All That Was Required

Late one summer, a letter arrives at the col bearing the road-council's seal. The council is reviewing every waystation it licenses on the great road, and an inspector is coming to decide whether the highest rest-house on the road is worth the keeping.

His name is Dov, and he is courteous, careful, and not unkind. He wants counts and columns: travellers served, beds filled, a value he can write in a ledger. What Toll keeps is harder to set down — bread in the morning, soup in the pot, a bed for whoever arrives, and a copper kettle always warm on its hook.

Now Toll must put into words what he has only ever known by doing it. And the winter, this year, is coming on hard.

A warm, quietly moving fantasy about worth, care, and the things that don't fit in a ledger.