Ryo stopped two paces from the posting board. The young man with the stamp box glanced over as if expecting a complaint and finding instead a man holding a cloth bag and watching him set a nail straight.
The steward worked carefully, tongue pressed to the back of his teeth, shoulders too high. The quill behind his ear made a small ink mark on his cheekbone. His hands were clean in a way that said he avoided most tools but handled paper every day. The guard beside him watched the lane because he knew he ought to, not because he expected anyone to do more than walk by.
Ryo read the top line of the notice, then the second. He didn't read aloud. He waited until the steward tapped the last nail and checked the corners for lift.
"Your countersign will follow," Ryo said. "But the levy reads as if it's already in effect."
The steward straightened and looked at him fully now. He had a light beard he'd shaved that morning and not well; a line of missed hair showed under his chin like a shadow he'd decided too late not to keep. He looked younger up close. He adjusted his coat and settled his stamp box in the crook of his arm like a hedge against being out of place.
"It is in effect," he said. "I carry Lord Gareth's writ with me. The countersign naming me as steward to act in his absence is on a separate sheet. I'll attach it when I finish my rounds. The levy is not unusual. Merchants contribute to the safety of the road that brings them trade. The term is 'guardianship,' not tax."
"Low Marsh pays tithe to Lord Halwick's steward at market town," Ryo said. "They do it at a table with witnesses and a book. Dame Mara keeps the village ledger and recognizes what's due and what's not. If you come to her table, she will stamp what you post here and everyone will know how to read it. If you leave it on wood with 'to follow' at the top, men with white shirts and clean hands will cut pieces from it and wave them in doorways."
The young man's mouth tightened. He looked at Ryo's face again, this time trying to place him among the types of men he knew. Not a farmer. Not one of his lord's men. A tradesman, maybe. The pot hook peeking from Ryo's bag and the clean sliver of wood he'd cut for a door repair didn't fit a simple picture. The jar was a shape under the cloth.
"I intend to sit with the village officer," the steward said, letting official words steady him. "That is why I'm here. My name is Soren. I serve Gareth of Millroads. The lord has a right to levy for his roads."
"Then bring your box to Mara's table now," Ryo said. "She sent for you. She will have the priest sitting in a chair you can point to later. If you sit there today, the men you think serve you will have fewer places to pretend. If you don't sit there, they will stand at doorways and say your name and ask for cups before you've signed anything."
Soren hesitated, not offended so much as weighing the suggestion against what he had planned for the morning. He looked toward the goose house and lifted his chin like he could see through the wall to the bread he hadn't eaten yet.
"Dame Mara asked for you specifically," Ryo said. "She has papers you'll want to see before you finish suggesting what's owed. You can eat bread at her table. No one will think you've bent because you put a crust on your ledger."
Soren looked at his guard, who pretended not to have heard. Then he nodded once, as if he'd thought of it himself. "Very well," he said. "We'll go there. You'll come, since you have thoughts about tables."
"I will," Ryo said.
They walked together. Soren moved in a way that kept his coat straight and his box upright; he checked his pace against Ryo's without looking down. The notice on the board flapped once in a small wind.
Mara's office already had bodies in it. The bench along the wall held Corlan and two women from the fish sheds who worked at the same table and knew how to set their elbows so conversations couldn't be overheard easily. Joss stood just inside the door, knee stiff, sweeping the threshold again even though it was already clean. The priest sat with his hands folded over his belly, eyes open and not yet eager to speak, which Ryo appreciated. Brann wasn't there. His absence was a weight and not a relief.
Mara looked up when they came in and showed a brief satisfaction that didn't reach her mouth. She stood, and everyone else stood a half-beat later because some rooms know how to keep order.
"Steward," she said. "I'm Mara of Low Marsh. Sit. Bring your box. We'll do this with both hands on the table."
Soren sat and placed his stamp box down like he'd been taught not to let anyone else reach it. He nodded to the priest, who nodded back without the arch weight of someone enjoying a ceremony. Ryo set his cloth bag down and unwrapped the jar enough to show its contents without making a display.
Mara didn't hurry. She took her time arranging papers and her quill and a small bowl of sand. She waited until the door had been closed and whoever was going to lean against it had done so. Then she tapped the table once.
"We have two matters," she said. "A levy posted at the board and a mark placed on a door in the night. They are connected by the men who moved their feet."
Soren licked his lip without realizing he'd done it. "Levies are the first matter," he said. "Lord Gareth—"
"Lord Gareth," Mara agreed, before he could lay the whole title out like a cloth you had to eat off. "He writes. You carry his words. The levy says 'effective immediately' and 'countersign to follow.' That is not how we do it here if you want clean coin. Here, a levy lands when the steward sits at this table and writes into my book, and when the steward of Lord Halwick does not write a contrary line. That keeps us from paying two men for one road."
