Ryo didn't give the hook a clean bite at the rope. He stepped into it and caught the shaft an arm's length from the iron, shoved down and twisted. The hook's curve glanced off the rope, slid on wet tallow, and bit stone. The rider swore and jerked back without thinking about his own seat. The horse caught the feel of metal skating under its feet and balked. It stamped, weights wrong, ears back. The hook tore free and came up, wild. Ryo let go before it took fingers and slammed his shoulder into the man's knee instead.
The second red cloak—hard face, wet curls stuck to his temples—had expected villagers who backed up when metal swung. He didn't expect a man who went low. His knee buckled. He grabbed for the hook with both hands to keep his balance, which gave Ryo exactly what he wanted: both hands away from reins.
"Stand down," Harrod barked, voice cutting flat across the rain.
The rider ignored him. He drove the hook again.
Ryo slid left and the iron took air. He put his foot on the hook's shaft and pinned it, then shoved the shaft under the lip of the gate's locking collar like a crowbar thrust. The hook jammed between iron and soaked oak. The rider pulled. It didn't come away.
"Off," Ryo said to the horse, same tone he'd used for "down" to a beast. He slapped the gelding's shoulder with the back of his hand. The horse shifted away from the humming boards like it agreed with him. The rider's foot slipped from the stirrup. He came off in a bad angle, boots skidding on algae-slick stone, arms windmilling at the one place where you don't want your hands if you like your fingers.
Ryo reached and grabbed the man's wrist and shoved it into the gap he'd made where the hook jammed in the collar, then slammed the stocks pin through the collar holes. Iron kissed leather. The man's cuff strap got caught with his skin. He yelped and tried to yank free. He couldn't. He was bound to the weir gate by his own shit.
Harrod's men started forward, then looked at Harrod's face and stopped like good animals.
"By order of—" the hooked man started.
"Shut up," Ryo said. He didn't raise his voice. He stepped sideways to keep his body between the rope and any hand that would try to be brave and stupid at the same time. He felt the hum through his soles and back teeth. The stuck beast in the side run thumped once, hate in a body. The rope creaked and settled. It held.
Mara didn't look up from the paper she'd been writing on as she walked; she didn't like to leave lines empty when people shouted. "Name," she said, pen steady. "Say it the way you want it on a fine."
The hooked man glared up, red cloak slipping sleeker with rain. "Deputy Merek," he bit out. "By order of Steward Olsin, responsible for road abatement."
Harrod's mouth went tight at the name. He kept his hands away from his belt because that was where he'd put them if he wanted to hit something. "Merek," he said. "You don't walk over my writ. I signed liability. You lay a hand on that rope without the Warden's say, I fine you and send a letter that sticks to your name like piss to wool."
"Lord Gareth sets the order," Merek snapped. He yanked his cuff. The leather creaked and bit his skin more. He flinched and tried to hide it with his teeth. "Olsin gives it. You carry it. Not sit with dirt and sign books with men who don't have a seal."
Soren lifted his countersign with both hands so the wax caught what little light there was. He didn't look dignified. He looked wet and done with being moved. "I am the seal," he said, voice as clean as he could get it. "You want to call this mud, call it mud. You still read the writing when it splashes you."
Merek spit toward Soren's boots and missed because the wind liked Ryo today. He took a breath like he was going to whistle and realized he didn't have one to blow. He looked at the tin man tied to the post. The tin man smiled and whistled anyway, a thin, high note around his teeth.
Anna stepped out of line, grabbed a fistful of river mud, and stuffed it into the tin man's mouth without ceremony. He gagged. She kept her hand there. "Whistle in that," she said. "I'll bury you in a different mud."
The weir boards vibrated like a harp string a child had hit. Ryo set his palm on the wet wood and said it again, under his breath, to the gate and his own bones and the place he didn't name.
Hold.
The hum steadied. The beast in the side run snapped its tail once, then gave up on this minute and went still again, sour, breathing water it hated.
"Deputy Merek," Mara said, writing. "Laid hand on weir in adjudication zone after liability signed by bailiff. Attempted to remove evidence without witness and against line rule. Bound by cuff to gate for safety." She looked up finally and smiled without warmth. "Bound. Good word."
Ryo took a step back to give Merek enough space to think he had room to move without actually giving him any. Merek glared at Harrod like this was his fault.
"You can't let a warden bind me," he said. "You can't let this puddle write a line over a steward's deputy."
Harrod lifted his chin the way a man does when he thinks through how much trouble he's going to buy for himself and decides he's already bought worse by waking up. "He isn't binding you," Harrod said. "That's your cuff. That's a pin in my gate you tried to jam with your hook. If you want to be unbound, you'll sign Soren's liability line. Then he'll lift it when the Warden says and not before."
"Fuck you," Merek said pleasantly, like he knew how to be ugly without moving his jaw.
