Standing in the small front room of the half rebuilt home, Wallan looked out as the final workmen from Caerley made their way from the mill back onto the old road back to town. The windows in the small bedroom upstairs were glazed with fine glass, but every room downstairs had two layers of well made and expertly fitted shutters. Most of them were open today to allow the breeze to move through the house.

  He stood, drinking his tea, contemplating the idea of dinner after a long day of working with the laborers hired by the Altamens to rebuild the mill and the miller’s house. The teams of workers arrived every morning, worked through the day, and then either rode back on the now emptied supply wagons, or just ambled up the road chatting amongst themselves.

  The house itself was mostly finished, Wallan and the two roofers having finished with the retiling of the roof just an hour earlier. Most of the work had shifted fully over to completing the mill this last week. The mill wheel was due to be mounted on its new axle in the next few days. The mill race itself ran fast and clear. Wallan admitted to himself he was excited to see it all in motion once they finished rebuilding the mill.

  The steaming cup of tea in his hands just below his chin smelled of handflowers and razorberries. It was tangy in a way he sometimes wished other foods could be. He inhaled deeply, letting the scents calm his racing mind.

  Wallan, newly elevated to his post as Hadestar, the lowest level of nobility of the kingdom, unlanded but still responsible to the Crown and kingdom. Though, through a calculated act of regional politics, Wallan had been assigned the duties of a very specific landholder.

  The old mill had been destroyed, he had heard, the season before he had arrived in Caerley. In a raid by the Hearainan. Supposedly, the People of the Forests had swept down from the foothills of the mountains, burned down the mill, and killed the miller and his wife. There were also rumors that the mill’s store of grain had been stolen. This aspect of the local rumors sat wrong for Wallan. The retelling after retelling in the town had centered around the grain theft. It confused him greatly, though he never questioned it publicly, being a better listener than a speaker made him more greatly appreciated by the average Caerly pub crowd.

  But, Wallan had learned at the Golden Tower that the Hearainan did not eat anything made with flour, so doubted they had made off with the grain themselves. Though, as he thought about it, maybe they had other uses for the grain, if not to just eat it without making it into flour first. Almost a month after first hearing the story, one off duty corporal drinking in the Inn had suggested they took the grain just to keep humans from having the resource. Wallan had nodded at that.

  While he hadn’t thought of the theft in those terms, he had seen several commanders at the front who thought in those terms. He had been used to destroy both fields and forests solely to keep the enemy from having access to those resources.

  But now, Wallan stood in the decently sized house that he was now expected to live in, and once the mill that served the region had been repaired he would be put in charge of the operations of that mill. He would be The Miller. And he would live in the Miller’s House.

  It was all a little much.

  A sip of his tea brought his thoughts back into focus.

  He had expected to become a scribner, writing letters and doing clerical work by contract, while making maps on the side. An anonymous life, as such things were counted. Wallan had even been looking for a small shopfront to purchase, with a small apartment above it to live in, before the seasonal fieldwork had come up. Before being asked, as a neutral party (who could read and do sums), to take a fresh look at the harvest reports. Things had spiraled madly out of control from there.

  Now he was looking at a future as the new miller to the entire region, because anyone proposed to run the new mill by any of the current Tarestars would be suspect, and voted down by the other members of the Altamens, the ruling landholders of the region. He would also be expected to teach.

  They wanted him to run a small school for the children of the lower ranks of the nobility who may not be able to hire tutors for their children. He would also have some children with him who were coming from merchant class families. He didn’t know if he had the temperament to teach.

  Certainly not the temperament to teach children.

  Walking toward him, and his house, up the road from Caerly, the bulky and awkward form of Pollard. The old man had been the foreman in charge of the seasonal harvesters for the Tarestar and Tarestia of Southfield, Khorit and Chania. Though Wallan would never be so bold as to call them by their names without their titles. They had not gotten along, though Wallan had done his best to be a productive and conscientious member of the harvest crew on which he had worked.

  Pollard had been an old grump who liked having workers fear him. He held no title beyond “foreman” that Wallan had been aware of, yet some days the man had acted like he was a Tarestar. Wallan also suspected the man, and one or two other of the foremen, had been shorting the wages of some of the more vulnerable workers.

