The woman wore grey like it was a knife. The chain mark at her throat wasn't a pin. It was burned into skin in a knot that looked like it hurt going in and never healed right. She didn't look at the Lurker first. She looked at the table. Ledger. Countersign. Harrod's seal. Book or Blood cloth under Werron's hand.
"Factor Vey," she said, as if that cleared everything. "Chainmaster's representative for writ T-119 and any derivative contracts. I'm taking possession."
Werron didn't sit for her. "No," he said. He sounded like a man whose sleep debt made him efficient. "There's a hearing. After we read."
"The Chain hears," she said, smiling like she was reading a line about herself. "It has already judged. This is contract matter. You don't have jurisdiction over chain claims." She flicked her fingers. Two black coats carried the iron ring forward between them like a crown too heavy for one head.
Anna's salt line smoked where the ring slid a handspan over it. The smoke smelled like rain and coins. The ring had little knot-marks stamped around its rim. Ryo stepped between ring and table and set the stocks pin flat on the wood with the head toward that iron circle like a dog showing teeth.
"Leave it," Ryo said.
Vey tilted her head. The brand at her throat darkened like fresh coals. "Warden," she said, amusement under her words. "You stand on rope and call it law. Your paper spills when it rains. Our law sits in iron."
"Then why bring it," Harrod asked, tired. "If we're so cute, go home and sign to yourselves."
Vey looked at him like he'd asked a child to stop playing. She lifted her left hand. Chain links traced the bones under the skin. Not jewelry. Scar.
"Ring," she said.
The black coats set the binding ring down so its edge pressed against the salt. The pressure came with it, low and steady, settling on Ryo's shoulders and wrists like someone was laying another wet coat on him and telling him to carry it while he worked.
Binding field: intruding. Hostile domain attempts to claim table.
Werron's palm shifted on the cloth. He kept it there. "By my father's hand and mine," he said. "Hearing opened on breach of road and weir." He didn't shout. He looked at Vey like she was an itinerary item, not a god's tooth.
"Closed," Vey said, not even bothering to make it performative. She breathed a word that wasn't the Chainmaster's name, not quite. A title shape. "Arbiter." The ring's hum climbed.
Ryo put his hand on the ring's rim. It felt wrong and too smooth. He slid the pin's shank through one of the ring's knot-holes and twisted hard so the step of iron sat in a notch in wood. It didn't lock the ring. It made it have to move the table to move itself.
"Try," he said.
Vey's eyes shifted to his hands like a craftsman finally finding someone else worth watching. She smiled. Her pupils had little reflections of the ring's knot-marks in them. "You don't want this, Warden," she said softly. "You'll die for a frog and a word. We'll still be here. We've laid chains around cities. We've closed rivers. You drew a salt line in your puddle."
She lifted her hand. The brand brightened. The chain across the gate picked up the note she sent it and sang back. Olsin didn't move. He didn't have to. He was the part of a problem that thinks it wins because it eats slowly.
"Witness," Soren said, voice raw. He put his countersign on the ring's rim so wax kissed iron. "By Gareth's hand and mine, no tool touches this table without my name under it."
"By my seal," Harrod said. He put his sign down too, his knuckles white. "Liability extends."
Vey's smile didn't move. "Your seal is quaint," she said to Harrod. "You gave us liability. Good boy." She stepped closer and hooked her thumb under the ring's edge. The salt hissed where her boot scuffed it. She smelled like clean iron and a place men pretend is safety.
Ryo picked up the jar with the dried thumb blood and the Book or Blood cloth with the other hand. He didn't ask Werron if he minded. He pushed Werron's palm off the cloth and rubbed a smear of old blood across the letters until they shone wet again. He pressed three fingers into it and then pressed those fingers onto the ring's rim so the blood went iron.
"Pick," he said to Vey, flat. "Book or blood. It reads the same here."
The brand at Vey's throat went a shade darker like someone had laid a thumb to it to test heat. She offered her own blood like nothing, blade snapped from a short sheath, tip of her thumb cut, a bright drop. She pressed it to the ring. It hissed when it hit iron and smoked like tallow.
The pressure climbed.
Contest escalated: Blood Hearing invoked. Opponent: Factor-class, Chain Domain attuned. Requirement: equal or heir-level witness.
