The first sheet of rain flattened the yard. It hit the salt line and carved a narrow groove, then widened it until the white streak broke into islands. Ryo put his shoulder under the ladder and swallowed the urge to look toward the lane where the tapping came—tap, tap, tap—like a bored man counting. The roof came first.
"Ren," he said, steady. "First pot only. Lay the worst run. Do not chase the rain. Let it run off while you smear. Toller, you spot. You talk, you don't shout. Tell him where the line slides."
Ren didn't answer. He shifted his weight along the rafter and set the brush into the good pitch like it was a knife he trusted. Toller planted a foot and leaned, peering along the reed as if his eyes could press it tighter.
Ryo went inside. The stain on the ceiling had already found its path; the first thin drip gathered at the edge of a beam and fell. Anna stood under it with a bucket in her hands, set her jaw, and slid the bucket under the bead just as it dropped.
"Not directly under," Ryo said. "Move it an inch to the side. Tie a string from the beam to the bucket handle so the water runs down it and doesn't splash."
Anna's eyes flicked to him, then to the beam. "String," she said. "Where?"
He took a roll of thin, rough twine from the shelf. He tied one end tight around a nail on the beam where the water had gathered and let the other end hang into the bucket. The next drip found the string and ran along it like it had always meant to.
"Quieter," Ryo said. "It won't wake you every time it falls."
Anna nodded once, quick. She moved with purpose now, tying two more strings, setting two more buckets. She laid folded cloths at their bottoms so the drops wouldn't echo. She looked up at the heavier stain and set a washtub near it without being told.
"Do we have nails to brace a loose lath?" she asked.
"Not today," he said. "We'll make do without. If a board comes, we catch it and set a prop."
He went back to the yard. The rain beat his face cold. He kept his shoulders level and his hands dry as long as he could by wiping them on the inside of his coat, then gave up and accepted the wet. He lifted the next bucket when Ren called and passed it up in a steady rhythm, not jerking, not rushing, letting Ren time the pull so the pot didn't swing and catch.
Ren laid the brush along the reed. The line of pitch held, then shivered, then clung. Toller's voice came down flat with no panic in it because he knew panic made men slip. "Left, two hand widths," he said. "The reed's sloped wrong from the last patch. It catches. Lay it heavy but stop before the buckle."
Ryo listened. He couldn't see the line from where he stood. He learned it from the sound: the brush dragging, the breath Ren pushed out when he reached too far, the clack of a pot rim against a rung when Toller misjudged by half an inch and corrected.
He thought about the second pot and the smell that wasn't strong until it was wrong. He stepped away from the ladder long enough to go to the covered pot on the bench. He lifted the lid a finger's width and smelled again. Dung and stale urine hid under the resin. Whoever did it had cut it with water and something soft, enough to keep it from setting under rain. He set the lid back and tied it with a strip of cloth around the handle and the ear.
He pointed at the pot when Anna came out to check the yard through the rain. "Do not use this," he said. "No one lifts the lid unless it's me or Ren. After we're dry, we take it to Mara. It's evidence. I don't want anyone saying our noses lied."
Anna didn't ask to smell it. She nodded, serious, and went to fetch a cloth she could tie around the handle brighter than the twine, a small flag that said don't touch to hands that forgot.
"You'll need fat," she said suddenly, hair plastered to her forehead. "We painted the net-roof with fat and ash once when the shed broke. It held for a night. It stank, but it held."
Ryo blinked rainwater out of his lashes. "Tallow," he said. "Mix with ash and flour. Warm it so it pastes. Not as hot as pitch. It will smear in the rain instead of running. It won't last. It'll turn sour by morning."
"It might get us past the worst," Anna said. "I can warm it."
"Do it," he said. "Keep it thick."
She ran inside. He heard the lid of the stockpot clang and then muffle. The tapping from the lane kept at its pace, patient and deliberate, like someone reminding themselves they had all day.
Ren called down. "Next," he said. Ryo lifted another bucket. His hands believed the weight before his shoulder did. He found the steady pull by the second rung.
Halfway through the run, a gust came from the west and drove rain under the reed. Ren flattened against the roof and set his forearm across the line to hold himself while water tried to push him off. Toller planted his bare foot sideways and shoved his hip against the pitch pot to keep it from tipping.
"Off the line," Ryo said, calm. "Reset. Don't fight the gust. Let it pass."
Ren didn't waste breath answering. He waited. The gust went on. Then it stopped as if a hand had lifted. He breathed once, once more, and lifted his brush again. He didn't chase the inch that had slid. He left it and started clean just past.
Anna came back with a small pot and a thick stick. The mixture inside looked wrong in a good way—grey and heavy and unwilling to drip.
"Test it," Ryo said. He held out a piece of broken reed he'd kicked free from the yard. She smeared it with the mixture. It held to the reed and didn't run when he turned it. He ran his thumb along it and found it tacky without being slick.
"Toller," he called. "Pass your hand down." The boy stretched his arm with fingers spread like a man reaching for an apple. Ryo smeared a thumb of the paste on his palm. "Up to Ren. Try a palm's worth where the rain pushes under the run. Edge it under the reed. If it slides off, stop. If it sticks, lay a thin skin there and nowhere else."