"Later," Harrod said. "You can try."
Ryo put his hand on the pin because he didn't trust any of them not to grab and make the line hum wrong. He looked at Soren. "Read him what he's signing," he said.
Soren didn't ask if he had the authority. He looked Merek in the face like he'd watched the last of his fear go down the weir with old leaves. "By Lord Gareth's hand and mine by leave," he read, "removal of the abatement beast from village line requires steward witness, village officer witness, and bailiff's liability. Interference incurs fine of five days public binding. Any harm to the weir falls to the signer."
"Add," Ryo said. "Any whistle use at the line without witness counts as interference."
Mara's quill scratched. "Added," she said.
Something slid like a bar in Ryo's chest.
Sanction: summary binding allowed on interference.
Merek heard none of that, but he felt the weight in the way the air went. He tried to pull his arm again to reclaim something. The leather bit him and he grunted. He stopped dignifying it.
Brann stood close enough that if Merek swung with his free hand he'd hit Brann first. Brann's face had that same calm Ryo had seen when he'd shoved the stick into the beast's mouth. He looked at Merek like a man looks at a problem he would enjoy solving if no one was counting.
"You brought boards," Brann said mildly, chin at the pack pony loaded with signs. "Two dots. You like hanging them without a seal. You're telling people to help your men while your men teach dogs to like the taste of tin."
Merek didn't look at Brann. "You like your mark back," he said, tone flat and ugly. "Sit your white shirts on your hands and I put you to work on my road tomorrow."
Brann's mouth did a small thing Ryo didn't know if it was anger or humor. "I heard you say 'my road,'" Brann said. "I look at the boards held up by a pin my grandmother calls true. You can call it yours when your men carry out the thing that wants to eat it with a rope around its throat. Until then, it's the Warden's mud."
Harrod snorted despite himself. He let it be a laugh. "We're all in the mud," he said. "Start writing, Soren."
Soren already had the quill. He looked at Merek's free hand like a man who could put a nail under it if he needed to and make it pay attention. "Will you sign," he asked.
Merek stared at Harrod. Harrod stared back. That was the bend. Merek sighed through his teeth like he was biting steel. "Give me the line," he said.
Mara slid the page to him where his cuff couldn't drip on it. Merek bent and signed in a hard, quick hand. He smashed a ringed thumb into the wax Harrod offered like he wanted the ring to hurt the wax. It left a dull mark with no crest. No seal. Just iron on wax. Enough for paper. Not enough for pride.
"Good," Soren said. It came out like standing up slowly after your leg has fallen asleep.
"Now remove it," Merek said, meaning the cuff, the pin, the problem of Ryo's existence.
Ryo didn't move. He looked at Harrod. "Read it back."
Harrod did, quick. He'd clocked the game. He made the words sound like his. "Liability on removal," he said. "Witnessed. Whistles count as interference." He tapped the line with a finger. "If you blow anything while the Warden stands there, I'll stack you on the table and let Mara write the fine on your face."
Merek bared his teeth at him finally. "Harrod," he said. "You think I won't tell Olsin you let a mudhouse clerk write a fine for a steward's deputy?"
"You can tell him," Harrod said, and sounded bored. "He already thinks I'm a problem. If he thought you weren't one, he wouldn't have sent you to fix me."
Ryo lifted the pin. He didn't do it fast. He did it when Merek had both feet under him and one hand where it couldn't take the rope by accident. He stepped back.
"Touch the hook again and you go in stocks," he said, even. "I don't care what cloak you wear."
"Try to put me in wood," Merek said softly. "See what wax does for you then."
"We can find out," Mara said. "Stocks are a tool. Paper is a table. One holds a hand. One holds men. We use both."
Merek didn't reach for the hook. He reached for his cloak pin where the fabric crossed his chest. He pulled something small and shiny from behind it. For a split breath Ryo didn't see it right. Then he did. A whistle. Not tin. Bone, small, hidden, flat. He raised it to his mouth like a man hiding a cough.
Ryo moved before his brain finished the word. He jammed his thumb into Merek's cheek where the molar meets the jaw hinge. Merek's mouth opened. The whistle clicked against teeth. Ryo brought his head forward as if he were going to kiss an enemy and bumped his forehead into Merek's with enough force to make Merek's eyes water. The whistle fell. Ryo caught it with his palm and closed his hand hard so it ground into his skin instead of hitting stone and singing.
Merek made a small involuntary sound that would have been a laugh if it hadn't been pain. Then he smiled because he hated being surprised.
"Good," he said. "You're fast. You'll be dead soon."
Anna took the bone whistle from Ryo's hand and put it in Mara's open palm like a woman handing over something with stain she didn't want in her apron. Mara set it on the page with whistle patterns and wrote "bone—Deputy Merek" next to a sketch of its shape.