Werron's hand came down on the ring next to Ryo's blood before anyone told him to. He didn't flinch when it smoked. He didn't pull away when it hurt.
"Witnessed," he said, and made it sound like something that matters because he would make it matter later when it hurt him.
Adjudication reinforced: Heir present. Table domain upgraded—Blood Hearing (Local). Chain field reduced.
The ring's hum flattened a hair. Vey's pupils narrowed. "You shouldn't have touched it," she told Werron, almost friendly. "It likes to keep who touches."
"That makes two of us," Werron said.
Olsin sounded bored. "This is tiresome," he said softly to the space near Vey's shoulder. "Take the animal. Chain over paper. We'll apologize and pay a fine in a week. The village will forget between this and the next rain."
Vey gave him nothing but the back of her ear. Her brand pulsed once, small, the way heartbeats do in wrists when the rest of the face is lying. Ryo's hands prickled. Not the ring. The bag at his hip. The little chain with two dots inside a link, the one he'd lifted from Olsin, writhed like it had felt its mother.
Ryo slid the bag against his body with an elbow so the chain inside didn't move on the table. He didn't need that little thing singing to big iron.
"Move," Vey said to the black coats. She didn't raise her voice. One set his boot on the salt line and hissed when something stung him at the ankle. He stepped over it instead.
Brann put his shoulder into the sled without waiting for orders, hard enough to shift weight. That forced the black coat to step with it or get his toe crushed. It looked like a shove. It was an introduction.
Merek's laugh was quiet and pleased. He would have liked to see blood either way.
Anna stepped to Vey's left side and did something Vey didn't expect from a woman who smelled like fat and rope. She planted her feet like she would for a churn and said, "Factor," in a tone she'd used earlier to shameless boys. "Do your tying in your own kitchen."
Vey turned her head a fraction and took in Anna without condescension. She saw someone who could set a table or set a hand. She shook her head once. "Pretty," she said. "You should have worn a chain ten years ago. We'd have made you clean."
"Hard pass," Anna said.
The ring slid another inch. The table creaked.
Ryo picked up the pin and rammed the point into the table through the ring's knot-hole. Wood split. The pin bit the trestle frame. The ring wouldn't slide without tearing the table apart. He looked Vey in the eye. "Try to move it through a hearing," he said. "You don't get to pretend we didn't know what this is."
Vey breathed a word again, softer, through her teeth. "Arbiter." The chain across the gate answered. The brand at her throat smoked. Harrod flinched like a man who's crossed a court once and broken shoes on the step.
Ryo took the old dried blood jar and upended the last flakes onto the cloth and his own cut fingers. He made it not nice. He pressed those fingers into the rope where it lay across the table edge, into the fibers that had touched everything that day.
Oath formed: Warden binds self to line. Duration: one day, or drop on death. Cost: fatigue, injury carryover amplified. Effect: Contract suppression within domain, 40%.
The weight shifted inside Ryo like he'd strapped a wet stone slab around his ribs. His hands shook, not on the rope. On everything else. He held.
The ring's hum dimmed a notch. Vey's brand popped with a tiny spark like fat in a pan.
"Fuck," she said, almost laughing, not because it was funny but because she respected audacity. "All right, rope-man. We do it this way."
She snapped her fingers. Two coats with chain harnesses moved, fast, on the Lurker's far flank. They looped a knee-chain around the sled, not the beast, and heaved. They wanted to turn the sled to make the rope rub wrong. Corlan swore and dug his heels. Brann threw his weight. Toller slid a throw-knotted loop over one harness man's elbow and yanked him into the ring's frame. He barked his skin on iron and reevaluated career choices.
Ren came behind the sled and jammed the shovel handle through the rope lattice, making it into a strut. The sled stopped turning. The Lurker thumped, not free, just furious. Ryo kept the hum under his hands manageable with breath and swears he didn't have time to say out loud.
"Werron," Ryo said without moving his eyes. "Open your hall or close your hall. Don't sit with your chain and pretend you aren't choosing."
Werron's mouth did a tiny ugly thing like he'd bitten a nail. He lifted his seal hand. "Hearing stands," he said, and looked straight at Vey. "Factor, you're over the line. Sit. Speak. Or leave. You breach in my yard, I ride to your yard and break something more important than a table."
Vey had never been told "sit" in a way that bit. She liked it less than Ryo had expected. She looked at Olsin like she was checking if anyone had duty to be the adult in the room. Olsin looked at the ceiling like he was above all this by a chair.
