## Chapter 510 — Useful Work

The holding had moved into evening by the time Ian returned.

Lethira was at the scarred table with three arrows laid across a folded cloth and the bathhouse papers occupying the far end. One arrow had lost enough of its fletching to deserve repair; the other two had apparently been included so the first would not feel singled out. She looked up when Ian appeared, watched him for a moment, then set the arrow down. “Crownholt?”

“Yes.”

That brought her fully away from the work. She leaned back and gave him the particular attention she used for tracks that had changed since the last time she crossed them.

“How did it go?”

Ian sat opposite her. “I think I accidentally helped invent a unit of mana.”

Lethira stared at him, then looked briefly at the bathhouse papers as if checking whether she had somehow asked the wrong question.

“That is not the answer I expected.”

“Neither was the day.”

He gave her the shape of it rather than every movement of brass cylinders and warded boxes. Arliss had turned his increasingly dramatic arrival into a question about whether appearance and physical state were the same thing. They had discovered that destroying and reconstructing identical material did not preserve an active working across it, while returning the original material allowed the working to reconnect. Tea had become experimental apparatus. A receiving crystal had found no measurable natural mana in Ian himself. Then Arliss, dissatisfied with vague comparison, had helped define one experimental reference unit from the mana required to freeze one dram of water under recorded conditions.

Lethira listened without interrupting until he reached the trees. “You froze trees.”

“Arliss froze trees. I measured her.”

“That sentence is not much better.”

Ian smiled and gave her the results: seven hundred and twenty units for one tree, seven hundred and eight for the other, then the same figures again after he restored each tree exactly and Arliss repeated the workings. Lethira knew enough magic and field work to understand why the repetition mattered even if the invented unit belonged only to one mage and one method.

“So the difference followed the trees,” she said. “Not her casting. And what did you get for her full reserve?”

“Yes, at least for those two. Her full reserve was eleven thousand eight hundred, by the same reference.”

Lethira gave a low whistle. “That sounds large.”

The number had surprised him too. It had been easier to make sense of the difference between two trees than to imagine what eleven thousand eight hundred of anything meant inside a person.

“It does, although the unit only means what we defined it to mean.”

“Good. You remembered that before I had to say it.”

“I had an excellent teacher.”

Lethira picked up the damaged arrow and turned it between her fingers. He had spent as much time explaining Arliss's questions as his own impossible answers; she had expected rather more of the latter.

“Arliss.” It was not quite a question.

“Yes.”

The answer came easily enough that Lethira noticed it. She made no immediate judgement while Ian continued.

He told her Arliss had enjoyed the work openly. They had spoken about Thomas again, and Arliss had refused the easy comfort of treating Ian's willingness to return as proof that what she had done in the past no longer mattered. When he explained the line he had given her about Voss—that the real test was whether Arliss kept private anything that might put his friends at risk—Lethira's hand stopped on the arrow.

“And she agreed?”

“She said curiosity wasn't danger. If she thought someone was actually in danger, she'd make the judgement again rather than promise blindness in advance.”

Lethira nodded once. “Good.”

She stripped the damaged feather free, inspected the shaft beneath it and set the arrow back on the cloth. The other two arrows lay beside it, their fletching available for comparison.

Ian waited a moment before adding, “We also talked about doing something again. I asked her to find somewhere we could eat where the worst outcome is gossip and not implications for anyone else.”

That earned him a longer look. Lethira's mouth curved. “Very specific.”

“I thought specificity was meant to be good for me.”

Lethira fitted a replacement feather against the shaft without fixing it yet. She checked its angle against the sound feathers, then set it down while she returned to the more interesting part of his account.

“It often is. You like her.”

“Yes.”

“As a friend?”

He had answered the first question easily. This one made him pause; he liked the idea of another afternoon with Arliss, but he had not thought much beyond that.

“I think so. Maybe. I don't know exactly yet.”

Lethira left the replacement feather on the cloth and reached across the table for his hand. She had to reach past the two sound arrows to do it; their shafts clicked together as she settled her elbow beside them.

“Then eat with her and find out what the friendship is when neither of you has a tree to freeze. You did not need to turn it into a report for me, but I am glad you told me.”

“I wanted you to know.”

“I assumed that was why you were telling me.” Her thumb moved once over his knuckles. “Crownholt has already had enough opportunities to make ordinary relationships into evidence.”

A scrap of feather clung to her thumb. Ian brushed it free with his other hand and kept hold of her, leaving the waiting arrows for another moment.

Ian squeezed her hand. “Also because I love you.”

Her face softened immediately. “I know that too.”

She leaned across the table far enough to kiss him. The arrow shafts rolled slightly on the cloth when her other hand caught its edge, and she steadied them without breaking the kiss. When she sat back, she looked faintly annoyed at the arrows for requiring competence during affection.

