The woman with the bark horn had the wary posture of someone who'd had to become a gate. Her braid was tight enough to pull the corners of her eyes, her pike was scarred from being used like a lever more than a spear, and her mouth had the weathering of too many decisions made with not enough coin.
"Rent," she said again, because saying it made it feel like order. The carts that made her palisade were all different—one with a broken wheel propped with stones, one with a sailcloth sidesheet patched and re-patched, one with a painted merchant stamp long since meaningless, one that had been dragged here as a family's last act of spite and hope. Willow branches had been woven through the spokes and uprights, green still, sticky with sap. Inside, shadow moved like animals thinking twice.
Ryn lifted the writ. He could feel the room in the paper; the factor's hand had been neat. It was weight and a lie both. "Salvage," he said. "One day."
Her eyes flicked to the seal, not to the words. Her mouth twitched in a way that had nothing to do with reading. "Fine," she said, as if relenting cost her a coin she could ill spare. "One day." She stepped out from the gap to let them in. "No pigs," she added as a reflex, then looked at their donkey and said, softer, "Except her."
Hana snorted. "She's better than a pig," she said. "She listens when spoken to."
They went in through the narrow gap one by one, rope low, mouths closed, children with the rope between teeth. The space beyond the carts was smaller than Ryn liked: two lanes of packed dirt, one house with a half-collapsed roof, a well with a stone curb. Smoke now, no fire. A child coughed an old cough. A man in a scarf with cracked lips stood near the well, hands white on the curb, not from thirst—he had water—but from fear of running out.
"Keep moving," Tamsin murmured, and Ryn did because stopping in a new place made arguments find you.
They put the cart near the house where the roof still held and the wind didn't come through one whole side. Dorran lay where Hana told him and obeyed because the alternative was worse. Kerrin with the yellow sash took one look around and went to the palisade's north edge the way a man goes to stand in a doorway when an argument in his house gets ugly. The donkey went to the patch of grass inside the well ring and put her nose to it with the patience of a saint learning someone had forgotten the last sacrament.
The bark-horn woman peered at Ryn's rope as if evaluating whether it would insult her fence. "Trella," she said abruptly, naming herself because men would otherwise call her 'you there' and assume she had no right to answer. "You?" she asked, a test.
"Ryn," he said, and did not add, ropehand. He lifted the writ an inch like a bench receipt. "One day. We'll set a line. We'll help you hold and then we're gone. Sponsor's men will be here before morning; if not, then the day after when they finish counting. Garron may send a feeler because he hates being out-rented."
Trella's gaze didn't flinch. "They came before," she said. "First, blue ribbon man with a ledger. We paid in flour and a knife. Then the Guild boy with a hat. We paid with sticks. Then a woman with a spear who laughed at our fence and told us to weave it tight. Then her captain who looked and left us and took something else."
"What did he take?" Sereth asked, blunt.
She rubbed the edge of the bark horn with her thumb. "My sister," she said, without drama. "She ran after him with a knife and a lie about what she would do when she caught him. She did not catch him. He broke her knife and gave her a loaf and told her to learn to hold doors. I want him to bleed for the words, not the act."
Tamsin's eyes flicked to Ryn's face and back to Trella. She did not tell Trella the woman with the spear had warned them twice and still cut. "He'll bleed for something," she said. "If it's not for you, it'll be for us. That can be acceptable or not."
Trella made a sound that was both yes and no. Ryn felt a brittle sympathy for her. He had felt hungry; she was hunger that had learned to write. "Let's set lines," he said.
He walked the inside of the carts and listened to the wood talk. Carts spoke differently than doors: they had learned to roll and be still both, and resented neither. He set rope at shins and throats where men with city boots expected space and would find none. He tied two knots that came undone when a jar fell, and he set a jar on a shelf that would fall when a knot released when a hand touched a line. He tuned the bell he hung from a rafter to ring at the wrong note just enough to make his own head turn. Sereth set two nails at elbow height in the shadow of a wheel so a man's sleeve would catch and he would present his neck. Tamsin dug at the base of a fence post to make it lean when pushed. Ilyon did something quiet with ash at the base of the well. He did not explain; Ryn did not ask.