Vey exhaled, not defeat. Calculation. She flicked her fingers and the black coats eased the sled back two inches. "Speak, then," she said. "You'll say words. We'll bring contracts."
"Bring them," Mara said. Her hand was already moving, ugly, fast. "We'll pin them to the day."
Harrod leaned close to Werron like men who don't like each other but don't like someone else more. "She'll try to bind him under a debtor's knot," he said, chin at Ryo. "Say the word 'levy' like it makes him owe the chain."
Vey heard him. She didn't deny it. "Levy," she said. "You took rope, you took men, you took my time. You owe."
"Prove contract," Ryo said. "Produce my mark. Produce my countersign. Produce a name that's not yours on a bill that says I asked you to chain my gate." He didn't put power into it. He put logic deep enough to cut.
Vey smiled with her teeth now. "Cute," she said. "Contract chain: if anyone stands under my writ, they accept debt to the Chainmaster for time lost."
Werron's eyebrows went up. "No," he said. "Not in my yard. Not while I stand. If you want to levy my villagers for being competent, you can eat that in front of my father."
Vey's eyes slid to Olsin. "He signed it," she said lightly.
"Then he can unsign it," Werron said. "Olsin, hand me the fucking paper."
For the first time since Ryo had seen him, Olsin lost smooth. He said, patient, "If we let rope dictate law, we'll never build a road."
"If you let chain dictate blood, you'll never have anyone to walk on it," Werron said.
Merek said, conversational: "You'll regret choosing a mud man over a steward."
"Probably," Werron said. "But not today."
Vey gave up on charming the heir. She went back to work. She looked at the chain at Olsin's wrist—no, absent now, lying on the table. She looked at Ryo's bag like she could see through it. She inhaled like a man about to dive.
"Chainmaster," she said, quiet. Not shouted. Not for the crowd. For the line that ran from her throat to larger iron. The chain across the gate tightened minutely and everything in the courtyard pulled.
The little chain in Ryo's bag wriggled hard enough he thought it would bite him through canvas. He clamped his elbow down. It stilled. The weight in his chest dug in deeper, nails in a board.
Hold, he didn't say out loud because this was the part where he didn't want the word to hear itself and get ideas.
Resist check: sustained. Oath drains. Fatigue rising. Injury carryover intensified.
He tasted metal. He didn't let it bleed into his mouth.
The ring pressed. The table rocked. Werron's palm stayed on iron. Harrod's seal finger left a print in wax. Mara wrote like a demon because that's what this part was.
"Two dots," Ryo said, steady. "Factor, look at your links. Look at the underside of your iron. Count your dots." He pulled the chain loop with the two faint burns from his bag and set it, bit by bit, on the table where she had to see it happen. "If your writ is clean, you can say it touching this and your brand won't smoke."
Vey didn't reach. She watched the loop as if it were a mouth. The brand at her throat pulsed once, disapproving.
"Three times you bled my line," Ryo said. "Weir. Road. Cistern. Two dots sit on each thing like a rat's tail. You want to say you own that? Say it on blood and iron with an heir's palm on the cloth."
Vey took one step toward the table.
Anna put the fat rag between Vey's hand and the chain. Vey paused, not because of fear. Because it was new.
"Wipe first," Anna said. "You don't get to touch anything here with hall fingers."
Vey's mouth did a small thing that wasn't quite a smile. She took the rag and wiped her hand, because if there was a rule that made her hair stand up in a different weather, she wanted to feel it.
"Enough," she said, and put her fingers down.
The brand at her throat sputtered like someone had poured salt on a coil in a hearth.
Contract impurity detected. Two-dots correlation. Chain dominance check penalized.
Vey's eyes flicked up at Ryo finally like they were looking at equal ground instead of a slope she'd skate. "Who are you," she asked, low. She meant it in a way that had kept men alive and dead in lists.
"Warden," Ryo said. "Temporary." He kept it true.
She looked at Werron. "I can take the debt off your boy," she said, nodding at Soren. "Give you a clerk who won't embarrass you when lords visit. I can call off ten tribunals. Just say 'adjourn' and step away."
Werron looked sick with wanting to say yes to something, anything that made his day shorter. He said no anyway. "Sit," he said again. "Speak. Or leave."
