Chapter 2 — A Building With Siege Habits

By morning, the Last Hearth had learned how to drip in several new places.

Aldric discovered one of them above his desk, where a brown-edged bead of water gathered on a ceiling beam, swelled with grave deliberation, and dropped onto the corner of his repair list. It landed precisely between the words transfer and valuation, which he chose not to take as commentary. The room smelled of wet stone, old cedar, and ink that had not quite dried because the air had more water in it than any self-respecting room should admit.

He moved the document case first. The legal papers went to the dry side of the desk, under a chipped blue cup he had found on the shelf and inspected for curses, cracks, and regrettable sentimental inscriptions. It had only cracks. The repair list remained where it was, because the drip had already made its opinion known and because the list was, technically, about repairs.

Immediate repairs required before transfer had grown during the night. It now included the common room hearth, the outer gate, the courtyard drainage, the south stair, the former officer's room window, two roof leaks, and the desk's tendency to lean toward the road as if preparing to flee. Aldric had added a column for probable cost, another for magical interference, and a third headed obstruction by co-owners, which he had left blank out of optimism or fatigue.

A floorboard outside his door gave a careful groan.

"If you are listening," Aldric said to the room, "I object to the timing. I have not yet had tea. No legal or architectural undertaking should begin before tea unless a roof has collapsed, and even then one may discuss priorities."

The ceiling drip answered by striking the word roof.

"Noted."

When he opened the door, Bettis Thorn was crouched in the corridor with a knife in one hand, a bit of charcoal in the other, and three brass keys held between her teeth. She did not look up. Her cropped silver-black hair stood in damp spikes where the morning mist had got to it, and the hem of her coat was already marked with dust from some place a person should not have entered before breakfast.

Aldric considered the scene. "I hesitate to ask whether you are inspecting the floor, attacking it, or negotiating terms."

Bettis removed the keys from her mouth. "Mapping."

"With a knife."

"Floor lied."

"Ah. A disciplinary matter."

She scratched a mark on the skirting board with the charcoal. The line joined two others, then curved around an old nail head that had been polished by decades of boots. "This corridor is wider here than below. Either the builders were drunk, the wall moved, or there's a service crawl behind the linen press. Possibly all three."

"The Last Hearth was built in stages during at least four periods of regional panic. Precision may not have been considered emotionally supportive."

"You know that from the documents?"

The answer sat too close to old habit. Aldric closed his door behind him and kept his hands visible around the repair list he had brought with him. "From the wall thickness, the join in the beam, and the fact that the ward-script over the stairhead changes dialect halfway through a sentence."

Bettis looked at him then. Her gaze went from his face to his fingers, to the paper, to the ceiling above his room. "You read ward dialects."

"In the same sense that one reads warning labels on bottles. It is a defensive life skill."

"Convenient."

"Rarely."

The corridor's sconce gave a small, damp hiss. Its flame, which should not have been awake without kindling, leaned toward Aldric's hand like a dog that had once been badly trained and still hoped for a command. He folded his repair list under his arm and did not touch it.

From the far end of the passage came Halda Vey's voice. "If the two of you are finished accusing the architecture, bring a lamp. The north guest wing has made a noise I don't care for."

"Buildings make noises," Bettis called back.

"So do goats. That doesn't mean you let one into the pantry."

Bettis rose in one smooth motion and tucked the knife somewhere Aldric did not see, which was almost certainly the point. "Guest wing first. Service crawl after. If the crawl leaves."

"Do service crawls customarily leave?" Aldric asked.

"In my experience, anything useful leaves when people talk about ownership."

This was not a comforting maxim from someone carrying most of the keys.

The north guest wing lay beyond a narrow arch off the common room, up three shallow steps and through a door that had been barred from the inside, the outside, and a third direction Aldric did not immediately approve of. The air changed as they entered. The common room still smelled of last night's banked ash, rosemary, and wet wool. The guest wing smelled of closed linen, mouse dust, old soap, and the flat breath of rooms that had not heard a name spoken kindly in years.

Halda stood beneath the first crossbeam with one palm pressed to the plaster. Her braid was pinned with a spoon. A clean one, apparently, though Aldric had not yet ruled out witchcraft. At her feet sat a basket containing salt, dried lavender, a bundle of cedar twigs, a hammer, a cracked saucer, and a lump of bread wrapped in cloth.

"I thought you were reading hearthcraft," Aldric said.

"I am."

