The south track turned to ruts and shallow puddles that skimmed with ice and cracked under his boots. The marsh smell came up slow—cold mud and stale reeds—mixed with woodsmoke that drifted flat across the fields. Ryo shifted the pot from his left hand to his right when the handle bit into his palm. He adjusted the cloth packing in the toes of the borrowed boots. They rubbed less when he kept the pace even, so he did that and let the road pass under him.
He stopped once when the wind caught him square and found a low spot behind a hump of grass. He set the iron pot between two stones and took time to set the stones properly. He didn't heap wood. He picked dry twigs off the undersides of branches, not the tops, and shaved curls off a piece of kindling with the dull kitchen knife until he had a pile that would take a spark. Smoke came thin, then steady. He didn't push it faster than it wanted to go. When he had a small bed of coals, he put water in the pot and dropped in a handful of onion with a pinch of salt from a twist of cloth. He watched the first small bubbles under the surface. He did not call it a meal. He called it something warm.
A peat cart rattled past with its wheels muffled in turf and mud. The driver looked down at him. The man wore two coats and still shivered.
"You'll not get far on that if you're walking to the marsh," the driver said, nodding at the thin broth and the small fire.
"It's enough to get me to the next roof," Ryo said. He tasted the liquid and turned the pot a quarter turn so it heated evenly.
"Plenty of roofs that leak past the willow line," the man said. "Name's Corlan. You heading to work or to trouble?"
"Work," Ryo said. "I'm looking at a posting. Alehouse in Low Marsh. They say the roof needs pitch, the well's shallow, benches sound."
Corlan snorted softly. "Aye, that would be the old Low Marsh. Roof's worse than they say when the wind sits wrong. Hearth still draws, though. I hauled peat there last winter; cook smoked fish right over the coals and it didn't taste like soot. Owner died with a jug in his hand and his nephew's head's already in the next county. He'll take coin if you show him a hand that's not shaking."
"Good to know," Ryo said. He filled the man's cup with a ladle of hot broth when Corlan held it out.
Corlan took a slow drink and looked surprised at the taste for something so thin. "You cook like that on ditch wood, you'll be fine in Low Marsh," he said. He glanced down the road toward the mill. "Just mind the men they've got calling themselves collectors. They say they stand for a lord with a big stamp on his ring. I still say a stamp doesn't give you right to take what isn't offered."
"Collector?" Ryo said.
"Calls himself Brann," Corlan said. "Broad across the back, shirt too white for honest labor. Comes with two boys who look like they've never pulled a net, only a purse. He's set up at the mill road some days, calling it a toll. If you go by on the south track, you'll miss him unless he gets bored and comes looking. He came to Low Marsh last market and stood in the doorway of the alehouse until the old reeve's daughter told him to piss off with proper words. He laughed but he'll be back. Men like him don't hear the part where you say no."
Ryo watched the steam ghost off the surface of the pot. He took another taste. It was better for sitting, the onion settling into the water. He felt that same quiet place open in him as when he'd swept the manor floor—no push, no drag, just repetition done right.
He packed away the pot when he finished. He banked the coals and pressed wet mud over them with the heel of his boot, then sorted the twigs as if he'd be back. He wouldn't be, but the motion made his hands settle again.
Low Marsh announced itself with short thatch and board walls pale from damp. Reeds leaned against fences in bundles. Nets hung like old curtains from hooks nailed into posts. The track widened into a center that had once been flat and now listed a little toward a ditch. A small shrine with a broken capstone held a bowl of dried herbs. The posting board stood there, same crooked lean, fewer notices.
Ryo paused to read the old ones without moving them. There was a note asking for hands to lift a roof beam, a complaint about a butcher watering his pork, and the alehouse notice again. He folded it back and let it hang.
He went to the nearest door with a sign over it—a board with a carved goose. A woman with hair in a knotted wrap sat on a stool just inside, her hands busy unraveling line. She looked up and took in his pot, his boots, and the clean edge of his cloth around his neck.
"You're new," she said. "I know everyone who isn't new, and you aren't any of them."
"I'm looking to speak with whoever holds the deed to the alehouse," Ryo said. "I saw the notice."
"Dame Mara's office," the woman said, sticking her chin toward a low building with a slate roof patched in three colors. "She keeps the village books and stamps the writs. If you have a paper, she will read it. If you don't, she'll tell you you should. If you're buying, it's her nephew selling, so she'll scowl at both of you and then do what's needed because she hates a thing half-finished."
"Thank you," Ryo said.
