## Chapter 507 — Where the Water Goes

The builder returned to the holding in midmorning with a clean version of the bathhouse drawing rolled beneath one arm. Lethira was outside near the unfinished range, checking the marking cord along one side of the prepared ground rather than pretending the backstop was ready for use. She straightened when she saw the plan.

“You have either brought approval or more work.”

“More work first,” the builder said. “Possibly approval after.”

He spread the revised sheet on the surviving wall of the collapsed outbuilding and weighted the corners. The old buried run was now labelled separately as rain and ground drainage, with its uphill branch and gravel-spreading outlet shown before the town-controlled wet ground. A second line left the proposed bathhouse and ended well inside their parcel, nowhere near the old channel or the narrow stream.

“The office wants three things settled on the same drawing,” he said. “Where the clean water comes from, where the used water ends, and confirmation that this line never joins the old one. I have given them an accessible settling point here and a broad coarse-stone spread here. If they accept that, I want them to accept it on the plan rather than discover a fourth question after I open the footing.”

Lethira studied the marks, then looked towards the house. “Ian, our bathhouse has acquired another administrative stage.”

Ian came through. “Administration, hooray.” He was not entirely excited, although maybe a little.

The plan remained stubbornly spread across the wall between them, immune to enthusiasm or its absence. The separate drainage line looked no more impressive for having reached a clean sheet.

“You say that now,” Lethira said. “We have not yet reached the office.”

The builder tapped each relevant part of the sheet in turn. The water would be carried under the holding’s existing household-drawing allowance rather than permanently diverted. The old site drain would remain for rain and ground water. The new bathwater line would pass through a point that could be opened for inspection, then end in a broad gravel spread on their own ground. Nothing in the revision claimed the stream as a drain or extended disposal rights into the wet ground below.

Lethira looked from the drawing to the builder. “I would rather settle it while he is here than send questions back and forth. Coming?”

“Yes.” Ian turned to the builder. “When this is agreed and the town are okay with it, is it just us and you to agree what and when? And how much.”

“Mostly.” The builder did not offer the word as a promise. “I will not tell you the town disappears until the stamp is actually on this sheet. They may require the outlet left open for inspection, or add another condition about how it is finished. But if they approve this version, I have no reason to take the footprint back through them. Then I price the approved work, we agree what is included, and you decide when you want me to start.”

The answer shifted the bathhouse from civic design back towards ordinary building work, but only on the far side of the missing stamp. Lethira looked again at the part of the footprint which had been waiting since the old drain proved to be something else.

“The eastern footing?” Lethira asked.

“Included. So is the separate drainage if that is what they approve. If I open the ground and find something neither of us priced, I stop and tell you instead of quietly making it more expensive.” He rolled the edge of the drawing back flat with one palm. “Timing depends on my stone and timber commitments. I can give you that once the office stops changing the plan.”

The builder had reduced the remaining uncertainty to the parts that belonged to him: material, labour and whatever the ground revealed once he was allowed to disturb it. That was considerably easier to live with than another unknown civic requirement.

Lethira nodded. “So first we persuade the town that our bathwater has somewhere respectable to go.”

“Respectable bathwater, got it.” Ian thanked the builder and took Lethira's hand to head into town.

The builder came with them, carrying the drawing along the ordinary road into town. The walk remained the familiar stretch between the holding and Merrowford, long enough for the bathhouse discussion to lapse into easier silence once there was nothing new to add.

Somewhere after the holding had disappeared behind the trees, Lethira glanced at Ian. “See? Administration already encourages independence.”

The civic office was busier than the path and quieter than the market. They were sent to the same water-and-drainage desk that had handled the earlier plan, where a clerk with greying hair pinned firmly back recognised the reference before she recognised either owner. She unrolled the revised sheet, found the old channel and read the builder’s new notes without asking him to explain what the drawing already said.

“This remains site water only?” she asked.