Soren lifted his chin. "The mill road falls under Lord Gareth's care—"
"The road to the mill does," Mara said. "The road to my lane doesn't. The levy says 'merchants of drink in Low Marsh.' That's my line to read, not yours. If you want my line to become yours, bring a paper with both seals, not one that says 'to follow.' I know a 'to follow' when I see one. It means the man with the box is confident the other hand will make what he's done into a rule, and if the other hand doesn't, the collectors will have already filled their pockets and we will spend the next month prying them inside out to get it back."
Soren's guard coughed into his fist. It sounded like he'd swallowed a fly. Soren glanced over as if to shush him and then thought better of it.
Ryo didn't speak. He looked at Soren's stamp box. The edges were new, the clasp unscarred. The sponge in the inkwell had not yet taken the grain of grit that always settled in bad rooms. Soren sat with his knees together, like he'd never had to widen them to make room for a man shoving the table with his hips.
"If you want clean coin," Ryo said, when Soren looked at him because not looking was making it worse, "there is a way to get it that doesn't turn every door into a place men feel forced."
Soren's face eased a fraction because "way to get it" was a phrase he understood.
"Say it," he said.
"Set collections at this table and no other," Ryo said. "Collectors register their names and marks here. You write them into Mara's book next to the levy. You note the date. They do not go to doorways. If they do, entry in the book is void for that day and coins go back to the men who paid them. Any coin paid goes into escrow with Mara until the countersign you say is coming arrives from your lord and the steward at market town has read it and chosen not to object. When both are satisfied, the coin moves to you, and Mara writes the line across the page that means 'done.' If the countersign never comes, the coin moves back to the men who paid it with the same witnesses watching. In return, people who pour for coin register here and are measured as merchants, not as kitchens. If you want to talk about how many coppers a day, you do it at this table, not at my door."
Mara's quill had already begun to scratch. She wrote as he spoke, not a transcript, but a list of the bones of what he said. The priest's head tilted, interested not in the money but in the method. Corlan sat forward a thumb-width, which meant he saw a way to stop stupid conversations in lanes.
Soren's jaw moved once as he swallowed. He looked down at his hands and then up at Mara and then at Ryo. "Escrow means I do not carry coin out today," he said. "My lord expects to see the tally when I return."
"Your lord expects to see the tally," Mara said. "He doesn't expect you to come back with coin that makes people spit when they see you and refuse to sell you bread because you set dogs on their children." She offered him the faintest edge of a smile. "He also expects not to have to undo what you did the hard way next month because the steward at market town wrote a line across your levy that said 'no.' He won't thank you for moving too fast."
Soren's guard looked at the floor because looking at Soren felt rude.
Soren touched the stamp box as if to be sure it was still there. "Collectors will resist registering," he said carefully. "They think their boots and their shirts are enough. They aren't used to writing their names down where someone can point to them later."
"Then they'll refuse to register," Mara said. "And that will make my job easier because I'll have a paper that says 'he didn't write' when I go to break his teeth with the steward at market town watching."
The door moved then. It didn't bang. It came open and stopped against Joss' heel because Joss had planted himself there early. Brann filled the gap a heartbeat later as if he'd timed it to make an entrance, which he likely had. The thin man with the ring was behind him. The mallet man didn't bring the mallet into the room. He wasn't good at everything.
Brann looked at Soren and offered a practiced dip of his head that passed for respect at a distance. He looked at Mara and let his eyes travel over the ledger and then at Ryo and paused a fraction longer than needed before pretending he'd simply encountered him by chance.
"You posted," Brann said to Soren. "Good. Now you'll read." He leaned his knuckles on the table and smiled. "We'll collect fair. We keep the road quiet. The levy keeps knives out of houses."
Mara didn't stand. She turned the jar on the table a finger's width so the light caught what it held.
"Before we talk about knives," she said, "we talk about thumbs. Someone put blood on a door in the night. Someone put a ring against the lintel. This is the piece we cut from the threshold before it dried so men could pretend it wasn't there. It's in my keeping now. I'll write it as fact when we finish here so no one can argue later."
Brann looked at the jar and then at Ryo. He didn't blink. "Pig's blood," he said mildly. "Folk use it to curse their own bad luck. They like to think they're interesting."
Soren leaned forward before he seemed to realize he had. He looked at the jar like the fact of the thing was heavier than the argument around it. "It looks like a human thumb," he said, mostly to himself. "If it is, it is an offense."
Brann turned his smile to Soren. "Then let's find the fool who did it," he said. "Men don't put their own thumbs on doors without being told to by drink. You sit the levy, and we'll sit the door. We'll take care of both for you."