He did not touch the shard in his shirt. He did not touch the hum under the floor of the house. He did not hum at stones. He wanted to. He didn't.
"Water," Hana said, and Trella gestured at the well and the cracked-lip man. "We let him be gate," she said. "He holds. He hates it. He might live for it." She patted his shoulder once with an intimacy that matched no story Ryn could see; it made Ryn trust her a fraction more.
They ate with their backs to wood. The bread Hana had bullied into shape was dense and good. Someone gave the donkey a piece of carrot; Ryn did not know where it came from and did not allow his eyes to soften. He chewed his own and swallowed and breathed and felt lightly human for the length of one bread chew.
Trella squatted by him with her horn across her knees. "Rent," she said again, low. He sighed. "What's your rate?" he asked, because she needed the tone continued in her mouth.
"You keep my door and you don't let thieves call it theirs," she said. "You take us with you if you run. If you die, you don't do it inside." Her eyes flicked to the children who sat with rope in hands. "You don't teach them that dying inside is right."
"Fair," Ryn said, and then, because her jaw wanted a number, "One day. One night. Then we go. No ledger. No owing."
She nodded once and that meant the deal held. The sponsor's ledger woman would not have approved of the terms. The factor would have, grudgingly.
The moor smoothed to iron and then turned black. The wind came from the east, dry. It brought a smell like bone-dust. The donkey flicked her ears. The rope around Ryn's waist tugged of its own weight. He tied one more knot low and then sat behind the carts and set his back against old wood and let his head rest for a blink.
"Don't sleep," Tamsin said, kicking his boot. "You hum when you sleep now."
He glared at her. "So do you," he said. She smiled, unoffended. "I hum sweet," she said.
Footsteps in the lane. Bluecoats were less tidy at night; this was the enforcer's breath, not his discipline. Ryn felt it in the way the bell didn't ring yet and the wood tightened in his back. He let breath out and put his fingers on the line. The system slid into the corner of his eye with its quiet banal boldness: [Approach: Sponsor (6–8).] [Other: Anomaly (west)—ossuary minor activity increased.] [Advice: Open left for release; hold right hard.]
He wanted to throw the notice into the ditch. He used it instead.
"Left," he murmured to Sereth. The archer shifted the wrong foot first and corrected before his knee could tell him he was forty. He drew in the shadow of a bent shaft and waited the long wait.
The enforcer came into the lane with two men in front and three behind, not many. That meant he had others elsewhere or had decided to taste here before he took. He wore the blue ribbon and the newly-mended cheek; the crystalline scaffolding showed at the edge of bandage. He looked almost tired. It didn't make Ryn like him. He inclined his head politely at the carts. "Rent," he said.
Trella lifted her chin. "Paid," she said. Her voice did not shake. Ryn admired her for it. He hated that he noticed admiration in battle; it got men killed.
The enforcer's eyes took in the rope inside and the bell and the lean of the post where Tamsin had wedged a rock under a wheel. He saw, he adjusted. "We will not break your door tonight," he said. "We have a river to attend. But my surgeon would like to borrow your rope man. A short time. He'll bring him back with all his fingers. He promised."
Tamsin's laugh sliced the night. "He doesn't know what fingers are for," she said. "He'll bring something back. Not what you left."
The enforcer's smile was tired and genuine. "I agree," he said. "But I work with what I have. Will you come? It will save me a taking later."
"No," Ryn said, because sometimes you feed a simple answer to a man who wraps nets in words. "Rent's wrong. We won't pay in hands."
The enforcer looked at him as if he had wanted something else. "You tie beautiful lines," he said. "You make good doors. You are stubborn and you don't enjoy being ordered. These are not sins. You will die for them anyway if you make them into a religion. You could make proper money." He gestured with two fingers at the carts. "These are shacks. I could give you ten times the wood. We could make something no spear touches."
