Lark watched me tie the first knot before breakfast, which is the sort of sentence that would have sounded like a riddle a year ago and now just meant: my mother's plant had opinions about runes.
The draft under our door had begun to pick petty fights with the hearth. Drift showed me where it misbehaved—ash motes settling in a skinny crescent near the threshold. I set a Sieve the size of a thumbnail in the hinge's shadow, then a Baffle a finger beyond. For a breath I could feel the itch of a third movement wanting a place to sit—somewhere the two could agree to be friends.
I sketched it in air: two Stitches crossing, a small Baffle seated in their hollow. Not for streams; for seams. I breathed it into the wood and, because this was the house that taught me not to lie, I whispered, "Borrowed," to the door and the floor and the pocket of draft between. The knot took—not because I was clever, but because I asked like I meant to live with it.
The ash crescent thinned to nothing. Drift fell out of the air the way a promise feels when it has been met.
Lark chimed, pleased, and tilted a petal to the emberling, which was doing its best impression of patient in my palm. "For seams," I told it. "Not streams."
It warmed my hand in a way that meant: I was listening even when you were mumbling.
Sera pounded on the door before the porridge decided it was finished being porridge. "Drift lesson," she said through the wood. "Brann is already at the ring pretending not to be early."
Brann was indeed pretending. His ant familiar stood beside him like a soldier who had learned to stop snapping to attention when no one was looking. Osk patrolled the far side of the green, terrifying first-years into competence. Professor Quill leaned in the shade with a slate against his knee, which meant we were still in the part of the morning where he pretended to be a bystander.
"Gentle," I told Brann, drawing Drift in the air. "Element: Fire. Type: Drift. Range: handspan. Cost: low. Efficiency: high. Strength: gentle. Wrapper: Contain. You're not painting. You're revealing. The ash sticks to wrongness; it ignores honest flow."
Brann nodded, eyes actually on the formula instead of on whatever theater he usually staged with his attention. He drew it. The ant's mandibles warmed—not bright, just civil—and a sheet of fine motes rose like dust deciding to be useful. The motes drifted over a training weir Quill had set for us, clung where a joint caught, floated where it held true.
Brann grinned, surprised by his own gentleness. "Useful."
"Don't give it to anyone who wants to use it to make murals," Sera warned.
"Who would do that?" he asked, then caught my raised eyebrow and laughed. "Right. Everyone."
Osk's shadow fell across us like a lesson. He didn't stop; he murmured as he passed, "You will teach it to three people and swear off the rest or I will have you run until your lungs decide to live elsewhere."
"Three?" Brann mouthed when Osk moved along.
"People who will use it to keep roofs up," I said. "Menders. Foundry. Wards."
"Not duelists," he said, almost sad.
"Especially duelists," Sera said. "We choke on clever. We starve without craft."
Quill clapped once, which meant the world was about to change rooms. "Ring two," he called. "With menders. Bring your ethics."
The clinic's back chamber had been turned into a lab the way a kitchen learns to be a classroom when enough people stand around the table with purpose. Gray-robed menders aligned instruments with the seriousness of people who had once been very tired of death. Ren—the first-year whose wisp had eaten Fitch's lightning mistake—sat on the central bench with sleep in her face and a thread of mischief in the corner of her mouth that said she was very much awake underneath.
"You consent to observation and supervised edits," the head mender said, tone gentle but formal.
Ren nodded. "Provided Kael doesn't name anything on me without asking first."
"I wasn't going to call it Thunderpants," I said solemnly.
She snorted; the menders hid a smile; Quill didn't.
"We are not writing thunder into anyone," Quill said. "We are re-knitting the seam left by a liar. Demonstrators: Ms. Belisar, Mr. Riven, Ms. Tallow. Mr. Calder—observe and shut up."
Brann actually saluted. "With pleasure."
Ren's seal lay just below her collarbone, pulsing a little too fast, as if the wisp underneath was ready to startle itself back into hiding. The mender traced Audit over the edge of the seal and showed us the leak: a hairline where Fitch's swap had fallen to ash; the innates had regrown, but the lattice was brittle at the seam.
"Not a stream," I said softly. "A seam."
"Good boy," the mender said, which is how you know she had decided to like me before I got in the way.
