Corin went walking on the third afternoon because the alternative was sitting down. Odell had sent them off at two, on the grounds that the loading floor was clear and the grain would not arrive until Thursday and there was genuinely nothing left that eight people could usefully do, and the others had scattered gratefully in various directions. Finn and the children had gone somewhere that involved shouting. Briar had gone back to the ledgers, which Corin suspected had very little to do with ledgers. Corin had walked upstream along the beck without deciding to, and had kept walking, and had found an old man sitting on a flat stone with his boots off and his feet in the water.
RUF: You're one of the students.
COR: I am.
RUF: You've been at Odell's.
COR: We have.
RUF: He'll not have said thank you properly.
COR: He said it several times.
RUF: Aye, he'll have said it. That's not the same as saying it properly. Sit down, you're blocking my light.
Corin sat down. He did it because he could not immediately think of a reason not to, and because he had been walking for forty minutes with nowhere to walk to, and because the old man had not asked so much as instructed. The beck ran shallow and fast over stones. It was, Corin registered with mild surprise, extremely loud up close.
RUF: Rufus Hale.
COR: Corin Ashby.
RUF: Ashby.
COR: Yes.
RUF: Castelgard name, that.
COR: It is.
RUF: Long way from Castelgard.
COR: Four days by coach.
RUF: I've never been.
He said it without any particular feeling about it, the way a person states that they have never been to the far side of the moon.
RUF: Been up to Solmere twice. Once for a wedding and once for a funeral, and neither of them mine, and I've not been back since the second one. Forty-one years ago now.
COR: You've not left this village in forty-one years?
RUF: I've left it. I've walked the whole of these hills, every path in them, and there's a fair few. I've just not needed to be anywhere else while doing it.
They sat for a while. Corin found the silence considerably more difficult than the conversation, and was aware that this said something unflattering about him, and did not know what to do about it.
RUF: You walk like a man being chased.
COR: I beg your pardon?
RUF: Watched you come up the path. Forty minutes upstream and never once looked at the water. That's not walking, lad, that's fleeing at a reasonable pace.
COR: I was thinking.
RUF: About what?
COR: About the mill, mostly.
RUF: What about it?
Corin considered deflecting. He was not entirely certain why he did not.
COR: That the platform will fill again by autumn. That Odell Crane is fifty-eight and carries more than I can. That his daughter has done four years of accounts at midnight because nobody wrote down a conversion table.
He looked at the water.
COR: That my family holds title to more land than this entire village sits on, and I have never once thought about who carries the sacks on any of it.
Rufus Hale said nothing for a moment.
RUF: That's a hard thing to notice.
COR: It's a late thing to notice.
RUF: Aye. Most people don't manage it at all. What is it you're going to do about it?
COR: I don't know.
RUF: That's honest.
COR: I've a great many plans. I've had them since I was twelve. I intend to go home, and I intend to hold our northern border, and I intend to be the sort of lord that people are glad to have.
RUF: And?
COR: And I have never, in a single one of those plans, included a person like Odell Crane. Not once. I have thought about soldiers and borders and the men who would ride with me, and I have never thought about the man who grinds the flour that feeds them.
He said it flatly.
COR: I've been planning to protect a province I have not, until this week, actually looked at.
Rufus pulled his feet out of the water and set them on the warm stone.
RUF: Can I tell you something you'll not want to hear?
COR: Apparently I'm here for it.
RUF: That's the good version.
COR: I'm sorry?
: You've noticed. That's the good version of this. There's a great many lords' sons who go their whole lives never noticing, and they're not wicked men, most of them, they're simply men who were never once made to carry anything. You've carried sacks for three days and you've noticed. That's not late. That's about as early as it ever happens.
COR: That's a considerably kinder assessment than I'd have given.
RUF: I've had forty-one years by this water and I've got fairly good at telling the difference between a man who's ashamed and a man who's simply been shown something.
They sat a while longer. The beck ran. Somewhere behind them, faintly, a child was shouting about something with enormous conviction.
COR: Does it bother you? That I'm sitting here having a revelation about your neighbours.
RUF: Not particularly.
COR: That seems generous.
RUF: It's not generous, it's practical. You'll go back to Castelgard in a year or two and you'll hold your border, and somewhere in the middle of it you'll remember an old man with his feet in a stream and a miller who wouldn't ask for help, and you'll make some small decision differently because of it.
He shrugged.
RUF: I'll never know which decision. Doesn't matter. It'll still have happened.
Corin stood eventually, and found his legs had stiffened, and discovered he had been sitting for over two hours.
COR: Thank you.
RUF: For what?
COR: I'm not entirely sure yet.
RUF: That's usually how it goes.
He waved a hand vaguely upstream, at the hills rising green behind the village.
RUF: If your lot want somewhere to go, there's caves up past the high pasture. Follow the beck to where it comes out of the rock and then keep going, there's a path, it's not hard if you're not stupid about it.
COR: Caves.
RUF: Three of them worth the walk. Two are just holes. The third one goes back a fair way and there's a chamber at the end that'll take the wind out of you.
COR: Is it safe?
RUF: It's a cave. It's as safe as you are sensible.
He put his boots back on.
RUF: Take the small one with the loud voice. He'll hate it and he'll not shut up about it for a year, which is the best possible outcome for everyone.