“Eat with Arliss,” she said. “Let people gossip if they need entertainment. If the food is terrible, you may report that part to me in detail.”

“What if it is good?”

“Then I will have to consider whether she has better judgement than you.”

Ian looked offended enough to satisfy her, then glanced towards the bathhouse papers. The arrows had encroached on one corner of the drawing; she lifted a shaft away from the proposed drain.

“Speaking of people with judgement, any news from our builder?”

“Not today. Which means tomorrow he may arrive during breakfast simply to punish us for asking.”

He did not. He arrived shortly after it.

The next morning was clear enough that the old bathhouse footprint had dried along its exposed stones. Lethira saw the builder from the front window first, carrying the approved plan under one arm. He still wore the purposeful expression of a man who had successfully made someone else stamp a piece of paper; this time he had brought a costing sheet to go with it. She was outside before he reached the surviving wall. Ian followed with two cups of tea and the knowledge that neither cup would be allowed near the plan.

The builder unrolled the drawing on the same board they had used during the drain inspection. The old site-water run remained marked as they had found it: upper branch, lower stone-lined channel and gravel-spreading outlet within their parcel. The approved second line left the proposed bath area and ran separately downslope before ending in the broader patch the clerk had marked, well short of both the stream and the town-controlled wet ground.

He laid the costing beside it. Footing rebuild, separate drain, structure, bath, heating position and access were all included; decorative additions occupied their own small list below the total. Ian and Lethira read through the work with him. He could make the trial opening that morning and bring his labourer and materials within the next few days, if the ground matched what they had planned for. They agreed the price and basic scope, leaving the optional work undecided.

“This is the version we took through the office,” the builder said, tapping the separate line. “Rain and ground water stay in the old run. Bathwater gets its own drain, and the disposal end stays open for inspection before I cover it. The office needs to see where it ends and what has gone underneath.”

Lethira bent over the costing again. “And if the next hole tells us something expensive?”

“I stop and tell you. We agree any changed work and price before I do it. If the ground is not what we expect, we may have to change the plan too.”

Lethira checked the lines for labour and material once more. The total now belonged to work she could point to on their own ground, and the builder had left the optional additions where she could ignore them.

“That is better.”

Ian looked from the line on the page to the actual slope. The builder described a broad stone-and-gravel bed beneath the surface, intended to spread the used bathwater gradually rather than send a bathful of soap and washing dirt directly into the stream or through the narrow site drain. It would remain entirely within their parcel and clear of the wet margin. He wanted to open the far end first; if the ground there refused to take water as expected, digging the trench towards it would only create a longer mistake.

“And the eastern footing?” Lethira asked.

“If the ground for the disposal bed is sound, I can set the drain route and begin the eastern rebuild. That is already in the approval. The inspection condition is on the disposal end before covering, not on starting the footing.”

Lethira looked towards the footprint as though walls might actually follow. She had carried the prospect home from the civic office; seeing the labour and material priced beside the drawing made her impatient to have something more substantial to look at.

“Today?”

“The test opening. Full trench when I bring the labourer and stone.”

The builder had brought a spade and iron bar. Lethira reached for the spade before he could, then waited while he marked the limits of the opening. He considered her, then nodded.

“You may dig.”

“Thank you.”

Ian retrieved the spade and presented it with unnecessary ceremony. Lethira accepted it with the composure of someone receiving a weapon in a much more important setting.

“Your authority has been recognised.”

Lethira ignored him and started on the marked patch.

Turf and dark soil gave way to lighter earth carrying more small stone. Lethira dug faster than the builder would have, but she followed his dimensions instead of turning strength into excavation policy. Ian moved spoil where directed and kept the edge clear. When the opening reached the depth the builder wanted, he took over with the narrow trowel and examined the exposed layer rather than trusting how quickly it had appeared.

The lower ground was coarse enough to earn a grunt of approval. He poured part of a bucket into the opening and watched it disappear into disturbed gravel instead of sitting at the bottom or running sideways towards the old drainage line. Ian refilled the bucket for a second test; the water behaved the same way.

“Good enough to proceed,” the builder said after watching the wet patch settle. “The office inspector may still dislike my stone size out of personal principle, but the ground itself is doing what the drawing assumes.”

Lethira rested her hands on the spade handle and looked from the hole to the footprint uphill. The work had left earth along the edge of one sleeve; she brushed at it and only spread it farther.

“So we are actually building a bathhouse.”

“We are digging drainage for one.”

“That is less romantic.”

The builder gathered the trowel and iron bar while Lethira waited with the spade. His eyes moved between the new opening and the old footing, already following the work back uphill.

“It is also the part that stops the romantic bathhouse becoming a damp ruin.”

She considered this and nodded. “Fine. We are romantically draining.”