"We're not mixing the two," Mara said. "Read your paper, Steward Soren. When you're done, we'll write it in a way the village can read, and then men who want to tell stories about curses can take them to the ditch and mutter where their words go home to frogs."
Soren swallowed and reached for his box. He opened it. The motion was practiced and soothed him. He took out a sheet with the levy and put it on the table and weighed the corners with small polished stones. He read, not rushing. He read the parts Ryo had remembered and the parts he hadn't said aloud. When he reached "countersign to follow," his voice didn't hitch in the way Ryo half-expected. He said the words like he had been told that phrase was acceptable until it wasn't.
He finished and looked up. "I will attach a list of collectors," he said, quick now, deciding. "Those who carry my lord's name register here and now, and then collect at this table and nowhere else. Dame Mara will keep coin in escrow until my countersign and the adjacent lord's steward acknowledge. If either refuses, coin returns. If either agrees, coin releases at this table and we write the receipt here." He looked at Mara. "Your table is neutral?"
"It is the village," Mara said. "I don't let it lean without kicking it straight. If you test me on that, you'll bruise."
Brann's smile didn't go away, but it got teeth in it again. "I have men to pay now," he said. "I won't tell them they worked for air while some clerk in town finds a page in a book he lost under his bed."
"Then you pay them out of your own purse for a week," Mara said without looking at him. "And if your counterman in the city brings your steward the right stamp, you get your coin. If he doesn't, you stop taking it. It's clean that way."
Brann's jaw worked once. The thin man with the ring had turned his attention to the priest, looking for approval he didn't get.
"Collectors register," Soren said again, settling the rule by repetition. "Names, marks, days. Dame Mara—do you have a page ready?"
Mara pulled a fresh sheet and put it sideways so she could make four columns. She wrote "collector," "mark," "day," and "amount" across the top with the lines straight and evenly spaced. She set the sand at the corner so ink would settle right. She looked at Brann and waited, because the first name on a sheet like that matters.
Brann didn't move at first. He weighed, the way Soren had weighed, except what he weighed was how people would see him in a week's time if he refused. He'd lose some weight he could throw later. He smiled again and put his hand out for the quill like he was doing Mara a favor.
"What do you want?" he asked. "Name is Brann. I don't write a family name for men I don't owe anything to."
"Your mark," Mara said. "Not your ring. Something you can't take off. Scar on your hand. Tooth you don't have. I'll draw it."
Brann's eyes flicked to Ryo. Then he held out his left hand without a flinch and turned it palm up. A line ran across the base of the thumb, fresh enough to still be red under the skin.
Mara's quill moved. It put down an almost-curve at the angle she'd noted. "Good," she said. "Day?"
"First day," Brann said, too glib. "We'll take coin today."
"You'll not take," Soren said before he could stop himself. He chewed the inside of his cheek because he'd said it aloud without softening it. "You will receive what people agree to give at this table. You'll leave doorways alone."
Brann's smile lost one more tooth. His ring clicked against the table once and stopped. "Amount," Mara said, as if she hadn't heard the small clash.
Soren lifted his pen again and set the rate in a way a steward learns to do when he wants to look reasonable: low enough that refusing looks petty, high enough to matter if it sticks. "One copper per day per merchant of drink," he said. "Measured by the day counted in the village book. Not per cup. Not per jug. Per day."
Mara wrote it down. So did Soren. The priest drew a small line in his own book because he liked lines that made men stop being stupid near his shrine. Corlan scratched his cheek like he had an itch that was only partly skin.
Ryo said nothing. He held his breath for one count and let it go. It wasn't done. It was something you could stand on until something else moved.
Mara looked at Ryo, then at the jar. "Do you wish to read your entry into my book before Brann brings his hand into another doorway?" she asked.
Ryo slid the jar forward. He said, "Blood mark placed on the alehouse door. Removed before dawn. Kept. Witnesses: Mara. Joss outside the door. Steward Soren present. Priest present. Brann today registers here with a fresh cut across the thumb that sits at the same angle as the print. Brann disputes that the print is his. Fact remains: mark was placed. I ask for a notice naming door-marking as trespass subject to fine or stocks."
Mara wrote faster. She didn't always grant requests when men asked for notices. She granted this one. "Two days in the stocks for the first mark," she said, thinking aloud. "Fine of five coppers to the village besides. The second mark earns six and a day. Third mark earns a day and loss of license to collect for a season. Steward?"
Soren nodded, eyes on Brann not because he hated him but because he knew that if he nodded while looking at the table, it would mean less.
Brann's ring clicked again. He put the hand with the fresh cut under the table and folded the other on its surface like men do when they've been told no without a shout.
"Are we finished?" he asked in a voice that said he intended not to be. "I have men who walk roads that are not as safe as you pretend. I have a lord who will want to know who spoke for him and who spoke against."
