The shouting started before the sun cleared the trees.

  Teshar sat up fast enough to jolt the furs loose. A body shoved through the hide flap. Cold air rolled in and stripped the shelter’s warmth in one sweep.

  Outside, the camp had bunched around the central fire. No sleepy muttering. No slow stretch into the morning. Voices overlapped—sharp, defensive, ugly.

  Varek’s stick cracked against a stone.

  He swung his legs off the furs and stepped over sleeping bodies. His ribs pulled tight. Varek didn’t shout to fill air. When Varek threatened, someone paid.

  He pushed out into the dawn.

  Mist lay low and wet, soaking his ankles as he crossed the open ground. Smoke rose straight from the fire for one breath, then the wind caught it and smeared it flat across the trees.

  Varek stood with his shoulders square and his stick braced in both hands. Not a spear, but people stayed where they were when he levelled it all the same. His face had gone hard and blank—the expression he wore when anger had already become a decision.

  The line facing him shifted their feet and held: hunters with narrowed eyes, women with work-stained hands, children pressed behind legs.

  Ketak stood in the middle of it.

  His chin was down. Hair over his brow. Purple berry stain still marked the corners of his mouth from the night before, and it made him look younger than he was. That made it worse.

  Siramae stood off to one side with her arms folded, watching without offering comfort. Kelon had drifted close with the air of someone who’d happened to be passing. Naro hovered directly behind Ketak, lips pressed thin, ready to fling himself into trouble the moment anyone moved.

  Arulan sat on a low log by the fire with his staff across his knees. He wasn’t shouting. People kept glancing at him and lowering their own voices without realising they were doing it.

  Varek pointed his stick at Ketak. “Speak. You took stones.”

  Ketak’s mouth opened. No sound came.

  A low murmur moved through the adults. No surprise. Recognition. Ketak’s hands were quick, and quick hands found stupid reasons.

  Teshar’s stomach dropped.

  The river stones.

  His mind went straight to the V-shape at the bend—the narrowed run, the pocket where fish slipped into the shallows. He saw water pushing through gaps, the shape undone by a few careless pulls. He saw three fish in a count that should have been twelve.

  Siramae stepped forward half a pace. “Where?”

  “Down by the reeds,” Varek said, eyes still fixed on Ketak. “Stones missing. Mouth broken.” His lip lifted. “Fish this morning? Three.”

  Three.

  Yesterday, they’d pulled twelve before the light went soft. Enough for a broth that didn’t taste like an apology. Enough to quiet the children for a while.

  Three meant hunger would start talking again. Hunger talked louder than Varek.

  Hoden spat into the dirt. “River doesn’t like being pushed.”

  Siramae didn’t look at him. “The river doesn’t like anything. It doesn’t like the cold either, and it keeps on running.”

  The elder woman clicked her tongue. “Or it liked the marked boy’s trick for one day, and now it wants payment.”

  Heads turned slightly—enough to give the words weight without admitting to listening.

  Teshar felt eyes slide toward him and away again, measuring whether he’d duck his head.

  He stepped forward.

  Ketak glanced up. Fear sat bright in his eyes. He looked away at once.

  “Ketak didn’t take the stones to starve us,” Teshar said.

  Varek turned his head. “Then why?”

  Teshar looked at Ketak. “Ask him yourself. Let him say it.”

  A beat. Varek’s eyes went to Ketak.

  “Speak,” Varek said. Lower now. More dangerous for it.

  Ketak’s fingers opened and closed at his sides. He pulled air in through his nose as if it would steady him. “Ketak wanted—” His voice caught. He swallowed and tried again. “Wanted to make—”

  “A circle,” Naro said, unable to hold it. “Just a circle. For a game. Like the adults’ talk circle. He saw one, and he wanted to make the same shape.”

  The noise drained out of the camp.

  A game. A circle of stones.

  Relief came first—hot and shameful. Not sabotage. Not spite. Then disgust, right behind it. Hunger didn’t care what Ketak had meant. Hunger cared what ended up in bowls.

  Varek’s face tightened further. “A circle.” He said it the way you said something that had stopped making sense. “You took food from mouths for a circle.”

  Ketak flinched as if the words had struck him.

  The stick lifted.

  Naro moved forward without thinking, shoulders rising.