Aureline went first, because we were in a room where heat and pride behaved. "Contain (vented)," she murmured, sketching a wrapper to keep any startle from running further than we allowed. "Tone," she added—her salamander breathing a gentled warmth that was not fire so much as consent. The seal eased.
Sera set a Concord between Ren's breath and the wisp's timid pulse. "Range-share," she said. "So your calm is its calm."
I drew the Knot.
Two Stitches crossing, a small Baffle in their hollow, laid across the hairline like a bandage made of grammar. I didn't force it. I asked the seam to do what seams are for: hold two edges close while they remember they are one cloth. The Baffle kept panic from running. The Stitches felt for give without choking.
Ren breathed out. The seal's pulse slowed. The wisp peeked—literally, a spoonful of fog the color of polite cloud rising to touch the inside of her skin as if it wanted to see who had rearranged the furniture.
"Is that it?" she whispered.
"That's it for today," the mender said. "We are generous with patience and stingy with strain. You will hate me for a week."
"I already do," Ren said fondly. "Thank you."
We unwrapped our attention like people leaving a room where a baby sleeps. Quill made notes in a hand that could have been chiseled. "For seams," he said to me when we stepped back. "Hold yourself to that. The temptation will be to tie your clever into every corner you see. Don't."
"Yes, Professor."
"Also," he added dryly, "Thunderpants is not a bad name. Keep it in your pocket."
We found Jes on the foundry steps threading a bandage around a finger with the sort of indifference that meant she'd trapped a nail and sworn at it until it apologized. "Council boys inside," she said. "Curves by the pound. Try not to drown them in sanity."
Inside, the heat felt reasonable—a small miracle with two gray coats by the furnace measuring notes on slates as if they planned to turn the foundry into a diagram. Jes had parked a run of blades in the tempering bath and looked like she was daring the Council to tell the oil it was wrong.
"Standardize a signature," one of the coats was saying. "We could license it between cities. Export steadiness."
"The city will still be here when your licenses dissolve in the rain," Jes said. "Curves are local. We build from memory and material, not decree."
I set Trace on the sink—Field, not Kitchen. Sera latticed Concord through the room's brick, smoothing the way for heat to behave. Quill asked the coats what they planned to do when the first storm arrived and their numbers learned how to lie. They assured him storms could be modeled. Jes assured them their models could try.
"Demonstrate," the coat said at last, sour with politeness.
We did. Up four, hold eight, down six, hold four. Repeat. The needles in their instruments nodded as if reluctantly admitting music could be counted without being owned.
While they argued, drift tickled the back of my throat.
Not in the room—in me. The emberling stirred in my coat, not alarmed, not giddy. Interested. I fed it a whisper of iron and the idea of listening. Something in its channels—near the ninth—unfolded like a hinge discovering it knew how.
"Level eight?" Jes muttered without looking at me.
"Breath ten," I said, surprised into a grin. "It can hum Trace without me for ten."
"Write it down," she said. "Then keep your mouth shut until we're done pretending we respect these men."
We pretended. It went as well as such pretending goes. The Council set a date for more pretending and decided to call it cooperation. Jes made change with her eyes and put her living hammer between the furnace and anyone who had never been burned on purpose.
After drills—the kind where Osk made us trot backward over rails while keeping a thread steady—Brann found me by the ring with an expression I had learned to read as: about to say something that costs him.
"Thank you," he blurted. "For the clinic. And for Drift. And for not telling anyone I nearly cut my ant in half trying to be clever two days ago."
"You just told me again," I said.
He rolled his eyes. "Yes, bricklayer. That's how thanks works. Also—the House called my father to 'consult' on Ward audits. He will swagger. He will also make a mess if he thinks he's being useful. If you see him, tie a knot on his mouth."
"I have a Baffle for that," I said. "I call it a question mark."
He snorted. "Teach me."
I did, after supper, on an empty lane under lamp-spirits that had learned humility. We practiced Drift until the ash motes behaved; we practiced the Knot on a frayed rope until it held without choking. Sera drifted by and told us to apologize each time the Knot took, which sounds ridiculous until you realize how many mistakes don't get made when you say "sorry" to the room.
Aureline arrived without announcement and watched us with that regal patience she had when she'd already decided whether we would pass and was just waiting to see how long we would take. "Your Knot is ugly," she said.
