Chapter 80: Beyond the Oasis
The morning after Osren’s visit, Due started making notes.
He didn’t announce he was making them. Alistair noticed only because Due’s hands, which had been resting for the first ti in weeks, picked up a pen and began moving again. It wasn’t the fast obligation-managent writing Due had done through the inquiry weeks, however. This was slower, and steadier, like he was building sothing that wasn’t urgent.
"What is that?" asked Alistair.
"Infrastructure," Due replied, not looking up.
Alistair pulled a chair over and sat across from him.
"Explain."
Due paused. He set his pen down, then adjusted his collar.
"The civilian settlents whose Sovereign Debt contracts are unraveling are going to need sothing to replace what Caldren built. I ntioned it four nights ago, but I didn’t say what I’d do about it because I didn’t know yet. Now, eventually, I’m starting to know." He tapped the paper. "We can’t run forty-three settlents. We don’t have the mbers or the capability. What we can do is build a frawork that individual settlents can use to run themselves, with Sun Harvest available for diation when sothing breaks."
"A frawork," Alistair repeated.
"Civic docuntation. Template contracts that don’t include living Characteristic hooks, and dispute resolution procedures that don’t require my presence to function." Due adjusted his collar again. "A faction that requires my personal attention to work is a faction that ends when I’m unavailable. I need sothing that works when I’m not in the room."
Alistair was quiet for a mont.
’He’s been thinking about this since before the inquiry,’ Alistair thought. ’Probably since the cave fall, and he’s only writing it down now because he finally has a morning where nothing else is demanding his attention.’
"Can it work?" asked Alistair.
"With docuntation, yes. Elara is already doing it instinctively in the settlents, though she just doesn’t know she’s building a process." Due looked up. "She takes notes every ti she visits one. Not strategic notes, but administrative ones. Patterns that keep repeating, questions people keep asking. I’ve seen her notebook three tis. She thinks she’s keeping track for her own benefit, but she’s actually building a civic infrastructure draft without realizing it."
"Does she know?"
"No."
"Are you going to tell her?"
"Eventually. I’d like her to finish the draft she doesn’t know she’s writing before I complint her for writing it." Due’s mouth twitched slightly. "The complint will make her self-conscious, and self-consciousness will make her worse at it."
Alistair was reluctantly amused. It was the most relaxed Due had looked in weeks. Loose, unhurried, working on sothing he cared about with no deadline pressing him.
Before the conversation could continue, Silas ca in from the periter carrying a bag. He set it on the table without ceremony.
The bag had four apples in it.
"I brought apples," said Silas.
Nobody said anything for a mont.
"Where did you get apples?" asked Due.
"A farr. Half a mile east of the base. He was walking past the periter with a cart, and he offered
apples."
"Why did he offer you apples?"
"He said Sun Harvest did sothing about the water routing in his mother’s settlent, and his mother asked him to bring us apples if he ever passed this way."
Due’s eyes narrowed slightly. He had the look of a man whose calculations had just been interrupted by information that didn’t fit the equations he’d been running.
"The water routing dispute was settled for two families," said Due slowly. "Not for a settlent."
"The farr said his mother lives in the settlent where the precedent is being cited," replied Silas. "Apparently, the precedent is being cited because it settled an argunt that had been making the settlent miserable for three years. He said his mother told him to bring us apples because the argunt was making the miller cry every Tuesday, and she’s tired of the miller crying."
Elara, who had co in from the periter behind Silas and had been listening to the last three sentences, laughed.
It was a small laugh, barely a sound, but Alistair heard it, and Due heard it, and Silas heard it. All three of them went very still for a mont, because Elara laughing was rare, and Elara laughing freely was rarer, and Elara laughing at the image of a miller crying every Tuesday was a version of her none of them had ever heard.
"That’s real," said Elara.
"The apples?" asked Silas.
"The miller. I know him. He does cry every Tuesday, and it’s not connected to water routing." She paused. "Or, it wasn’t. Still, I can see how soone in the settlent would have decided that it was."
Due picked up an apple and looked at it.
"I am going to add this to the civic infrastructure draft," he said.
"The apples?" asked Silas.
"The miller. The premise that our diation work has second-order effects we aren’t tracking. We need to track those effects, because they are going to matter more than the individual dispute resolutions in the long run." Due set the apple down. "I am honestly impressed that the first piece of evidence for this ca in the form of fruit."
Silas’s lips twitched, barely.
Alistair took one of the apples and bit into it. It was good, and not remarkable, just a good apple brought by a farr whose mother was tired of a crying miller, from a settlent that had cited a Sun Harvest ruling as precedent for its own problem.
’This is the work,’ Alistair thought. ’Not the fights, not the dispatches. This. A farr with apples, a settlent that cited a precedent, and a miller who is going to stop crying on Tuesdays.’
He didn’t say it out loud.
Elara sat down at the table. She pulled out her notebook, the one Due had been watching her keep, and opened it to a fresh page. She wrote sothing at the top, and Alistair couldn’t see what it was.
"What are you writing?" asked Silas.
"The miller."
Silas looked at Due. Due was looking at the apple. Neither of them said anything.
Seeing this, Alistair caught the expression on Due’s face. Quiet, internal, like his draft had just gotten a new section before he’d finished the current one. And Alistair was honestly delighted by how pleased Due was allowing himself to look about it.
"Due," said Alistair.
"Mm."
"Are you happy?"
Due set the apple down. He adjusted his collar, then looked at the ceiling for a mont.
"I am," he said finally. "I’ll get over it in about ten minutes, because we have a Sovereign Record dispatch arriving this afternoon and I suspect it will contain sothing that requires
to be less happy. Until then, yes."
"Good."
The dispatch arrived two hours later.
Due read it standing. His expression went through the sa three stages it had gone through with Caldren’s challenge, rapid, professional, before landing on a shape that ant the morning had just decided on itself.
"Three continental factions," said Due.
Alistair stood up imdiately.
"They’ve formally requested information on our registration docuntation. Through Echelon channels. Not aggressive, just curious." Due looked up from the paper. "However, the Record published it in the continental section, which ans every faction on the continent now knows three continental factions are curious about us."
"Nas?" asked Alistair.
"Two of them appear in the continental section regularly for conflict-related coverage. The third, I don’t recognize. It’s old, older than Therasia, older than Elysium. The kind of faction that doesn’t show up in Record dispatches unless sothing has moved them to show up."
Due looked at the paper again.
"This is what Caldren ant."
"I know," replied Alistair.
"Are we ready for it?"
Alistair looked at the apple on the table, then at the notebook Elara was writing in. Silas sat quietly at the edge of the room, where he sat when he wanted to be present without making a production of it.
His gaze returned to the dispatch.
"We’re going to find out," Alistair said.
Outside, the wind moved through the Oasis of Grain, indifferent to what had just been printed onto thin dissolving paper. For the first ti since Sun Harvest had planted its symbol on the territory’s edge, Alistair felt the weight of being watched by people who had never set foot here.
At that mont, his jaw tightened.
Three factions. Two he could trace. One older than the kingdoms that had built this continent, and the dispatch had not given its na.
Eventually, it would.
Just not today.
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