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Kain didn't see Carol for a stretch after the cold frame work.
The frame finished on its own time. He set the last hinge on the lid and stood the whole of it on its feet at the end of the herb-bed, and put the glass in along the runs he had cut for it, and the lid sat true to the box and the box sat true to the ground.
He stood back and looked at it for a long minute.
The frame had the look of a thing a man could trust to do its work without him coming back to it, and Mark would have said something about it that was half a compliment and half a criticism in the way Mark used to say a thing.
「Skill Gained: Glazing (Handyman)」
「Handyman: D → D+」
That was the morning of the second week.
Sam had said two weeks on the fastest end and three on the more likely.
Two had come around, and Kain had been turning it over in his head since the sun came up.
He found a reason to be in town that ran the gamut from nails for the barn to a bag of flour for the kitchen, and he saddled Roan and rode in.
Roan was off as they came up the road into Tillamore.
The gelding stepped sideways twice and shied at nothing on the third stride and clipped his hoof against his own foreleg on the fourth. Kain held him steady at the rein and let him work it out.
Sam's store stood on its corner with the front door open to the morning air. Kain hitched Roan to the rail and went in.
Sam was at the counter pricing a stack of axe-heads, and he looked up when the bell rang and gave Kain a nod that was less cheerful than it usually was.
"Kain. You here for the seed I set aside, or are you here for what we're both here for?"
"Delivery in yet?"
"Not yet. Today's the earliest day it could have come. Don't hold on it too tight."
"I'll be in the nails."
Sam rolled his eyes at a man who had come in for a thing the man hadn't come in for. "They're nails, Kain. They hold things together. Pick some."
Kain went to the bins at the back wall. He'd spent an hour with Carol at the cooperage in Lathemtown being walked through the differences, and the time had been worth it. He went through Sam's bins one at a time with the patience of a man who had learned the hard way that the bin matters.
He pulled a small handful of the framing nails and a small handful of the joinery nails, and turned for the counter.
The door behind him opened, and the bell rang, and Kain didn't have to look to know who had come in.
The man who came in wore the weather-beaten jerkin of a road-messenger and the dust of an early ride, and he went straight to the counter without looking at Kain or at anyone else.
"Urgent letter from the Adventurer's Guild. For the general store at Tillamore."
"That's me," Sam said.
The letter went across the counter, and the messenger took the coin Sam slid the other way, and touched the brim of his hat, and went out the way he had come in. Kain was at the counter before the door closed behind him.
Sam snorted. "You didn't come in for nails."
"I came in for what we both knew I came in for. You waited it out as well as I did."
"I did. Open it?"
"Open it."
"Two minutes."
A pair of farmers came up to the counter with a stack of shingles for a patch job they were working on.
Sam moved the letter to the side, took the shingles, named a price, took the coin, wrapped the shingles in twine, and saw the two men out with the kind of professional cheerfulness that ran on its own steam. Both of them glanced at Kain on.
Sam took the letter back up. "Guild seal." He tilted it under the lamp and tapped a small divot at the upper edge of the wax. "Real one. The dot pattern matches Greyhaven's office."
Sam set the corner of the wax under the edge of his thumbnail and broke the seal clean. The letter came out of the envelope and unfolded on the counter under the lamp, and the two men leaned in.
"Dear Tillamore," Sam read, and the corner of his mouth twitched at it.
The letter ran ten short lines on the regional office's printed letterhead. Kain followed the lines over Sam's shoulder.
It thanked the village for the report on the formation of a dungeon in the country adjacent to the settlement.
A survey team would be dispatched within four to six weeks of the date of the letter, to assess the dungeon and evaluate the danger to the settlement and the surrounding country.
The village was to follow the instructions below to the letter.
Under no circumstances was any person to enter the dungeon without prior authorization from the Guild.
Under no circumstances was any civilian to be allowed within five hundred yards of the entrance.
Any monster activity suspected to originate from the dungeon was to be reported by rider to the regional office without delay.
Sam paused at the end of the next-to-last paragraph.
"In the interim, the province of Tillamore is provisionally classified as a Dungeon-Adjacent Municipality, pending survey confirmation."
The words sat on the counter between them.
Tillamore wasn't a province, and it wasn't a municipality.
Tillamore was a village with one inn and one general store and one smith and one healer and a road through it, and a formal classification under a name as long as the one in the letter was the kind of paperwork that didn't belong on the village. The paperwork was on the village now.
"Posted," Kain said.
"Posted. The Guild Halls hang their bulletins the same day a designation comes through.
The board in Greyhaven will have a small notice on it by the end of the week.
There'll be a hold-line on it asking adventurers to give the survey team room before any unauthorized entry.
The hold-line will hold some of them. It won't hold all of them. "
"How many won't it hold?"
"More than I'd like. The next dungeon west of us is past the cold hills, and the next to the south is the better part of two days' ride. The board will have us at the top of the regional list for a stretch."
