Chương 81: Chapter 79: Foundations.

It was surprisingly hard to meet the village chief. Far harder than I had imagined. This entire village was built and maintained off the back of Veyne support. By all rights, this place was as much a part of my holdings as Veyne Manor was. Yet, despite that, the Village Chief did everything not to meet me.

"Still no?" I asked Damian. He'd regained some of his color from yesterday. Perhaps that bit of sleep had done him some good after all. He had come hours later, almost overeager for me to give him a task, any task at all. As it happened, I did have something in mind.

"They say she's busy again. They said the same thing when I checked half an hour earlier too." And when he had checked an hour ago, and the half hour before that.

"What excuse was it this time?" I asked.

"She's checking supplies." Damian said.

"Ah." How deliciously vague. Damian did not say anything for a few seconds. I looked away from my inspection of the floor and up at him.

"What is it?"

"You seem…closer." Damian pointed.

"Oh?" He was pointing at Sere, who was currently resting her head on my thigh as she absently doodled. Every now and then, I would reach out and stroke her hair. She had been doodling an outline of the village for a while now. She had been clinging to me more than usual since last night. It was hard to blame her. Violet had been clingy too, though in the odd way where she tried hard not to make it obvious. She was out stretching her legs. I merely hoped she didn't break anything in her stretching.

"It's nothing." Damian said finally.

"Do you want me to go ask again?"

"No. No matter how many times you ask, I doubt it will change. She wants me to come there herself. A little presumptuous, but it has forced my hand." Damian nodded, moved to stand next to the door.

"Whenever you're ready then."

"You're coming with me?" He nodded hurriedly, almost with too much force. Then, in a quieter voice, one that just carried in the silence: "I can do that much at least." There was nothing to say to that. Sere reached out and poked my cheek, making me look at her. She drew my gaze then to her notepad, towards an empty page. Going? Can come?

"Sure." I smiled down at her.

"With your Gift. You're not tired of using it, are you?" She shook her head, sat up straight. It was time to remind this Chief that I was far too used to these kinds of petty games.

"She isn't here."

"The Chief left some time ago."

"You should wait for her at the inn." That, and more, were the excuses many of the villagers gave me when I tried to ask. She wasn't in her own home -a large house that faced the main gate leading into the settlement. From what I could see, no Magical Implements glowed. I was forced to accept that she really wasn't there. That meant the only thing to do was to ask the other villagers. All of them shied away from me, and so I'd had to (almost literally) corner them and demand answers.

The answers did not lead me anywhere I hadn't already been.

"She is avoiding you," Damian observed.

"Yes, I believe that much is clear," I said.

"I had thought she merely meant to test my patience. It's the kind of petty things nobles always do. Instead it seems she truly just means to avoid me." There was one person I could ask, of course: Count Vance. Except, I had just built quite the impression on the man. How could I go to him not one day later because I couldn't even find one woman? Hence, I was left at a very frustrating impasse.

"What now?" Damian asked, looking around. We currently stood in the center of the village, a place from where we could overlook most of the small settlements at once. I did not even know what this 'Village Chief' looked like. The last one had died relatively recently, and my family ledger had no pictures of the new one.

"I do not wish to go back to the inn." I said, paused.

"Actually, can you try to find Violet?" From what I had heard last night, one of the things many expeditioners like to do is gamble with the locals. It was a small fear, but it didn't hurt to check up on her. Damian hesitated.

"You think she's up to trouble?"

"Of course she is," I said.

"Check the tavern." It wasn't much of a tavern from what I'd seen from the outside -more of a repurposed shack. The joyful, drunken yelling from the outside had been more than enough to convince me otherwise.

"But you-" He paused.

"It's still not safe. You never know who might be watching." A silly fear, given everything I had told him.

"I have Sere with me." He took a deep breath, and finally nodded. I left him there as I walked away. In truth, a part of me had wanted to be away from him, as I had no doubt some part of him wanted to be away from me. A small chasm had opened up between us, one I did not know how to cross. Not without falling inside. I did not name the emotion that rose in my chest. I simply walked.

"Sere, are you here? Just touch me if-" The lightest of touches on my shoulder. It was gone as quickly as it came. It was too little a drop of her Edict to risk discovery.

"Okay. Good. Just keep watch. If you see anything, tell me, okay?" I whispered, loud enough that I was sure she would hear. The expeditioners had seemed like a strange lot to me back in Aelheim. They were a hardened folk in a city that had tried so very desperately to forget about what lurked outside the walls. I had thought them hard men and women. The villagers here were hard too. Not in the same way, but similar enough. Just about every face I saw was weathered in some way.

The people here didn't have quite as many scars, but perhaps they simply wore them on the inside.

