Weaves of Ashes

Chapter 556: Chapter 551: Kindleday

Location:Kaelport — The DDF Ground, The Yard, The Long Shed

Date/Time:13 Sparkfall 9943 AZI, Kindleday

Realm:Lower Realm

Somebody had put a bird in the rafters of the long shed, and Jayde had been listening to it for an hour.

Not a caged one. It had got in through the gap where the roof sheets did not quite meet the west wall, which had been on the list since Emberrise and had stayed on it because a gap in a roof is the sort of problem that only becomes a problem in the rain, and it had not rained. It sat up there and made the same three notes in the same order and then waited for an interval it never varied, and did it again.

By the second hour she had the interval. By the third she had caught herself waiting for it, which was the point at which she moved her chair.

The long shed was the DDF’s, in the sense that everything on that ground was, and it was hers in the sense that nobody else wanted the end of it with the tallies in. Sixteen paces of trestles down one wall. Ledgers in a run along the shelf. A window that faced east and gave her the whole morning and nothing at all after noon, which suited her, because the afternoon was for the yard.

She had been at the sheets since before light.

It was not urgent work. That was the thing about it that she had stopped apologizing for somewhere in Ashwhisper — the urgent work announced itself and generally arrived on a horse, and this did not, and this was the work that decided whether the urgent work could be answered at all when it came. Grain in, grain out. Iron. Cloth, which was its own column and had been since before she understood why. Medicinal stock down from the baths, which was new and which had a shape to it she did not like yet: going up steeply and not because more people were ill.

The bird did its three notes.

”If you go up there,” she said, ”you will put a foot through the roof.”

[I would not.]

”You would, and then we would have a hole in the roof and a bird in the shed.”

Reiko was on the end of the trestle with his chin on his forelegs, dog-sized because the doors on this ground were made for people, and he did not move and did not stop watching the rafters. Silver eyes. The rune on his shoulder had been dim since the first day they came onto this ground with other people on it, and he did it himself, and had never once needed to be reminded.

[It is the same three notes.]

”I know.”

[It has been the same three notes since before you were awake.]

”I know that too.”

***

Meifen came in at the second bell with a wax slate and a face Jayde had learned to read across a yard.

”It’s the timber.”

”How much of it?”

”All of it, in the sense that there is none.” Meifen put the slate down on the trestle rather than handing it over, which was a thing she had started doing about two months ago and which Jayde had never remarked on, because the moment you remark on it the person stops. ”The yard at Suhe has sold its whole season forward. Not to us. Not to anybody in particular either — three buyers, none of them big, all of them since Emberrise.”

”Prices?”

”Up a third. Which is not the interesting part.” Meifen’s hazel eyes came up. ”The interesting part is that it isn’t scarcity. There’s as much standing timber on that river as there was last year. Somebody is buying it and not cutting it.”

Jayde turned that over and put it down where she put things.

”Are we short?”

”We are short in Emberwane. Not before.”

”Then we have eight months, and I would rather spend them knowing why than buying badly.” She pulled a clean sheet. ”Find out who the three buyers are. Not through the DDF. Through the school.”

Meifen’s eyebrows moved. ”The school.”

”Seven hundred children have seven hundred families, and about forty of those families are in timber, and a child will tell a teacher a thing that a factor will not tell a corps.” Jayde wrote two lines and turned the sheet round. ”Ask Eden how she wants it done. Do not ask her to do it. She will do it anyway, and then she will be doing it instead of the thing she is supposed to be doing, and she has six hundred more children than that building was built for.”

”Six hundred and—”

”I know what the number is.”

”Yes,” said Meifen, and did not apologize, which was the other thing about her.

She went. Jayde sat looking at the sheet for a moment afterward and then wrote timber — not cut at the bottom of it and underlined it once, and filed it, which in that shed meant the third shelf and in her head meant somewhere she would find it again.

***

Heiteng was in the granary yard with his sleeves up, losing an argument about carts.

