Ryo held the lamp close to the smear. The flame made the iron in it shine dull. It hadn't flowed. It had been pressed—the roundness of a thumb, the way the skin had ridges. Someone had leaned in, put a hand to his door, and left a mark to be seen in the morning.
He could smell it when he held the lamp too near. Old iron and meat. Not fresh, not long dried. Somewhere in between. He set the lamp back so the heat wouldn't cook it into the wood.
He did not touch it with his skin. He brought a small bowl and a clean sliver of cloth, soaked the cloth in hot water, and wiped the area around the print first, slow, gathering the dust without smearing the blood further. Then he took a thin paring of wood from a scrap and pressed the edge under the top grain of the board just below the mark. He worked the knife under it in small bites. He wanted the spot to come up cleanly, not in splinters. When the paring lifted, he had the print whole enough to recognize, dried and ugly on the curl of wood. He set it on a plate. He wrapped the plate in cloth and put it in a clean jar with a lid, because people forget what they saw when it's gone and then they argue. He would not argue over a stain he had already scrubbed away.
He made a weak lye with ash and hot water in a bucket. He tested it with the tip of his finger against his tongue to make sure it wasn't strong enough to eat the wood too much. Then he scrubbed the door and the frame and the place where a hand might go when reaching. He scrubbed the latch. He scrubbed the sill and the board outside where the foot would land after a step through. He poured clean water, then more. He dried it with a cloth he would burn later. He burned the cloth on a shovel in the hearth and held the shovel until the rag went down to ash so the wind didn't lift anything out.
When the wood was cool, he poured a thin line of salt along the outside edge of the threshold. He didn't know if salt made cowards think twice or if it made his own mind settle. He did know that many eyes took in a door before they trusted a room, and he wanted those eyes to see care taken.
He swept fine ash across the outside step after the salt. A thin layer. He didn't go thick. Thick made a show. Thin caught new prints.
He set his small book on the bar and wrote: midnight—thumb of blood—door—thin man with ring spoke earlier—bring jar to Mara at first light. The letters were neat. He turned his pen so it wouldn't blot.
He laid his bedroll near the hearth where the clay held the day's heat. He did not go past shallow sleep. He woke twice to the pop of a coal and once to the cough of something outside. He listened then, not moving, counting the seconds between any sounds. There were none but the small noise of water in the ditch and wind pushing at the reed bundles.
Before the first color came up behind the willows, the latch lifted slow. It didn't scrape. That had been fixed yesterday. The door eased inward against the bar. Ryo sat up and put his bare feet on the cold floor and waited. Whoever was outside tested the bar once and then let the latch settle. Boots crunched on the thin ash. He counted six steps away.
He got up when he heard the second knock, the one he knew. Anna's three quick, pause, two. He lifted the bar, set it aside, and opened the door.
Anna stood with breath smoking and an empty look on her face that covered another expression she didn't want him to see yet. She looked down at the salt line, then at the ash. She didn't cross. She shifted her weight.
"Someone put a mark," she said.
"Yes," Ryo said. "I took it up and I kept the piece. I cleaned the door and the frame and the latch. Come in. Step over the salt, don't kick it."
She lifted her skirt a little so the hem wouldn't drag and stepped over the line like someone who had done it before. She shut the door behind her and set the latch down gently. She looked at the place where the print had been and then at him.
"Do you want me to say the words or do you want to pretend this is just boys being proud of their rings?" she asked.
"I want you to say what you know," he said.
"It's a threat," she said. "It tells anyone who comes that you take coin in here and that you do as you're told or you'll be dragged out and shown to people and made to hand your face over. It says you can't keep your doorway clean. Some folk see blood and think they're marked and go soft in the knees. If a priest comes by later, he'll say it's a curse. He'll want bread and a chair and a bit of coin to wave his hand. He'll mutter over water and tell you to pour it across the threshold. The water is water. What matters is people seeing you don't leave dirty things where you eat."
"I cleaned it," Ryo said. He went to the jar and lifted it out, set it on the bar, and unwrapped it. She looked at the curl of wood and the dried print on it. Her mouth went tight, then she let out a breath. "You took it up," she said. "Good. If Mara sees it, she'll stamp a paper saying so. Brann can say it was pig blood, but it won't matter if we have a stamp. We're not going to the priest?"