Vey sat. She made it look like a joke she was going to tell later. She put her hands on the rim. "Fine," she said. "On record. We contracted five collars for rat abatement—"
"For dogs," Mara said without looking up. "Son-of-bitches, see my note."
"—for dogs," Vey corrected smoothly, "with training whistles and paste measures. We trained where water moved to teach fetch, come, and stop. We posted boards—"
"Without a seal," Soren said.
"—as courtesy," Vey continued like he was a child in a school, "to enlist help. Two of our men exceeded remit. They will be disciplined internally. The Chainmaster accepts liability for time spent correcting—"
"No," Harrod said. "You accept my fine."
Vey's brand flared. "We don't accept outside fines."
"You're in a blood hearing in my yard," Werron said. "Pay the fucking levy and like it."
Vey set her jaw like a woman tasting vinegar. "Amount," she said.
Mara didn't look at Harrod. She said, crisp, "Hands by the weir, three days posted. Two days stocks for Merek. Five for Tomas. Tin surrendered. Whistles surrendered. No posting without Guild seal. Any collar training in village bounds with two dots on anything hangs your neck like a board."
Olsin finally moved like he was bored being outside his favorite room. "This is soap," he said, disdain thick. "These mud words wash off. We have courts."
"You do," Werron said. "You can file your complaint there. Meanwhile, this stands."
Vey watched Werron as he spoke and did the math in his face. She nodded once. "Fine," she said. "I accept fines on Tomas. Not Merek."
"You don't get to pick," Harrod said. "He tried to hook my rope. He blew at a cistern. He sits."
Merek's eyes glittered like this had finally gotten interesting. He wanted either outcome to hurt someone else.
Vey smiled. It was uglier when it was earned. "Then he sits and I pay for his chair," she said. "And I take your frog when we're done."
Ryo looked at Werron. Werron nodded. "Kill it when you finish reading," he told Ryo. "Do it in my yard. Loud."
The Lurker breathed like a bellows caught under a terrible cart. It heard its own execution because it was smart enough to be an animal and not smart enough to be anything else.
"On record," Vey said quickly, as if she wanted to stamp something before it changed again. She tapped the iron ring. "Chain lays a claim on this table with Binding authority. We will return with hall paper. This hearing is cute. It won't hold beyond rain."
Ryo tapped the Book or Blood cloth. He didn't smile. "We'll make more," he said.
Vey stood. She left the ring. She took nothing from the table but air.
"Chain," she said to the gate. The heavy links lifted and settled with a tired sound. Olsin looked like he hadn't enjoyed this play and was going to fix that later.
Ryo didn't watch her go. He turned to the sled, set his palm on the rope over the Lurker's neck, and breathed until his arms shook in a way he didn't like admitting.
"Now," he said.
Ren put his shovel to the right place. Toller took weight on a loop. Brann kept the sled still with a foot. Harrod put his hand on the rope because if you're going to sign for death you should carry a strand.
Ryo twisted the rope against the bar in the beast's mouth and jerked hard enough to end any argument. The loop bit behind the jaw, off-plane, where a thing doesn't have strength. The beast bucked. It couldn't. Its eye rolled white. Witless. Ren put the shovel down flat like a heavy piece of mercy.
The sound the Lurker made wasn't an animal everyone had a word for. It was a sound you don't say later. It stopped. Hands stayed where they were for three breaths because brains need it.
Ryo held the rope until the hum died under his palms and then a count longer so his hands could tell his head he'd finished something.
He let go.
"Write," he said. Mara already was.
Werron stared at the dead thing with a set jaw and then up at Olsin. "Bring me your invoice," he said again. "And a bucket."
Olsin blinked. "A bucket," he said.
"For the blood," Werron said. "So we can wash your hall."
Vey paused in the arch as if a thought had just caught her heel. She turned, looked at the ring on the table, the little chain loop in Ryo's bag like she could see through canvas, and smiled thin. "Enjoy your day," she said. "We'll bring the Chain's book at dawn. We'll lay it on your table and we'll see which hum is louder." Her eyes flicked to the brand at her throat as if to remind it to burn bright. The ring on the ground trembled once, like something waking up in iron. The salt line smoked to nothing where her shadow crossed it. Ryo felt the bag tug at his hip as the little chain inside writhed and pressed against the canvas like a snake trying to climb out.