The builder looked at Ian, who lifted both hands. “I had nothing to do with that sentence.”

By the time the man left, the test opening had been covered temporarily against someone stepping into it, the new route was marked with pegs and the plan and costing rested on the table inside with the civic mark visible near one corner. He would return with his labourer, drain stone and footing material within the agreed few days. With the trial satisfactory and the route set, the eastern rebuild could proceed alongside the drain work; the disposal end would remain accessible until it had passed inspection.

Lethira stood at the kitchen window after he had gone and looked towards the pegs. Ian came beside her, and she leaned lightly against him before he asked whether she was pleased.

“I am. It has spent long enough being a drawing.”

“We could celebrate with a Guild job involving absolutely no drains.”

Lethira turned her head. “You have doomed us.”

Ian watched her trying to look suspicious while still leaning against him. He had seen the smaller notice each time they went looking for something else, pinned beneath work with much grander consequences.

“Chickens? That notice has survived almost as long as the bathhouse.”

A smile began despite her suspicion. “Fine. If it is still there after lunch, we will finally discover what Merrowford's chickens have been doing without us.”

The notice was still there.

Brannock was behind the Guild counter when Lethira removed it from the lower board. She looked from the paper to Lethira, then to Ian. “I had begun to assume you were avoiding that one on principle.”

“We were waiting until our qualifications matched the seriousness of poultry,” Lethira said.

“Then your long training has ended.” Brannock opened the ledger.

The notice had been renewed twice since they first saw it. The latest entry was still modest: a small holding west of the southern road had lost four hens over ten days. Two had disappeared from an enclosed yard in late afternoon; two had been missing at morning count. There had been feathers near the far hedge but no large blood patch, no broken door and no sign of anything forcing the main coop open. The owner had repaired one obvious gap and lost another bird three days later. The Guild wanted identification and practical prevention. Killing ordinary wildlife was not required simply to make the report feel complete.

“E-rank,” Brannock said. “Mostly because the owner has reached the point where every noise after sunset is becoming a wolf in his imagination.” She checked Lethira's B tag and glanced at the notice. “Try not to frighten the chickens with your qualifications.”

Ian leaned on the counter. “Does the unranked aide receive specialist poultry authority? Or is there another qualification I need?”

“Become a chicken,” Brannock said.

Brannock finished the entry while Ian considered this. Lethira took the stamped contract before he could pursue a classification route that should not exist.

“We will report back.”

The holding was close enough that they walked. The road left the denser streets, crossed a shallow drainage ditch and followed small cultivated plots, sheds and orchards. Lethira carried her bow because she was working, but the pace had none of the alertness of the mill or the north-west road sweep. Ian walked beside her rather than performing exaggerated aide subordination for an audience that was not there.

Lethira's glance towards him invited an explanation for his apparent disappointment. “I was expecting a Guild poultry badge,” Ian said.

“You have not earned one. And before you argue, becoming a chicken was the requirement for specialist authority, not a route to promotion.”

Ian considered this. “That would certainly change our relationship.”

Lethira kept walking.

An older couple kept the smallholding. The man met them at the gate and immediately began describing a fox; his wife, standing behind him with a feed scoop, corrected that nobody had actually seen one. Lethira showed the contract and waited until both versions had finished before asking to see the coop, the yard and the hedge where feathers had been found.

The coop itself was better secured than the notice suggested. The door fitted closely, the latch sat above the reach of most animals and the repaired gap at one lower corner had been closed with two overlapping boards. A fenced run extended beneath a pair of old fruit trees. Its far side met a thick hedge growing over a shallow stone bank.

Ian stayed on the packed path while Lethira worked the edge. Beneath the hedge, where shade had kept the soil softer, she found four-toed prints narrow through the heel and repeating in both directions. A few reddish-brown hairs clung to a broken thorn. Farther along, chicken feathers had caught beneath the lowest branches, but there was no mass of them and no sign that anything large had struggled there.

“Fox,” the man said from behind Ian.

Lethira did not answer yet. She followed the prints away from the run until they disappeared over dry ground, then found them again beside a drainage cut where the soil held another clear impression. The route approached along cover, used the bank and hedge to stay out of the open and left by almost the same line.

The repaired gap was sound. Twenty paces farther along, the problem was older and less obvious: roots had lifted one fence post so that the lower rail no longer met the stone bank. From standing height the hedge concealed the difference. At ground level there was enough space for a fox to flatten itself through. Lethira pressed two fingers into the soft soil outside it and found the edge of another print.

“There.”

The couple came closer, stopping where she told them so they did not erase what remained. Ian moved around the other side and looked from the gap to the covered route.

“That seems almost insultingly simple.”

“Most successful entrances are.”

The older woman frowned. “But two were gone in the morning. We shut them in.”