  Kelon’s hand shot out and locked around Naro’s wrist. The grip held. Naro’s nostrils pulled wide. He didn’t try to wrench free.

  Siramae’s eyes left the stick and moved across the onlookers. She read the faces that would remember this and turn it into rumour.

  Teshar moved between Ketak and the blow.

  Varek’s voice dropped. “Move.”

  “Let him pay it back,” Teshar said. “Not with fingers. With mornings.”

  People near the fire pulled their hands into their sleeves. Someone stared very hard at the ground.

  “Mornings don’t fix stupid,” Varek said.

  “No,” Teshar said. “But mornings fix stones. Mornings fix fish. And a boy with broken fingers can’t do either.”

  Hoden let out a short laugh that held no warmth. “And when he runs off and breaks it again? When his courage finds him after he’s forgotten the cold?”

  Teshar looked at Hoden, not at Varek. “Then Varek breaks fingers. But that’s after. First, we give the work a chance to teach him.”

  A few adults exchanged looks. Work made sense. Work was proof.

  Arulan lifted his gaze. Calm. Heavy. “Say it plainly.”

  Teshar kept his voice level. “Ketak puts the stones back. Ten mornings at first light, in the water, until his hands ache. He rebuilds what he broke. Tonight, he carries extra wood so the fire stays high.” He looked at Varek. “If he refuses any morning, you break fingers.”

  Ketak’s head jerked up. Cold water. Wood. Pain that didn’t ruin him. His eyes widened.

  Naro’s shoulders eased a fraction. Kelon loosened his grip on Naro’s wrist, but didn’t let go.

  Varek held Teshar in his gaze. The stick stayed raised, but it stopped climbing.

  “And who keeps him there?” Varek said. “He’ll hide in the reeds. He’ll lie.”

  “I’ll go,” Teshar said. “Kelon goes. Naro goes.”

  Kelon tipped his head once.

  Naro nodded, tight-lipped, which from Naro was considerable restraint.

  The elder woman made a sound under her breath. “Marked boy handing out punishments now.”

  “Marked boy is standing between a child and a broken hand,” Siramae said. Level. Quiet. “If you’d prefer to take his place, say so.”

  The elder woman looked at the fire.

  Arulan tapped his staff once on the packed earth.

  The camp went quiet.

  “Varek,” Arulan said. Just the name. He waited until Varek turned to face him. “No broken fingers.”

  Varek’s jaw moved. The stick lowered—slow and unwilling, like a branch bent further than it wanted to go.

  Arulan looked at Ketak. “Ten mornings. Extra wood tonight. You sleep near the fireline where adults can see you.”

  Ketak’s cheeks burned. “Ketak will.”

  Arulan’s voice carried across the circle. “The river stones are not camp stones. Not heart stones. Not game stones. Anyone who takes from the mouth takes from children’s mouths. That is the rule now, and it will be the rule after I am gone.”

  No one answered. A few people stared at the dirt. A mother pulled her child against her hip.

  Varek spoke low and final. “If it breaks again, I break fingers. His or whoever’s next.”

  Arulan let the threat stand. Part of the fence, not a contradiction.

  People peeled away in tired pieces. Someone fed a stick into the fire. A woman tugged a child toward the shelters.

  Ketak stayed where he was, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the ground.

  Teshar stepped close enough that only Ketak could hear. “You’ll be cold. Every morning.”

  “Ketak knows,” Ketak said.

  “You’ll want to get out before your time is done.”

  Ketak’s eyes came up. Bright and unhappy. “Ketak is stupid.”

  “Yes,” Teshar said. Not soft, not cruel. “And you’re alive, and you’ll remember it. That’s two things that stupid doesn’t always come with.”

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  Ketak stared at him.

  “Nod,” Teshar said.

  Ketak nodded. Hard. Shame and relief pressed together in his face until neither came out clean.

  Siramae came to stand beside Teshar as Ketak moved off toward the woodpile. Her voice stayed low. “Good choice.”

  “It ties me to it,” Teshar said.

  “Of course it does. Pain that teaches without breaking is rare. Most people only know how to do one or the other.” She watched Ketak’s back. “Hold it carefully. The band will remember who gave it.”

  Teshar looked toward Hoden, toward the elder woman, toward the faces still watching from the edges. “They’ll use this.”

