Ryo didn't waste the boy's breath. He grabbed the ash pole from the door, the coil of rope, and the stocks pin he'd tucked through his belt. He slung his bag with the book and the jar and the tin disk and the nails; he didn't leave it now, not when men with two dots on their tin were standing anywhere near water.
"Ren. Toller. With me," he said. "Anna—bar. If we don't come back with our feet under us, go sit at Mara's table and don't move for anyone."
Anna already had a bucket handle in one hand and the lye pot set aside to cool. She cut him off with a look that said if he fell, she'd pick him up with her teeth if she had to. "Go," she said.
They ran. Soren ran too, box under his arm, his pole in his hand because he'd forgotten to put it down. The priest came behind them with the broken broom because he was stubborn. The horn sounded once more—short, clipped. The lane spit them into fields and the fields into ditch banks. The weir sat like a bite taken out of the road, a low wall of board and stone and iron that let water behave when it wanted to do something else.
One look told Ryo what the boy had seen. The weir-keeper's walkway—a plank across the gatehouse—had a man on it, calm as a fisherman with a handline. He wore a tin disk with two dots on a string against his chest. He turned his head when Ryo came up and smiled like a shopman. He had a reed whistle in one hand. He whistled once, low. Down in the churning pool, something massive moved—long and thick, scaled in places, slick in others, jaw like a snapped log. Rope was already around it, looped hard under the gill plates or whatever passed for gills. The rope ran over a capstan peg and back to a stake. It wasn't their rope. It was a rope with paste on it that smelled wrong.
The weir-keeper lay on the bank with a groinful of blood, conscious and doing a good job of not making it everyone else's problem. Two boys from the fields held the wound with their hands and didn't look up.
"Don't step on the stone there," the tin man said pleasantly, pointing with the whistle at a dry patch. "It's slicker than it looks." He whistled again, three short notes. The thing in the pool turned its head at the sound like a dog hearing its name.
Ryo's breath found a place that was cold and stayed there. He recognized the rope: same smear they'd used at the road, but thicker, more deliberate. The loop buried itself into flesh when the thing pulled, then slipped back when the man whistled. Not a pet. A trick.
Brann came up behind on somebody's ragged breath, hand wrapped in bloody cloth, eyes hot. He didn't shout. He took one look and went still because even he knew when noise sells your teeth.
Ryo went left, not at the man, at the gate wheels. The hand cranks sat above the boards that raised and lowered the sluices. A rust line on one showed where it had sat for a season. He set his pole against a brace, tested the play. It moved a finger-width before sticking.
"Ren," Ryo said. "Gate two, left crank. When I say up, you crank. When I say down, you crank hard and don't catch your fingers."
Ren put his shoulder to the iron. It protested, then remembered it was made to move. Toller went to the other side without asking.
Soren looked at the tin man like he expected words to help. "By Gareth's hand and mine," he started.
The tin man laughed, easy. "You'll love this," he said. "Our lord loves even more that we keep dog-things off his roads. Weir's a good training ground. They learn to turn on a whistle. They learn to stop when a rope goes hard. We show up when a village is tired of losing pigs. We fix their problem for one season. Then a tax comes due. It's very neat." He tapped the two dots on his chest. "We are the neat part."
"Your collar's neat," Ryo said. He kept his voice flat. "It was around the throat of the one we burned. Tin with two dots in the braid." He shifted his grip on the pole. "What do you call this one?"
The man smiled because he wanted someone to ask. "Gate-Lurker," he said. "Pretty, right? He won't hurt you if you stay where you're told."
"Open just the first board," Ryo said to Ren. "Let water push. Not full. Let him feel the pull and set his feet wrong."
The tin man's eyes clicked to the wheel and then back to Ryo. "Don't," he said, tone still pleasant, more teeth behind it. "If he slams, your weir breaks. If your weir breaks, your field goes away. We can talk. Bring the book. We make a mark. Then we go away and you get your road quiet back."
Ryo ignored him. "Mara," he said over his shoulder because he heard her breath and the way paper sounds even when wrapped. "Here. Witness. Soren—name a line."
