CHAPTER 538: TWO TREES FOR ONE (1)

The five days after the festival slid past like neat columns added and balanced, and Arielle liked that very much. The city still rang with music at night—pipes wandering into alleys, someone always deciding the last song wasn’t yet the last—but mornings belonged to ledgers, stamps, and decisions that made sense when written down. Light in the solar came in clean and square across the table; dust motes floated like settled accounts. Lyan kept pace beside her, coat off, sleeves rolled, jaw clean-shaven for once. He wore that careful half-smile that meant he was thinking three steps ahead while pretending he wasn’t, and when she slid a paper under his hand, he read as if paper could talk back.

Day one began with tariff tables and the parade of merchants who all believed their case was special. The spice man with cinnamon under his nails leaned too close to the map; the miller had a flour handprint on his vest and a worry line deep as a plow furrow; the barge woman smelled of rope and river, her palms callused like bark. Arielle laid out the numbers—river tolls, warehouse fees, bridge repairs—and tapped a blue box she’d drawn with steady strokes.

"Stepped levy," she said. "Smallholders pay less per cart. Large caravans pay more per axle. It looks simple on the wall poster and no one needs to hire a scribe to understand it."

"No one likes to feel tricked," the miller muttered, hopeful and wary both.

Lyan barely glanced at the table. He leaned over the river sketch and traced the bend north of the grain quay with one knuckle. "South current pulls harder this month," he said, almost to the water. "The north sandbar is up. If we add a seasonal bridge-tax deferment on the upstream span, more boats will choose Grafen’s docks instead of skipping to Dunbridge. It makes the choice easy; easy choices are cheaper than arguments."

Arielle’s pen paused mid-stroke. He had not been briefed on current charts yet, not the little notes she wrote in the corner about where reeds stood taller and where a barge would scrape if it hugged the wrong bank. Still, he spoke as if the river kept a diary and read it to him at breakfast. She underlined seasonal bridge tax deferment, circled quay, and bit back a smile that was not professional at all.

The barge woman squinted at Lyan as if deciding whether to forgive a lord for knowing her river. "You drop the fee on the old north span," she said, "I’ll swing two boats to your grain quay this week. But if the south current takes one of my boys off his feet, you’ll send a rope team."

"We’ll post a rope team," Lyan said at once. "And a hot kettle on the dock." He did not look at Arielle when he added, "Put the kettle in the poster."

Arielle, who had already inked a tiny teapot in the margin as a joke for herself, inked it again in earnest. He looked up and then away fast, as if he had almost been caught watching the curve of her throat when she leaned in. He always thought he hid it well. He did not. It warmed her anyway.

By afternoon the tax poster had a simple staircase and one sentence: Small carts, small toll; big axles, big help for our bridges. Someone brought the first copy to the square; a baker’s boy read it without stumbling. That was worth three calculations.

Day two was Valmere’s mana mists. The letter from the salt flats had been brief—two lines and a smudge where the writer had coughed on the page. Arielle spread her drafts. "Two crews, four masks, twelve-hour cap," she said, tapping with her stylus. "We pay by hour logged against the fog-line. We rotate before runes heat the face-plates. We require wash tents."

A rune-smith from the lower quarter stood with hat in hand, thumb worrying the brim. "Masks crack if they run hot too long," he offered. "And your men pull them up to scratch—because that’s what men do—and the nose takes all the burn." He looked like he wanted to apologize to noses in general.

Lyan tilted the paper toward the light, thumb bracing the edge the way he braced a nervous recruit’s elbow. "Pay by clear day instead of hours," he said. "If the mists thin faster, they finish faster. Pay a bonus for a week without nose blisters. We reward outcome, not wait."

Arielle amended the line. "Bonus tied to logs and a healer’s sign-off," she said, already drawing a neat box for signatures. "And we build a board in the town square where crews chalk what worked. If a pattern repeats, Gessa in Valmere will see it and copy without asking permission."

The rune-smith blinked, surprised to be included in a thought that lived on a square. "I can bring chalk," he said, as if this were a much larger promise than it sounded.

"That saves coin," Arielle said, then heard her own voice and smiled at herself. It did save coin. It also saved lungs. Both counts felt legitimate. "We’ll add a barrel for drinking water," she added, because men who scratched their noses also forgot to sip unless you put the dipper in their hand.

Lyan leaned back, chair creaking. "Make the barrel painted blue," he said. "And move it when the wind shifts."

"Because people are lazy?" the rune-smith asked.

"Because people are busy," Lyan said, gentler than a correction. He could be like that—sharp one hour, soft the next. She filed the solution with a little twist of her mouth she told herself was just satisfaction. It was also admiration, and she let herself have it.

Day three: Dunbridge smugglers. Arielle’s ledger mapped coin flows in crisp lines: which alley bought twice as much lamp oil as it needed, which warehouse keeper suddenly had a better belt, which tavern grew louder on market night and then curiously quiet two nights later. She set her abacus, beads clacking into place like footfalls. Surena stood near the shutters where the light cut her in half, all slate-grey leather and stillness.

"Run decoy carts on market day," Lyan said after listening, finger resting between two numbers as if they were stones in a stream. "Sacks that clink a little and smell like spice. The real goods leave the morning after at dawn. Change the lantern codes on the east road so anyone tracking our lights gets turned around near the quarry."

"Quarry men rise early," Surena said. "Our shadows can blend."

Arielle adjusted the schedule and wrote he thinks like water through stone in the margin, then went pink and scratched it out so no one else would see. Josephine, who had appeared without announcement and was eating sugared almonds as if they were proof of something, leaned over her shoulder. "Romancing physics now?" she whispered, delighted. Arielle elbowed her gently, which only encouraged her.

They settled details: decoy sacks filled with mended pot handles that clinked properly when shaken; lantern code adjustments that changed with the saints’ days so no one could memorize them by accident; a rumor planted in the wrong ear about a convoy of "Wyvern glass" that would lure any curious lord to count our soldiers instead of their own. When Surena finally nodded once, Arielle noted it with a tick mark that felt like a door locking.

Day four: Norhallow forest titles. The map of the green border went on the table. Arielle smoothed it flat with the side of her hand the way you soothe fabric before cutting. "Trial lease," she said. "Two trees planted for every one harvested. Survival proved at twelve months. We measure by growth ring rubbings." She tapped a small circle she’d drawn where a shrine sat beneath a yew. "Local caretakers retain rights to offerings."

Lyan added a clause, slow and careful as if each word weighed what it asked. "Spirit roads stay uncut," he said. "Shrines get a fifty-pace buffer. If a wood listens well, it should not hear the axe every day."

He went very still for a heartbeat, head tilted as if listening to a sound behind the wall. The room’s air seemed to shift. Arielle had the absurd impression that someone had opened a window in winter and let in pine.

(Plant two for one felled.)

(Prove it and I will bless it.)

(Guard the old paths.)

Arielle did not hear those lines, of course, but she felt the hush. His mouth softened—the small line that lived at one corner unwound—and the light struck the ink on the map just so, brightening the drawn path to the shrine. Then the moment folded itself up and tucked quietly away. She noted it and moved on, pencil tapping the dates for inspection. "Seasonal felling only," she added. "No cutting when the ground is waterlogged. Carts destroy more than axes do."

"Write it like a story," Lyan said. "People will remember stories when they forget clauses."