Chapter 9: Cost

Chapter 9: Cost 

Rigar woke when he rolled onto his left arm.

For a moment, he did not know where he was. He caught the edge of the mattress with his good hand and listened.

A cart rattled past outside. Somewhere below, the innkeeper was arguing with a supplier over the weight of a sack.

No water. No scraping.

He eased himself upright.

His sword lay beside the bed, where he had left it within reach. In the morning light, he could see a small nick near the middle of the blade. He ran his thumb beside it, remembering the shock of striking the creature’s plates.

He had not noticed the damage last night.

On the table, his share of the reward lay beneath the copper badge.

He looked at the coins for a while, then reached for his shirt.

Getting his injured arm into the sleeve took three attempts.

He was still struggling with the other sleeve when someone knocked.

“Come in.”

Liya opened the door, stopped, and studied him.

“Should I come back when you’ve won?”

“The sleeve is twisted.”

“I can see that.”

She set a small bundle on the table and helped pull the fabric clear of his elbow. When she reached across him, he noticed the swelling around two of her fingers.

He caught her wrist gently.

“Your hand.”

She drew it back.

“It bends.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

He looked at the bundle. Fresh cloth, bought before he had even left his room.

“We’re seeing a healer.”

“I was going to change your bandage.”

“After someone looks at your fingers.”

She opened her mouth, then glanced at the shirt still caught around his shoulder.

“Finish getting dressed first.”

The innkeeper directed them to a narrow street behind the potters’ market.

“Blue door, beside the woman who sells lamp oil. Go before noon. After that, you’ll be waiting with every apprentice who’s dropped a tool on himself.”

The healer’s door stood open.

Inside, shelves held jars, folded linen, and shallow wooden boxes marked in a careful hand. A man with a cloth pressed to his cheek sat near the window. Beside him, a little girl swung her legs beneath a bench while her father held one of her shoes.

Rigar and Liya took the remaining seats.

She rested her injured hand in her lap. He watched her try to loosen the knot of her coin pouch with the other.

“Give it here.”

“I can manage.”

He waited.

After a moment, she handed it over.

He loosened the knot and returned the pouch without looking inside.

The healer called them together.

She was a broad-faced woman with graying hair pinned firmly above her neck. She listened while Liya explained what had happened, then asked Rigar to remove his shirt.

He glanced at Liya.

She folded her arms.

“This round is yours.”

The healer waited until his arm was bare, then began unwinding the bandage.

The cloth clung to the wound.

Rigar fixed his eyes on a crack in the opposite wall.

“When did you first injure this?”

“Several days ago.”

“And yesterday you lifted timber, fought something, and opened it again.”

He said nothing.

She glanced at the dried blood on the last layer of cloth.

“That was a statement.”

Liya lowered her eyes.

The healer cleaned the wound, examined its edges, and pressed carefully around it. Rigar’s fingers tightened against his knee.

“You were fortunate. It needs time to close properly.”

“How much time?”

“I’ll look at it again in three days. Until then, no fighting, no lifting, and no testing whether it has improved by doing either.”

“I can use my right hand.”

“You can. Your left shoulder and arm will still move when you stumble, brace yourself, or forget which hand you meant to use.”

He remembered the creature’s jaws closing around his sword.

The healer applied a dressing and wrapped the forearm.

Then she turned to Liya.

“Your turn.”

Liya offered her hand.

The woman examined each finger, asking her to bend and straighten them. When she pressed near the knuckle, Liya drew a sharp breath.

“No obvious break,” the healer said. “But you’ve bruised it badly. Spare it heavy work.”

Liya nodded.

Rigar watched her with some satisfaction until she noticed.

“Don’t,” she said.

The healer looked between them.

“If you’re both finished supervising each other, I’ll tell you what the treatment costs.”

The sum took a noticeable share of the reward.

Rigar counted out the coins. Liya placed her own payment beside his before he could reach for more.

Outside, he stood with the lighter pouch in his hand.

They still had enough for their rooms and food. Enough to rest for a few days, if they were careful.

He had gone to sleep thinking the reward had put them ahead.

Now he understood how quickly an injury could consume it.

Liya adjusted the strap on her shoulder.

“We can still eat.”

“I know.”

“And sleep indoors.”

“I know.”

She looked toward the potters’ stalls.

“Then stop looking at the pouch as though it bit you.”

He tied it shut.

The canal administration kept a small infirmary beside its eastern storehouse. A guard at the gate directed them across a yard stacked with replacement beams and sections of iron grating.

Rigar slowed beside one of the stacks.

The bars were thicker than he remembered.

He could still see the lantern moving across the damaged opening beneath the canal.

Liya touched his good elbow.

The attendant was waiting by the infirmary door.

Harn lay on a narrow bed near the window, his injured leg raised on folded blankets. His eyes brightened when he recognized them, and he started to sit up.

“Don’t,” Liya said.

He stopped halfway and settled back.

“You sound like the woman who changed my dressing.”

“She probably has good reasons.”

On the next bed, a red-haired man watched them.

