The bell rang twice.
The first clang sounded wrong, cut short as if the rope had slipped. The second followed after a pause too long to mean anything.
No one reacted to the first.
Men lifted their heads at the second, not because it carried instruction, but because it confirmed what they already felt. Something had failed before the day even began.
Eryk rose from his pallet and stepped into the aisle. The line formed without anyone calling it. Bodies adjusted around absence the way water closed around a stone.
The shed felt colder.
The fire barrel by the door was empty. Ash lay pale and untouched at the bottom, fine enough to blow if anyone breathed on it. No one had been assigned to tend it. No one had noticed it had gone out.
Outside, the yard waited.
Not quiet, not calm. Waiting. Like a cart held at the lip of a slope, brake creaking, the driver pretending he meant to stop there.
Hala stood near the pot with her arms crossed, staring down into it as if the stew might explain itself. The flame beneath was small and stubborn, a thin tongue that clung to life without offering much heat.
"Pump," she said. "Carry."
Nothing else.
No warning. No promise. No insult to make the boys flinch into speed. Just the work, stripped down to its cheapest shape.
Eryk went to the pump.
The handle moved easier than it should have. The beam had shifted overnight, loosening the tension. Water surged up too fast, slopping against the rim and spilling onto the stone.
Eryk slowed his pull and widened his stance.
Tomas joined him without speaking.
They worked the handle together, finding a rhythm that did not match the bell. The sound of water filled the space where orders used to be.
On the third haul the bucket bumped hard against the inner wall, scraping stone with a sound that made Eryk's teeth tighten. Tomas adjusted his grip and said nothing. He had learned the same lesson as everyone else. If you said what you noticed out loud, you invited the yard to make it your problem.
After three loads, Tomas finally spoke.
"Fen came back."
Eryk did not look at him. He kept his eyes on the rope and the groove it was wearing into the beam.
"From where," he asked.
"The lower access," Tomas replied. "He waited. Then he walked up himself."
Eryk set the bucket down and swapped hands, hiding the quick tension in his fingers by making it look like routine.
"Did he say anything," Eryk asked.
Tomas swallowed. His breath fogged thick in the cold.
"He asked who had him," Tomas said. "Like it mattered."
Eryk pulled again. The handle creaked. The rope moved in an uneven line.
"He went to intake," Tomas added. "He tried to get written in."
Eryk felt his stomach tighten, not with hunger, but with the quiet dread of recognizing a bad shape before it closed.
"Did they write him," Eryk asked.
Tomas gave a short sound that might have been laughter if it had held any air.
"They didn't even look up."
They kept pulling.
The water rose too fast, then too slow, as the shifted beam settled into its wrong position. It was like the yard itself. A machine still moving, still producing output, but no longer aligned to anything that could be called correct.
When the first buckets were carried off, Eryk followed the flow toward the tool intake.
Near the desk, Fen stood with his shoulders hunched as if bracing against wind that wasn't there. His shirt was damp with sweat that had already chilled. His ankle was wrapped in cloth that had bled through twice, the fabric dark and sticky at the edges.
The younger clerk sat at the desk with his head bent low. His quill scratched fast, skipping lines, as if he had learned speed was safer than accuracy. Ink stained both cuffs. His other hand pressed the page flat with impatient fingers.
"I was sent down," Fen said, voice rough. "No one came. I waited two bells."
The clerk did not look up.
"You should speak to your foreman," he said.
"I did," Fen replied. His voice shook with effort. "He said to speak to you."
The quill paused for a breath.
"Who told you that," the clerk asked, still not looking up.
"The foreman," Fen said, as if repeating the word might summon the man.
The clerk's gaze flicked briefly to the side of the desk, toward the second ledger sitting there untouched. The closed one. The one that used to open for men who mattered.
"That ledger is closed," he said.
"So where do I go," Fen asked.
The clerk's eyes moved over the page like a man reading a prayer he didn't believe in. When he spoke again, his voice carried the calm of someone who had stopped imagining outcomes.
"Wait," he said.
"Where," Fen pressed.
The clerk finally looked up then. His eyes were tired and flat, not cruel, not kind.
"Where you were," he said.
"I wasn't anywhere," Fen said. His breath hitched. "I was down. I was sent."
The clerk blinked once.
"If you were never assigned," he said, "then you were never there."
Fen stared at him, mouth open as if he had been struck. Not because the words were clever, but because they were final. They made the world smaller.
"So what am I," Fen asked, and there was something sharp in his voice now, something dangerous.
The clerk's quill resumed. Scratch, scratch, scratch.
"Not my problem," he said softly.
A foreman approached from the side, hearing the raised edge in Fen's voice the way dogs heard a whistle.
