13. No Interest
No Interest
Kain rose early the next morning to a yard full of birds just outside the window.
"Well. Someone's happy to be up and about." He got up and started dressing. It was a fine enough thing to wake to, and as he moved about the house he turned over what the day needed from him.
One thing rose to the top of the list. He needed to ride out to the Martinson place and settle the terms on Roan.
They had set the broad shape of it back in the fall, fifty silver by fall, but they had left the rest vague, and now that spring had come around it wanted pinning down.
He ate fast and went out to the barn, and it didn't take long to get Roan saddled and ready. He swung up and rode out down the lane toward town.
The air was cool off yesterday's rain, the sky scrubbed clear above it. Wind moved through the trees along the road, stirring the new green on the branches, and his cloak pulled at his shoulders as Roan found a steady pace.
Sasha was out front of the Kettle with a broom, working the rain off the steps, and she looked up as Kain slowed Roan in the road.
"Morning." Kain nodded down at her. "Anything you need today?"
"Don't think so." Sasha thought about it and shook her head. "Deliveries are all made, and the guests have behaved themselves through the wet, which is more than I looked for. A storm usually has the whole house climbing the walls. Matthew's doing fine, too."
"Good to hear." Kain put Roan back to a walk and on down the street. "Send word if anything comes up."
Sasha lifted the broom after him, and a few others called out as he passed down the main street. At Garland's forge the big doors were just coming open, and the blacksmith stood in the gap of them.
"I'll be along in a week or two," Kain called down.
"Appreciated," Garland called back, and Kain rode on past, out the west road, until the Martinson place came up on its lane behind the unpainted fence.
He rode up the lane toward the barn. Off to his left Carol worked in a paddock, mending a stretch of fence, too far to hail and not looking his way.
Up by the barn Martinson stood wrestling with what looked like a stone water trough.
Kain rode in, swung down, and tied Roan to the hitching post. Martinson looked up at him, and Kain crossed over, took the far end of the trough, and lifted.
The thing was carved stone and heavy with it, and both men grunted as they hauled it up off the ground. Martinson backed toward the nearest paddock, shouldered the gate open, and they wrestled the trough through and over to a low stone stand set ready for it.
They eased it down together and stepped back.
"There we are." Martinson dragged a sleeve across his brow. He gave no word of thanks for the help, only the reason for it. "Old one cracked over the winter. There's a mason north of town carves them. Heavy work."
"Lives off out there on his own?"
"That's the way of it." Martinson put out a hand, and Kain shook it. "What brings you out this morning?"
"Came to settle the terms on the debt." Kain set it out plain. "We said fifty silver by fall and left it there. I'll have seeds in the ground inside the week and money coming in not long after, so I need to know how to lay out what I've got."
"Practical." Martinson nodded, and something in the set of his face said he approved. "Come sit."
They went over to a pair of stump seats set against the side of the barn, worn smooth from use, and Martinson leaned back against the boards.
"Fifty silver by fall. No interest."
"No interest?"
"No interest. You're not a stranger." Martinson watched the paddock. "Fifty silver, sometime before the fall's out."
"You don't mind if it comes in pieces, or all at once?"
"Whichever suits you."
He didn't say more. He sat against the barn wall and watched the paddock, and after a while he spoke again. "You've done right by Sasha and the boy."
Kain let the words sit where they were and didn't answer them.
Martinson got to his feet. "Work to do."
Kain stood with him. "I'll let you get to it."
"Don't thank me." Martinson took his hand again, and Kain shook it. "Though they tell me around the village you've got a hand for fixing things."
He nodded toward the gate of one of the paddocks. "That hinge sticks. Get it a quarter open and it hitches up and won't go further. I've tried everything I know and can't shift it. You mind having a look?"
"Can't promise a look fixes it. I'll see what I can do."
He went down to the gate and crouched at the hinges. Both looked ordinary enough at a glance, a little rust on them, nothing past what a man would expect.
Martinson came up behind with a handful of tools, set them on the ground, and went back to his work.
He worked the latch and pulled the gate open. A quarter of the way it caught, just as Martinson had said. He hauled it harder and it came the rest of the way, but the hitch was there, plain and bound to grate on a man.
He swung it shut, found no catch on the return, and tried again with the same result.
He pulled the gate full open and looked over the tools he'd been left, rags and a pick and a jar of grease, not much. He took up a rag and started wiping the hinge down.
"Hey."
Carol's voice came from off to his left.
"Hey," Kain said back.
"Dad talk you into that gate?" Carol came up beside him. "He's been on about it for months. Says it's a ten-minute fix, only he's never the time, so it's always next week's job."
"A man has to set his order." Kain finished the wipe-down and leaned in close. A line of rust had worked itself down into the joint of the hinge. "Hand me the pick?"
She passed it over, and he set to picking the rust out of the joint while she stepped back and folded her arms.
"You been cutting his apples into wedges instead of feeding them whole?"
Kain set his teeth against a hard knot of rust, and when it came free he gave a nod. "Been cutting them."
Carol grinned wide enough to split her face, and she had the look of someone with more to say when Martinson's voice carried down from the barn.
"Carol. That fence won't mend itself. I want the paddock sound before I turn the yearlings in for the Dennisons at noon."
Carol rolled her eyes. "Slave driver." She pushed off the fence and went, lifting a hand at Kain. "See you around."
Kain grunted at her back and kept at the hinge, picking the rust clear. When he reckoned he had it, he wiped it down again and turned up one last fleck he'd missed, and he scratched that off too.
Then he dipped his fingers in the grease and worked it over the joint.
It took some working, the gate swung back and forth, to drive the grease down into the joint where it needed to be. He wiped the hinge a last time, capped the jar, and gathered the tools.
He turned to carry them up to the barn and found Martinson already there. The farmer came over and swung the gate back and forth a few times, slow and then quick.
"Hasn't swung that easy in years."
He said no more. He took the tools and the rags back off Kain, and Kain went up and climbed onto Roan.
Carol lifted a hand as he came around, and he raised one back, then rode out through the gate and off down the road toward town. Behind him Martinson said something to her, too low to catch, and Kain didn't slow to hear it.
It wasn't his business, and he left it where it lay. He rode back through town with the fifty silver sitting square in his mind, and he meant to have it cleared before the leaves turned, every coin of it earned.