The next morning began crooked.
The bell still rang on time, but the shape of the yard did not settle around it the way it used to. Men hesitated an extra heartbeat before reaching for buckets. Foremen spoke like they were trying not to spend words they might need later. Hala stood with her arms folded longer than usual, watching the flow fail to organize itself.
"Leave the grain," she said at last. "Pump first. Then yard. Quarry is calling early."
Tomas was already at the pump when Eryk reached it, hand locked around the iron as if he could hold the day in place by force.
"Handle is stiff today," Tomas muttered. "Feels wrong."
The first pull proved it.
The handle didn't travel with the tired, predictable drag Eryk had learned. It jolted halfway down, stuck for a breath, then gave all at once. The sudden drop yanked his shoulder lower than it should have gone. The rope squealed where it crossed the beam, a sharp sound that made a few heads turn and then turn away.
"They oiled it?" Eryk asked.
Tomas huffed a laugh with no humor. "They marked it 'to be checked'."
Water came up darker than usual. Not foul. Just colder. It smoked in the air as they poured it into waiting buckets. The line of men didn't complain. They rarely did. They just moved the buckets away and brought the next ones forward, as if keeping motion steady could keep everything else steady too.
After the second haul, Gerrit appeared.
"You," he said, chin jerking at Eryk. "Leave the pump. Yard needs hands. Tomas, you stay."
Tomas's mouth twisted. "So I get the stiff handle alone."
"Handle still turns," Gerrit replied. "So do you."
Eryk set his bucket down near the trough and moved before Tomas could say anything worse. The yard had changed while he worked.
Tools lay in rows, more than usual, but the rows were broken. Shovels mixed with broken-handled picks. Hammers with heads wired back onto their hafts. Chain coils stacked in loose, uneven loops like someone had stopped caring whether they held shape.
Near the steward's table, a foreman from the upper ledges stood close to the clerk, speaking low.
"Two men short on mid-tier," the foreman said. "Three on the haul. I can lose a cart, not a chain team."
"You cannot lose carts either," the clerk replied without looking up. "The ledger has no room for replacement this count. Use what you have. Move names, not numbers."
"How?" the foreman asked.
The clerk flicked his fingers as if brushing dust off a page.
"Reassign temporarily."
He didn't look toward the workers. He didn't need to. People were not the thing being managed here. The count was.
Gerrit turned to Bran.
"You and Hollowford," he said. "Carry tools to the mid sheds. They will pull from there as needed."
Bran shouldered a crate. Eryk took the other end. The wood bit into his palms through old callus and fresh damage.
"You hear that?" Bran said under his breath as they crossed the yard. "Move names, not numbers."
"I heard," Eryk said.
He kept his eyes down. The ground was safer than faces.
The mid sheds buzzed like a hive. Men went in empty-handed and came out with tools that should have been replaced months ago. Just inside the door stood a boy a year or two older than Eryk, checking a rough list against what was taken. His pencil moved fast. His eyes moved faster.
"Temporary," he said to almost every request. "Foreman says you bring it back after second bell."
Temporary.
The word spread across the yard like thin paint, covering cracks without filling them.
When the first bell after dawn sounded, Eryk was sent back to the pump.
Tomas's face was red and wet with effort. His breath came in short gusts like he was trying not to give the handle any more of him than necessary.
"Thought I lost you to the quarry," he said. "They pulled Harn from here already."
"Harn?"
"The older one with the shoulder. Listed pump, now he is 'assist lower path'. Just for the morning, they say."
Eryk took the handle. It fought him again. The rope rasped and jumped in the groove.
"They'll bring him back," Tomas said. "If the path holds."
They didn't have time for more. Water was needed in three directions now. Yard. Quarry. And a new line of buckets for the upper sheds where the steward had moved his desk so he could watch traffic more closely.
By midmorning, Eryk was moved again.
"Hollowford," Gerrit called. "Upper."
The upper yard felt tighter than before, like someone had tightened a belt around it. The steward's table had been rolled closer to the sheds. Two ledgers lay open now instead of one. The narrow-faced clerk handled the first with practiced certainty. A younger clerk worked the second, scratching marks with less confidence, his quill catching occasionally like it didn't trust the page.
"Temporary assignments," the younger clerk said as Eryk approached. "Carry this to the tool shed and wait there. Foremen will draw as needed."
He handed Eryk a plank marked with chalk lines. No names. Just symbols.