"Raise it higher men!"

"Damn it, a little more to the side! Are you blind or stupid!" The sound pulled me towards itself. To a corner of the village, right next to the village's walls. There was a small crowd of Villagers and Expeditioners there. They gathered around a section of the metal barrier where the blue mana channels had gone dark. The wall was cracked. It wasn't a massive hole in the defenses, but it was certainly a gap.

There was space between two interlocking metal panels, space wide enough I might have been able to force my entire arm through. There was no blue mana running between those sections at all. Men and women hauled wooden braces into position, propping them against the inside of the wall. Others packed earth against the base with shovels and bare hands. It didn't take a genius to figure out they meant to force the two panels together.

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"Higher! Brace the top first." A woman's voice, "So help me God if you mess this up again Darrel!" She stood at the center of the working men with her arms folded. The woman had a rather exasperated look on her face, as if she was wondering if perhaps she should do the work herself. She was older than me by decades. Her hair was dark and cut short, streaked with grey at the temples. I was sure she was older than even my father was. Older than most of the expeditioners, even more than the villagers.

The woman wore what everyone here did. A heavy silver coat. I watched from a few paces back. No one acknowledged me. That was new. It was certainly an improvement from the way people had been running away from me before. No, that wasn't quite right. They had noticed me. I saw it in the way a man carrying timber shifted his path to avoid coming within arm's reach. In the way two women near the base glanced at me, then at each other, then very deliberately turned back to their work.

Most of all, it was in the way the closest whispered conversation had simply stopped at my arrival. Word of the body had spread, then. Of course it would, in a village this small and self-contained. It was an odd feeling. A kind of presence I did not have in Aelheim. This had not been the kind of reputation I'd wanted to invoke. I cut through the crowd, closer to the working men now. The woman giving orders spared me one glance. An assessing look. She turned back to her people without a word. I let it go.

For now, I was more interested in the wall. The work was going by fast, from what I could tell. These people knew what they were doing. The woman might have been yelling at them, but now that I really looked, she wasn't really complaining about the work being done. She spent more of her complaining on the work having been necessary at all. That is what bothered me.

"How often does this happen?" I asked. No one answered. The nearest man, broad and bearded, adjusted his grip on a support beam and didn't turn.

"I asked a question." Still nothing. Neither from the crowd I had cut through, nor the working men in front of me. I considered projecting mana. It would get their attention, certainly. Instead, I waited. The older woman finally answered. She didn't look at me as she did.

"Every few months. Sometimes more."

"Is it always this section?"

"This one and two others on the east side." I stepped closer to the base of the wall. Someone jostled past me -a fat man carrying a timber brace. He knocked my shoulder hard enough to make me stumble half a step. The thing he had been carrying must have kept me from seeing him. Before I could even register irritation, there was a dull thud. The man staggered sideways, almost fell over entirely. He caught himself on the timber, barely, and looked around. There was no one there, of course. How clever.

Sere had kicked out the snow from in front of him. Made him take an uneven step. That way, she could stay perfectly hidden. Her Edict would not break. The girl learned frighteningly quickly. I didn't react and didn't smile. I simply crouched down by the base of the wall as though nothing had happened. The man looked from the empty space behind him to me, and then moved on as if nothing had happened. He had already rationalized it. Perhaps I should have a talk with Sere about restraint. After I praised her.

I pressed my hand flat against the ground near the foundation. The soil was cold, as expected. It was also wet. Taking a deep breath and channeling mana, I dug slightly beneath the snow, until I found mud that was far wetter. I leaned closer. There was a line where the foundation met the ground. One that came from the tiniest of shifting. One that happened over time, impossible to notice unless you dug. It took me a few seconds to think about this.

To draw on things I had read, and had never gotten the chance to use. Never thought I would, since I had woken up in this place. I stood, wiping my hands on my coat.

"You're fixing the wrong thing," I said. I did project mana. Not much of it, but enough that nobody could claim not to hear me. Now they looked at me. Every face in the small crowd turned. Some of the fear was still there. Annoyance was right alongside it. Annoyance that a fourteen year old girl who hadn't even lived here, was butting into their business. The old woman turned fully. Her expression was flat.

"Is that so." It wasn't a question. I answered it anyway.

"The wall isn't cracking because the metal is weak. It's cracking because the ground is moving." There was silence.

"You have moisture pooling beneath the foundation," I continued.

"The temperature here must change sometimes. A little. Enough to make the water freeze and thaw. It pushes the wall a little, sets it back." I shrugged.

"Never happens evenly though. Give enough time and this happens…." I pointed at the wall.

"Doesn't matter how you brace it from up there, it won't change a thing." The woman stared at me. I couldn't read her expression. That alone was notable. Most people, I had found, were easy.