  “They’ll use everything,” Siramae said. “Everything ties you. Better to choose the knot yourself.”

  She walked back toward the fire. Teshar stood where he was a moment, listening to the camp find its ordinary noise again.

  Across the fire, Hoden sat with a tool in his hands and his eyes on the ground. His jaw worked slowly, turning something over. He hadn’t spoken since Arulan’s ruling, but he’d watched every word of it.

  By the time the sun was properly up, the four of them stood at the river bend.

  From the bank, the water always looked harmless. Light on the surface. Reeds whispering. A distance lie.

  Up close, the stone mouth was worse than Teshar had hoped.

  The V-shape still stood, but one arm had been pulled apart. The narrowed run had widened. Water pushed through gaps that had no business being there and turned the pocket into a useless swirl.

  Ketak hugged himself on the bank, shivering before the water touched him. He stared at the broken line with the stunned look of someone who’d assumed the world would mend itself while he slept.

  Kelon crouched and pressed two fingers into the mud near the edge. “You took them from here.”

  Ketak nodded. “Ketak thought—stones are stones.”

  “These stones were eating for us,” Naro said. He picked up a river stone and turned it in his palm, genuinely puzzled by the idea. “That’s a strange thing when you say it out loud. Stones eating. Fish doing chores.”

  “Everything does work,” Kelon said, “if you put it in the right place.”

  Naro pointed at him. “That’s uncomfortably wise for this time of the morning.”

  “Get in the water,” Kelon said.

  Teshar stepped into the shallows.

  The cold seized his calves immediately. He let out a short, bitten sound he couldn’t stop, planted both hands on a slick stone and lifted. His grip slipped. The stone dropped and cracked against his shin.

  Pain flashed. Ketak flinched at the sound.

  Varek’s voice came from the bank behind them. He’d followed, of course. Stick in hand, eyes on Ketak. “Get in.”

  Naro turned. “Varek, he’s already—”

  “Ten mornings start now,” Varek said. “Not when he feels ready.”

  Naro looked at Teshar. Teshar gave him nothing.

  Ketak stared at the river. His whole body shook. He stepped down.

  The cold took his feet, and he gasped, arms going wide. Teshar caught his wrist before he could pitch into deeper water.

  “Breathe,” Teshar said. “Slow. Through your nose.”

  Ketak’s chest heaved. “It hurts.”

  “Yes. Stay with it.”

  “Why does it hurt that much—”

  “Because it’s cold,” Naro said, already wading in with his own sharp intake of breath. “It hurts everyone that much. You’re not special.”

  Ketak looked at him. Startled out of his panic for a moment.

  “Are you going to stand there,” Kelon said, already moving stones, “or are you going to get useful?”

  Ketak clenched his teeth and stepped deeper.

  Varek watched from the bank. He didn’t speak again. His presence was a tally.

  They dragged stones through the shallows and set them back into line, packing smaller rocks into the gaps. Teshar kept the angle in his head and read the current through his knees—where it pressed, where it gave, where it lied about which way it wanted to go. He shifted stones a handspan at a time until the water began choosing the narrowed run again.

  By mid-morning, their hands were split, and the shape had returned.

  Not perfect. Enough to feed.

  Teshar climbed out and shook feeling back into his fingers. Old cuts opened again.

  Varek watched him. “Count.”

  “Count what?”

  “Fish.” Varek’s eyes stayed on the water. “Yesterday you said ‘enough.’ ‘Enough’ is a story. I want numbers.”

  Teshar gathered a handful of pebbles from the shallows and set them in a shallow hollow near the bank. “One per fish,” he said.

  Naro looked from the pebbles to the river stones and back. “So big stones eat for us and small stones count for us.” He considered this. “I’m not sure I like what that says about the stones’ opinion of people.”

  Kelon’s mouth twitched.

  Varek made a sound that was nearly impatient.

  Teshar waded back in.

  They waited. The river needed time to settle into its tightened path. His knees stiffened. His ankles passed through cold and into the flat numbness beyond it. Ketak’s shaking became a constant thing, like a second heartbeat.

  Teshar leaned close. “Hold on.”

  “Ketak is holding,” Ketak said, through his teeth.