Toller nodded and passed the paste up. Ren didn't ask questions. He pressed a thumb of it in, breathed through his nose, and pressed a second. The rain ran over it and didn't take it away at once. It didn't fix the pitch, but it stopped the small line of water that had been slipping under the reed and running inside at the joint.
"That'll rot if it sits," Ren said.
"We scrape it in the morning," Ryo said. "It gets us to morning."
Inside, the strings began to sing with drops. The sound changed from random plinks to a quiet hiss. Anna moved between buckets like she was dancing grudgingly. She tied two more strings, then three. The washtub took its first steady trickle. She wiped her face with a dry corner of her sleeve and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes with a sharp breath.
The tapping in the lane stopped. It didn't go away. It paused. Ryo heard boots splash through a puddle and then the scrape of someone choosing to lean on wood that wasn't theirs. He didn't look up. He kept his focus on the line above.
"Ren," he said. "How many hands to the end of the first pot?"
"Not enough," Ren said. His voice carried a small bite of frustration he usually swallowed. "Half a run. Maybe less."
"Then lay the worst," Ryo said. "Leave a gap where the drip runs to the string. We control the leak inside. We do not smear soup on a line that won't hold."
Ren grunted agreement. He worked. Toller shifted. They made the yard smaller and smaller with their attention.
Soren's quill would be scratching at the board and then on Mara's table. Ryo let that thought touch him and leave. It wasn't for now.
Anna appeared at his elbow with a strip of cloth. She wrapped it around his wrist. "For grip," she said. "You're slipping."
He hadn't noticed. He nodded once. "Thank you," he said.
She glanced toward the lane where the tapping had been and then away, back to the buckets. "I'll watch the door," she said. "If it opens, the latch will speak to me."
"Keep it barred," he said. "If someone calls you by name, answer only if it's Mara's voice."
She didn't argue. She went back inside. He heard the bar lift to test, then settle again. He liked the way it sounded in the groove he'd worn for it.
Rain found its own rhythm. The steady curtain softened and then came back hard. Ryo fell into the work he knew. Lift a bucket. Take a breath. Pass it up. Wait for the weight to leave his hands. Listen to the brush. Listen to the string's hiss. Step back under the ladder so the next drip didn't go down his collar.
He counted movements instead of minutes. Ten passes. Fifteen. After twenty, Ren raised his brush.
"Done with the good," Ren said. "We have wet reeds and one bad run left. The paste will hold a thumb's width."
"Give Toller the pot," Ryo said. "You set yourself where you won't slide and tell him where to smear. He has surer hands for that edge."
Ren didn't like that, on principle. He listened anyway, moved an arm-length down, and watched his brother's hands like a man watching someone else fold a net that could tangle.
Toller used the paste like he'd always meant to paint roofs. He made it thin. He didn't push. He didn't talk, which made him older for three minutes.
The tapping started again in the lane. It wasn't at the same pace. It was slower now, a bored man's three taps against damp wood and then a pause like he wanted someone to ask what he was doing. No one asked. The rain answered for the yard and the roof.
Ryo walked to the door once and set his palm against it without opening. He felt the small vibration of knuckles on the lintel, separate from the rain. He held his hand there until the knuckles stopped. He went back to the ladder.
Inside, Anna's voice carried. "Do not touch that pot," she said, sharp. "If you lift the cloth, I will wrap it back around your head."
Ryo turned his head just enough to see who she was talking to. No one was in the doorway. She was talking to the space where worry lived, setting a rule for it. He felt something ease in his chest that wasn't breath.
The worst of the line held with paste and pitch enough to make it ten minutes. That was all he asked of it. The sky didn't grant favors; it gave gaps. They grabbed two.
"Down," Ren said. "Now. We'll come back in morning and scrape the paste and lay proper. If we stay, we slide."
Ryo stepped back and away from the ladder. Toller came down fast, then forced himself to slow, one rung, one rung, hands close. Ren followed, boots finding the rungs his body already knew.
When they hit the ground, Ryo took the brush out of Ren's hand before he could set it down in the wrong place and rinse the rain through it. He carried it inside to the hearth and scraped the bristles clean on the rim of the hearth stone. Anna had already set a small pot of water warming—not boiling—to wash pitch without cooking it into the hair. He dipped, wiped, dipped, wiped, until the brush was as clean as it would get without a river.
Ren stood in the doorway like a plank that had been set up against a wall for the night. He didn't come in. He didn't want to track mud onto a floor he could see had been swept with intent. Toller leaned on the frame and breathed the smell of stew like he was reading it.
"Eat," Ryo said. "You'll feel the slip in your shoulders in ten minutes and then you won't want a bowl in your hands."
Ren stepped over the threshold careful. He didn't look down at the place the blood had stained yesterday. He didn't need to. He had seen it in the jar at Mara's. He took his bowl and ate standing where he could see the line inside and the door.
Toller ate fast, then slower when he realized there would be more. Anna ate between moving buckets like she didn't trust the strings to keep their promises.