"No," Ryo said. "We're going to Mara with this, and we're going to keep sweeping. If someone wants to pray, they can do it on their way to the mill."
Anna nodded once in a way that said she had expected that and was relieved anyway. "I'll draw water," she said. "Then I'll clean the sill again so anyone who noses at it gets salt and not the smell."
She went to the well with a bucket on each hand and came back with shoulders braced against the weight. She started heating water without being told which pot to use. If she hurried, she stopped herself. She kept the cloth separate for the door and poured the used water into a ditch, not back into the yard.
Ryo watched her work until he knew she would follow the order without him standing there, then he put on his coat and took the jar and his book.
Mara's door wasn't locked. People came in and out. They sat on the benches along the wall and they said their small problems, and she put them into a ledger and she made them into lines and amounts and dates so they would sit under the weight of paper instead of under someone's ribs. She looked up when he came and looked down at what he carried before she looked at his face.
"Show me," she said.
He set the jar on the table, unwound the cloth, and lifted the plate out. He did not touch the wood with the print. He turned the plate so she could see. She didn't reach. She leaned in and looked with the eyes of someone who had seen much and didn't trust the first look.
"How long," she said.
"An hour or two before dawn," Ryo said. "A thin man with a ring tapped my door last night. He told me his boss would come today and drink free. He tapped where that thumb was left. He wanted to leave a print, not break a door."
Mara nodded, then turned and walked to the door. "Joss," she called. A man with a sore knee who swept the lanes for coin and odd bread stood halfway outside. "Go fetch the keeper from the shrine. Tell him to bring cloth and his lamp and nothing else. He is to come careful, not to spill words. Then go tell Corlan I want him to bring his boy and stand here and wait. Go, and don't tell anyone why."
Joss limped away without questions. Mara came back and took out a thin sheet of writing. She wrote two lines and folded it and pressed it with a simple mark, not a seal, just her name.
"I'll put a notice at the board," she said. "It says: A mark of blood was placed on the alehouse door. The mark was removed and kept. This paper stands for that fact. If any man says there was no mark, he speaks against what I wrote and he can come sit where you sit and tell me why. That's the end of that argument."
She looked at the print again. "It's human," she said. "Pig sits slick. This holds rough and there are small lines. Someone scraped his own thumb. He'll have a cut that looks like a knife slipped. Not deep, but annoying."
Ryo nodded. He didn't trust his own nose to make such a call with surety. He believed hers.
"What will you do?" he asked.
"What I always do," Mara said. "Make it cost more for him to come here than to leave you be. I'll call the men who fix roofs and the men who haul peat and the women who smoke fish. I'll tell them that if they stand aside while Brann pisses in the village door, he'll piss in theirs next week. Some will nod. Some will look at shoes. The ones who nod will come when we need a word at the mill. The ones who look at shoes will pay if you pay, and they'll pay if you don't. We don't move for them. We move for the ones who nod."
"The priest?" Ryo asked.
"He'll say, for a small offering, he can wash the threshold with blessed water," Mara said. "If that makes your workers sleep, let him spill it. I won't pay for it. If he insists on his hand over your door, I will tell him to put the same hand over Brann's camp on the mill road and see if his charm works in both places. He'll decide the water is tired that day. We will keep our own salt."
Corlan arrived with his boy and the shrine keeper in his old grey coat. The keeper said little. He took the plate from Ryo's hands and put it in a pouch with a cloth carefully, as if it might break. He did not say he would pray. He said, "It will be recorded," and Ryo found that simple sentence worth more than a chant. Corlan looked at Ryo like he was waiting to see if he would shout or sulk or do some other thing men did when they were pinched.
"I'm going to fix a roof and boil a pot," Ryo said. "If Brann comes, I will ask for a writ and send him here. If he brings his hand too close to my workers, I'll put it somewhere he can't use it for a week. Then I'll send him here."
Corlan grunted. "Good," he said. "I'm tired of boys with white shirts telling me they make the road safe when I can't pull a wagon past their arse because they've stopped it across the lane to count coins."
Mara stamped the simple notice, and Ryo took it with him and tacked it to the board. He walked back to the alehouse with the jar in his bag and the notice's words in his mind, clean and straight. When he opened the door, Anna was on her knees with a cloth in her hand and her mouth set.
