Three Wells received the travelers on day 1295, eleven actual travel days after Ember Wash.
The seasonal upper loop had added the two days Isha had allowed when the low road was occupied and the river covered its stepping stones. The guide’s revised route book, the ferry receipt and the two pack animals arrived together. No one told the receiving yard that the animals should somehow have been there on the old date because the first lease sheet had looked cleaner.
Brin paid the agreed detour allowance and signed the animals over to the carrier pool’s authorized keeper. Their next task would begin after rest, feed and the owner’s ordinary decision. Isha closed her paid light-road leg with the date and the crossed river written in her own hand. She accepted a meal, took her balance and went to visit a cousin rather than following the restorer indefinitely.
Pera was at the interpreters’ room when Kesh found her. Her mallet lay beside a resonator with a new padded strap. Oss sat at the other table comparing the older notation with a local keeper’s seasonal notes. Both were human, paid for actual work, with no ability to answer every Marcher in the country by remembering one useful pattern.
