Epilogue: The River Does Not Insist

The town slept. The stream, out of practice, talked to itself in the dark, finding its way over stones it had not touched in fifty years. The sound of it ran under every dream in Onner's Bridge that night like a thread pulled through cloth. On the step of the Temple of Hudor, at the hour when even the Dry Toast was dark, Mother Vess watered her urns. The watering can poured. It had been pouring for some time, longer than any can holds, a thin silver line in the moonlight, and the urns stood full to their brims and drinking. Something green had come up in the nearest one since sundown that had no business being up before spring. None of this was remarked upon, because there was no one in the square to remark, except the knight. Lord Daniels stood at the foot of the temple steps, gleaming. There was no moon side to him and no dark side. The light came off the armor evenly, from everywhere, sourced from nothing: a man-shaped patience shining quietly in an empty square. His horse was down in the channel, standing in the new stream to the fetlocks, drinking with its reins on its neck. The water parted around its legs in the wrong direction. The horse did not care. No one had ever asked the horse anything. "She shows the signs," said Lord Daniels. "So did her father." The can poured. "And look where that got him." "He did bring prosperity and ale to the region." "Don't forget the elven wine in the services." Mother Vess glanced up from the urns and winked, an event which would have required, from anyone who had ever sat through one of her sermons on the virtue of diminished expectations, several days of quiet…