"Rope," Ryo said to Ren because the beast had felt that jolt of men being stupid and it had flexed. The creak had shifted pitch. Ren leaned his shoulder back into his angle and Toller tightened his tie at the back post.
Harrod blew a breath out through his nose. "Can we move the fucking thing now while we're all brave in front of each other," he said, finally letting the edge show.
"Careful," Ryo said without looking at him. He put his palm to board and rope and counted himself into the feel. "Ren, up left a hand. Down right two fingers. Hold. We go slow. If he rolls, you let him. We don't fight a roll. We guide it."
They worked. Merek didn't move his hands where the Warden could see them. He watched. He learned something whether he wanted to or not. The beast slid, ugly, tail lashing once as the water pulled it down the side run to the catch. Toller got the secondary rope around the near post and through a ring. He took privilege of the grin he liked to wear when he had rope in his hands and could make it sing.
"Stop," Ryo said. They stopped. The Lurker lay pinned in new geometry. It would hold. It wasn't kind. It was work.
Harrod nodded, short, like a craftsman who sees a door hang true and hates everything else about the house.
"Right," he said. "Now let's get the crates into a shitty cart and walk them up a hill."
"Walk them to the table," Mara said.
"Table," Harrod agreed. He sounded like the word tasted like lye. He turned to Merek. "You'll walk too," he said. "And you won't touch anything without saying 'please' in front of paper."
Merek smiled wider and showed a little blood on his teeth where Ryo's head had kissed him. "You picked a side," he said.
"I picked a table," Harrod said.
They moved as a knot again—crate men, riders, villagers. Brann fell into step where no one could push him without getting an elbow. Soren walked like he was holding up a roof with his jealousy of the air.
They were twenty paces from the weir when the tin man made a sound through mud and tongue that wasn't a whistle and wasn't anything you'd hear on purpose. It was a hiss scraped through teeth. Ryo turned his head by habit to count hands and rope. He saw the tin man shift his weight and something catch the light inside his cheek. Not bone. Not whistle. A thin sliver of tin held against molars with a tongue.
"Anna," Ryo said without turning. "He's got another—"
The thin man spat the sliver sideways, not to call the beast, to call the little runner. It wasn't dead? For half a breath Ryo thought he was wrong. Then he realized what came wasn't an animal. It was a boy—Corlan's boy—running to fetch something he'd left by the post. Tin hit stone at his feet and rang an ugly clear note, and the Lurker in the side run, far behind them, surged at the sound like a hand had clapped inches from its ear.
The side run board flexed. The rope gave a fraction. The hum changed from held to warning.
"Rope!" Ryo barked. Ren was already pivoting, but he was ten paces away on a bad angle. Merek, of all fucking people, moved like a man who liked his nose where it was. He threw his weight against the side post instead of grabbing the rope like an idiot. He took it on his shoulder and swore like a religion.
Ryo didn't run to the rope. He went to the boy. He grabbed the kid by the forearms and dragged him away from the tin sliver and the post. The kid yelped a word that wasn't apology so much as surprise.
"Don't pick up two dots," Ryo said. He scooped the sliver and put it in his pocket. It bit through the damp cloth. He didn't care.
Harrod was at the rope in the next breath, cloak slit clean so he didn't get caught by his own nice. He shouldered in next to Merek and looked like he was going to be sick but didn't stop. Crew found the line and put weight into it. The hum slid back to steady like a saw made to cut again.
Ryo straightened. He walked back to the tin man, wiped his palm across the man's mouth hard enough to take skin, and then took Anna's rag and shoved it in, deep. The man gagged. Ryo didn't apologize. He tied the rag behind his head with a piece of rope in a knot that would tighten if he opened his mouth too wide.
"Now we go," Ryo said. "Merek, if you blow anything, I put your hand in wood until your wrist forgets it learned to move."
"Get in line," Anna said darkly to Merek. "Priest first."
The priest, who had watched all this with the cheer of a man who had seen worse and liked having fresh things to complain about, snorted. "Don't put me in front of a rope unless you want me to tell it why it's a bad idea," he said. "Walk."
They walked. The lane felt like it had edges; the space between bodies felt like a room you could lock. Ryo carried the bag. He kept his hand on it because he wasn't going to let the day take his book with a sound like tin in rain.
They reached the shrine steps before the sky made up its mind between rain and spitting. Harrod set his hand on the table as if to claim polite space. Merek planted himself with the red of his cloak bright under the door's grey. He took a breath like he'd saved it for this and smiled slow. Then he did blow—through a second bone sliver he'd had palmed between two fingers, not at the weir, not at the beast—one thin, ugly note aimed down the lane toward the south cistern. Screams answered from that direction—women and a child. Ryo's back went cold. Mara's pen snapped. Soren lifted his countersign like it could block sound. The priest didn't swear. He said, quiet, like an order: "Warden. Now."