knives.

He took one half for himself and assembled it in layers—first butter, then blackcurrant jam, then clotted cream.

Lethira recognised the scones before Mirelen did.

“I’ve had those.”

Mirelen looked at her.

“Of course you have.”

“Once.”

“That is still once more than me.”

Mirelen picked up a half and examined the cut surface before tearing off a small piece plain. The fruit inside caught her attention first. She chewed, considered it, then reached for the butter.

Lethira took another half. She chose strawberry jam and cream, omitting the butter after looking at Ian’s more elaborate construction.

“You have put butter, fruit preserve and cream on the same piece.”

Ian’s plate supplied all the evidence required.

Mirelen was less cautious. She spread butter over hers, tried a small amount of blackcurrant jam at one edge, tasted it, and added more. The clotted cream made her pause.

She touched a little with the tip of her knife, tasted that separately, then looked at the scone again.

“This is extremely rich.”

“Yes,” Lethira said.

Mirelen added it anyway.

For the next few moments neither woman spoke.

Mirelen swallowed and looked at the remaining halves on the plate.

“I withdraw my earlier concern about mysterious food.”

Lethira took another bite.

“You had no concern.”

“I was preserving it for when it became necessary.”

Her hand moved towards a second half.

“It has not become necessary.”

“I like using my power for things like this.”

Lethira looked down at the scone in her hand.

“I know.”

She said it simply and gathered a little more strawberry jam with her knife.

Mirelen looked over the tray: ordinary-looking food, familiar local butter beside things she had never eaten before, all of it sitting on the same scarred table where they had spent the afternoon sewing.

“This I understand more easily,” she said.

“The food?” Lethira asked.

“The scale.”

Mirelen added another small amount of blackcurrant jam.

“If you had told me this morning that he could do anything, I would have imagined mountains moving.”

“Those are available too,” Lethira said.

“I am deliberately not imagining harder.”

She took a bite.

“For dessert, at least, the consequence appears to be that I now know what this cream tastes like.”

Lethira’s mouth curved.

Mirelen considered Ian’s heavily layered scone.

“Except possibly to pastry.”

Ian squeezed Lethira’s hand.

“The issue is deciding how to use it, and for whom. Teleporting and flying are easy—limited consequences. Other things are more complicated.”

“What would you do with it, Mirelen?”

Mirelen had been spreading cream across the last corner of her scone. She stopped and considered the question properly.

“First?”

She looked towards the window and the road beyond it.

“I would stop carrying a bedroll.”

Lethira laughed.

“I mean it. I have spent enough of my life sleeping on roots.”

She took another bite, then continued after swallowing.

“I would probably move myself from one end of a patrol to the other when I was tired. Bring hot food into bad weather. Dry my boots without waiting. Replace things I had forgotten instead of walking half a day back for them.”

Her knife scraped a little cream from the plate.

“Then I would see someone injured.”

The humour faded.

“And I would think: I can fix that. Then another person. Then a village with a bad harvest. Then a road where people keep dying in winter.”

Mirelen frowned faintly.

“I don’t know where I would stop.”

She looked down at the remains of the scone.

“So I think I would begin with dry boots and discover quite quickly why Aelira was worried.”

Ian smiled.

“Yeah, she’s very wise.”

Mirelen nodded.

“She is.”

She spread the last of the blackcurrant jam across her remaining half.

“Which is why I noticed when she chose not to explain you.”

Lethira squeezed Ian’s hand once before letting go and reaching for another scone.

“Aelira is very good at deciding which information belongs to her.”

“And very irritating when the information does not.”

“That too.”

Mirelen ate another bite, thinking.

“I understand the decision better now. If she had told me everything she knew, I would have spent our first meeting wondering whether every odd thing around you was some invisible exercise of power.”

She looked down at the cream on her knife.

“Instead I mostly wondered why a human had followed two Wardens into the woods and seemed pleased about it.”

Lethira smiled.

“That was a more useful introduction.”

Mirelen gave a small shrug.

“Probably.”

The conversation eased again. For a few minutes the most consequential choice at the table was whether the strawberry or blackcurrant jam worked better with the cream, and Mirelen changed her answer twice.

“Do you both enjoy exploring? I think you do, Lethira, given the recent cave work.”

Lethira set down the knife she had been using for the cream.

“Yes.”

The answer came easily.

“I like finding out what a place actually is instead of what somebody says it is. Roads, ruins, caves, old boundaries. Somewhere unfamiliar gives you things to notice.”

Mirelen nodded.

“I do too. Though I prefer places where the first discovery is not that the ground intends to kill me.”

“You crossed the fallen tree yesterday.”

“That was a known tree.”

Mirelen gave Lethira the patient look of someone prepared to defend an absurd distinction for as long as necessary.

“It was a fallen tree over uneven ground.”

“Known enough.”

Lethira smiled and reached for another piece of scone.

Mirelen considered the question a little more seriously.

“I like new country. New routes especially. Finding where water actually runs, where people have been, what animals are using a place. Somewhere nobody has properly mapped yet is interesting.”

Her attention settled on Ian.

“Why?”

“There is a large green island on the other side of your world that doesn’t appear on any map I’ve seen. Would you like to go and have a look at it sometime?”

Both women stopped eating.

Mirelen’s reaction came first: not disbelief exactly, but the stillness of someone discovering that a casual question had contained rather more country than expected.

“Not on any map you’ve seen.”

“No.”

Mirelen looked at her.

“And you’ve never heard of it?”

“No.”

Mirelen put down her knife.

A smile started slowly.

“I would want to see it.”

Then the Warden caught up with the explorer.

“Not by arriving in the middle of it with whatever I happen to be wearing.”

Lethira laughed once.

“No.”

