11. High Water
High Water
The rains came with the turn toward spring. The ground still held frost in patches, and Jeremiah warned him off planting just yet, but the green had come into the hills, real and deep now, and the river ran full with snowmelt off the high country.
The first storm of the spring woke him before dawn, a clap of thunder hard enough to rattle the windows, and he came up out of sleep sitting. He blinked the dark away and got to his feet.
Morning was close, and he went to the window.
The sky hung grey, and the rain came down in thick sheets, near the hardest he had seen. Water sluiced off the barn roof and cut channels through the grass of the yard.
The smell of wet earth reached him even through the walls.
His mind went to the Kettle and the trench they had dug behind it. This storm would be the first real test of the drainage, and he meant to see it hold.
He rose and pulled on his cloak, ate a fast breakfast standing up, and went out the front. Ghost watched him from its place by the fire and made no move to follow, and he couldn't blame it for keeping to the warm hearth.
He stopped only to feed Roan before he set out up the road alone. The storm wouldn't harm the horse, but standing tied in the rain all day would only wear on him, and Kain would get soaked either way, just quicker from the saddle.
Walking saved the stabling fee besides, and he had no intention of leaving Roan out in the wet all day for nothing.
He slogged up through the mud and the rain toward town and found that everyone else had the sense to stay indoors. He couldn't fault them for it, and the street ran empty by the time he reached the Kettle.
He splashed around to the back of the Kettle and looked at the trench they had built, then up at the roof. Water sluiced off the eaves and dropped into the trench, ran the length of it like a stream, and burst out the far end to run off down the slope and into the ditch along the road.
It was the result he had hoped for.
He crouched and reached into the water and felt along the bottom, where the clay had set hard under his hand. Set like that, no stretch of steady rain would soften it now.
He crossed to the cellar door and pulled it open. The steps ran down into the dark, and he went down them careful and quiet, found the small lantern at the bottom, and got it lit.
The smooth new wall stood sound in the lantern light, not a crack in it. He looked across the rows of vegetables, the sacks of flour, the barrels of fruit and pork, and found only the faintest damp standing on a wall across the way, years yet from turning into any real trouble.
The door banged open and Sasha came down the stairs at a run.
"Stop, thief. I'll have you know there's a great warrior guarding this place. Oh. It's you, Kain."
"You have a great warrior guarding this tavern?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Well." She set the frying pan down on a barrel. Her wet hair stuck to her cheeks. "People know you're here, Kain. You've got a reputation."
"Don't make more of it than there is." He turned back to the wall.
"You killed the wolves."
"And one of them came near to taking my arm. Killing a wolf pack is what you do when they're at your animals. I'm no S-rank dragon-slayer." He shrugged. "Sorry if I startled you. Came to see how this held up in the rain. Looks like it held fine."
"I'll say this. It's the first storm in three years I haven't had water on the floor."
"I'll slap some sealant over that crack while I'm down here." He nodded at the far wall.
"I don't think I'd even have spotted that yet."
"Better to stop it before it grows. I'd sooner replace the whole wall, but I doubt the town'd turn out to do it twice."
"And I can't pay for it twice, which is the larger problem. That quick-set, the quickite, it didn't come cheap. Worth it, but not cheap."
Kain looked around the cellar. "I can do you one better than sealant."
"One better. How?"
"Floor's dry now, but it's one bad storm from changing." He knelt by the grain sacks. "I build you a raised pallet, get these bags up off the ground, and a flood doesn't ruin your grain. Keeps the mice off them too, if you ever get mice."
"That's not the worst idea you've had." She shrugged. "Spend your day how you like. I won't stop you."
"Not much else to do in this weather." He pushed up his sleeves. "Let's see what you've got down here."
He took the leftover quickite and mixed a small batch, then spackled the crack, along with two more he found after going over the wall twice. None of them ran deep or urgent.
He only meant to stop them spreading before they grew into the kind of thing the whole town had turned out for once already.
He worked through to evening, when Sasha came down to call him up for the dinner rush. By then he had the cracks sealed and a low pallet knocked together from scrap lumber, enough to lift a few of the grain sacks off the floor.
It was a small thing, and it was something.
Up in the tavern Matthew slept in his bassinet, and Sasha worked the kitchen while Kain took the bar and poured drinks. A few waterlogged travelers came in out of the rain, though the room was mostly locals waiting out the storm.
Garland the blacksmith sat near the end of the bar, big arms folded on the counter, quiet and somewhere far off in his head. Kain went over and set a fresh ale in front of him.
"You look deep in thought."
"Feel it, too." Garland straightened on the stool. "That cellar job you did out back here. The trench, mostly. Jeremiah tried to walk me through it, but I lose the thread halfway through anything Jeremiah says."
"Simple enough. Dug a trench to carry the water off, lined it so it couldn't seep back into the ground. Before that the water had nowhere to go, so it sat against the foundation and rotted it from below."
Garland's mouth disappeared into the heavy black beard that covered half his face. "You think you could come look at my shop?"
"Maybe. What's wrong with it?"
"Got a cellar under the shop. Not a root cellar. I keep my metals and powders down there, the dear stuff for the finer work. It's leaked for years. I patch the wall every few months and it does nothing. Powders going clumpy, iron rusting, copper and silver gone to tarnish. You know how it goes."
"I don't know the first thing about metal. Water I understand. I'll come look."
"I'd be grateful. I've a mind for metal and not much past it.
Building, fixing, the practical end of things, it's all fog to me.
" Garland waved a thick hand. "And I'll pay you for it.
I haven't got a pretty face or a baby or a kitchen handing out free supper, so I won't pull the crowd Sasha pulled. I'll pay fair for whatever you can do."
"Soon as the planting's in, I'll come by."
Garland nodded and drank. "How'd a farmer come to know so much about water, anyway?"
"Grew up poor, down in a city flood plain. The river came up every spring, and the dikes turned the water off the rich streets and sent it down into ours. You learn to move water, growing up like that."
"Makes sense. You're a good man, Kain. Better than me by half." Garland drained the ale, belched, and got to his feet. "Come by whenever you're ready."
Garland went out into the rain, and Kain went back to the bar. The storm would blow itself out before long, and then there was ground to turn, soon as the frost gave it up for good.