Chapter 5: Wool and Grain

I folded the River Lord's message in my head and put it away with the rest of his debts.

"Then we don't pass his chain," I said.

The fisherman looked at me as if I'd told him to fly.

"Grain comes up the river, my lady," Gwenn said. "There isn't any other way."

"Wool comes down it," I said.

Every spring and autumn, the hill farmers sent their wool down the Aven on the river guild's boats.

It went past Penhal and through the River Lord's chain to the market at Kerys.

I'd copied the tolls into the book for ten years.

The River Lord took a fifth of every bale.

Two days later I stood in the river guild's hall at Aven Ford, in a long room that smelled of tar and wet rope.

Twenty boat masters sat on benches along the walls, and every one of them had stopped talking when I walked in.

A man in the River Lord's green sat in the corner with a cup, watching.

At the head of the room, a broad woman with a long gray braid sat with her boots on the table.

"Katell Jaouen," she said. "I run the guild. And you're the king's daughter who said no at supper."

"I am."

"You've come to ask me for grain on credit, which I don't give," she said.

"Past a chain I don't own," she said. "For a lady with no coin."

"I've come to sell you a road," I said.

That got her boots off the table.

"Your boats carry the hill wool past Penhal every autumn," I said. "Then the River Lord takes a fifth of it at his chain."

"I know what the River Lord takes," Katell said. "I pay it."

"Land the wool at Penhal instead," I said. "Cart it down the King's Road to Kerys. It never sees his chain."