## Chapter 492 — Small Plans

### Saturday, 10 June 2028

The restaurant had three tables, six counter seats and nowhere sensible for Kanno's cardboard tube.

The woman who showed them in solved that problem by pointing to the narrow gap between the wall and the end of their table. Kanno slid the tube into it carefully, checked that nobody could kick it on the way past, then sat.

Thomas put his own flat print sleeve beside it.

Isha kept hers upright between her chair and the wall.

Kanno noticed but said nothing. The winter road had survived the print event, two streets and seven minutes waiting outside. Isha was apparently unwilling to let lunch finish the job.

Thomas opened the menu. For someone who had wanted to visit the restaurant for months, he showed remarkably little certainty once presented with actual choices. He read the handwritten lunch board, returned to the printed menu, then looked back at the board.

“You could have decided before we came,” Kanno said.

“That would remove the point of having a menu.”

Isha opened hers beside him. He had found enough about the place to bring them across town, yet the lunch board was still holding his attention as though it contained something unexpected.

“He researched enough to want to come here and stopped before it became work.”

Thomas looked grateful. Kanno turned to her own menu.

The restaurant was warm and close without feeling crowded. One of the front windows stood partly open, letting in street noise and an occasional thread of cooler air. From the kitchen came the sharper sounds of lunch being assembled: a pan set down, a knife against a board, running water, somebody calling a short confirmation that disappeared beneath the room's conversation.

The woman took their orders, pausing while Isha asked what accompanied one of the fish sets. The side dishes changed according to what had been prepared that morning; after hearing what was available, Isha chose it.

Once the woman had left, Thomas glanced towards the cardboard tube.

“What did you actually buy?”

“One of the prints. You asked outside.”

“I was hoping time had improved the answer.”

Kanno rested her hands around the water glass and let him wait while she drank. The tube was still wedged safely beside the wall, its cap firmly on.

“It has not.”

Isha smiled and looked towards the tube herself. Kanno had left the event with two prints, six postcards, one small book and the protective tube she had bought after deciding that carrying loose paper through lunch was unacceptable.

Thomas had left with a print of a temporary pedestrian route and two free paper samples.

Isha had bought an empty winter road beneath a distant mountain.

The purchases sat around them like evidence from three different visits to the same room.

“Where are you putting yours?” Kanno asked Thomas.

“Near the desk, I think.”

Isha glanced at him. “We could still look at the wall before hanging it.”

Thomas nodded. The prints were still in their sleeves, and Isha looked down at hers when Kanno asked about the road.

“I don't know yet. The empty part needs room.”

Kanno understood what she meant without asking. Much of the print was road and pale winter air. The mountain occupied less space than the distance leading towards it. Crowding the image beside something louder would change what had made Isha stop at the table in the first place.

“Not the hallway, then,” Thomas said.

“Probably not.”

Their food arrived and displaced the conversation.

Three trays filled most of the table with bowls, plates and small dishes. Kanno moved her phone before it became part of the arrangement. Thomas tucked the programme from the event into his bag. Isha shifted the print sleeve a little farther from the edge.

For several minutes, none of them said much.

Isha's fish had crisp skin beneath a light glaze and enough salt to make the rice useful. Thomas's meal came with a sauce he tasted twice before deciding he liked it better in smaller amounts than he would have used at home. Kanno initially ignored one sharply pickled side dish, tried it after everything else, then returned to it between mouthfuls of rice.

“You made a face at that,” Thomas said.

“I was deciding.”

Kanno offered a small piece across the table before finishing the dish. Isha accepted it; the first taste made her eyebrows rise, and she paused with the remainder held above her tray.

“Strong.”

Kanno waited while she took a second bite.

“Good.”

Outside, someone rolled a delivery cart past the open window. The wooden wheels rattled over a join in the road and faded towards the next intersection.

Kanno ate another mouthful of rice and looked towards Isha's sleeve.