"Door needs a hand more than wood," Ryn said.
He nodded. "True," he said. "My offer remains."
Then he did something Ryn had not expected at all: he backed away and did not test the line. He had learned something this morning and was saving that lesson for when his surgeon had a bowl clean. He signed a small hand gesture to someone beyond and two of his men moved toward the west lane with sticks that were not quite poles and not quite blades. "We have other doors," he said. "Rent travels."
He left. The rope in Ryn's hand hummed discontent. He let his breath out. He did not unclench.
"Worse than I thought," Sereth murmured. "He's patient."
"He'll come when his surgeon is ready then," Tamsin said. "Don't give him your map."
"I wasn't planning on it," Ryn said, and his mouth tasted of the surgeon's glitter, memory more than substance. He rubbed his lip with the back of his hand and his skin tingled. He spit. He wanted to put the whole dirt of the moor into his face until nothing glittered. He put his palm back on wood. He did not hum.
They held the carts through the first black hour. The ossuary hummed faintly in the west, a low wrong call that made thin things skitter out of holes and find salt lines to cry at. The sponsor's crew moved east as if pulled by ribbon, their lanterns hooded, their shadows long and purposeful. The Guild's horn sounded once, ragged. The Warden's did not. The moon came up like a scab. Ryn measured his breath against the sound the bell made and found a rhythm he could live inside.
The second hour woke a different problem. A man with a knife and a lot of need went under the cart at the north end because he was tired of lines and thought little shadows didn't have rules. He slid his hand under a wheel. Ryn felt the line he'd tied there quiver and tilt and knew the weight he'd chosen for it would take a hand if the hand kept coming. He didn't need more hands on a ledger. He slid silent, caught the man's wrist with line and elbow, twisted with Hook-and-Break, and the man cried out in five words: "Please—I—no—it—help—" each word the size of a grain.
Ryn's knee came down on the knife cleanly. It broke. His hand slackened the loop a hair, and the man slipped free and scrambled backward, leaving grief in the dirt. Tamsin hissed because pity was an ugly cost. "You did noble," she said, sneer worn like a shield so that the naked thing underneath could breathe air. "Don't do it again."
"I won't," Ryn lied. The man scrambled into the moor and disappeared the way desperate men do: poorly.
Trella didn't speak. She stood and watched the east and waited for rent.
Near dawn, the ground softened to dew and hands stopped shaking. The rope was simply rope again. Ryn let the bell ring without wincing. The donkey snored that donkey snore that was a benediction. Dorran stirred and grunted, then exhaled with long satisfaction that meant pain had leached into a corner. He looked at Ryn and made a face. "Still here," he said, accusing and grateful.
"Still here," Ryn said back.
The sky went weak gold. That was when men did stupid. A boy with more hair than sense climbed the wheel of the cart to see if the world was the same shape in daylight. He un-shouldered the line from his neck to do it. Ryn saw him at the edge of his vision and jerked his head. "Don't."
The boy stiffened, caught. He started to step back and stepped wrong. The line Tamsin had tied across the inner gap caught his ankle and he flailed. Ryn dropped the bar and lunged and caught the rope going from the cart to the upright and felt the weight of the child as a new argument in his hands. He hauled; Hook-and-Break reversed, his back and thighs took it. Tamsin's knife flicked and cut the child's shirt how wrong to move his center of gravity; he folded around her knife and fell into Ryn's legs. They got him down with a clatter and a soft curse that was all relief. The boy blushed to his ears. Ryn glared at him because if he didn't, his voice would be too soft. "Hold rope or I teach you why it bites," he said. The boy nodded, mortified.
Trella's mouth softened. "My rent," she said to Ryn, soft. It meant: you did what I needed.
He nodded without looking at her. He didn't have thank you in his mouth right now; it would get caught on his teeth.
