Edria
Inotice it first at the market.
The grain merchant is in a good mood, which is unusual enough that I stop and look at him twice. He's haggling with old Perrin over seed prices, but the number he's offering is lower than last month's, and he doesn't look pained about it. Perrin looks stunned, like he's waiting for the catch.
By midmorning, three separate people mention it at the forge.
Trade taxes down across the board—imports, exports, both.
Nobody knows why. Nobody knows how long it'll last. But the mood in Oxwood has lifted in the way it only does when people can breathe a little easier, the lightness of a village that's been underwater suddenly finding its footing.
Papa tells me when he comes in from the market at midday, setting his basket on the workbench with something close to relief on his weathered face.
"Thirty percent," he says. "On imports and exports both."
I keep working the hinge I'm fitting. "Since when?"
"Since last week, apparently. Merchant said the directive came down from the regional trade office." He settles onto his stool, stretching his bad leg out. "It means our steel costs less. What we sell brings more."
I set the hinge down. "That's a significant reduction."
"It is." He watches me. "You don't look happy about it."
"I'm thinking about it."
"Think faster. It's good news."
I pick the hinge back up. Thirty percent is not a minor administrative correction.
That's a deliberate directive from someone with enough authority to move regional trade policy without announcing it publicly.
Someone who rode into Oxwood five days ago and spent an afternoon looking at the town hall records.
I don't say that out loud. I don't say anything about it to Papa, or to Sorella when she leans out her tavern window to tell me the same news, or to the Henley woman who stops to collect her repaired shears and spends ten minutes celebrating.
I don't say it because saying it means admitting I think Nyrius did something useful, and admitting that means something I'm not ready to sit with yet.
The medicine costs the same as it always has.
I stand at the apothecary counter that afternoon and watch the man behind it count out Finn's vials with the slow deliberateness of someone who knows he has no competition in this village.
Two silvers and four copper for a month's supply.
The trade reduction doesn't touch what he charges, because he imports from the city and sets his own margin on top.
I pay it. I walk home with the vials wrapped in cloth in my pocket and the familiar arithmetic running in my head.
The forge income will improve. Not enough. Not yet. Not for months, if the reduction even holds that long.
I go to the forest that night.
Velis has four men with him this time, which sets my nerves on edge before I even unwrap the blades. He counts them faster than usual, already moving on before he's finished.
"I need twenty next time."
I stop. "We've had this conversation."
"We're having it again." He tucks the bundle under his arm. "The buyers are ready to move. They need volume."
"I'm one person working a forge I share with my father." I cross my arms. "Twenty blades in two weeks is not possible without drawing attention."
"Then take three weeks."
"Velis." I lower my voice, even though the forest is empty around us. "Who are these buyers? Because last time it was nervous that people arming themselves, and now you want double the volume on a rushed timeline."
"They're in the Ardenmere region." He says it like distance makes it cleaner. "Far enough that it doesn't touch Oxwood."
"Far enough" means they're organized. Far enough means they have money and a plan and someone sourcing weapons for them with enough coordination to reach across regions.
I know what that looks like. I grew up in a border village and I've spent years listening to what moves through the forest at night.
"These are not nervous farmers," I say.
"No." He meets my eyes without apology. "They're not."
The coin in my pocket is already spent three times over in my head—medicine, grain, the roof section above Finn's room that leaks when it rains hard. "If this comes back on Oxwood—"
"It won't."
"If it does," I say, "I'm done. Permanently."
He nods, easy and unbothered, which means he doesn't believe me. Maybe he's right not to. I take the payment and go.
I'm muttering to myself on the path back, which is a habit I've never managed to break.
Running through the numbers, the timeline, the excuse I'll give Papa for the late hours.
I'm so caught up in it that I don't hear Finn until he steps out from behind the fence post at the edge of our yard and nearly stops my heart.
"You have got to stop doing that," I hiss.
"You have to stop sneaking in at midnight." He crosses his arms—a gesture so much like Papa's that it's briefly unsettling on his fourteen-year-old frame. "I heard you talking to someone in the forest last week. I heard the word blades."
I look at him. He looks back, messy auburn hair and steady hazel eyes, chin set with a stubbornness I recognize because I invented it.
"Finn—"
"Don't tell me it's nothing."
I glance toward the house. The window above the kitchen is dark. "Come here." I pull him around the side of the building, out of the lane's sightline. "Keep your voice down."
"Tell me what you're doing."
"I'm making sure we eat." I hiss. "And that you have medicine. That's what I'm doing."
His expression doesn't soften. "Illegally."
"Yes."
He's quiet, jaw working. He's not a child—hasn't been one in a while, if I'm honest. He's been watching me carry things I won't talk about for years now, and he's not stupid.
"How dangerous is it?" he asks.
"I'm careful."
"That's not what I asked."
I watch my brother—the thin set of his shoulders, the concern pulling at his face, the way he's trying to stand straight despite the cold and the hour. He's trying very hard to look like he's not scared.
"It's managed," I say. "I know what I'm doing."
"And if you get caught?"
"I won't."
"Edria." His voice drops. "If something happens to you—"
"Nothing is going to happen to me." I put my hand on his neck briefly, the way I used to when he was small and frightened. "I need you to keep this between us. Can you do that?"
He exhales through his nose. "I don't like it."
"You don't have to like it."
"The money for my medicine comes from this."
"Yes."
He looks away, toward the dark lane, and I watch him work through it—the discomfort of knowing, the guilt of being the reason, the helplessness of being fourteen with a chronic illness in a village that can't afford healers.
"I'll keep it," he finally says. "But I don't like it."
"I know." I squeeze his shoulder once. "Go to bed."
He goes inside. I stay in the cold for another minute before I follow.
Sleep doesn't come.
I lie on my back in the dark and listen to the house settle around me—Papa's slow breathing through the wall, the creak of Finn shifting in his bed, the wind working at the loose shutter above the stairs. The usual sounds of a house held together by stubbornness and insufficient repair.
I think about Velis's buyers in Ardenmere. I think about the word organized and what comes after it. I think about what Velis said—they're not farmers—and the comfortable ease with which he said it.
Then, unwillingly, I think about Nyrius standing in my forge asking why someone talented is trapped in a failing village.
I wonder what he'd say if he knew the answer. Not the version I gave him—family business, nothing to explain—but the real one. The late nights and the oilcloth and the forest meetings and the buyers who aren't nervous farmers.
I wonder if the same man who reduced Oxwood's trade taxes without telling anyone would turn me in without hesitation.
I'm still wondering when I finally fall asleep, and the answer I land on isn't the comfortable one.