CHAPTER 82: 82: A NEW BEGINNING PART VII

---

Fizz sighed and untied the mustache. "You are no fun and therefore you will live longer."

They left as the lamps in the lane lit one by one like a breadcrumb trail for the absent-minded. The old apple press behind the inn waited in the space where back doors and quiet deals meet. It was a place for barrels and gossip. It smelled faintly of wood and old sweetness.

Lark arrived as shadows joined hands. He was a narrow boy made of angles and nerves, with hair that did not listen and eyes that had learned how not to look at anything that could get them in trouble. He carried his fear like a coin under his tongue.

"I was told there would be money for a memory," he said, as if reciting a curse so it would not stick.

"There will be," John said. "For a memory that earns its keep."

Lark’s gaze flitted to Fizz and then away. "It talks."

"So do you," Fizz said. "Most days."

Lark swallowed. "Ask."

John did not waste the boy’s courage. He spoke as if filling a bucket he had already measured. "Ninteen years ago and more. The White estate. A common woman visited or lived in the servants’ wing. She was not supposed to be seen. The Duke did not want anyone to know she existed. Who knew her name? Who knew where she came from? What became of her after a child was born."

Lark’s jaw flickered, which is what happens when you keep your mouth closed for too long and it wants to open. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger as if he were trying to erase a stain.

"I carried linen from the east corridor," he said. "The winter wing. We changed the bed sheets once a day even when no one slept in them. That is how I knew the bed was for someone who mattered, because sheets hate being changed for nothing."

He glanced at the coins in John’s hand without trying to be subtle and went on. "A girl told me once... she worked laundry properly, not my scut work — that a woman with river hair had come by at night, led by a guard with a white pin. She had a ribbon the color of a red leaf. She carried a charm at her neck made from birch wood. I never saw the woman, but I saw the laundry that went to that room. Fine linen. Not a noble fine, but fine like someone who wanted life to be kinder."

Fizz was very still. John kept his voice even. "River hair."

"Braided with bits of yarn like they do where the dyehouses are," Lark said. "Smelled like soap and dye, not like perfume."

"What became of her," John asked.

Lark looked down and studied his boots as if they had shown him kindness once. "I do not know her name. I was told not to hear it. But I know what the girl told me when she drank on Saint’s Night and forgot she was careful. After the baby was born, a guard captain with a white pin and a bent nose took the woman out through the birch gate at dawn. He walked like he owned the path. The girl cried after, because the room smelled like goodbye." He swallowed again. "The guard captain’s name was Rettan Vale. That is a name I am not supposed to know."

Fizz’s voice came out of him very quietly. "Rettan Vale."

Lark flicked his eyes up and then down. "He was the kind who knows how to keep a story short. He did not hit, because he never needed to."

John passed the boy one coin. Then a second. Then a third. He held the fourth back between two fingers where Lark could see it make promises.

"Where did the woman go," John said. "What road?"

Lark shook his head, quick and helpless. "If the laundry girl knew, she did not say. She left herself two winters later to marry a cooper. Not in this town. Another one. I could ask if anyone hears where she is now."

"You will ask," John said. "And you will not hurry and ruin it. You will be paid whether the answer is something or nothing. But you will not lie and call it something."

Lark nodded, eager, grateful, greedy, ashamed. All the usual human things in a boy who had been taught that coin was colder than winter and twice as patient. "I will try."

John gave him the fourth coin. He kept two more in his palm to let the boy see his future if the wind gave him a map.

"Who told you about me," Lark asked, because fear and curiosity are cousins who visit together.

"The wind," Fizz said solemnly.

Lark half laughed and then stopped himself, as if laughing in the wrong place might get him thrown out. "Tonight was not bad," he said. "I thought it would be worse."

"Most things are," John said. "Go home. Do not practice being brave where it will get you killed."

Lark slipped into the alley the way a shadow hides inside a shadow and was gone.

Fizz floated down until he was level with John’s chin. "Rettan Vale."

"Captain at the time," John said. "He would be more now."

Fizz ran both paws over his face as if trying to rub the name off the world. "River hair. Birch charm. Red ribbon. I like clues that come with colors. It means the future will be easier to paint."

"It means we have something we can turn into a road," John said.

They walked back through a lane where windows had started closing for the night and dogs had decided the village belonged to them again. The forge’s sign creaked once, twice, in the kind of wind that makes roofs remember to be friends with walls.

Gael met them at the door with a ledger and a yawn. "You were long," he said.

"We were careful," John said.