The Fair

By the morning of the fair, Elias had worked four evenings beyond supper and developed a tenderness along the inside of his thumb that made holding a spoon uncomfortable. The lower ditch was clear, the beans were weeded, and the neighbour’s eldest had agreed to see to the animals that afternoon in exchange for help with a wall. Thomas had inspected the arrangements with the care he usually reserved for buying livestock. Permission, when it came, was given while he was looking at the ditch, and Elias had been sensible enough to accept it without asking whether this meant he might go next year as well.

He was dressed before Anne stirred the fire. She found him cutting bread in the kitchen and stood in the doorway a moment, still tying back her hair.

“Leave enough for your father. There’s another loaf wrapped in the pantry, and you’ll want something round that cheese if you’re carrying it all morning.” She came across to examine what he had packed. “Mara says her aunt can put you both in the loft, but you’re to be there before she closes the house. I won’t have you waking a woman who’s been kind enough to offer you a bed.”

Elias assured her that he remembered. They had discussed the sleeping arrangements twice the previous evening, along with the road, the gate money and the inadvisability of buying anything alive. He folded the cheese into a cloth while Anne found the other loaf. When she returned, she put it down and reached for the scissors on the shelf.

He had expected this. His hair had begun catching beneath his collar, and she had been looking at it for several days with an expression he knew. He sat on the stool she pulled into the light and bent his head while she cut the worst of it away.

At the basin afterwards, he tried to flatten what remained. In the water his face broke apart whenever he touched the rim: dark brown hair, a long nose he had only recently stopped disliking, eyes that appeared grey until he leaned towards the window. There was blue beneath the grey, clearer in daylight, though he rarely had cause to look at them closely. He was more concerned with the patch above his ear that insisted on standing up. His face had lengthened over the winter, losing some of the softness Anne still seemed to expect when she reached to wipe something from it. The rest of him had grown less evenly. His shoulders filled his good shirt, but his wrists extended well beyond its cuffs.

Will arrived while Elias was still at the basin, bringing cool air and the smell of the yard into the kitchen. He had washed, though the effort had left his ginger hair sticking in damp sections where his fingers had passed through it. A loose thread trailed from his waistcoat. He was a little shorter than Elias, lean through the middle, with strong forearms and a face browned by work on roofs. His nose sat slightly crooked from its encounter with his uncle’s ram. Otherwise there was nothing about him that would have drawn a second look in the village, except that he generally appeared to have come through a hedge when a perfectly good opening stood nearby.

Anne cut the thread from his waistcoat before he noticed what she was doing. He thanked her and accepted bread, then waited while Elias fetched his bundle.

Thomas was outside with the dog. He had brought the bucket as far as the step and was letting it rest there while he watched the brightening sky.

“Stay on the road through the lower valley,” he told them. “The upland way won’t save enough to be worth it, and I don’t want another account of how you nearly reached somewhere before it got dark.”

Will took this with the seriousness it deserved. “We’ll go by the mill and join the carts. My uncle says the ground’s still bad above the quarry anyway. We won’t be climbing about up there.”

Thomas looked at both of them, perhaps deciding whether to extend the warning to climbing in general. In the end he lifted his bucket. Anne came out to straighten the fold of Elias’s collar, and they left while she was reminding him where she had put the cheese.

The village was only beginning to wake. A shutter opened above the lane; somewhere behind the houses a child protested being washed. They passed the church with their bundles over their shoulders and enough money between them to pay the gates, contribute something to Mara’s aunt and still make a few decisions worth discussing. Elias could feel his coins through the little purse inside his shirt. He checked them twice before they reached the mill.

---

Once the road began climbing, they could see the old watchtower above the quarry. Part of its western wall had fallen since their last visit. Will pointed out the gap and said he had heard that a shepherd was using the lower chamber for shelter.

Elias remembered the chamber rather well. At twelve they had gone there with stolen candles and a sack of provisions, intending to occupy it until someone came to besiege them. Their preparations had included a flag, three spears made from bean poles and no means of reaching the upper floor except a staircase Thomas had expressly forbidden them to climb. They had been carrying their provisions up when two treads gave way. Will had fallen through as far as his ribs; Elias had caught the back of his coat and braced himself against the wall until Will found somewhere to put a foot.

Getting down had proved harder. By then neither trusted the remaining stairs, and the window was much higher from inside than it had looked from the ground. They had spent the night in the upper room, sharing bread and trying to conserve a candle whose flame made their difficulties seem manageable. Towards dawn, when it went out, Will had moved closer without saying anything. Elias had been glad of it.

