The short warning path crossed a garden that did not belong to the road office.
Its old gate had stood open before the war. On day 1302 it was shut, with a neat row of repaired beds behind it and a child’s coat drying on the inner rail. The road keeper showed Tavin the longer route while the carrier’s team rested at the receiving yard.
“Two hours around the upper bend,” she said. “More in rain. The short path takes less than half an hour if you can use the lower board.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Ask the people living beside it.”
They did. That was the first useful difference.
The household keeper, Vesi Dann, had closed the gate after a repair crew carried hot equipment across her beds without warning and left a loaded handcart on the only route her father could use. The road office’s original path note said access maintained. It did not name a time, a load limit, a receiving person or what happened when access harmed the people maintaining it.
“You want an emergency path,” she told Brin. “The last man said his work was an emergency for three weeks.”
