Daren moved away from the hearth.The needle followed him, then stopped when Brida slid a heavy iron cooking lid between him and the casket.“Keep that there,” he said.Maera watched Enn’s antlers with an expression he could not read.“The collar preserves the core. It seeks compatible channels. That does not mean it can cross the glass.”“Can you prove that?”“I can show you how the seal works.”“Without opening it.”She inclined her head.Selka knelt beside the table. “I’ll watch your hands.”“You always did.”“When you taught me to mend a torn sleeve, yes.”For an instant, something unguarded crossed Maera’s face. Then she turned the casket so they could see its underside.Seven small hollows surrounded a circular seal. Six held clear stones. The seventh was empty.“The opening stone remains on the mountain. Break the glass and the cradle closes around the core. It cannot be rejoined while the collar is shut.”“Convenient,” Daren said.“Necessary for transport.”Selka took a thread

Iven placed sixty nine bowls on the long table and left the largest one empty.Daren watched her measure beans into a cooking pot. They had come from the pockets and kitchen bundles of Fenlow’s refugees, collected handful by handful after the first night’s confusion. Nine pounds altogether.It had looked like plenty until she divided it by the people in the hall.“Two ounces each today,” she said. “One in the morning meal. One tonight.”“And tomorrow?”“Whatever the foragers bring, and what we can trade for.”She pointed to the empty bowl.“For the person who thinks being hungry makes him more important than everyone else.”Daren sat down.Outside, Brida’s workers fenced off the horse pond. The melted hound lay beneath a hard skin of gray metal. Nobody would put a shovel into it until they understood what the trapped gold might do.The bronze tube from the gatehouse sat beside the hearth, wrapped in cloth. Enn remembered such fittings, but could not remember what their teeth engaged.

Daren found the current with a handful of sawdust.He scattered it across the mill chamber’s water and watched the pale flecks drift toward a narrow opening behind the turning wheel. Every seventh revolution, the flecks stopped, trembled, and vanished into darkness.Tovin crouched on the stair above him.“It started after they moved the stones at the gate.”“You stayed out of it?”“Yes.”Daren looked at the boy’s wet boots.“I stood on the second step. The water rose.”Brida lowered a measuring rod beside him. A fresh line on the stone confirmed it.“Good,” Daren said. “Keep noticing things. Keep telling us before you follow them.”He had wanted a rest. He had slept for an hour after the meal and woken with his shoulder stiff enough to make dressing a negotiation.The fort had chosen a poor time to develop lungs.They stopped the wheel with the repaired sluice rather than wedging its blades. Selka stood at the stair with a lantern while Brida searched the wall for a maintenance hatch.

The grain wagons had gone by the time Daren reached Rillmarket.Their wheels had left deep tracks in the road, and a scatter of wheat lay in the mud outside the storehouse. He stopped himself from kneeling to gather it.Beside him, Jun stared at the empty loading yard.“All of it?”“Everything ready for sale,” said the man at the gate.He wore a leather apron reinforced with thin stone plates. Behind him, three bridges crossed different arms of a fast river. Their arches hummed softly as water moved beneath them.“My name is Halvek Cress. If you’ve come to blame me for selling grain, take your place behind everyone else.”“We came to buy,” Daren said.“With what?”“Work.”Halvek looked at his bandages and crooked leg.“What kind?”“Siege works. Stone. Water. Whatever you have that needs mending.”Selka stood a few paces back, her magistrate’s coat turned inside out. Jun had insisted on joining them as the third person at Brida’s stools. She wanted to hear any agreement herself.Daren

The mill wheel turned backward.Daren saw it through the open stairwell, each blade lifting water against the current. Above him, smoke sank from the hearth into the hall. People coughed and stumbled toward the courtyard.“Everybody out,” he told Pella. “Keep the children together.”Enn stood rigid inside the grate. Its antlers had faded to dark iron.“The return,” it whispered.Daren understood enough to be afraid.The old mechanism was drawing the refuge’s warmth toward the mountain. The severed high conduit had not stopped it. Another path had survived beneath the stone.He sent Brida to the maintenance hatch and Selka to the iron chest.“Leave the glass shut.”“What about Edrin?”“Bring him. Guard him.”They found the deserter standing between his watchers, staring at the smoke.“Can you stop it?” Daren asked.“Not from here.”“Then you come with me.”Edrin looked at the mill stair. His mouth worked without sound.Daren waited one breath.“I won’t drag you.”The young man nodded a