"With bread."

"Rooms are less dramatic if you feed them before asking questions."

Bettis peered into the nearest guest chamber. "Does that work on magistrates?"

"No. Magistrates are mostly flourless."

The first room had a bedstead, a chest, two chairs, one narrow window, and the atmosphere of a place prepared to endure an interrogation. The mattress had been stripped down to ticking. The shutters were swollen shut. A faded ward-mark circled the doorframe, its old chalk lines sunk into the grain of the wood so deeply that cleaning would not remove them. Someone had once carved a small crescent near the lintel, then crossed it out.

Aldric stopped before the threshold.

Not because the mark frightened him. That would have been simpler. Fear had edges. This was recognition, which had fingers.

"Old sleeper's ward," Halda said, watching him without turning her head. "Protective. Overprotective now. It remembers too many people sleeping in shifts."

"It is not only a sleeper's ward," Aldric said before he could choose a less useful answer.

Bettis made a sound that was not quite a laugh. "There he goes."

"I am making an observation, not volunteering."

"Same boots, different mud."

The ward-mark tugged gently at Aldric's attention. It had been laid by someone competent and exhausted, someone who had known the difference between a room and a refuge but had lost patience with explaining it. The upper arc held a keep-safe bind. The lower hinge-line held a stay-contained bind. That second one was the problem. It had probably saved lives once. Old work often had. Old work also had the discourteous habit of surviving after the need for it had changed.

"It was meant to keep sleepers from wandering out during an alarm," he said. "Possibly also to keep unwelcome things from wandering in. Over time those become similar instructions if no one corrects them."

Halda nodded once. "And now?"

"Now it will interpret a guest who rises for the privy as a breach in night discipline."

"That's going on the list," Bettis said.

"Which list?"

"The list of things that will make guests shout."

"A vital administrative category."

Halda took the bread from the cloth and broke off a thumb-sized piece. "Show me where it listens."

Aldric did not move.

The room remained a room: dusty, damp, patient in the manner of rooms whose furniture had heard too many secrets and not enough sweeping. Through the swollen shutters came a thin grey light. Somewhere below, the common room hearth shifted with a soft clink. No one pressed him. That was worse than pressure in several respects, because pressure could be refused on principle.

He stepped close enough to examine the inner line of the ward without crossing the threshold. The spell-ink stains along his fingers darkened in the cold air. He put both hands behind his back.

"The lintel," he said. "Left side, beneath the cracked crescent. It will answer to a named host or a night captain. The latter title should be avoided unless you want the blankets to form ranks."

"Noted," Halda said. "And don't hide your hands as if they're planning burglary. Bettis has that covered."

Bettis, who had been checking beneath the bed with her knife, said, "I object to the singular."

Aldric lowered his hands. The ward gave a faint pulse, warm stone through air, then retreated. It did not trust him. It did, however, recognise that he knew where its hinges were. There was an old difference.

Halda pressed the bread to the left side of the lintel. "Room for rest," she said, plainly. "Not for alarms. Not yet. We are looking, not filling you."

The ward-mark dulled from a hard grey to something closer to tired chalk.

Bettis leaned out from under the bed. "If guests have to feed their rooms before sleeping, charge extra."

"They don't," Halda said. "Hosts do."

Aldric made a mark on his repair list. Correct guest wing sleeper wards: remove containment emphasis. Host ritual required. Then, because accuracy demanded it, he added: Bread apparently involved.

They moved from room to room. The second guest chamber had a hearth no larger than a washbasin and a chimney that coughed soot when Halda insulted its masonry. The third had a wardrobe that shut itself whenever Bettis approached, which Bettis took personally and began treating as a professional challenge. The fourth room was dry, surprisingly clean, and entirely too smug about both facts. The fifth had three mouse nests in the mattress, two cracked panes, and a door that kept trying to lock behind them.

"This one is anxious," Halda said.

"This one is rude," Bettis said, testing the latch.

"Many anxious things are."

"If it locks me in, I'm removing its hinges."

Aldric examined the frame from a safe distance. The latch plate bore a worn thumb-mark, the kind left by repeated use during frightened years. Beneath it, almost hidden by grime, ran a line of old threshold script. "You may wish to avoid threatening the door while standing inside the room."

Bettis turned her head. "Was that advice?"

"It was an observation with ambitions."

"Say advice when you mean advice. Saves time."

"Advice," Aldric said, with some distaste, "is often mistaken for authority."