One side of his face was swollen. A bandage wrapped his head above the ear, and both shins were covered.

Samer.

Rigar had pictured him lying unconscious beside the orchard channel. Seeing him awake brought an unexpected easing in his chest.

Harn held out his hand.

Rigar took it.

For a moment, the worker only gripped him.

Then he said, “I heard you leave.”

Rigar glanced at Liya.

“When she went for the farmer?”

Harn nodded.

“I couldn’t tell how many of you there were. I heard footsteps going up, and then it was quiet.”

“I stayed by the door.”

“I know. You spoke again.”

His grip tightened briefly before he let go.

Liya set a small packet of fruit on the table between the beds.

“The innkeeper said these were good.”

Harn looked at it.

“You didn’t need to bring anything.”

“She insisted,” Rigar said.

Liya gave him a look.

“The innkeeper,” he added.

Samer shifted on his bed.

“I should have reached the road.”

Neither of them answered immediately.

He stared at the bandages around his legs.

“It wasn’t far.”

Harn turned his head toward him.

“You’d already been hit.”

“I could still walk.”

“And then you couldn’t.”

The exchange had the weary rhythm of an argument they had already had several times.

Rigar pulled a stool closer.

“What happened after you barred the door?”

Samer rubbed his thumb against the edge of his blanket.

“I ran along the bank. There’s a cart shed beyond the orchard. I thought there would be rope there, and someone to help carry him.”

“Did you see anything in the water?”

“A movement.”

He stopped.

The yard outside rang with the sound of someone unloading timber.

Samer waited for it to fade.

“I looked back toward the gate. When I turned again, the water beside me had risen. Something struck my legs.”

“The same creature?” Liya asked.

“I don’t know.”

He answered too quickly, then took a breath.

“I didn’t see a head. Or a body. I fell against the stone edge. After that…” He touched the bandage above his ear. “I remember someone asking my name.”

Rigar leaned forward, then made himself sit back.

The man had told him what he knew.

Harn reached for the cup beside his bed. Liya moved it closer.

“We were only supposed to clear the intake,” he said. “Branches, mud. Whatever had slowed the flow.”

“How did the creature get into your passage?” Rigar asked.

“Through the lower opening. Samer saw it first. We got back through the iron gate, but it hit the frame before I could secure the bolt.”

His gaze dropped to his raised leg.

“The old support came down. Samer helped me close the gate, but he couldn’t lift the timber off me.”

“So you sent him outside,” Liya said.

Harn nodded.

“I told him to bar the outer door in case the iron one failed.”

Rigar looked at the red-haired man.

Samer was watching him now.

“The lower grating,” Rigar said. “Was it damaged before yesterday?”

Samer frowned.

“Some of it.”

“How long?”

“Three weeks, perhaps. I reported it when we cleared the silt.”

Rigar felt Liya turn toward him.

“What kind of damage?” she asked.

“Two bars bowed inward. The mortar was cracked around one end.”

“Could an animal have passed through?”

“Not through the gap I saw.”

Samer held his hands apart, considered the distance, and narrowed it.

“A rat, certainly. Nothing like the thing that came at us.”

“What did the overseer say?”

“That a mason would inspect it. I put a mark beside the opening and entered it in the maintenance book.”

Harn looked across at him.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You were on the western sluice that week.”

Rigar studied the space between Samer’s hands.

Three weeks.

He had imagined a single violent moment beneath the canal: something forcing the bars apart and passing through.

Now he wondered whether it had returned to the same opening again and again.

Liya spoke before he could ask another question.

“Have you told the guards?”

“This morning,” Samer said. “They took the book.”

Rigar let out a slow breath.

There was nothing useful he could add to that.

They stayed until the attendant brought the workers’ midday meal. As they rose, Harn asked for their names again.

“For my wife,” he said. “She’ll want to know who to thank.”

Liya smiled.

“Tell her you helped. You kept moving when we pulled you.”

Harn glanced at his leg.

“Not very quickly.”

“Quickly enough.”

At the door, Samer called them back.

He was looking at Rigar’s bandage.

“I’m glad someone else came along.”

Rigar nodded, uncertain what to say.

Outside, he kept thinking about the distance between the blue bag and the road.

They ate at a stall near the storehouse, where an old man served lentils from a pot broad enough to wash a child in.

Liya carried the bowls one at a time. Rigar moved them farther onto the table so neither would be knocked by passing customers.

For a while, they ate without speaking.

Then he said, “I tried to break the stone above the crossbar.”

She looked up.

“You stopped me.”

“I remember.”

“If the rest had fallen—”

“It didn’t.”

“Because you looked.”

Liya lowered her spoon.

He had meant it as thanks. From her expression, she understood that, but there was something else she wanted to say.

“What?” he asked.

“When you called my name inside…”

He waited.

“I nearly used too much.”

“The water?”

She nodded.

“I could see its mouth on your sword. I wanted to throw everything at it.”

He remembered the first surge, the creature wrenching its head aside.

“You hit its eye.”

“I was aiming for its face. I wasn’t that precise.”

He looked into his bowl.