“Yes,” the builder said. “Rain, ground water and whatever enters from the uphill branch. Cleared and repaired where needed. No bathwater into it.”

The clerk traced the separate line. Lethira answered the source question: household water drawn and carried under the holding’s existing right, with no permanent diversion from the stream. The builder described the accessible settling point and the gravel spread beyond it. The clerk shifted the proposed spread slightly uphill on the drawing, made it broader rather than longer and confirmed that its lowest edge still remained inside the private parcel.

“What use?” she asked.

“Bathing,” Lethira said. “Soap, dirt, hair. People washing themselves.”

The clerk wrote the use beside the new line before continuing down a list which had plainly been built by other people finding creative uses for drains. Her pen paused at the next category.

“No laundry?”

“No.”

Another mark went onto the sheet. The bathhouse was becoming more precisely limited with every small answer, without becoming any less capable of being a bathhouse.

“No kitchen waste, dye, tanning liquor, alchemy, butchery or workshop discharge?”

Lethira’s mouth moved faintly. “We are planning a remarkably unambitious bathhouse.”

The clerk ignored the humour professionally and wrote the restriction beside the drain. The disposal end was to remain accessible until inspection. If the use changed materially, the approval did not change with it by implication. Then she turned the sheet slightly and looked at Ian as the other recorded owner.

“Does the other agree to the same use and the inspection condition?”

“I agree, thank you.”

The clerk added his agreement, read the revised line once more and pressed the office stamp onto the sheet. “Construction approval to the revised plan. This does not approve a permanent diversion, boundary change or discharge onto controlled wet ground. The old run remains site drainage. Inspection applies to the new disposal end before it is covered.”

The eastern footing could now be rebuilt as part of the approved work. The builder waited until they were outside before allowing himself any visible satisfaction.

“I will price this version,” he said. “Footing rebuild, new drain, structure, bath, heating position and access around it. Anything decorative or optional I will put separately so you know what you are refusing.” He tucked the approved sheet back beneath his arm. “I will check the stone and timber I already have committed and bring you a price and a start window at the holding.”

“Thank you.”

The builder nodded and left them near the civic approach, already looking more interested in the drawing than in further conversation. Lethira watched him disappear into the movement of the street before turning to Ian.

“Well,” she said. “We have an approved bathhouse.”

Ian leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “So I'm approved to bathe with you, but have to wait. This seems a unique form of torture.” He smiled at her.

Colour reached the tips of Lethira’s ears. She turned until they were almost nose to nose, refusing to surrender the ground merely because he had chosen it well. “You have already bathed with me. You are being denied only the privilege of doing it in a bath we own.” Her hand settled around his waist. “Apparently bureaucracy has discovered how to make anticipation taxable.”

The approved drawing was already walking away beneath the builder’s arm, leaving them with nothing immediate to do about the bathhouse except wait for his price. Memory supplied a less administrative version of hot water.

“It has been a while. Do you remember our first bathing?”

“Yes.” Lethira’s expression softened with the memory. “The stone room. You argued for the deeper bath because it held heat longer, entirely for thermal efficiency.” She let the old phrase acquire exactly as much disbelief as it deserved. “You worried that your machine might improve you, hide parts of you behind decorative steam, or otherwise become helpful in ways neither of us wanted. I was much less embarrassed than you were.”

Her smile widened. “And after all that preparation, you stood up in the bath, looked down at yourself, attempted to sit again without checking where the ledge was, and disappeared almost to your chin. Your beard floated.”

She had laughed until language failed her then. The memory still threatened the same result now.

“I remember.”

Ian blushed and smiled. “I remember various sensations from that.”

Lethira gave him a look that was private rather than innocent. “So do I.” Her thumb moved once over his hand. “And unlike the drainage plan, those required considerably less administrative approval.”

They had begun drifting away from the civic offices without either of them formally choosing a destination. Merrowford supplied carts, voices and the late-morning movement of people already thinking about food.

