The bell rang, and Blackstone moved as one body.
But today it moved wrong.
Eryk felt it the moment he swung his legs from the pallet. The shed was already too loud. Boots struck stone in hurried patterns outside. Boys whispered without meaning to. Even the pigs sounded different, being fed early, their snarls sharp and restless behind the pen.
Blackstone was waking ahead of itself.
Hala's voice cut through the noise before the boys were even fully lined.
"Bowls clean. Yard swept. I don't want a scrap showing where a Lord's boot might land!"
She wrenched a bowl from a trembling boy's hands, turned it, ran a thumb through the grease, and thrust it back at his chest.
"Again. And I'll see my face in it this time."
The boy fled for the wash trough.
Bran's elbow brushed Eryk's as they lifted a pair of water buckets. "Inspection," he muttered.
Eryk's stomach tightened.
Bran added, quieter, "Means the steward's been growling for days. Means Garren's likely in the city. Counting what still breathes for his share."
The name sat in Eryk's ribs like a stone.
Tomas passed them at a near run, words tumbling as always. "Means boots get shined, means numbers go up, means pit gets hungry," he whispered, then flinched as Hala's glare snapped toward him.
"Move," Hala barked, and Tomas scattered.
They scrubbed as if filth itself were the enemy. Ash was swept into corners where visitors would not walk. Straw was replaced in the pens. Boards were dragged across the trench like a lid set back in place, then another layer thrown over it as if stink could be buried by effort.
One of the worst-looking boys, thin as split kindling, cough rattling like loose bone, was taken by Gerrit and sent out of sight.
No one said where.
No one asked.
Lysa pressed a rag into Eryk's hands as she passed.
"When men with tall boots come," she said without looking at him, "keep your eyes down and your hands busy. They like noticing what looks back at them."
"The Lord?" Eryk asked before he could stop himself.
"Sometimes him. Sometimes only his man. Sometimes both." She shrugged. "Doesn't change what we have to scrub."
The quarry hammers were strangely muted that morning, like a beast ordered to breathe shallow.
Blackstone was dressing itself for company.
By late morning Eryk and Bran were ordered to the upper yard with sacks and barrels, stacking them neat near the main traffic path. The work was the same work, only arranged to be seen.
"It's theater," Tomas whispered as he passed with a pump handle balanced over one shoulder. "All of it. They like their dirt arranged."
Then hoofbeats sounded in the street corridor beyond the wall.
Not many. No raiding cry. Just the steady, professional sound of mounted feet on stone.
Voices followed. Low. Controlled.
Eryk felt Garren before he saw him.
That flat cadence. The familiar absence of urgency. The way men around him shifted without being told, as if the air had changed shape.
Bran's elbow touched Eryk's again. "Eyes down," he murmured.
From the yard's edge, Eryk caught fragments through the work.
"Short on heads this month."
"Fields were thin. Bandits thick. I don't control the rain."
Numbers. Only numbers.
Eryk risked a glance.
Garren stood near the steward's table, cloak cleaner than Eryk remembered, sword hilt dull but cared for. The iron ring turned idly on his thumb as he spoke, slow, absent, like breathing.
The steward waited beside an open ledger, quill poised. Ink stained his fingers the way soot stained Hala's pots.
Bran nudged Eryk again. "Tools don't stare."
Eryk dropped his gaze to the sack at his feet and kept lifting.
The ledger lay open at the steward's elbow by midday.
The quill moved in crisp strokes.
"You claimed three and a half last time," the steward said. "Only three remain in yard work."
"The half went to the pit," Garren replied without interest.
"Then I mark that one as spent."
The quill made a short, decisive line.
The steward's eyes tracked down the page. "We're short again."
Gerrit gestured vaguely toward the lower yard. "Hala's got one that's slow. Small. Coughs. Eats more than he carries."
The steward tilted his head, considering. His gaze slid across the yard and landed, briefly, on Eryk.
"This one's Hollowford," he said. "Teeth still good. Hala says he doesn't drop much?"
Hala was summoned with a snap of fingers.
"Not yet," she said sharply. "But he's new. I can make him earn his bowl."
Garren finally glanced over, eyes flicking to Eryk for the barest moment.
Eryk felt it like a hand on the back of his neck.
"The boy swings," Garren said. "Keep him where he's useful. Take someone else."
The steward nodded, already satisfied.
The quill moved again.
Elsewhere, a boy's line vanished.
Eryk did not see which one. He only saw the moment it happened, the smooth, careless certainty of ink deciding who stayed above ground.
A hand touched his shoulder.
Bran, steadying him before anyone could notice his pause.
"Lift," Bran breathed.
Eryk lifted.
His arms trembled. The sack cut into his forearms. His jaw ached from clenching.
Later they were ordered to move crates closer to the path, the kind that looked heavy enough to impress. Eryk took one corner and Bran took the other.
They carried it past the steward's table.
Past Garren's boots.
Eryk could see the scuffed leather, the damp hem of the cloak, the iron ring turning slowly on the thumb.
Heat stirred under Eryk's ribs.
He wanted it.
He hated that he wanted it.
A vibration. A pull. The iron obeying. Anything that proved the world could still be forced to move.
The thrum did not come.
There was no answering in the dark.
Only the weight in his arms.
His grip tightened until his knuckles whitened.
Behind him Hala snapped, "Drop that crate and I'll have your hide, boy!"
He obeyed.
The crate struck stone with a dull final sound.
Garren had already turned away.
"If the Lord wants more bodies," he was saying to the steward, "he can spare more coin. Men don't grow from stone."
He mounted smoothly.
The small retinue turned for the gate.
Bran murmured, so low only Eryk heard, "Keep moving. He's not worth losing your spot over. Not like this."
The yard swallowed the sound of hooves.
Work returned to its usual rhythm, but it felt thinner now, like a cloth stretched too tight over a frame. Eryk watched the paths. Watched who was called. Watched who did not come back.
That night the shed was quieter than usual.
Too quiet.
One pallet lay empty.
Someone had packed it away without comment.
Tomas stared at the rafters as if counting beams.
Bran broke a crust and said softly, "Inspections are good for some. Bad for others. Lord looks, some get pulled up, some get pushed down."
Eryk lay with his hands folded on his chest.
He saw again:
The iron ring.
The indifferent boots.
The ledger stroke that spared him.
And the other line disappearing beneath ink.
Killing Garren in that yard would not have stopped the quill.
The steward would still have stood over the book. The Lord would still have sent another man with an iron ring.
The desire was still there.
Carved deep.
But now it had weight on it, more than rage alone had ever carried.
Eryk pressed his raw wrists together until the old rope scars burned.
The thrum stayed silent.
As if waiting for something other than anger.
One man's death would not break Blackstone.
If Garren were ever to look at him in real fear, it would not be in a yard where the ledger still lay open.
It would be on the day the hand that counted finally slipped.
And the stone beneath it shifted.