“The artist who made your road seemed pleased you liked the road more than the mountain.”

“She said most people tell her the opposite.”

“That is probably why.”

In the print, the two colours had slipped fractionally apart around the trees. Isha had first assumed the effect deliberate. She remembered the artist explaining the separate passes.

“I liked that she stopped correcting the registration,” Isha said.

The artist had explained that she had stopped treating every slight misalignment as failure once she realised which ones belonged in the finished image.

Thomas had been elsewhere in the room during that conversation. He had seen the finished print outside; now he was hearing how it had been made.

Kanno reached into her bag once there was enough clear table to do so and took out the small book she had bought.

It was narrow, stitched visibly at the spine, with a plain cover carrying only the title and a small printed mark.

Thomas's attention went immediately to the binding.

“You may look at the book,” Kanno said, “but don't turn lunch into an investigation of thread.”

“I had not yet proposed that.”

Isha held out a hand, and Kanno passed the book to her. The exposed stitching flexed as she opened it, drawing Thomas's eye once more before the first image caught his attention.

The pages moved through small pieces of the city: the back of a vending machine, drainage grilles, a bicycle shelter with one missing roof panel, the underside of a pedestrian bridge, a narrow concrete stair beside a retaining wall. The drawings were sparse, printed in two colours with enough variation that the method remained visible.

Isha stopped at the stair. A plant had grown through a crack beside the third step.

“This one.”

“That was the page,” Kanno said. “The plant and the stairs.”

Thomas leaned far enough to see without taking the book from Isha. Most of the page was concrete; the plant was tiny. He studied the steps for a moment before sitting back.

“I would have thought the stairs.”

The book continued around the table once, then returned to her bag before sauce or tea could reach it.

Kanno mentioned one printer who had produced the same building entrance repeatedly, allowing small registration shifts to remain visible between versions. She had no desire to copy the idea, but the work had changed what she wanted to look at when she got home.

Thomas asked whether that meant the wall photographs.

Kanno took a moment before answering, her hands folded loosely beside her bowl.

“Maybe. Today made me want to work. I don't know yet what I want to work on.”

“Then look first,” Isha said.

Kanno nodded. Isha drank her tea while the last cleared space on the table filled with cups and the folded programme Thomas had taken out again.

By the time they finished, the restaurant had turned over two of its other tables. A pair of customers at the counter left, and an older man took one of their places with a newspaper folded under his arm.

Thomas paid his share. Kanno recovered the tube from the wall gap and checked the cap without comment. Isha slid her winter road beneath one arm.

Outside, June had brightened while they ate.

The awning no longer offered much shade. The street carried more people than before, and the heat gathered against the building fronts where the air moved least.

They stood for a moment while Kanno adjusted the tube strap. Isha looked down the street.

“Coffee?”

“We just had tea.”

“Yes.”

Thomas smiled. Kanno settled the strap on her shoulder and looked towards the busier road ahead. People were coming out of the restaurant behind them; she moved closer to her friends to let them pass.

“Coffee.”

They set off without choosing the café immediately.

Kanno carried her tube vertically through the crowd. Thomas had his print tucked safely under one arm. Isha walked with the winter road beside her, its empty stretch of paper hidden for now inside the sleeve.

The afternoon could decide the rest.

---

On another day, under a different sun, Lethira heard the builder on the path before he knocked.

She had spent the morning alone at the holding.

Breakfast had taken less time with one plate. She had inspected two arrows, decided the kitchen hinge could survive another day and moved the blue-glazed bowl from the window to the dining table while cleaning.

Half an hour later she had moved it back.

The knock came while she was sorting a small pile of household papers.

The builder stood outside with rolled sheets beneath one arm and a leather case in the other.

“I have the bathhouse plan. The drainage notes took longer than I expected.”

Lethira stepped aside to let him in.

“Is it ready for the office?”

