The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 106 What Could Grow Here

Iven refused the seed because the trader called it hardy.

“Hardy in what soil?”

The woman blinked, then began a better answer.

On the seventieth morning, Rovan's oats arrived before the copper left the yard. Nera weighed one hundred sixty eight pounds in sound sacks. Brida weighed the fourteen pounds of ordinary gutter. The exchange closed in front of witnesses, with no promised labor trailing behind it.

Vessa received her remaining thirty five pounds before anyone discussed buying seed.

She checked the measure, tied the sack, and stood beside Daren for a moment.

“I thought I'd have to hate this place to get it back.”

“You didn't have to like it.”

“No.”

She looked toward the raised planting box.

“May you grow enough that the next person doesn't have to argue so hard.”

Then she left with a returning carrier, her claim paid in full.

Only after she was gone did Iven bring the seed packet to the work table.

The trader had turnip seed from a dry upland plot, kept through one season in a sealed jar. Useful information. Still not proof that it would thrive in Hearthfast's damaged ground.

They bought only a small trial portion, paid for with a repaired basket fitting already accepted by the trader. No grain changed hands for it.

The old garden remained isolated.

Daren walked its edge with Brida, keeping to the marked dry path. Pale crust clung to the lower stones. Clear-looking seep sat beneath it, carrying salts that settling would not remove. The eleven bowls in the side cistern still had no approved disposal route.

The stopped pump would not solve that by becoming more impressive.

“We need someone who understands roots,” he said.

“We needed that before we had a title for you,” Brida answered.

A request had gone to Asha Renn at Harrowmere on the sixty eighth day, carried along the reopened high road. It described the clean raised box, the surviving barley shoots, the salt finding, and the limits of their water trial. It asked for advice or a visit without promising food, pay, or labor they had not agreed to supply.

No reply had yet returned.

In the meantime, they could prepare something worth inspecting.

Berrit built a second small box from sound reclaimed boards, set above the contaminated ground. Iven and two volunteers brought clean ridge soil in separate baskets, leaving the old garden tools marked so nobody carried crust into the new bed.

Daren helped fit the narrow wooden water run from the dedicated clean barrel. His gift felt only faint intention in the older crafted fitting beneath its support, a remembered steadiness that could not tell him whether a seed would live.

He listened, then tightened the ordinary peg by hand.

Tovin asked whether the old greenhouse could be made warm enough to force a crop before the grain ran low.

“The roof is still broken,” Brida said.

“And warmth doesn't replace growing time,” Iven added.

Daren watched disappointment cross the boy's face. He remembered believing that enough power could shorten every necessary interval.

“Build the frame we can keep dry,” he told him. “Then we learn what grows in it.”

They stretched an oiled cloth over one half of the new box on a removable frame. It could reduce cold wind and keep heavy rain from washing the trial bed away. It was not glass, a restored greenhouse, or a promise of winter abundance.

Iven divided the remaining seed before anyone touched the soil. One portion went into the trial row. Another stayed dry in its jar, wrapped against the damp.

Corven, waiting to speak about his damaged boot, watched her close the lid.

“You're saving what we could plant.”

“I'm saving what we could lose.”

He glanced at the empty beds beyond the wall, then crouched to hold a corner of cloth while Tovin tied it down. The boy's first knot slipped. Corven retied it without making a lesson of the mistake.

Daren brought the planting board over. Iven scratched the date, the seed source, and the two different exposures beneath the row marks. If the covered half failed and the uncovered half lived, they would need to remember which had been which.

“Who checks it when you're elsewhere?” Daren asked.

“Tovin and me,” she said. “Orin watches with us. Nobody pours extra water because a leaf looks lonely.”

Orin opened his mouth, then closed it.

Selka turned away to conceal a smile. Daren left the board where the children could reach it without climbing onto the box.

Orin helped mark the planted row with little stones.

“Do we know which ones will come up?”

“No,” Iven said.

“Then why put them in?”

“To learn without losing all our seed.”

The answer pleased him enough that he repeated it to Enn, who listened from the hearth doorway with the patient expression of an old creature hearing humans rediscover caution.

By evening, one hundred eighty eight pounds remained after the sale, restitution, and resident allocation.

It was more than they had begun with. It was still a number that declined while plants took their time.

Daren stood beside the new frame with Selka.

“You can hear old promises,” she said. “Can you hear anything from that?”

He touched a fresh board.

“Nothing.”

“Good. Then it has room for ours.”

Beyond the western wall, an animal screamed along the trade road.

The sound ended in the crash of a cart striking stone.