Ryo pinched the edge of the cloth with two fingers and didn't pull yet. The ink hadn't run, which meant it was put there after the rain eased. The letters were neat, careful. The hand wanted to be seen. He set his palm against the door to keep it from moving and slid a thin spatula along the sill until he had the cloth lifted without smearing it. He folded it twice, ink inward, and put it on a plate. Then he went and washed his hands even though he hadn't touched the ink. He dried them on a cloth he would burn later.
Ren sat up on the bench without a creak. He'd slept like the kind of man who never fully does. Toller was a shape against the wall with a blanket to his chin. Anna was already by the hearth, tying her hair back and making a face at the smell the paste left as it warmed again for scraping.
"What," Anna said, not a question, already braced.
Ryo turned the plate so the words showed and let her read.
Her mouth made a small hard line. "He thinks he's a poet now," she said. "He hasn't got the breath for it."
Ren swung his feet to the floor. He didn't ask to see the cloth; he could smell trouble when it lay on a plate. "You take that to Mara," he said. "You take the nails. You take the jar. We scrape before the sun, then lay proper if it holds."
Ryo nodded. He put the cloth into the bag with the jar and the nails and his book. He added a scrap of wood with the maker's stamp he'd pried from an old peg—two dots, one above the other—so Mara could compare if she needed to. He pulled on his coat.
"Anna," he said. "Bar stays down. Don't open for anyone until I come back or Mara calls your name through the back door herself. If the roof drips, count the drops until your head gets quiet."
She gave him a look that said she didn't need to count to quiet her head, but she would if it kept the room from boiling over. "If they tap," she said, "I'll throw a bucket through the crack and let them drink that."
"Don't open," he said again.
He stepped over the sill with his weight on his heel where there had been nails. The yard was flat and grey. The wind had gone elsewhere. The lane held only the sound of water finding the lowest spots to sit in. No one leaned on the fence by the posting board. The notice Soren had amended stood with the fresh lines he'd added dry and firm, not bleeding into the grain.
Mara's door didn't need knocking at this hour. He went in with the bag under his arm. Soren was already there with his box open and one hand around a cup he hadn't drunk from. He looked like he hadn't slept, which meant he'd finally begun to hold the job instead of being dragged by it. The priest sat and rubbed at his temple with two fingers, not for a headache, just making the hour fit.
Mara glanced at the bag and lifted her chin at the table. "Set it down," she said.
Ryo laid the jar with the wood curl, the plate with the three nails, and the folded cloth out in a row, then put his book beside them without opening it. He named each thing and where he'd found it, not with flourish but with the exact words he'd use if someone woke him from sleep to ask.
Mara unfolded the cloth with a clean stick so her fingers didn't smear the letters. She read the three words, then turned the cloth to look at the edges.
"Paper would have slid under and got wet," she said. "Cloth makes a better threat. Soaked up the rain and took ink at the last minute. He wanted it seen at dawn." She tapped the letters with the stick. "He made someone else write this. His hand was clumsier yesterday. That's a scribe's habit. Knows how to keep lines even when he's leaning."
Soren leaned forward to look, slow, careful. He lifted his eyes to Ryo. "Do you think this is a bargain he intends to keep," he asked, "or bait so he can say you chose blood when he bumps you?"
"He wants my book," Ryo said. "He wants to hold it in his hand and turn a page. He wants people to watch him do it. He wants to show he can make a man bring his own order to a table and hand it across."
Mara's mouth twitched in a way that wasn't humor. "We won't let him put his hand on your book," she said. "If he reaches, I will put the point of my quill in his palm so deep he'll remember his letters for a week."
Ryo set the nails closer to Soren. "Heads-down in the threshold," he said. "Three. Maker's stamp is two dots vertical. I put a peg with the same stamp next to them." He paused. "And the pitch."
He told them how the second pot had been wrong and what it smelled like. He told them about the paste and how it held for a night and would have to be scraped. He didn't say it with pride. He said it as if he were reading inventory.
Soren's hand closed on the edge of the box. "He tampers with roofs," he said, an edge coming into his voice for the first time. "He sets nails at doors. He leaves blood marks and letters. He wants a levy to pay his men while he takes coin twice." He looked at the priest as if expecting a word that would make the room settle into the right shape.