He was losing it deliberately. Jayde had watched him do it enough times now to know the shape — he let the man from the haulage get all the way to the end of a position, nodding, and then asked one question about the middle of it, and the man went back and found the middle did not hold and rebuilt the whole thing himself and walked away believing he had won. It took twice as long as telling him. It worked about four times as often.

Jayde waited by the weighbridge until it was over.

”Eleven carts,” Heiteng said, coming across. ”He will bring fourteen and be pleased with himself.”

”You wanted fourteen.”

”I wanted thirteen. Fourteen is better.” He wiped his hands down the front of a shirt that had not been a king’s shirt for a long time. Mercury silver eyes, out in the open, in a yard full of haulage men who did not look twice.

That was a decision and not an accident, and it was hers, and she went back over it more often than she let on. Nothing in this country teaches a man what a dragon’s eyes are. Nobody on this continent has ever stood close enough to one to learn the tell, and the whole of what they see in Heiteng is a big foreigner with an odd face who is good with a ledger and better with a cart. The people who would know it on sight are the people who put Yinxin in a collar, and they are not weighbridge men, and they are not within four hundred miles of this ground.

She had run the other version. Heiteng hooded, Heiteng indoors, Heiteng explained to every factor who came onto the ground — and it was worse in every direction she took it, and it made him a thing being hidden, which is the one shape that gets looked for.

So the eyes stayed in the daylight. She made the call again most mornings and had never once found it comfortable.

”The east store is dry,” Heiteng said. ”I opened the whole of it on Restday, and there is not a soft sack in it.

”Good.”

”It is good. It is also the third year, which means it is not luck, which means somebody built that store properly four hundred years ago and nobody has written down who.” He said it the way he said most things now, which was as though the fact were a small pleasure he had been handed. ”Your Qin would know.”

”Qin would say he did not know and then tell me anyway in about a week.”

”Yes.”

They walked up the yard. Somebody was hammering in the cooperage, and somebody else was singing badly over it, and the smell off the drying floor was the flat sweet dust that got into everything on that ground and never entirely came out of cloth.

”I have to go to the baths tomorrow,” Jayde said. ”The stock’s moving wrong.”

”Wrong how?”

”Up. And the sick lists are flat.” She squinted against the light. ”Which means either the baths are being used by people who are not ill, or somebody is carrying stock off the shelf, and I would rather it were the first.”

”It will be the first.”

”It will probably be the first.”

”It is the first,” said Heiteng. ”The bathhouse at Tiller’s Row has a bench outside it, and eleven old men on the bench, and not one of them has been in the water since Emberrise. They go for the bench.” He shrugged one shoulder. ”Somebody is giving them the tea.”

Jayde laughed. She did not do that much on that ground and it came out shorter than she meant it to.

”Then I will go and look at the bench.”

”Take the small one. They will talk to him.”

”He is not small when he wants something.”

”Take him anyway.”

They had got to the top of the yard, where the ground fell away toward the water, and Heiteng stopped with his hands in his belt and looked down the length of it the way he did most days, and Jayde had never once asked him what he was looking at because she had a fair idea and it was not hers.

”I sent a letter home in the winter,” he said.

She waited.

”There was somebody asking after me. It reached me in a roundabout way, and it was not anybody’s business, and I put nine lines on a sheet and sent it up the road.” He was still looking at the water. ”That was Ashwhisper. Nothing since.”

”Is that bad?”

”It is the best answer I was going to get.” Heiteng’s mouth did something that was not a smile and was in the same family. ”She is not a woman who writes back to be seen writing back. If she had disagreed with me, I would have heard about it by now, and I would have heard about it at close range.”

”So she took it well.”

”She took it properly,” he said, ”which in her case is the same thing and better,” and then the man from the haulage came back up the yard wanting to talk about the fourteenth cart, and that was the end of it.

Jayde filed it under the heading she kept for Heiteng’s home things, which was a short heading and had nothing in it she could use, and went to find her boots.

***

The school had grown a wall since Restday.

Not a good wall. It was four courses of whatever the yard had lying about, running out from the east end of the long room and stopping after nine paces because that was where the material had stopped, and there were children sitting along the top of it eating.

