The second shape cut out of the upstream shadow like a knife. Slimmer than the Lurker, fast, a runner. Head low, teeth out, eyes set wrong. It came up the undercut bank with its belly skimming stone and water peeling off its back. It didn't look at people. It looked at the bank where Ryo's bag lay by a post—book, jar, tin, nails, all of it in one place because he'd needed both hands for the gates.
The tin man on the post smiled with blood on his teeth and breathed, "Fetch."
Ryo didn't shout. He moved. Ash pole in his hands, he ran sideways to get between the thing and the bag instead of straight at it. A straight line makes you late. He threw the pole low and hard, not to hit—across the ground a pace in front of the bag so it made a bar. Then he dropped and went hands on, two steps past the bag, rope already in his fingers because he didn't drop what mattered.
"Ren," he said. "Hook the bag. Pull. Toller—nails, now, in front of it."
They were already moving. Ren's roof hook skipped once on stone and then bit the bag's strap. He yanked it toward him with a haul that would have pulled a man off a ladder. Toller hit his knees sliding and dumped a handful of nails point-up onto a board he'd grabbed from a pile, then shoved the board into the mud in front of where the bag had been like he'd set trap-line since he had teeth.
The runner hit the pole bar and didn't care, drove through its own bruise, and went mouth-open straight for what its brain had been taught was reward. It bit nails. Teeth met iron points and wood. It yelped—a high, horrible sound—and did what animals do when they meet a pain they don't understand: it bit harder. Blood ran. It jerked its head, throwing the board aside in a spray of points. It still came, because training can be stronger than pain for a heartbeat. Its head cleared the line of where the bag had been. It snapped at empty ground and found Ren's hook instead.
Ren didn't flinch when the hook bit meat and nearly tore out of his hands. He put his boot against a post and leaned his weight away. The strap held and slid the bag toward his feet. The runner shook its head to free the hook. It took the pole bar in its chest. It stumbled. That was the breath Ryo had.
He dropped a loop over the runner's nose and jerked up hard so the rope bit behind the teeth. He twisted the loop to a half-hitch that jammed if the head pulled. The runner tried to pull. The rope sank into gum and the fleshy place behind the nose. It panicked and yanked backward. Ryo went with it instead of fighting it, bled off the pull by stepping, let it waste energy.
"Down," he said, low and mean, like to a bad dog that knows the word and hates it.
The runner didn't know the word. It knew pain. It went to its belly to try to get purchase. The priest came in from the side with his broken broom and jammed the stick against the base of the skull to lever the head up. The runner snapped sideways. It caught the broom and took it. The priest let go instead of losing fingers. Brann came in over the priest's shoulder like a man who didn't want to think, just break. He put his good foot on the runner's neck and pushed, not elegant, enough.
Anna threw. Not lye. The small pot of clean fat she'd brought for the rope. It hit the runner's eye and ran into its mouth when it opened to bite. It gagged, coughed, tried to spit, and didn't understand slick that didn't sting.
"Hold," Ryo said to himself. He put a knee on the runner's ribcage and turned the rope another half twist, jamming the loop off plane so the flesh didn't slide. The runner's back legs scrabbled on stone. He shifted his weight so those legs had nothing to push on.
"Finish it," Ren said, already bringing the shovel down.
"Wait," Ryo snapped, and Ren checked a blade length from bone. He wasn't trying to keep it alive. He wanted a second's look. The runner's eyes were wrong, but in a different way than the big one—glassy, fixed at a point just beyond the thing it wanted. In its mouth, under the fat, he saw a smear of dark paste at the gum line where human fingers had rubbed it like bait.
He let that burn into his memory and got out of the way. "Now."
Ren didn't aim for the dramatic. He put the flat of the shovel behind the skull and drove down and through. Bone cracked. Legs kicked three times, four. Ryo kept the rope tight until the kicks weren't kicks anymore. Then he let it go slack and backed off without turning his back to the water.
The tin man on the post watched, calm again. "They like tallow," he said conversationally. "They like tin. They like the smell of the paste when it's cooked down. They like the sound of the whistle because it means food."
Ryo ignored him. "Bag," he said.
Ren had already pulled it under his foot. He set the hook out and pushed the bag toe-close to Ryo. Ryo put his hand on it and felt for what mattered without looking, because eyes lie and hands remember. Strap, book leather, jar's glass cool under cloth, tin disk hard, nails a bite through canvas. He lifted it by the strap and moved it behind him, back from the bank. Anna put her hand over it and looked ready to bite anyone who reached.
