The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 22 The Broken Wheel

The first wagon in the queue carried a dead ox.

Its partner stood shaking in the traces while a woman sawed at the harness with a bread knife. One wheel had dropped through rotten planks over a drainage cut. The broken axle pinned the animal beneath a load of turnips, and everyone behind it had been waiting for someone else to clear the road.

Vann stopped his cart.

“We can go around,” Jun said.

The slope beside the track looked firm until Daren saw how the grass leaned. Water had passed beneath it. A loaded cart would peel that turf off like skin.

“On foot. Not with him.” He nodded toward the mule.

A road steward in a green sash watched from a dry rock. Three hired guards stood beside him, their spears clean.

“Her obstruction,” he said when Daren approached. “Her responsibility.”

The woman looked up. She had been cutting long enough to blister her palm.

“My husband’s gone for a replacement axle.”

“Then wait for him.”

Daren set his pack down.

The steward studied his size, then his bandaged arm and bad leg. His attention settled on the copper scar showing above Daren’s collar.

“No fighting on the king’s road.”

“Help us clear it, then.”

That earned a laugh from one of the waiting drivers. The steward’s face closed. Daren turned away before pride could make a morning’s delay into something worse.

Jun touched his elbow before he bent to work.

“We agreed on two days.”

“I know.”

“So say what this costs.”

He looked at the blocked crossing and the waiting cart. “Half a day, perhaps. Going around on foot costs us the transport. Doing nothing leaves us behind everyone else.”

She studied the rails herself before nodding. He was relieved she had asked. He was also irritated, which told him how much practice this new arrangement would require.

They unloaded the turnips into spare baskets. Selka worked beside the woman; Jun kept the surviving ox quiet. Daren found two sound rails in the damaged crossing and asked the drivers for wedges.

Only one man moved at first.

Then Vann took a mallet from his cart, and the others began finding tools they had forgotten they owned.

The dead beast was beyond any help Daren could give. He used the rails to lift the wagon bed while the woman cut the last straps. His shoulder shook. A controlled breath steadied it long enough for Vann to push the wedge home.

Then the warmth vanished, leaving the pain exactly where it had been.

“Again?” Vann asked.

“No. Change places with me.”

The answer embarrassed Daren. It also kept the wagon from falling on anyone.

By midday the axle rested on a crib of stones. They dragged the carcass clear and laid temporary planks across the cut. The woman’s wagon could not travel, but everyone else could pass.

She offered Daren six turnips.

He looked at the bruised vegetables, then at her empty harness.

“I can take three.”

“You did the work.”

“So did you.”

She gave him four and refused another argument.

The steward rose as Vann’s cart approached the crossing.

“Inspection.”

He prodded the empty baskets with his spear butt. He opened their blankets and pushed a thumb into the peas. Daren watched every movement without offering the man an excuse to find something sharper.

“Destination?”

“Harrowmere,” Vann answered.

“Business?”

“Baskets.”

“And them?”

“Possible passengers on the way back.”

The steward’s gaze caught on Selka. She had tucked her hair beneath a plain scarf, but she could not disguise the stillness of trained attention.

“Where did you serve?”

“West court.”

“Retired?”

“No.”

Daren felt the space around them tighten.

Selka reached into her sleeve and showed the pale line where a magistrate’s cord had once rested. “Removed.”

It was true enough, though she had removed herself. The steward smiled at the evidence of someone fallen below him.

“Mind you don’t practice your old trade here.”

He let them pass.

Beyond the bend, Jun released a breath.

“You could have lied.”

“He already suspected training. A bad lie gives a petty man work he enjoys.”

“An honest answer can do that too.”

“Yes.”

They walked beside the cart through the afternoon to spare the mule. The saved turnips went into the evening pot with peas. Vann shared a heel of hard bread and did not call it a gift.

At their camp, the woman’s teenage daughter caught up carrying a little sack. Her father had returned with the axle; they would travel tomorrow. She brought a handful of salt and a warning.

“The green sash takes names for Caster Vey.”

Selka lifted her head.

“The grain factor?”

The girl nodded. “He lent Harrowmere threshing stones after the flood. Now he says every sack belongs to him until the debt is settled.”

“Every sack?” Jun asked.

“Even next spring’s seed, if you believe his men.”

After she left, Vann scraped the pot clean with his bread.

“Renn won’t let seed go. She’d burn a barn first.”

Daren thought of Hearthfast’s two handfuls of barley, guarded like silver while people went hungry. He had imagined a village with grain enough to bargain over. Instead, they were walking toward people cornered by a different gate.

He tightened his knee binding before sleeping.

Across the campfire, Selka had stopped eating.

“What?” he asked.

“I know the loan form,” she said. “I used to approve it.”

Above the ridge, something immense moved against the stars. The monastery had reached another waiting place.