Thomas found them after sunrise. He brought a ladder and was so quiet while they descended that Elias would have preferred shouting. It was Anne who explained, later, how far he had searched.

For months afterwards they had called the place their fortress. Neither mentioned the hour before dawn.

“The shepherd’s put a roof over part of it,” Will said. “I’d like to see how he’s fixed it to that wall. There wasn’t much left to take a beam even when we were up there.”

Elias followed his gaze. From the road the tower still looked worth exploring. “We ought to have taken a rope. I’ve thought about that since. All that time carrying those poles about, and neither of us thought we might need to get down.”

Will considered this as they walked. “I thought we’d use the stairs. I hadn’t planned on bringing half of them with me.” He shifted his bundle to the other shoulder. “Your father must have passed beneath that window three times. I remember hearing somebody and thinking it was the shepherd coming to turn us out.”

They went on discussing the ladder and the collapsed floor, each supplying things the other remembered differently. By the time the tower disappeared behind the slope, Elias had begun to feel that, with a little better preparation, the expedition might reasonably be counted a success.

They had made many such expeditions. The culvert beneath the manor road had taken them into the enclosed orchard, where they discovered that the fruit was no nearer ripe than the pears outside Will’s house. A disused lime shed became a dragon’s den until its owner found their candles and made them spend two days scraping wax from his boards. There had been tunnels cut into haystacks, a raft that carried them farther downstream than they intended, and an attempt to see the inside of the manor dovecote that ended with Elias unable to put weight on his ankle. Will had got him home a little at a time, first supporting him, then carrying him on his back for the last stretch. He had stayed to explain it to Anne, though Elias had urged him to leave before she saw them.

Other boys joined them sometimes, but most went home when rain came or an adult threatened to tell their parents. Elias never had to turn round to see whether Will was still there. Once, when children at the mill began repeating an old story about what had been found in the mine, Will had struck a boy considerably bigger than himself. Elias had joined the fight before learning what had been said. They both went home with split lips, and Father Martin spent an evening getting the account out of them while Mistress Bell held a cold cloth against Will’s face.

The road levelled. Ahead, a family had stopped a cart to adjust a load of hurdles. Elias and Will helped lift the rear corner while the carter freed a strap caught beneath the wheel. In return they were offered a ride as far as the next turning, but the cart was crowded with children and they chose to walk beside it instead. One of the little girls asked whether they were going to buy horses. Will explained that they were looking first, which was true enough to satisfy Elias.

By midmorning they had left the cart behind and were eating Anne’s bread on a bank above the valley. The town lay beyond the next ridge. Elias could hear distant bells when the wind turned, and wanted to finish eating before he was properly hungry.

Will had removed a boot to shake out a stone. “My uncle’s worked as far as the southern road. He says there are towns there where you can hear three languages in the same market. If I could get enough paid work together, I’d go down after harvest. A roof’s a roof wherever you are. I could earn as I went.”

Elias had heard versions of this before, but he liked hearing them. He asked how far the southern road went, and Will admitted that he did not know. A carter had told him it reached the sea. They tried to work out how long that might take, using distances they knew and disagreeing over how many days a man could walk before he needed to stop.

“I’d want to go with a company,” Elias said. “You’d see more than the road. Think of being sent somewhere neither of us has even heard of, with horses and everything you need. You’d learn to use a proper sword. By the time you came back, nobody would be telling you to mind the hens.”

He knew the difficulties without needing Will to name them. The men who left villages to serve generally carried spears, and returned, when they returned at all, to the work they had left behind. Knights had fathers who were knights, or fathers with land and money enough to place them in another lord’s household. Elias’s name belonged on Thomas’s holding, beneath the amount owed. He could no more buy his way into such a household than he could buy the mill.

But he had been Sir Elias in the quarry long before he understood any of that, and knowledge had not entirely displaced the image. Given enough distance from home, it still seemed possible that someone might let him try.

Will pulled his boot on. “I’d like to get somewhere before there’s fighting. Stay a while. Have enough money to eat whatever they eat there.” He leaned back on his elbows, looking up the road. “And meet a girl who hasn’t known me since I was small. Someone beautiful. I’d like to have a decent coat when it happened, so she wouldn’t spend the whole time wondering whether I was there to mend something.”

Elias imagined an unfamiliar room, a girl turning towards him, the ease with which he would speak if he were already the man he intended to become. In practice he had recently spent most of a conversation with a wool merchant’s daughter explaining where her father could water his mule. He hoped experience might improve matters.