"You're polite," the woman said, turning her attention back to the line. "Don't let them take that from you. Polite isn't weak here."
The slate-roofed building was really two cottages pushed together, the doorway made from the gap where chimneys would have met. Inside, the air smelled of oil and old paper. A woman in her middle years sat at a table, a ledger open, quill in hand. She had hands that looked like they knew rope and bread dough better than quills, and she used the quill without fuss anyway.
"You have business?" she asked without looking up.
"I'm Ryo," he said, and placed his papers on the table without letting them leave his fingers until she reached. "I saw the notice for the Low Marsh alehouse. I'd like to examine the property. If it suits, I'd like to purchase it."
She looked at the seal, then at him. "You read what you sign?"
"I do," he said.
"And you understand this paper says you're allowed to carry your own debts, not ours," she said, tapping the writ. "If you buy a roof with a hole in it, you bought the hole. If you buy a well, you keep it clean. If you sell beer that makes men piss blood, we'll hang you by your ankles until you swear never to do it again and then watch you while you make it safe."
"That seems fair," he said.
Her mouth pulled sideways. "I'm Mara," she said. "I keep the village regular. I'm also aunt to Joran, who holds the deed. He's a decent boy who thinks he needs city stone under his feet to breathe right. He's not wrong that the marsh will drown a man who fights the wrong way with it. Sit."
Ryo sat on the bench. The bench creaked but held. He kept his hands on his knees where she could see them. She flipped another ledger open and ran her finger down a list.
"The alehouse has no formal debts," she said. "It has nothing owed to the lord this quarter. We pay our tithe to Lord Halwick's steward at the market town. I have papers that say so. We've had a man from Lord Gareth stand at our mill road waving a writ at passing carts, but I don't answer to a writ I didn't witness and I won't see coin collected without mark or measure. If you buy the alehouse and that man turns up at your door, you send him to me. I'll tell him the same thing."
Ryo nodded. He thought about the kitchen heat at the manor and Matilde's hands red from scrubbing. He thought about what peace cost and what it didn't.
"May I see the alehouse?" he asked.
"You may," she said. She leaned back from the table and raised her voice without turning her head. "Joran!"
A young man stuck his head around a curtain. He had the quick eyes of someone who worked mostly outdoors and the pale skin of someone who didn't stay long when he came in. He wore a jacket that had been mended with care and not much skill.
"What?" he said.
"This is Ryo," Mara said. "He wants to see the alehouse. Walk him there. Answer his questions with the facts, not what you hope they are. Don't talk price until he's seen everything, and if you lie to me about anything he asks, I'll tell your mother exactly how you tried to sell her sister's work."
Joran lifted both hands. "I won't lie," he said. He eyed Ryo. "You look like you can read, so you'll want to read the deed yourself. That's fine with me. Come on."
The alehouse sat at the lowest point you could build on without calling it a pond. The thatch looked like a man who needed a barber and didn't know it. The door sagged on its leather hinges. The yard held a circle of old footprints where the last customers had stood and talked and gas ran down from the eaves to the ditch.
Joran pushed the door and it fought back, sticking until he leaned his shoulder into it. The room inside smelled of old ale, dried fish, and clean ash. That last smell mattered to Ryo. It meant the hearth burned hot enough to eat what it made. The benches were scarred but not cracked through. The tables rocked when he leaned on them until he found the right place to set a wedge under a leg.
"The roof leaks there," Joran said, pointing to a dark stain. "And there. And when the wind sits from the west, it leaks along that whole run. I was going to pitch it last summer but we had a run of sickness and the man with the pitch pot asked double."
Ryo walked the floor. He touched the wall where it met the floor to feel for damp. His finger came up clean. The window shutters hung straight. He went behind the counter. The shelf there had a worn spot where a hand had set a mug, again and again, without thinking. He put his own hand there and let the weight rest.
"Show me the well," Ryo said.
Joran took him out back. The well had a stone collar and a wooden lid. The lid's handle wobbled. The rope had been replaced within the year; the fibers hadn't gone grey. Ryo lifted the lid. The air above the water didn't smell of rot. He let a bucket down. He did not drop it. He set the rope around his waist and let it slide slow over his palms so the bucket didn't bang the sides. At the bottom, the bucket touched water and wobbled. He turned it gently until he felt it take weight. He drew it up without hurry. The rope sang in his hands.
He poured the first bucket over the side, letting the water wash the collar and the spill run clean. He drew another and smelled it. Cold and clear. He wet his lip and then took a mouthful, held it, swallowed, and waited for the taste to settle.
