Heat hung like a curtain. Even the flies seemed too lazy to bite. Ryn could feel the field around the tollhouse as a stitched net tugging at his skin—lines across the door, a wedded pair at the left cart gap, the bell on the rafter tuned to a note his head couldn't stop noticing. He had set it all like a prayer and then forced himself not to think of it as one. Array, the neat letters had stored it, the System the clerk naming his shelves.
"Two bends," Sereth said softly from behind the door slit. "Sponsor's lot moving polite down the lane. Northmen at the hedgerow two fields off—they're weighing whether to be insulted. Ossuary quiet like a thinking man."
"They always think," Tamsin muttered. She flicked a coin—no, bone disk—across her knuckles and let it fall. Small rebellions. "Eat something while you hate them."
Hana had put broth into four cups and forced it into hands. "Salt," she said. "And don't take a long drink. You vomit, I'll make you drink that." She had no patience left for men forgetting that bodies are taxed before ledgers.
The donkey stole a crust from Dorran's hand with the impunity of a saint, and Dorran let her. He had slept the odd fifteen minutes men learn to sleep in war and woke into breath like a man collecting himself for another ugly story. He set his hand on the shield propped at his leg. It made a low, decent sound.
Ryn put his palm to the door frame and then to rope and felt the field's pressure lines—subtle dips where a body would lean at the wrong time, a kink where a foot would catch. He could reach out to the bell line in his head and guess when the note would ring off-key. He hated how much like the System this felt. He loved that he could use it as a knob.
He was going to get no grace today. He'd chosen Rook only hours ago and felt it under his skin like a coat he had to grow into too quickly. He had a half-breath to practice hopeful tricks and would spend the rest pulling lines and making men do ugly dances in his door. That was the job. He'd do it.
The sponsor's enforcer walked into view like a bored god going to check his altars. Nine behind. No surgeon. No negotiator. No blue-ribbon banner: they didn't need to wave it; they were their own blue.
"Rent," he called, tiredly precise. Saying it soothed him the way a ritual does. He lifted two fingers and his crew fanned out in habits he'd taught them—four to the left gap, three right, two at the well side to feel the tune of the bell.
"Paid," Trella's cousin said before Ryn could. She had learned from a woman she'd never met. Ryn loved her for it, even if his stomach turned at the word. He would rather have set the lines and walked away. He never got to.
The enforcer looked past her, at Ryn's hands, the way he always did. His mouth thinned when he didn't see fear he could exploit. He lifted his hand and sent two men left. Ryn had laid the two-line array across that gap—one ankle-height line kissing the lip, one knee-high to pull when the first made a leg step too high. He waited until the first boot had committed weight into the lift, until thigh muscles began to lie about control, then hauled the knee line. The second line bit; the knee thought about breaking; a man went down with a sound like a lesson. Often enough, that noise leads other men to step stupid. They stepped stupid. Tamsin cut a tendon with the precision of a woman practicing unkind kindness. Sereth put an arrow into the corner of a sleeve where cloth meets skin and used an old tailor's trick to yank a body half a step back at the wrong time.
The bell hummed low. Ryn let it go. He had tuned that pitch because it would hit the enforcer's nerves too—the man had been under this bell yesterday and had learned to hate the note. He didn't look at the bell this time. He had learned something good. It was annoying and good.
Polite men to the right came on the well side and Ryn pulled his rope to plant the falter line across their ankles just high enough to be ungracious and low enough to seem like a small sin. One man tripped, cursed sweetly. The enforcer adjusted with a small chin. Ryn could have nearly respected it if he hadn't hated what it was for.
The field in his bones shifted in a way he understood: pressure change at the cart's right wheel. Slower breath. Someone settling onto the roof without understanding he'd set his nails there. He let his hand go to the bell line and just… breathed at it. It didn't ring. He didn't need it to. He sent two fingers out and marked the deadfall line to drop when the weight moved wrong. It moved wrong. He tugged. The board fell like a liar and made the man do an honest, surprised curse.
"Saints, you're irritating," the enforcer said from the lane, exhausted. "Bring me your hand." He didn't ask. He said it like a man ordering water.
"No," Ryn said, simply, steady.