Toller hauled the board with nails off to the side and kicked the loose iron into a pile with a careful foot. He didn't want a boy to find a point later and remember Ryo wrong every time he limped.
Soren stood with his pole out like he could stab a problem and make it better. He looked at the tin man like the shape of the day had finally cleared a space in his head where anger could sit without crippling him.
"You trained it to go for tin and fat," Soren said. "You called it fetch. You aimed it at a bag."
The tin man smiled. "We aim them at pig sheds and garbage pits," he said. "If a bag sits on the ground smelling like all three, it's very hard for a trainee to pass up. Don't take it personal."
Mara walked to the runner. She looked at the paste rubbed inside the gum line. She didn't kneel. She didn't want it on her coat. "Two Dots," she said without raising her voice. "What do you call the paste?"
"Sweet," he said, playing to his own laugh. "Cooked marrow, tallow, a little salt, a little old urine to give it teeth. You rub it and say 'good' and then you rub it and say 'fetch' and then you stop rubbing unless they bring you something with tin in it."
"Shut up," Mara said. She didn't put heat in it. She made it like a lid on a pot.
Ryo tugged the rope off the runner's face before the loop cinched hard and made a mess he didn't need. He wiped the rope with a rag by habit because he would not carry this stink on a line if he could help it. He looked at the crate by the weir house because now he knew where to look for neat.
There it was. Half under a tarp. Branded at the corner with two dots burned into the wood. No stamp from a lord's store. No guild mark. Neater. Wrong. Ryo pulled the tarp back. Inside: tin disks on cords in handfuls, reed bundles cut to length, thin bone slivers already scraped and smooth, two whistles, and a folded paper held down with a stone.
He didn't reach for the paper first. He picked up a tin disk between two fingers. Two dots. Same as the collar. Same as the nails. He set it on Mara's ledger without asking if she minded.
Then he took the paper. He opened it. Ink neat, precise, lines in a hand someone had taught to draw letters the way a man teaches an ox to pull straight. It read like a shopping list a soldier would write. Twelve "collars," six "lines," paste recipe and times, whistle patterns: three short for come, one long to stop, a word scribbled beside "fetch." It also had locations. Not names. Marks. A circle with a cross—shrine. A rectangle with a dot—alehouse. A circle with a tail—mill. One he didn't recognize, a funny S with a bar—Ryo angled the page and realized it was the south cistern. A note: "High evenings. Women draw with children."
Anna made a sound low in her throat that wasn't a word. "They would've brought a dog to a well," she said. Not question. Statement with murder behind it.
Ryo folded the paper once, twice. He did not fold it along the creases; he folded it offset so if the man cared about his neat lines, it would itch under his skin later. He put it into his bag under the book and the jar. He set the tin disks from the crate next to Mara's ledger. "Count them," he said. "Write how many. Write where we found them."
Soren nodded, jaw tight. He counted aloud because that stops your hands from shaking. "One, two, three…"
The priest finished binding the weir-keeper's groin with a belt and two sticks to keep pressure where pressure belonged. He stood and came to the tin man, looked at his tied wrists, looked at Ryo's knot, grunted approval. "We don't have enough rope to tie up all the problems I want tied," he said to no one in particular. "If I had any left, I'd go fetch your lord with it and make him look at his rat."
The tin man rolled his head against the post because sitting with pride hurts. "They'll pay us more after this," he said. "You can write it. He signs. We set lines where you like. We go away for a month and you say we saved your road. Then you forget what you don't like." He didn't look at Mara. He looked at Soren because he understood where the soft spot might be after a day of howlers.
Soren didn't bite. He looked at Ryo instead. "We take the crate to the table," he said. "We write it. We show it to any rider who shows up with a clean seal and a dirt head. We lock the whistles in my box."
Ryo scanned the bank again, the water, the boards. The Lurker in the side run thumped once, sluggish. The rope creaked. It held. The board he'd pinned with the stocks pin held. The boys holding the weir-keeper held. The field women had taken the dead runner's head and wrapped it in a sack without waiting for permission because they knew what stank where.
"Ren," Ryo said. "Walk the far bank fifty paces. Check for another cart. If there are two more crates, I want them before someone with a ring remembers what he forgot." He looked at Brann's face when he said it. Brann's mouth didn't move. His ears did.