Eden was in the doorway with a slate and the particular flat expression of somebody doing arithmetic she had already done twice.

”Whose wall is it?”

”Nobody’s.” Eden did not look up. ”It appeared. I came in on Restday, and there were fathers here, and by the afternoon there was that, and one of them told me it was for the shade and went home.” Her eyes came up then, blue and entirely unimpressed. ”It is not for the shade. They have decided we are going to put a roof on it.”

”Are we?”

”We are going to have to.” She turned the slate round without being asked. ”Eleven more on the roll since Kindleday last. Not turned away. I have stopped turning away, because turning away is a thing that gets talked about in a village for a year, and having a child sit on a wall is not.”

Jayde looked at the numbers for a while.

”Timber’s gone up a third at Suhe.”

”I know. Bai Shu told me on Grindday.” Eden tucked the slate under her arm. ”I did not ask you for timber.”

”You are going to.”

”Yes. Not today.”

Something came out from under the wall at knee height and put itself against Jayde’s boot. Zhi was deep blue at the moment, which meant nothing much was happening, and had a piece of somebody’s bread.

[Is the wall ours?]

”Apparently.”

[It is a bad wall.]

”It is.”

[I like it,] said Zhi, and went back under it.

***

Yinxin was asleep in a chair in the middle of the afternoon.

Jayde came into the Pavilion for a ledger she could have done without and found her there, in the workshop, with her feet on a crate and a cup gone cold on the arm of the chair and her head back, and stopped in the doorway.

The wyrmlings had built something in the corner. It was about four feet high and made largely of the crate slats that had been stacked against the wall on Restday, and it had a door, and the door worked. Shenxin had done the door. You could tell, because it was the only part of the structure that was square.

Jayde stood there a while.

Twenty-four nests left in the world and one woman in three realms who could close them, and she was asleep in a chair at the third hour of the afternoon with her mouth slightly open and her hair coming out of its tie on one side, and there was no version of that Jayde was going to interrupt for a ledger.

Huaxin came out from under the chair and looked at her.

They regarded each other. Huaxin was pearl-cream and amber-eyed and did not do very much, and when she did do something it was usually the correct thing, and Jayde had begun to find her slightly unnerving in a way she enjoyed.

Huaxin put one foreclaw on the leg of the chair. Then she looked at Jayde again.

”All right,” Jayde said, very quietly, and went out without the ledger.

***

Ashborn was at the Pavilion’s edge where the light stopped.

That was not unusual in itself. The edge was where Ashborn preferred to be when there was nothing to do, and there had been nothing to do since Emberrise, because the campaign had a rhythm now and most of it was waiting for dragons and weather. The blade-arms were folded. The chitin along the forward edges caught what light there was and did the thing it did, which was to look wet without being wet.

The sensory pits were facing the same direction they had been facing on Restday.

Jayde had noticed it in Ashwhisper, three days of it, and had written it down and then not written it down again because there had been nothing to add. It was not distress. Ashborn ate, and worked, and carried her, and did everything asked. It was only that when there was nothing being asked, Ashborn turned a particular way and stayed turned.

”What is it?”

No answer, because there was never going to be one. Ashborn had never made a sound that was not the sound of Ashborn moving.

For a while she stood beside the great flat head with her hand on the plate above the pits, which was permitted, and looked out along the line of it.

There was nothing out there. There was never anything out there; the Pavilion’s edge did not have an out there, not in any sense she had been able to make hold when she tried to explain it to Eden.

”Tell me when you want to,” she said.

Then she went and did the rest of the day, which was the cooperage, and the tally on the medicinal stock, and a long argument with herself about whether six hundred was a number she could solve by building or only by choosing, and an evening meal she ate standing up off the end of the trestle because she had let it get late again.

The bird was still in the rafters.

Twice more it did the three notes, and she listened to both, and thought about the gap where the roof sheets did not meet the west wall, and decided that it would keep.

It was a good day. She noted that, in the small, honest way she had started making herself do it, because there had been a stretch last year when she had not been able to tell one day from another, and she had promised somebody she would keep count.

Nothing had gone wrong in it anywhere.