Halda looked at him across the room. "Only by people who make it sound like a proclamation."

The latch clicked.

Bettis went still.

The door closed with immense satisfaction.

For a moment, nobody spoke. The room seemed pleased by this development. Dust drifted in the grey light. The little hearth gave an approving pop, although no fire had been lit in it for years.

Bettis tried the handle once. It did not move. She tried it again in a more informative way. The latch held.

"Aldric," Halda said.

"I am not responsible for the door's interpretation of criticism."

"No one asked that."

From the other side of the door, Bettis said, "The room has barred the window too."

"For your safety," Halda said.

"I don't want safety. I want out."

"There is a lesson there," Aldric murmured.

"If the lesson includes patience, I will damage it."

Halda folded her arms. Her expression had the bright, dangerous calm of a woman who had found a teaching moment and intended to make everyone suffer usefully. "Open it."

Aldric looked at the door. The threshold mark had woken fully now, pale lines glimmering beneath the grime. A guest inside. A possible disturbance outside. Raised voices. Unknown host authority. The old instructions had arranged these facts into the shape of a siege and felt proud of itself.

"It is responding correctly to obsolete conditions," he said.

"Then correct the conditions."

"You are better suited to hospitality craft."

"And you're better suited to old threshold work."

"A fact I have been trying, with reasonable consistency, not to advertise."

A small scraping came from inside the room. "Is he explaining instead of opening?" Bettis called.

"Yes," Halda said.

"Tell him I'll start with the hinges."

"She'll start with the hinges," Halda told Aldric.

"I heard."

The ward around the door brightened at the word hinges. Excellent. Now the room believed it had a trapped guest, external agitation, and a mechanical threat. Aldric pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that had once preceded severe diplomatic consequences and now merely indicated that an inn had outmanoeuvred three retired professionals before breakfast.

He put his hand near the latch, not touching. The old command rose easily. Open. Yield. By right of threshold, by name of host, by law of passage. It would have worked. The door knew it would have worked. He felt the ward brace itself for the old shape of him.

Behind him, Halda said nothing.

That was unkind of her.

Aldric let his hand fall to his side.

"Room," he said.

The ward held bright and wary.

"You are not under attack. The person inside is not a prisoner, a sleepwalker, a spy, or an escaped goat. She is Bettis Thorn, co-owner, excessively armed, and increasingly annoyed. Your concern is noted. Your method is unsuitable. Please open the door."

Nothing happened.

Bettis said, "Excessively?"

"I am negotiating. Do not interrupt."

"Negotiate better."

The door remained shut.

Halda shifted the basket against her hip. "You asked like a magistrate refusing a petition."

"I was clear."

"You were correct. That's smaller than useful."

Aldric gave her a cold look, which she received as if it were mild weather. The air around the latch was warm now, not with welcome but with effort. The room was not malicious. That was the tedious part. Malice could be condemned. This was care gone stiff with age, fear preserved in wood and chalk and latch metal.

He stepped closer and placed his palm flat against the door.

The ward recognised him properly this time. Old paths opened under his hand: night watches, barred doors, names entered at arrival, names checked at dawn, thresholds sealed against things with too many teeth and people with too much panic. The inn did not show him pictures. It was not that theatrical. It gave him pressures, habits, the shape of repeated hands on latches and backs against doors.

"You kept people safe," Aldric said quietly.

Inside, the scraping stopped.

"You did. This is not that night. There is no alarm in the hall. The guest is awake, cross, and in possession of tools. Open the door, and we will mend the instruction before anyone sleeps here."

The latch softened under his palm.

Not opened. Softened.

Halda broke another piece of bread. Without a word, she passed it to him.

Aldric looked at it. "Must I?"

"No. You can stand there and lose an argument to a door."

Bettis said, "I can hear you both."

"Good," Halda said. "Then hear this: no one is taking the hinges off unless the door refuses hospitality after being offered hospitality."

"That is an offensively witchy sentence."

Aldric pressed the bread to the lintel, where the listening point hid beneath flaking paint. His fingers brushed old chalk. The spell-ink along his knuckles tingled, faint as nettle-sting. "Rest, not containment," he said. "Shelter, not seizure. Open for the person leaving. Close for the person sleeping. Learn the difference."

The door opened six inches.

Bettis's eye appeared in the gap. "I dislike the implication that I was educational."

"Then avoid becoming trapped in instructional furniture," Aldric said.