Ren went. Toller went the other direction without being told because he liked to prove he could be useful at the same time as his brother. Anna stood with one foot on the bag like it was a man's throat.
"Warden," Soren said. He said it awkwardly, like a new boot. "I am going to write you on a piece of paper before dark so when people ask 'who stood where and who told us where to point our poles,' I can show it. You will take the line until I find you someone foolish enough to want it. If you tell me to take it back tomorrow, I will. If you don't, we do it again the next time a man with two dots smiles."
"Write it," Ryo said. He looked tired even to himself. He wasn't about to make a speech. "Tie it to Mara's table and the priest's door."
Mara nodded, short. "And to the weir," she said. "No one puts hands on these gates without your say and a witness. If he does, we write his name on the wall of his own house with pig blood so his wife has to look at it while she eats."
The tin man snorted, then sucked air through his teeth because the knot he had tried to pick bit him harder for the trouble.
Ren came back with a coil of rope over his shoulder and a grin that had more edge than humor. "Two more crates," he said. "Same dots. One with whistles and clean cords. One with pegs and a hammer."
Brann's eyes slid to the crates and then to the tin man. He didn't say, "This isn't mine." He didn't say anything. That told Ryo more than if he'd shouted.
"Take them," Soren said. "Put them on Corlan's cart. Corlan, you don't let that cart roll into a ditch even if your leg wants to cramp to make it funny. If someone tries for it, run him over and we'll write that you did it in defense of a line."
Corlan spat to the side and flicked his eyes once at the Lurker. "I'm tired of moving tables," he said. "I'll move boxes instead."
Ryo checked his bag again without looking like he needed reassurance. He put the strap over his head and settled the weight where it rode best. He put his palm on the top for a second and felt the book through the canvas. It felt like a door bar.
"Back to the table," he said. "We sit. We write. We don't open if anyone says 'book' in a nice voice." He looked at the priest. "Do you want a boy to sit at the weir all afternoon and say 'no' to anyone who wants to touch the wheel?"
The priest looked at the bound tin man and then at the Lurker. "I'll sit myself," he said. "I'm too mean to get pulled into the water and I like telling people 'no' after a day like this. If I need a piss, I'll tell the beast a prayer and he can listen."
Ryo nodded. That settled. He turned to go.
The tin man couldn't help himself. "He'll send riders," he said. "Someone like you sits with a clean hat. He says the word levy like it sounds like 'supper.' He asks for your beast. He says thank you for doing his work and then he taps your table and calls it his."
"Then he can carry the beast himself," Mara said, dead flat. "We'll help him tie the rope to his saddle if he wants."
They made it ten paces before a boy from the gully path came down half on his feet, half on his hands, mud slicked up to his waist. He didn't have breath to shout this time. He looked at Ryo's face and then at the bag and then at Soren and held up a piece of wood like it had bit him.
It was a sign board—small, like the ones they nailed under notices when they didn't have room. Two dots burned into the corner. Words burned neat under the dots: By Order of Millroads Steward—Pest Abatement Ongoing. Assist Collectors. Do Not Interfere.
The boy gasped, "They're nailing them at the mill road bend. Three men. One with a red cloak. He's got a paper with your lord's seal. He says he'll fine anyone who touched a rope today. He says the beast is his."
Soren closed his eyes for one breath. He opened them and looked like somebody had put a nail through one boot and he had decided to walk anyway. "Table," he said, voice thin and mean. "Bring that board. Bring the crates. Bring the man. We'll see whose paper reads louder."
Ryo set his jaw. He started walking. He didn't quicken. Speed wastes breath before you reach the place where people forget how to read.
"Anna," he said without looking. "If someone puts that sign under our notice, you put a handful of pig shit under the dots. Make it look like a blessing."
"I'll use my best," she said.
They were halfway to the shrine when a red cloak showed through the rain at the bend, neat as a seal on wax. The man under it sat a grey horse like he'd never had to jump a ditch. He raised a rolled paper in one hand and called in a voice made to carry over quiet rooms, not marsh wind. "By Lord Gareth's authority," he said, "I require immediate surrender of any captured abatement specimen and any items used to restrain or train such. Interferers will be fined and bound." He smiled like he had a good seat by a fire and had never smelled lye. "Who speaks for this puddle?"