Chapter 4: The Documents Are Worth More Than I Am

The morning Osric Vane brought her to meet the settlement's governor, Mara counted seven ways the introduction could go wrong before they had crossed the distribution square.

She had been cataloguing the man for four days — not deliberately, the way she catalogued documents, but in the incidental way of someone who notices patterns and cannot help naming them. Osric moved through the settlement's geography the way water moved through cracked stone: not forcing anything, simply finding the lowest available path and filling it so thoroughly that redirecting him would have required rebuilding the terrain. He had brought her food without being asked. He had given her a corner of his converted storeroom with a blanket and a door that latched. He had introduced her to no one. These three facts, taken together, said something she had not yet assembled into words.

She was assembling it now, walking half a step behind him across ground that had been swept clear of ash but still crunched underfoot with things she didn't look at, while Osric narrated the settlement's recent history in the comfortable tone of a man describing a house he owned.