He stood. The sun pulled itself out of the moor. The sponsor's horn joined the birds in a false harmony. Far to the west, the ossuary's hum lifted a hair. The factor's pikes glittered faint. The world arranged its pieces. Ryn pulled at his belt to tighten it and felt the corner of the wrapped shard piece for the perimeter in his pocket. He would not hum at it. He would place it somewhere it would lie and not talk without permission later. He hated that he had become a man who decided where to place a hum.
Sereth drifted up beside him. "You have to pick your board," he said without preface.
The System, as if in answer, slid the old neat box into his vision again with the weight of inevitability.
[Advancement: Trapper II or Specialization: Rook (Field Control).]
[Trapper II: Improved trap construction (speed +15%), increased trigger finesse, broader trap catalog unlocked (snares, deadfalls).]
[Rook I (Field Control): Unlock array logic; lay wedded line fields; anchor surge control increased; techniques: Anchor Whip II, Snapline stability +10%.]
[Note: Hybrid growth possible; cost: slower leveling.]
It should have felt like joy to be offered mastery. It felt like a bill. He rubbed his finger and thumb together until they squeaked and called up Marla's voice telling him: Anchor first, then weight. Trapper made sense like nails. Rook answered a hunger under his ribs like the way his fingers had watched the bar and said: move weight this way and make the world follow. He could try both; he would do neither well. The Warden had told him boring keeps you alive. The sponsor would hate a rook more. Garron would hate a rook less. The Guild would try to write both.
He chose without loving the choice. He thought about rope singing along a hedgerow, about the bell humming, about Tamsin dancing between the places he pointed, about Sereth hanging a line that would trip a knee just-so. He thought about keeping doors for ugly days. He thought about being not special, useful.
"Trapper," he said in his head. "And I'll pick Rook when the board's under me."
The System nodded, perhaps annoyed, perhaps satisfied.
[Advancement: Trapper II acquired.]
[Trap construction speed +15%; Trigger finesse +10%; Catalog expanded (deadfall, spikeplate, falter rope).]
[Synergy: Linework II -> III; Hook-and-Break (Intermediate) efficacy +5%.]
[Technique synergy: Snapline Step stability +5%.]
[Status updated.]
He exhaled and felt something in his hands click into true, not strength, not better, a readiness like a tool in its proper place on a bench. The donkey nudged his pocket and he sighed. "Still no apple," he said, and she made a noise that meant liar again.
He stepped to the palisade gap. The Warden's warning about paper came due immediately. Two council-men with tethered argument faces ran up to the carts from the far side of the green with a piece of parch sewn together in the middle and the factor two steps behind, exhausted and grim.
"Rent," the council-man gasped. "To hold. To pass. To—" He saw Ryn, then the writ, then the rope, and floundered. "Who are you?"
"Your rope," Trella said crisply. "Be silent." The council-man shut his mouth on a reflex he'd forgotten from childhood.
The factor put his hands on his knees and breathed like a man used to stairs. "We only have space for one argument today," he said, mouth dry. "Sponsor's ledger or ours." His eyes went to Ryn and then to the wrapped shard in Ryn's vest and then to the donkey and then to the children. He swallowed. "And then bones."
"Later," Ryn said, and hated how much like the Warden he sounded. He lifted the rope. "Hold this until we go. Then tie your own. Don't write it. Do it."
Trella saluted with her bark horn. "Rent," she said for the last time today, and blew the horn once, not at the sponsor's signal, but at the rhythm of the children's rope.
The world listened. Not enough. It never did. But a spark of something honest went into the air and men turned their heads as if something sensible had spoken in a language that wasn't theirs.
They moved at first light because staying made men think they could beg the day to be kind. It would not. Ryn cut his lines on the way out and left one in Trella's hand and one tied low for someone to discover with their foot and call him a bastard. He felt alive and a little dead and a good deal more tired.