They stayed on the bank longer than they meant to, discussing where they would live if they could choose. When they finally gathered their things, Elias had decided that a house near the sea would be worth seeing before he dismissed it, though neither could agree on whether the water would be too cold for swimming.

---

The queue at the town gate reached past the ditch. Drovers kept their animals to one side while the rest of the traffic compressed beneath the arch, where two men collected pennies and a third examined loads. Elias watched a woman ahead of them unwrap six cheeses for inspection. She wrapped them again with movements so deliberate that he could tell she was angry, though she thanked the man before moving on.

Inside, he had to stop to let a wagon pass. The street was narrower than he remembered, made narrower still by boards laid across barrels and goods hung from every available hook. There were baskets of wooden spoons, folded lengths of cloth, shoes paired with cords through their eyelets. A man held up a small looking glass and turned it towards a woman until she laughed and pushed his hand away. Elias smelled onions frying somewhere beyond the press of bodies. He and Will had agreed to look round before spending anything, but the agreement became less certain with every yard.

Mara’s aunt lived behind the bakehouse near the east gate. They found Mara helping carry cooling loaves into the shop, her sleeves dusted white. She had travelled the previous day with her uncle and appeared already to know where everything in town belonged. Her aunt let them leave their bundles beneath the loft ladder and repeated the hour she expected them back. They thanked her, promised to remember and stepped out again with nothing to carry.

That alone made Elias feel prosperous.

For an hour they moved wherever something caught their attention. They watched a cooper fit hoops to a little tub and a man lose three bouts of wrestling before winning the fourth. Will bought a replacement buckle after examining enough of them to establish that he was making a considered purchase. Elias found a knife with a narrow blade and a smooth horn handle. He asked the price, handed it back carefully and remained at the stall a little longer so that leaving would appear to be his choice.

They were following the sound of pipes towards the fair meadow when Will caught his arm.

Above the people ahead, a banner hung from a tall staff beside the meadow’s northern entrance. A white heron stood against dark blue, one foot raised. Elias knew the shape before he could see it clearly. He had scratched it into the lid of a box years ago, working from the picture in one of Father Martin’s books, and had never managed to make the bird’s legs look right.

Will moved into a gap beside a cart. “That’s Avel’s. Look at the red border. That’s his banner.”

There were several tents beyond the rope enclosing that part of the meadow, and horses tethered beneath a long awning. Elias looked for a man in armour, although nobody nearby was wearing any. A groom carried an empty bucket between the horses. At the entrance, a boy in a blue coat was arguing with someone delivering hay.

Sir Rowan Avel had held the crossing at Dunmere. Elias knew the account of the broken rear guard, the wagons blocking the causeway, the families driven down from the northern farms. He knew that Avel had stayed until the last of them were across, and that the king had honoured him afterwards. In the story Will’s uncle told, the water reached the horses’ bellies and the knight fought with an arrow through his shoulder. Father Martin’s book made no mention of the arrow. Elias had preferred the uncle’s account.

There had been other battles since. Travellers brought the names; the boys fitted deeds to them when the accounts were insufficient. Between the quarry and the stream, they had fought the defence of Dunmere so often that each knew exactly where the other would stand.

A man selling ribbons told them that Avel was staying two nights on his way south. He had come into town that morning to hear petitions with the bailiff. There would be no display of arms, the man added, apparently having answered the question several times already.

They walked along the enclosure. Through an opening in the awning Elias could see saddles resting on a rail, a breastplate on a stand and the corner of a table covered in dark cloth. He slowed enough that someone behind him asked to get past.

“His sword will be in there if he hasn’t taken it,” he said. “The one from Dunmere. I only want to see what the hilt looks like. There’s a different one in every picture.”

Will had noticed the equipment too. He pointed towards a smaller shelter behind the main pavilion, where a wagon stood with its shafts resting on the ground. “They’re bringing the hay round that side. We could see from behind the wagon without going near the horses.”

They continued as far as the next stall, discussing it while pretending to examine a basket of whetstones. Elias could still leave. The man with the pipes was somewhere across the meadow, and there was a smell of roasting meat strong enough to make him swallow. He thought of returning home having stood within a few yards of the sword and looked at a tent instead.

He put down the stone. Will was already watching the hay cart.

---

Getting behind the wagon was easy. The carters were occupied with a strap, the groom had gone to fetch another bucket, and nobody looked towards the two young men who stepped over a sagging length of rope as though they had business there.

