Loghlan looked at Mairwen. The look that passed between them was the kind of silent conversation that thirty years of marriage made possible, and what it contained was too private and too complicated for anyone else in the room to read. But when Loghlan turned back to Isabell, the wariness in his eyes had been replaced by something sharper.
Not agreement, not yet, at least. One part in twenty of his treasury was still a great deal to stomach, and he was cautious. But under that caution lay the hungry, careful attention of a man who had just realized that the woman across the table might be offering him exactly the thing heād been trying to build for his entire life and failing to achieve with sandbags along the river banks and shallow wells.
"The rainy season overwhelms our drains any year that the rains last more than five days without respite," he said bitterly. "Sewage flows down the streets, and we see more sickness through the winter. Itās not as bad in the spring, but if thereās an early thaw and the river runs high, then.... That brings its own problems, too."
"Are you saying youād be able to solve this for us as well?" Loghlan asked directly. "And that youād consider it part of the same āproblemā as building the aqueduct?"
"This is part of why I told Liam that my price would be so high," Isabell said. "If Iām going to solve one of your problems, I intend to build a system to resolve every aspect of it. Too little water in the summer, too much water in the rainy season. Abundance near the river, but scarcity in the distant fields because your irrigation is inefficient..."
"These are all problems with water, Lord Loghlan, so if youād like me to engineer solutions to your problems with water, then thatās what Iāll do," she said bluntly. "If you want me to solve the problems of moving people and goods through your barony, then thatās a conversation about roads, bridges, maybe even canals... Itās a different problem entirely."
"But so long as weāre focused on the problem of water, itās all interconnected," Isabell said, hoping that he was starting to see the value of what she was offering.
"I... I never thought of it that way," Loghlan admitted. After all, building an aqueduct was an entirely separate project from handling his cityās drains. "So, how would you handle the floods? And how do these things interconnect in your mind?"
Before Isabell could respond, her silvery eyes flicked upward toward the ceiling with the sudden alertness of a hunting dog catching a scent. Her free hand flattened against the surface of the table, fingers splayed wide, and for an instant, the air in the room seemed to thicken, as if the timbers and stones of the tavern itself were whispering something that only she could hear.
Then it passed. Isabell lowered her gaze, exhaled slowly through her nose, and folded her hands in her lap with a composure so practiced that a less observant woman than Mairwen might have missed the tension in her shoulders.
"Is everything all right?" Mairwen asked quietly. Things had been flowing relatively smoothly until now, but whatever had just happened clearly disturbed the Hemlock Witch enough to pull her completely out of their conversation.
"Perfectly fine," Isabell said smoothly, though to Mairwenās ears, it sounded like the reassurance of a merchant who knew better than to raise concerns at the wrong moment than someone who believed it was true.
"I think that Lady Ashlynn may be close to finishing her business upstairs," Isabell explained, though it seemed like she wasnāt entirely focused on the conversation in the small, private dining room, and her eyes kept drifting upward in the direction of the rooms above.
Across the table, Ignatious had gone still in a way that stripped away a bit of his usual warmth as he displayed the predatory stillness of a creature that had no need to breathe. His dark eyes met Isabellās for a fraction of a heartbeat, and something passed between them that was too fast and too private for Mairwen to read.
Then Ignatious turned back to Loghlan with the same gentle warmth heād worn all evening, and the moment dissolved like frost touched by sunlight.
"Iām afraid that Master Isabellās solution to your flooding problem will have to wait until later," Ignatious said. "If Iām not mistaken, Lady Ashlynn will be joining us shortly, and sheāll want to talk about things that are rather more pressing than drainage ditches. Though," he added, with a glance at Isabell that carried a trace of dry humor, "I suspect Master Isabell considers drainage ditches to be among the most pressing concerns in the kingdom."
"Theyāre more important than most people think," Isabell said primly. "Especially on a night when the wine is good enough that you find yourself lying in a ditch come sunrise," she added with a light, musical laugh, and Loghlan surprised himself by laughing along with her.
It was a brief sound, rough and unexpected, but it loosened something in the room that had been drawn tight by the conversation about dead children and bad water and the cost of iron drill bits.
Mairwen watched her husband settle back in his chair, and she saw the shift in him that sheād been watching for all evening. It wasnāt quite a surrender or a simple agreement. Rather, she saw the quiet, grudging recognition that the people in this room understood his problems better than anyone heād ever met in the courts of the March.
And beyond that, she saw the thought that if the woman Master Isabell served was even half as capable as the people she kept close to her, then maybe, just maybe, the decision Liam had talked them into wasnāt the gamble that Loghlan had feared it was.
It was an investment. And the woman who could solve the water problem was just the beginning of the return on it...