Soren looked ill, then angry that he felt ill. He walked to the edge, lifted his countersign like it was a real banner, and said, loud enough for the wind to carry to the far bank, "By the lord's leave and mine, I name this the weir line. Men who stand here stand for the village. Nothing crosses this gate unbidden."
The priest put his hand on the gatehouse stone and added, dry, "May the water spit out anything that tries."
Weirline: raised.
Ryo put the pole across the weir boards and set his weight. "Up," he said.
Ren grunted. The board lifted an inch. Water poured, not a wall, a fist. The Gate-Lurker turned toward it because things that live in water know water. The rope went tight, jerked, and slid on the capstan peg. The tin man tightened his grip on the whistle. He didn't blow it. He stepped a foot to his left, lining himself with the stake that anchored the rope.
"Brann," Ryo said. "If you want to be useful, take your stick and break that stake when I say. Don't break your wrist doing it."
Brann's mouth twitched because he heard the small permission in that. He set himself, not telegraphing.
"Down," Ryo said. Ren cranked the board back down fast. The water surge steadied. The Lurker had turned itself so its jaw was toward the gate. It opened its mouth. Its teeth were flat in places where it had chewed wood. It went for the gap between boards on instinct, nose wedging in. It pushed. The board creaked.
Ryo jammed the stocks pin through the holes of the locking collar next to the crank. It had never belonged there. It fit anyway. He kicked it with his heel to set it. The board stopped. The beast pushed harder. The board didn't rise.
"Hold," Ryo said, to the gate and to the line, because that was the word he had. Hold: carried.
"Whistle and he stops," the tin man sang, like he was teaching a child. He raised the whistle. Ryo threw the ash pole. It hit the man's wrist where he'd held it up to show off. The whistle went wide. It hit stone, bounced, and fell into the churning water.
The man's smile went away. "That was rude," he said. He leaped down from the plank like a cat, going for the rope.
"Now," Ryo said. "Stake."
Brann brought his stick down with his whole body behind it. The stake jumped an inch, then another, then went. The rope snapped hard and whipped. It lashed across the tin man's back. He yelled because rope paste burns when it kisses skin. He fell forward and would have gone into the pool if he'd been a fraction more brave or stupid.
Toller was already moving. He slid in and got the rope on his side, looped it twice around a bollard post—old, cracked, still stronger than his bones—and leaned back with both heels dug in.
"Up a hair," Ryo said to Ren. "Enough to catch his jaw. Not enough to let him through."
Ren cranked. Soren leaned without being asked. The board rose. The Lurker forced its nose under the lip and lifted. Its mouth opened wider. Its jaw caught on the edge of the board. It bit on wood. Teeth met oak. Scraped. Shuddered.
"Down," Ryo said. He and Ren and Soren dropped the board onto the jaw. The sound wasn't bones; it was jaw muscle pinned where it didn't bend. The Lurker went wild, throwing its back half, tail slamming into posts, water throwing cold. The rope snapped tight and held because Toller had been born to fight stubborn things with lines. The tin man tried to scramble away along the walkway. Ryo grabbed his ankle, yanked, and slammed his knee into the plank without care for it as a joint. The man screamed and grabbed at anything. His hand found Ryo's coat. Ryo hit his wrist with the empty place where the stocks pin had been. The fingers opened.
"Brann," Ryo said without looking away from the crank. "Two dots on his chest. Take it."
Brann's hand moved, quick. He ripped the tin disk off the man's neck. The cord cut skin and left a red line. Brann tossed the tin to the bank like it burned. Ryo let it land where Soren could see it.
"Ren," Ryo said. "Shovel." He didn't want to kill the Lurker yet. He wanted it not using its mouth. He took the shovel and slid it edge-first between jaw and board, then twisted the handle just enough to wedge. The Lurker tried to pull back and couldn't. It thrashed and banged its head on wood. The board held. The pin held. The rope held. His arms shook. He kept them steady because other people were pushing too.
