Chapter 400: The Work That Went On

Liora caught me outside the chapel and handed me a basket.

“Carry that.”

I accepted it before looking inside. Clean linen, three stoppered bottles, and a packet of folded cloth occupied most of the space.

“Good morning to you too.”

“Good morning. Mind the bottles.”

She continued walking, and I followed.

I had spent the morning hearing about giants, undead soldiers, and the difficulty of defending a forest against enemies who did not need to stop for sleep. Being given something I could carry without consulting a map was almost pleasant.

“Where are we going?”

“The treatment rooms. Unless you have somewhere more urgent to be.”

I looked at the basket.

“Not for a while.”

She glanced back at me.

“Good. You’ve been very difficult to find lately.”

“I have been here.”

“So have I.”

That answer stayed with me as we entered the chapel.

The morning queue extended beneath the covered walk.

A woman waited with her ankle resting on a folded cloak. A little boy slept against his father’s shoulder. Two apprentices were sorting the patients according to what they needed, while an older attendant persuaded an anxious man that sitting down would not cost him his place.

Liora checked the boy first.

She asked his father several questions, touched the child’s wrist, and sent one apprentice for Ilyen.

“He needs examining before the others,” she explained quietly. “Don’t wake him just to make him answer me.”

Inside, she directed me toward a shelf.

“Linen there. Bottles below. The cloth goes beside the basin.”

I put everything away and watched her wash her hands.

“How long have you been organizing this many people?”

“Long enough to know you will stand in the doorway if I don’t give you a chair.”

She pulled one out with her foot.

I sat.

Through the open door, one apprentice began explaining a medicine too quickly.

Liora called her back, kindly but firmly.

“Ask him to tell you how he’ll take it when he gets home.”

The apprentice tried again.

This time, she discovered he had misunderstood.

Liora had been dividing her days between the chapel, the receiving infirmary, and visits to the outlying settlements.

Southmere still expected her.

She spoke of that with the uncomplicated certainty of someone describing where she belonged.

“I promised I would come back,” she said. “There are other healers taking turns now, but some patients still ask for me.”

“You could stay here more often. We could send—”

“I know.”

She smiled before I could mistake the interruption for annoyance.

“I like seeing them. And they notice things the reports don’t mention. A bridge plank that has begun to give way. A well nobody drinks from anymore. Someone who has stopped coming to the market.”

Her apprentices joined those visits in pairs. One learned to examine patients. The other learned what happened after the healer left.

Could a person lift the kettle? Read the instructions? Reach the privy? Afford to rest a strained shoulder when every bucket needed carrying?

“The blessing helps me notice pain,” she said. “It doesn’t tell me who will bring the water.”

She took a fresh roll of linen from the shelf.

“Aldren has been useful about that.”

I found out how when we visited the woman with the injured ankle.

She had been recovering well until the step outside her new lodging began forcing her to put weight on the wrong foot.

Liora examined the swelling, eased the discomfort with a narrow thread of healing, and asked whether the temporary ramp had arrived.

“Yesterday,” the woman said. “A tall man came back to check it in the rain.”

“Aldren.”

“That’s him. Said dry wood could make liars of sensible people.”

I smiled.

“That sounds like him.”

Liora had several such arrangements with the building crews. A loose handrail reached Aldren before it produced another patient. A water stand placed too high went back to the builders as a practical problem rather than a complaint filed and forgotten.

When we returned to the treatment room, Evelyn was examining the sleeping boy with Ilyen.

Liora gave her the father’s answers without being asked twice.

I watched my wife listen, ask one further question, and accept Liora’s judgment about what needed doing first.

There had been a time when Liora looked toward Evelyn before trusting every decision.

Now they worked beside one another.

I waited until the boy was settled before asking about her own strength.

“Has the change among the gods affected your blessing?”

Liora looked toward Evelyn before answering, this time to include her.

“Some days the working comes more readily. Some days I notice too much in a crowded room. Aurelia and Thesra have been helping me sort out what has changed.”