"Shallow but sweet," he said.
"Told you," Joran said, sounding relieved, as if the well's quality personally praised him. "We had to scrape it twice last summer when the draught came on, but the water didn't foul."
Ryo looked at the hearth. He knelt and put his hand into the ash bed. He picked up a pinch and rubbed it between his fingers. Fine, no grit. He rolled a bit of grass into a twist and set it where last year's soot had stained the stone. He lit the twist at the small coal he teased out from a burned knot, breath steady. Smoke curled up and vanished into the chimney without hesitation.
"It draws," Ryo said. He looked at the flue. "Chimney needs a sweep, but it draws."
Inside the kitchen area, a cracked pot sat with a chip in the rim and an old iron hook hung over the fire. A rack against the wall held spoons, the same kind Matilde favored. He ran his thumb along the edge of one and found no splinters.
Joran watched him with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. "So," he said. "You thinking you'll take it? I don't want to still be here when the thaw comes. The river floods the low road and the whole place gets stuck in until it drains, and I can't take another spring watching the fields turn to mirror. I know some folk love it. My uncle did. He liked the way the air gets when the geese come in, he said it made his head quiet. I hear only frogs and the sound puts knots in me."
Ryo stood in the middle of the taproom and looked at the hearth. He listened to the silence in the room. The walls didn't shiver when a cart passed outside. The bench, once wedged, didn't rock anymore. He set his hand on the bar again.
He said, "What's your price?"
Joran swallowed. "Three silver and a half," he said, too fast. "It's worth five but I'm not a fool. The well's shallow. Roof's a job. Hearth works. Papers are clean behind. I'll show you. That's the price."
Ryo thought about the salt in his pouch and the way his coins sounded when he turned them. He knew what he had. He knew what a roof cost, not from here but from places where men kept ledgers. He didn't plan to haggle for the sport of it. He counted the jobs he'd have to do before he could pour a cup for money. He also thought about the man Corlan had named and the way Mara had said "send him to me."
"Show me the papers," Ryo said.
They went back to Mara's table. She had already set out the deed and the last two tithe receipts. Ryo read each line. He traced his finger down the edges of the script to make sure there were no additions cramped into margins. He looked at the seal impressions and the little error in the steward's hand that repeated on both—an ink blot where his pen always caught on the edge of a capital H.
Mara watched him read without comment. Joran sat on his hands and shifted on the bench until Mara reached over and cracked his knee with her knuckles. He stopped moving.
"The roof will need pitch and reed cutting," Ryo said finally. "I'll need to hire hands for a day and feed them. The well will need a scrape before summer. The door needs rehanging. I'll need to clean the place from floor to beams. I'll pay two silver and a quarter now. If, when the roof is patched and the license to pour is signed by you and the reeve at market, the papers are clean as these and no claim is made against the property, I'll bring another silver at the next market day. If someone comes with a claim I don't know about, I bring nothing, and we talk again." He paused. "I will not hand over the second coin if I'm paying a man who calls himself a collector with no mark to stand on."
Joran's mouth opened. "Two and a quarter now? That leaves me with less than I thought, and the city won't—"
Mara cut him off with a look. "You have coin in your belt already from the nets and from the cured fish you sold in the fall, you just don't like the number you see when you count," she said. "And you don't get to sell the house for the cost of the roof I patch every other year with men who are your neighbors. You'll take two and a quarter now if it's honest, because it's better than two in a month when your nerves are worse."
Joran glared at the table, then let it out in a breath. "Two and a quarter now," he said. "Another silver at market. If no claim."
Ryo nodded. He counted the coins into Mara's hand, not Joran's. She did not flinch at the way the small pile looked. She wrote a receipt with the same steady script and pressed it with a village stamp. She handed it to him.
"You haven't bought it yet," she said, as if she could hear his thoughts aligning to a counter and a clean floor. "You've set the first stone. The rest still needs laying. I'll give you the key to the door now. You can clean. You cannot pour a cup for coin until I stamp the license and the reeve in market town acknowledges it when I present the names. If you pour, you pour for neighbors and pay in sweat and help before you take a copper. Do you understand me?"
"I do," Ryo said. The key was iron and old, teeth worn shiny where a hundred turns had polished it. It felt correct in his hand.
A shadow crossed the doorway. The air in the room changed, not colder, just more deliberate, as if someone had decided what the next minute would be. Ryo turned and saw a broad man standing in the frame, one hand on the lintel like he wanted the wood to remember it had been touched. Two thinner men stood behind him the way dogs stand just past a shepherd's heel.
