I Won't Do This Alone

The morning work board had Eda's name written on it six times. Noah's medicine, the soup, the night log, the laundry, relaying the meeting, and even Cassian's meals. Instead of an eraser, Eda scraped her own name off with the flat side of a kitchen knife. "I love Noah. That's exactly why I won't be doing this alone."

The scraped ink dust fell onto the table.

In the family dining room, last night's soup bowl, an empty medicine bottle, and two households' worth of test papers sat piled together. It wasn't written who had made the board. Eda recognized the handwriting anyway. The task names were in Cassian's aide's hand, the times were added by the head housekeeper, and the names filled in last were Cassian's. All six slots read Eda.

Cassian had just come in from hauling night fuel. Coal dust clung to the shoulders of his coat, and the skin under his eyes was dark. He looked at the scraped-up board and his first words were:

"This is an emergency."

Eda set down the knife. The angrier she got, the calmer her hands became.

"I know that, Regent Cassian Reeven."

At the full name, Cassian's jaw tightened.

"That's exactly why this needs to change more, not less. If it waits until the emergency is over, my classes disappear and only this board is left."

"Classes can be made up."

"Three hours of northern law lessons missed yesterday. Today, two hours of medicine logs, one hour of laundry, one hour of relaying the meeting. On the days I make it up, Noah will still take his medicine and people will still eat soup."

Noah stood at the end of the table, looking at Eda's blank slots the way he'd looked at his own scraped-out name. He opened his mouth, but Eda spoke first.

"It's not your fault."

Noah closed his mouth. He didn't apologize or try to smooth things over on anyone's behalf.

Serena pulled the work board off the wall and laid it flat on the table.

"I'll record the refusal as valid information. Let's start by checking which tasks stop if Eda doesn't take them."

The head housekeeper and the kitchen staff exchanged glances. The memory of being punished for stepping into the question of who decided a noble family's medicine and meals still showed on their faces.

Maria wiped the moisture from her apron.

"The medicine just needs the physician's assistant to learn the timing. The soup is a matter of ladling out one extra bowl. Laundry is my area, but if bloody bandages start coming in too, I don't have enough hands."

"Then who can cover it?" Serena asked.

"Right now, me. After that, the walking wounded that Lisa's training. But I keep the key to the wash kettle."

Maria talked about dividing the work without letting go of the key at her waist. Eda almost pointed that out, then stopped. If she tried to draw her own boundary today while also solving someone else's contradiction, the work would only pile up again.

"I'll handle Noah's medicine," the physician's assistant said. "But I can't also do the night log."

"The night log goes with the soldiers' shift change," Cassian said.

Eda asked.

"Who reads it and fixes the wrong entries?"

"I will."

"The same person who just hauled night fuel and is about to run a meeting?"

Cassian had no answer.

Serena brought out a new board. Assigned, backup, start time, end time, rest, refusal or stoppage. Six columns. Eda's eyes went to the "backup" column before the "assigned" one.

"Noah's medicine."

The physician's assistant wrote her name under assigned. The physician was backup. Night calls went to Cassian. Eda's name appeared nowhere.

"Soup."

A kitchen lead and a serving backup were listed separately. The previous day's condition, that Noah would collect his own bowl if he was well enough and otherwise leave it outside the door, carried over unchanged.

"Laundry."

Maria was assigned, the walking wounded was backup. In the rest column, the extra half hour added from the previous day's training was written in. Maria tapped the key with a doubtful look, but she didn't erase her name.

"Relaying the meeting."

Cassian looked at Eda.

Eda waited. She wasn't testing whether he'd fix it with a request. Her own answer was already decided.

"Just take this one meeting."

"No."

Cassian's eyes narrowed.

"You're the one who knows the content best."

"That's why I left a template. Decide who reads it too."

The head housekeeper raised her hand. She said her niece could deliver it to the residents' representative. The girl read slowly, but she knew the village roads. Eda wrote the head housekeeper into the backup column, as the one to correct the niece if she got something wrong.

"Cassian's meals," Serena read out last.

For a moment no one spoke.

Eda smiled faintly.

"Is that a task?"

Cassian said, dry faced.

"I eat."

"Correct."

The sixth line was struck from the work board entirely. Cassian's meals stopped being someone else's duty of care and became his own responsibility.

Noah climbed up onto a chair and drew a small box beneath the new board.

"This one."

"What column is that?" Cassian asked.

"People who are resting."

"There's already a rest column."

"That one's just from this hour to that hour. This is for people you're not allowed to call."

Eda wrote her own name in that box. Three morning class hours. Maria hesitated, then wrote in the half hour she was owed from the day before. The blacksmith's name went in too.

Cassian studied the board for a long time.

"What about emergency calls?"

Eda answered.

