Eda Picked Up the Seed Sack Before Her Mother's Portrait

Eda picked up the seed sack before her mother's portrait. Meltwater stood ankle deep on the floor of the seed storehouse, and the four family portraits leaning against the wall still sat above the dry line. "The portraits later. Get the barley up first." Even after she said it, her eyes didn't leave the smallest frame.

Early on the twenty fifth morning, the south wall's vane, one of Mara's three, had stopped turning.

Teo reported brown water running under the wall. When Doran broke the ice in the south drainage ditch, the trapped water pushed toward the storehouse.

When the first stream of water came out under the seed storehouse door, Eda was sorting supplementary documents for the royal administrative school. Doran's work verification was on her morning schedule, and choosing a date for Noah's clinic escort was on the afternoon.

"The storehouse is flooding!"

Eda dropped her pen and ran. She stopped once at the end of the hallway to flip the handover board. Her name was already gone from the clinic prep and morning medicine check slots she'd chosen not to take. The storehouse emergency slot was blank.

Cold water came in through her boots when she opened the door. On the low shelves of the storehouse sat twelve sacks of spring barley, nine of oats, six of beans. On the high shelves stood two boxes of account ledgers and four portraits of the Riven family. The bottoms of the seed sacks were already darkening.

Cassian followed her in and reached for the nearest large portrait.

"That's the former lord's official portrait. If it gets wet, it can't be restored."

Eda pressed down on the wet seam of a barley sack.

"This one, if it gets wet, we can't eat it in spring."

"Clear the things up high first and the path opens."

"The path for carrying out a portrait opens only if you step on a seed sack to do it."

Her voice turned more formal and her sentences shorter. Cassian took his hand off the former lord's portrait.

Doran came in carrying a shovel and rope. He didn't wait for Eda's instructions. He looked once at the mud outside the threshold and knocked on the south wall.

"If we just bail the water, it keeps coming in. The wall's drain groove connects to the outer ditch. While two of you get the sacks out through the door, two others need to cut off the outer channel."

"Do we break the wall?" Cassian asked.

"Break the wall now and the roof support comes down. A temporary ditch outside, shelf leg supports inside. We need both."

Doran handed shovels to two apprentices and sent them to the south wall. He didn't call the soldiers. It was Orsen's first day handling the north gate's supply changeover, and there was no reason to interrupt the medicine deliveries and food notices again. Instead he pulled two people who'd been assigned to morning drainage duty from the roofing team. He had it posted on the public board that the west communal sleeping room's tile replacement would fall behind by half a day because of it.

"Who decides what stays inside?" Doran asked.

Cassian started to answer, but Eda raised the water damaged list first.

"I'll sort the seeds and ledgers. I'll ask Mari to handle the transport, and the portraits stay to be decided by their owners."

"You don't have to sort all of it yourself." Cassian said.

"I made the storage order sheet, so I can do the first sort. But only until my morning appointment to verify my work experience. After that I hand off to Rin."

Eda wrote the end time in chalk above the door. Two o'clock. Below it, the handover went to Rin, transport responsibility to Mari, drainage to Doran and the two apprentices. She assigned Cassian only the task of bringing down the ledger boxes from the high shelf.

When they lifted the first barley sack, the bottom tore open. Wet grain poured onto the black water. Mari pushed an empty laundry basket underneath. Nadi and Jina held cloth on either side to catch the grain.

"Don't mix it with the dry ones!" Mari shouted.

Eda marked three zones on the floor. Sacks submerged in water, sacks wet only at the seams, sacks still dry. She didn't put beans and oats in the same basket. She wrote quantity and time in front of each zone. So that no one would end up taking on night work under no name of their own just to save the seed, she also made a next drying shift and a wage column.

Cassian carried one ledger box out. When he brought down the second, a small portrait stood behind it. The picture was no bigger than two palms. A woman in worn blue clothes, not formal robes, was smiling in it. It was Eda's mother.

That picture wasn't on the list of the four large portraits. Eda had found it in a drawer when she was ten and put it in a small frame.

"Take this to your room first." Cassian said.

Eda was holding a wet sack of beans.

"Not now."

"It's small. One hand is enough."

"That one hand needs to be holding this bean sack seam."

Cassian's face hardened. Eda saw the look and realized she was heading down the same road again, erasing all her own wants. The same habit showed up in her school application, in her rest schedule, in Noah's care chart. The habit of saying what she wanted only after finishing everything that needed doing. The habit of hoping there'd still be something left to want by then.

She handed the bean sack to Mari.

"I'll keep this portrait."

"Then take it now." Cassian said.

"No. I'm not changing the rescue order. Just don't put it on the discard list either. I'll put a mark on it showing it's my choice."

Eda tied a dry red cord to the small frame's hanger. She wrote, "Eda's personal property, to be retrieved after seed transport." The large family portraits had no mark showing whose choice they were. Cassian put his own name on the two former lord's portraits. The other two stayed on the high shelf until an owner was decided.

