55. The Charter #4
Gilbert nodded. Some of the others nodded too. The room took that in. Some of the faces showed it. Some of them stayed plain.
Sam squared his shoulders against the bar.
"I've been turning the matter over since the surveyors rode out this morning. There's a piece of it I want to put to the floor."
"Put it," someone said.
"The dungeon will draw adventurers regardless.
The board at Greyhaven has the entry posted.
Parties will come down the road whether the village asks them to or not.
The choice in front of the village isn't whether the parties come.
The choice is whether they come on the village's terms or come on their own. "
Sam tapped the gavel handle on the wood.
"I'm proposing the village open the dungeon to independent parties under Guild license.
They pay a posting fee at the store. They register with the chapter.
They board at the Kettle while they're in the village.
They buy supplies at the store and the smith.
The village holds the inflow of coin that comes off the supplying.
The village uses the coin to build the purse to hire the contract that ends the dungeon at the six-month mark or shortly after. "
Will Martinson set his shoulders off the wall.
"Adventurers are a wild lot. They don't care about the country they ride through. They drink hard and they fight harder and they take what they don't pay for if no one is watching."
"They do," Sam said. "Which is why I'm proposing the village set the rules ahead of the riders.
A charter. Rules of conduct posted at the door of the Kettle and the door of the store.
Damage paid out of the rider's posting fee or out of the rider's purse.
A man who breaks more than his fee covers loses the right to post in the village.
The Guild will back the rule if we've set it down in writing. Hale said as much."
"Words on paper," Will said.
"Words on paper. Better than the words not on paper."
Will took that in. The face he wore neither agreed nor disagreed. The wall took his shoulders back and Carol stayed at his side and said nothing.
Sam looked across the room. "Anyone who normally helps me settle a thing like this. Hands up if you're in favor."
A row of hands went up across the room. Kain counted them.
The McGraths. Mrs. Hollifield. Jeremiah at the bar.
The Dennison who ran the freight wagon. A handful of others Kain knew by face and name.
Will Martinson didn't put his hand up. Will Martinson didn't put his hand down either.
He stood with his arms across his chest and watched the room.
"Against."
Two hands went up. Neither was Will's.
"Carried. I'll draw the charter. Anyone with a piece they want on the charter, bring it to me at the store. Any better idea, bring that too. We'll write it together. We'll have it posted by the end of the week."
Sam lowered the gavel. "The Kettle's open. The bar's open. Sasha will need a hand for the next hour. Go easy on the cider."
The room broke into smaller pieces. Sam came around the end of the bar and tipped his head at the kitchen. Kain followed. Sasha dropped the towel on the bar and came after them. Carol left her father at the wall and came after Sasha.
The four of them stood in the small space at the back of the kitchen where the stove threw its heat against the wall and the soup pot held an evening meal a stretch off from serving. Sam's face wasn't the face he had worn at the bar.
"What do you think."
Carol answered first.
"Posted rules are a start. Registration is a start. Posting fees are a start. They're the bones of a thing. The thing doesn't walk on bones alone. A piece of paper at the door of the store doesn't have any teeth in it."
"No," Sam said. "It doesn't."
Sam turned to Kain.
"A village with rules at the door needs a man who can put the rules on the rider who breaks them. A village without a man like that has rules nobody minds."
"I hear you."
"I'm not asking the man at the bar to sign on tonight. I'm asking the man at the bar to hear the asking and to chew on it. We're going to need a teeth-on-the-paper before the first party rides in."
"I'm chewing."
Sasha hadn't said a word through the exchange. She had a knife in her hand and a potato on the cutting board for the soup pot, and the knife had been doing the work the knife was doing through the talking. She set the knife down now.
"Matthew likes you," Sasha said. "I have a thought on it the same as Sam, and I'm not going to say the thought tonight any clearer than that. Whatever the man at the bar decides, the boy and I will be on the side of the decision. That's the whole of what I have to say."
Carol set a hand on Kain's shoulder, light, brief, the way the captain's hand at the elbow at the toasts had been.
"I'll be at your elbow," she said. "Whichever way you go on it."
Kain looked at the three of them.
The kitchen had the smell of the soup pot and the smell of the smoked sausage at the rafter and the smell of the cider Sasha had poured into the cup for him at the festival and the cup for him at this meeting and the cup for him at every meeting before this one.
The kitchen had three faces in it. The three faces were the faces the answer was going to be answering to whenever the answer came.
"I'm chewing," Kain said again.
Sam tipped his head and went back out to the bar. Kain stayed in the kitchen a beat after Sam went out. Sasha picked up the knife and went back to the potato. Carol took her hand off Kain's shoulder and went back out the kitchen door toward her father at the wall.
The soup pot held its work. The smoked sausage at the rafter held its work. The cider in the cup Sasha had left on the counter for him a stretch back was still in the cup. Kain picked the cup up and drank.
He came out of the Kettle a piece troubled and walked the boards back to Sam's.
Will Martinson came past him along the boards going the other way, without a word and without a look.
Carol turned at the corner of the Kettle and started after her father, and then she stopped, and then she came back along the boards to Kain at the rail.
"Kain."
"Carol."
"Take me to the dungeon."
The asking came out low and held the weight Carol's asking held when she had thought a thing through before the asking and wasn't going to ask twice.
"Carol."
"The gryphon was a phantom in this town for a stretch before you brought it back broken to lay across the green.
I sat in my father's kitchen and I waited on news of it and the news that came came after the kill.
I wasn't going to ask to go up the ridge then.
I'm asking to go up the ridge now. I want my own eyes on the country.
I don't want it living in my head as a thing I haven't looked at. "
"When."
"Three days."
"I'll come past for you in the morning."
Carol's mouth opened on a thing and the thing held in her throat the way it had at the top of the porch steps the night of the cold frame. The thing didn't come out, and the mouth closed on it.
"Three days," she said instead.
Carol turned and went back along the boards after Will. Kain rested a hand on the rail a beat before he untied Roan.