The Knight Who Owes Me a Thunderstorm

How it begins

It was raining inside the knight's glove.

Iona asked him to remove it.

Emric Dane did, carefully, revealing a small storm circling his palm. Lightning flickered between two fingers. The rest of him remained offensively dry.

“That,” she said, “was a complete thunderstorm when you borrowed it.”

“I know.”

“It had a registered cloud.”

“Yes.”

“A return date.”

He looked at the rain.

“Also yes.”

Iona had expected a messenger, an apology or the usual royal explanation that an unfortunate emergency had improved the contract. She had not expected the knight himself, standing in her collecting room with the last of her winter inventory dripping onto the floor.

“Where?”

“East border.”

“Military use?”

“No.”

She waited.

“A village needed water.”

Iona opened the return seal. Inside its glass, a tiny landscape had changed. Dry fields now held dark furrows. A well shone beneath a roof that had not appeared on the original chart.

“How many people?”

“Seventy-three.”

“And the army?”

“Ordered me not to stop.”

The remaining thunder moved under his skin.

Iona felt the unwelcome beginning of understanding. She disliked it. Understanding was often delivered to the person expected to absorb somebody else's cost.

She had saved that storm for the growers beyond the ridge. Their deposits paid for her roof.

Emric put a small purse on the table.

It was not enough. They both knew it.

“I can work,” he said.

“For how long?”

“Until the debt is repaired.”

“That isn't the same as until I stop being angry.”

“No.”

She looked up.

Most men in armor mistook a task for a victory. This one appeared willing to remain at the table without winning.

Iona shut the seal.

“Then begin by telling the growers what you've done.”

Emric nodded.

Outside, the sky remained painfully clear.

She fetched two coats. Whatever happened next, she would not have him explain her lost weather from beneath a dry one.