"You'll bring me a piece," the enforcer said, tired. "Warden will get the first. I am patient." He took two light steps left and right and forced Ryn to split his attention across two points so he would make a mistake. He didn't. He'd split his attention across worse math this week.
[Anchor Whip II unlocked. Stagger effect increased. Field sense radius +1m.]
The System's letters were almost helpful. He didn't congratulate them. He snapped the rope against a shin at a moment when the man thought he was safe, the field telling him where the weight had settled. The line bit. The man's foot betrayed him and the body above followed. Tamsin's knife smiled without showing teeth.
They were boys at the door and the bored god was impatient. It would go on like this for a half-hour if not for the horn.
Three long and one short from farther east, derisive and wrong. Not sponsor, not northmen, not Guild. Ryn had heard it earlier and hated it as a new alphabet thief. The enforcer's head barely turned. He lifted his hand and drew a withdrawal; not because he felt kindness, because he was careful with his boredom. "Soon," he said again, bored promise to himself, and his men melted away as if he had suddenly discovered a better feast.
"Move," Hana said in the breath after the enforcer's back turned. Habit by now. Ryn didn't argue with a habit that had kept him breathing. He checked rope and cut knots he needed to leave behind; he hung a line for the door woman's hands; he rolled the donkey's halter with his fingers and rubbed her jaw. "Apple," he told her, audacious and uncowed by his own lies. She snorted amen.
They slid out the back over the nettle patch into a narrow path that made men stoop in ways they didn't like. Good. The field in Ryn's bones carried the lines of the alley with it—the places he'd hung rope, the spots he could use for the next argument. He disliked that, loved it, carried it.
Sereth moved along a parallel hedge, eyes counting through the far gaps: sponsor men bored, northmen eating bored, the new thief band loud and bored. Every boredom required eating. He'd pick which would feed on him least.
The path cut into bracken and then low beech, then opened into the shoulder of a ridge. Down slope, the next hamlet—two houses and a shame—had no door left. Men with inside-out coats had made a square where the beams had been. The horn had come from here. They took rent under the sign of wrong and Ryn's hands itched.
"Do we pay," Tamsin asked with contempt, amused.
"We teach rope," Ryn said, in a tone that even he knew was getting too fond of itself, and hated that, and kept moving.
They hit the edge of the square as two men with reversed coats and long knives announced the price for not having the blue ribbon's paper. A child cried behind a grown man whose knuckles had bled from picking something heavy. The door was gone. Ryn walked into the space a step over slow. The field told him where the two men had weight. He set a low ankle line across the gap between two carts and felt it settle. He turned to the men that had their own coin.
"Rent," he said, bored. The word kept working.
"Pay us," the left thief said, pointing his knife at Ryn like a new toy. He had a mouth full of old anger that had nothing to do with Ryn. That was the problem.
Ryn pulled the line across their ankles and made the cart behind sing. They both jerked, stupidly, and Tamsin was behind the left one in the gap, knife at his kidney, not cutting because she'd keep his breath for a half-minute if his friend did anything dumb. But she would. The field settled under her feet like it had asked to be used. She disliked that too.
The right thief stepped hard and Ryn snapped the line into the space in front of the man and let the mind flinch go wrong direction, then cooled his voice. "Leave," he said, perfectly dry. He had the Hermes trick of making a truth sound like a lie good men want to believe. "This door eats bored men."
It worked because they weren't committed; they were trying on a hat. They threw the rent they had collected—bread and a jar—down in a tantrum and left as if they had decided they meant to anyway. Men on the circle exhaled. Hana picked up the jar by the handle and set it on a cart and looked at Ryn like he wasn't a fool for once.
"Move," she said, almost kindly, and they did.
That's how the afternoon went: failing to be heroic in useful ways. A field and a door held; Tamsin's knives cut men who thought they were new gods into old dogs; Sereth shot sleeves and a foot and a hand with nails he didn't have but a bow that made them; Ilyon saved a set of lungs from glitter twice and hid it under vinegar; Dorran remembered to hold his shield low; Kerrin remembered to tie then untie knot, not the other order. He found they could buy an hour with four lines and the ability to be boringly cruel.