Beyond the wagon, the smaller shelter stood open. It held travelling chests, a rack of weapons and the table Elias had glimpsed from outside. The breastplate rested beside it with its straps hanging loose. There were scratches across the metal, some shallow and bright, others dark where they met a folded edge. He had expected armour to look heavier. This seemed shaped so closely to a body that he could imagine how a man would move inside it.

Will touched his elbow and pointed. A sword lay in its scabbard along the back of the table, partly concealed by a padded coat. The grip was dark leather, the crossguard plain except for a slight curve towards the blade. On the pommel, a small silver heron stood within a worn circle.

They came closer. The stitching on the scabbard had been repaired with thread of a different colour. Elias bent to look at the bird. It was scarcely larger than his thumbnail, finer work than anything he had ever owned.

“We ought to go,” Will said, though he did not move towards the opening. “You’ve seen it now. Somebody will come back for the horses.”

Elias knew he was right. He also knew that the thing he wanted to see was still inside the leather. He reached towards the hilt, intending only to turn it enough to study the other side.

“Leave it where it is, please. Then both of you come away from the table.”

The voice came from the opening behind them. Elias withdrew his hand so quickly that his sleeve brushed the padded coat. A man stood beneath the edge of the awning, bareheaded, wearing a blue wool coat open at the throat. Grey ran through the hair above his ears. He had one glove tucked into his belt and a folded paper in his hand.

Will was nearest the loose side of the shelter. There was room for him to duck beneath it, and Elias saw him judge the distance. Then he stepped back towards Elias instead.

The man watched them without raising his voice. “I’d like to know what you’re doing here. Take a moment before you tell me. If you’ve been sent with something, I’ll want to know who sent you.”

Elias tried to find a version of their errand that would sound less foolish. Beside him Will stood very still. The bird worked into the man’s coat was the same as the one on the pommel, and recognition made Elias’s face burn.

“Nobody sent us, sir. We came to see the sword. We saw your banner from the road, and we thought we might be able to look from outside.” He could hear how little that explained their presence at the table. “Then we saw where it was. I shouldn’t have touched it.”

Will spoke before the knight could reply. “We came round together. I found the way past the wagon. We weren’t going to take anything, but I know that’s only what we’re telling you.”

A second man appeared outside, older and much broader, carrying a bundle of straps. He stopped when he saw them. Sir Rowan asked him whether anything was missing, and they waited while he put down the straps and inspected the table. Elias watched him lift the coat and count the small objects beneath it. Until that moment he had not noticed the purse beside the sword.

“It’s all here,” the man said. “They’ve had to pass the rope to get this far. I put it up again myself after the hay came through.”

Sir Rowan set his paper on a chest. Up close he looked older than Elias had expected, with deep creases beside his mouth and a pale, irregular patch beneath one eye. His boots were muddy. Nothing about him diminished the sword on the table, but Elias had difficulty joining this man to the figure he had carried in his head.

“You understand the trouble you’ve made for yourselves,” the knight told them. “My groom comes in and finds you with your hand on that hilt, he won’t know you’re admiring it. Someone may get hurt before either of you has explained.” He glanced towards the horse lines, then back at them. “You can spend the afternoon helping Master Perrin. The stalls need clearing, and there’s equipment to be cleaned before we leave tomorrow. You’ll do what he asks, properly. When he’s satisfied, you may go.”

Elias agreed at once. Relief made it difficult to speak clearly, and the knowledge that Sir Rowan Avel had seen him behave like a thief made it difficult to look up. Will agreed beside him. Perrin took them round to the horses and gave them forks.

---

There were six stalls beneath the long awning, divided by hurdles and bedded with straw. Perrin showed them where to heap the spoiled bedding, where the fresh straw was kept and which horse was liable to bite if approached carelessly. He stayed until he had seen them work, then went to attend to a loose shoe.

Elias knew this labour. He had done it before breakfast on days he barely remembered afterwards. Here, with music drifting across the meadow and money waiting unspent inside his shirt, every forkful seemed to take longer. Beyond the enclosure people cheered at something he could not see. Will worked in the neighbouring stall, sleeves rolled above his elbows, his good waistcoat folded safely over a rail.

They did not talk much at first. Elias was angry with himself, and each time he remembered his hand reaching for the sword, he found a new reason to be embarrassed. After a while he apologised across the hurdle.

Will carried a load of bedding past him before answering. “I was standing there hoping you’d draw it. I could have said something sooner.” He tipped the fork and shook it free. “We’d better get on. If we finish while there’s still light, there might be something left worth seeing.”

