The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 75 The Hand That Answered

Jun recognized Denna's coat before she recognized the woman wearing it.

Five days of work had changed the yard around her. Copper lay on Berrit's bench. The split gate frame waited untouched beneath a cloth. Near the shaft, Ysra's watcher raised a signal board and lowered it again, rehearsing a warning nobody wanted to need.

Then the traveler came through the gate, and Jun dropped the clean bandage she was folding.

“Bellcut?”

Denna nodded.

The forty fifth day had begun cold. Frost still shaded the wall, though sunlight reached the communal bench. Jun stood in that narrow warmth while Denna unfastened the inner pocket of her coat.

“I reached it on the fortieth. I left the following morning.”

A folded sheet emerged, wrapped against rain.

“Neve gave me this.”

Jun reached for it, then stopped.

“Did you see him?”

“Yes.”

The word seemed too small for what it did to her. She gripped the bench and sat before her legs could decide otherwise.

Denna sat beside her.

“Alive. Thin. His right hand is badly scarred. He works in the infirmary kitchen when they allow it.”

“When they allow it?”

“He remains on their labor roll.”

Jun tore the wrapper with her uninjured hand.

Neve's account was brief. Tev had entered the north infirmary after a boiler coupling burst during cleaning. She had dressed his hand herself. Fever had delayed recovery; the fingers had healed stiffly. Heavy lifting remained unsuitable. His household description matched Jun's inquiry, and Neve had read the personal note aloud to him.

Below that, in a different hand, five crooked lines leaned across the page.

Tell Sive I did not lose the blue bowl. I left it under the bed because Jun always took the larger one. I can still hold a spoon. Please don't come by the north road. They stop people there now.

There was no elegant signature. Only Tev's name, laboriously written with his left hand.

Jun pressed the paper against her mouth.

Sive arrived slowly, guided by Pella. Denna repeated what she had seen while the old woman touched the uneven letters without covering them.

“He remembered the bowl,” Sive said.

Jun laughed once, painfully. “I did take it.”

For several breaths, the yard continued around them. A bucket scraped stone. Someone called for a mallet. The world had not learned that it was supposed to stop.

Daren kept the others away until Jun looked up.

“I want to go.”

“I thought you might.”

“Don't tell me the pump needs hands.”

He pulled a stool beside her. “It does. That doesn't answer whether you should see your brother.”

Denna described the journey before anyone made a plan from relief alone. Bellcut was reachable, but the north road now had an inspection post. Visitors needed a named destination and could be held while a clerk checked it. She had entered as a carrier with other deliveries. Tev had warned her himself before she left.

“Could he walk out with you?” Jun asked.

“No. I asked Neve. His treatment costs were entered against his work account. The kitchen master says release needs another office's mark.”

Selka had approached quietly. She stopped beyond the bench, waiting until Jun beckoned her closer.

“Is that real?” Jun asked. “Can they keep him for the bandages they used after their boiler burned him?”

“They can write it,” Selka said. “That doesn't make the claim defensible.”

“Will a better sentence get him home?”

“Perhaps not.”

Jun looked away, then back.

“Good. Don't begin by promising me that.”

Selka accepted the rebuke.

They agreed to make copies of Neve's account and preserve Tev's original. Denna could describe the approach and the kitchen entrance. Jun would choose traveling companions after they knew the condition of the southern route, rather than charging toward the warning her brother had risked sending.

Denna refused to guess how long release might take. She had seen a living young man, not an order granting him freedom. Jun thanked her for drawing that boundary. Hope was difficult enough to carry without someone filling its empty places with assurances that would collapse on the road.

Sive kept one hand on the sheet throughout.

“He says he can hold a spoon,” she murmured.

Daren understood what she heard beneath it. A boy reassuring the people who had once fed him that some part of himself remained useful.

He hated that usefulness had become the language in which Tev thought he must ask to be remembered.

Near midday, Jun found Edrin beside the bench fittings. She told him what had happened without accusing him of this particular injury.

He listened with his hands still.

“Did you know a coupling could do that?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Did people get warned?”

“Sometimes.”

The answer hurt her. It also gave her something firmer than an invented apology.

“Then when you teach Tovin, you tell him before he touches it.”

“I will.”

At dusk, the forty eight hours promised to Reedbank were complete. Brida's record showed measured grooves, a finished bridge, inspected supports, and a trial still delayed because the copper contact had failed its first dry fitting. Ysra accepted the labor account. She kept her watchers for the trial by her own choice.

Jun helped Sive carry supper to their sleeping place. For once, she took the smaller bowl without being asked.

Behind them, Daren read Tev's warning again.

They stop people there now.

Hearthfast had found a way to return something stolen from a spring.

Beyond its walls, another return was being deliberately closed.