Old Roads

The King’s Surveyor arrived three days after the funeral, a thin man in a grey coat who smelled of lamp oil and politeness. He sat in her father’s chair without being asked.

“The Crown will of course honour your father’s service,” he said. “A pension. A small house in the capital. You needn’t worry about anything.”

“And his maps?”

“Crown property.” He smiled. “Every one of them. I have a list.”

He produced it from his coat, a long scroll of numbered entries in cramped handwriting. Edda read it while he watched her. It was very thorough. It listed maps she had forgotten existed, maps from before she was born, a sketch of the harbour at Kell her father had made on the back of a menu.

It did not list the Greywood.

She rolled the scroll up slowly and handed it back. “You’ll find everything in order,” she said.

That night she sewed the oilcloth packet into the lining of her travelling cloak, and before dawn she was on the road east, walking towards a forest that did not exist on any map but one.