Near sundown, Ryn's stomach told him its opinion of killing a boy earlier. He didn't vomit. He would later when no one was looking. He didn't have the luxury now. He rubbed at the rope burns at his wrists and forced his hands to move again, looking for the next door about to learn the wrong lesson. He found it.
They came upon the weir. Again, because roads are loops and bad places are sticky. The Guild had finally made a line that didn't look like a child's drawing. Pikes in a half circle, men moving in pairs, the factor with his baton and the weight of three bad days under his shirt. The water smelled like old teeth. Bones hummed under the upstream lip. Sponsor men watched from the far bank with their blue ribbon bored. Northmen at the next bend did what wolves do when they see someone's house is on fire: flanked boredom. If Ryn hadn't become what he was this week, he would have laughed at how bad the arithmetic had gotten.
"Hold," the factor called out, as if he had written it down yesterday. Then, more human, "Please."
The field in Ryn's blood told him where the Guild line would bend and where the water would cheat and where sponsor men would push. He set three lines without thinking, not for the Guild—he'd file the bitterness later—for the men behind them with hands still. He set a wedded pair between two pikes to stagger a rush; he strung a narrow ankle line along the submerged lip where the weir turned to make a knee wet; he hung a bell from a tree branch at a pitch the enforcer hated and felt petty about enjoying it.
Sponsor men pushed. Northmen tried to make a tax out of boredom. The bone sighed and didn't move because it was storing hunger. Ryn pulled. His hands shook. Tamsin's knives sang a better song than his bell. Sereth did what old men do: made little things you can't see into things other men broke their tandems on. Ilyon poured vinegar on bad air and ash on good water. It worked ugly. He'd take it.
After the weir had held a breath, the factor leaned in across the gap under flag of hating to be grateful. "You are insufferable," he said. "Thank you."
"Write me down as insufferable and late," Ryn said, because pettiness was a rope too. The factor grinned, ugly and honest, and backed away, writing while standing because he'd learned how.
By the time the last horn went pale with heat, Ryn had held three doors and had learned two fields and had broken one boy and had promised one donkey an apple twice. He had one line left in him. He set it.
They got as far as the low rise before the night. The ossuary's hum finally lifted like a sigh—movement, stored hunger decide to use itself. The field under his skin grew louder. The System tried to gently tell him something like a mother: [Incoming: Ossuary drift increase. Night activity.] He snarled at it, soundless, and thanked it anyway. He didn't have time to hate the clerk.
They bedded the children under a hedge. Hana gave bread into hands and told lies in a tone that made them true tomorrow. Dorran propped his shield and slept like a man who had built a road with his body. Sereth sat and cleaned his arrows and did not think about where he had put them. Tamsin sharpened one knife and watched Ryn because sometimes her job was to make sure he kept being who he said he was. Ilyon sat on his hands and didn't pull the wrong pouch.
Ryn took the last wedge from his pocket and considered. He could put it under this ditch and make the hum lie. He could keep it for later when the field would be worse. He looked at the donkey. She bumped him. It wasn't a vote. It was a presence.
He buried it. He hated it. It would keep a line straight this night. It would come due later. He'd pay. He turned to Tamsin and let blood out through his breath. "One more," he said.
She stood, coin forgotten on purpose. "Always," she replied.
They went to the last door—the low shed on the rise that had become a tollhouse for the week. He set the line. He tuned the bell. He begged his field to be enough and refused to call it begging. He held the rope. The night moved. The bone sang. The enforcer would eat breakfast with boredom and send men to make it Ryn's problem. The surgeon would hum at willow and write something new in his head. The Warden would be bored or not. He would continue to move.
"Move," Hana said. Ryn breathed. He pulled.
The door survived night. That was all he asked. He asked too much and got it once. He'd pay later.
In the second hour, when the bell rang wrong and the field shivered and the line bit a good man's shin and his breath made an ugly noise, Ryn smiled and hated himself and felt alive in the way men who refuse to be special must: by being useful, stubborn, and late. The System told him he had advanced his array logic. He did not care. He cared that a child did not cry. He cared that the donkey had eaten something green and forgave him again.
At dawn, he would go do it again. He didn't hum at stones. He didn't need to. The rope hummed enough. He pulled.