  The water in the narrow channel shifted. Shadows flickered near the reeds.

  The first fish slipped into the pocket.

  Kelon’s spear struck clean. He lifted it without ceremony and tossed it to the bank.

  Teshar dropped a pebble on the pile.

  Another fish followed.

  Naro jabbed, missed, shifted his feet with a curse, and tried again. The second strike landed. He held the fish up and looked at it for a moment.

  “There,” he said, to no one in particular. “Hello. Sorry. Into the basket.”

  Two more pebbles.

  When the sun had climbed enough to matter, the pile held seven.

  Seven. Not yesterday’s twelve. But the morning had been spent repairing rather than catching. The cost sat in the pebbles in plain sight, where anyone could count it.

  Varek stepped to the water’s edge and looked at the pile. He looked at the channel. He looked at Ketak, standing pale and shaking with his chin up.

  “Seven,” Varek said.

  “Seven so far,” Teshar said.

  Varek picked up one pebble, turned it over in his fingers, and set it back. “Yesterday, twelve. Today seven. Three lost to a boy and a game.” He looked at Ketak steadily. “What does seven and three make?”

  Ketak blinked. “Ten.”

  “Ten,” Varek said. “The number you owe us. Count that too.” He set his stick across both shoulders and walked back toward camp without another word.

  Ketak stared at the pebble pile. The numbers had done something the shouting hadn’t—turned his mistake from a story into a shape he could see and touch.

  Naro watched Varek go. “That was almost poetic.”

  “Don’t tell him,” Kelon said.

  Ketak’s lips had gone pale. His eyes were glassy from cold, not from crying. Pride kept him upright.

  Teshar set a hand on his shoulder. “Out. Warm up.”

  Ketak shook his head. “Ten mornings.”

  “Ten mornings doesn’t mean dying on the first one.”

  “Varek said—”

  “Varek just left,” Naro said. “He can’t see you getting out.” A pause. “And he’d probably prefer you alive to witness the other nine.”

  Ketak looked at Teshar.

  “Out,” Teshar said.

  Ketak obeyed.

  Siramae arrived from the camp path with a fur over one arm and a small stone bowl cupped in both hands. Someone must have sent word. She didn’t fuss or ask questions. She pushed the fur into Ketak’s arms and pressed the bowl into his hands.

  “Drink.”

  Ketak drank. He grimaced at the bitterness. His shoulders sagged as warmth went down.

  “Bitter,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something that works.” She looked at the pebble pile. “Seven.”

  “Seven so far,” Teshar said.

  She nodded once. “Say the number at camp tonight. Not as a boast. Just the number.”

  Teshar frowned. “Why?”

  “Because Hoden will call it luck and the elder woman will call it three less than yesterday,” Siramae said. “Numbers are harder to argue with than stories. Let them hear the number first and build backwards from it.”

  A grunt came from further up the bank. Varek had paused in his walking. “She’s right,” he said, not turning around, as if the agreement was mildly offensive to him. He kept walking.

  Naro watched him go and leaned toward Kelon. “Agreed with Siramae and kept walking. That’s the closest Varek gets to a compliment.”

  Kelon said nothing. He didn’t disagree either.

  Teshar’s eyes moved along the bank.

  Mud. Reed fragments. Footprints from the morning’s work.

  And one set that didn’t match.

  Bare. Human. The heel is narrow, the toes pressed deep, the weight is forward and careful. The stride was too short for Kelon or Naro, too deliberate for any child’s run. Not the flat-footed slap of someone in a hurry. Someone standing still.

  He crouched and ran a fingertip along the outer edge. The top had started to dry. It hadn’t cracked.

  Kelon came to him without being called. He looked, crouched, looked again. His face went blank in the particular way it did when he was making an assessment he didn’t want to get wrong.

  “Not ours,” Kelon said.

  Naro leaned over them. His voice lost its lightness entirely. “Someone came here.”

  “Stood here,” Kelon said. “Watched, maybe. Then left.”

  Siramae stepped closer. Her eyes moved from the print to the reed line to the far bank. “When?”

  “Night,” Teshar said. “Or before dawn. The edges are soft but not washed.”

  “Single set?”

  “One clear. The rest may have been in the grass.”

  Siramae was quiet. Then: “So they knew to stay off the mud where they’d show.”