"When there's no backup at all and someone gets hurt if you don't call. And after you call, you write down who called and why."

"That's a lot of conditions."

"Because until now, people got called with no conditions at all."

Cassian didn't make excuses. Instead he wrote his own name in the night log's assigned column. Start at dusk, end at the first dawn shift bell. Backup was his aide, Orsen. Rest was the three hours after.

"Will this do?"

Eda checked the board.

"Doing it once today doesn't mean it's over."

"I know."

There was no apology or tenderness in that short answer. But Cassian didn't erase his name.

When Eda went back to her room for morning class, a thin layer of dust had settled on her desk. Noah's medicine schedule was tucked between the pages of her textbook. She carried it over to the work board and opened her book on northern law.

Over three hours, footsteps stopped outside her door twice. Once the physician's assistant came looking for a medicine bottle, then turned back. Once the head housekeeper's niece came to ask about the meeting wording, then read the template again herself. No one knocked.

Eda never finished the first chapter. Her mind kept drifting to Noah's room. Refusing the work hadn't made the worry disappear. Still, worry and being in charge weren't the same word.

At dusk, Cassian took a copy of the work board to Noah's temporary bedroom. Eda followed to watch the shift handover, but she didn't go inside.

Noah lay under the blanket with his eyes open. When Cassian shut the door, Noah's hand tensed.

"I won't lock it," Cassian said.

"Where's the key?"

Cassian left the key sitting in the doorknob and took his hand away. It was turned so it could be worked from the inside too.

"The physician's assistant has the medicine. I'll check your temperature and the outer temperature board. Orsen comes in once, two hours from now."

"Why?"

"To see if my log is right, and to wake me if I fall asleep."

"What if I say uncle can't come in?"

Cassian's mouth opened, then closed.

"I still come in."

Noah tapped the bed rail with a finger, twice.

Tap, tap.

"That means stop."

"Stop what?"

"The medicine, the questions, checking the window. If I do it twice, you stop first and ask why after."

Cassian's instinct was to say that immediate danger was an exception. Serena pointed at the refusal-or-stoppage column on the work board.

"If it's an immediate risk to life, you stop, then call a second person. Not keep going alone."

Noah tapped twice again. Cassian stopped talking.

"Why now?" he asked.

"Just testing it."

Cassian didn't get angry. On the log he wrote, "Signal test, stopped."

As night deepened, the wind knocked against the window. Cassian got up now and then to check the temperature markers, then came back and wrote start and end times. When Noah couldn't sleep, Cassian didn't try to make him talk. He sat in the chair and mended a torn seam on a fuel gauntlet.

Eda looked into the room once from the end of the hallway. The door was open and the key sat in the knob. Noah's hand was out from under the blanket, but it wasn't touching the hearth line.

After midnight, the outer temperature dropped. Cassian was about to head out with the map when he called Orsen first. The two of them checked the log together, and then Cassian woke the firewood carriers. He didn't lock Noah's room, and he didn't call Eda.

When the first dawn shift bell rang, Orsen came in. Without waking the sleeping Noah, Cassian read off the medicine count, the temperature, the two households' readings, and the double-tap signal. He handed over the doorknob key too.

The first night column on the work board was finished. Eda's name appeared nowhere in it.

Cassian went to the dining room and warmed the leftover soup himself. Eda was still asleep in the classroom. Noah breathed evenly in his bed behind the open door.

After sunrise, when Eda opened the classroom door, there wasn't a single call slip in the hallway. In the hourglass on her desk, all three measures of sand had run down. She hadn't rested the full three hours. She'd read for one, dozed for one, and for the last one, she'd walked all the way to the door wondering whether Noah had taken his medicine, then turned back. Still, no one had turned that wondering into an assigned task.

On the family dining room's work board, there were signs of overnight corrections. Orsen had crossed out one number in the outer temperature column with two lines and written his name beside it. The physician's assistant had left a stamp mark at Noah's medicine time. In Cassian's night column, alongside the end time, was written "double-tap once, stopped immediately."

Eda looked for Cassian's meal line. There was no line at all. Instead, in the sink sat a soup bowl he'd eaten from, washed, and set upside down himself.

"Was everything fine through the night?"

Serena answered.

"There was work. It just wasn't Eda's."

Noah tapped his finger twice from inside the open door. This time it didn't mean stop. It was a signal asking whether Cassian remembered his promise. Cassian stopped talking at once and looked at Noah.

"Can I ask why?"

"I just felt like it."

"Should I log it?"

Noah thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. Cassian set down his pen.

Eda didn't erase her name from the "people who are resting" column on the work board. Instead, she added one more line for her next class hour. Beneath it, she left the blank night shift slot as it was, so the next person could choose it, not Cassian.