Elias went back to work. When Perrin returned, he found the clean straw spread and the passage swept. He inspected the corners rather than the open floor, which Elias respected, then took them to wash before putting them beside the equipment table.

The cleaning required more care. Perrin showed them how to remove dried mud without grinding it into the leather and how little oil the finished surface needed. He gave them cloths, brushes and a buckle so clogged with dirt that Elias could scarcely see the pin. They were trusted with simple pieces first. As the afternoon passed without damage, a pair of arm defences joined the tack, followed by a helmet lined with worn leather.

Sir Rowan came back while Will was working a cloth around the helmet’s rim. He had changed into a looser coat and carried a cup. Perrin reported on the stalls, then asked him to look at a cracked fastening. They discussed whether it would last until the next town. The knight sat on a chest, drew a strap through his hands and tested it where Perrin indicated. Elias listened while pretending to concentrate on the buckle. It had never occurred to him that Sir Rowan might have to consider the availability of a saddler.

When Perrin left to find a replacement, the knight asked where they came from. Elias told him about the village and Thomas’s holding. Will explained his work with his uncle. Sir Rowan knew the ridge road and asked whether the little bridge below the mill had been repaired. They were able to tell him that it had, though the approach still flooded. The conversation became easier while they were discussing something they understood.

“And you’ve walked all that way to look at an old sword,” he said. “Was there nothing in the fair you wanted?”

Elias rubbed at a mark on the buckle with his thumb. “There was plenty, sir. We didn’t know you’d be here. We’ve heard about Dunmere since we were small. Father Martin has a book with the crossing in it, and we used to go down to the stream and try to hold the bank.” He hesitated, aware that Will had stopped polishing. “We thought if we saw the sword, we’d know what it was really like.”

Sir Rowan let him finish. He seemed neither amused nor offended. After a moment he asked whose book Father Martin owned, but Elias could only describe its binding. The knight knew it from the picture of the causeway, which he said had been made much wider than the real one.

Will wanted to know about the wagons. He had always wondered why the men had not simply pushed them into the water to clear the road. Sir Rowan explained that the first had broken an axle across the narrowest section and that there were children inside the second. By the time they had lifted the children out, another team of horses had become tangled in the traces. He remembered one of the carters refusing to abandon his animals. Two soldiers had gone back to help him, and the delay had cost them ground they could not easily recover.

Elias kept the buckle in his hands. He had imagined the crossing many times, but there had never been a frightened team refusing to move, or a man trying to cut leather while other people shouted for him to hurry. He asked how the knight had known where to stand.

“There wasn’t much choice by then. The men beside me needed room to use their weapons, and we needed something behind us that wouldn’t give way.” Sir Rowan rested his cup on the chest. “We’d walked the crossing that morning. That helped. So did having men who listened when they were tired and frightened. You won’t find all their names in the book.”

Will bent over the helmet again. Elias could tell he was listening as closely as he was. For a while their questions stayed with the causeway: the horses, the water, how far the last wagons had to travel before they were safe. Sir Rowan answered what he could remember and said when he could not. Once he corrected a number Elias had been certain of for years.

Then he asked what they hoped to do with themselves. Will described working his way south, more cautiously than he had on the roadside. Elias spoke about learning arms and travelling with a company. Saying it in front of the knight made him conscious of his hands, the old seams in his shirt, the dried mud still lodged beside one nail.

“I know I couldn’t enter a household the way a lord’s son does,” he added. “But if I could learn, and somebody gave me the work, I’d do it. I’d like to see more than the same fields every year.”

Sir Rowan considered him for a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see the world. I wanted it badly enough at your age. I still prefer a new road to most rooms people ask me to sit in.” He leaned forward to take the buckle Elias had finished, examined the pin and set it with the clean pieces. “But a company will make use of a strong young man whether it means to teach him anything or not. Ask what you’ll be paid. Ask who pays for your food. Don’t let a fine coat do all your thinking for you.”

Elias nodded. He had expected either encouragement or dismissal and was not quite prepared for advice about wages. Will asked whether there was anywhere a man could learn without belonging to a household. The knight described the town militia and service with men-at-arms, making clear the difference between being taught and simply being given a weapon. He offered no easy route into the life they imagined.

Perrin brought a small pot of oil and left it between them. Sir Rowan took up a piece of harness himself, working at a stiff section while Elias began the next buckle. Outside, a horse stamped against the ground. The pipes had stopped; in their place came the rising voice of a man calling people to the wrestling.