  But, Wallan felt like there was always a “but” lately, he only suspected it. He had no actual proof that he could bring to Tarestar Khorit. If he just brought his suspicions to the Tarestar, would he be believed? Workers like Shima and Tornela that he had worked with in the fields wouldn't testify against them. They couldn’t risk their jobs to report the abuses they suffered on those same jobs.

  He knew Shima, a widow, had four children. She could not risk losing that income.

  Wallan could feel his anger building. He could also feel the impotence of his own position, which churned the anger further. Wallan knew, as a Talent, that undue anger could lead to unexpected results. Being calm was taught as a foundation of skilled magic use.

  He wasn’t certain how people like Shima dealt with this impotent rage on a daily basis. But he outranked the old man now. Maybe the Tarestar and Tarestia would take his word over the foremen now? He doubted it.

  But it was worth considering.

  Watching the lumbering form of Pollard trudging up the road to his house, Wallan set his mug on the simple wooden slat table, and made his way to the front door to meet the man.

  Letting out a long sigh, he opened the front door.

  Standing within the shade of the small awning that extended past the door frame, he waited for his visitor to make his lumbering way up the last stretch from the road. Pollard looked out of sorts. Ruddy faced and sweating profusely in the mild late day temperatures.

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  …maybe the long walk was harder on the old man than I thought it would be… he thought. The mill was outside of Caerley proper, an hour’s slow walk from the west gate exiting the town.

  Once he had stopped in front of Wallan, the old man pulled an embarrassed face. He was looking like his plans to knock on the front door being spoiled had left him completely at a loss of what to do or say next. Pollard fidgeted. Wallan noticed the man’s sweat had soaked his blue tunic, and left the fabric a hanging mess draped about the outstanding girth of his belly.

  Finally, he looked up to Wallan’s face, and said in his usual, wheezing voice, “I’m not certain how I should be addressing you.” His face curled in on itself in vexation. “You worked for me a season ago, and now you…” The old man trailed off in frustration.

  Wallan wanted to let the man writhe, a fat worm on a rust hook of his own making. He then wondered why he disliked the man as much as he did; he had dealt with Masters at the Kuljat Amulajat, those Golden Towers of learning in the capital. He had been under the thumb of cruel and ignorant military commanders and officers who outranked him. But something about Pollard’s cruelty to those who had been laborers under him just made Wallan mad.

  “Well, Pollard,” he finally said, not allowing the man an honorific before his name, striking hard at the fact that he now vastly outranked the man. “I believe the form of address depends entirely on what business brings you here today.”

  Pollard stared at him now. Slack jawed in surprise. Maybe the older man had been expecting a softer, kinder greeting from the much younger man.

  “If you are here to talk with me for my role as Miller, then Miller Maduson. If you are here for an issue dealing with Royal business in the region, then Hadestar Maduson, or Hadestar Wallan will do. That title also works, socially, is no other topic presents itself. If, however, you have come to me to talk about the school, then Thidsear Wallan is at your service.”

  Bending slightly at the waist, he made a small bow to Pollard.

  Wallan had not been the best student of Court Ettiquite, but he knew enough to know what titles he should have and when. Now that he had titles, at least.

  Pollard looked down at his feat, wrapped in a fine pair of intricately woven shoes popular with the men of Caerley. Wallan thought they were oddly dainty feet for such a …large… man. The man in question shuffled those feet now, showing how incredibly uncomfortable he was.

  Wallan was fine with this. Pollard deserved a little ill comfort.

  His face was florid and sweating heavily in the late day light, Pollard finally found his voice. “I am very sorry to bother you today,” and here he looked panicked for a moment. “Thidsear Wallan. I have a granddaughter, Doutty.”

  He looked at Pollard, his eyebrows raised. He wanted to just say “Congratulations,” and be done with the man. Pollard began wringing his hands, and the sweat on his forehead began to drip down his face in rivulets, collecting on the edges of the old man’s jowls. Whatever this might concern had the foreman in an emotionally ragged state.

  Stepping outside into the late harvest season evening sun, it was the end of Oichid and the first of Naois was in two days. Wallan took a deep breath, enjoying the acidic scent of aged tannins on the breeze. “Come with me to the well, Pollard.” He paused slightly, “If you would.”

