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Chapter 83: The Northern Coachman

Winter was the dead time for most of the north — the Hermes Plateau especially, where the Months of the Demons drove people indoors and kept them there, and hunger was simply the second season. But for “False Leg” White, winter meant work.

Every year the Church’s envoy came to his door in the first weeks of cold and offered the same arrangement: a run to the western border of the kingdom, collecting orphans from the towns along the route, delivering them to the Old Holy City. Twenty silver royals per trip. Good money for a man whose broken legs had ended his career with the count’s house and left him with his brass-fitted cane and a reputation as the most reliable coachman in three counties.

This should be the last run of the season.

“Your honor, please go back inside. The wind cuts sharper than it looks.”

The envoy shook his head and took a long pull from his jug. He was a broad man, comfortable in cold weather in the way that people become comfortable only after years of choosing it. “In the New Holy City it’s worse than this. At the plateau, armor and leather aren’t enough — the cold comes through every gap and finds you. Without the cold pills, ordinary men don’t survive the winter there.”

“I’ve heard as much,” White said, meaning it. He had never been to the New Holy City and did not plan to visit. “Your gloves — those are from the wolves in the western borderlands, aren’t they?”

The envoy looked at his hands. “You noticed that?”

“Thirty years, my lord.” White let the pride sit in his voice without apology. “First for the baron, then the countess, then the Wolfsheart Kingdom’s little princess. If the accident hadn’t taken my legs, I’d probably still be carrying furs and silverware between the kingdoms. Jewelry from the Eternal Winter, handicrafts from the fjords — they couldn’t get enough of it and I could never deliver fast enough.”

“The accident,” the envoy said. “Is that how you got the name?”

“Refugee riot.” White spat to the side. “The thugs wanted the carriage and anything in it that could feed them. I drove the horses through them to save the countess. The horse panicked, threw me, the carriage went over.” He knocked his hand against the brass fitting on his cane. “Countess climbed out through the cushions with a few bruises and walked away without looking back. I dragged myself home on a broken leg.” He paused. “Count’s house dismissed me a month later. Said I couldn’t drive anymore.”

“God did not abandon you,” the envoy said. “Now you drive for the Church.”

“Yes, sir,” White said. And inside thought: If God were merciful, he wouldn’t have let me be on that road at all.

A girl’s voice from the back: “We need a pause.”

White pulled the reins and felt the horses slow. The envoy climbed down from the bench and went around to the rear of the carriage. A crack of sound — a strap against wood or skin, White did not look — and then the envoy returned and settled back beside him.

“Go.”

White shook the reins. “Brace yourselves, we’re moving again.”

The road ran northeast through country White knew well — pine forest thinning as it rose toward the plateau, settlements small enough to clear in a single morning. The envoy talked about the route, about the numbers of orphans taken in per season, about the shortages that drove families to surrender children to the Church rather than watch them starve. Church members alone were not enough to transport them; good-reputation coachmen were needed.

“Your predecessor praised your work,” the envoy said. “You have done well.”

“It’s a privilege to be part of a good deed,” White said.

He meant it, mostly. He had thought about it before, in the long hours of driving when there was nothing to look at but road. The children had to endure the journey — the cold, the stops, whatever else the envoy decided — but at the end of it there was the monastery, and the monastery meant food and a roof and the reasonable expectation of not dying in winter. Whatever the cost of the passage, the destination was better than what they’d left behind.

Being alive is the greatest happiness.

They reached a town at dusk — one White had stopped at before, where an inn kept a yard large enough for a carriage. He bought sweet potato porridge with coins from the Church’s purse and watched the children divide it. He asked for bread and butter at the bar inside, ate it, went up to his room.

Late in the evening he heard voices from the yard. He went to the window and lifted the curtain.

The envoy, returned from wherever he’d been. Opening the carriage door. Two children — girls — brought out and handed to two people in aristocratic clothing who were waiting beside the vehicle.

White let the curtain fall.

Not the first time. He had seen it before on previous runs, or something like it. He thought about it for a moment, and then thought about the monastery, and the food, and the roof. Sometimes the cost was higher on the way there. That was how it worked. The destination was still the same.

He went to sleep.

In the morning they drove on, and reached the Old Holy City two hours early. Other carriages were already unloading. The envoy handed him the leather purse — twenty silver royals, same as always — and dismissed him with a wave.

White counted the coins twice. Correct.

He looked around the yard at the other coachmen. Some of them had faces he didn’t recognize — from other kingdoms, maybe, given the route markings on their carriage sides. He looked at the children coming down from the carriages and realized, without quite meaning to, that they were all girls. Every carriage. All girls.

When the church collects orphans, do they only take girls?

The thought sat in him for a moment, solid and unpleasant, a thing with edges. Then he shook his head, tucked the purse inside his coat, and started the journey home.

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