“What does your father grow?” the knight asked Elias.

Elias told him, then found himself explaining the different strips and the lower patch that never drained properly. Sir Rowan asked about animals and whether Thomas worked the holding alone. Elias described Anne’s garden, the cow, the days they owed to the manor. He tried to make it sound neither better nor worse than it was. Speaking about home here, beside polished steel and a coat bearing the heron, made the smallness of it unusually apparent.

“Most days there’s something waiting before you’ve finished what you’re doing,” he said. “Even when you get ahead, you find out you’ve forgotten a job. I don’t mind the work. I’d just like there to be something after it.”

Sir Rowan worked the leather between his fingers for a time before answering.

“My brother had a place with apple trees behind the house. Poor ground, by all accounts, though he could talk about it for an hour. I used to visit between journeys. He’d want to show me a wall he’d repaired, or a tree that had finally borne, and I’d be thinking about how soon I ought to leave.” He turned the strap over and examined its underside. “One autumn he asked me to stay another day. They were pressing the apples. His wife was making bread, and there were neighbours coming to help. I had no orders requiring me anywhere. I left because I was tired of hearing about apples.”

Will’s cloth had slowed. Elias looked at the knight’s hands, waiting for him to continue.

“He died that winter of a fever. His wife wrote to me, but the letter followed the army for weeks. By the time I reached her, she’d moved the press into the shed. I remember helping her shift it again because she’d put it where the rain came through.” He eased the strap into a loop. “I’d have enjoyed that day if I’d stayed. I knew the neighbours. I liked his wife’s bread. Nothing was keeping me from it except the conviction that I ought to be somewhere else.”

Elias thought of Thomas waiting for him to hold the other end of a board, and how often he had been watching the lane while his father explained what they were going to do. He did not want to imagine the yard without him. Nor did he quite know how to answer Sir Rowan without pretending to understand more than he did.

“I don’t want to leave them with everything,” he said eventually. “I’d have to make some arrangement. I only meant I’d like to go for a while.”

The knight looked towards him. “I wasn’t asking you to stay. Your father may be thoroughly tired of finding you in his doorway.” There was warmth in the remark, but he let it pass without waiting for a laugh. “Go when you can, if that’s what you want. Only pay some attention while you’re still there. It took me a long time to understand how much of my brother’s life I’d have liked to share. He had people he loved in his house, work he understood, neighbours who came when he needed them. He was happy more often than I thought to notice.”

He picked up his cup and found it empty. From outside, Perrin called to ask whether he wanted the horses brought round before supper. Sir Rowan went to speak to him, leaving Elias with the half-cleaned buckle and Will looking down at the helmet in his lap.

They worked quietly for a little while. Then Will asked Elias to inspect a mark he could not remove without something sharper. Elias leaned across, and together they decided to leave it for Perrin.

---

By the time the last of the equipment passed inspection, the shadows from the tents had stretched across the horse lines. Perrin made them wash their hands again and brought bread, cold meat and two cups of watered ale. They sat on the grass beside the wagon to eat. Elias was hungry enough that the first mouthful hurt a little going down.

Sir Rowan found them there after they had finished. He carried the sword in its scabbard. Both boys rose, brushing crumbs from their clothes, but he told them to stay where they had room and moved a bucket out of the way with his foot.

“Perrin says you’ve done everything he asked. Before you go, you may as well see what brought you here.” He drew the blade and held it where the evening light fell along it. “Keep your hands away from the edge. It’s been sharpened since I last used it.”

The steel was brighter than Elias expected. A shallow groove ran along much of its length; near the guard there was a maker’s mark too small for him to decipher. The blade narrowed towards a point that looked more delicate than anything capable of surviving the battles they had discussed. Sir Rowan turned it slowly, letting them see both faces.

Elias had forgotten the dirt beneath his knees. When the knight offered him the hilt, he stood carefully and took it as instructed. It was lighter than the iron bar he and Will sometimes practised with, but the weight seemed to gather ahead of his hand. He held it too tightly at first. Sir Rowan adjusted his fingers and showed him where to place his other hand, then stepped clear while Elias lifted it a little.

There was no movement he could make that would improve the moment. He stood with the sword held before him, feeling the worn leather beneath his palms, and tried to remember every part of it.

Will took his turn with the same unexpected quiet. He asked about the grip, and Sir Rowan showed them both how much difference a small change made. They were allowed no swinging, though Elias suspected the knight knew precisely how much they wanted to try.

