I wait in the yard for a long time after he's gone, one hand braced on the cold stone of the wall, turning over everything he said and didn't say. The warning was real. The promise not to arrest me was real. Both of those things being true at once is more unsettling than either one alone.
What unsettles me most, though, is the realization sitting quiet and inconvenient in the far reaches of my mind—that I cared what he thought when he looked at me across that forge last night. That I still care now, standing in an empty yard with coal dust on my hands.
I care, and I shouldn’t.
10
NYRIUS
Isit with the ledger copies until the camp fire burns low, and then I sit with them a while longer.
Edria's voice keeps running through my head—not the sharp version, the one she uses like armor, but the flat one from the back yard.Ask what a village looks like after twenty years of impossible taxes.She said it without drama, which made it land harder than drama would have.
I've governed border territories for longer than that. I've read the reports, reviewed the numbers, made the adjustments the regional councils recommended. I told myself that was governance. Riding through a place twice a year and reviewing documents prepared by the men profiting from those same documents.
Edria would have a word for that. Several, probably.
The part I can't put down is the question of the weapons. Not her specifically—I meant what I said about not arresting her. But the supply lines reaching Ardenmere, the organized buyers, the rebel attacks growing more coordinated. Someone is building something, and the materials are moving through villages likeOxwood because those villages are desperate enough to provide them.
We created the desperation. That's the part Thalen and Fenrath and the nobles won't say out loud, because saying it requires admitting the system they benefit from produces predictable and preventable consequences.
I add that to the list of things I can't unknow.
Cyran findsme still at the table when the morning watch changes.
He studies ledger copies, then shifts his eyes to me, then at the cold tea beside my elbow. He sits down across the table without being invited.
"You know something about the weapons," he says.
"I know something about the craftsmanship."
"That's the same thing."
I close the ledger. "It's a stylistic similarity. It's not proof of anything."
"Nyrius." He uses my name without the title, which he reserves for when he's being completely direct. "If you have information about the supply lines and you don't report it to the courts, that's a political liability you can't recover from. Not if it comes out later."
"I'm aware."
"She's one woman in one village." He throws his arms to the side. "Your standing, your territories, your ability to do anything for any of these border settlements—all of it depends on the courts trusting your judgment. If they think you've been protecting a weapons smuggler because?—"
"I know," I say. "I heard you."
He leans back. "Then what are you doing?"
"I need to understand the full supply chain before I condemn anyone." I push the ledger aside. "If I report a name without understanding who's actually behind the organization, I hand the courts a scapegoat and the real threat continues." I place my palms on the table. "I'm not protecting her. I'm building a case that means something."
Cyran considers this silently. "That's a reasonable argument."
"It's also true."
"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive." He stands. "How long?"
"A week. Maybe two." I pull a blank page toward me. "I want to trace the forest routes west of Oxwood. The western routes connect to three other settlements—if the supply is moving through here, there's a transit point somewhere between the village and the Ardenmere border."
"I'll pull the patrol maps."
He goes. I write.