Ian pressed against her shoulder. “Lunch, dinner, breakfast? I still have no idea what time it is.”

Lethira looked up at the light, then past him at the traffic through the streets as though Merrowford itself were a clock he had neglected to learn. “Lunch. Easily.” She leaned back against him. “You are improving at days and measures. Time of day remains your great enemy.” Her hand tightened briefly around his. “Food?”

“Yes, please, before I get distracted by memories and the local Guild has a job to arrest me for public arousal. Although I do know a Rank B adventurer who could bring me in.”

Two people passed them carrying a basket between them, neither showing any interest in the crime Ian had just invented for himself. Lethira had considerably more difficulty maintaining professional detachment.

Lethira turned her head very slowly. For one heartbeat she managed the professional expression of a Warden considering a difficult contract; then the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “I could probably take the contract. I would have to disclose a serious conflict of interest involving the suspect.” She steered him towards the market. “Food first. Then you may continue incriminating yourself somewhere less crowded.”

“I'd be pleased if you brought me in… by hand.” Ian smiled naughtily whilst following her.

Her ears coloured again. “That… is not improving your defence.” She tightened her hold on his hand and drew him closer as they walked. “Lunch first, criminal.”

The market was close enough now that the smell of pastry had begun competing successfully with the conversation. It offered Ian a route out of further self-incrimination which neither of them treated as compulsory.

“Yes, Warden.”

Lethira gave him a slow, satisfied look. “Much better.”

The market supplied enough competing smells to interrupt the arrest fantasy. Hot bread and onions reached them first, followed by roasting meat and the heavier savour of pastry. A stall near the busier edge had thick hand pies stacked beneath cloth, the newest batch still steaming when the seller lifted the cover.

“Pie?” Lethira asked.

Ian closed his eyes, thinking lovingly of pie. “Yes, please.”

Lethira laughed. “That may be the most sincere thing you have said since leaving the office.”

There were two fillings left in quantity: minced meat and onion in dark gravy, and root vegetables with sharp cheese and herbs. Lethira chose the meat for herself, then waited while Ian made the more serious decision.

“Meat or cheese?”

“Cheese for me today, please.”

The seller wrapped both in paper. A split in the crust of Ian’s pie showed soft root vegetables and melted cheese beneath the browned pastry, with herbs strong enough to survive the heat. Lethira had already eaten half of hers by the time she looked sideways at him.

“Well?”

“Almost as good as public exposure and hands-on arrest.” Ian smiled. “Thank you, Pie-Warden.”

Lethira stopped chewing. “Pie-Warden.”

For a moment she regarded the remaining half of her pie as if professional dignity might somehow be recovered from it. The market continued around them without recognising the title.

She swallowed with dignity. “I have spent decades building professional credibility. And somehow this is what survives.” Her shoulder bumped his as they walked. “Eat your pie before I confiscate it as evidence.”

Ian looked worried. “I'm unsure based on track record if that's a joke.” He took another bite to be safe.

“Good instinct.” Lethira’s voice stayed dry, but her eyes made the joke clear. She let the threat expire while they walked along the edge of the market, shoulders brushing whenever the crowd narrowed their path. For a little while the approved bathhouse, the revised drainage and the builder’s future quotation could remain where they were; lunch required less planning.

Ian kissed her cheek, then used his free hand to remove the remaining pie-based evidence. The market offered no witness willing to challenge his interpretation of evidence disposal.

Lethira accepted the kiss without breaking stride. When she looked back at him, only folded paper remained in his hand. “Efficient destruction of evidence.” She finished the last of her own pie more slowly. “Suspiciously efficient.”

Ian smiled. “I reached out to Thomas and Isha after Crownholt. If we can find somewhere to sit, I can tell you about it. If you're interested.”

The teasing gave way to something quieter in Lethira’s face. “Yes. I am.”

She chose a low stone wall beneath an old tree at the edge of the market, well back from the stalls and the passing foot traffic. Once seated, she folded her empty pie paper into a smaller square and rested her hands loosely in her lap. They spoke quietly enough that their voices did not carry to the path.