When the sword was sheathed, they thanked him. Elias wished he could find something beyond the words he would have used for a cup of water. Sir Rowan seemed satisfied with them. He asked whether they had a bed for the night and listened to their directions to the bakehouse, then sent them out through the proper entrance before the light was gone.

On the other side of the rope, Will stopped to put on his waistcoat. Elias waited, watching the knight return beneath the awning. Perrin handed him a paper. He bent over it, listening, and the ordinary business of the household closed around him.

They walked across the meadow slowly at first. Then Will began explaining what he had felt when the knight moved his hand on the grip, and Elias interrupted because he had felt it too. By the time they reached the food stalls they were talking over one another, trying to recall the exact position of their thumbs.

There was still fair left. They bought a hot onion pastry between them and watched the final wrestling bout from behind a row of men who objected whenever someone tried to squeeze closer. A woman selling ribbons asked whether the two of them had been rolling in the horse lines. Will glanced down at his knees and admitted that it had been something of that sort. She laughed and let him look through the cheaper lengths without urging him to buy.

Mara found them near the bakehouse as the shutters were being closed. She had spent part of the afternoon looking for them, and Elias began his explanation before she could ask. Will supplied the way round the wagon, refusing Elias’s attempt to pass quickly over it. She listened through the discovery, the stalls and the polishing, then wanted to know what Sir Rowan had been like.

That took longer to answer. They followed her inside, where her aunt gave them stools and a pot to share, and found themselves describing his boots, the questions he had asked, the way Perrin spoke to him. They told her about Dunmere and the sword. Elias kept the account of the apple press to himself, not because it was a secret, but because repeating it across a supper table felt different from hearing it while the knight worked leather in his hands.

Later, in the loft, Will lay on his back beneath a borrowed blanket and held one hand above him, fingers curved around an absent hilt. Elias watched from the other pallet. There was straw caught in Will’s hair, and his clean waistcoat lay carefully folded beyond the dust. They went over the afternoon until footsteps sounded below and Mara’s aunt called up that she needed some sleep. After that they spoke more softly, discussing how they might make a practice sword that balanced properly, until Will lowered his hand and turned towards the little window.

Music reached them through the gap beneath the shutter. It had been there for some time, faint enough to overlook while they talked, but now Elias could distinguish a fiddle and the voices of people singing badly together. At home, this late, he would have heard the dog settling beneath the table and his father checking the door. Here someone was laughing in the lane, and a cart was still moving somewhere beyond the bakehouse.

Will sat up and listened. “There must be people down by the meadow still. We could go and look for a little while. We’ve spent nearly the whole day inside that enclosure.”

Elias had already begun reaching for his boots. He stopped before picking them up, listening for movement below, then carried them to the window. The shutter opened over a narrow yard. Beneath it stood the low roof of a wood store, with a stack of empty baskets against the wall at one end. He leaned out far enough to see the edge, tested the sill with his weight and beckoned Will across.

Getting down required more care than he had expected. The roof dipped beneath his first foot, and he held still until he was certain the sound had not carried into the house. Will passed out their boots, then lowered himself beside him. They crossed above the supporting wall, avoiding the middle, and climbed down by the baskets. Elias caught the top one before it fell. For a moment they stood in the dark with it between them, listening to a cough from inside the bakehouse. When no light appeared, they set it back and put on their boots.

The yard door was fastened with a wooden latch. Will lifted it slowly while Elias kept pressure against the frame. Outside, the lane felt wonderfully open after the cramped descent. They shut the door behind them and walked towards the music, keeping quiet until they had turned the corner.

---

The fair had drawn closer together in the dark. Most of the traders had covered their goods, but lights still burned around the food stalls and the alehouse doors. People sat on overturned tubs to eat, their knees almost touching across the narrow passages. A fiddler had found a place beneath an awning, and couples were dancing in the space where the poultry cages had stood that morning. Elias and Will worked their way round the spectators until they could see, then stayed to watch a woman steer her increasingly unsteady husband through a dance he plainly believed he was leading.

Beyond the alehouse, a painted board advertised a travelling player’s dragon. Elias had seen it earlier, but the show had finished by the time they were free of the knight’s enclosure. Now the creature stood partly covered in a yard behind the player’s wagon, its long wooden jaw propped open. From the lane they could see teeth, a wheel beneath one claw and a fold of painted canvas that might have been a wing. Will thought a man walked inside it. Elias thought the wheels carried it and the man only worked the head. There was room beneath the yard gate to settle the matter.

