At the reed cutter’s landing, the water road ended in a wall of fallen stone.
It had once been a bridge. Now only the southern arch remained, spanning a narrow cut beside the main channel. The northern approach lay across the water in pieces. Willow roots gripped one broken parapet. Beyond it the land rose into a long dry slope.
“You can get through at low water,” the reed cutter told them. “Without the boat.”
Chaska rested her pole against her shoulder. “I see.”
The woman came down to inspect the skiff. She wore a broad hat tied beneath her chin and had a bundle of cut reeds over each shoulder. Her name was Halwe. Her own boat had split in the fire, when she dragged it over the bank to get the dry reeds away from the flames.
She examined Chaska’s patch for a long time.
“You did that?”
“Yes.”
“Hold water?”
“Unfortunately, no. We worked hard on it.”
Halwe looked up, decided Chaska was not mocking her, and barked a laugh.
The bargaining happened on the landing while Ysabet sat with Pip in the shade. The skiff had cost five silver and six copper before their labor. Halwe offered two silver. Chaska wanted four. At three, with the oar included and the pole kept for walking, both women became silent in the way people do when they are prepared to agree but resent being first.
“I could store it,” Halwe said.
“Until when?”
“Until you come back.”
Chaska looked at the fallen bridge. “I don’t know when that is.”
“Three, then.”
“Three.”
They unloaded onto the upper landing. The frame’s spars made a light rattling as Chaska folded them tighter. She lashed the rolled sail across the bundle, checked the padded navigation mirrors, and added the whole assembly to the load Lilt would carry when the harness could safely go back on.
For now, Chaska carried it herself.
Halwe let them sleep on the hard ground beside her reed stacks. They bought fresh bread and a small packet of dried river fruit from her, and filled their jar at the spring she showed them. Chaska wrapped the remaining coins in her shirt rather than put them in Ysabet’s bag.
That night Pip walked without waking.
Its feet began against the blanket in a faint uneven tapping. Ysabet opened her eyes, expecting the mouse to have escaped. Pip lay on its side beside the box. All five useful legs moved in sequence. Even the little folded limb twitched, toes trying to spread.
She put her right hand near its face and tapped the ground twice with her left.
The feet went on moving.
She touched one lightly.
Heat and dry wind struck her. Something burned beyond a line she could not see. Her body seemed taller, heavier; the earth shook with movements that arrived together. She drew away before the pressure could fill her head.
Pip woke with a hard click. It rolled onto its belly and backed into the blanket until the wool stopped it.
“Here,” Ysabet whispered.
She moved the water lid into view. Pip stared at it, then at her bent fingers. After several breaths it drank.
Ashaun sat up on the far side of the camp. Her right hand was already at her belt.
“What?”
“Feet moving. While it slept.”
“Marching?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Ashaun looked at the little tracks worked into the dust. She took her hand off the knife wrapping.
At dawn Ysabet wrote the sequence on the back of the old stitching pattern. She drew a line down the page and put what she had felt on the other side. Chaska looked over her shoulder.
“Why separate it?”
“Because I’ve heard about burning valleys now. I don’t know whether the feeling brought the picture or I did.”
Chaska fetched her own paper. She drew the marks in the dust before anyone walked over them.
The loose sheets were becoming impossible to keep in order. Ysabet trimmed two thin scraps from Halwe’s waste reed boards, wrapped their edges in spare cloth, and pierced the papers with her cheap iron needle. Chaska pulled the thread through where Ysabet could not hold it. The resulting notebook was crooked and stiff to open, but the unpaid mill bill and the stitching-pattern pages could no longer blow away separately.
Ashaun came to stand beside them. She pointed at the outside pair.
“The rhythm was wrong for a line on the flat. On broken ground the outer steps shorten.”
Ysabet looked up.
“I thought you didn’t want stories told beside it.”
“I don’t.” Ashaun jerked her head toward the spring. “Bring the paper.”
They walked far enough that their low voices would not carry. Chaska stayed with Pip and the mouse, making no attempt to draw the creature into the conversation.
Ashaun named two stretches of country where black grass grew on bare ridges and military roads passed over old burning pits. She could not say either was what Ysabet had felt. She refused to describe the battles there.
“Does it matter which?” Ysabet asked.
“If you’re making a record, it matters when you don’t know.”
They came back to find Pip inspecting Chaska’s grounded frame. It had worked its head under the folded sail and was clicking at the noise the cloth made around its eyes. Chaska lifted one corner rather than pull the bundle away.
“Better?”
Pip stepped out, then went back under by itself.
Halwe pushed the skiff into the channel while they packed. It floated lighter with only one woman and two bundles of reeds aboard. Chaska watched it turn past the landing.
“You’ll miss it?” Ysabet asked.
“I’ll miss not carrying things.”
Then she put the frame across her shoulder and set off toward the surviving arch.