Ishrel

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

Seraya put the two messages side by side on the table and held them flat with the same stone weight she had used the night before. The earlier account had been carried by a man who reached the support settlement before dusk. The newer one had come at dawn, passed across a damaged footbridge by three people who had not all seen the travelers themselves. Each hand had added something; each had left something out.

She ran her finger beneath the lines she trusted. The group beyond Stonewater still had water. They had dry shelter for the children, though not enough bedding for everyone. Their grain was nearly gone. One older traveler had developed a fever, and the person tending him had asked for clean cloth and the medicines that could be spared. Two freight workers had attempted to shift a damaged load away from the exposed shelf. Neither message said whether they had succeeded.

The later note gave a smaller number of people than the first.

“Did someone leave?” Senka asked.

Seraya shook her head. “It doesn’t say.”

“Could be they counted a household twice.”

“Could be.”

“Or someone isn’t there anymore.”

Seraya flattened the edge of the paper. “That’s the part I don’t want to guess about.”

They were seated in the shared kitchen’s rear room, where the morning light fell through slats onto a row of water jars and the shelves where Senka stored the things people could borrow and were expected to return. In the adjoining room someone chopped roots against a board. A child coughed. From outside came the scrape of a cart wheel being lifted free of the rut by the well.

Senka dragged a basket nearer and took out two tied parcels. “Food enough for four days, if we make them take small portions. One more day if the other camp hasn’t been eating what they said they were. I’d rather send less than have someone die here because we gave away what we couldn’t spare.”

“Agreed.”

“You need to write that down?”

“I was going to.”

“Then write that I said it, not that everyone at the kitchen agreed. Half of them were still asleep.”

Seraya made the correction. Senka watched her for a moment, then pushed a small twist of dried leaves across the table.

“From the healer’s stores. Ovara looked at the list and chose these. The other things requested would need someone who knows the patient. We’re not sending powders because a courier wrote the word fever.”

“Is Ovara coming to the meeting?”

“She said she’d come once she’d seen Bale.”

Seraya’s hand paused over the tally.

Senka didn’t pretend not to notice. “I thought Dasken was deciding that.”

“He is.”

“And Bale?”

“Has agreed to let Ovara examine him.”

“That’s a start.”

“He’s more careful than he was.”

“I’ve watched him lift a grain sack like it was empty. I can believe he’s stronger. I can also believe he’s the last person who ought to judge how much pain he’s in.”

Seraya almost answered too sharply. She put the pen down instead. “He isn’t asking to carry everything. Dasken wants him because he can hold a position and because he’s been following instructions.”

“I know.” Senka covered the parcels again. “I wasn’t arguing with you.”

“No. I know.”

From the front room a voice called Senka’s name. She rose and stood with both hands on the table for a moment.

“It’s a miserable choice,” she said. “Whether to send people into that gorge or leave the people beyond it waiting. I’d prefer a third.”

“So would I.”

“Tell Dasken the food is ready. Tell him I’ll have someone carry it as far as the staging place, but I won’t put a child on that lower path to save the weight of an adult’s back.”

Seraya wrote that down too.

Outside, the morning had come up clear and dry. Along the western side of the settlement, bare earth rose toward the terraced waterworks and the closed upper road. At the farther edge, the ground broke into ridges that led down toward an older route cut below the present crossing. The path was not visible from here. Its position had been established with copied surveys, travelers’ descriptions and the patient work of Yedra Salk, who had spent the previous afternoon comparing those accounts against what could still be seen from safe overlooks.

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.