Chapter 5: Ninety-Four

I didn't answer her.

On the Line you don't swing at a trail you haven't read yet.

"Okay," I said.

Meriel blinked. She'd had the next line ready, and I hadn't given her the cue.

"Okay?"

"Go get your breakfast."

Lorcan opened his mouth. I picked the pry bar back up and turned to the roof.

[She'll cry the second we drive off.]

The truck left.

I didn't cry.

I pulled off forty more shingles, then went inside and sat down hard.

Gwenna sat across from me.

"Every week," she said. "I watched you write them. You used to make me read the dirty parts for spelling."

"You never once fixed the spelling."

"I was too busy blushing." She drummed her fingers. "The Line logs every piece of mail that leaves the station. Who carried it out. Who signed."

"The register."

"The register." She pulled out her phone. "The mail clerk owes me for a thing involving his truck and a ditch. Don't ask."

"I wasn't going to."

"Give me three days."

That night the second crossing came in.

No flare this time. The patrol never saw it.

I woke at four to the dogs of Highwater barking across the water, and I went down to the ford with a lantern.

A young couple were coming over the stones with an old man between them.

The man was thin as a rake and had a canvas tool roll strapped to his back.

He stopped on my bank and looked up at the inn.

He looked at the roof for a long time.

"Your rafters are sound," he said. "Your purlins are rotten. Who cut those shingles?"

"Highwater did."

"Hm." He sniffed. "Not bad. Not good."

By breakfast the old carpenter was on my roof.

By noon he had Emrys up there with him.

I didn't ask Emrys to come back.

He just showed up at nine with a ladder and a cooler.

"Your carpenter needs a second pair of hands," he said, as if they'd met before.

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