"And you know this how, exactly?" she asked. Her voice was careful. Not hostile, but only just.

"I read," I said.

"Quite a lot, actually." Not reading in this world, but she didn't need to know that.

"You read." She repeated the words.

"You read about foundations and frozen ground. In Aelheim. The place that has never seen a winter."

"Among other things."

"Other things." She echoed again. If she was wanting a reaction, I did not give her one. Why…patient? Defy. That did make me pause. You should know the answer more than anyone, Vaelin. You are in my head, after all. The crowd shifted. A few of the men exchanged glances. The woman watched me. I had been through enough of these now to read her expression plainly: she was deciding. Evaluating.

"If you dig out the soil beneath the affected sections and replace it with something that drains...." I trailed off.

"The wall will stay where you put it." That was about as much as I knew about this kind of thing. It wasn't like this was the only thing I'd ever read. It was a pleasant surprise I even remembered this much.

"And if we dig beneath the base," she said, "the whole section comes down on top of whoever's under it."

"Not if you have someone hold it while you work."

"Hold up a twelve foot metal wall." She said dryly. Ah. Right. Nobody here had Gifts that were particularly strong, or they wouldn't be here in the first place.

"I know someone who can manage it." Damian's Gift would serve well here. Perhaps even better than my mana would have. It would give him something to do. An unexpected benefit, but I would certainly accept. Best not to leave the task to an expeditioner with a similar Gift then.

"He held a stone pillar twice that size during a battle two days ago. A wall that isn't trying to kill him should be easier." The few of the expeditioners in the crowd nodded. They had seen that much too. The woman looked at me for a long time. I had washed my hands as best I could. There was no blood there. At least, I hoped there wasn't.

"We have some slag from the mine. It drains well enough." She said finally. I didn't know the first thing about mining, but I assumed she was right.

"Then you have what you need," I said. There was another silence, and this one was longer.

"Kael," the woman said, without looking away from me.

"Check how much slag we still have in the north stores." A man broke from the crowd and moved without question. I watched him go. Watched the way the remaining villagers deferred to her. In subtle ways, in acknowledging looks and respectful nods. I had suspected as much, of course. Before, I had simply thought she was a woman of middling authority in this place. Now I was sure. This was the village chief. You're a rather tricky woman to find.

"The section on the east side," I said.

"Does it have the same problem at the base?"

"Worse," the Chief said.

"Lost a whole panel there two months ago. Shallows nearly got through and we lost two people patching it." Two people. Something inside me stirred. I stamped it down. Now wasn't the time.

"Then we should look at it."

"We?" Her brows rose a fraction.

"I have good eyes, and I read too much." I said, "Might as well have the chance to use both."

"You've been here less than two days." She said it like that settled anything.

"I have. And yet here I am, while the people who've been here longer haven't fixed this." I shrugged.

"They might never have." A dangerous thing to say. I said it anyway. In truth, I knew I was pushing it. I hadn't pointed out anything particularly brilliant. It was just that the people here weren't very educated. Neither did they have the chance to learn from experience. They would be dead before they could. Something dark flashed across the woman's face. I held her gaze and did not flinch from it. The woman turned back to her wall.

She picked up a shovel someone had left leaning in the snow and drove it into the earth at the base. I stepped forward. Not beside her -in front of her. Close enough that the woman had to stop and look up. The fear I had seen in the other villagers flickered behind her eyes, just for a moment, before she buried it. Good. She could bury it. I respected that.

"I've offered my help." I spoke quietly. There was no need for anyone else to hear this.

"I have been trying to meet with you all day." Her jaw tightened. She knew that I knew.

"This, at least," I said, looking past her at the cracked wall, at the braces that would fail again in a few months had I never come.

"Should earn me the audience I've asked for." There was more silence. I did not think she would answer at all at first.

"Tonight," the woman said.

"After sundown." She drove the shovel back into the earth.

"Don't be late." She turned away and I allowed it. I walked back the way I had come, and felt the lightest brush of fingers against the back of my hand. There, and then gone. I moved to a small pathway between two of the huts, enough that nobody would be able to see me without me seeing them in turn.

"You can come out." Only then did Sere shimmer back into view beside me. She already had her notepad out. I glanced down at it. Knew.

"You knew she was the Chief?" Sere nodded, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

"Before I did?" Another nod. Even more smug. Who knew if she was right. Did it matter? She simply looked too cute for me to argue.

"And you didn't think to tell me?" She shrugged. Flipped to a fresh page, wrote two more words, and held the notepad up with both hands. More fun. I stared at her. Then I laughed. Actually laughed, for what felt like the first time in days.

"You," I said, "are terrible." She beamed.