“What happened?”

Ian gave her the short version rather than replaying the messages or repeating the old letters. After Crownholt, he had contacted Thomas and Isha and told them that he had taken the seized private correspondence and kept the originals unread outside Crown custody. The decision about whether to receive them had remained theirs. They had chosen to have the letters returned sealed and unread; after that, they had decided for themselves what to read, what to leave closed and what to keep.

Lethira listened without interrupting. Her expression tightened briefly at Crownholt, then eased when the account reached the point where Thomas and Isha had been given the choice Ian had preserved for them.

“Good,” she said. “I wondered what you were going to do with them.” Her shoulder rested against his beneath the shade of the tree. “And now you know.”

“Yeah, I'm glad they have them, Crownholt doesn't, and they get to decide what to do with them. I think that's much fairer, or maybe, less unfair.”

“Less unfair is probably the better description.” Lethira watched people cross the market beyond the shade. “Giving the letters back does not make Crownholt never have taken them, and it does not undo what happened around them. But one part is finished. The Crown no longer keeps their private words merely because it once had the power to.”

The market moved past the edge of their shade in fragments: a handcart, two apprentices, somebody carrying a bundle of greens large enough to hide most of their face. None of it belonged to Crownholt, and the ordinariness gave the old intrusion less room to fill the afternoon.

She leaned a little more firmly against his shoulder. “And Thomas and Isha do not have to be grateful for receiving something that should have been theirs. They can read them, burn them, lock them away or leave them untouched for the rest of their lives.” Her gaze returned to him. “Did telling them make Crownholt feel any more finished to you?”

“A bit. Crownholt, yes; Voss, I'm not so sure. I then went back to see Arliss; I'm not sure why. That was quite eventful. I might be trying to make friends with anyone I interact with a bit too much, though.”

Lethira’s eyes narrowed slightly at *eventful*, but the last admission caught her first. “You do collect people,” she said. “Not everyone. People who interest you, argue with you, surprise you, or let you be something other than the strangest thing in the room.”

She did not make the observation into a diagnosis. Their time together had already contained ordinary work, ordinary meals and several people willing to disagree with him, despite the impossible route by which Ian had entered her life.

There was no accusation in it. If anything, she sounded amused now that Ian had named the pattern himself. “Wanting friends is not a problem. I would worry more if you started treating every pleasant conversation as proof that someone had become one.” Her shoulder remained against his. “Arliss, though? What happened?”

Ian gave her the broad shape of his return visit without repeating the detailed conversation about the gods. Arliss had his first name but not his surname or where he lived, and he had not identified Lethira, Mirelen or the other mortal guests at the dinner he had mentioned. He had named the Lifegiver and Waykeeper, explained the gardening arrangement and told her they were his friends. More importantly, the confidence she had agreed to keep had held. Reality had since given Ian reason to know that she had kept her promise rather than quietly turning the conversation into Crown property.

The meeting had gone well beyond ordinary conversation. Arliss had been less interested in what his power could give her than in what it actually did: how an instruction was interpreted, what a result established, what it failed to establish, and how an impossible claim might still be tested. They had experimented rather than merely talking, with Arliss treating omnipotence as a problem that could be divided into observations, mechanisms and unanswered questions.

That interest was unusual enough to interest Ian in return. Almost everyone else understandably encountered his abilities through consequences, danger, gifts or the question of what he might do with them. Arliss wanted to know how the impossible worked. She also offered something Ian could not get by asking reality for an answer: the perspective of somebody who had spent a life actually studying and practising magic. If they continued meeting, he wanted to learn magic from her, or at least learn how a mage understood it.

“That does sound different,” Lethira said after a while. “Most people who learn what you can do acquire a reason to care about the result almost immediately. Arliss already has a profession built around asking why one ward holds and another fails.” Her mouth curved faintly. “And you have apparently found a mage willing to poke omnipotence with a stick and take notes.”