"Afternoon," the man said. He showed his teeth with no humor in them. "Dame Mara. I thought I'd try again when you weren't so busy with the charity barrel."
Mara did not stand. She did not look surprised. "You can try again every day until the frogs start singing, Brann," she said. "The answer will still be that I don't collect coin against a writ I didn't see signed."
Brann's eyes slid to Ryo and took him in the way a man sizes a cut of meat. "New face," he said. "You city or country? You don't smell like fish."
"I'm nothing," Ryo said. "I'm looking at a building."
"Alehouse," Brann said, and nodded toward Joran. "He's selling his uncle's hole in the ground. You buying a hole, you pay the road share when you start pulling coin out of it. Lord Gareth takes care of his roads. We collect so the roads stay safe."
Mara tapped the ledger with the butt of her quill. "We pay Lord Halwick's steward, like we always have," she said. "The road to the mill is not your lord's to claim. You stand there on legs that don't have the right to be in my doorway telling my folk to hand over coin, and you expect me to do the tally for you? You're either bold or thick. I haven't made up my mind which."
Brann smiled again. It looked more like a man trying to remember how. "You can wag your tongue all you like," he said. He looked at Ryo again. "When you open, I'll be in your doorway. You hand me a jug to taste and two coppers a day for the road. One jug because I'm thirsty, two coppers because I make sure the wrong sort don't come through your windows at night. Or you can hope the night watchers here kick out the right door when they hear glass and singing."
Ryo met his eyes without changing his face. He listened to the details—two coppers a day, a jug without paying. He listened to the timing—when you open, not now. He watched the two thin men behind him shift their weight like boys who wanted to impress someone and didn't know how.
"What writ will you show me when you come," Ryo asked quietly, "so I can mark the amount against the collector's name in my book?"
Brann tilted his head. "You'll have your book ready?" he asked.
"I write down who I hand my money to," Ryo said. "It saves me trouble when someone else asks for the same coin."
Brann's teeth flashed again. "I'll show you a writ when I show you a writ," he said. "You'll know me by my face. That's enough for you now. Get your kettles hung and your roof patched. First night you pour for coin, I'll be in your doorway. We'll see if your book likes my name."
He turned without waiting for a dismissal. The two boys followed, making sure to look at Ryo like they had memorized him. They had not, but they'd try.
Ryo watched the door close. The room eased a fraction. Mara let out a breath through her nose like someone who had been holding a weight against a shoulder and was pleased to put it down for a second.
"He'll come," she said. "He's as predictable as the thaw. You heard him. He wants coin and beer and to be seen while he takes it. Keep your head. We'll do this by the steps we set. You'll clean. You'll fix the roof. You'll get your license. If he comes before that, you send him to me."
Ryo nodded. He slid the key into his pocket. He looked down at the quill's scratch across the paper and the slow curve of his own name in the receipt. He had put his weight on this road. It would hold if he walked the way he meant to.
"Can I use your broom?" he asked.
Mara blinked and then barked a short laugh that had no joke in it, just a release. "There's a broom leaning under the alehouse bar," she said. "It'll shed more straw than it will pick up the first day. Use it anyway. You'll find the rhythm. You always do, the ones who last."
He went back to the alehouse with the key heavy in his pocket. The door resisted less when he set his shoulder to it. He pushed it open, stood inside, and closed it with his hand on the latch so it wouldn't bang. He listened to the quiet of his own space for the first time.
He set the pot on the hearth. He didn't light a fire yet. He walked to the corner with the darkest stain and, with his thumb, pressed a flake of old pitch that had curled from the beam. It yielded. Work, not a problem. He took the broom out from under the bar. The bristles were tired. He dipped them in a bucket until the end just darkened and went to the far wall.
He began to sweep along the grain.
Something like a note slid under a door in the back of his head, not words so much as a settled feeling.
Hearth: recognizes keeper.
He did not chase the thought. He swept another lane, then another, and watched the lines of dust pull away from where people would set their feet.
As the first pale piles gathered along the doorway, a hard rap sounded against the sagging door—three quick knocks, a pause, then two. Ryo set the broom upright and listened. A girl's voice came through the wood, too bright and quick to carry fear but edged with nerves all the same. "Hello? I heard someone bought the place. If you need help for coin or bread, I can work. If you don't open the door, I'm going to come in anyway because I'm tired of men saying wait."