A Contract Dispute

It was a yellow and pink evening.

The sun was going down, bleeding these colours into the sky. The clouds had caught fire at their edges, and the whole town of Thistledown was washed in a warm, golden light that made even the broken cobblestones look gentle.

Wren was sitting at her table. She had fallen back into the rhythm — pick up a paper, check the seal line, press the stamp down hard enough to leave a clean impression, set it aside.

The work she had left behind on the morning of the harvest fair was still here, waiting for her, indifferent to everything that had happened since.

She looked out the window beside her desk.

Some children were playing in the street. Della was among them, and with her was Kip — the boy from behind the stall, the one the attacker had nearly reached. He was running now, laughing, chasing Della around a barrel. His mother was nowhere in sight. He looked unhurt. He looked like a child again.

They all stopped, all at once, and turned their faces toward the sky. The sunset had deepened into something richer, and their profiles went yellow in the light. For a moment, none of them moved. They just looked up, and the sky looked back.

Old Man Pryce came up to Della in the street. He said something to her, leaning down slightly on his cane, and then pressed something into her hand. A folded paper. A note.

Della looked at it, nodded once, and then ran off toward the town entrance without looking back. Her copper curls bounced against her shoulders and then disappeared around the corner of Thistle's Best Inn.

Wren watched them for a long moment. Then she turned back to her desk. Pick up a paper. Check the seal. Stamp. Set aside.

The rhythm was waiting for her. It always was.

Pryce entered the office. The door creaked open and then creaked shut behind him, and he made his way to his larger table without a word.

"When will he leave?" Pryce said, his voice louder than usual.

"Rourke?"

"Yes. It's been two days." Pryce settled into his chair and pulled a stack of papers toward him with more force than necessary. "If you had woken up earlier, I would have sent you to Blackburn."

"Wren's really sorry."

"It's not your mistake." Pryce looked at her across the room. His eyes were tired, but the sharpness in them wasn't aimed at her.

He worked in silence for a while. The only sounds were the scratch of his pen and the steady rhythm of Wren's stamp. Then he spoke again, quieter this time.

"Did he observe anything unusual from you?"

"No. Wren is trying to stay low." She looked at Pryce, then out the window toward the square where Rourke had been seen walking that morning, ledger in hand. She spoke again after a pause. "But it's like there are always some eyes on Wren. Looking at her. Tracing her every move."

Just as she said it, sounds rose from outside. Voices. Loud ones. The kind of noise that didn't belong to the ordinary rhythm of a town evening. Wren's hand paused on the stamp. Pryce lifted his head.

They both turned toward the window.

Out the window, a small crowd had gathered. Near them was a fruit cart, overturned, apples scattered across the cobblestones.

Beside it stood a farmer — weathered, sun-browned, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows — and across from him, a well-dressed man. The cut of his coat was too fine for Thistledown. His shoes were too clean. He looked like a merchant, and he was gesturing wildly, his voice carrying even through the glass.

They were arguing. Loudly. The kind of argument that drew eyes before it drew solutions.

"A dispute," Pryce said. He started to rise from his chair.

Wren held up her palm toward him. The gesture was small but firm. Stop.

"Wren will take care of it."

She got up and headed out the door before he could argue.

The evening light caught her face just as she approached the crowd. It was still golden, still bleeding pink at the edges, and it softened the dark circles under her eyes in a way that was almost kind.

Heads turned toward her as she neared. The arguing paused. She stepped between the bodies, her shoulders squaring, her voice cutting clean through the noise.

"Everybody, get to your work."

She gestured for the crowd to disperse, her hand sweeping outward. There was no zmagic in it. No Voice. Just the crisp, practiced authority of someone who had spent six years telling people where to sign.

And they listened.

The crowd broke apart. People drifted back toward their stalls and their errands, muttering, glancing back once or twice, but leaving. Within moments, it was just the farmer, the merchant, and Wren.

She spoke up. "What's the matter?"

The farmer turned toward her desperately. "This man. We agreed upon the price, and now he's demanding less money."

Wren looked at the merchant. "You did the vow on the contract, right? Then he can't take more money from you. He'll be punished by the Chorus."

The farmer looked at the ground. His shoulders dropped. "No. I did not do it."

"Why?"

"I don't have the money to do it." His voice was barely above a murmur now. "I can't afford thirty impos."

Wren just looked at him. His face was a mix of sadness and embarrassment, the kind of expression worn by a man who had been cheated before and had learned to expect it. Thirty impos. The cost of a single vow. He couldn't afford what she did every day without thinking.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Wren will see what she can do."

The merchant was shifting his weight from foot to foot, glancing toward the inn, looking restless. Like he was getting late for something. "Are you done? Just take the money, or this will get spoiled."

"Wait."

Then Wren felt them again. Eyes on her. She knew, even before turning around, who it would be. Rourke. She could feel his gaze like a finger pressed against the back of her neck. She did not turn. She kept her eyes on the merchant.

"That's really less," she said. "This price is a fraction of the harvest's worth. He cannot even cover his seed."

The merchant's face hardened. "Girl, I am not beating around the bush. So shut up."

He turned toward the inn and shouted, his voice carrying across the square.

