The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 43 A Door She Could Not Open

Selka asked for permission to teach the gate watch and was refused before she finished explaining why.

“No,” Jun said.

Daren looked up from the stool where he was sorting bent nails. The request had come during the afternoon meal, in front of enough people that turning it into a private conversation would have meant something.

Selka stood with her arm still in its sling.

“I can show them the Summit's approach signals.”

“You can show them without choosing who stands watch.”

“I wasn't asking to choose.”

“You used to call that part preparation too.”

The accusation stopped her. Around them, spoons continued moving, though nobody seemed to taste much.

Daren knew the signals mattered. The monastery's anchor crew had changed its working hours, and a light at the wrong time could mean a load moving or a patrol approaching. He also knew that useful knowledge had been Selka's quickest path back into authority since arriving here.

He set down the nails.

“Show the marks to the watch leaders,” he said. “They choose how to use them.”

Jun turned toward him. “Why do you decide?”

The question was fair. It was also infuriating. He felt both facts at once.

“Because I began answering before I thought.”

Iven wiped her hands and joined them. Brida came from the gate with chalk on her sleeve. They asked Selka to explain the actual task: recognize three common lantern arrangements, distinguish a work call from an approach warning, and make sure nobody mistook a lowered lamp for retreat.

The knowledge could be written and taught with two people present. No one needed to swear to Selka, accept a watch assignment from her, or give her power to send them beyond the wall.

Jun accepted that distinction, reluctantly.

Then Brida asked who would approve a risky training exercise.

“Me,” Daren said, and caught himself.

“Pella for fitness,” Brida said. “Me for the place. The people doing it for whether they agree.”

“And if we need a decision during an attack?” Berrit asked.

They could not hold a meeting while a gate burned. They could decide in advance whose directions applied to a particular defense and what those directions did not include. A gate captain could tell a willing watch where to stand. That did not authorize sending a frightened boy into a passage because he was small enough to fit.

Tovin, who had been listening from the milling bench, lowered his eyes.

Daren made sure the rule included his own voice.

When the arrangement was written, Selka asked to give the lesson immediately. Two watch members agreed to sit with her. Jun chose to remain, not as a pupil but as a witness to what was said.

Osric, one of the two residents with bows, asked whether the same rules meant he could refuse a bad shot.

“What makes it bad?” Brida asked.

“A person behind the target. Someone I can't see clearly. Wind that will carry the arrow toward the road.”

“You decide whether you can make your shot,” Daren said. “Whoever directs the watch needs to know that before giving the order.”

Osric nodded. He had served no army, only hunted among hills where a missed arrow might strike another hunter beyond the brush.

Daren realized he had been treating experience as something that began with a uniform. He asked Osric to help mark the safe firing angles from the gate. The hunter agreed, provided nobody later moved a shelter into those lines without telling him.

Daren returned to the nails and discovered his hands were shaking.

He had once commanded a breach with a gesture. Now even a lesson required more people than he expected. Yet the slow work in front of him was preventing a different kind of breach, one a stronger wall could not mend.

Near dusk, a cry came from the milling bench.

One of the soaking tubs had split along an old seam. Barley water spread across the floor toward the hearth. Iven caught the nearest basket; Nera thrust cloth beneath the leak. Daren reached for his stick and began to stand.

Pella's hand settled on his shoulder.

“Sit.”

“I can hold a tub.”

“You can pass that empty bowl.”

He did.

The people nearest the spill worked quickly. They saved the grain from the clean bench tray and set aside what had fallen onto dirty stone. Iven would not count the dirty handfuls back into supper simply because everyone hated waste.

She replaced half a pound from the store and marked the loss.

Daren held the bowl until she took it. His usefulness had been smaller than he wanted and exactly what was needed.

Afterward, Selka sat beside him with the lesson board.

“They knew two of the signals already,” she said.

“Did they tell you?”

“After I stopped explaining the first one.”

He smiled despite himself.

She did not smile back. “I keep finding places where I expect people to let me finish before they know whether they agree.”

Daren looked at Pella cleaning the wet floor.

“I know the habit.”

Selka traced a lantern mark with her thumb, careful not to smudge it. “Knowing it doesn't remove it.”

Across the yard, the watch hung two plain lamps at the gate. Their arrangement came from Selka's lesson. The person who chose it was Berrit.

For the first time that day, Daren felt the rule working instead of merely delaying him.

Then a single lamp appeared on the lower road: Halvek's messenger, coming after dark with no cart behind him.