The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 14 Sixty Nine Bowls

Iven placed sixty nine bowls on the long table and left the largest one empty.

Daren watched her measure beans into a cooking pot. They had come from the pockets and kitchen bundles of Fenlow’s refugees, collected handful by handful after the first night’s confusion. Nine pounds altogether.

It had looked like plenty until she divided it by the people in the hall.

“Two ounces each today,” she said. “One in the morning meal. One tonight.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Whatever the foragers bring, and what we can trade for.”

She pointed to the empty bowl.

“For the person who thinks being hungry makes him more important than everyone else.”

Daren sat down.

Outside, Brida’s workers fenced off the horse pond. The melted hound lay beneath a hard skin of gray metal. Nobody would put a shovel into it until they understood what the trapped gold might do.

The bronze tube from the gatehouse sat beside the hearth, wrapped in cloth. Enn remembered such fittings, but could not remember what their teeth engaged.

Daren disliked the number of things in the fort that could kill them merely by being misunderstood.

He disliked the empty food sacks more.

Iven handed him a bowl the same size as Orin’s.

The boy looked from one to the other.

“You’re bigger.”

“Iven knows what we have.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“No,” Daren admitted. “It isn’t.”

Iven set another bowl beside them.

“Foragers and people doing heavy work get additional roots when there are roots. Today, everyone gets beans. Tomorrow we count again.”

There was no comfortable answer hidden in her voice.

Daren ate slowly. The beans tasted faintly of the different homes they had come from: smoke, sage, damp cloth.

At the far end of the table, a child spilled half her portion. Her mother made a small, broken sound and began gathering beans from the boards.

Conversation stopped.

Orin started to push his bowl away.

Daren caught it gently.

“Eat yours.”

Then he helped clean the table while Iven measured a replacement from the small portion she had held back for accidents.

No one praised her. Daren thought that was probably what competence looked like when people depended on it: trouble smaller than it might have been.

After breakfast, she spread their remaining supplies on a blanket.

Salt. Dried herbs. Three turnips. A bag of pine nuts not yet shelled. Two handfuls of seed barley wrapped in waxed cloth.

Daren reached for the barley.

Iven put her hand over his.

“That isn’t a meal.”

“It’s more than nothing.”

“It’s half a field if we find good ground.”

He looked at the few pale grains.

The army had taught him to take what could be carried and burn what could feed an enemy. He had never been responsible for the season after a victory.

“How much can we keep?” he asked.

“All of this. It came from my kitchen garden. The valley grain won’t root well above the frost line.”

He withdrew his hand.

“Then keep it.”

Brida joined them with a rough map scratched onto slate. The nearest market road passed through Rillmarket, a settlement built around three bridges. Its people traded with the sect but belonged to no monastery.

“Two hours down the western track,” she said. “Longer back.”

“Why hasn’t the Summit taken it?”

“Because every army needs someone who can keep a bridge standing.”

Daren looked at the broken gate, then at his bandaged hand.

“We may have something to trade.”

Iven nodded toward the tools.

“Those stay. Work can go.”

He had been about to suggest selling the spare mallet.

He rubbed his face.

“I’m learning.”

“You need to learn while we still have time.”

There was anger in that, but not contempt. He preferred it to reassurance.

Jun joined them at the slate before the meal was cleared. She knew the western path because she had walked it with her father to sell woven reed mats. A washout halfway down forced travelers above the river; taking the lower branch would waste an hour.

Daren marked it.

Iven made him say aloud what the journey was for: discover what food could be bought, what it would cost, and how it could reach Hearthfast. No taking a storehouse because its owner refused them. No promising labor that belonged to someone else.

He looked at her.

“You think I would?”

“I think hungry people call many things necessary.”

He remembered his hand reaching for the seed barley. Her rules felt less insulting when he considered how recently he had needed one of them.

He repeated the purpose of the journey until she was satisfied.

They agreed to send scouts at first light. Today, nobody could be spared from the gate, the wounded, or gathering food close enough to remain inside the watched approaches.

Daren wanted to leave immediately. Selka reminded him that he had slept less than two hours since Bracken.

He would be no use bargaining if he collapsed before reaching the bridge.

As he rose, Jun blocked the end of the table.

She had brought a strip of blue cloth, carefully folded.

Selka recognized it before Daren did.

A magistrate’s seal had been sewn into one corner.

“My brother wore this when they took him,” Jun said. “They told us it meant he was under protection.”

Selka’s swollen mouth parted.

“Where?”

“Larch Hollow. Last winter.”

Daren watched her eyes change.

Jun laid the cloth beside the empty bowl.

“Tell us what happened to him.”