The Assignment

A survey is an act of ownership disguised as an act of description, and Ivar Holm had spent nineteen years pretending otherwise.

He unrolled the commission on the table of the inn at Vestmark and read it twice. Four years. The eastern marches, from the river to the ridge. A stipend that assumed he would not need to eat in winter, and a line at the bottom, added in a different hand, assigning him an apprentice.

He had not requested an apprentice. He had spent nineteen years not requesting one.

“Master Holm.”

The boy in the doorway was perhaps twenty, dressed for weather he had clearly never been out in, and holding his own copy of the same document as though it might defend him.

“You’re the apprentice.”

“Aleksy Rune, sir.”

Ivar put down the commission.

Rune. The house of Rune held every acre between the river and the ridge. The house of Rune had been petitioning against this survey for eleven years, on the reasonable grounds that a map is the first thing a crown makes before it takes something.

“They’ve sent me a Rune,” Ivar said slowly, “to help me measure Rune land.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Whose idea was that?”

Aleksy Rune’s jaw tightened very slightly — the first genuinely informative thing he had done since entering the room.

“My father’s,” he said.