The chisel slipped and Sorren cut his thumb.
He pulled his hand back and looked at the blood welling in the thin line across the pad. Not deep. He wiped it on his trousers and picked up the chisel again.
"Show me," his father said.
"It's nothing."
"Show me."
Sorren held out his hand. Breck Dor took it in his own calloused grip and turned it toward the light. He studied the cut the way he studied wood grain — carefully, without hurry.
"Shallow," Breck said. He let go. "You were holding the chisel too high. Keep your thumb below the edge or it'll find you every time."
Sorren adjusted his grip and went back to the mortise joint he was cutting. The workshop was cold. Early spring in the Thornmark meant the ground was still frozen in the mornings and the air held a bite that didn't ease until past midday. The workshop sat behind the Dor house, a low stone building with one good window and a door that stuck in wet weather. Tools hung on the wall in rows — chisels, planes, saws, mallets, each in its place, each maintained with the same care Breck gave to everything he touched.
His father sat on his high stool at the main bench. The stool had been built to his exact height so he could brace against the bench without standing. His left leg ended below the knee. The trouser leg was pinned neatly, as it always was. He worked with his hands flat on the wood, measuring by feel before he measured by rule, and when he was satisfied he cut once. Breck Dor did not cut twice.
"The grain runs this way," Breck said, turning the cabinet door he was fitting. "Feel it."
Sorren ran his hand along the surface. Smooth in one direction. Rough in the other.
"Now sand with it. Not against."
Sorren sanded. The pendant around his neck shifted against his chest — a small gray-brown stone on an old leather cord, smooth from years of wear. His father's father had worn it. Nobody in the family talked about it much. It was just the pendant, the way the stool was just the stool and the workshop was just the workshop.
Outside, someone was shouting.
Breck didn't look up. Shouting in Duskhollow usually meant Hask.
It meant Hask.
Sorren's cousin came around the corner of the workshop at a run, his face red, his shirt untucked. He was sixteen, the same age as Sorren, but built wider and looser. He moved like he was always arriving somewhere he hadn't meant to go.
"Sor." He was breathing hard. "Sor, did you hear?"
"I heard you from across the village."
Hask grabbed the doorframe. "The examiners. They're coming. My father got word from Kellsward this morning. They'll be at Kellsward in six weeks for the aptitude test."
Breck's hands stopped moving. Just for a moment. Then he went back to sanding.
"Six weeks," Hask said. He was grinning. "We have six weeks to get ready. My father says he'll pay the testing fee for both of us. He's been saving."
Sorren looked at his father. Breck's expression hadn't changed.
"That's generous of your uncle," Breck said.
"He says it's what family does." Hask stepped into the workshop and picked up a piece of scrap wood, turning it in his hands without seeing it. "We need to train. Both of us. Every day until we go."
"Train how?" Sorren asked.
"Running. Lifting. Whatever the test is. We need to be ready."
"We don't know what the test is."
"So we prepare for everything." Hask dropped the scrap wood and punched Sorren's shoulder. "Come on. Don't just sit there sanding. This is the most important thing that's ever happened to us."
"It's the most important thing that's happened to you," Breck said quietly. "Sorren has a joint to finish."
Hask's grin faded slightly. He looked at Breck, then at Sorren.
"Right," Hask said. "The joint. Sure." He backed out of the doorway. "After the joint, then. I'll be at the well."
He left. They heard him shouting to someone else as he ran back through the village.
Breck sanded in silence for a while.
"He's excited," Sorren said.
"He's always excited."
"You don't want me to go."
Breck stopped sanding. He looked at Sorren the way he looked at wood that had a hidden crack — measuring the damage before deciding whether it could be saved.
"I want you to finish the joint," he said. "Then we'll talk."
---
Duskhollow had forty-three households.
The village sat in a shallow valley between two worn ridges in the eastern Thornmark. The Kellsward Road ran north through the center and disappeared into the forest. A narrow track ran east into the deep frontier where only hunters went. The houses were granite and dark timber — gray stone walls, pitch-sealed roofs, windows of scraped hornrock-beetle shell that let in an amber light. A stream ran along the western edge, and the communal well stood in the square where the roads met.
The Gathering Hall was the largest building, used for disputes and celebrations and the few occasions when the whole village needed to be in one place. Next to it stood the founding stone — a shoulder-high granite pillar carved with the names of the original households that had settled the valley five generations ago. The oldest names were barely legible, worn smooth by wind and rain. The stone stood at the crossroads, and people passed it every day without looking at it.
Nobody from Duskhollow had ever been accepted to an academy. The examiners came through the Thornmark every four years, tested the children, and moved on. Every four years, no one from the village qualified. It was not a tragedy — it was simply how things were. The academies were distant, almost mythical. A place other people went.
---
At midday, Sorren's mother came to the workshop with bread and ashpot in wooden bowls.
Maren Dor was a small woman with brown eyes that missed nothing. She ran the household the way Breck ran the workshop — with practical authority and no wasted motion. She set the bowls on the bench and looked at Sorren's hand.
"You cut yourself."
"It's nothing."
"Wash it. Use the water by the door, not the stream. The stream's still too cold."
Sorren washed his hand. The cut stung. His mother watched him do it, then nodded once and sat on the step.
"I heard about the examiners," she said.
Breck tore off a piece of bread. "Hask told the whole village."
