The settlement on the southwestern edge of Sun Harvest’s territory was called Stenfell.

Elara had visited it three times before. Once for the inquiry, once to deliver a mediation notice, and once on a day when she had told Alistair she needed to walk somewhere, and wasn’t sure where. He had not asked why.

She came back that afternoon slightly less tight in the shoulders than she had been that morning, and Alistair counted the day as a success without knowing what had happened in it.

The fourth visit was different.

Alistair walked with her most of the way. Not because she had asked, but because the morning had been quiet, and he had felt the pull of a man who wanted to see a place he hadn’t yet seen through the eyes of the person who had already seen it three times.

He didn’t say this. He just fell in beside her on the path, and she didn’t comment on it, and they walked together without speaking for the first half hour.

Eventually, Elara broke the silence.

"The miller is going to be at the grain hall."

"The one who cries on Tuesdays?"

"Yes."

"Is it Tuesday?"

"Yes."

Alistair glanced at her. The corner of her mouth had lifted, however, only slightly.

They reached Stenfell around midmorning.

It was smaller than he had expected, twenty-six buildings, a main street that ended at a well, and a grain hall with a wooden roof patched at the northern corner so recently that the patch was still lighter than the rest of the wood.

Elara went into the grain hall first. Alistair stayed outside.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. This was her work, and she knew the people, and the people knew her, and his presence would have turned the morning into a visit from Sun Harvest rather than from Elara.

Regardless, he wanted to see the place from the outside and to understand what she was doing when she did what she did in the settlements.

A woman came out of a building across the street, carrying a basket of cloth. She stopped when she saw Alistair, then kept walking, slower.

She didn’t recognize him. He could see that in her face.

She saw a tall man in grey standing outside the grain hall, decided he was probably a visitor, and chose to ignore him. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

He was honestly grateful for that. It was the first time in a long while that a stranger had looked at him and not known the name underneath the face.

Inside the grain hall, through the open door, Alistair could hear Elara’s voice.

Not the words, just the shape of it, calm and practical, the tone of someone having a conversation about grain storage with someone else who was equally interested in grain storage.

Someone laughed. It wasn’t Elara. It was a woman’s voice, older, slightly rough.

After a while, another voice joined in, higher, faster, and definitely arguing. Alistair could hear Elara responding.

She wasn’t winning the argument. She wasn’t losing it either.

She was just having it, the way people have arguments about things that don’t have stakes beyond the argument itself.

’She’s never had that before,’ Alistair thought. ’An argument that is only the thing it is.’

He stood in the grey sun outside the grain hall and waited.

Eventually, Elara came out.

She looked slightly different, and not in any way he could have pointed to.

Still, there was a quieter thing at the edges of her face, the same quiet thing he had seen the day she told Due the miller was real.

They walked back together.

The path ran east through low dry grass, and the sun did what the sun did in the grey world; it was just light, not color, and the warmth on the side of Alistair’s face was the only part of it that felt like anything.

He let them walk in silence for most of the way.

About a mile from the base, however, he finally said it.

"You’ve been in every settlement since the inquiry opened."

She nodded.

"The people there, they’re starting to know your name." A pause. "Not Vance. Yours."

He was looking ahead, not at her. It was easier to say things when he was looking ahead.

She didn’t respond for a long time. Long enough that he wondered whether he had misread the moment and should have kept walking without saying it.

Finally, "Is that a problem?"

"No." He kept walking. "I wanted to say it while it was still new."

She didn’t say anything else, and neither did he.

They walked the rest of the way to the base, and when they got there, Elara went straight to her notebook and wrote something at the top of a fresh page before doing anything else.

Alistair watched her write it. He didn’t ask what it was.

Due looked up from his own work. He looked at Elara, then at Alistair, then back at what Elara was writing. He didn’t say anything, going back to mapping settlement distances.

A few minutes later, Elara set her pen down and looked at the ceiling.

"Alistair."

"Mm."

"The woman in the grain hall today. Her name is Maren. She argued with me about water routing for nearly twenty minutes, because she thought I was wrong about the seasonal channel structure."

"Were you wrong?"

"Partially. I was applying the Redrun mediation template to a settlement with a different terrain slope, and she caught the error before Due would have caught it." Elara’s expression softened. "She has never worked with a faction before. She has worked with water her entire life. She was right, and I was wrong, and I told her so, and she told me she expected the apology, because she thought I looked like someone who could tolerate being wrong."

Due looked up from his mapping.

"She said what?"

"She said I looked like someone who could tolerate being wrong. Casually. It was the highest compliment I have been paid in my adult life, and the woman who paid it to me did not know she was paying it."

Due set his pen down.

"I need to meet her."

"You will. She has already told Beska she will come to the next mediation session in Redrun to observe. She wants to see how you handle the farmers there."

Silas, from the far side of the room, "She’s auditing us."

"She is auditing us," Elara confirmed. "And she is doing it as a favor, because she thinks we are worth auditing before she decides whether to trust us."

Due was silent for a long moment.

"Elara," he said eventually.

"Yes."

"Your notebook. The one you have been keeping." A pause. "When you are ready, I would like to read it."

Elara looked at him. She didn’t look surprised. She looked like a woman who had been waiting for him to ask.

"You can read it now."

She slid the notebook across the table.

Due took it. He opened it to the first page and began to read. Alistair watched his face go through the stages Due’s face went through when he was reading something better than he had expected, first the slight narrowing of the eyes, then the pause at the third page, then a careful re-reading of one section, then the quiet acceptance that what he had suspected was accurate.

He closed the notebook after five minutes.

"This is better than what I would have asked you to build," he said.

"I know."

"You know?"

"I’ve been listening to you talk about the civic framework for two weeks. I knew what you were going to need before you did, so I started the notebook because I wanted to be ready when you asked." Elara picked up her pen again. "I wasn’t sure you would ask. I thought you might just write the framework yourself and not notice that I had already done part of it."

"I would have noticed."

"I know. Eventually."

Due’s eyes narrowed with something close to amusement. It was the second time in two days, and Alistair was definitely going to start counting.

That was when the horn sounded outside.

Two short blasts, low and clipped. Not an attack signal. A rider had come through the eastern gate, and whoever it was had ridden hard enough that the watch wanted Alistair to know before the man dismounted.

Alistair was already on his feet.

Due closed the notebook and slid it back across the table without looking down. Silas had stopped moving entirely. Elara’s hand stayed on her pen, but the pen wasn’t writing.

"East road," Due said quietly. "Therasia."

Alistair clicked his tongue once and walked toward the door.