The priest sighed through his nose and set both hands on his stomach. "A man who makes other men bleed to read his notes is a fool," he said. "If I say more, I'll be wanted at every door in a week to draw a charm on a lintel and tell wives their men will stop being mean because I said a word over salted water. I'll bless a broom before I bless a threat. If I am to sit here and do any good, I will sit and watch words go into the book. That does more than my hand on a doorway."
Mara nodded. "We post a notice," she said, already drawing a sheet. "Tampering with roofs earns a day in stocks and a fine of ten coppers to the village because it risks more than thumb blood on a door. Nails in thresholds earn the same and a morning cleaning the public drains with your hands and my eyes on you, so you know what filth looks like when you spread it."
She wrote while she spoke. She wrote fast and neat. "And as to 'Book or Blood,'" she added, looking at Ryo, "we'll give him the book today at my table. He'll look at it with his eyes. He won't put his hand on it. Soren will stand on one side. I'll sit on the other. If he reaches, we stop him together."
Soren looked grateful and annoyed at the same time, because he'd wanted to offer exactly that and had been beaten to it. He took up his own sheet.
"I'll set a thing of my own," Soren said. "Collectors who register and then put nails on thresholds or blood on doors lose their mark for a season and their share in any levy until the season ends. They can stand on the road with their white shirts and a tin cup and beg. If they do it twice in a season, they lose their job. My lord won't put his name on a man who gets me thrown off a table."
Mara's eyes warmed by a finger-width. "Good," she said.
The door moved. Joss didn't have to plant his heel this time; he opened it and stepped aside as people came. Corlan first, because carts are always earlier than arguments. Two women from the fish tables, sleeves rolled, eyes sharp, not afraid to stand in a room with men and not there to watch. The goose house woman, who had line on her hands and bread flour on her shoulder. Then Brann, not late, not early, wearing a shirt he'd kept dry by standing under someone else's eave while men pitched a roof.
He saw the bag, the jar, the nails, the cloth. He didn't flinch. He smiled at Soren without warmth and at Mara as if she was doing a fine job setting his table for him.
"Book," Brann said. "Or blood. It's what we wrote, isn't it?"
"It's what someone wrote for you," Mara said. "Sit. Don't touch. You can look."
He sat. Calm. The thin man stood with his weight on his right foot and his ring turned so the flat caught light. The mallet man had a stick now, not a mallet. He stroked it like it had been given to him by a grandfather for good luck.
Ryo set his book on the table and opened it to the last page quietly. The words were small and even and exact: dates, lines, what was said, what was done, not what he thought about it. He turned the book so the columns could be read across by someone who knew how. He set one finger above the line that read: Blood mark—jar—nails—cloth—dawn—message.
Brann leaned forward as if to sniff. His hand moved without permission from his head. It made for the page.
The point of Mara's quill met the thick skin of his palm hard enough to leave a dot. Soren's stamp box shifted, and his hand came up quick and flat, palm out, like a quiet man breaking up a slap. Ryo didn't reach. He moved his heel a quarter inch and set it on the soft leather of Brann's shoe, just above the toes, not crushing, just pressing. Brann's hand stopped moving. He looked at the quill. He looked at Soren's palm. He looked down at his toes like a man told there was a coin under his foot and not permitted to lift it.
"Eyes on the book," Mara said. "Hands on your own knees."
Brann let his mouth soften. He withdrew his hand a fraction and made a gesture like he had been joking and expected his joke to be enjoyed. He set his palm down where Mara had told him to. He looked at the lines. He read. His jaw moved once when he reached "nails."
"I didn't put those," he said, casual. "You can write in your pretty lines all you want. Men throw nails. It doesn't make them mine."
"That is why we're writing names and marks next to levies and trespass," Soren said. He sounded steadier now, not stiff. "A man who collects admits to standing for the rules that let him collect. If he breaks them, he loses the right. If he breaks them twice, he loses his pay, and if he breaks them three times, he will stand in stocks with a board under his feet so everyone else knows he can't use the road like a rule he wrote himself."
