Book Two Chapter 10: The Letter

Book Two Chapter 10

The Letter

Roen had noticed the letter the morning after the cook-off, the Ashenmoor seal pressed into grey wax, slipped between two pages where Sera kept the things she wasn’t ready for. He said nothing, giving her space and waiting for her to give the news. Roen had learned which silences were yours to break and which were hers to keep. Sera knew near enough what it said, and that was the exact reason she was avoiding reading it, as if seeing the words on paper was going to make it real. She was choosing the hour to open it, and Roen had long since decided the best thing he could do about that was leave it alone and keep her tea hot.

She opened it on the third morning, when the inn was quiet, and the breakfast things were cleared, and there was no one in the common room but the two of them and Nyx asleep on the windowsill.

He watched her go line by line, reading her by the small things, the hands, the jaw, the breath she took before she let herself feel something. She read it once quickly and once slowly. Her hands stayed flat on the table the whole time, which was worse than fidgeting.

“It’s from his physician,” she said. “He’d never let anyone write to me about it, so someone did it behind his back.” She folded the letter along its old creases. “He’s near the end, the physician thinks weeks. He’s careful to mention exact numbers.” A pause. “He’s telling me to come now, while there’s still a man here to come to.”

She smoothed the folded paper under her hand, once and then again, as if fixing the creases was the only thing she could control. Outside, a cart rattled over the frost and someone called a greeting, but the ordinary sounds appeared far away.

Roen came round and sat across from her.

“We knew it was coming,” she said, without the note of asking him to comfort her. She was stating the books as they were, the way she steadied herself with anything. “Months, he said. I’ve had the months. I knew the letter would come.” Her mouth did something close to fighting an old dryness. “I thought knowing would make it lighter…Well, It doesn’t. It just means you’ve carried it longer and it cuts deeper.”

“No,” Roen agreed. “It doesn’t make it lighter.”

He knew exactly how true that was, having seen a hundred griefs coming before they arrived, and not one had come lighter for it. He didn’t say so. It wasn’t the morning for the long view. It was the morning for her father.

“I’m going,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Now…today, if I can settle the post, maybe tomorrow at the latest.” She was already moving as she said it, the grief turning itself into tasks, because tasks could be done and grief might only be carried. “The trade board can hold a week if Brenner watches it and you keep the merchants from doing anything clever while I’m gone. Use Hilde’s gossip network; she can get you all the information you need. There’s a ledger page I’ll leave you, the deposits from the cook-off. Don’t let the smith’s wife talk you down on the spice order, she’ll try.” She stopped and looked at him. “I’m doing it again.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Tell me to stop.”

“No,” Roen said. “If counting the deposits or giving me orders is what gets you out the door and onto the road to your father, do it, but have no fear, I’ll keep the smith’s wife honest. Go and be with him.”

Something in her face moved at that, shifted rather than broke, and she put her hand out across the table at last, and he took it. Her fingers were cold. He held them until they weren’t, and neither of them said anything more, because there was nothing more that words were going to do for it, and they both knew each other well enough by now to know when to stop reaching for them.

• • •

Milo figured it out by overhearing bits and pieces and quickly putting them together.

He came down for the second breakfast he always pretended not to have, and stopped in the doorway to the common room with a piece of bread halfway to his mouth. He looked at the two of them at the table, saw the folded letter and Sera’s face, and set the bread down.

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“Who died?” he said. Then, hearing himself, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be harsh. What happened? Is it bad?”

“No one yet,” Sera said. “But my father…He’s very ill. I’m going to him.”

Milo listened to her words. He had buried his mother, who had buried his father before he was old enough to remember, so he understood exactly how big what she’d just said was. He always understood the weight of things.

“I’ll come,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, and it wasn’t quite an offer. It came out of him fast, before he’d decided to say it, and Roen watched the boy’s own face catch up to his own certainty.

“It’s a long road and a sad house at the end of it,” Sera said. “You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t have to.” Milo frowned at something he didn’t have words for. “But I want to. I…,” he stopped. “I don’t know how to say it. I feel like I’m supposed to…,” he gave up. “Ah…It’s stupid. Forget it. I just want to help. You shouldn’t drive that far alone, that’s all.”