The tool shed was fuller than Eryk had ever seen it.
Broken-edged shovels.
Hammers with flattened faces.
Chains with links stretched and twisted back into something that only looked whole if you didn't stare too long.
Foremen came and went. Each time they took something, they glanced at the plank and told Eryk where to notch.
"Two for mid-tier haul. One for lower swing. Three chains for upper lip. Mark there."
"What about return?" Eryk asked once.
The foreman snorted. "Return them intact and we are lucky."
He left with the chains as if luck was a resource he could requisition.
Eryk marked as instructed.
Time lost its shape. Men moved in and out. Tools disappeared. Tools returned worse. A shovel came back with a new crack down the blade. A chain returned with one link bent enough to catch. A hammer came back with a smear of something dark on its head that someone had wiped at and failed to erase.
Eryk stacked them into separate piles without being told. Whole. Damaged. Broken. It was the only sorting that made sense.
Someone brought him half a bowl of stew and a crust. He ate standing, back to the wall, watching the doorway like it could bite.
Late afternoon, a familiar face drifted into view.
Harn.
His name wasn't on Eryk's plank, but Eryk knew him by the way he favored his right shoulder. Harn reached for a pick with his left hand and grunted as he hefted it.
"They send you back to the pump?" Eryk asked.
"For the count," Harn said. "They need me lower first. Path is soft."
He didn't stay long enough for questions. He vanished into the flow again, absorbed by moving bodies and shouted instructions.
Eryk marked nothing.
Harn's name wasn't listed.
At the second bell, the steward came out from the shade and stood near the door as if the light itself was optional. He didn't look at Eryk first. He looked at the plank.
"How many picks to lower level?" he asked.
"Four," Eryk answered. "And three back."
"How many to mid-tier haul?"
"Six taken. Two returned. One cracked."
The steward made three quick notches in the margin of his ledger.
"Any chain breaks?"
"Not brought back," Eryk said carefully. "Three taken to upper lip. No returns yet."
"Foremen will report them," the steward said. "If they fail on the line."
He moved on without asking names. Names didn't help the count. Numbers did.
As the light thinned, traffic slowed. One by one the foremen stopped coming. One chain returned late, twisted and stiff with frozen mud. Eryk hung it in the broken pile.
No one brought Harn's pick back.
When the last tools were stacked and the door barred, the younger clerk came to collect the plank. He frowned at it.
"Some of these marks do not match the sheet," he said. "Foreman count says five picks to lower level. You have four."
"I saw four taken," Eryk said. "Two returned."
"Foreman said five," the clerk repeated. "So five were assigned. If one broke, it is in their report."
He scratched a correction onto the plank and copied it into his ledger.
"Five," he said.
The number sat on the page with clean certainty.
Eryk watched the line dry.
That night, in the shed, Tomas lay on his back with one arm over his eyes, like he was trying to block out the ceiling.
"Harn did not come back to pump," he said.
Bran turned his face toward the wall. "They'll say he's still 'assist lower path'," he muttered. "Until they don't say it anymore."
"Did you see him?" Tomas asked Eryk.
"Once," Eryk said. "He took a pick and went down. I didn't see him return."
Tomas's hand closed into a fist against his forehead. "They won't cross him out if they never write him down in the new place," he whispered. "He'll just sit between lines."
"That is safer than some places," Bran said.
"Not if you fall in the middle," Tomas whispered back.
No one answered.
Eryk lay flat on his pallet and stared at the low, dark ceiling.
Harn's shoulder. The way he'd lifted the pick left-handed. The way he'd moved into the flow without leaving a mark on the plank. The ledger would show where he had been.
Not where he went.
Not where he stopped.
Something settled in Eryk then, quiet and sharp.
The system could only see what it had time to write.
Anything that happened between scratches of the quill slid into a gap where numbers did not live.
Harn had gone into that gap.
The machine would keep moving over it.
Tomorrow the pump handle would be stiff in a new pair of hands. The plank would start clean.
And Harn would be nowhere at all.
Eryk folded his hands over his chest.
The ache in his shoulders hadn't left. The day had demanded the same weight as before, only carried in more directions. He was more tired than he'd been in a long time.
But he did not feel weaker.
He felt thinner. Like something stretched and held.
Blackstone still worked.
It was only losing track of what it used to count.
And some losses did not leave bodies behind.
Only missing marks.