“We aren’t treating every improvement as the same thing,” Evelyn said. “Practice still matters. So does rest.”

Liora held up her hands.

“I can do finer work than I could before. I can also stop before I’ve exhausted myself.”

“Usually,” Ilyen added from the next room.

Liora sighed.

“She hears that word even when nobody says it.”

Evelyn smiled, but her attention remained on Liora.

“You have been doing well.”

For the first time that morning, Liora looked uncertain what to do with her hands.

Then someone called her name from the covered walk, and she recovered immediately.

“Would you carry another basket?” she asked me.

The second basket went to the hospice.

Evelyn came with us, and on the way Liora told me that Lethan had been asking about the new arrivals.

“The royal families?”

“The unicorns.”

“He heard already?”

“Patients talk. Attendants talk. Elara is not nearly as uninterested in phoenixes as she pretends.”

We passed beneath the silver apple tree.

Before entering the inner passage, I stopped and quieted winter until no trace of cold reached beyond my skin.

The old trap had once learned from every attempt I made to help through my domain. Growing stronger had not made that history less important.

Sivren checked the boundary before admitting me.

“Better,” he said.

“You sound surprised.”

“I enjoy evidence that instructions have been remembered.”

Evelyn’s mouth twitched.

I carried the basket inside.

Lethan remained in the seventh chamber.

The independent supports held steadily, allowing the other sixteen chambers to continue their own work without being drawn into his. Elara and Elianor had covered one wall of the adjoining room with comparisons between the original hospice care and the commands the court had imposed upon it.

Maelin stood beside a table of notes.

Thesra watched the clearer section through which Lethan could see us.

The copy of Annet’s petition remained where he could read it.

So did Teren’s song, with the correction about the officer’s horse and its better wine.

I pulled my chair to its usual place beyond the marked line.

“I’ve been told you want news of our guests.”

Frost gathered slowly beside his hand.

True?

“The unicorns and phoenixes? Yes.”

His eye moved toward Evelyn.

She nodded.

“The phoenix tried to look dignified while I examined his companion’s wing. He was very worried.”

A faint movement touched Lethan’s mouth.

The next word took longer.

Colors?

I told him.

We described the gold beneath Serevan’s wings, the copper of his tail, and the way Aelune’s mane seemed almost white until the shade revealed the silver in it.

Lethan listened without interrupting.

Then he asked about the city.

I began with the council’s plans for the new allies and stopped when Evelyn touched my sleeve.

“He asked about the city.”

I considered the distinction.

“There is a bakery near the eastern lodging court that puts too much honey in its buns.”

Liora looked up.

“There is no such thing.”

“My sleeve disagreed.”

Lethan’s gaze shifted between us.

I told him about Julian’s waterwheel, the repaired carts, and the children deciding that a phoenix would require a much larger birdhouse than anyone had thought to build.

No question appeared for a while.

Then a line formed, crooked and slow.

Tell me ordinary things.

I looked at it until the frost stopped moving.

“All right.”

The treatment had progressed since his brief return to speech.

Not quickly enough for any of us.

But there had been changes.

Maelin could now help him reach the camp memory without the river battle immediately following it. Thesra had isolated another section of the repeating command. Some waking periods lasted longer before fatigue closed the clear portion of the chamber again.

His voice had not become reliable.

Writing still cost him effort.

“And his right hand?” Evelyn asked.

Maelin glanced toward Lethan.

He blinked once.

“Twice this week,” she said. “A movement he chose, rather than one the memory demanded.”

I looked at his hand, resisting the urge to lean forward.

“Twice?”

“Small movements,” Liora said. “We’re helping the muscles recover without asking them to prove anything.”

Lethan’s attention returned to me.

A word appeared.

Perrin?

I looked around.

Elara smiled.

“You aren’t the only person he asks to see.”

Perrin arrived carrying a wooden box and arguing with Aldren.

“I didn’t say it needed another hinge.”

“You drew one.”

“A drawing is not a commitment.”

“Then you won’t mind crossing it out.”