She pulled the door open the rest of the way and stepped out with dignity scuffed by dust on one shoulder. In her left hand she held a small iron hook, a length of string, and something that looked suspiciously like part of the window catch.

Halda pointed at it.

Bettis put it in her pocket. "Evidence."

"The window catch is not evidence."

"It is now."

The room behind her gave a faint creak, not unhappy, merely unsettled. Aldric wrote on his list with more force than necessary. Guest room five: defensive containment ward. Responded to acknowledged past function + revised host instruction. Requires reworking before use. Door susceptible to Bettis.

"That last part is unnecessary," Bettis said, reading over his elbow.

"I disagree."

"Put every door in the building down as susceptible to Bettis and save ink."

"The statement would lack diagnostic precision."

For the first time that morning, Halda laughed. It was a low, brief sound, like a kettle deciding not to boil over after all. The corridor seemed to accept it. The sconce flame steadied. A draft that had been worrying at Aldric's collar moved away toward the stair as if it had found another errand.

They continued.

The rest of the guest wing yielded fewer hostages but more opinions. One room warmed itself too much when Halda mentioned travellers, creating a damp, breathless heat that would have rendered any guest unconscious with gratitude. Another refused to admit Bettis at all until she knocked twice and said please, a requirement she described as moral decay. A third opened easily for Aldric, then slammed its shutters when he looked too long at the warding over the bed.

"It thinks you're inspecting it for military use," Halda said.

"I was inspecting it for structural magical instability."

"Did your face know that?"

"My face is not a policy document."

"No," Bettis said. "Too readable."

Aldric declined to dignify that with ink.

By the time they reached the back stair, the repair list had acquired three new sections and a water stain shaped like a disapproving hare. The stair led down toward the cellar routes, turning sharply along the outer wall. Its stones were worn hollow in the middle, and the handrail had been repaired with two different woods and one strip of metal that hummed when Aldric passed.

Bettis touched the metal strip. "Signal rail."

"Alarm conductor," Aldric said.

"Signal rail sounds friendlier."

"That does not make it accurate."

"Accuracy isn't always the most useful first word."

The comment landed with irritating neatness because Halda had said almost the same thing in a different shape. Aldric put one hand on the rail. The hum rose and then steadied, uncertain whether to announce him. Below, cellar air breathed up cold and mineral-damp, carrying the smell of old barrels, wet earth, and something sharp that might once have been vinegar before surrendering to philosophy.

"This route connected the guest wing to the protected stores," he said. "During an alarm, the rail would carry a signal to the lower doors. It may still do so if someone falls loudly enough."

"Falls loudly," Bettis repeated.

"Some people are inconsiderate in emergencies."

"I am beginning to see why ballads preferred you at a distance."

"Ballads preferred many things at a distance, including facts."

The cellar door at the bottom opened before Bettis touched it. She stopped with her hand still in the air. The door swung inward two handspans, then halted. The darkness beyond smelled colder than the stair, with stone sweating into packed earth. Somewhere inside, water ticked into a shallow puddle.

Halda lifted the lamp. "That's not invitation."

"No," Aldric said. "That is assessment."

"Of us?"

"Of whether we qualify as authorised."

Bettis slid sideways and looked at the hinges. "I qualify everywhere eventually."

The cellar routes were low-ceilinged, practical, and full of the kind of shadows that made bad poets reach for worse adjectives. Shelves lined the first chamber, most empty, some holding cracked jars, bundled rope, rusted hooks, and three candle stubs fused to a plate. Old ward-marks ran along the ceiling beams in a pattern meant to keep food from spoiling, mice from nesting, and frightened people from hearing whatever might have been outside the walls.

That last part had gone wrong. The cellar was too quiet. Their footsteps landed and disappeared. The lamp flame made no sound. Even Bettis's coat stopped whispering when she moved.

Halda's mouth flattened. "Hush-ward."

"Poorly maintained," Aldric said. "Or overfed."

Bettis tapped a shelf. No sound returned. "I hate it."

"A reasonable response."

"Fix it."

"That was a command."

She looked at him. "Advice."

Halda's eyes narrowed in amusement.

Aldric sighed through his nose and reached toward the nearest beam. The hush-ward pressed back at once, eager and smothering. It wanted silence the way a miser wanted coin. Silence meant safety. Silence meant nothing outside could hear breathing, crying, prayer, teeth chattering, soup being ladled, children asking the wrong questions. Silence had once been mercy.