"I saw your ash," she said. "Boot marks. One man. Toes pointed out. Not a worker's step."
"I saw," Ryo said. "Mara stamped it. I put the notice."
Anna went to the bar and poured herself a cup of hot water to warm her hands. "I've worked in places where a man like that comes," she said. "They always think the same. They think we won't tell each other and they think the room won't remember. They're wrong."
He stirred the pot and tasted the water. It needed more onion. He cut it slow and put it in, watching the pot take the new flavor without losing the old.
There was a scuff at the door. He looked up. A boy leaned in, not stepping over the salt. It was Toller, shoulders up, hair wet from fog.
"Ren says we're here to look," he said. "He says we climb this afternoon if the pitch is decent. He says if the pitch is bad he won't climb at all and you won't want him to because you'll be patching twice and hating everyone."
"Tell him to come in," Ryo said. "Step over the salt. It's for eyes."
Toller stepped in like the line mattered and then forgot it as soon as his second foot was down. He went straight to the darkest stain and poked it with a thin stick, then sniffed the end and nodded. "We'll do the dry lines first," he said. "Ren will say 'no wet reed,' but he'll do a bit if the wind stays quiet."
Ryo ladled a cup of hot broth and handed it to him. The boy held it with both hands and breathed the steam like it was a thing you could wear.
"Brann's boys marked the door," Toller said between sips. "They did the same to Janna's fish shed last month. Janna's boy threw piss water on them and they beat him for it and the shed still smelled better after. Janna told the keeper and Mara stamped, but Brann didn't stop. He'll come here because you set the broom in a way he doesn't like."
"I set the broom how it cleans," Ryo said. He walked to the shelf and took down the jar with the print just enough to show Toller there was a thing and put it back so the boy would have something to say when he went home.
Ren arrived without hurry, a plank of a man just like Anna had said. He stood in the doorway and looked up at the roof and then at the yard and then at the ditch. He stepped over the salt because everyone else had. He did not remark on it. He walked to the darkest stain inside and put a hand up to the beam without standing on anything, just reached and balanced.
"You the owner?" he asked.
"I am," Ryo said.
"Roof holds if patched this week," Ren said. "It goes in two storms if you don't. Price is two silver for us and the pitch, stew for the day, two loaves to take home, and a bucket of clean water that doesn't go warm by noon. We bring our own shoes and rope. We come at first light and we don't stop for gossip. If we fall, we climb back up if our legs hold, and if they don't, you get the priest and he brings our mothers."
Ryo didn't haggle. He counted what he had and what he needed and said, "Done." He looked at Anna. "Can you fetch loaves from the goose house? Pay the woman with the line knot in her hair two good coppers, not one. Her bread holds."
"I know the one," Anna said. "I'll go."
She took her cloak and went out with her shoulders squared and her jaw making a small angle that said she would not detour for men asking her to smile. Ren watched her go, then looked at Ryo again.
"Brann puts blood on doors when he can't move a man with his voice," Ren said. "He'll come with a writ he made in a market stall with a stolen seal. He'll put his ring on your door and tap it. He likes the sound."
"He sent a thin man to say he would be here," Ryo said. "He told me the first night was free."
Ren's mouth moved in something that wasn't a smile. "He's never heard the word no from a man who meant it," he said. "He's heard it from men who wanted to go home and from men who didn't know what the word is for. He's heard it and laughed. He hasn't heard it and had it stay put. If you say it and keep your hands still until it's time to use them, he'll either back out or he'll make the mistake that lets us put him in front of Mara."
"Then I'll say it and keep my hands still," Ryo said. "If he reaches for a girl's arm, I take his hand and put it down. After that, we go to Mara."
Ren nodded once as if a line had been snapped straight. "We'll start after we eat," he said. He went outside and began to look at the pitch jar he had brought, prying the lid, sniffing, rolling a bit between his fingers to see if it held. He took a knife and scraped the rim and wiped it clean on a rag he would later burn in a place where dung wouldn't catch.
The thin man with the ring came before noon, just as Ryo had skimmed the scum off the stew and added a pinch of black pepper that had cost more than it should have. Ryo saw the white shirt through the small window before the man reached the line. He set the ladle down and wiped his hands on a cloth and went to the door.