"What's this," the foreman asked.
Fen turned to him with relief that looked almost like hope.
"He told me to wait," Fen said, pointing at the clerk. "I came back. I need to be put somewhere."
The foreman's eyes narrowed.
"Who told you to come back," he asked.
"The clerk," Fen said quickly, because now he was trying to match answers to questions like there was a right sequence.
The foreman turned to the desk.
The clerk did not look up.
The foreman leaned closer to Fen. His voice dropped low, the kind of low that meant instruction, not sympathy.
"You don't want your name floating right now," he said. "Go back to where you were useful."
Fen stared at him.
"I was useful," he said. "I worked. I waited. I didn't leave."
The foreman's expression did not change. It tightened slightly, like someone pulling a cord.
"And if I can't work," Fen asked, and his hand lifted toward his ankle before he caught himself, remembering the yard did not like visible weakness.
The foreman straightened.
"Then don't be here," he said.
Fen stepped away from the desk.
He did not go far.
He moved to the tool stacks, hovering at the edge of the pile like a man waiting for permission that no longer existed. His fingers twitched as if they wanted to grab something, to prove motion, to prove he belonged.
Fen bent to pick up a short-handled mallet, then paused, as if remembering there was no one to hand it to, no one to say yes.
A boy reached over him for a better tool, elbowing him without apology.
Fen straightened, jaw tight, and lifted the mallet anyway.
The first man who saw it frowned.
"That one's mine," he said.
Fen held it out at once. "Take it."
The man did not take it.
He looked past Fen's shoulder toward the desk. His eyes searched for the clerk, for the steward, for any shape that meant ownership.
There was only the clerk's head bent over ink.
The man's mouth tightened.
"You don't just take," he said.
Fen's voice came out low and brittle. "Then where do I ask."
The man took a step closer. He smelled of dust and old sweat.
"You ask your foreman," he said.
"I don't have one," Fen said.
The man's stare hardened.
"Then you're not here," he said.
Fen's fingers tightened around the handle.
Eryk was close enough to see Fen's knuckles whitening. Close enough to see the way the other man's stance shifted, weight ready, not for a fight, but for a correction.
Eryk moved without looking like he moved. He shifted his bucket slightly, just enough to block Tomas's shoulder and put himself out of the line between them. No heroics. No confrontation. A small adjustment in the flow.
The man's gaze flicked once to Eryk, then away.
Behind them, a guard in a cleaner cloak stood near the fence, watching the exchange with the bored patience of someone who would only intervene if it became a problem he might be blamed for.
The guard did not move.
Fen took a breath through his nose, slow and controlled.
He set the mallet down on the pile as if it were hot.
"Fine," he said.
The man snatched it up at once and walked away.
Fen stood empty-handed.
For a moment his face did something small and ugly, like he was trying not to show his teeth.
Then he turned and limped toward the quarry access path, moving as if he had been given an order.
Eryk watched him go and felt a familiar coldness settle behind his ribs.
Not pity.
Recognition.
This was what it meant to fall between lines. Not dramatic punishment. Not public execution. Just the quiet erasure of permission. A man still standing, still breathing, but no longer assigned. No longer attached to anything that would make his injuries someone else's concern.
The morning continued.
A crane lift was attempted with a smaller load. The chain tightened with a sound that made men's shoulders rise.
The hook held.
The stone rose a hand span, then settled again as the load shifted.
Not enough to fall. Enough to scrape.
The sound made men freeze.
No call followed.
After a moment, work resumed around it, the beam left where it had settled, misaligned by a finger's width. Enough to matter. Not enough for anyone to claim.
Eryk carried water down the upper descent and passed a man seated on a stone, ankle twisted badly enough that his foot pointed wrong. Someone had wrapped it tight with cloth that looked too clean to have come from the yard.
"Help's coming," a boy nearby said, like he had to say it out loud for it to be true.
The man nodded.
When Eryk returned with water, the man was still there.
The boy was still there too, but his confidence had drained. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes as if resting could make the problem vanish.
No one came.
At the edge of the upper descent, Fen reappeared.
He had found a job without being given one.
He was dragging a shallow sled with a half-load of stone toward the hoist lane. Each pull made his ankle wrap darken. The rope around his waist was tied too tight, cutting into his shirt. His face was set in a hard line, the expression of a man trying to prove he could still move the world.
The sled scraped stone.
Nobody told him to stop.
Nobody told him to continue.
That was the point.
By midday, the stew was served early.
The pot was emptied while it was still warm.
The portions were uneven. No one complained. Complaints required direction, and direction was becoming rare.
Eryk ate and returned his bowl.
Hala watched him.
"You still carrying," she said.
"Yes."