“I guess the single upside of working at Crownholt is stick poking.” Ian found it amusing, but not enough to laugh. “I then took her back in time. She argued *a lot*, which was quite interesting given her proximity to power and how short a time I've known her. That was also interesting.”

“That interests me more than her being impressed by what you can do.” Lethira’s attention had become distinctly Warden-like. “She knew by then that you could take her through time, and apparently her response was still to tell you when your proposal was bad.” A small smile touched her mouth. “That is useful information about Arliss. What were you arguing about?”

Ian summarised the dispute rather than recreating it. His first proposal had been to create an identical branch of history that began when they arrived and could disappear when they were finished. Arliss had objected that if people in that branch continued thinking and living, destroying the branch afterward did not become harmless merely because it had been created for a visit. His next attempt had kept the real past but relied on correcting any consequences large enough to change the present. Arliss had objected again: that meant allowing their interference to spread and then deciding afterward which lives and histories should be restored.

The eventual compromise had been much narrower. Instead of making history disposable or repairing it behind themselves, Ian made the two of them invisible and non-corporeal to the historical world, unable to touch it, change it or be perceived by anyone inside it. They could observe Old Crownholt without becoming causes in the history they were watching.

Lethira listened with growing amusement. “So she did not argue that you were incapable of making it safe. She argued about what *safe* meant until you produced a version she could actually defend.” She considered that, then glanced sideways at him. “I think I might like her.”

“I am a little torn by liking her, but she wasn't in the same category as Voss. And could she have point-blank refused him? What about any of the guards? The King and Voss are the ones here, I think. In some ad hoc categorisation of villainy and justice.”

“She'd be very useful on an island expedition. I am not suggesting it yet.”

The possibility changed the scale of the conversation. Arliss as a private acquaintance was one thing; Arliss standing beside Mirelen on an unknown shore would connect people and knowledge circles which had so far remained deliberately separate.

Lethira was quiet for a few moments. Her expression had lost the amusement from the time-travel argument, though she remained comfortably against his shoulder. “I do not think *could she have refused* has one clean answer. Arliss had choices. So did the guards. Some choices might have cost position, advancement, trust or employment. I do not know enough about Crownholt to tell you exactly what happened to a Crown mage who told Voss no.”

She looked down at their hands. “That matters when deciding how much responsibility belongs to her. It does not make her participation disappear. Voss had much more discretion over what happened day to day. The King appointed him to manage the inquiry, and the separation and assessment continued under royal authority. Those are different kinds of responsibility. I would not turn them into one neat scale merely because we want the categories to behave.”

The distinction did not produce a verdict on Arliss. It only stopped *not Voss* from becoming the same thing as *not responsible*.

The island remark drew a smaller smile back. “And yes. A ward assessor who argues with omnipotent time travel until the experiment is properly specified would probably be useful somewhere full of unknown ruins, dangerous animals and things we have misidentified before.”

Her expression tightened at the other side of it. “It would also mean telling her that the island exists, introducing Mirelen, changing who knows about you, and deciding whether we want a Crown mage inside something that has so far been ours to explore. So I am pleased you are *not suggesting it yet*.”

“The other point is—her presence would make it less of an Elven invasion. At some point that might be worth a consideration. The major risk is widening her knowledge of you, and our friends.”

The word *invasion* was exaggerated, but the first sight of strangers did not come with access to their intentions. Appearance, weapons and apparent allegiance would arrive before explanation.

“Yes.” Lethira took that more seriously. “If we ever reach actual contact, who arrives matters before anyone understands a word we say. Two armed Wood Elf Wardens appearing together could look like something very particular even if our intentions were harmless. Adding a human would not magically make the group neutral, but it would change its shape.”

The inhabited inlet remained only a possible future contact, not a destination they had chosen. That made the composition of such a group worth thinking about without turning the thought into a plan.