Yesterday, she had seemed certain. Her hand had risen, the water had moved, and the creature had released his blade.

He had not thought about what it had cost her to choose how much.

“The second time was weaker,” she said. “I thought I’d left too little.”

“It was enough.”

“This time.”

He raised his eyes.

She was not asking him to reassure her.

After a moment, he nodded.

“We should learn how to do it again.”

“With something that doesn’t have teeth.”

He smiled.

“That would help.”

At the Hall, the clerk recognized them before they reached her desk.

“The statements arrived.”

She opened a ledger and checked the numbers on their badges against two entries.

“The rescue has been added to both your records. The gathering request is marked complete.”

Rigar watched her turn the page.

It was strange how little space the event occupied.

A few lines for the door, the trapped man, the creature. Room left beneath them for whatever came next.

He touched the edge of the counter.

“What do I need to do before I can apply for Iron rank?”

The clerk looked at his bandage.

“Heal.”

“I mean after that.”

“I know.”

She rested her quill across the ledger.

“You’ll need more than one completed request, even with this report. An examiner will consider whether you can take on the work consistently.”

“How many requests?”

“There isn’t a number that guarantees promotion. Your file needs to show what you can handle.”

He glanced toward the board.

More gathering. More deliveries. Jobs that would pay for food and a bed while the higher notices remained beyond his reach.

The clerk followed his gaze.

“If you want to know what you’re missing, speak to Bren in the practice yard. He supervises the preliminary assessments.”

“Can I take one now?”

“No.”

Her eyes moved to his arm again.

“But you can watch.”

Liya leaned forward.

“Does he work with magic users?”

“With anyone who expects to work in a party.”

The clerk pointed toward a passage at the rear of the Hall.

“Through there. Ask before touching the equipment.”

The practice yard was longer than Rigar expected, enclosed by high stone walls that kept most of the street noise outside.

Weapon racks stood beneath an awning. Straw targets lined one end, while white chalk marked several rectangles on the packed earth.

In the nearest one, a broad young man held a wooden sword and a round shield.

Opposite him stood an older man in a plain vest, carrying a shorter practice blade.

The younger man advanced.

His first strike came hard enough for Rigar to hear the air move. The older man turned it aside and gave ground.

Another strike followed.

Then a third.

The young man pressed forward, shield raised, driving his opponent toward the edge of the rectangle.

Rigar shifted his weight without realizing it.

The opening was there, beside the older man’s shoulder. A committed thrust might force him out.

The young man saw it too.

He lunged.

The older man stepped across the line of the attack and struck the inside edge of the shield. The shield turned. The attacker tried to follow, but his feet were too close together.

A short push sent him onto one knee.

The wooden blade stopped against his neck.

“Again,” the older man said.

The young man got up, breathing hard.

“I nearly had you.”

“You nearly reached the wall.”

A few people beneath the awning laughed. The older man looked at them, and the laughter stopped.

He returned to his position.

This time, Rigar watched their feet.

The younger man began more cautiously. Two exchanges passed without either gaining ground.

Then the older man let his sword drift outward.

The same opening.

Rigar saw the younger man’s heel lift.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

Liya glanced at him.

The lunge came.

A moment later, the young man was outside the chalk rectangle, staring at the place where his opponent had been.

The older man lowered his weapon.

“What changed?”

The young man scowled.

“You moved sooner.”

“And you told me where you were going.”

He pointed his blade toward the man’s rear foot.

Rigar looked down at his own.

Aris had struck that ankle more times than he cared to remember.

He could almost hear her telling him to stop reaching with his shoulders before his feet were ready.

He had thought he understood.

Beneath the awning, someone called the older man’s name.

Bren turned, and Rigar approached.

“The clerk sent us.”

Bren looked at their badges, then their hands.

“Sent you for what?”

“To ask about an assessment.”

“When?”

“When my arm has healed.”

Bren nodded.

“That’s a better answer than I usually get.”

He placed the wooden sword on a rack.

“Who taught you?”

“A woman named Aris.”

“How long?”

Rigar told him.

Bren listened without interrupting, then asked, “Do you use anything besides the sword?”

“Fire magic.”

“And you?” he asked Liya.

“Water.”

“Can you both come back tomorrow?”

Rigar glanced at his arm.

“To watch?”

“To watch. You can learn something while that heals.”

Bren looked toward the yard, where the young man had begun practicing his stance alone.

“Stand under the awning. Keep clear of the marked ground, and listen when I stop an exercise.”

Liya adjusted her grip on her staff.

“Should I bring this?”

“Yes.”

She looked at her swollen fingers.

He noticed.

“You’ll be watching too. When you’re ready, I’ll need to see how you work together.”

Rigar turned toward the chalk rectangle once more.

The young man had widened his stance. It looked less impressive than his earlier advance, slower and more deliberate.

Bren watched him make a careful step.

“Better,” he said.

On their way out, Rigar paused at the edge of the yard.

Yesterday, he had stared at the Silver notice and wondered how long it would take to reach it.

Now he watched a heel settle firmly into the dirt.

“We’ll be here,” he said.