“For their requirements. I haven't settled the final outlet.” He shifted the rolled sheets beneath his arm. “I can take it in when I'm next in town, or leave you the office copy.”

“Leave it with me. I'd like to hear what they say.”

They spread the largest sheet across the scarred dining table. Two cups held the upper corners. The blue bowl, briefly promoted from decoration to equipment, held down the third.

The drawing kept the old footprint.

That pleased Lethira before she examined anything else.

The failed eastern section was marked for rebuilding. The excavated channel was marked intact, with the access stone he had proposed beside the bathhouse. Farther down, beyond the lengths they had opened, the final outlet remained to be examined. Inside, the builder had arranged the washing space, bath, heating position and water entry with enough clear access that future repair did not require dismantling half the floor.

Lethira traced one internal wall with a finger.

“You moved this. Was it in the way?”

“Of the drain access.” He turned the page so she could follow the line beneath the floor. “Leave it where you had it and somebody repairing this later will have to lift too much flooring.”

She followed the space he had left for the work, then nodded and moved on to the notes.

The second sheet carried measurements and notes for the town office. One line remained deliberately unfinished.

**Waste water — final route after inspection and town requirement.**

“You left it open,” Lethira said.

“The channel we uncovered is sound. I haven't seen where the lower run ends, and I want the town's requirements before I draw a disposal route.”

She looked from the unfinished line to the measurements. His refusal to invent the missing route improved her opinion of him. They discussed the eastern footing, further inspection below the exposed drain and which work needed to wait for civic approval.

When they were done, he kept one copy, left Lethira another and gave her the sheet intended for the town office.

“If they reject the disposal route before I draw it, everyone saves time.”

“And if they reject everything?”

“Then you pay me to draw it again.”

Lethira laughed as she gathered her copies.

“At least that part is clear.”

He accepted payment for the planning work already completed, packed his case and left.

For a while Lethira stayed at the table.

The plan remained under the bowl.

She ate bread and cheese standing at the kitchen counter, then returned the bowl to the window ledge and stacked her household copy with the other papers. After changing for the road, she slid the town copy into a document wrap.

Her bow went over one shoulder as naturally as the wrap went beneath the other arm.

By the time she reached Merrowford, the western approach had begun its usual transition from road to town: fenced plots, sheds, houses, carts and then the gate itself.

The guard recognised her and glanced at the document wrap.

“Guild?”

“Bathhouse. I'm taking it to the civic office.”

He stepped aside for her and turned to a cart coming up behind. Lethira continued inside.

The civic office was busy enough that she had to wait.

A cooper occupied one desk arguing about a fee. At another, a woman and a clerk were working through whether a permission granted to the woman's late husband transferred with ownership of a shed.

Lethira found a bench.

Waiting remained one of the least impressive skills civilisation required from competent adults.

She read the bathhouse notes again and watched the dispute at the other desk slowly become less of a dispute as somebody found the correct record.

Eventually the familiar clerk with polished lenses called her forward.

“Dawnleaf.”

Lethira put the rolled sheet on the counter.

“Today I bring you a smaller problem.”

The clerk unrolled it and checked the outline and the use written above the measurements.

“A household bathhouse on the existing footprint?”

“Yes.”

Her finger stopped at the unfinished drainage line. Lethira leaned across the counter to read the builder's note with her.

“He has opened the drain beside the bathhouse and checked several lengths. They're intact. The lower run still needs inspection, and he wants to know what you require before he commits to a disposal route.”

The clerk read the note through, then explained which work could proceed. Further opening of the lower run for inspection was permitted. Rebuilding the failed footing was not yet part of that permission. The final plan would need to show water source and disposal clearly, and an old outlet would not be accepted merely because previous owners had used it.

Lethira had expected those requirements. She checked where they needed to appear on the final sheet while the clerk marked it.

The clerk stamped the preliminary sheet, wrote a reference number on a small slip and handed both back.

“If the final route approaches the stream directly, expect more questions.”

