The bell dragged him out of sleep.
It wasn't a sharp sound, more a dull, tired clang that seemed to roll around the stone and settle in his bones. For a moment, Eryk didn't know where he was. The pallet under him was a thin, lumpy thing that smelled of old straw and damp. The ceiling above was rough boards crossed with cobwebs instead of the smoke-stained rafters he knew.
Then his wrists flared as he moved, raw grooves scraping against the short loops of rope still knotted there.
Blackstone.
The night came back in fragments: the yard, the chickens, the woman with the ladle, Lysa's voice, the door closing halfway and leaving him alone with the sounds of a town that didn't care why he was there.
The bell clanged again. Voices rose in the yard outside, boys shouting, a dog barking, someone cursing about cold water.
Eryk pushed himself up. His shoulders protested. His legs felt thick and bruised from days on the road. His cheek throbbed a slow, ugly pulse where Droth's fist had landed.
He swung his feet to the floor. The stone was cold enough to sting.
The shed door creaked open.
"Up, hill boy," Bran said. "Mistress Hala wants hands, not corpses."
Bran filled the doorway: broad-shouldered, nose crooked from old breaks, hair sticking up in sleep-flattened tufts. He had a cloak thrown over one shoulder and a bucket in one hand.
Eryk blinked gritty eyes at him. "How long till first light?"
Bran snorted. "That was it. You want sun, try climbing the wall."
He tossed something. Eryk flinched before he realized it was a rough-spun shirt and a patchy cloak.
"You won't last an hour in that rag from the road. Hala complains when the help falls over."
"Why are you…?" Eryk started, then let it die. He pulled the new shirt over his head. It smelled of lye and someone else's sweat, but it was thicker than what he'd had.
Bran shrugged. "Kitchen feeds me. Easier when she's not yelling. Move your feet."
Eryk followed him out.
The lower yard looked different in the gray before dawn. The chickens were still huddled in their coop, feathers puffed. The great stew pot was dark and empty, soot-blackened on the outside. A boy about Bran's age yawned as he hefted a bucket and trudged toward the pump.
"That's Tomas," Bran said. "He talks too much. You'll see."
The pump handle squealed as Bran started working it. Thin water coughed out into his bucket.
"You start with water," he said. "Everything here does. You carry full buckets to the kitchen, to the trough, to Hala's temper. You spill, you go back."
He shoved the first full bucket into Eryk's hands. It bowed his shoulders.
"Arms straight. Don't let it knock your knees. And don't drop it."
Eryk's arms felt like they were being pulled out of their sockets as he followed Bran across the yard. Every step sloshed the load. His wrists burned where the rope rubbed under the sleeves.
At least no one was beating him.
He hated that thought the instant it formed, but it stayed.
Hala was already awake.
She stood by the empty stew pot, sleeves rolled up over forearms corded with muscle, hair tied back with a strip of cloth. Without the fire's glow she looked shorter, but no less solid. Two other boys moved under her sharp gaze, one chopping vegetables, the other scrubbing yesterday's crust from the pot with sand.
"You're late," she said when she saw Bran. "Bell rings, you move. Don't make me come drag you by the ear like a stubborn pig."
"We're here, aren't we?" Bran set his bucket down beside Eryk's with a grunt.
Hala gave Eryk a brief once-over. Her eyes lingered on the raw lines at his wrists.
"You the new one," she said. "Eryk."
"Yes, mistress."
"Good. You can carry and chop and clean and keep your mouth shut until I say otherwise. You drop a pot, I drop you in the midden." She jerked her chin toward a gloomy corner beyond the sheds that already smelled sour. "Start with water. Then peel. Then scrub. Then carry. If you're still breathing by sundown, we'll see what else you can manage."
She turned away. Conversation over.
Bran bumped Eryk lightly with his elbow. "If she yells, it means you're not keeping up. If she throws something, you duck and run faster. Come on."
The morning became buckets.
From the pump to the pot, from the pump to the trough where the dogs lapped, from the pump to a barrel in the corner of the yard. His shoulders burned. His palms grew slick. Once, his foot slid in mud and he lurched; the water sloshed hard enough to sting his shins but didn't spill.
"Better," Bran grunted. "First day's worst. Second isn't better, you're just too tired to complain."
Tomas, the talkative boy, worked beside them at the pump for a while. He had quick hands and a mouth that never seemed to rest.
"Came in with the Harnach lot," Tomas said cheerfully as he pumped. "They got raided last winter. I've been here three seasons. Hala doesn't like it when you try to sneak scraps, so don't. Gerrit watches the yard like a hawk, and he likes having a reason to send someone up to the steward. Steward likes having a reason to complain. You'll see."