Lethira looked from the intact coop to the opening behind them. The two morning absences still needed an explanation; a route into the yard did not supply one into the building.

“Did you count them inside before you shut the door?”

Both owners became quiet. The man looked towards the fruit trees and eventually said, “Usually.”

His wife pointed out that he closed the coop; he reminded her that she fed the birds before sunset. Lethira let responsibility move briefly around the yard before interrupting it.

“Show me where they roost before they go in.”

That produced the second half of the answer. One hen had developed a preference for the low branch of an old pear tree inside the run. White droppings marked both branch and ground. From there the fence top was close enough that a bird could reach the hedge if sufficiently committed to poor decisions. Lethira found several feathers in branches beyond the fence and a shallow hollow under bramble where a hen had clearly spent time scratching and settling.

“No eggs,” Ian said from a sensible distance.

“Not now. But at least one bird has been getting out before the yard is closed.” Lethira inspected the hollow once more. “That does not tell us whether the fox took it afterward.”

The owners stared at the pear tree with the offended expressions of people betrayed by livestock. The man recovered first.

“So the fox is taking them.”

“Probably some of them.” Lethira heard the word, stopped, then corrected the answer before it could harden into certainty. “We have fox tracks entering through that gap, hair on the hedge and feathers along its route. That is enough to say a fox has been coming here and has had access to the hens. We also have evidence that at least one hen was leaving the run on its own. I cannot tell you which missing bird did which from ten days of disturbed ground.”

His wife nodded more readily. “What do we change?”

Lethira walked the fence with them. The lifted post needed resetting or bracing. The lower gap could be closed with a board or stone apron extending far enough along the bank that the fox could not simply move half a pace and squeeze through. The hedge did not need to be stripped away; cover was not the problem if the boundary beneath it held. The pear branch could be trimmed, or the hens could be brought into the coop before dusk and counted rather than assumed to be inside because the yard looked empty.

She found a shallow food dish near the back step and added one more instruction. “Do not leave scraps beside the fence. It may not be why the fox came, but it gives it another reason to keep checking.”

“That is for the cat,” the man said.

A grey cat appeared beneath a cart at the sound of its professional interests being discussed. Ian looked at it. The cat looked at Ian. Neither accepted responsibility.

“The cat can eat nearer the house,” the woman said.

Her husband clearly understood that this part of the contract had already been decided.

They had enough for the Guild, but Lethira checked the outer route once more before leaving. The tracks continued along the drainage cut and into scrub beyond the next field. She did not follow them to a den merely to convert identification into pursuit. No one had reported attacks on people or larger stock, and the contract did not require exterminating an ordinary predator because it had found an easy meal.

On the walk back, Ian carried the stamped notice and one loose reddish hair Lethira had wrapped in a scrap of paper for Brannock. He regarded both with the gravity of a man entrusted with state evidence. “So that was adventuring. We found a hole in a fence, a fox and a chicken with poor respect for boundaries.”

“That may have been the more difficult creature.”

Ian considered the wrapped hair in his hand. “I feel my role as aide was underused. I held the evidence magnificently.”

The corner of the wrapping had come loose. Ian tucked it back under with one finger and checked that the hair was still inside before resuming his solemn progress.

“You did not lose it.”

“B-rank performance?”

Lethira gave him a look. “No.”

Brannock accepted the report with no visible disappointment that nothing had required a bow. She read Lethira's distinction between confirmed fox access and uncertain attribution for every missing bird, looked at the wrapped hair and entered the result into the ledger.

“Owner gets identification and prevention. If losses continue after the fence is repaired and birds are counted in, they can repost for removal.” She glanced at Ian. “No poultry rank.”

“I had stopped hoping.”

“That is healthy.”

The fee was ordinary enough that Lethira counted it once and put it away without ceremony. They bought bread on the way home.

By the time the holding came into view through the trees, the new bathhouse pegs were catching the low light. The covered test opening sat farther down the slope, deliberately ugly and therefore difficult to mistake for finished work. Lethira slowed beside the first peg, and Ian stopped with her.

“This morning we got the bathhouse started,” he said. “This afternoon we identified a fox. After Crownholt, I think I like this scale. There isn't a hidden escalation, is there?”

“You say that now. The builder is coming back with stone.”

Ian's expression became appropriately grave. Lethira took his hand and led him towards the house.

At the door she stopped, looked down at his boots and then at her own. “Wash first.”

“We barely touched anything.”

“We have been in a chicken yard.”

Ian looked down again. A scrap of damp earth had dried along the side of his boot. He lifted one foot to see the sole, decided he had seen enough and set it down outside. Lethira waited until his expression conceded the point.

“It should be compelling.”

“It is.”

She opened the door. Behind them, the bathhouse remained stakes, old footing and one covered hole in the ground.

For tonight, that was enough construction.