She considered Arliss separately from the politics. “She would also bring expertise neither Mirelen nor I have. Wards, unfamiliar magic, structured testing. That could matter before contact as much as during it.” Her expression tightened again. “But bringing her means she learns about me, Mirelen, the island, your relationship to us, and whatever else becomes visible simply by being there. She has kept one confidence. That is evidence in her favour. It is not permission to hand her every other one.”

Lethira rested her head briefly against his shoulder. “So I think you are right twice. She may become useful enough that the composition of a later party is worth discussing, and deciding that would cost us privacy.”

“A joint Wood Elf / North party is politically attractive—purely from a political perspective. It's then this *continent* reaching out. Chuck a dwarf and a cute girl with cat ears and you've got full representation.” Ian smiled, becoming less serious.

Whatever careful political model had existed a moment earlier had now acquired a visibly arbitrary recruitment standard. Lethira allowed herself to notice the change.

Lethira stared at him for a beat, then laughed. “That is an impressively Ian definition of full representation.”

She settled back against his shoulder, still smiling. “The serious part has merit. Wood Elf and northern human involvement together would make it harder for first contact to look like one kingdom, one people or one claim arriving on an unknown shore. But if we start collecting people by ears and ancestry purely to improve the picture, Mirelen may throw us into the sea before we get there.”

The turn towards absurdity relieved the discussion without erasing it. The hypothetical expedition could remain hypothetical while its imagined membership became increasingly questionable.

Her eyebrows rose. “And I notice the hypothetical dwarf received no requirement to be cute.”

“I didn't notice what he or she looked like after my imagination got to the cat-girl.” Ian held up his hands as a guilty party.

Lethira looked at the raised hands, then at him. “An excellent defence. Complete surrender to the evidence.” Her smile widened. “I will remember that apparently your diplomatic planning becomes unreliable as soon as someone has attractive ears.”

The joke had carried them a long way from Arliss without quite abandoning the question of who Ian actually knew in this world. Merrowford itself supplied the next comparison.

“I don't think I've seen a demi-human yet. I recall Thomas and Isha interacting with several of them.”

“You may have passed one without knowing what you were looking at, but I do not remember us actually speaking to anyone you would have identified that way.” Lethira glanced towards the streets beyond the market. “There are demi-human families and businesses in Merrowford. More in Southbank than around the central market. Thomas and Isha spent time there, yes.”

A trace of mischief returned. “So before you recruit an imaginary cat-girl for continental diplomacy, would you like to meet some actual people?”

Southbank lay close enough that the question did not need to remain abstract. It was an ordinary district of Merrowford before it was an answer to anything Ian had imagined.

“I… don't want to be some kind of fluffy ear tourist, feels a bit rude potentially. I am going to assume certain men in this world *will* seek out females of various demi-human species. I might be overcompensating.”

“Probably a little.” Lethira considered it rather than dismissing it. “Going to Southbank because you are curious about part of Merrowford you have never seen is ordinary. Going there to stare at people's ears and tails as though they are exhibits would be rude. I think you can manage the distinction.”

“As for men seeking out women because they are a different people…” Her expression became drier. “I would be astonished if humans had discovered a category of attraction they had somehow neglected.” She squeezed his hand. “You are allowed to notice that someone is attractive, Ian. Just try to notice the person as well.”

They rose from the wall. Ian brushed his head against her ear for effect, requiring him to stand on his toes. The height difference made the demonstration considerably more deliberate than a casual brush could have been.

Lethira went still for half a heartbeat, then turned just enough to look down at him. The tips of her ears had coloured again. “That,” she said with considerable dignity, “is an extremely poor demonstration of noticing the person as well.”

Ian chuckled to himself. “Let's have a walk through Southbank. There is a square there, I think.” He squeezed her hand. “I'll try not to drool.”

“We can then walk back along the other side of the river and… cheat… our way across near our home?”

The proposed route turned curiosity into the rest of their afternoon without requiring any destination more serious than home. The map could remain provisional until the streets corrected it.

