Chapter 10: Inspection

"His signature's coming," I said.

The commander looked at me over his clipboard.

"Is it."

"It's coming. Inspect the place."

He held my eyes a second longer. Then he sighed through his nose and turned toward the inn.

He was thorough.

I'd have been disappointed if he wasn't.

I'd served under him for three years.

He climbed into the attic with a flashlight and tapped every new rafter.

He ran water in the kitchen and checked how fast it drained.

He checked the beds and the blankets and the fire buckets.

The girl followed him everywhere with her clipboard, writing down whatever he said.

"Stairs," he muttered.

"Stairs," she wrote, and underlined it twice.

He stopped at the railing the carpenter had built and leaned his whole weight on it. It didn't creak.

"Who did this?"

The carpenter looked up from the bottom step. "I did."

"Where did you learn?"

"Over the Line. Forty years." The old man shrugged. "We have stairs there too."

The commander grunted and wrote something down.

In the kitchen the widow was taking her bread out.

She cut the heel off a loaf, still steaming, buttered it, and held it out to him without a word.

He looked at it. He looked at her.

He took it.

He ate it standing by the stove, with his clipboard under his arm. Then he held out his hand, and she gave him another.

Gwenna caught my eye across the kitchen and mouthed, "Marry her."

At the end he stood in the yard and flipped back through his pages.

"Roof passes. Kitchen passes. Water passes. Fire safety passes." He looked up. "This is better than my eastern station."

"I know," I said. "I've seen your eastern station."

The corner of his mouth moved.

Then he went serious.

"None of it matters without Ravensworth's name. The Accord's clear. A sound roof, a keeper, and the landholder's signature, filed before first snow."

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