The path out of the hamlet fell into an old hollow way—a sunken lane where the earth had been scraped by carts for a century and then left to hold water and arguments. The walls rose shoulder-high on either side and the hedges knit thick overhead. It was a pipe; he had a word for pipes now. Tamsin's lip went into the half-snarl half-laugh she wore when she craved and hated knife work.
"Bad," Sereth said.
"Underpasses are bad; this is worse," Ryn said. He looked at the hedges. He ran his hand along old root. The hum under his skin went to low and level. "We take it," he added, and Tamsin's eyes glittered because of course they would.
He set deadfalls for the rear—someone would follow; he didn't care. He set a falter rope across an ankle point where a man would try to jump the worst puddle and instead find a love-bite from the mud. He took the donkey's rope and looped it twice around his waist, acknowledgment and promise. He set his foot into water and found it cold. Kerrin stepped where he stepped. Hana cursed and lifted the hem of her skirt without embarrassment. Ilyon walked with lips pressed, noticing everything and refraining from saying anything—a new trick he was teaching himself.
Halfway down the hollow, a shape blocked the far end. It wore a cloak with its edges torn and a hood that looked like it had learned to be many faces. It stepped forward and the donkey snorted, not in fear. It smelled of wind and quiet.
The Warden stood and looked at Ryn as if he were a fence post someone had banged in a wrong place and wanted moved an inch. They did not gesture. They simply existed with the weight of a fact.
"You brought my piece," they said. Not question.
"I did," Ryn said, breath misting in the cold lane. He patted the vest where the shard lay in wrappings. He did not take it out here. He would not hum in pipes. "I put another in a spring. I broke the one under the last house into boring pieces."
"Good," the Warden said, exactly as before, and it made Ryn want to slap them and thank them both. "You will take the east path into the fell and crawl under a fallen mile bridge. You will find two men cutting. You will kill one and speak to the other." They turned their head, a movement that made the hedges seem to lean in to listen. "If you try to save both, the fallen bridge will fall again and the river will eat six of yours. If you kill both, the sponsor's surgeon will take the child from the hamlet. If you run, Garron will set a price on your donkey."
Tamsin's teeth bared. "You are an asshole," she said, not with fear, with respect for an honest asshole.
The Warden cocked their head a hair. "I am not a friend. Choose now."
Ryn's belly knotted into the shape of anger he had learned to transmute into rope. He hated their arithmetic more than the sponsor's because it didn't lie about the totals. He thought of Marla—the way she had chosen to hold because she believed it would pay in bread. He thought of the spear-woman laughing at his knots and warning him anyway. He thought of Trella blowing rent. He thought of Dorran sleeping like there were no ledgers left. He thought of the donkey and the apple. He thought of Kerrin with the sash and Pell counting. He thought of Hana turning men into doors whether they had hinges or not.
He said, "I will kill the one and speak to the other," and hated choosing a person to murder like that.
The Warden nodded. "Then do it," they said, and stepped aside to let the rope pass. They didn't bless; they didn't curse. They watched like the moor watches men fall in holes. Ryn brushed the edge of the cloak as he went and felt cold like understanding.
As they went under the hedges and the world turned into rutted mud and twig-shadows, Tamsin leaned toward Ryn without breaking her step. "I liked when you pretended the world didn't talk back," she said. "You were easier to drag."
"I was," he said. "You'll have to drag me harder now."
"I will," she said, and touched his elbow with a kindness too quick to be counted.
They came up under the "fallen mile bridge"—a short stone arch from before the Calamity, half-collapsed. Two men indeed knelt under it with pry bars and chisels, their backs to the road, their bodies making small oaths at rock. Sponsor's men by the clean edges on their tools and the unnatural neatness in their packs. One had the line of a clerk gone strong; the other had the line of a soldier closed into a clerk's clothes. Both had little bags laid neat like lunches. They were prying at the stone like a dentist at a child's last tooth.
"Stop," Ryn called, voice low and cut short. They flinched and turned like boys caught stealing bread. The soldier-clerk put his hand on his knife slowly. The other man kept his palms up like he had been taught to live by showing he had no sharpness.
