Myriam walked me to the chapel door, hand brushing the frame like she blessed the wood out of habit.

  “Go and move in the world a while,” she told me. “The high ones will stay where they are. The nearer ones watch. We will talk again.”

  “I’ll bring more strange metaphors.”

  “I look forward to arguing with them.”

  Sun hit me full in the face outside. The square already buzzed. Hammer on anvil from Kael’s forge, kids chasing each other round the well, someone scolding a cow with language that would have fit right in on a trauma ward.

  Now to see the Mayor.

  The inn doubled as his office. I found him at a corner table near the hearth, sleeves rolled, chain of office crooked against his shirt. A ledger lay open in front of him. He stared at it with the focus of someone trying to bore a hole through numbers by will alone.

  “Mayor Brody.”

  His head jerked up. His fingers went straight to the chain and worried the tarnished links.

  “Ah. Lady Emily. Forgive me, I ought to be—” His gaze flicked to my borrowed tunic, the bare forearms, the missing armor. “Are you well enough to be walking about?”

  “Well enough to look for trouble.” I glanced at the ledger. “And to do a little paperwork of my own, apparently.”

  That pulled a tired huff out of him.

  “If you have a solution that comes by way of ink and not blood, I will name a holiday for it.”

  “I have something smaller.” I eased myself into the bench opposite. The wooden edge pressed into my bruised side; I ignored it. “Do you have somewhere you keep important things? Charters, records. Somewhere that doesn’t leak every time it thinks about rain.”

  His shoulders straightened a little. Familiar ground.

  “The strong box.” He tapped the wall behind him, where a stout chest squatted under a shelf of mugs. “Iron bands. Was my father’s. Holds the town seal, the charter, such coin as we have not already spent on feed and nails.”

  “Good. I want the resin recipe in there.”

  His brows climbed.

  “You…do?”

  “I walked your fence yesterday.” I folded my hands on the table to keep from poking his ledger. “You’re about to pour half your labor and sanity into that resin. If I fall off another tree, or a boar gets lucky, or Beakly eats something that eats him back, I don’t want the recipe dying with me.”

  He looked down at his hands. The chain clinked, links bright where his fingers had polished them over the years.

  “You think that likely?”

  “I think the odds are not zero.” I met his eyes. “You can't risk the village on one tank with cracked ribs and a bird that naps like it’s his job. That’s not a sustainable plan.”

  His mouth twitched; then the humor drained away, leaving something raw.

  “Write it,” he murmured. “By all means. I should have thought to ask. Yet again, you put your mind to our troubles before I even climb out of my own fog.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “It’s your job to live in the fog,” I answered. “You’re the one counting sacks of grain.”

  He let out a sound that could have been a laugh or a groan.

  “My job.” His thumb ran along a dent in the tabletop. “My job used to be knowing when Widow Harrow’s roof needed mending before she asked. Sorting land disputes. Making certain the road was cleared for the spring fair. When the adventurers came through, I stamped bounty notices, listened to their complaints about ale prices, sent them off to bash skulls that needed bashing.”

  “There were more of them before?”

  “Dozens.” His eyes went distant. “Bright cloaks, bright steel. You’d hear them a mile off, singing, boasting. They’d sweep in, clean out wolves from the north wood, knock bandits from the roads. Then stride into my hall all noise and sweat, slap a sack of ears or goblin teeth on the table, and I’d count them and make a little ceremony of the reward.”

  He gave a crooked smile.

  “I felt…useful. Part of a pattern. The problems were big, but they belonged to people who swung swords for a living. I kept my town tidy round the edges.”

  “And now the wolves and bandits stayed, and the adventurers didn’t.”

  “They stopped coming, one spring.” His fingers drifted from the chain to the ledger, then stalled halfway. “Caravans thinned. The last band of heroes I saw limped in with half their number. They spoke of storms of fire in the old capital, of rifts that wouldn’t close. Larger things.” His jaw worked. “They looked through me when I spoke of broken fences. Then they left. No one came to take their place.”

  The room held the low hum of the inn around us—Elspeth clattered in the kitchen, someone laughed near the door—but at our table the air felt still.

  “I watched the world grow lean,” he went on. “Each year the beasts stray closer. Each year we have a little less. I keep thinking there must be some clever line to write, some bargain to strike, some…decision that will set it all back in order. And instead I stare at my own ink and feel like a child holding a broom in a burning house.”

  The words hung there. He blinked hard and looked away, toward the window where the fence cut a dark line against the trees.

  “I clung to forms. To meetings. To votes.” He snorted, bitter. “Procedures for a quieter age. Now a stranger falls out of the sky in holy armor and teaches my folk to brew stone onto wood while I…watch. Shake hands. Try not to get underfoot.”

  “You think that makes you useless?”

  “What else would you call it?” His fingers squeezed the chain until the brass dug into skin. “A good mayor would have found a way before the grumbleboars broke through. A good man would not stand behind a woman half-broken and let her bleed for his people.”

  My throat closed for a moment. I swallowed it down.

  “You stayed,” I told him.

  He frowned.

  “Where else would I go?”

  “Plenty of places.” I leaned forward despite the protest from my ribcage. “You could have packed that strong box and walked to some bigger town. Found a post where the beasts haven’t found the door yet. Let Oakhaven fend for itself.”

  His eyes widened, as if the idea had never occurred to him as anything but a story about cowards.

  “I took an oath,” he murmured.

  “So do I, where I come from.” I watched his face. “Doesn’t stop people from quitting when things get ugly. You didn’t. You’re still here. You listened when your people panicked. You let them argue. You asked a stranger what she thought instead of throwing her out or pretending you had all the answers.”

  His mouth opened, closed.

  “That is…very little.”

  “It’s the whole thing.” I tapped the ledger with one finger. “In my world, when everything went sideways, the people who mattered weren’t the ones with the prettiest plans. They were the ones who stayed in the room. Kept showing up. Signed the orders no one wanted to sign. Held hands in waiting rooms at three in the morning.”

  He studied me with an intensity that made me want to look away.

  “You think I’m doing…well.”

  “I think you’re doing the hard part.” I let out a breath. “The part where nothing is clear and you can’t swing a hammer and feel the wall get stronger. You look useless because you don’t get the satisfying noise. But the village moves when you twitch. They watch you. Your chain, your face. You flinch, they run. You hold steady, they keep going.”

  His gaze dropped to the tarnished brass resting against his chest. For once his fingers stilled.

  “I feel like I am standing still while the river rises.”

  “Standing still can be holding the line.” I nudged the inkpot toward me. “Let me write the recipe. You put it in the box. Then, next time you feel useless, you can pat yourself on the back for implementing an archival system.”

  That earned a stronger snort.

  “Archival system. You and Myriam with your priest words and strange notions.” He pushed the ledger aside and set a blank sheet before me with something like ceremony. “Very well. We will record this wonder of yours for the ages.”

  “For the record, it’s messy, time-consuming, and smells like someone cooked a pine tree in bacon fat.”

  “Then it will fit admirably among Oakhaven’s other miracles.”

  I dipped the quill, flexed my fingers once, and bent over the page while he watched, chain resting quiet against his throat.