The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 18 The Bridge Keeper’s Price

The grain wagons had gone by the time Daren reached Rillmarket.

Their wheels had left deep tracks in the road, and a scatter of wheat lay in the mud outside the storehouse. He stopped himself from kneeling to gather it.

Beside him, Jun stared at the empty loading yard.

“All of it?”

“Everything ready for sale,” said the man at the gate.

He wore a leather apron reinforced with thin stone plates. Behind him, three bridges crossed different arms of a fast river. Their arches hummed softly as water moved beneath them.

“My name is Halvek Cress. If you’ve come to blame me for selling grain, take your place behind everyone else.”

“We came to buy,” Daren said.

“With what?”

“Work.”

Halvek looked at his bandages and crooked leg.

“What kind?”

“Siege works. Stone. Water. Whatever you have that needs mending.”

Selka stood a few paces back, her magistrate’s coat turned inside out. Jun had insisted on joining them as the third person at Brida’s stools. She wanted to hear any agreement herself.

Daren had agreed. Her distrust had become useful weight instead of something he could order away.

Halvek pointed toward the middle bridge.

“Tell me why that arch sings lower than the others.”

Daren listened.

The first and third held a clear note. The middle one wavered beneath it, deepening whenever a cart crossed.

“Something beneath the water,” he said.

“That is not an answer worth feeding.”

“Then let me look.”

Halvek led them onto a narrow inspection platform below the road. Daren lowered a weighted string between the piers while Jun marked its length on a board.

He used his scar against the stone, but heard only a fragment about safe passage. No hidden measurement. No kindly ghost willing to do the work for him.

He moved the string and tried again.

Beneath the downstream pier, the weight dropped suddenly.

“Scour hole,” he said. “The river has eaten the bed from under your footing.”

Halvek’s expression changed.

“We packed that after the spring rains.”

“With loose stone?”

“Woven baskets.”

Daren lowered the string once more. It caught on something below and came up trailing a severed reed cord.

“Your baskets are opening.”

Above them, a cart rolled onto the bridge.

The note deepened.

Halvek shouted for it to stop.

Too late.

A stone shifted against the inspection platform. Jun stumbled, caught a rail, and cried out as the wood broke beneath her hand.

Selka caught her collar.

For a heartbeat, both women hung over the river.

Daren drove the measuring spike into a joint and wrapped his arm around it. He took one controlled breath, letting the thin warmth steady him instead of trying to become stronger than the whole bridge.

“Halvek. Her belt.”

The bridge keeper hauled Jun onto the platform while Daren held Selka’s sleeve. His burned palm opened under the strain. He kept breathing until her boots found wood.

Then the warmth was gone.

He sagged against the pier, shaking.

Above them, men pushed the cart back to shore.

Halvek stared at the broken rail.

“You were right.”

“I’d rather have been wrong.”

They spent the next hour hanging weighted brush bundles into the scour hole. It was temporary work, meant to slow the water until divers could replace the broken baskets. Halvek supplied the men and rope. Daren directed from the bank.

When the middle arch’s note steadied, the bridge keeper brought them a sack of dried peas.

“Forty eight pounds. Payment for the inspection and the work.”

Jun held the sack as though someone might take it back.

Halvek had brought it from a smaller shed beside his own house. Through the doorway, Daren saw a woman dividing the remaining sacks into separate stacks. She counted again when the peas were carried out.

“This is your winter store,” he said.

“It is my payment. Don’t make it charity because that feels easier to accept.”

Daren looked at the bandage Halvek had tied around his scraped knuckles.

“Then your western pier needs inspection before the next heavy rain. The water shifts when you strengthen one side.”

Halvek nodded. “That advice comes with the first payment.”

Daren thanked him, then asked about grain farther west.

“Harrowmere,” Halvek said. “Two days if the high track is clear. The lower road takes four.”

“Will they sell?”

“They might. Their seed keeper has been arguing with the Summit’s buyers.”

“Her name?”

“Asha Renn.”

Selka watched the empty wagon tracks.

“Why sell the Summit everything if you know what it does?”

Halvek’s face hardened.

“Because my people eat too. Because their silver pays the divers. Because a bridge keeper who chooses which hungry traveler deserves a road becomes a toll lord before winter.”

Daren touched Selka’s arm before she answered.

“We asked for trade,” he said. “He traded.”

Halvek lent them a mule to carry the peas. They left their spare iron chisel as security and promised to return the animal at dawn.

On the uphill road, Jun walked beside Selka for the first time.

After a while, she said, “Thank you.”

Selka nodded without making more of it.

They reached Hearthfast in early afternoon.

A stranger lay beside the boundary stake with his hands tied. His coat bore the Summit’s seven rays, but he had cut every embroidered eye from the collar.

Brida held a mallet over him.

“He says he ran away.”

The stranger looked at Daren’s copper scar.

Then he looked toward the keep.

“Don’t open the heart,” he whispered. “There are two mouths in that box.”