Chapter 3: Three | The Constable

The village of Carden had a constable, a market cross, and an inn with a roof that appeared to be losing a long argument with gravity. It did not have a wall, which in Lellander's estimation made it either very brave or very stupid, and twelve hundred years had taught him not to assume the first. He had not spoken to her since the fire. She had spoken to him eleven times. He had counted, because counting was a form of discipline and discipline was the only thing standing between him and the urge to seal her boots to the road. "Stay here," he said, outside the constable's house. "Why?" "Because I am asking you to." "You're not asking. You're telling. Those are different things. I know because people have been doing both to me for as long as I can remember, and the ones who tell usually have a worse reason than the ones who ask." He went inside. He spoke to the constable, a red-faced man with the build of a farmer and the manner of someone who had been given a badge and was still deciding what to do with it. He described the girl as a ward of Lankshyre, recently displaced, in need of temporary keeping. He left coin, enough for a week's board and a new pair of stockings, and instructions that she was not to leave the village until a proper inquiry could be made to the county. The constable wrote nothing down but nodded in a way that suggested he intended to. Lellander walked east. The road climbed out of Carden's valley through sheep country, stone walls and drainage ditches and hay that had never once dried properly on the rack, and by noon it had reached a stretch of gorse and shattered…