Then someone yelled at him, yanking him back to reality, “Leonarth!”
He flinched. Not because the voice was sharp, but because it was careful. People shouted when they were angry or when they loved you without shame. This voice was neither. It was the voice people used when they were approaching the edge of a story and did not wish to spook the ending.
He turned. Ava stood where the thistles began; her novice robes were pinned neat, her hair caught up tight under a kerchief. She could have been anyone’s guardian. She was his—or at least the woman who had kept him fed, guided, and told him which men to avoid and which days to keep his head down whenever threats or trouble drifted in from the road. She had never told him whether he had her eyes, or anyone’s for that matter.
“You promised,” she said.
He did not ask which promise. There were multiple. To stay within the hedgerow. To avoid the field where the earth had sunk after heavy rain, and never quite forgiven the river for leaving. To attend his lessons when the Abbey bell called.
“I’m not in it,” he said, half turning back to the veil. “I’m only—”
“Looking,” she finished for him. “You have been ‘only looking’ since you had knees.”
He pocketed the glass. “What if there’s a road in there?”
“There are roads everywhere,” she said. “That’s what a town means. Roads that go forward and roads that go back. Roads that bring visitors who buy, and roads that bring those who don’t pay. The only road I concern myself with is the one that brings you back within the Abbey walls when the bell strikes.”