CHAPTER 744: HAMMERS IN A FOREST (2)

"Noted," he said, and the word sounded like a stamp on paper.

The healer’s brow pinched. She leaned in and pressed near the buckle at his shoulder. "There is a catch on this strap," she murmured. "Not a curse. An echo. Tag of old rhythm."

Aeren’s head tilted, sharp. Two soldiers leaned forward a finger’s worth. One made the sign people make when they think a curse is listening.

"Echo," the nurse repeated. "Not a curse." She tapped the leather. "It likes neat feet. If he walks wrong, it will unhook."

Mikhailis lifted his heel and set it down crooked on purpose—heel-drag, toe a little off, angle just shy of comfortable. The nurse captain, standing at his shoulder like a metronome that hates music, tapped 2-3-5 with two fingers on his sleeve—two taps, pause, three, pause, five. He moved with it. The tiny grit sound the echo made, like chalk on bone, sighed and let go. It was almost disappointed.

Several soldiers exhaled at once. A junior laughed under his breath at the soft little noise and then clapped a hand over his own mouth as if he had broken a rule. He hadn’t. He just felt human again.

"Show your wrists," the healer said, business returning to her fingers. She sealed the strap with a smear of sap and a thin strip of cloth. "Done."

Aeren’s gaze flicked to the strap, then to the nurse captain. "Add ’check for echo-tags’ to the morning walk," he said. "Tents, straps, corners. If you hear chalk, don’t be brave. Be boring."

A few smiles appeared and died, the good kind. Someone murmured, "Yes, sir," with relief dressed as discipline.

The table work widened. Others came forward—quiet, orderly. A scout with a split lip tried to wave away the bowl and got the stare that makes grown people behave. "Answer," the healer said.

"Did you skip rations?" she asked him.

He hesitated, eyes sliding once toward the kettle.

"No."

The sap went cloudy like a storm rolling into a glass. The scout froze, eyes big, then crumpled in the very particular way of a person who realizes he has lied to a bowl. He looked at Thalatha, horrified.

She didn’t scold. She tilted her head toward the quartermaster. "Make him eat an extra half today," she said. "Then post him at the water barrel to count cups without turning it into a rhythm. Learning duty."

The camp laughed a little, with him, not at him. The sap cleared as soon as he said, "Yes, Commander." He left with ears red and a smile that hadn’t learned what to do yet.

Aeren watched the small scene and let it loosen something in his chest where he kept bad calendars. He made a small note on a scrap of bone with his thumbnail. His stance softened by the width of his boot leather.

He looked back at Mikhailis. "Any other tricks that will surprise me in front of my people?" It could have been a challenge. It wasn’t. It was a request not to be blindsided.

"Only the kind that involve pebbles and ugly walking," Mikhailis said. "And we teach those." He lifted his shoulders a little. "I prefer boring miracles."

Aeren’s mouth twitched—the kind of almost-smile men allow themselves when no one’s life is at risk in the next minute. "Good," he said.

The healer finished her checks and set the bowl down with the care you give to a tool older than your rank. "Next," she called, and the rhythm that followed belonged to lists and hands and the sound of cloth tearing cleanly for bandages.

Mikhailis shifted aside so he would not block sight lines. He caught a soldier’s strap as the man passed and ducked to retie it—two twists, a press, the knot that did not slip even when tired. The soldier blinked, startled that the outsider had known the camp knot, then remembered where he had seen it last: on a placard underground, tied with the same firm humility. "Thanks," he muttered, already moving.

Small is safer. Stack small things until the big ones don’t need to happen.

Aeren did a slow turn, scanning the lift lip, the tents, the faces. When he came back to Thalatha, his eyes were less hard. Not soft. Just less hard. "We verify," he said again, but softer now, like a man repeating a step that will become habit.

Thalatha’s chin dipped. It was almost a bow, almost not. "We do," she said.

Silence sat with them for a breath. Wind ran a cold finger along the cups. Somewhere a bird tried two notes and changed its mind. The camp felt more like a room again and less like a stage.

Mikhailis let his lungs do one long exhale that didn’t ask permission from the floor. He looked at Thalatha’s hands as she flexed her gloves—half checking leather, half reminding her fingers that they were allowed to rest. The sight put a small ache behind his ribs. Don’t be obvious. Don’t be a boy about it. Let her win the room, then help her keep it.

Rodion shifted warm against his ribs.

Verification complete for immediate concerns. Recommendation: practical demonstration to replace rumor with muscle memory.

Already walking there, partner.

Please do not call me partner in public. I have standards.

You have categories.

Superior to standards.

He almost smiled. He didn’t let it bloom.

Aeren cleared his throat. "We’ll need to see it," he said, as if Rodion had whispered into his ear instead. "Not just sap and straps. Show my people what you mean when you say ’walk ugly’ and ’one pebble.’"

Thalatha had already turned her head toward the stretch of dirt between two tents—a patch of ground flat enough to teach on, far enough from the lift mouth that a shout would be a mistake. She pointed once with two fingers, the way she did when a decision was already decided.

"Run it once," Thalatha said, already looking past the tables to a clear patch between tents.

They built a tiny class in the dirt. The Archivist’s neat bone placard—NO CLAP • PRIME‑STEP • ONE PEBBLE—went on a crate. Mikhailis paced a lane and marked it with three stones in a not-line. Scouts took the part of a Hound and a Sentinel with a shield and a blanket. He tossed a pebble at a yawn point someone would have stepped on a hundred times and never seen. It clicked right. They felt the imaginary pull go wide.

"Do it slow," he said. "Then do it slow again."

It did not take long. The strange made sense when your boots found it. Aeren watched with his arms folded and his feet slightly apart. Twice his gaze went to Mikhailis’s hands; twice it moved to the placard instead. When the drill ended, two skeptics traded a glance that did not have bitterness in it. We can use this, that glance said. That will do.

Thalatha walked with Mikhailis to the ridge under the line of trees, because vents needed checking and no one argued with that. They looked down together at the throat they had closed politely and the placards that did their quiet work.

"The house below listens when we speak rules," she said finally. "The surface is louder. It likes applause."

"We make the surface into a house anyway," he said. "We post it where it matters, and we do not give it rhythm when it begs."

He took a breath. The hard words lived there; he did not hide them. "I need to reach Silvarion Thalor. Elowen will be worried. Lira will have sharpened towels. Cerys will pretend not to care. Serelith will take notes in dangerous ink. The network needs to know I am not bone dust."

Her jaw did not change. Only the skin at the corner of her eye softened. "You will not vanish," she said.

"I will not." He looked at her directly. Do not be a boy. Be a man. "I will say it to you first, not to a messenger. And we will set channels that do not depend on luck."

They turned back to the camp together.

The war tent rose with its poles like ribs and smoke line like a thin scar. Aeren stood inside with two wardens, the nurse captain, and a quartermaster counting in quiet. Thalatha took the head of the rough table. Mikhailis took the edge where invited, not the center.

"Three things," Aeren said, practical like a ledger. "One: verify camp integrity. Two: stage for spillover from below. Three: set conditions for the human’s movement." He did not make the word human ugly. It was the right word in a world that sorted its dangers by names.

They checked stores first—glowcap gills counted, bone meal stacks simple and sober, resin pots sealed. The quartermaster’s list matched the nurse captain’s marks. Good.

"Spillover staging," Thalatha said. "We run the exit like a brood mouth. Placards on both sides, skeleton backs in place out of sight, nurse rota on water."

Aeren nodded. "Agreed." He looked at Mikhailis. "Conditions."