"I've seen enough stewards," Eryk muttered.
"You came with Garren's lot, yeah? Place that burned." Tomas whistled low. "Smoke smelled wrong yesterday. Thick. That was you."
Eryk's jaw tightened. "It was my village."
Tomas shrugged, not unkind. "Was. Now it's just a story to scare folk into paying. Buckets."
By midmorning, Eryk's arms trembled so badly he had to set one load down halfway and rest his hands on his knees, sucking in cold air.
"Straighten up," Bran said quietly. "You bend like that where Gerrit can see, he'll tell Hala you're no good and she'll tell the steward. Steward's got a ledger and no patience."
"Steward already saw me," Eryk said. "He looked in my mouth like I was a mule."
"That just means your teeth are worth feeding." Bran grabbed the bucket's handle with him for the last few steps. "Come on. Then you can chop."
Chopping turned out to be no kinder.
Hala gave him a knife and a crate of turnips and onions firm with cold. He sat on a low stool and hacked until his fingers cramped. The knife handle rubbed blisters on top of blisters. His eyes smarted from onion sting. Somewhere behind him, the stew pot began to steam as water boiled and Hala started throwing in bones and scraps.
"Smaller," she said once, glancing at the uneven chunks. "You want to gnaw half a field in your bowl?"
He cut smaller.
"You'll get quicker," Lysa said later, dropping a coil of tallow-wrapped cloth beside him when Hala's attention shifted. "Rub that on your wrists when Hala's back is turned. Rope's already had its go at you; no point letting the buckets finish."
Eryk looked up. "Why?"
Lysa shrugged. "You're no good to anyone if your hands split open. That means Hala shouts more. I hear her through the wall. I don't like that."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Places are easier to keep track of than boys. I remember the ones who make less noise." Her gaze flicked once to his cheek, then away. "I'll remember your name until I don't need to."
It was more kindness than anyone had offered since Hollowford.
He unwound the cloth under the table and smeared the greasy tallow along the raw grooves around his wrists. It stung, then dulled. The next two buckets hurt a little less.
The day blurred.
Water. Chopping. Scrubbing bowls until his fingers pruned and the skin along his knuckles cracked. Carrying sloshing slop buckets to the corner trench where pigs rooted in trampled muck. They were big, bristled things with small, clever eyes, snouts working constantly.
"They'll eat anything," Bran said, dumping kitchen scraps into the mud.
"Even bones," Tomas added. "That's what Harnach used to say."
Eryk stared at the pigs' thick shoulders, the flash of teeth as they squabbled.
"People?" he asked before he quite knew he meant to.
Bran's mouth twisted. "If they fall in, I suppose."
Eryk stepped back from the edge.
Near midday, Hala thrust a bowl into his hands, thin broth with a strip of gristle and a few limp vegetable scraps. He drank it fast enough to burn his tongue.
"Don't gulp," Hala snapped. "It's not goin' anywhere."
He swallowed anyway. The warmth spread through him like something almost kind.
"At least no one was beating him," the thought whispered again.
He hated it a little less this time.
In the late afternoon, Hala sent him with Bran to take a bundle of used cloths up to the drying line behind the steward's building.
The upper yard felt different: quieter, somehow. Fewer shouts. More controlled noise. The air smelled more of ink and smoke, less of slop. Men in better cloaks moved between doors with papers in their hands. A forge rang somewhere further up the hill, measured and steady.
"Eyes down," Bran murmured. "If they want you, they'll call."
They passed the steward's open door.
Inside, Eryk caught a glimpse of shelves lined with neat bundles, a table with a ledge for inkpots, a single fat ledger open on its stand. The steward stood over it, quill moving, lips moving silently as he counted.
Eryk's gaze snagged on the page.
Names, or what passed for them, marched down it in cramped script: "Marek, quarry. Tomas, yard. Hala, kitchen." Some were only marks and places.
One line had a name he didn't recognize, next to "pit." The name had been crossed out with two blunt strokes of ink. Beside it, in a different hand, someone had written a number.
Bran tugged his sleeve. "Keep moving."
Back in the lower yard, the stew pot steamed, and the dogs whined as they waited for their share. The afternoon dulled to a gray smear. Smoke gathered under the low clouds.
He was carrying a crate of stale loaves from the store shed when it happened.
Gerrit, the yard guard with the narrow eyes and patchy beard, stood by the kitchen door, arms folded, watching the line of boys as Hala ladled out their evening portion.
