Stephanie Williams's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Henry stood at the waystation and told her the problem was Nathan's now. Stephanie held her ground. "Then I'll fix that too," she said. He gave a tired shrug and mounted his horse. "His district. His rules. You need bodies on this road, not one peddler a week." He rode off before she could answer. She stayed among the glowing willows and understood the true trouble. A body now and then would not hold a claim. Her sire wanted the road busy. She had emptied it and half-filled it back. She needed a reason for people to come. Vera Bole was mucking the stall when Stephanie found her. The horses ate quiet now, not frozen, just calm. Vera forked hay and grinned that gap-toothed grin. "You look like a girl short on visitors," she said, her laugh coming a beat late. "How do you draw travelers to a road they fear?" Stephanie asked. Vera leaned on her fork. "Same as any inn. Give them a reason to stop. Water. Shelter. A tale worth carrying home." She nodded down the willow road. "Word travels faster than feet." That night Stephanie walked to the market town at the road's far end. A red-eyed man stood on the corner in a chalk-scrawled board. He shouted about floods and years and rivers gone dry. People crossed the street to avoid him. Gideon Ash, someone muttered, banned from the square last week. Stephanie watched the crowd flinch and turn. Fear moved them. She had been fighting fear. She should have been steering it. She stepped close. "You want people to listen," she said. Gideon's red eyes fixed on her. "They won't. Council saw to that." "Preach on the willow road instead. Free ground. No council. Travelers pass there again." She held his stare. "Tell them the old danger left. Tell them the road is safe now. Tell them the stone waystation gives shelter and clean water." He studied her board, then her. "And what do you get." "I own the road," she said. "I want it walked." Gideon dropped a fact and stopped. "Floods come whether they walk or not." But he took the road. For a week he stood by the willows and called out to every cart. Safe passage. Rest at the waystation. Sweet water in the shade. The story spread the way Vera said it would. Peddlers came. Pilgrims came to hear the shouting preacher. Families stopped to water horses under the glowing branches. The willow road filled with steady traffic, day and night. Stephanie hunted the ones who wandered off after dark, careful, never near the crowds. Her ground fed her now. It fed her well. She sent Vera to her sire with the result, not the excuse. His district had a busy road again, and one childer holding it. But a full road meant witnesses. And Gideon Ash had started asking why so many travelers never reached the town on the other side.