Lethira gave him a look at *drool* but let the offence pass. “There is a small square, yes. Mirelen and I ate beside the fountain when we went for cloth. Your map makes it look rather neater than it is.” She kept hold of his hand. “Southbank, then along the far bank as long as the path remains useful. And when ordinary geography has made its point, I will permit a small act of outrageous cheating rather than making us walk back to a bridge merely for moral improvement.”

Her smile returned. “Try to survive the ears.”

Ian took her hand, and they walked. The shade of the tree gave way to the brighter street as they rejoined the movement around the market.

The route into Southbank took them away from the busiest part of the market and towards the river. Streets tightened gradually rather than changing all at once. Workshops appeared between houses, open doors giving brief views of benches, hanging tools and shelves crowded with things made for bodies that Merrowford’s more conventional shops did not always assume. A cart stood half unloaded outside one doorway while a broad-shouldered man with small horns argued amiably with the driver over which crate had been promised first.

Across the lower bridge, the town changed texture again. Southbank Lower had the compressed, repeatedly adapted look of a district that had never been given quite enough room and had learned to use what it had. Upper floors leaned over narrow streets. Repairs showed several ages of timber and plaster. Signs mixed ordinary lettering with several symbol sets, sometimes together on the same board. Nothing announced that they had entered a different Merrowford. The people did that simply by being more varied.

There were humans among them, plenty of them. There were also demi-human residents whose visible differences varied widely: a woman with short furred ears carrying a basket against one hip; a narrow-faced clerk with a tail looped carefully around the leg of his stool while he wrote; two children with small horns chasing one another until an older woman sent both back towards a doorway. None of it arranged itself for Ian’s benefit. Work continued, arguments continued, somebody laughed from an upstairs window, and a butcher farther along the street cared more about keeping flies away from his hooks than about the arrival of a Wood Elf and her human companion.

The small square proved real. Three narrower streets met around an irregular public space whose old fabric had survived less neatly than the symbol on Ian’s map suggested. The low wall beside it still gave people somewhere to sit, though sections had been repaired in different stone. The old dry fountain remained recognisable near the centre, its stone worn and repaired in more than one place. Children used its edge for a game whose rules changed loudly whenever somebody began losing.

Lethira slowed without turning the square into a historical exhibit. She looked around with the same attention she gave any part of Merrowford that had continued changing while she was elsewhere. Southbank had changed. New timber sat against old stone, one building filled a narrow gap between older walls, and the businesses around the square did not need to be the ones Thomas and Isha had known for the place to remain itself.

They continued through rather than making it a destination. Beyond it the river became easier to glimpse between buildings, then easier still as the streets loosened near the bank. Hot oil and worked leather gave way to wet wood, mud, rope and the slow mineral smell of the water. Warehouses and sheds interrupted the view in places, but farther on there were stretches where rough fencing, mooring posts and patches of grass stood between the road and the broad river.

Ian squeezed her hand and they continued. Lethira answered with the pressure of her fingers rather than interrupting the quiet stretch of the walk.

The farther west they went, the less Southbank felt like a district and the more it became the ragged edge of a town. Buildings stopped arriving in continuous rows. Workshops gave way to yards, stacked timber, narrow gardens and pieces of ground whose purpose was obvious only to the people using them. The river remained beside them, broad and slow, sometimes hidden behind reeds or rough fencing and then suddenly open again.

Lethira did not hurry. She watched the opposite bank almost as much as the path ahead, occasionally turning her head to compare the water, road and tree line. Merrowford’s centre gradually compressed behind them into roofs and chimney smoke. From here the town looked less divided into districts than it had while walking through it. Southbank, old streets, markets and workshops became parts of the same irregular settlement beside the water.

The ground underfoot became less obliging as they left the busier riverside behind. Where there was a clear way, they used it. Where grass and damp ground had reclaimed the edge, they moved farther from the water. Lethira tested one muddy patch with the toe of her boot, rejected it without comment and took them around by firmer ground.