They stopped when they saw me.

Perrin brightened.

“You can settle something.”

“Probably not.”

Aldren took the box from him and set it on the outer table.

“Good answer.”

Inside lay a small wooden paddle, a counterbalanced arm, and a bell so tiny I almost missed it.

There was no crystal. No inscription. Nothing that required power from a king or god.

“A call bell,” Perrin explained. “If the hand movement becomes reliable, he may be able to use it instead of forming words just to ask for someone.”

“May,” Aldren repeated.

Perrin looked offended.

“I said may.”

“I’m enjoying it.”

Liora tried the paddle with one finger.

The bell sounded softly.

She asked for less resistance.

Perrin opened the box again.

I followed them out when Lethan grew tired.

The bell would remain in the adjoining room until the healers were ready to fit it. Nothing was being attached to the chamber merely because Perrin had finished making it.

“How did you come to be working on that?” I asked.

“Liora asked,” Perrin said.

“And before that?”

He looked at Aldren.

Aldren looked at him.

“How long do you have?” they asked together.

That seemed an adequate answer to how much I had missed.

We went to the workshops.

Perrin’s workbench had acquired three neighboring benches, all equally crowded.

One held replacement fittings for the construction golems. Another carried pieces of a covered stretcher cart. On the third sat a signal lamp whose shutters reminded me of the old lighthouse work.

“Smaller,” Perrin said when he saw me looking. “Carried by two people. Ordinary lamp inside, if no one is available to charge the crystal.”

“For the evacuation roads?”

“And the new watch stations.”

He turned a handle. The shutter opened, closed, then opened again.

“We learned a great deal making the lighthouse turn. Most of it concerned things that stopped turning when they got wet.”

Aldren lifted a lid to show the protected mechanism.

“This one has been outside in the rain.”

“Deliberately?”

“The first time.”

Perrin moved toward the stretcher cart before I could ask about the second.

Its wheels were broader than the ones we had used during the hill evacuation. The bed hung from supports designed to soften the worst jolts.

“Sella suggested the change here,” he said, pointing beneath it. “Braddoc told me how quickly my original fastening would wear out.”

“Quickly?”

“He was very specific.”

There were apprentices now who could build parts without waiting for Perrin to stand over them.

He showed me gauges for matching replacement pins, patterns for identical joints, and a rack of rejected pieces marked with the reason each had failed.

“We were making too many things only the person who built them could repair,” he said.

“Eleanor has mentioned that.”

“Frequently.”

One apprentice brought him a fitting. Perrin examined it, handed it back, and asked what she thought of the edge.

She ran her thumb beside it, frowned, and returned to the bench.

“You didn’t fix it for her.”

“She’ll be repairing them when I’m elsewhere.”

He said it without looking up from the cart.

I remembered him watching the lighthouse beam sweep across the water, too excited to notice his supper.

That part of him remained. He still leaned toward every new problem as though the answer might be hiding just beneath it.

Now he was teaching other people how to look.

Aldren took me outside.

His work could not be fitted onto a bench.

We walked through the eastern district past roofers, drainage crews, and a row of houses whose doors had been painted different colors by their new occupants.

“I have been here,” I said as we turned into a lane I did not remember.

“You have ridden through the main road.”

“Apparently that isn’t the same thing.”

“Apparently.”

He showed me where the crews had widened a turn after two supply wagons became wedged together. Where runoff had threatened a row of kitchens. Where a temporary dormitory was being divided into family rooms now that new buildings had opened.

He knew which foreman needed more roof tiles and which was likely to underestimate his need for them.

He also knew which workers had children beginning lessons that week.

“Morning crew?” he asked a mason climbing down from a platform.

“Tomorrow.”

“Go when the bell rings. They’ll manage the last course without you.”

The mason nodded, smiling.

Aldren continued walking.

At the new water stand, a boy filled two pails while his grandmother sat in the shade.

Aldren watched the overflow run toward the drain.

“Halwen caught the problem before we paved it,” he said. “Another hand’s width in the wrong direction and every spilled bucket would have gone beneath that house.”