She was smiling too, though hers carried more caution.

“I would go. But if it isn’t on our maps and none of us knows it, then we would know almost nothing. No creatures, no safe water, no useful plants, no weather, no paths, no local idea of what counts as dangerous.”

Mirelen glanced at her.

“That is most of the appeal.”

“That is also most of the problem.”

“Yes.”

Neither sounded discouraged.

Lethira looked back to Ian.

“How much do you actually know about this island?”

“It appears to have no settlements, and the wildlife looks a bit more... aggressive. I didn’t ask or look much further, because that’s not really exploring, is it?”

Ian smiled.

“Shall we go tomorrow?”

Mirelen stared at him.

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Lethira said. “He does this.”

Mirelen looked back towards the unfinished shirt.

“I have not even finished appropriate clothing for being eaten somewhere none of us has ever heard of.”

“That shirt would not help.”

“It might improve morale.”

Lethira had gone still in the particular way she did when enthusiasm was being made to pass through professional judgement before reaching her feet.

“Tomorrow could be a first look.”

Mirelen’s attention returned to her.

“Coast?”

“Somewhere open enough that we can see what is around us before it sees us. Daylight. We take proper field equipment anyway.”

“No walking into dense forest on the first afternoon.”

The two Wardens had already shifted from speculation into the familiar work of narrowing risk. The dessert remained between them, temporarily forgotten.

“No.”

“Water treated as unknown.”

“Yes.”

Mirelen’s fingers had already moved towards the scrap paper, turning enthusiasm into a list before it could become carelessness.

“Anything that looks harmless remains unknown until demonstrated otherwise.”

Lethira smiled.

“You have done this before.”

“Not on the other side of the world.”

Mirelen looked towards Ian again, and there was no disguising the interest now.

“If you can bring us home immediately when we decide we are finished, then I would go tomorrow for that.”

Lethira nodded.

“A reconnaissance, not an expedition.”

She reached for the last half-scone.

“And if the island tries to eat us within five minutes, we come home and improve the plan.”

“I will be at your”—Ian corrected himself—“both of your disposal for logistics and provisions.”

Mirelen caught the correction but did not comment on it.

“Good. Then I still want a real pack.”

Lethira nodded.

“So do I.”

Mirelen leaned back, already thinking like a Warden rather than a visitor.

“Enough food and water for longer than we intend to stay. Rope. Spare bowstrings. Cloth. Something for marking a return point. I am not arriving on an unknown coast with nothing because the man beside me can produce anything.”

“And we choose what we take before we leave,” Lethira said. “Not after the island presents a problem.”

Mirelen glanced towards her unfinished grey-green shirt.

“I may regret not buying boots.”

“You have boots.”

“I have boots which were repaired yesterday.”

Mirelen looked towards the pair by the door as if the leather might object to being discussed this way.

“They survived greybacks.”

“That is not a recognised standard for unknown islands.”

Lethira smiled.

“We can inspect them in the morning.”

Mirelen considered that acceptable.

“And if Ian is handling transport, I want the first arrival somewhere with room around us. Beach, open rock, grassland. Not forest.”

“Agreed.”

Lethira looked towards Ian.

“Then tomorrow is a look. We pack properly, you handle getting us there and back, and Mirelen and I decide how far we actually go once we see it.”

“Whatever level of involvement you wish, I’ll be happy to do. Even if it’s very little.”

Mirelen considered that.

“I would rather you came.”

She looked towards Lethira, who nodded.

“If you are the only person who can take us home immediately, I prefer having you beside us rather than somewhere else waiting to be called.”

“That,” Lethira said, “and I want you there.”

She picked up the abandoned piece of blue cloth, then seemed to remember that they had just agreed to cross half a world tomorrow and put it down again.

“But I do not want you solving the island before we meet it. Transport. Supplies. Getting us out if we decide to leave.”

Mirelen reached for a scrap of paper from beside the sewing things.

“And another pair of eyes.”

“Yes.”

“That seems enough.”

The first items on the list were mundane: water, food, rope, lamps despite the intention to return before dark, spare strings, chalk, cloth, knives, basic medical supplies and something waterproof for notes. Mirelen added a second line beneath water and underlined it.

**More water than we think we need.**

Lethira read it.

“You are expecting trouble.”

“I am expecting ignorance.”

“Fair.”

The weather was another unknown, so they added a light outer layer, dry cloth and something that could serve as cover from either rain or strong sun without pretending they knew which would matter.

Within a few minutes the impossible journey had become a packing list on a scarred table, beside two unfinished shirts and the remains of dessert from another world.

“Tomorrow morning, then,” Lethira said.

Mirelen nodded.

“After breakfast.”

Lethira glanced towards her.

“One breakfast.”

“We can revisit that in the morning.”

The dessert was cleared away and the sewing abandoned properly this time.

Mirelen carried her boots to the brighter end of the table and inspected the repaired heel, flexing the leather and pressing hard around the new work. Lethira fetched both bows and the field pack she had used for the cave; Mirelen brought her own pack from her things. Together they worked through the list, fitting the equipment between the two packs. One lamp became two again.

They packed as Wardens who expected their assumptions to be wrong, not for a heroic expedition.

The grey-green and blue shirts remained unfinished at the far end of the table, temporarily displaced by rope, water, bowstrings and folded provisions. Mirelen’s new book sat safely beyond all of it, still marked at the point where its fictional travellers had acquired problems of considerably smaller geographic scale.

By the time the light outside began to fail, two packs stood ready beside two bows.

Mirelen rested a hand on hers.

“Other side of the world.”

Lethira looked at the equipment, then towards the darkening trees beyond the window.

“Apparently.”

A slow smile appeared.

Neither of them went to bed early.