Now it swallowed the ordinary creak of leather and the drip of water until the cellar felt less safe than erased.

"It needs noise," Halda said softly. The hush-ward ate most of the softness.

Bettis pulled a small bell from one of her pockets. Aldric decided not to ask. She rang it once. The bell gave a strangled click.

"Offensive," she said.

Aldric placed his fingertips against the beam. "Enough."

The ward tightened. Command again. His own irritation was the easiest road in the world, and the inn knew that road better than the muddy one outside.

He withdrew his hand.

"We are not hiding," he said. "We are storing turnips, towels, lamp oil, and whatever that jar used to be. Ordinary sound is permitted. Drips may drip. Steps may step. Bells may make themselves objectionable in the usual fashion."

Bettis rang the bell again. This time it produced a small, clear note that darted up into the beams and came back thinner, but present.

The cellar released a long breath. Water resumed ticking into the puddle. Halda's basket creaked against her hip. Somewhere deeper in the route, a rat expressed an opinion and retreated.

"Better," Halda said.

"Temporarily," Aldric replied. "Every hush-line down here will need loosening. If guests are ever sent this way during weather, they should not feel buried alive before reaching the stores."

"Guests won't be sent this way," Bettis said.

Aldric looked at her.

She looked back.

Behind the first shelf, where no guest had any business being, a narrow panel sat half a finger proud of the wall.

"Ah," Aldric said. "The service crawl."

"Not service," Bettis said. "Staff route. Emergency route. Smuggling route if one lacks imagination."

"Those are three distinct administrative categories."

"Not down here."

The panel opened when Bettis pressed a knot in the wood and lifted with her knife. Beyond it, a low passage angled under the inn toward the southern side, where the ground fell away toward the spring terraces. Cold air moved through it carrying mineral steam, moss, and the faint green smell of bruised herbs under thawing snow.

Halda leaned close and closed her eyes. "Bath path."

"Unstable bath path," Bettis said. "Listen."

Now that the hush-ward had eased, they could hear it: water running somewhere it should not, not the clean fall of a channel but a thick, undermining suck beneath stone. Aldric pictured the spring terraces below the inn, mossy steps in cold air, pools breathing steam into the trees. He had seen them only from the officer's room window as pale vapour beyond the courtyard wall. From here, they sounded like a legal complication with drowning attached.

"No guests on the lower path," Halda said.

"There are no guests," Aldric replied.

"There will be."

It was said without drama, and because of that, it struck the room harder than a prophecy. There will be. Not might be, not if the sale stalls, not should the inn become someone else's trouble. Halda spoke like a person already making space for wet boots, chilled hands, aching backs, and strangers embarrassed by how badly they needed warmth.

Aldric wrote: Lower spring path unsafe. Water undermining stone. Close access until inspected.

Then he added, after a pause: Before travellers arrive.

Bettis saw it. Of course she saw it. She saw every inconvenient thing. Her eyebrows moved a fraction, but she said only, "We'll need rope and stakes to mark it. Not ribbon. Ribbon invites fools."

"Rope does not?"

"Rope tells fools where the argument starts."

The passage to the bath path was too low for Halda to enter without bending nearly double, which she declared an insult to both witches and spines. Bettis went first with the lamp, because Bettis went first into spaces that should have been sealed, barred, or left to professionals with shorter names. Aldric followed far enough to see the slope of the passage and the old threshold line carved along the stone. It was not designed merely to guide movement. It counted people.

"This route was used during evacuations," he said.

Bettis's voice came back from ahead. "How many?"

"The line marks groups of five. The notch at the turn confirms passage to the lower doors. If fewer returned, the upper rail would know."

Halda was silent behind him.

Cold steam touched Aldric's face. The stone beneath his palm was slick, not with slime but with spring breath. The threshold line still held a faint warmth. It had counted frightened people once. It might count towel-bearing tourists next, if they were all foolish enough to remain involved.

"Can it be changed?" Bettis asked.

The question was practical. No reverence, no horror, no careful stepping around what the old magic had been used for. Can it be changed? Not forgiven. Not erased. Changed.

"Yes," Aldric said. "Not quickly. Not safely while the lower stones are shifting."

"So we mark the path, close the route, inspect the foundations, loosen the cellar hush-lines, fix five guest rooms, retrain doors, feed lintels bread, and stop the common room hearth from declaring breakfast a military event."