“And the house?”

“Occupied yesterday.”

The grandmother waved him over.

He expected a complaint. I could tell from the way he studied the doorway.

She handed him a small cloth bundle instead.

“For your supper.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I baked too many.”

Her grandson looked at her.

She ignored him.

Aldren accepted the bundle.

Inside were four little pastries, each carefully wrapped.

We walked on for several steps before he spoke.

“They were in the temporary hall for weeks.”

I looked back at the open door.

Someone had placed a pot of flowers on the sill.

We stopped on a rise overlooking the ground set aside for our new allies.

Eleanor’s survey stakes marked only the approach road. Farther out, the meadow remained open around a clear stream.

“Aelune asked that we leave the old trees,” Aldren said. “We’re moving the stores nearer the road instead.”

“And the phoenix roost?”

“Perrin has drawn six versions.”

“How many did they ask for?”

“A quiet ledge.”

I laughed.

“What did Eleanor say?”

“That he was welcome to build a staircase for himself, but the intended occupants could fly.”

Aldren unwrapped one pastry and offered me another.

Below us, people moved between the houses. A construction golem carried timber past a woman hanging washing. Somewhere, a hammer kept a steady rhythm.

“I’ve missed talking to you,” I said.

Aldren looked toward me.

Then he nodded.

“Come without needing something next time.”

“I can do that.”

“And bring boots you don’t mind getting muddy.”

Liora joined us for supper that evening, arriving with a book tucked beneath her arm.

“Work?” Evelyn asked.

“A story.”

“For a patient?”

“For me.”

My wife smiled and moved a chair out for her.

Adriana asked about Southmere, and Liora told us about an elderly patient who had begun courting a neighbor after years of claiming she disliked him.

“Apparently he repaired her gate,” Liora said.

“A persuasive argument,” Garrick Valewood observed.

Julian became very interested in his plate.

Mirelle mercifully asked whether the gate had actually needed repairing.

“Not nearly as much as he claimed.”

Helena laughed. Across the table, Perrin began considering whether a better hinge might have improved the proposal.

Aldren passed him the bread before he could develop the idea.

I watched Liora laughing with Evelyn and realized how rarely I had seen her without a patient waiting nearby.

When supper ended, she took her story into the garden to read before dark.

We returned to the hospice the following afternoon.

Perrin had adjusted the bell. Liora had tested the movement with the same light pressure Lethan had managed under her hand. Sivren had approved the stand, which rested clear of the chamber’s workings.

Lethan had asked to try.

There were fewer of us inside than I wanted, and as many as he had agreed to: Evelyn, Liora, Maelin, and me.

The others waited beyond the door.

Liora placed the padded paddle beneath his finger.

“It won’t move unless you press,” she said. “It can stay here while you rest.”

For a long time, nothing happened.

I kept my eyes on his face.

His gaze sharpened. The smallest movement passed through his hand.

The bell trembled without ringing.

Liora waited.

Another breath.

Then a thin, clear note sounded in the room.

Lethan closed his eyes.

Evelyn pressed her fingers against her lips.

We did not ask him to do it again.

Maelin steadied the separation she had been holding. Liora checked his hand for strain, then left the paddle where he could feel it.

The sound had not opened his chamber.

It had not restored the years stolen from him or made tomorrow’s attempt certain to succeed.

When Perrin heard it had worked, he sat down abruptly on the bench outside.

Aldren settled beside him.

Neither spoke for a while.

Inside, Lethan began forming words again.

Still here?

“Yes,” I told him.

His eye moved toward the chair.

I sat back down.

Ordinary things.

So I told him about a grandmother pretending she had baked too many pastries, and a man who could design a lighthouse but had forgotten that phoenixes did not need stairs.

Liora laughed softly beside the bed.

Outside, Perrin began explaining something to Aldren in an indignant whisper.

Lethan listened until he grew tired.

This time, when he wanted quiet, his finger moved against the little wooden paddle.

We heard him.