Brann turned his head to Ryo and smiled too much. "You like the word rules," he said. "You think it keeps men like me from touching small things and making them fall over. You think it makes the floor not tilt when I decide to lean."
"I think rules make it harder to lie," Ryo said. "And easier for women who sell fish to laugh when you say you invented the road."
There were two small laughs, one from the back where the fish women stood, one from the goose house woman who knew when lines should be cut to size.
Brann's eyes didn't leave Ryo's face. He let the smile stay too long, past the moment when it could have looked like restraint. He moved his hand and set his thumb on the table near the jar and tapped it once.
"Two coppers," he said to Soren. "Per day. We take only that, at this table. We'll do it like you want. You can write our names on your marks and you can draw little pictures of our bad habits. Bring your coin box and I'll bring my ring. We'll pretend it all fits."
"Not two," Soren said, and Mara's head turned a fraction, because she'd expected him to hedge. "One. We set one yesterday. It's written on the board. If you want to add jugs to it, you can argue with me on a dry day when I have patience for the sound of your ring."
Brann's jaw tightened by a hair. The priest leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling like he was checking for leaks. He wasn't. He was letting the heat off the table lift past his nose.
"Sign," Mara said to Brann. "Your name. Your mark. Beside the words that say you register today and take coin at this table and no other."
He held the quill without turning it into a weapon. He drew a B, simple, and then the line of the cut under his thumb like a man who knew his hand would heal and didn't mind writing it while it did. He set the quill down.
Mara sanded the ink. She tapped the corner of her page near the list labeled "trespass." "I have this notice to hang," she said. "Roof tampering and nails on thresholds. The law for this belongs to the village. The steward stands witness and agrees."
Soren nodded and set his own small countersign under the line. His stamp pressed clean. The priest drew his own tiny mark at the edge, not priestly, just a witness's dot.
Brann stood and moved as if to go around the table and read his name from the other side. He didn't. He turned instead and looked at the room like he was taking back a corner that had never been his.
"Afternoon," he said. "I'll be by later to count, if you pour. If you don't, I'll be by to tap." He let his ring hit the doorframe on the way out, light, a score more than a knock. The thin man did the same like a child repeating a trick. The stick-man didn't. He stared at Ryo as he passed and then at the bag and then at the book and made a promise with his face that had nothing to do with words.
When the door shut and the room let out its breath, Mara didn't look satisfied. She looked like someone who had rebuilt a chair and wanted to sit on it but didn't trust the legs yet.
"He'll take the one copper if he can say he made you nervous with those letters," she said. "He'll take it and he'll tap your door just as hard at night. He loves the sound. We'll hang the notices and we'll keep the book where it belongs."
Soren put the quill down and rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "Do you want a watch set by the mill road?" he asked Mara. "My guard can't sit there every night. He's one man and his sword makes him worse at this than a broom."
"A broom is better at most things," Mara said. "We'll set the men who don't spook at wind and the girls the boys don't see standing by the ditch until they need to. We'll do it by turns and no one will crow about it."
Ryo closed his book and tied it shut with the small strap so if an eager hand found it, it would have to fight leather before it fought him.
"Anna needs reed scraped from her strings before it sours the shed," he said, mostly to himself. "I'll go back. We'll scrape the paste and lay clean."
Mara handed him a copy of the new notices without flourish. "Hang it inside your door, clean, at eye level," she said. "If he touches it with his ring, we write that down too."
On the way back, the day tried to brighten and failed. The clouds sat like an old problem above the reeds. The lane had footprints he didn't want to step in. He put his feet where the ground held and let the rest go.
The roofline looked right from a distance. Up close, he could see the slight lift where paste still held, waiting for hands to clean it. Ren had laid the ladder straight. Toller sat on the bottom rung with a rag, quiet, and lifted his head when he saw Ryo.
"Did he take the book?" the boy asked, like that was the question that would tell him how the world would be this afternoon.
"No," Ryo said. "He read it with his eyes. He didn't touch it. If he had, we'd have broken his thumb with a quill."
Toller grinned involuntarily at the picture and then tried to make his face solemn in case someone thought he laughed at wrong things. "We scraped the worst," he said. "It stinks less. We can lay."