The paste stank when it warmed. It smelled like a sheep pen and a cook fire had had an argument and both lost. It also stopped a drip that would have woken them every time it fell. Ryo accepted the smell because he could wash it tomorrow. There were trades he wouldn't make. This one he would.
He kept his ear open for the tapping. It had moved away. It found something else to bother. The quiet in the lane wasn't peace, only absence.
When the worst of the rain eased to a weaker sheet, Ryo took a candle and went to the thresholds. He didn't open the door. He went to the back and looked through the gap near the hinge where the wood had dried and left a sliver. He saw nothing but water running in lines down the yard and a shape that might have been a cart and might have been two people standing close under a cloak. They didn't move. He let the thought go.
He checked the bar. He checked the latch. He checked the wedge under the hinge side. He didn't do it because he didn't trust them. He did it because bodies forget what they've done when they get tired.
Ren set his empty bowl down and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. He looked at the rafters and then at the door.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We scrape that paste before the sun hits it. We lay clean. If the sun doesn't come, we lay anyway. If anyone puts dung in your pot again, we'll know sooner." He looked at the covered pot Anna had tied. He checked the knot and nodded, approving it as if it had been a rope on his roof.
"We'll take it to Mara," Ryo said. "She'll write it down where even a clever liar can't tug it free later."
Ren grunted agreement. He put his hand against the hearth stone to feel if it held heat enough to keep the room from sweating when the rain turned cold. "You did the strings right," he added, almost as an afterthought, which was praise enough.
Anna straightened from the buckets and blew hair out of her face again. "I learned that in a shed that looked like it stood by leaning on its own shadow," she said. "If you don't tie strings, men say they can't sleep and then they punch someone because the bucket sounded wrong. No one punches anyone if the water goes quiet."
Ryo stirred the stew. He didn't take more. He set the lid across the pot so it wouldn't congeal too fast. His hands felt steady enough to write. He dried them on a cloth and opened his small book.
He wrote: rain—bad pitch found—paste added—held. Thumb jar to Mara. Brann tapped. No writ at door. Noon: table. He kept the letters level. He let the page carry what the room didn't need to hold in the air anymore.
When he closed the book, the door still held a little water at the bottom edge where the cleaning had taken the oil from the grain. He would rub it with tallow later. Not the foul paste. Clean fat.
He took a lamp and went to the front, wanting one last look at the sill. He lifted the bar and cracked the door a finger's width. Rain pattered off the edge of the lintel onto his hand and slid down his sleeve. He leaned and looked down.
Three small nails stood point-up in the groove of the threshold where salt had been. They had been set heads-down, points up, just under where a foot would come down if a man stepped out with his weight wrong. They weren't big. They were mean. They would have gone through leather and into the ball of the foot, deep enough to lay a man out in the doorway swearing and then to fester if he didn't pull them right.
Ryo didn't move his foot. He let the door rest against his knuckles so it wouldn't open more. He eased a thin spatula from the shelf behind the bar with two fingers, slid it along the gap, and lifted the nails into the blade one by one. He didn't touch them. He laid them on a plate and set the plate under the lamp light. The nails were clean except for a smear of mud at the heads. He could see the mark of the maker's tiny stamp if he squinted—two dots, one above the other.
He closed the door and set the bar back down. He set the nails beside the jar in his bag and wrapped them with the same cloth.
Anna came to his shoulder, saw the wet spot by the door where he'd leaned, and looked at his face.
"What?" she asked.
"Nails," he said. "Point up. Under the threshold. Three."
She stared at him for a long second, then swore in a way that wasn't for show. "He wants you lame," she said. "That's cleaner than a knife. Men laugh at men who limp on the first day."
"He wants me to step without looking," Ryo said. "So I'll look every time."
He didn't make a speech. He went to the hearth and added a small piece of wood so the stone would keep its warmth. He checked the strings over the buckets. He listened until the drip had found the new path and gone quiet again.
Something in him settled where it had been waiting to. It wasn't triumph. It was the feeling of a line drawn twice and staying where it was put because he kept drawing it there.
Emergency Routine: held.
He didn't look for the thought. He left it alone. He rolled his shoulder and felt the tired find him for the first time since the rain had started.
"We go to Mara at first light," he said. "Jar. Nails. Book. We don't shout. We set things down where they belong and let them sit there."
Anna nodded. "And if they tap again tonight?"
"We keep the bar set," he said. "We don't open for tapping."
Ren flexed his fingers. "I'll sleep on the bench," he said. "I don't like roofs over men who aren't ready to sleep under them alone when the reed is wet. I won't wake easy if I go home."
Ryo gave him a blanket without arguing. He laid his own bedroll near the hearth where he could see the door without lifting his head. The rain flattened into a steady background that let the room go to a different kind of quiet.
The last thing he did before lying down was to put the plate with the nails and the jar with the thumb curl on the bar, at the place where hands rest. He wanted to see them in the morning and carry them unforgotten.
The rain eased just before dawn. Ryo stood to stir the banked coals—and froze. A strip of clean cloth had been tucked through the crack under the door from outside, pulled tight so it lay flat on the sill. On the near end, written in a careful hand with ink that hadn't had time to run, were three words: Book or Blood.