"Call it again," Ryo said to the tin man. "Let's see if names work when your toy is busy swallowing wood."
The man spat at him. The spit got in the water and went away without anyone seeing it.
Soren stepped down so his boots were on the wet stone next to the weir-keeper's blood. He didn't look at his shoes. He looked at the tin man. "Who pays you," he asked. "Give me names."
The tin man laughed again, same pleasant sound with a new hitch in it because his knee hurt. "Everyone pays us," he said. "You pay us. Your lord pays us. The road pays us when it sells salt and grain. We keep the road quiet and then you don't like the way we knocked on your doors." He looked at Brann's wrapped hand. "That one liked it when we knocked for him."
Brann didn't bite, not in front of this many eyes. He kept pressure on the rope with his shoulder, teeth bare.
Ryo took the man by the hair—not hard, not soft—and looked at the side of his ear where people forget to wash. There was a smear of black there—pitch. He filed the detail and then put the man's face against the board. He didn't slam. He pressed. Water sprayed him with the beast's breath.
"Shut the gates and he drowns," the tin man said, words muffled. "Leave them open and he eats your road. Let him go and he goes where I tell him. Your choice, Warden. Book or blood." He said the words like a man who'd been told the phrase to use in fifteen villages in case it carried meaning in some.
Ryo didn't see anything holy when he looked at the beast. He saw a lever. He looked at the gate wheels and then at the spillway that took overflow to a side ditch where the water moved faster than a man could run in mud. He looked at the board heights and the bend. He didn't want the weir broken. He wanted it to do what it was built to do.
"Up left two," he said. "Down right one. Count with me."
Ren cranked. Soren jumped sides and cranked the other. The priest put his shoulder into a wheel and grunted at it. The Lurker's head dropped a fraction. Its body twisted with the new flow. The rope angle changed. The beast slid sideways, mouth still wedged. Its back slammed into the spill boards and then slid, half twisting. It went into the side run like a crate getting shoved onto a different cart.
"Hold it there," Ryo said. He put the shovel across the mouth again to keep it from chewing. He kept it pinned against the side flow. The water did the next part. It took the bulk and shoved it into the channel where it could kick and thrash and not break the main gate.
"Boards," Ryo said. "We block here." He pointed where the side flow narrowed. Toller didn't ask where to get boards. He went to an old shed and came back with two. Men he didn't know took them out of his hands and shoved them into slots that had been cut before Ryo had been born for this exact use.
The beast was trapped in a side run barely wider than itself. It could drown there, or it could thrash until it tore its own spine at the tail trying to turn. Ryo didn't care which if he could keep the weir.
"Alive," Soren said abruptly. "If we keep it, we show it to his lord with the collar and the tin. We put it in his courtyard and say 'this is what your men bought when they wanted a quiet road.'"
Ryo cut his eyes to Soren. For the first time since dawn, he liked the man beyond his box. "Then we keep it alive," he said. He stepped down into the side run, boots in cold water, and checked the boards and the gaps. He looked where a rope could hold without sawing through, where a pole could cross without someone losing a foot later.
"Anna," he called, because he knew she'd ignored him and come as soon as she'd heard the word weir. "We need clean fat, not lye. We need it now. We smear the rope so it keeps its bite without eating itself. We smear the boards where the rope crosses."
Anna didn't make him feel stupid for calling her by name like a dog. She'd already sent a girl back for fat and came in with a pot that didn't stink of dung, bless every thought in her head. She handed him a rag dipped in tallow. He smeared rope and boards with it and felt the difference when the rope moved. It held without sawing.
Brann looked at the tin man the way men look at problems they would enjoy solving with a ditch. He took a step toward him. Mara moved between them again, not dramatic, just there, ledger closed under her arm.
"Brann's mark is suspended," she said. "Your man sits until sundown and then again at dawn for freeing himself during a call. If you touch him before then, you'll sit in his place and I will send a boy to fetch every woman you've cheated on the price of bread to come look at you."
Brann looked like he might want to test the truth of that. He didn't. He spat to the side, not at anyone, and put his good shoulder back on the rope.