"We work on commission," the palmer (not soldier) said. "We weren't braced for sermons."
Ryn breathed. The Warden had told him one would die. He had to pick which. He measured hands. He measured eyes. He measured breath. The soldier-clerk had the set of someone who would sell a child if his ledger told him it came out even. The palmer had the set of someone who would sell himself first.
He made a choice he would hate forever. He stepped in with Hook-and-Break and took the soldier-clerk's wrist and bent and pushed with knee guided by rope and duty until bone told him what he already knew, then cut while the throat was exposed from shock, cleanly, because Tamsin's rules about ugly things done with kindness stuck. The man died with one noise, not two. The palmer made a noise that would not haunt Ryn because his head was full of worse noises. He dropped his bar. He lifted his hands. "What," he said. "What now."
"Go," Ryn said. "Tell your sponsor I know how to pick between bads. Tell him his man died easy because he was the wrong one." He felt sick to his marrow; he kept his mouth under control. "If you come back with tools, I'll break you too."
The palmer swallowed and shook and did not flee. He looked at the body and then at the bridge and made a small choking laugh that had no humor in it. "You made me right," he said, with a contempt reserved for oneself. "I hate you for it." He picked up his bar and his bag with a precision that meant he would not leave falls for later, and he went. He did not look back. That would come later and poison his sleep.
"Forgive yourself later," Tamsin said softly, as if she wanted him to hear her kindness then and not later. He heard it. He did not accept it. He tied a line around the arch and felt the stone hum. He did not hum back. He pulled with his body and the bridge gave a little and then held. He could hold it for a moment more while his rope went under and their cart passed. He would not hold it for strangers. He would not be allowed to.
They went under, one by one, fast because the choice was a flood. The donkey went with ears flicked; she trod carefully as if counting his breaths for him. Dorran opened his eyes as he passed under stone and grunted approval of the arch like an old mason. Hana cursed hard and stayed under until she had to pop up. Kerrin ducked his head too far and hit it and did not complain. The children hushed without being told.
They came out on the far side of the fence line with the sun sliding toward meaner. Ryn let go the rope and the arch settled into place as if nothing had ever begged it to move. He put his hand on the stone and whispered something that wasn't prayer. He felt disgusting for whispering at rock.
The System slid its ledger in with no opinion about anything.
[Warden Directive: In progress. Shard ready; delivery pending.]
[Event: Sponsor influence at hamlet increases. Rent charged: 2 harvested sacks, 1 boy draft (later).]
[Guild: Factor holds at the weir: 2 pikes lost, 1 kept.]
[Ossuary: Drift increased to the west.]
He exhaled through his nose until it hurt. He could not fix all the fights. He could fix rope. He could lay traps. He could kill one and speak to the other and hate himself for it.
They came into another stand of beeches where the ground was gracious for a change. The Warden leaned against a trunk there like a hawk on a branch. Ryn took the shard out of his shirt and handed the wrapped packet across without ceremony. The Warden took it. They did not weigh it. They slid it into their cloak and Ryn felt something in his chest unclench that he had not known was clenched. He almost said thank you and swallowed it.
"Boring," the Warden said again, approval in it only because it was accurate. They looked at Tamsin and Sereth and then at Ryn with a kind of non-recognition—perhaps on purpose. "The ossuary will wake hungry. You will walk into it in three days or it will take you anyway. Do it because then the timing is yours."
"I don't want it," Ryn said bluntly.
"I don't care," the Warden said, not unkind. "It will care; it will get time if you don't give it coin." They tilted their head and a cold bit of the moor's wind slid under Ryn's shirt. "You did the arithmetic. The bill will come due with your insolence on it too."
"Good," Tamsin said dryly. "I love being called insolent by a tree."
The Warden might have smiled. It was hard to tell. "Keep rope," they said simply, and stepped past Ryn like wind.
Ryn hissed in a breath that felt like the first clean one he had taken since the road. He half-expected the System to pop in with praise. It didn't. Good. He was bored with applause.