"So we have a month before the team gets here."
"Four to six weeks. A month is the fast side."
"A month is the fast side."
Sam folded the letter back into the envelope, set the envelope under the counter, and looked at Kain a beat. "You."
"Sam."
"You think you might go and have a look at it. Before the team gets here. Ahead of any folks who don't want to wait."
Kain looked at him a beat. The thought of saying yes ran through his head and ran back out. "I was a merc, Sam. Not a dungeon-crawler."
"You've been in a dungeon."
"I've been in a cave during a goblin-nest job that the country brought a wyvern down on. The cave came down around the lot of us. I came out. The rest of the Hands didn't."
Sam drew back the half-step a man drew back when he'd gone over a line he didn't see was a line until he'd gone over it. "I didn't."
"No apology owed. The plain of it is I do men. Not monsters. The country northeast of here is past the edge of what I'd get done well alone, and a man who walks into a country past the edge of what he can get done alone has stopped doing the work and started doing the dying."
"Then we wait on the team."
"Then we wait on the team."
Kain set two coppers on the counter for the handful of nails and slid the nails into the small pouch at his belt.
Roan was easier at the rail than he had been on the road in. The horse had felt the weight of the calendar at the start of the ride, and the weight had come off when the answer had come down on the counter. Kain swung up on him and rode out of town.
The road took the long slope down past the McGraths and past the other two farms before Kain's gate.
A month. Less than a month, maybe.
He worked it through as Roan walked. The board in Greyhaven would already have the line on it by the time Sam's shingles were on the patch the farmers had come for.
The clock that mattered wasn't the four-to-six-weeks clock.
The clock that mattered was the clock between the line going up on the board and the first man in a coat too good for road dust riding up the lane to the Kettle to ask after a place to stay.
That clock had started already. The clock couldn't be slowed by a man wanting it slowed.
Carol's mare was at the rail at the gate when he came down the lane.
Kain swung off Roan and walked him to the paddock.
Carol was at the herb-bed at the side of the house in the kerchief she wore when she worked, pulling the ragweed and the bindweed out of the rows and laying them in a small heap at the side of the bed.
Ghost was at the end of the row with its head on its paws and the one eye on her hands the way the one eye watched a person who had earned a place at the farm.
Kain crouched at the other end of the bed and started up the row toward her.
"You're early."
"You were early. I came down the road past Sam's after the rider went past me. The rider was wearing the colors. I figured you'd ridden in for the same reason I was wondering about."
"You figured right."
"News, then?"
"News."
"Good or bad?"
"Depends on the side of it a person's on. A wait longer than it's been already, on our side. On the other side, the side of the men who watch the boards in Greyhaven, the kind of news that puts a place on a list it wasn't on before."
Carol pulled a clump of bindweed up by the root and laid it on the heap, and didn't look up.
"How long?"
"A month. Maybe a stretch longer."
"I can wait a month," Carol said.
"I'm glad of that."
She sat back on her heels and looked at him then. "One question and then I'll let it go. Is the village in mortal danger right now, before the team gets here?"
"No. Not now."
"Then the festival can go."
Kain set the letter down. The festival had gone clear out of his head.
The last festival had been the spring one at the end of planting, and the one before that had been the autumn one, and the late-summer one was three days off and he hadn't had a thought in his head about it since the letter had gone out of Sam's door in the rider's pouch.
"When is it?"
"Three days. You forgot."
"I forgot."
"You remember the last one?"
"I remember everyone had their eye on the ridge."
"They're not going to have their eye on the ridge this time. They're going to have it on you."
Carol pulled the last bindweed of the row and laid it on the heap and sat back to look at him.
"The gryphon's been dead the better part of two months.
The village has had its time to think on it.
The Kettle's going to be open through the night this year.
The McGraths are bringing the meats. Garland's setting up the iron-work on the green.
Sam's got the cider and the bread orders set.
They mean to do a big one. You're going to be the man of the hour. "
"I don't want to be the man of the hour."
"I know it."
"I could be sick."
"If you're sick that day the village comes down your lane to find out why and brings the cider with them."
Kain set his hand on the back of his neck. "Three days."
"Three days. I'll stand at your elbow for the worst of it. The worst of it will be the toasts."
"Carol stands at my elbow for the toasts," Kain repeated, mostly to hear how it sounded, and almost smiled at it for the second time that day.
"She does."
"I can do toasts."
"You'll do them shorter than the ones they want from you."
"I will."
The half-laugh came short out of her and held no warmth. The heap at the end of the bed grew. Ghost moved its head with the work, watching one hand and then the other.
When the sun was past the top of the barn Carol stood and wiped her hands on her apron and went to her mare at the rail.
"Three days."
"Three days."
She swung up and rode out the lane.
He turned for the barn. Roan needed brushing.