Ryo turned the tin man gently so he could see his face. He had a small scar under one eye, the tidy kind men get in youth and then think looks like a story. He wore his hair cut to not get in his teeth in wind. His hands were clean except for the paste smear.
"Your name," Ryo said.
"Two Dots," the man said, cheerful again now that the Lurker was caught and not dead. "All the names you'll like are answered to by that. You want the man who stamped the tin, you go to Millroads and ask for a permit. You want the man who spit on your door, he's in the stocks." His eyes flicked to Soren's box. "Your lord bought five collars three months ago. He called them animal control devices. You can check his book."
Soren's face didn't change, but his knuckles whitened on the wheel. "He didn't buy them from you," he said, voice flat. It wasn't denial. It was a thing he wanted to be true.
The tin man smiled wider. "He bought them from me," he said. "He paid with clean coin and didn't ask where I tested them. You want to blame a little man in a nice coat with a stamp? He'll show you an order that says 'pest abatement.' He'll show you signatures neat as spring flowers. He'll tell you they were for mill rats. He won't be lying."
Mara's mouth tightened like a seam about to pop. "Soren," she said. "We write this. We do not say it on the lane and watch ears run with it in the wrong direction. We write it. Then we put it on a cart and push it into the lord's hall and make him read it where we set the cart."
Ryo yanked down on the rope to put a new angle on the Lurker's head. He didn't meet Soren's eyes because he knew what was in them, and he didn't have time for pity. "If your lord bought them for rats," he said, "then he can come look at the rat with four rows of teeth."
Two boys came back with fat. Anna took it and went where it needed to go. The priest checked the weir-keeper and did what a man with a cook's experience does when he has to keep someone from bleeding out—pressure and insult.
"Line stands," Ryo said to no one and everyone. "We keep this thing until morning. We sit at the table and write names and marks and who called what by what name. Anyone who taps at a door tonight sits with his hand in wood until his fingers learn the lesson the big thing didn't."
Warden: authority extended—hydraulic works.
He didn't smile. The words in his head were just weight.
He looked at the tin man's ankle and saw the swelling. He took his own rope and tied it around the man's wrists and then around a post, not to hurt him, just to keep him. He wrapped the knot wrong on purpose, so if the man tried to pick it with his fingers, he'd tighten it and cut his own skin. He took the two-dot tin and put it in his bag next to the collar disk and felt the bag ride heavier on his shoulder in a way that was more about what was in it than weight.
Soren stood with the wheel under his palm like it was a court bench. "Come to the table before dark," he said to everyone and no one. He looked at Ryo. "We'll write suspension. We'll write your post. We'll write a paper for the weir that says whose hands touch the gates. I'll sign my name to it and take responsibility. If my lord doesn't like it, he can come sit with me and the priest and argue about rats."
Ryo nodded once. "Good," he said. "Bring the clean ink."
He stepped back from the weir, finally, and let the sound settle into a new normal—water churning, rope creaking a note that said held, a beast making a low stuffed sound behind wood, people swearing and then starting to talk about bread again because appetites don't wait.
He had turned toward the path when the tin man laughed soft and polite. "One thing," he said. "If you keep him alive, you have to feed him. If you feed him, the others smell it. When they come, they don't try the rope. They go to the door with the smell. They have noses for that now."
Ryo didn't let the words get into his spine. He let them sit in the air. He didn't give the man back an answer. He didn't have one that would satisfy the part of himself that liked the truth more than words.
He walked, with Ren and Toller and Anna and Soren and Mara and the priest. Brann came, because he didn't want to be left out of whatever story the table would make.
They were fifty paces from the weir when a shout went up behind them from the boys holding the weir-keeper. Ryo turned fast. One of the boards in the side run bucked like something under it had gotten wise. The rope jolted. The Lurker didn't rise—but a second shape slid out from under the gate boards upstream, slimmer, faster, mouth full of teeth—and it didn't go for the weir. It went for the bank where Ryo's bag lay. The tin man on the post smiled with bloody teeth and whispered, "Fetch."