  No one answered that. It didn’t need answering.

  Ketak stood very still with his fur wrapped tight, eyes fixed on the print. His cold-pale face had shifted to a different shade entirely.

  “Does that mean—” he started.

  “Right now it’s just a print,” Naro said, before Ketak could finish the question. “One set of feet. Not a pack. Not an army. Just someone who stood here and then didn’t.”

  Ketak looked at him. “Is that supposed to help?”

  “A little bit,” Naro said. “Did it?”

  Ketak thought about it honestly. “A little bit.”

  “Good. That’s all I had.”

  Varek had turned back. He stood three paces off, looking at the print. His fingers were tight on the stick until the wood showed white. He didn’t say ‘I told you’ and he didn’t say ‘we should leave.’ He said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.

  Teshar straightened. His legs still ached from the cold. His hands stung from split skin. He thought of the print’s angle—weight forward, toes deep, the stance of someone leaning toward the water rather than away from it.

  Someone is watching the stone mouth.

  Someone who knew what it was worth.

  “I’ll tell Arulan,” he said.

  “Now,” Kelon said. Not a question.

  “Now.”

  Siramae met his eyes. “Plain words. No panic in them.”

  Teshar left them at the bend and walked back to camp with his hands stinging and his legs half-numb.

  Arulan sat by the fire. He listened without moving, without interrupting.

  Teshar kept it plain. Footprints. Bare feet. Fresh. Near the stone mouth. One set is clear. The stance of watching, not passing.

  Arulan’s hand tightened on his staff. His face didn’t change, but the staff shifted across his knees—a small, involuntary thing.

  “How many sets?” Arulan asked.

  “One certain. More possible.”

  “Close?”

  “They stood at the bend,” Teshar said. “Long enough to leave a mark. They knew to stay off the mud.”

  Arulan went quiet. He looked past Teshar at the shelters, at the children playing near the thorn ring’s edge, at the tree line beyond.

  Varek had appeared behind Teshar. He hadn’t pretended to follow.

  “We pull back from the bend,” Varek said. “Children inside the ring until we know what they want.”

  “If we pull back, the stone mouth goes untended,” Teshar said.

  Varek’s jaw moved. “So it goes untended for a few days.”

  “A few days without the pocket is three fish a morning instead of twelve,” Teshar said. “Half the band was coughing before the cold settled. We need to be stronger when strangers come, not weaker.”

  “Better hungry than dead,” Varek said.

  “Better fed and watchful than hungry and frightened,” Teshar said. “Watchful costs less.”

  Varek looked at Arulan.

  Arulan tapped the staff once on the ground.

  People near the shelters turned. Even those who’d been deliberately not listening went still.

  “Tonight,” Arulan said, loud enough to reach the edges of the ring, “two awake at all times. One at the fire. One at the river bend. Torches ready. No children outside the ring after dark. No one outside it alone, for any reason.”

  A murmur rose and thinned under his gaze.

  “The stone mouth feeds,” Arulan continued, eyes on Varek. “It stays. It is watched. Whoever stands at the river bend watches the bank as well.” He looked at Teshar. “You teach the marks. You teach what belongs to the Maejak and what does not. You teach people to see what they’ve been walking past.”

  Work given. Not praise.

  “Yes,” Teshar said.

  Varek looked at him—the considering look, not the hostile one. It lasted one breath. Then he turned away.

  Siramae appeared at Teshar’s shoulder as though she’d been there a moment already. She pressed a strip of dried meat into his hand without comment.

  “Eat,” she said. “You’ve been in cold water for half the morning, and you haven’t eaten since before the shouting started.”

  He ate. He hadn’t noticed the hunger until she named it.

  Across the fire, Hoden sat with his tool and his tight jaw and his eyes aimed carefully at nothing. He’d heard every word of Arulan’s ruling. Every word of the footprint report.

  Teshar watched him.

  A stranger’s print in the mud, and Hoden’s eyes didn’t widen. They narrowed. There was a difference, and it sat in Teshar’s chest like a stone with a bad edge.

  Smoke lifted from the fire and drifted east.

  Back at the river bend, the sun would dry the print by noon. The edges would blur. The mud would crack, and the shape would become just a shape, nothing that shouted.

  The warning wouldn’t.