Seneca Farm

The Silver Hands were one of the best mercenary companies in the kingdom. Now, only one remains. Kain Asheld buried the three people closest to him on a quiet ridge overlooking the valley where they promised to meet. He honors that memory with a deed to a farm, bought with his share of a final bounty and a desperate need for silence. The dream of that new life requires more than just land. Locals call it Madder's Place. It is a disaster of rotting floorboards, collapsed roofs, and fields reclaimed by the wild. The village needs him just as much as he needs the solitude. Support comes from unexpected a young collector named Oren, a sharp-tongued tavern owner named Sorrel, and a trust system that leaves payment in unlocked boxes by the road. As Kain clears the rot from his new home and tracks the wolves harassing the village, he discovers building a life takes its own kind of strength. This is the story of starting over, and of moving on when you can't take the people you love with you.

The farm made it through winter and Kain his first full year. The debt didn't go anywhere. Kain owes fifty silver on a horse and has four new plots that won't plant themselves. The east side of the property sits on a clay hardpan that nobody mentioned when he bought the place. Breaking through it is weeks of pickaxe work he didn't plan for. His brother's son is almost a year old. The boy's mother runs the only tavern in town alone, and the back stairs are rotting, and the storage room leaks, and she won't ask for help. Kain finishes his farm work at midday and walks to town. Splits firewood, patches walls, holds the baby while she pours drinks. A farmer's daughter on the west road knows more about soil than he'll learn in ten years. She brought him a seed catalog and told him his drainage was wrong. She was right. She keeps being right, and she keeps showing up to say so, and he hasn't figured out what that means yet. Something has the wolf nervous. It won't go north anymore. This is the story of showing up.