"Send this letter tonight." I seal it and hold it out. "Don't log it through the regional post. Use our own rider."
“Is it urgent?”
“Yes.” I nod.
Cyran weighs the letter in his hand. “It feels official.”
“What does that even mean?” I toss my quill into my pack.
“Official orders could relate to the town, directly impacting a certain blacksmith who resides there.”
"Good night, Cyran." I nod to the tent flap.
I sit with the lamplight and the ledger copies long after the camp goes quiet, turning the numbers over until they stop looking like numbers and start looking like names.
7
EDRIA
Inotice it first at the market.
The grain merchant is in a good mood, which is unusual enough that I stop and look at him twice. He's haggling with old Perrin over seed prices, but the number he's offering is lower than last month's, and he doesn't look pained about it. Perrin looks stunned, like he's waiting for the catch.
By midmorning, three separate people mention it at the forge. Trade taxes down across the board—imports, exports, both. Nobody knows why. Nobody knows how long it'll last. But the mood in Oxwood has lifted in the way it only does when people can breathe a little easier, the lightness of a village that's been underwater suddenly finding its footing.
Papa tells me when he comes in from the market at midday, setting his basket on the workbench with something close to relief on his weathered face.
"Thirty percent," he says. "On imports and exports both."
I keep working the hinge I'm fitting. "Since when?"
"Since last week, apparently. Merchant said the directive came down from the regional trade office." He settles onto hisstool, stretching his bad leg out. "It means our steel costs less. What we sell brings more."
I set the hinge down. "That's a significant reduction."
"It is." He watches me. "You don't look happy about it."
"I'm thinking about it."
"Think faster. It's good news."
I pick the hinge back up. Thirty percent is not a minor administrative correction. That's a deliberate directive from someone with enough authority to move regional trade policy without announcing it publicly. Someone who rode into Oxwood five days ago and spent an afternoon looking at the town hall records.
I don't say that out loud. I don't say anything about it to Papa, or to Sorella when she leans out her tavern window to tell me the same news, or to the Henley woman who stops to collect her repaired shears and spends ten minutes celebrating.
I don't say it because saying it means admitting I think Nyrius did something useful, and admitting that means something I'm not ready to sit with yet.
The medicine coststhe same as it always has.
I stand at the apothecary counter that afternoon and watch the man behind it count out Finn's vials with the slow deliberateness of someone who knows he has no competition in this village. Two silvers and four copper for a month's supply. The trade reduction doesn't touch what he charges, because he imports from the city and sets his own margin on top.
I pay it. I walk home with the vials wrapped in cloth in my pocket and the familiar arithmetic running in my head.
The forge income will improve. Not enough. Not yet. Not for months, if the reduction even holds that long.
I go to the forest that night.
Velis has four men with him this time, which sets my nerves on edge before I even unwrap the blades. He counts them faster than usual, already moving on before he's finished.
