Aetherbound - E.K. Johnston Page 0,45

out in search of something that will help you. At least that will keep everyone busy.”

“What will I offer as a reward?” the king asked. “My coffers are emptying quickly, and I have no family left to marry off.”

“We will cross that bridge,” said the priest, “when we get to it.”

The years rolled on. The knights came and went, eyes shining with bright ideas and new hopes. Nothing worked, but several valuable trade agreements were agreed to and a new way of smelting iron was discovered in the process, so it wasn’t entirely without result. Still the king lumbered from his bed to his spot on the riverbank, even when the fish stopped coming. His castle fell into disrepair and his people began to leave. He didn’t stop them.

A young knight came one day with nothing. He hadn’t been on a quest at all yet. He’d only heard that this was a good place to get inspiration. He sat by the king’s side on the riverbank and listened to the stories of the days before, when the king had been able to plough and plant, and the lands had flourished.

“What if,” said the young knight one afternoon, “I drove the plough?”

No one had ever offered that before. It had been years, but the king still remembered how to hitch up the oxen. He told the young knight how, leaning on a crutch the knight had made for him. It took forever, but they both enjoyed the work. The field wasn’t large, but it would grow enough grain for the people who were left.

“What if,” said the young knight a few days later, “your room was at the bottom of the tower, not the top?”

It had never occurred to the king that moving his room downstairs would help, but of course it did. Now that he no longer had to go up and down several times a day, he had more energy. His leg hurt less in the evenings and he slept better. He could walk far enough to reach the fishing hole, and not wait for smaller fish in the shallows.

“What if,” said the young knight after a month had passed, “I stay, and you teach me everything you know?”

And the king had an heir and the heir had a quest and the little kingdom thrived.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of asking the right question.

17.

A WEEK AFTER NED left, Fisher asked Pendt if she wanted to move out of the apartment. The question caught her completely off guard. She thought that things had been going well.

“I suppose I could,” she said. “If there’s a space for me to go. I don’t need a lot. Am I allowed to take the possessions I’ve acquired with me?”

Fisher gaped at her.

“No, Pendt, that isn’t the way I meant it,” he said. “I would never send you off now that I’ve got what I need. That’s terrible. And those things are yours. And even if they weren’t, Ned left you an account. And—”

“I understand,” Pendt said before he could get too hysterical. “I also understand that you might not like living with a relative stranger. I can go if you truly want to be alone.”

This really wasn’t going the way Fisher meant it to. He was trying to be nice. It was hard to be nice to Pendt. Not because she was difficult or surly, but because she was so bad at putting herself first.

“Look,” he said. “Let me start over. Without taking my feelings into account, and without considering the well-being of the station: Do you want to live in your own apartment?”

It took Pendt a while to answer. She chewed thoughtfully on a piece of purple melon. He could almost see her weighing all the options and then trying not to weigh all the options.

“Do you want to live alone?” she finally answered with a question. “My only experience living by myself involved a closet with very poor air circulation. I knew that I’d have nicer accommodations here, but honestly, you are a good person to live with.”

“I’ve never lived by myself,” Fisher said. “This was my family’s home, and then it was where Ned and I stayed. I hadn’t thought about what being here by myself might be like.”

There were already two areas of the apartment Fisher didn’t go into. Pendt had never seen the suite his parents lived in, nor had she been through the doors of the office where his parents worked when they weren’t in operations. Fisher did his