"Rowan! Rowan!"

A man stepped out of the inn. Sandy brown hair, broad shoulders, a sword resting in its hilt at his side.

Wren recognized him immediately — the man from the attack, the one who had summoned ice and fought like he had done it a hundred times before. The one who had offered her his hand after knocking her to the ground.

Rowan approached them quietly. His eyes met hers as he drew near, and something flickered there. Recognition. He remembered her too.

"What's the matter?" Rowan stepped up beside the merchant, his gaze moving between the three of them.

"Just beat them up and let's go to the capital. We are running late." The merchant spoke with indifference, as if he were asking for a cart to be loaded or a horse to be watered. Violence, to him, was just another transaction.

Rowan's expression didn't change. "Why? What happened? You want us to beat them?"

"She—" The merchant started, but Wren cut him off.

"This man agreed upon a price, but now he's paying far too low."

"So what? There's no contract." The merchant's voice rose to a shout. The farmer was stepping backward, his face pale, his hands trembling at his sides. He looked like a man who had been hit before.

"I hired you. You listen to me." The merchant jabbed a finger toward the farmer. "Just beat him up." Then the finger swung toward Wren. "If she gets in between, beat her too."

Rowan didn't move. He looked at the merchant. Then at the farmer. Then at Wren. His hand stayed where it was, resting on his sword hilt, utterly still.

The evening light caught the thin scar along his lip. The silence stretched.

"We were hired as your escorts for the travel," Rowan said, breaking the silence. "Not as your personal bodyguards."

"What are you talking about? I gave you money!" The merchant jabbed a finger toward him.

Rowan stepped closer. "Sir, we're your escorts on the road. That's what you hired us for. Don't test my patience. If you're ready to make the journey back to the capital on that dangerous road alone, without us, we'll return your money. You can go."

The merchant's face went pale. He stepped backward, once, twice, and his heel caught the edge of the overturned cart. He stumbled against it and grabbed the side to keep from falling.

"Woah, woah." A voice drifted up from down the street. Smooth. Amused.

A man was walking toward them. He was tall, with dark grey hair of medium length, slicked back from his forehead but with a few strands falling loose across his brow. His eyes were covered — at first glance it looked like a blindfold, a strip of dark cloth wrapped neatly around his head. But he moved without hesitation, without the cautious reach of a blind man. He approached like someone who could see perfectly well.

"Sorry, I overheard you all."

His face was soft, almost gentle, as he drew close. Up close, even Wren felt her cheeks warm a little. There was something disarming about him — the easy angle of his smile, the unhurried way he occupied space.

The merchant stared at him. "Who are you?"

"Me? I am just a traveler. You can call me Silas."

All of them looked at him with something between shock and confusion. The blindfold. How was he walking? How was he looking at them?

He continued, "There are plenty of mercenaries around here. He can hire someone else."

Wren stepped forward. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Silas said, turning his blindfolded face toward her, "there are people like me who'd be happy to escort him."

The merchant's face lit up. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, thrusting them toward Silas without a second thought. Silas looked at the money, then at the merchant. He reached out and took it, tucking the coins into his own pocket with the casual grace of someone accepting a gift.

Then something black spread across his hand.

It looked like a void — a patch of absolute darkness, swallowing the light around it. Wren's breath caught in her throat. A Cant-user.

Silas brought his hand close to the merchant, and the merchant slammed to the ground as if some invisible force had shoved him down. He hit the cobblestones with a grunt, his fine coat crumpling beneath him.

"What—" The merchant shrieked, scrambling backward on his elbows.

Silas looked down at him, his expression still soft, still pleasant. "I never agreed to bodyguard you. You gave me the money, and I took it." He tilted his head. 

"Did we have an agreement?"

".....No."

"Did we have a contract?"

"No......."

Rowan stepped up beside Silas and gripped his shoulder. "Stop it."

"Woah, woah." Silas raised both hands, the void dissolving from his skin like smoke. "I was just helping you guys out."

The sun was nearly gone now, swallowed behind the horizon. The last light bled away into a deep blue dusk, and the square began to dim. Lanterns were being lit in the windows along the street.

The merchant scrambled to his feet. His coat was dirty, his pride was bruised, and his hands were shaking. He stumbled toward Wren, all his earlier bluster gone, replaced by something desperate.

"Just make the contract," he said. His voice cracked on the words. "Give him any price he wants."

Wren looked at the farmer. The farmer looked back at her, still half-terrified, still not quite believing what was happening. She took his hand in one of hers. She took the merchant's hand in the other.

The eyes on her — Rourke's eyes, she knew, watching from somewhere in the darkening square — intensified. She could feel them pressing against her skin. She closed her own eyes and began to speak.

Then the double voice came, "We petition the Chorus who hears us. Grant protection to these parties, and let them follow what they agreed on."

The air stilled. The contract was bound. Wren released their hands and stepped back, the remnant of the Voice still humming in her throat.

And then, from across the square, the door of the notary office banged open.

Old Man Pryce came running. Despite his age, despite his cane, he was moving faster than Wren had ever seen him move. His face was pale. His eyes were wide.

"Della," he gasped, reaching them. "She isn't back. It's turning night. She's in the forest."