"We could save all of them. Why leave any behind?"

"Because there aren't enough hands to save all of them."

"I'll carry it."

"Sir Cassian Riven is assigned to the ledger boxes and the threshold supports. If you add tasks on your own, another slot goes empty."

When the full name and title came out, Doran looked up. Instead of arguing, Cassian drove a wedge into the threshold support.

Outside, the temporary ditch caught its first water. The soil was too soft and the shovel blade kept collapsing. Doran tried to pry up an old flagstone between the storehouse wall and the ditch. That flagstone was the decorative border of the manor's flower bed.

Serena arrived and asked.

"If we pull that up, the flower bed soil will slide down."

"I can't let the seed storehouse flood just to protect that soil."

"What's the alternative material?"

Doran pointed to a stack of thin slate meant for the west sleeping room's roof.

"Bring that over and the roof falls behind a full day instead of half a day. Use the decorative border stone and it's just one row of the flower bed, and it's done."

Serena didn't open her own budget sheet. She called Sana, who managed the flower bed, to check the loss of soil and herb roots. Sana said the two rows of southern herbs could be moved to another plot, and the decorative repair could wait until summer.

"We use the flower bed border stone." Serena said. "Log the loss under manor decor, and the two hours of herb transplanting get paid."

Doran only nodded and pulled the flagstone. He hadn't waited for Serena's permission to make the field decision, he'd confirmed the material choice and cost with the residents first, then put the shovel in on his own responsibility.

Once the temporary ditch opened, the water level in the storehouse dropped a finger's width. The children's workshop vane still wasn't a tool for conclusions, but the brown water channel Teo had first spotted went into the drainage log. Credit for the discovery wasn't folded into Noah's name.

By the time Eda's two hours were up, thirteen dry sacks had been moved to the empty dining hall upstairs. The nine sacks wet only at the seams had their cloth changed and gone to the drying rack under the eaves. The five submerged sacks would have their grain spread out to check sprouting and mold separately. Of the one sack's worth of barley spilled on the floor, less than half was recovered.

"Don't write that we saved all of it." Eda told Rin.

Rin corrected the first line of the handover sheet. Instead of "twenty seven seed sacks moved," she wrote "thirteen dry, nine wet, five submerged, one sack of barley estimated lost."

"Who's on drying duty?"

"Jina and Nadi for the first shift. Two more spots are still open after that."

"Don't put my name in. I'm going to get my work experience verified."

Saying it out loud made her heart want to turn back toward the storehouse first. No one had sorted the wet seed better than Eda. But if she stayed to the end just because she was good at it, the substitute exam thirty days from now would fail before it even started.

Mari looked at the two empty slots.

"Rin has to log records and I have to watch the laundry drying. I'll ask Sana for two field hands."

"Ask about wages and afternoon rest too."

"I know. I'll ask even without you here."

Eda took off her boots to pour out the water and noted the time spent borrowing dry shoes on the handover sheet too.

Doran was waiting outside the storehouse door with the work verification form. He was half an hour late for the appointment, but he hadn't left. He took off his wet gloves and read the document.

"Take out this line, 'directed the estate's drainage system.'"

Eda raised her eyebrows.

"I didn't write that sentence. It's from the recommendation template."

"What you directed today was two hours of seed sorting. I did the ditch, and Sana confirmed the flower bed loss."

"Write it that way, then."

Doran wrote, "drafted seed inventory sorting criteria, handed off two hours of on site work, disclosed the amount lost." It wasn't impressive, but it was real experience. Eda didn't shorten the sentence.

While the certificate dried, she went back to the storehouse. Not to take over the work, but to find the red cord. The small portrait still sat on the high shelf where it had been left first. The water had dropped further, but the floor was still black.

Cassian had set the two former lord's portraits up in the corridor and was waiting.

"I didn't carry yours."

"Thank you."

Eda picked up the small frame with her own hands. Not a single drop of water had touched the edges of her mother's smiling face. It wasn't because it mattered more than the seed. It was because even after saving the seed first, she hadn't given up the one thing she wanted.

On the public board, what was saved and what was lost stayed side by side. Thirteen sacks of dry seed, nine wet, five submerged, one sack of barley estimated lost. Half a day's delay on the west roof, one row of flower bed decor removed, two hours of herb transplanting. Two family portraits were Cassian's choice, one small portrait was Eda's.

Eda didn't put the frame in her document bag. She held it separately against her chest, so the work verification certificate and her personal belongings wouldn't become the same kind of proof.

In front of the afternoon clinic escort schedule, Noah asked.

"Are you still in the storehouse today, sister?"

"No. I handed it off."

"Then can I pick this date?"

Eda pointed to the one date, out of the two available, that had no school class.

"I'll go that day. Not as a reward for saving the seed today, but because it's the appointment I chose."

Noah nodded and left only his own confirmation on the date.

Outside the window, the temporary ditch kept running brown water. On the wall of Eda's room, instead of a large family portrait, hung one small picture of her mother, no bigger than two palms.