"Breakfast has not yet been proposed."

"It will be," Halda said from the cellar. "People forgive a great deal if fed early enough. Not everything. Enough."

Aldric had once attended a treaty supper at which nine minor nobles, two generals, and a queen had failed to accomplish what Halda seemed to expect from porridge. The comparison was unhelpful and, worse, possibly in Halda's favour.

They emerged from the service passage with damp knees, dirty sleeves, and a clearer understanding that the Last Hearth was less an inn than a set of interlocking habits, many of them armed with good intentions. The cellar door shut behind them, but not fully. It left a polite gap until Bettis nudged it with her boot.

"Learning," Halda said.

"Spying," Bettis said.

"Often the first step."

Back in the common room, the morning had become brighter without becoming warmer. Grey light lay across the tables. The great hearth held a low bed of coals under ash, more settled than it had been the night before but still too alert. When Bettis dropped her newly acquired window catch onto a table, the coals stirred.

"No," Halda told the hearth. "That's not an alarm. That's theft with aspirations."

"Evidence," Bettis said again.

Aldric sat at the end of the table and began organising his notes. There was too much to repair before any sale could proceed cleanly. This was not involvement. It was due diligence. A responsible owner did not transfer a building that might trap its guests in instructional bedrooms or swallow all cellar noise as a safety measure. Even a temporary owner had obligations.

The word temporary looked less sturdy than it had the night before.

Halda set the basket on the table and removed the cracked saucer. "You made the door listen."

"I made the door open."

"No. Opening was the last bit. Listening was the work."

Bettis pulled out a chair, checked beneath it, then sat. "He also made the cellar stop pretending we were all dead. Useful habit."

"The cellar was not pretending we were dead. It was suppressing audible evidence of occupancy."

"Dead is shorter."

"Dead is inaccurate."

"Shorter," Bettis repeated.

The hearth gave a tiny pop, which might have been agreement. Aldric chose not to record it.

Halda pushed the wrapped bread toward him. "Keep some of that."

"For doors?"

"For you. You look like a man who has tried to win a moral argument with damp stone and lost by inches."

"I do not eat lintel bread."

"It's ordinary bread that happened to be useful. Don't make it grand."

Bettis leaned back in her chair and looked around the common room: the hearth, the marked list, the muddy path visible through the window, the arch to the north wing, the cellar stair beyond. Her hands had gone still at last, which made her seem more dangerous, not less.

"We need a map," she said. "A real one. Guest wing, staff routes, cellar lines, spring access, every door that thinks it's a soldier, every window that lies, every passage someone forgot to confess."

"Agreed," Halda said.

Aldric dipped his pen. "A preliminary structural and magical condition report would be advisable before any transfer conversation."

"Map," Bettis said.

"Report."

"Map."

"The two are not mutually exclusive."

"Fine. You make your report. I'll make the part people can use."

Halda tore the bread into three uneven pieces and placed one before each of them. "Good. We begin with the building admitting what it is. Then we teach it what it can be."

Aldric looked down at the bread. Flour dust clung to the torn edge. It smelled plain and faintly sour, the kind of bread made to survive a road and improve a soup, not impress anyone. He had not eaten since the previous day's travel, unless one counted a magistrate's mint taken out of politeness and regretted ever since.

Across the room, the inn settled. Not dramatically. A beam eased. A coal shifted. Somewhere in the north guest wing, a latch clicked once and did not lock.

Bettis picked up her piece of bread, inspected it as if for traps, and took a bite. "You're useful," she said to Aldric.

The words were flat, suspicious, and delivered with the air of someone identifying damp in a wall.

Aldric set down his pen. "My condolences."

"Don't get comfortable."

"That has not been a significant risk in many years."

Halda smiled into her bread and said nothing.

The repair list lay open between them, its ink crowded now with doors, wards, hush-lines, unstable paths, and instructions that had once meant safety. Aldric added one final entry beneath the rest, because a report should end with the most immediate practical requirement.

Prepare inspection map with Thorn and Vey.

He paused, considered the wording, and crossed out with.

Prepare inspection map for Thorn and Vey.

The hearth popped again.

Bettis swallowed. "I saw that."

"You saw nothing of consequence."

"I saw grammar lose a fight."

Aldric sanded the ink. Outside, the road bend shone with wet mud, the spring steam lifted between the trees, and the Last Hearth held its doors closed against the cold without barring them. For the moment, that was almost competent.