"We're done here," Mara said. "You come back at the hour to register the men under you or you don't. If you don't, your name stands on its own and you can carry your ring to the mill and say it sings when you tap it. Steward Soren, you'll sit with me and we'll make sure the words you pinned at the board match the words in this book."
Soren closed his box. It clicked. The sound was smaller than Brann's ring.
Ryo wrapped the jar again and tucked it into his bag. He kept his eyes on the page as Mara sprinkled sand, not because he didn't trust Brann with his face in that moment, but because he wanted the ink to set before the next breath.
Brann stood. He didn't push his chair back with his legs. He lifted it because he understood some rooms remember the sound of scratches. He smiled once more and left. The thin man glanced back at Ryo as if he needed to memorize a detail he'd missed. The mallet man waited outside, empty-handed and looking hungrier.
When the door shut, the room let out a little pressure like a pot lifting its lid to spit once. Soren stood and looked ten years older and, oddly, closer to Ryo's age than before.
"I'll walk to the board and add what we wrote," he said. "Then I'll sit here again so men see the box. I don't like 'to follow' written on anything. I said it this morning because I thought it was proper to say it when everything else was ready. It wasn't."
"It's a line thieves like," Mara said. "You'll learn to hate it faster than I did if you carry that box long."
They broke up. Corlan went out with his boy to stand by the cart because he felt like standing somewhere he could see the sky. The priest stayed in his chair and scratched his nose and said nothing theological at all, which was his gift.
Ryo walked back to the alehouse with the jar under his arm and his book at his side. He passed the posting board. Soren stood there with his box open and his quill down, adding "By agreement with Dame Mara, collections at her table only. Names and marks to register. Coin to escrow. Countersign to follow from Lord Gareth's hand and to be acknowledged by Lord Halwick's steward at market." A woman stood and read each word as he wrote them like she was eating from a loaf one slice at a time.
The lane felt colder. Clouds had thickened. He could taste wet in the wind. He rounded the last bend and saw the alehouse roof. Ren and Toller were up there with the rope and the pitch pot. Ren knelt by the darker line and didn't move, which wasn't like him. Toller stood on the ladder, one foot on the rung and one finding nowhere to go.
Ryo picked up his pace. Ren didn't look down. He held the edge of the pot away from him as if it were full and dangerous.
"Don't step under," Ren said when Ryo reached the yard. His voice was flat, controlled the way it got when he wasn't going to shout because shouting wastes air you need.
Ryo stopped. "What happened?" he asked.
Ren reached into the pot and lifted his hand out slow. Pitch hung in a string that should have broken earlier than it did if the mix was right. The string formed a skin and then tore and dripped too easily, running rather than setting.
"Someone slacked the second pot with dung and water," Ren said. "They did it while we were above the eave and you were with Mara. Toller went to lift and smelled it before we smeared, or the whole line would have turned to soup and slid with the first real rain. We scraped what we could. We can't use this pot. We have enough in the first for a run and a half. The clouds are coming thicker."
He held the pot so Ryo could smell the wrongness. It wasn't strong. That was the trick of bad pitch. It told you it was fine right up until it wasn't.
Ryo breathed in and tasted the air. The wind shifted cold. A fat drop landed on the back of his hand and sat there heavy before sliding off.
They would either patch the last run now with what they had, or they would watch the roof leak over the darkest stain through the night and sleep with buckets.
He didn't look back toward the lane. He didn't look toward Mara's. He looked at the ladder and then at the bench under it. He put his hand on the rung to test the grit on it and felt for the rhythm of steps.
"Use the first pot for the worst line," he said to Ren. "I'll feed you up what you need. Don't rush. If you rush with bad pitch, it goes worse. If you take the run slow, it might hold until morning."
Ren didn't nod. He was already moving—knees, rope, hand—settled into the work that didn't care about men with stamps or rings.
Ryo turned to Anna, who had come around the side with her hair half loosed and her mouth set hard.
"Put buckets under the stain inside," he said. "Not under the splash—under where it will drip. Lay cloth so it won't echo in the night and make everyone think the roof is falling."
Anna ran inside without questions. Toller climbed three rungs, hands sure, face turned up to the line.
Ryo went up two rungs to meet the bucket that would need lifting at a steady pace. The drop on his hand had been first. The second landed on the rung. Then the third hit the yard and burst on the salt line, carrying a little groove through it.
By the time Ryo got his shoulder under the ladder and his hands on the next bucket, the sky opened into a steady, cold sheet. Ren called down for more pitch. Toller swore that he could see it sliding already. From the lane, somewhere to the north, a ring clicked against wood in a steady, patient rhythm—tap, tap, tap—as if a man were counting the seconds it would take for water to find a hole.