“Questions or refusal?”

“That depends what you bring me.”

Fair enough.

Lethira put the papers away.

On leaving the civic offices, she turned towards the market rather than immediately taking the western road home.

The Guild stood where it always had near the square, familiar enough now that entering no longer carried any sense of return.

Brannock was working through a ledger when Lethira approached the records position. She glanced up and noticed the empty space beside her.

“No aide today?”

“No.”

Brannock finished the line she was writing while Lethira turned towards the board.

Two higher-rank notices remained pinned along one side. The first offered several days' escort work for a merchant factor along a route Lethira knew well. The second concerned quarry workers hearing repeated sounds behind an old wall in a deeper cut.

She read that one twice.

Brannock followed her attention.

“The quarry factor called it ‘probably nothing’ three times while I was writing that.”

Lethira read the notice again, then left it pinned beside the escort work. Several days on the road did not appeal, and neither did going into the quarry today.

“Not enough to tempt me. What happened with the cave warning?”

“Delivered. The Varren households have been told not to enter from their side. Ridge title is still being checked.”

Brannock laid her pen across the ledger while Lethira asked about branch responsibility. That remained under discussion too. Her gaze dropped to the document wrap beneath Lethira's arm.

“Have they sent you here about something else?”

“No. These are the bathhouse papers; the town office has kept that for itself.”

Lethira laughed and left without taking a contract. Brannock picked up her pen again.

By then bread and cheese no longer counted as lunch.

The Reed and Wheel was close enough to provide the obvious answer.

Caswick looked up when Lethira entered, glanced once towards the door behind her and then returned her attention to Lethira.

“The river fish is good today,” Caswick said.

“Then save me from choosing.”

Lethira took a table near the yard.

The inn sat between busier periods. Two travellers occupied a table nearer the hearth, speaking quietly over bowls. Through the rear opening came the sounds of stable work and an occasional hoof against timber.

Caswick brought fish with herbs, vegetables and bread.

The skin cracked cleanly beneath Lethira's knife.

She ate several bites before Caswick returned with a cup.

“How is the house?”

“The roof no longer leaks. And we bought an unnecessary blue bowl.”

Caswick set the cup beside her plate and moved the bread out of the way of her elbow.

“It has already lived in three places,” Lethira added.

“Then it is settling in.”

Lethira looked at her, but Caswick was already on her way to another table before she could decide whether that had been mockery.

The fish was good enough to keep her seated longer than hunger required.

She watched people move through the yard. A traveller checked a strap on his own pack rather than waiting for stable staff. Someone upstairs opened a window. A girl carried folded sheets from one room to another.

Nothing required her attention.

When she finished, Lethira paid and left by the riverward side.

The quickest route home would have taken her back towards the western gate.

She chose the water instead.

Warehouses and working yards thinned gradually along the bank. Reeds returned where commerce left them room. Two children crouched near the water with a bucket between them, deeply occupied by something Lethira did not need to identify.

Farther on, she reached the town-ground route she and Ian held with the southern parcel.

The path remained uneven.

A few sections had become clearer through use. Elsewhere grass and damp ground still decided the easiest line. Lethira followed the higher edge without trying to improve it.

By the time she crossed onto their own southern land, the town had disappeared behind trees and bends in the ground.

She stopped once to look towards the river.

Then she turned uphill.

At the house, Lethira put the stamped bathhouse sheet on the dining table.

The blue bowl came off the window ledge and held one corner flat.

She stood back.

After a moment, she left it there.

Outside, the afternoon still had several useful hours in it.

Lethira took one of the six chairs into the light beside the house, brought the two arrows she had inspected that morning and sat with the first across her knees.

One feather needed a little work after all.

She warmed the binding between her fingers, straightened it and checked the shaft again before setting the arrow aside.

The second was already fine.

When the shadow of the eaves reached her boots, Lethira turned it once in her hands and put it with the finished one.