The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 5 The Price of Warmth

Nobody drank from the spring.

That was the first thing Daren asked, and Brida answered before he finished.

“I knocked the cups away.”

Golden threads swam beneath the surface of the trough. They gathered around Orin when he approached, bending toward his branded wrist like grass in a strong wind.

Daren moved him back.

The threads loosened.

“It’s searching for him,” Selka said.

“Through our water?”

“Through anything joined to the mountain’s gathering works.”

He looked toward the keep. They had restored the fort’s heart, and something beyond its walls had noticed.

Inside the hall, the ember stag stood taller. Its antlers no longer scraped sparks from the floor. Fire moved beneath its hide in the pattern of flowing water.

“What are you?” Daren asked.

“Keeper of the common flame.”

“A name.”

The creature hesitated, as though the question troubled it more than hunger had.

“Enn.”

“Enn, your spring is hunting my son.”

The stag lowered its head.

“The high channel remains open.”

“Close it.”

“I have no hands.”

Daren almost laughed. Instead, he sat on the nearest bench before his legs gave way.

“Show me.”

Enn breathed into the ashes. A shape appeared there: wheel, hearth, spring, and a narrow channel running toward the northern wall. Beyond the wall, the line climbed the mountain.

“The old lords sold our surplus,” the stag said. “Then they sold what was not surplus.”

Selka knelt beside the image.

“The tithe conduits.”

Daren watched the line pulse. “You knew about these?”

“Not beneath Hearthfast.”

“Did you know what they took?”

“Grain essence. Ore essence. Labor from the condemned.”

“Children?”

Her silence answered.

Outside, Orin asked Brida whether the water could be boiled clean. The ordinary question made Daren want to break something.

He kept his hands open.

“You’ll explain everything,” he told Selka. “After we cut this.”

The channel ended behind a shrine built into the northern wall. Brida pried away its facing stones, revealing a copper pipe thick as Daren’s wrist. Golden light moved inside it without making a sound.

He raised the mallet.

Selka caught his arm.

“Break a live conduit and it will burst through the courtyard.”

“So how?”

“Divert it. Give the pressure somewhere to go.”

Daren studied the wall, the trough, and the slope beyond them. Siege work. Nothing he had forgotten how to do.

They dug a trench to the empty horse pond. The cooper, whose name was Harl, shaped a wooden plug while Brida stripped the copper joint. Everyone who could carry earth carried earth.

Daren made himself learn their names.

Pella and Jun. Old Sive. Tovin, the mill boy. Neri, who had lost her skirt in the tunnel. Her brother Kes, who would not leave her side.

When the trench was ready, Selka froze the pipe with the last of her spirit strength. Daren drove the plug home.

Gold burst from the open joint.

It raced along the trench and struck the horse pond with a sound like a bell dropped into mud. Steam rose. The courtyard shook.

Then the spring cleared.

Daren staggered against the wall.

Copper light spread across his palm. The warmth from the mill returned, gentler this time. Through the scar he could feel where the fort’s circulation had been broken and where their work had restored it.

A path opened beneath his ribs.

Not his old core. Something smaller. A channel no wider than a needle, joining breath to blood.

He drew air into it.

Pain flashed white.

“Stop,” Selka said.

He released the breath and spat blood onto the stones.

Enn watched from the hall doorway.

“You hear what has been broken,” the stag said. “Few living hands can answer.”

“Can it heal him?” Daren asked, looking at Orin.

“It can mend a place of refuge. Bring him within its protection.”

“How?”

“Finish what you began.”

Daren looked at the blocked gate, the dead hound under the wall, the exhausted people waiting beside clean water. He wanted a blade he could carry into the mountain. Instead, he had been given a building site.

Brida leaned on her shovel.

“A roof before dawn,” she said. “Then a gate.”

“And food,” Harl added.

Their entire supply lay in two bundles: dried turnips, half a loaf, and barley gathered from Daren’s coat.

Before anyone ate, Selka tore the blue magistrate’s braid from her coat and used it to tie the damaged pipe shut. Daren watched her pull the knot tight.

“That won’t change who signed the order,” he said.

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“Because it’s strong cord, and we need strong cord.”

He could work with that answer. Forgiveness was a different matter, and he had no strength left to consider it.

He divided the loaf among the children.

Orin broke his portion and offered half back.

Daren took a crumb so the boy would see him eat.

Beyond the ravine, a horn sounded.

The riders had reached the opposite ridge sooner than Selka expected. White cloaks moved between the trees. One man dismounted and planted a spear in the earth.

A golden banner unfurled above him.

Selka went to the wall.

“Captain Istren,” she said.

“You know him?”

“He trained me.”

The captain’s voice carried cleanly across the ravine.

“Give us the marked child before sunrise. Refuse, and every village that shelters your kin will pay his weight in blood.”

Harl looked at the woman beside him.

“My daughter lives in Fenlow,” he whispered.

Daren saw the first division open among his people before he had earned the right to call them his.