"Then keep doing that."
That was all.
Her eyes flicked past him once, toward the quarry slope, then back to the pot. She did not ask questions. Questions were hooks. Hooks dragged you into responsibility.
After the meal, salt spilled near the storage shed when a crate split. White crystals scattered across the stone in a bright, useless fan.
A boy dropped to his knees and tried to scoop it back with his hands.
Another boy joined him, using the edge of a broken plank to push crystals into a pile. They moved quickly, glancing up as they worked, as if expecting a shout.
No shout came.
A guard glanced over, then away.
The salt mixed with grit until it was useless.
One of the boys tried anyway, pinching cleaner pieces from the top and dropping them into a sack. After a minute, his fingers were gray.
Hala passed and stopped.
For a moment, Eryk thought she would shout.
She looked at the sack, then at the spill, then at the boys' hands.
"Leave it," she said.
One of the boys froze. "Mistress, it's salt."
Hala's face tightened. Not anger. Something flatter.
"I said leave it," she repeated. "You want a beating for stealing dirt."
The boy swallowed and let the sack fall. The salt inside made a dull, useless sound.
Hala walked on.
The boys stared at the spill like it had become a trap.
Then they backed away and returned to their loads.
Eryk carried two bundles of cloth toward the upper sheds and passed Fen again.
Fen was no longer hauling.
He stood by the hoist lane with the rope still tied around his waist, one hand braced against the wall. His face had gone pale beneath the dust. The wrap on his ankle had loosened, the cloth sagging, red-dark and wet.
A worker walked past him and nudged his shoulder, not unkindly, just to move him out of the lane.
"Off," the worker muttered. "You're in the way."
Fen tried to shift his weight.
His ankle gave.
He went down hard, one knee striking stone, breath knocked out of him. The rope around his waist tightened and snapped his ribs forward.
For a second, the lane paused.
Not in concern. In calculation.
If Fen lay there, the sled behind him could not be moved through the same gap. Work could not pass. The lane could not pretend it was smooth.
A foreman stepped in and grabbed the rope, jerking it loose from Fen's waist with a twist that made Fen flinch and gasp.
"Move him," the foreman snapped.
Two workers grabbed Fen under the arms and dragged him to the side. His boot scraped, heel leaving a faint smear.
They carried him to the edge of the path and set him down against a timber post.
Fen's head lolled for a moment. His eyes fluttered, trying to focus.
The foreman looked at him as if considering whether it was worth speaking.
"Back down," he said at last.
Fen blinked. "Where."
The foreman's eyes narrowed.
"Down," he repeated, and pointed toward the lower access stairs as if they were a trash chute.
One of the workers shifted his grip. "He can't climb."
"Then he can sit," the foreman said.
Fen's mouth opened.
No words came out.
The worker who had helped lift him hesitated, then leaned close enough to speak without being heard over the lane.
"Keep breathing," he murmured.
The foreman heard enough to scowl.
"Don't waste time," he said, and jerked his chin again toward the stairs.
The worker and the other man lifted Fen again, awkwardly, and began carrying him toward the lower access.
Eryk watched from where he stood with the cloth bundles in his arms.
Fen's eyes lifted once.
Not pleading.
Not accusing.
Only looking, the way Kett had once looked, the way Jory had looked, trying to fix the shape of the moment in someone else's mind so it would not vanish entirely.
Eryk did not move.
He did not look away either.
He held the look until Fen's face disappeared behind a stack of crates.
Then he turned and kept walking.
The afternoon dragged.
Not longer than any other day, but slower.
Work continued around gaps like a river around stones.
The crane that had been stalled earlier finally moved, but the line of men guiding the load stood farther back now, hands ready to flee, not to catch. A foreman shouted at them for it. They stepped forward by inches, never fully committing.
The yard learned, even when no one taught it.
When the bell rang to end the shift, it was late.
No one corrected it.
Eryk returned to the shed.
Another pallet was gone. Not the one beside his. Farther down.
The space had been swept clean.
Tomas sat on his pallet with his hands wrapped. He stared at his own fingers as if checking whether they still belonged to him.
"He didn't come back," Tomas said.
Eryk lay down.
"No," he replied.
Bran sat with his elbows on his knees.
"They don't send anyone to check anymore," Bran said. "They just wait to see what stops."
Outside, the gate creaked softly as the wind moved it. The hinge scraped, dry and ungreased.
No guard called out.
The sound faded on its own.
Eryk closed his eyes.
Chalk dust clung to the edges of his hands, worked into the cracks of his skin. It did not come off when he rubbed his palms together.
In the dark, the bell rope above the yard made a small sound as it swayed, frayed fibers whispering against stone.
It sounded like something wearing through.