Eventually even the last scattered buildings were behind them. Across the river, the western countryside opened out through rough vegetation and wetter ground, with trees farther back obscuring any easy sight of the holding. Their home was somewhere beyond that green interruption: close by map and inconveniently distant by the ordinary routes that remained.

Lethira slowed and studied the far side. “I think your proposed cheating point has arrived.” She looked along the river once more, apparently checking that they had at least made a respectable effort at geography before abandoning it. “We could continue until the river teaches us another lesson about wet ground, or we can admit that we own a house over there and possess an extremely unfair method of reaching it.”

“Or we can walk on water.” Ian smiled at her.

Lethira looked from him to the broad river and back again. Her expression settled into the wary amusement of someone who had learned that an absurd suggestion from Ian was often entirely practical. “That would at least preserve the principle of walking home.”

The river offered no visible cooperation. Its surface continued moving around reeds and small drifting fragments with the same disregard it had shown before Ian suggested treating it as a road.

She studied the water once more and squeezed his hand. “Are you proposing ordinary feet on very extraordinary water, or something more dramatic?”

“Just the water will behave like a mostly solid surface to us, like slightly damp sand maybe.”

Ian stepped on to demonstrate. For a moment the gesture looked exactly like stepping where there was nothing to stand on.

The river accepted his weight with only a shallow yielding beneath his boot. Water darkened around the sole and shifted as though compressed, ripples spreading away from a surface that should not have been able to hold him. There was no hidden platform and no sheet of ice; the current still moved beneath and around the place where he stood.

Lethira stared at his foot, then at the river beyond him. “That is deeply offensive to everything water has been teaching me for most of my life.”

Still holding his hand, she placed one boot cautiously onto the river beside him and pressed down until it took her weight. Her ears lifted. “Oh, that is strange.”

Ian took her hand. “I love you, first of the water elves.”

Below their joined hands, the current kept sliding past as though two people standing on it were irrelevant to the larger work of being a river. The ripples around their boots merged with ordinary current a few paces away.

Lethira laughed, the sound carrying oddly clearly over the river. She shifted her weight fully onto the impossible surface beside him and looked down at the current sliding beneath their boots. “I love you too. And I am absolutely not allowing *water elf* to become a recognised people because you made the river behave.”

“Maybe we should go home and breed a race of half-elf water folk.” Ian smiled. “Or at least some of that sentence.”

He scampered over the water towards the other side, fully aware he couldn't outrun an elf. The yielding surface made each footfall look slightly wrong without giving him any useful advantage.

Lethira’s laughter followed him for only a moment before her footsteps did. The strange surface yielded beneath her boots without slowing her much, and the broad river made the pursuit look considerably more dramatic than it was. “You are making a very ambitious proposal for a man fleeing immediately after making it.”

She closed the distance with insulting ease. Ian was captured.

Lethira caught him from behind before he reached the bank, one arm closing around his middle while the other took his wrist with practised, completely unnecessary competence. The river dipped slightly beneath both of them and continued flowing as though this were merely another indignity it had decided to tolerate.

“There,” she said near his ear. “Suspect detained.” Her hold tightened just enough to make escape clearly theoretical. “Now, about *some of that sentence*.”

Ian looked up, lost in her eyes, his own showing nothing but love. “I'm yours, take me.”

Whatever answer Lethira had prepared for the ridiculous proposal disappeared. Her expression softened completely, the chase and the river and the joke falling away beneath something older and simpler between them.

“With pleasure.”

She kissed him there in the middle of the river, one arm still secure around his waist while the impossible water shifted gently beneath their feet. Beyond her shoulder waited the far bank, the trees and the house they had chosen together, with an approved bathhouse still existing mostly on paper and a builder due to return with a price.

The bathhouse could wait for stone, timber, inspection and a builder’s price. For now, home was close enough to walk to across the water.