Raven Meadows's Arc

Chapter 24 of 25

The ledger worked, but only halfway. Moira had written every task in it, yet the tasks still sat undone. A leak ran through a hut roof for two days. The barn needed a new hinge. Someone had to grind the herbs for the gnome's trade. Raven read the list and knew who should do each job, but the book didn't. It named the work. It didn't name the hands. Moira found her at the market stall, staring at a torn roof line no one had climbed to fix. "The list breaks the same way," Moira said. She flipped the ledger open. "Tasks here. But I don't know who can mend a roof. So it waits. Meanwhile the beaver's cousin sits by the fire doing nothing, and he framed houses for years." Raven's jaw tightened. "You're telling me capable people are just standing around." "Yes. Because no one wrote down what they can do." Moira didn't soften it. "You need a second book. Skills, not chores." Raven had seen a hall like that once in the lower market, where they logged every trade and apprentice. She'd hated the place. Cold, official, full of stamps. But the idea held. She sent word through the huts and the longhouse. By afternoon a line formed at the stall, longer than the food line. Hilda Green stood at the front, arms crossed over her peasant apron. She'd hauled her supply cart in that morning and stayed to watch. "You'll get liars," she said flatly. "Half will claim skills they don't have to jump the work queue. I've seen it. Every market has a man who swears he's a cooper." Raven hadn't thought of that. She looked at the ledger, then at the crowd. "Then we test them. Small jobs first. If they can't, it comes out." "Slow," Hilda said. "But honest. Honest is slow." She uncrossed her arms. "I'll vouch for the ones I traded with in Voglenauch. That's four you can trust straight off." Moira wrote through the afternoon. She asked each person one thing: what can you do with your hands. She wrote the plain answer. A tanner. Two who could split shingles. The beaver's cousin, who'd framed twenty houses. A woman who set bone. Raven watched the leak-roofed hut. By dusk a man with a hammer climbed it, matched to the job from the book. The leak stopped. Moira closed the ledger. "Now the work finds the hand," she said. "Not you." Raven should have felt lighter. She did, mostly. But she looked at the long list of names and skills, all of it written in one book, held by two women. Every strong pair of hands in the haven was now recorded on a single page. She thought of the barn, and the lock, and Garrick's warning. A book this useful was worth stealing. And the lower market already knew her walls held something they wanted.