The man smiled the half-smile again for practice. He held a paper between two fingers and let it hang like bait.
"Writ," he said. "From Lord Gareth. It says we collect for the road and the safety of the hamlet and that you, as a merchant of drink, pay a daily share to the road man. You're a smart sort. You like paper. Take a look. We'll get this done and I'll taste your stew."
Ryo took the paper. He didn't step back. He held it right there so the man couldn't put his foot across without stepping on salt. He opened it and read. The ink was good. The hand had neat letters. The seal was wrong. It had a field mark that matched nothing he had seen on Mara's papers and an edge too smooth for the old press. It had no witness sign. There was no steward's countersign. There was also no date, just a season. It said "this autumn," and the stamp had been pressed without sand to take the extra wax, leaving it shiny and easy to smear.
He handed it back. "Take it to Mara," he said. "She will read it and tell me what I owe. If she says I owe you two coppers a day, I will hand you two coppers at her table. If she says it isn't a writ, you'll hand this back to the boy you stole the press from."
The man's smile cracked. "You think you're clever," he said softly.
"No," Ryo said. "I think we don't do collections at my door. We do them at Mara's table. That's the end of it."
Behind the man, Ren stood with his arms folded, eyes on the roofline as if he had never looked up in his life and had just discovered why people did it. Toller leaned against the wall with a stick in his teeth like a reed and pretended to be a piece of fence. Two other men had gathered without gathering. They were just there, doing nothing, where anyone could see them.
The thin man looked at the salt line. He laughed in the way men laugh when they would like to step on a thing but can't find a shoe. He put one toe on the line and then took it off as if unconsciously. "This is nothing," he said. "You can pour your salt back in the bucket and stir it into your stew, and we'll still be there tonight."
Ryo didn't answer. He held the door. The stew simmered behind him. The smell went out the window because he had set it to. The man with the paper shifted with the cold and his white shirt caught the wind.
"Tonight," the man repeated, and turned. He didn't look back to see if the threat landed. Men like him didn't check. They assumed.
Ren let out a breath that wasn't relief or fear. It was the sound of breath leaving a body that had stood too still for one moment. "We'll be on the roof," he said. "We'll hear if you need us and if we need to climb down fast, we will. But it's better if we don't. It unnerves the thatch."
Ryo went back to the hearth. He stirred and tasted and added nothing. He set three bowls and three spoons for the brothers and one for Anna. He kept his own back for later.
Anna came back with bread and set it down and then saw Ren and Toller and went still because she did not know yet if more men meant more trouble. Ren nodded to her without blinking or smiling and went to fetch a rope. Toller winked because he couldn't help himself. Anna relaxed the distance that says a person will stay or run depending on the next two heartbeats.
"You'll want to eat now," Ryo said to the brothers. "By the time you come down, the light will be wrong for a good stew."
They ate by the door, stepping over the salt and back again like the line meant something and also like it was just a line. Ryo took another note in his book: writ—no countersign, season not date, smooth seal—send to Mara.
He did not stop moving. He laid wedges ready. He moved the bucket out of the way of clumsy boots. He showed Anna how to stand so a falling bit of thatch wouldn't catch her face. He put a cloth out for Ren to wipe pitch from hands without touching the door.
When the first step went up the ladder, the afternoon turned. Work sounds beat out the pattern of nerves: foot, shift, rope creak, the small dull thud of a tool against wood. That rhythm held the room together.
He did not forget the thin man's "tonight."
He kept the broom near the door anyway.
Something settled at the edge of thought once the scrubbed threshold dried and the salt lay even and he had written it all down. It wasn't words so much as the feeling of a line drawn along the door that would stay where he put it.
Threshold: holds.
He let the sentence float up and drift away. He didn't chase it. He ladled stew for Anna and then for himself and sat on the low bench where he could see the door and the ladder and the line of salt and think about only stirring and swallowing.
The ladder creaked as Ren climbed, pitch pot swinging. Halfway to the eaves, a shadow fell across the door again. This time it wasn't the thin man. It was Brann himself, wide and calm, with two others behind him and a third carrying a mallet he pretended not to hold. He reached out and tapped the lintel with his knuckles like he was greeting an old friend and smiled in a way that asked to be answered. "Evening," he said. "We'll keep this short. Bring your book."