"Hask told Krev's wife, who told the Pell family, who told Old Grenal, who told me at the well." Maren ate a piece of bread. "By tomorrow the goats will know."
"What do you think?" Sorren asked.
His mother looked at him. She had a way of looking at people that made them feel she was reading something written on the inside of their foreheads.
"I think your uncle Resk is a good man to pay the fee," she said. "I think six weeks is not a long time. And I think you should finish your lunch before it gets cold."
"That's not what I asked."
"It's what I'm answering." She looked at Breck. "Your father has something he wants to say. He's been sitting on it since Hask left."
Breck chewed his bread slowly.
"The testing fee is twenty silver marks," he said. "Your uncle has been saving for years. He's paying for Hask and for you. That's forty marks. I earn three marks in a good month." He paused. "That money could buy seed for ten planting seasons. Or a breeding pair of goats and a milk cow. Or winter supplies for every family on this street."
"I know," Sorren said.
"Your uncle is spending it on a chance. A small one. The examiners test a hundred children from twenty villages and take maybe two."
"I know."
Breck looked at him. "And if you're one of the two, you walk away from here. From this." He gestured at the workshop, the tools, the light through the window. "You know that too."
"Yes."
His mother put her hand on Breck's arm. He didn't look at her, but something in his shoulders eased.
"Eat your ashpot," Maren said to Sorren. "It's getting cold."
---
In the afternoon, Sorren delivered a repaired chair to the Vell house at the far end of the village.
Old Vell was sitting outside his door, whittling a stick. His grandson Suri was hanging laundry on a line strung between two posts. He was thirteen, sharp-featured, and he moved with the quick efficiency of someone who had decided that time was never to be wasted.
"Your father's work," Vell said, running his thumb along the repaired joint. "Nobody else gets the fit this clean." He set the chair down and looked at Sorren. "Heard the news?"
"Everyone's heard the news."
"Suri wants to test." Vell's expression didn't change. "He's been asking about it since dawn."
Suri came around the corner with an empty laundry basket. "I didn't ask. I told him I'm going."
"He told me he's going," Vell confirmed.
"You're thirteen," Sorren said.
"The age is thirteen to seventeen. I qualify." Suri set the basket down. "And I run faster than anyone in this village, including your cousin."
"Running might not be what they test."
"Then I'll do whatever they test. The point is to go." He picked up the basket and went back to the laundry line. Over his shoulder he said, "Your father made a good chair."
Sorren walked back through the village. He passed the mill, where three boys were throwing stones at a post. He passed the Pell house, where Brek Pell was doing pull-ups from a crossbeam while his younger brothers watched. He passed the communal well, where two mothers were talking in low voices about the testing fee and whether their families could afford it.
He stopped at the founding stone.
The names of the original households were carved into the granite — Dor, Vel, Ren, Krev, Pell, and others worn too faint to read. Five generations of families, all still here. Nobody had ever left for an academy. Nobody from Duskhollow had ever qualified.
If any of them passed the test, they would be the first.
Sorren stood at the stone for a while. Then he went home.
---
That evening, the family ate at the table. Bread, ashpot, and dried fish from the winter stores. Through the window, Sorren could see the dark shape of the forest against the sky. Lanterns glowed in the houses across the square.
"The Krev boy wants to test," Maren said. "And both Pell boys. And the miller's daughter."
Breck grunted.
"If five or six go to Kellsward together, Resk won't have to pay for a separate escort. The village can send them as a group."
"It's a three-day walk," Breck said. "Through the forest."
"People walk it all the time."
"Traders walk it. Armed traders." Breck set down his bread. "These are children."
"They're old enough to be tested. They're old enough to walk."
Sorren ate and listened. His parents did this — talked around a subject in circles, each one adding weight to their side without saying what the real argument was about. The real argument was never about the walking or the escort or the testing fee. The real argument was about him leaving.
"I'll be fine," Sorren said.
Both parents looked at him.
"I know the road. I know the forest. Uncle Resk will be with us."
Maren's expression softened slightly. Breck picked up his bread again.
"Finish your dinner," his mother said.
After dinner, Sorren helped his father in the workshop. They worked side by side in the lamplight. The rhythm was familiar — sand, check, sand, check. The silence between them was the comfortable kind, the kind that came from knowing each other well enough not to fill it.
"When I lost my leg," Breck said, without looking up, "I was training to join the garrison. Running a wall exercise. I fell and the bone came through the skin."
Sorren stopped sanding.
"I was seventeen. Everyone in the district knew my name. Breck, the fastest runner. Breck, the one who'd join the garrison for sure." He adjusted his weight on the stool. "And then I fell."
"I know the story."
"You know what happened. You don't know what it taught me." Breck looked at the cabinet door in front of him. "It taught me that the world decides what you are, and then you decide what to do about it. Not the other way around."
He picked up his plane and ran it along the edge. A thin curl of wood fell to the floor.
"If you go to Kellsward," Breck said, "go with your eyes open. Don't go because Hask is going. Don't go because the village expects it. Go because you looked at what's ahead and you chose it."
He went back to planing. Sorren went back to sanding.
The lamp burned low. Outside, Duskhollow settled into darkness. Forty-three households ending their day the way they always did.
Sorren went to bed. The pendant lay cool against his chest. Through the window, the forest was a black line against the stars.
He slept.