"Then lay," Ryo said. "Slow. Not in a hurry to make up for yesterday. The roof will remember if you rush."
They worked until sweat replaced rain on their faces. The paste came away in strips and dirty thumb-sized smears. They warmed the first pot just enough to spread again, not so much it slid. The brush made the right sound, not the sticky wrong sound.
Anna kept the buckets empty and strings taut and the door barred when a soft knock came and a boy's voice tried out three names to see which would open it. She didn't open. She didn't speak. When the voice used Mara's, she picked up the bucket with both hands and stood staring at the latch without moving a hair until the voice went away.
Ryo felt the line inside him go from tight to right. It wasn't an announcement. It was the way a room sits after chairs are righted and the floor is dry.
Proof: recorded.
He let it pass. He wiped the brush and hung it by the hearth to dry without bending its bristles. He set two bowls and bread and didn't ask if anyone was hungry because he could feel hunger like he could feel the weather at the back of his neck.
By mid-afternoon, the last run held. The stain on the ceiling looked less like a threat and more like history. He didn't smile at it. He nodded once.
The door took three knocks then. Not tapping, not a threat. Three solid raps, the way a man knocks when his hands are cold and he'd rather new rules were old ones.
"Open," Anna said, because she had looked through the back gap first and seen a face worth a latch.
Ryo lifted the bar. Soren stood there with his box under his arm and a look a man gets when he's moved three pieces on a board and doesn't like the fourth.
"I have a countersign," Soren said. "It came with a runner smelling of horse and fear. It acknowledges the levy. It names me. It writes the word 'immediately' twice to make its own echo. It says nothing about tables. It says collectors may gather at their discretion." He took a breath he didn't want to take and let it out. "I added our lines anyway and hung them. But Brann has a thing he will wave. He will do it tonight because he won't waste fresh ink. He will say we tricked him into writing his name before his lord sent this."
Anna made a small ugly sound and went to check the strings that didn't need checking.
"We'll sit at Mara's again," Ryo said. "We'll sit until we wear the seat smooth. If he waves his paper on the lane, we'll bring him back to the table by the same rope we used this morning. If he breaks the rope, we'll write it down and then we'll watch him work harder to look harmless while he holds a mallet."
Soren shook his head, not at Ryo, at the sky. "I'd like to believe that," he said. "I saw the man with the mallet this morning walking in a circle as if it made a fence. I don't like what that means for dusk."
Ryo looked at the bench, the bar, the broom. He looked at the brace under the door hinge and the wedge under the leg of the table that didn't wobble when you put a hand on it right.
"Bring your box," he said. "We'll put it on the table. We'll do what we did. If he comes to the door, we'll keep the bar set. If he comes to the roof, we'll set buckets and sleep anyway."
Soren huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "You talk like a man who thinks he can make sleep into a rule," he said.
"I can make a room that lets other people sleep," Ryo said. "That's as close as I can get."
Soren turned to go. He paused with one foot over the threshold. "If he chooses blood over book," he said, looking at Ryo's face, "what do you choose?"
"Bandages," Ryo said. "And then the book again."
Soren went, and the yard felt like it was waiting. The light went in the way light does in Low Marsh, not down but sideways. Ren came in and took the bench like a plank put back on its shelf. Toller lingered by the door and then slid the bolt himself, almost reverent.
Anna took two deep breaths and let her shoulders drop correctly for the first time in a day. She set a bowl in front of Ryo without asking if he wanted it and then pushed his book across the bar with one finger.
"Write it down," she said. "The part about the counter-ink and the boy who smelled like fear. Write the part where you said bandages first. I like that on a page."
He wrote. The ink took clean, not thick. He let the lines dry under the lamp. He would carry the book again in an hour. He would set it on the table again.
Dusk brought feet to the lane—the slow, deliberate kind, and then more. Before Ryo could lift his hand to the latch, a voice called not his name but the word he'd been hearing all day, in a tone that made it sound like a knife being turned. "Book," Brann called. "Bring it to the shrine." Behind the words came a different noise: the creak of a heavy thing being dragged. When Anna peeked through the back gap and whispered, her voice was flat. "They've brought the stocks to the shrine and set them facing the door."