Lady Corven asked the spring keeper how much younger she would look.
“Twenty years,” it said.
The creature stood on narrow legs beside the pool. Its face was pale and long, almost a goat’s face, though its eyes met hers like a person’s. Water shone under the rock roof. After three days crossing the desert, Corven could hardly bear to look away from it.
“And how much longer would I live?”
“No longer. A younger face. A younger body. The same years left.”
Her guide Tavi set their packs down in the shade. His fee for the trip would buy the first two horses for the stable he planned to open. He had heard the terms before. He had tried to tell her during the journey, but she’d wanted to reach the spring first.
At fifty-eight, Corven still owned land, houses, and more silver than she could spend. What she no longer received was attention. Young courtiers spoke across her as if she were a chair. The invitation to the winter ball had arrived addressed to her daughter. Corven’s name had been added below, in a smaller hand.
She wanted to walk through that room and have people turn.
“What do you take?” she asked.
“Twenty years of memory. One unbroken stretch. You choose the years.”
Tavi took out the bread. “We should eat before you choose anything.”
“Is that part of your fee?”
“Keeping you able to get home? Yes.”
She sat. Her silk sleeves were stained with dust. On the second day a sand creature had risen in their path, a long shape with two mouths. Tavi had led her around it by daylight; in darkness it would have mistaken their moving warmth for food. She had paid him for knowledge, not kindness. He had given her both without pretending they were the same.
Now he counted their water bottles. They had enough to reach the next shelter if they left before evening. Corven did not have to decide quickly. She could come back another day. But the thought of crossing the desert again made her tired.
“I had a bad marriage,” she told the keeper. “There are twenty years I could happily lose.”
“Then name them.”
She named the first year after her wedding and the twentieth. The keeper moved one thin hand over the pool. A face rose in it: her own, without the lines at her mouth. She remembered that face. She had been beautiful. She leaned forward.
“What remains?” she asked. “Do I still know how to speak? To manage my land?”
“You keep your skills. You lose what happened. People you met in those years will have to meet you again.”
Behind her, someone scraped a bowl against stone.
A young man sat farther inside the shelter. Corven had taken him for another traveler. He was holding a little clay horse and turning it over in his hands.
“You drank?” she asked.
“Yesterday.”
“You look well.”
“I am well.” He kept turning the horse. “My brother brought this when he fetched me. He says I made it for his son. I believe him.”
“But you don’t remember.”
“Not the horse. Not the boy.”
The keeper had not hidden the price. The man had chosen it. That made his flat voice worse to hear.
Corven tore her bread in half. In the twenty years she’d named, her husband had shouted at her, ignored her, and spent money that belonged to both of them. In those same years, her daughter had learned to walk. Corven had taught her to ride, badly at first. They had laughed when the child’s pony refused a bridge.
Her husband had died in the eighteenth year. In the nineteenth, Corven had learned how much he owed. In the twentieth, she had paid the workers and kept the land.
“One year,” she said. “Could I buy one year?”
“For one year of memory.”
It was not a trick. The bargain grew smaller with the price. She tried to choose a year with nothing in it. Every year contained somebody: a sick friend, a new road, her daughter’s strange new laugh. Even a dull year was crowded when she looked closely.
“Silver?” she asked.
The keeper shook its head. “The spring drinks memories. It has no use for silver.”
Tavi offered her the last slice of bread. He wasn’t watching the face in the pool.
“Would you do it?” she asked him.
“No. I want to open a stable. I need to remember who’s promised me a horse.”
It was such a small answer. She almost laughed. Then she ate the bread.
When she stood, the younger face waited in the water. She could still have it. “We should leave,” she said.
Tavi lifted the packs. The keeper lowered its hand, and the face broke into small ripples.
Back in the city, Corven paid Tavi enough to buy his first two horses. It was the fee they’d agreed upon, not a reward for saving her. She slept for a day, then asked her daughter to dinner.
Her daughter could not come that evening. She had guests of her own. They chose Sunday instead. Corven felt the old sting, smaller this time, and didn’t send a second message.
She went to the winter ball in a dark green gown. A young man at the door nearly sent her to the family seats. She gave him her name and waited until he moved aside.
Near the musicians stood Renn, who had once helped her argue over a boundary fence. He had been furious then. They had become friends afterward.
“Will you dance?” she asked him.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
His knees were worse than hers. They took the slower tune and talked about Tavi’s stable, about her daughter’s guests, about the fence neither of them had quite forgiven.
Before midnight her feet began to hurt. She told Renn she was leaving.
“Already?”
“Yes. I’ve had a good evening.”
She let him bring her cloak, then walked out through the same door.
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