  Walking around to the left side of the house, Wallan stepped up to the low stone wall that marked a deep well made with three lobes, each pool a different depth and made for a different purpose. One to draw from for the use of the house. The second a wide, round trough, made for the watering of horses, usually the cart horses of those who came hauling sacks of grain, or bags of flour. And the third lobe, which had an awning to keep off the sun on hot days, made for the purpose of sitting on shaded benches and soaking one’s feet.

  It was an old custom, not often used these days; but Pollard was an old man who valued older ways. This was a gamble Wallan knew, to loosen the old man up, and make him more comfortable.

  Stepping up to the stone parapet, Wallan removed his shoes and loosened his leg wraps. Pollard looked at Wallan as though the younger man were performing some alien and unknown dance. As Wallan stepped into the shallow pool and settled himself onto one of the stone benches that circled the cool pool of water fed by the deep, central well.

  …this feels amazing… I wish I had thought to do this earlier… I may end every day until winter like this… he thought, letting a slow, long sigh escape his lips as he smiled.

  Looking back to where Pollard stood, “Will you join me? I’m certain the walk out here was long enough that you might need a soak.”

  “My lord…” And there it was. The man could only see his title now, and it was going to make talking with him like pulling scales from a lisk.

  “Please, Pollard, don’t make me a bad host.”

  Then Pollard looked horrified, as though the rumor that he had insulted a lord had already been bandied about at the local taverns, and he quickly fumbled about removing his shoes and taking a place at the bench opposite from Wallan. He hadn’t thought to roll up his pantlegs, and now the bottoms of his pants were wet.

  His discomfort didn’t look like it had lessened any, but now he was more embarrassed by soaking his feet and pants bottoms. “My… uhm. My lord. You …” he stumbled to an awkward halt again. “You will be opening a school.”

  “Yes.” Wallan simply agreed, looking directly at the man, eyes wide.

  Pollard looked down at his feet where they dangled in the water, his legs not quite long enough to let his feet reach the submerged stone of the well’s floor. “Thidsear Wallan…” he swallowed nervously. “My Doutty is a clever girl. Only eight years old now, but… She takes after her mother, and after my late wife.” He paused again.

  “When she works with her mother, or comes to work with me, you can see she is a thinker. Not a dull pebble, like some kids. She wants to know things.” He aggressively rubbed his meaty hands together in his anxiety. His voice was now thick with tears as the dust on his face from the road streaked. “Her father isn’t with us anymore, and my daughter has had to take work as a scullery. I… I try my best for them both, I do, Hadastar Wallan, and, but…” Holding back his tears, Pollard finally pushed through.

  “I know the school is for children of higher station than my Doutty, my lord, but please… I need to ask you to teach my granddaughter her letters and numbers. She can be more than what her mother has been reduced to. She can. And if she had her letters and numbers, maybe we could find her a place in a respectable trade. Something that has a future to it no matter if her husband someday died of the crawl.”

  Wallan flinched at it all, as Pollard slumped forward then, all of his energy spent. He had seen men in the army camp contract the crawl, and most died soon enough from it. The lucky ones did anyway.

  Wallan saw a bigger issue here, though. The man had just wanted his grandchild admitted to the school, and was worried to ask for what he saw as an impossible favor from someone of a higher caste. Wallan thought, then, of how Pollard had treated some of the women who had been in the same situation as his own daughter, women with children who had lost their husbands to ill fortune.

  He wanted to strike the man. He wanted to melt the old hypocrite where he sat, slumped and in tears. But, if he did, then Doutty and her mother would be even worse off than they already were. It would be Wallan’s own fault, and their lives would spiral down even worse than how they were living now.

  He closed his eyes. Taking a moment to center himself, letting go of his anger at the old fool.

  Opening his eyes, Wallan looked at his former foreman.

  “Pollard, I have a great deal of latitude in who I admit to the school, and I can take your granddaughter in as a student.” The relief and joy on the old, chubby face practically lit up as he heard the news.

  Wallan continued, “But, I will need help here at the mill. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have someone to help keep my house as I work on these projects for the Altamens.” He let the statement drop in between them like a brick loosed from a high wall.

  Pollard suddenly looked like he would move the very mountains themselves to fix Wallan’s problems.