He turned to his people. They weren't his; he could not stop calling them that in his head.
"We go east," he said. "We hold one more day. We pull one more door. We break one more ledger. Then we turn north because the bone wants us, and I am tired of paying it later."
Hana sized him up like bread. "You got tall," she said. "It's a trick. It'll turn you into a lever and break you. Try to be heavy, not tall."
"Noted," Ryn said, and thought suddenly and painfully of Marla's opposite and similar advice. He missed her as if she had just walked around a cart and would be back in the next breath. He did not let anyone else see it.
They moved. The day went a quarter turn and stopped, then a quarter turn more, and started again. They skirted a patch of bracken where something had died a season back and refused to accept it. They avoided a yard where a pig had lodged itself in a door and was too much door to be pig and refused to become bacon. They set one line across a gate where men would run, with the hope that they would see it and be educated rather than trip and break their teeth. They tied knots.
At last, when Ryn's legs had become arguments and his breath had become accounts, they saw the low shape of the next tollhouse like a hand on the ground. It hummed, of course. The shard under the floor was being neat. He did not love it.
"We don't touch it tonight," he said. "We hold. We sleep in shifts. We let the hum be someone else's problem in the morning." He rubbed the place under his skin where the shard had lived and hadn't left. "We don't hum at stones."
Tamsin made a noise of elaborate agreement. "We only hum at each other," she said. "Everyone else can listen."
They went in. The door closed. The rope sang. The bell chimed a note he had tuned to sound like bread on a board. The donkey sighed and found a corner. Dorran laid down with a groan like prayer.
Ryn leaned against wood and let his eyes close. For three heartbeats he sleep-walked the choices he had made and the ledgers he had refused and the one man he had killed because someone with pale eyes told him numbers. He hated himself. He would do it again if the Warden told him the bridge fell under children if he didn't.
He opened his eyes when the bell rang the wrong tone.
Tired had made him slow. His hand went without his head. He grabbed the rope, pulled, ducked a line he'd set, and presented his bad rib to a spear point. It kissed instead of bit; he let it. He shoved with his shoulder; Tamsin's knife flashed and bit; Sereth's bow hissed and thocked; Ilyon threw skunk-water in the precise angle a mother would pour stew, and the night became work again.
He had chosen Trapper. He would choose Rook when the board came under him. He would be a boring man's useful lie. He would tie men to doors. He would be sorry in private and practical in public. He would feed the donkey carrots when the world allowed that luxury.
He held the door. He did not hum at stones.
Outside, over the ridge, the ossuary's hum lifted like a sigh coming from a deep lung. The Warden's horn did not reply yet. The sponsor's ledger woman slept or did not. The enforcer sharpened his spear and decided where to put his bad mood. Garron's men bleeding a river held a line that had never been theirs and would be again.
Ryn set his hands on rope and practiced indifference. He did not get good at it. He did get steady.
By morning, he had a decision to sell to people who thought they wanted the moor to be kind: turn north into bone and debt, or run east until they ran out of rope. He already knew the choice. It did not taste good in his mouth. He swallowed. He set a line.
The System presented one neat line at the end as if it had been listening and had only one thing it could contribute:
[Chapter Outcome: Doors held: 3. Lives: 19 + donkey.]
[Pending: Ossuary incursion (2 days). Sponsor measure (1 day). Warden's patience (finite).]
"No ledger," Ryn whispered into the wood to be petty to the only god he admitted to, then grinned despite himself because petty counted as hope when the world was a ledger.
He went to sleep with his hand on the rope and woke with it there and counted knots and told himself that was what men do when they cannot afford to believe in better things. They make rope into prayer and pull.
The dawn waited. The bone hummed. He did not.
They would go north. He hated it. He could live it.
He set his jaw and told Hana before she could tell him he was being tall and she could cut him down to heavy. She looked at him and rolled her eyes and said, "Fine," and went outside to tell lies that would become truths if everyone said them at once.