CHAPTER 745: HAMMERS IN A FOREST (3)

"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."

Mikhailis lifted a palm. "Escort me with two scouts only to the first relay post." He spoke calmly. "No monster assets topside in your camp. The ones that obey me stay masked, perimeter only. I will carry a debrief packet for Silvarion Thalor and leave a sealed copy with you."

"Return window?" Aeren asked.

"Seven nights for first mirror. Fourteen to return in person unless a crisis chain blocks the road." He let his eyes go to Thalatha, not to Aeren. "I answer to her while inside your lines. Outside, I answer to your law when it reaches that far."

"So long as he answers," Aeren said. It was not a joke. It was the right clause.

"I like rules when they save people," Mikhailis said. "I’m lazy in that way."

For the first time, Aeren smiled, small and brief, as if a stone had remembered how to be warm.

They met again in a smaller tent to set the lines that would hold them together. Three channels, because one fails when the world decides to be rude. A mirror ping ladder—odd intervals so echoes could not eat it; the timing written in prime marks that no rhythm could copy. Bone-tab couriers with etched hold/attend/bar shorthand; the nurses added colored thread knots at the edges to show urgency when eyes were tired. And the breath-ribbon code: 2‑3‑5 tick marks in the margin of any message to rank its heat.

"Tokens," Mikhailis said. He took a small bone tab from inside his coat. On one face his permission pattern—Stand, Heel, Gate—scratched in the thin lines only a trained eye would know. "If you see this on a door, it is my request, not my order."

She tied a neat knot at his wrist. It looked like nothing much. It felt like a rule. "If you are stupid, this will itch," she said.

"I itch often," he said. "Useful feedback."

They did not touch more than that. It was enough.

The alarm found them while they were still making lists. A low, wrong flare through tent cloth. The glowcap store pulsed light like a bad heartbeat.

They went as a line without stepping in rhythm. The quartermaster had already pulled the first crate and found the scratch: a Reset‑well mimic rune under the plank, meant to wipe the log sheet if someone "accidentally" pressed it, then blame the outsider’s weird tricks for any missing pounds.

Mikhailis knelt. He did not touch it. He measured the air with his palm and found the yawn point two finger-widths off the obvious. "There," he said.

Thalatha’s pebble hit it. A soft click. The pull misaligned and died like a bored argument.

"Nurse," Thalatha said.

The nurse captain sealed it with sap and cloth and wrote a placard in big, tired letters: NO RESET MAGIC IN SUPPLY. She tied it with a neat knot that made Mikhailis want to clap and did not, because he was not an idiot.

"Who?" Aeren asked, voice very quiet.

A recruit two tents away looked like a rabbit. Hands rough where a pen had been held wrong too many hours. He confessed with his mouth shut. Someone had coached him. The "friend" had left notes in tidy hand with extra loops on the long strokes.

Aeren closed his eyes just once. "Major Silev," he said. Not present. Long a critic of Thalatha’s style. Loyal to the old way where speeches were armor and rules were for other people.

Mikhailis did not speak. It was not his anger. It was Aeren’s.

Aeren breathed, and when he opened his eyes, the anger faced outward, not in. He put a hand on the recruit’s shoulder and moved him toward the nurse captain. "You will learn better. You will write the placard yourself and post it every dawn for a month." Then he turned and, only then, looked at Mikhailis. "Thank you."

"Boredom saves lives," Mikhailis said. "And paperwork."

They made their farewells by doing work. Below the terrace, arrangements settled into place like furniture you trusted. Rodion’s voice came with the soft hum of the board.

Masking signatures complete. Gate Warden patrol adjusted; vent cadence set to ’supper at home.’ Hound on Stand/Gate. Moth-nets at low glow. If someone finds any of this, I will personally knit them a trophy.

You cannot knit.

Above, Thalatha wrote the camp law placard in her soldier hand and tied it high where sun could warm it: FOOD BEFORE ORDERS • NO LIVING PUPPETS • PRIME‑STEP IN HAZARD ZONES • ONE PEBBLE PER FIVE BREATHS. The queen‑to‑be trotted forward with a rota to keep the exit tidy—three on, two off, one hovering at the lip for relief. Nurses read and gave the kind of nod you only give to things you wish you had written yourself. Thalatha tied the rota to the post with the knot Mikhailis liked best.

They walked the short perimeter to "check vents." Pines made lines against the sky. The lip of the world fell away and the land showed its old bones. They stood, very close, shoulders almost touching, and did not speak for a few breaths. She reached up as if to adjust a piece of nothing at his collar; he held still because holding still is sometimes a promise. They found each other with a quick kiss that did not try to be more than it could be in daylight. It felt less like fire and more like putting a book back where it lives.

"Seven nights," she said.

"Seven nights," he answered. "I’ll answer even if I’m in the middle of saving a fool."

"Especially then."

"Especially then."

He left at first light with two scouts: Iven, who walked like feet were secrets, and Nera, whose eyes found whatever you were trying to hide. The road sloped through pines and old stones. Echo pockets lived in the roots where rain liked to sit. A shrine with kind paint and a musical mouth tried to teach them a rhythm as they passed; they did not clap. A ferryman with too many teeth offered them a free crossing on a stream that barely came to the ankle—Nera bowed without smiling, and they waded, and the whisper Lurker’s jaw never opened because no one gave it the response it was waiting for.

"Placard there," Mikhailis said, pointing to a birch leaning like a curious aunt. He scratched NO CALL‑AND‑RESPONSE on the smooth skin and tied it with a bit of fiber. They crossed a singing bridge on prime‑step, feet rude and honest. On a shale cut the slope wanted to slide them neat into a ditch; he flicked a pebble at a yawn point that felt like the corner of a mouth, and the slide forgot to be born.

"It works in sunlight," Iven said, surprised then embarrassed for being surprised.

"Boredom saves travel time," Mikhailis said. "Don’t tell the poets."

They made good distance with no sword drawn. The world tried to make theater; they declined. He liked that.

At the last rise, he stopped to look back. The camp below had become tidy geometry—lines that said someone had decided where things went and then stuck to it. The terrace lip held a figure with wind in her hair and calm in her stance. Thalatha lifted two fingers, not as a command, but as a farewell in the language they both now loved—prime-step.

He tapped the bone tab at his wrist and bowed the smallest bow he knew how to make without being stupid. Then he turned toward Silvarion Thalor, already shaping his message to Elowen in his head—short, truthful, no drama; a note that would say we taught the house to breathe and we did not break its windows.

Rules are love letters the house can read, he thought, and for once, he did not add a joke to make it easier. He liked it the way it was.

I have drafted three openings for your message to Elowen, Rodion offered. One formal, one useful, and one that pretends to be casual but is actually manipulative in the ethical way.

We’ll do the useful one. Save the manipulative for when we run out of pebbles.

I will mark a bin: ’In case of insufficient pebbles, break glass.’

You’re impossible.

I am reliable. It is similar, but less charming.

He laughed once under his breath, and the sound went into the trees and did not come back wrong. The road bent. The scouts moved. He followed. The world waited to see if he would keep his promise, and he found that he liked being watched by rules more than by pride.

They went on.