"It's new," I said. "Most newborns are ugly. Present company excepted."
She blinked, then let the smallest smile exist. "Use it on seam-breakers like Ren's, not on people you want to force into being tidy."
"I thought that was implied."
"Implied is how roofs rot," she said, and drew it cleaner than I had, because of course she did. "Here. Your stitches are too proud. Your Baffle sits in the hollow like it thinks it owns the place. Stop feeding it."
I redrew it. The knot breathed. Aureline nodded. "Now I'll allow you to save my life with it later."
"That seems specific," Sera said.
"It's Crownspire," Aureline said. "Later shows up like a friend with keys."
We were still laughing when a runner found us with a Council seal on his collar and a cautious soul in his heel. He handed me a folded note with my name in a hand I didn't recognize.
Mr. Riven,Your attendance is requested for a private consultation on applied heat memory. The Council's Auditor for Infrastructure believes your "Trace" could be of national benefit.Midmorning, Trium Hall, room C. — Clerk Serevan (for Auditor Reth)
Sera read it over my shoulder because of course she did. "National benefit," she said. "That's the flavor of cake that explodes in the oven."
Quill read it next. He didn't sigh; he exhaled in that way that means we will be boring more carefully tomorrow. "Jes will come," he said. "I will be there already. You will bring your ledger. You will say local memory, not universal curve. And you will ask what the Council plans to do when the first village that buys their curve cooks copper instead of wheat."
"What if they promise not to export anything without listening to the stone?" I asked, naive on purpose.
Quill patted my shoulder as if forgivably dim. "Then you will ask them to write it down and sign it where Jes can see."
Jes swung by with a loaf tucked under one arm like a club and glanced at the seal. "If they say 'standardize,' say 'season.' If they say 'replicate,' say 'remember.' If they ask you to teach everyone, you say no until they agree to hire three menders for every city they send your notes to."
"That's a dramatic ratio," I said.
"It's the minimum that keeps people from dying tidy," Jes said.
I went home with the emberling snug under my coat and my mother already putting out two bowls because she could hear my appetite from the curb. Lark leaned toward the draft under the door to see if the knot still held and chimed once like a spoon against a glass when it approved.
My mother listened to the Council letter with the kind of face she used for early frost—a deep, patient disappointment in weather. "You'll go," she said. "You'll be polite. You'll be stubborn. And you'll make an oath."
"What kind?"
"The kind that makes your hands heavier," she said. "We don't put runes into living things without someone whose job it is to keep blood inside bodies. We don't sell curves to people who won't feed the hearth that learns them. We don't teach clever to anyone who thinks roofs are boring."
"Quill will make me write it down," I said.
"Good," she said. "Write it twice. One copy for your ledger. One for your pocket. When someone tries to pay you to forget, touch it."
I wrote it after supper with the emberling warming my ink and Lark leaning over like a nosy aunt.
The Oath-Knot (Personal):— I do not write into bodies without a mender.— I do not sell a curve to a place that won't hear the stone.— I teach Drift to people who keep roofs up.— I tie Knot only on seams that ask and with owners awake.— I am generous with patience and stingy with spectacle.— If I must choose, I choose dull bread over bright cake.
It was ugly. It would hold.
When I slid the finished scrap into my pocket, the emberling pressed its core to my thumb. A thread deep in its lattice—one I hadn't had words for until right then—thickened like a promise picking up weight. The seal over my heart warmed. Ten breaths of Trace without me; tomorrow might be twelve if we listened harder than we spoke.
I slept hard, which is a kind of blessing you earn. The dream ledger had a sketch of the Knot with Sera's neat annotations: hemming stitch here; baffle lower; humility baked in. Osk had scrawled in the margin: RUN. Jes had drawn a loaf with a knife stuck in it and labeled the knife Council. Quill had written, Make them bring their own bread.
Morning would bring rooms with lapels and instruments and the sort of sentences that start with for the good of—. I would bring my ledger and my Oath and my bricklayer's hand. We would say season, remember, local until the words turned dull, which is what good words do when you use them enough.
And if they tried to slide a Needle into the pillar of a city, we had ash that clung to wrong, a Sieve that separated lie from flow, a Knot to hold a seam while it forgave us for noticing, and a promise in my pocket that would make my hands heavy when the easy chart tried to lift them.