The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 41 The Mark on the Cloth

Selka reached the table and put her good hand beside the mark she had drawn.

Sive did not invite her to sit.

“Who decided my grandson could be kept?”

“I signed the extension.”

“We know that. Who decided?”

Daren watched Selka look at the cloth. The distinction had caught her where a shouted accusation might not have done. She had named an act. Sive was asking where responsibility lived after the ink dried.

“The quarry supervisor requested it. A clerk prepared the return. I approved it without asking Tev.”

“Then you decided.”

“Yes.”

The hall had become quiet enough to hear the ladle touch the bottom of the supper pot. Daren remained on his bench, injured leg supported. He could see Orin near the bowls, listening with the stillness children used when adults had forgotten they were present.

He asked Pella to take the younger children to the far end of the hall. He did not tell her to make them forget what they had heard.

Jun stood beside her grandmother. Her hands rested flat on the table. She had already struck Selka once, and the stitched lip still carried the history of it.

Tonight she asked for the route again.

Selka named the quarry below White Stair, the transfer through Bellcut Pass, and Steward Arvek's split cedar seal. She did not invent a final destination to fill the silence after those names.

“Is he alive?” Sive asked.

“I don't know.”

The old woman closed her eyes. Daren saw the labor it cost her to open them again without letting hope become anger at the wrong answer.

Someone near the hearth said Selka should be made to go and find him.

“With whose food?” Iven asked.

“With hers.”

“And when that runs out?”

Nobody answered. A punishment could sound like a rescue if no one followed it far enough down the road.

Daren wanted to speak. He had learned something useful about that desire: wanting silence filled did not always mean he owned the next words.

Brida moved a lamp onto the table.

“We can hear what happened tonight,” she said. “We can't pretend we know every consequence before anyone has spoken.”

Sive looked around the hall. “And who hears?”

They chose three residents to keep the account: Brida, Nera, and an older shepherd named Maret who had lost no family to Selka's office but had lived under its measures. Jun would speak for herself and help her grandmother. Iven would record food or travel commitments if the discussion reached them.

Maret asked why anyone should trust an account kept by people who depended on Selka's knowledge to stay alive.

Brida looked toward the marked lantern board.

“We can need what she knows and still hear what she did.”

“And if hearing it makes us unwilling to use her?”

“Then we face that choice after we hear.”

Daren saw Selka glance toward the door. For an instant he thought she might leave. Instead, she moved her stool so that her body no longer blocked the lamp from Nera's board.

It was an ordinary adjustment. He remembered commanders who had made even the light in a tent serve their rank. He also remembered never noticing that habit until he had lost the right to sit nearest the flame.

Daren was asked to remain available for questions about Hearthfast, not to decide whether Selka had been forgiven.

He agreed before the request could sound like a challenge.

Selka was allowed to sit when Pella saw her shoulder begin to shake. The kindness did not change the question on the table.

Nera found a clean board and charcoal. She could write names and numbers well enough; Selka could correct a place name aloud but would not keep the only record of her own answers.

They began with what could be stated plainly.

Tev had been seventeen when the first transfer was made last winter. His father had been the original labor candidate. Selka had approved the substitution. Later, she had approved more service without seeing Tev's agreement.

When Nera wrote that last point, Selka asked her to add that no objection had been attached to the return.

Jun laughed once, without humor.

“Where would he have put one?”

Selka's mouth opened. She looked toward the empty place on the table where the court's form would once have lain.

“There was a petition channel.”

“For someone inside a guarded quarry?”

“I don't know whether he could reach it.”

Nera waited.

“Write that,” Selka said.

Daren felt the room change. It was a small change, but real. A thing that had once sounded complete had acquired the missing person inside it.

Outside, a wind pressed smoke back through the hearth opening. Enn shook sparks from its antlers and moved away from the draft. The monastery remained on its ridge, beyond the wall and beyond this table's power.

Brida ended the first sitting before exhaustion turned every question into a weapon. The board would remain covered near Iven's stores. Anyone who wanted to give an account could do so tomorrow, with someone beside them if they wished.

Sive stayed after the others rose.

“I don't want a better apology,” she told Selka. “I want someone to tell me what happened after he left.”

Selka bowed her head.

Daren nearly promised that someone would.

Then Maret, who had said little all evening, touched the corner of the cloth.

“My sister carried food to White Stair that winter,” she said. “She came back with a receipt they told her to burn.”