They had been inside scarcely a minute when Elias found the handle. He meant to lift the jaw just far enough to see how it was fixed. Instead the head swung sideways, the canvas pulled tight and a length of chain began rattling through the body with a noise much louder than either had expected. Will caught the head before it struck the wagon, but by then someone inside was shouting. They ducked under the gate with the player coming down his steps in his shirt, calling for the watch.

Elias was laughing as they ran. He could still feel the resistance of the handle in his palm, then the awful ease with which it had moved once he put his weight behind it. Will was ahead of him, taking the narrow passage between the closed stalls. Behind them a lantern lifted above the yard gate. Elias looked back to see whether the man had come through, turned towards Will again and collided with someone running across the passage.

Their heads struck with a hard, sickening knock. Pain flashed above his eyebrow. He caught at a stall upright as the girl staggered against him, her sack falling between their feet. For a moment he could neither see properly nor get enough breath to swear. Then she shoved herself clear, one hand pressed to her forehead, and all his attention narrowed to the person who had just driven her skull into his.

“Would you look where you’re going? You came straight out between those stalls. I couldn’t even see you until you were on top of me.” He took his hand from his brow to check for blood, still gripping the upright with the other. “You could have knocked us both flat.”

She was already bending for the sack. “And you were looking behind you. I saw you doing it, so don’t stand there telling me how much attention you were paying.” She tugged at something caught beside his boot, then looked up from beneath her hood. “Move your foot. Unless you’re planning to fall over me again, you can stop standing on my things.”

He lifted his heel. The sack came free, its neck still tightly knotted, and she gathered it against her knees. He had no idea what she was carrying, but she checked the cloth where his boot had held it before attempting to rise. Her haste, the way she kept listening past him towards the market, made it obvious that she had no more business being there than they did. Somewhere beyond the stalls a second voice called out. She turned sharply towards it and pulled the sack closer.

Will had stopped a few paces away. He looked from Elias to the girl, eyes wide, then back towards the passage they had just come down. Elias knew they needed to move. His forehead throbbed, however, and she had spoken as though he had deliberately placed himself beneath her feet.

“I was trying to get past the stalls, same as you. There’s room if people keep to one side instead of charging across wherever they please.” He reached down when she struggled with the weight, caught the loose cloth below the knot and helped haul it up. “We let each other through a gate at home. We don’t run into someone and then order him out of the way.”

She got the sack against her hip, breathing hard. A lock of hazelnut hair had worked loose beside her mouth; the rest of her face remained deep beneath the hood. When she tried to push the hair back, the sack slipped, and Elias steadied it before letting go. She seemed about to say something, but Will came back and took hold of his sleeve.

“Elias, he’s coming round the end. You can argue about it tomorrow if you’re both that pleased with each other, but I’m not waiting here to explain the dragon.”

Elias pulled his arm free, intending to follow. The girl had heard him too. Her mouth changed, annoyance giving way to an expression Elias liked considerably less. She looked towards the lane Will had chosen, then towards the gap behind him, measuring her way out. He should have let her go. Instead, still stung by the suggestion that he had been standing about waiting to be knocked down, he pointed towards the passage she had crossed.

“Next time, slow down before you come flying out of somewhere. You’d have had half the trouble if you’d watched the way in front of you.”

She eased backwards, testing the sack’s weight on her shoulder. “You might try that yourself. Though I suppose if everyone at home has to wait at a gate while you explain whose fault it is, you’ve never needed to learn.” Her mouth curved as she saw him draw breath. “Mind the next corner, farm boy. I shan’t be there to stop you.”

He had been going to tell her that she was the one who had fallen, except she hadn’t quite fallen, and he had helped her up anyway. Neither seemed worth saying. She had somehow taken his perfectly reasonable account of a gate and made him sound like a fool who could not get through one. By the time he found the beginning of an answer, she was already moving backwards into the gap, grinning beneath her hood.

Then she turned and ran, hitching the sack higher as she disappeared between the stalls. Will hauled Elias in the other direction, and this time he went. His head hurt with every stride. He could have explained it if she had stayed long enough to listen, although he suspected she would simply have found something else to say before he finished. As they passed beneath a hanging cloth, its edge brushing his cheek, he remembered a faint sweetness in the air when she had leaned close to lift the sack, something clean and unfamiliar beneath the smoke. It came back with the loose curl beside her mouth and the grin she had left him with. He tried to picture the rest of her face and immediately resented himself for wondering.