"Don't crowd," he barked as one of the younger ones edged forward. "You'll get your turn, rats."
Eryk waited his place, bowl warm in his hands, when he saw it: a small crust of bread tumbling from the edge of the tray as Hala shifted it. It bounced once and landed by Jory's boot.
Jory, the younger of the water-bearers, big-eyed and slight, stared at the crust as if thunder had struck beside him. His gaze jumped to Gerrit, then to Hala's turned back.
His foot moved, very slightly.
The crust slid against his toes.
"Oi," Gerrit said. "What's that?"
He stepped forward and ground the bread under his heel, then stooped to pick it up between two fingers. He held it up like evidence.
"You think this falls out of the air?" he demanded. "You slip it, it jumps into your pocket, and somehow it lands at your feet in my sight, Jory?"
Jory shook his head quickly, eyes wide. "I didn't—"
Gerrit's gaze flicked down the line. It brushed Eryk's face, searching.
Eryk felt his throat close.
He could say he'd seen it fall. That it had bounced. That Jory hadn't had time to grab anything. He could shrug, make it nothing.
His tongue lay heavy.
Gerrit's eyes narrowed. "You telling me it walked there on its own? You callin' me blind, boy?"
Jory's mouth worked soundlessly. Whatever protest he'd had died.
The yard felt very still.
Eryk looked at Hala. She kept ladling, expression flat. Lysa's jaw was tight as she stacked bowls. Bran stared at the ground.
No one spoke.
"It… it just fell," Jory whispered at last. "I didn't mean—"
Gerrit snorted. "Didn't mean. That's what they all say."
He flung the flattened crust into the mud.
"Bran!" he called. "Take him up. Hand him to the steward. Tell him I caught him thieving."
Bran flinched like he'd been struck, then set his own bowl aside. He took Jory by the arm, not roughly, not gently.
Jory looked back once.
Eryk met his eyes for a fraction of a breath.
He said nothing.
Bran led Jory out of the yard and up the steps.
Hala kept serving. "Next," she said.
Eryk stepped forward. His bowl filled with watery stew. He moved away before his hands could start shaking.
He ate in the corner of the yard, back to the wall. The stew tasted of bones and salt and something bitter that wasn't in the pot.
Later, when the light had faded and the last of the pots were scrubbed, he carried a slop bucket to the trench. The pigs surged forward in a grunting wave, mouths working.
"They'll eat anything," Tomas said again behind him, voice low. "Hala says they're half the reason Blackstone doesn't stink worse."
Eryk watched the mass of jostling backs, the flash of teeth in the mud.
His stomach turned.
He thought of the crossed-out name in the ledger. Of Jory's thin wrist in Bran's hand. Of the steward's ink-stained fingers.
He tipped the slop in and walked away before the pigs finished.
By the time the bell rang again, short, sharp, for end of work, his body felt hollowed out. His hands were a map of new blisters and old rope burns. His feet throbbed with every step.
Lysa met him by the shed.
"You managed," she said.
"Barely."
"That's more than some." She leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. "You keep your head down, listen when Hala shouts, and don't steal in front of Gerrit, you'll last a while."
"What happens to the ones who don't?" The question came out rougher than he meant.
Lysa's mouth tightened. "Depends. Some go to the quarry if they're still useful. Some go to the pit. Some just… stop coming back before dark."
She watched his face for a moment.
"You think there's a clean way through this," she said quietly. "There isn't. There's breathing, and there's not. If you figure out how to stay right and breathing at the same time, you come tell me. I've been wondering."
She pushed the shed door open.
Inside, the straw pallets waited in their row, shadows stretching long.
Eryk sank down onto his.
Outside, someone shouted. Somewhere up the hill, a hammer rang faintly. The air tasted of smoke and pig and thin stew.
Hollowford felt very far away.
He lay on his back and watched a spider pick its way along the rafter. His body ached in a dozen different places. His fingers still felt the shape of the bucket handles. When he closed his eyes, he saw Jory's face looking back at him as Bran led him away.
It had been the truth, what Gerrit said, sort of. The bread had landed at Jory's feet. He hadn't taken it. Not yet.
Eryk hadn't lied.
He just hadn't said anything that might have helped.
No ledger would show the difference. Somewhere, a line would be written. A mark added, or crossed out. One more mouth for the pit. One less boy in the yard.
The thought settled over him like another blanket.
He turned onto his side. The straw rustled. His wrists stung where the tallow had worn away.
He had lived through the bandits.
He had lived through the road.
He had lived through his first full day in Blackstone's yard.
He had learned how to last a day.
Tomorrow, he would have to learn how to last another.