Chapter 144: The Ironwood Delivery
The ground started shaking before breakfast.
Elian looked up from the kitchen accounts with the pen still between his fingers. The numbers on the page blurred under a fine trembling that ran through the Iron-heart bar, rattled the brass ink cap, and sent one spoon walking toward the edge of Bruna’s clean counter.
Bruna caught the spoon without looking.
“No,” she said.
Elian turned toward her. “I have not said anything.”
“You had the face of a man about to ask whether breakfast can be delayed.”
Outside, Barnaby brayed.
The sound came flat and offended through the eastern wall, followed by the hard crack of a hoof striking his stall boards.
Ground disturbance. Excessive timber. Oversized cats. Worksite standards declining before porridge.
Elian set the pen down and closed the ledger around a scrap of drying paper. “That will be Rask.”
Bruna’s hand stopped above the oat pot.
“The Timber-Mane delivery?”
“Yes.”
“The twenty cords of murder-wood you put into a trade agreement before asking where it would sit?”
“I asked.”
“You asked the ledger. The ledger did not answer because ledgers are cowards.”
The tremor came again.
This one ran through the floorboards. A mug near Heda’s elbow ticked against its neighbor. Heda, perched sideways on the end of the nearest bench with one foot hooked under the crossbar, sat up with her ears forward.
“Something big?”
“Several somethings,” Rylia said from the hearthside.
She had been standing with one shoulder braced against the stone, eating black bread and smoked meat from a wooden plate while speaking in low tones with Varg. Her healing shoulder still carried stiffness when she reached too far, though she had threatened Sif yesterday for mentioning it. At the tremor, her plate went to the mantel. Her head angled toward the yard.
Sif came in from the side door with pitch dust on her forearms. “That is not wagon traffic.”
Dorvik was already shouting outside.
The dwarf’s voice cut through the yard in a series of sharp, ugly syllables that made two merchants at the corner table flinch. The words were not all Common. The meaning did not need translation.
Something heavy was somewhere foolish.
Elian took the ledger under one arm and headed for the eastern door.
Bruna followed him with a cloth still in one hand. “If those logs come within twenty feet of my kitchen wall, I will cook the person responsible.”
“That may be Rask.”
“Then I will need a larger pot.”
The yard had become a problem with claws.
The southern edge of the clearing boiled with motion. Six Timber-Mane haulers dragged the first sledge into view, their broad feline bodies bent low into leather harnesses thick enough to moor a ferry. Their fur ranged from dark gold to ash-brown, with black striping along shoulders and forearms. Corded muscle shifted under short coats. Ironwood trunks rode behind them on a sledge built from raw timber, chain, and spite.
The logs were wrong at a glance.
Not long like pine. Not broad like oak. Dense. Dark. Heavy enough that the sledge runners had cut twin scars through the hardened clay. One trunk, stripped of bark and squared at one end, had a grain so tight the morning light slid off it in dull bands. Another log dragged a stone wedged beneath it for six feet before the stone cracked and spat chips into the grass.
More sledges followed.
Rask walked beside the lead team with a hooked axe over one shoulder and a strip of red cloth tied around his left forearm. His mane had been braided back with bits of bone and dark cord. He did not hurry. He did not need to. The yard moved out of his way or learned about physics.
Dorvik ran across the staging lane waving both arms.
“Stop! Stop there, you overgrown plank-hauling lunatics! Do not bring that sledge past the outer rut. Do you have eyes? Do you have respect for clay? Do you have a death wish involving ground shear?”
The lead Timber-Mane hauler stopped. The five behind her stopped with him. The sledge did not.
It slid another handspan.
Dorvik jumped sideways and swore hard enough that Heda brightened.
Rask looked down at him. “Your yard is soft.”
“My yard is a layered surface with drainage failures and temporary compaction under seasonal load,” Dorvik snapped. “Your sledge is a crime.”
“It holds the timber.”
“It holds disaster waiting for a shallow grave.”
Elian stepped into the yard and counted before speaking.
Four sledges. Twenty cords, if Rask had packed according to the contract. Maybe more. Timber-Mane did not seem like people who under-delivered by accident. The old central staging lane could take wagons, oxen, rain, and yesterday’s southern riders. It could not take this many ironwood trunks crossing wherever their haulers pleased.
The lane had been enough for the old Hearth.
The old Hearth had not hosted Timber-Mane ironwood, southern route-beasts, Yard Exchange traffic, Bay One storage, and three arguments about spice quality before breakfast.
Rask’s eyes found Elian.
“Tavern-master,” he said. “Your wood.”
“My clay,” Dorvik muttered.
Elian opened the ledger on the nearest empty barrel. The page from yesterday’s Timber-Mane agreement sat near the front, still smelling faintly of wet ink and camp smoke.
“Rask,” Elian said. “No sledge moves another foot until we mark load paths.”
One of the Timber-Mane haulers gave a low chuff. Amusement, maybe. Or a cough big enough to ruin a chair.
Rask rested the hooked axe across his shoulder. “We dragged it through the basin.”
“The basin is not my yard.”
“Your yard is smaller.”
“Yes. I charge more for damage.”
Rask’s whiskers twitched.
Dorvik jabbed a finger at the sledge runner. “If that crosses the middle clay, it cracks the underfill. Then the next rain turns your delivery lane into soup. Then every wagon wheel sinks. Then I spend three days rebuilding what your pride flattened before breakfast.”
“Dwarf speaks fast,” Rask said.
“Dwarf is preventing stupidity from becoming masonry.”
Elian took up a piece of charcoal from his pocket. “Dorvik. Load-bearing ground?”
Dorvik snapped his fingers at one of his apprentices. “Measuring rod. Wedges. The broad planks. Not those, the thick ones, you half-baked nail.”
The apprentice ran.
Rylia came to Elian’s left. Sif to his right. Varg moved behind him with a small slate and chalk, already tracking numbers. Torra took the southern edge of the yard with her glaive angled against one shoulder, eyes moving from sledges to animals to the merchants gathering near the common-room door. Skade appeared on Bay One’s lower roof and crouched near the gutter with one hand on the tiles.
Bruna stopped at the kitchen threshold.
“Everyone not hauling, measuring, guarding, or paying for breakfast gets behind the red cord,” she called.
A merchant in a blue travel coat protested from beside the water trough. “My team is stabled on the far side. I paid for access.”
Bruna pointed at the ironwood sledge. “That log weighs more than your opinion.”
The man opened his mouth.
Rylia looked at him.
He shut it and backed up.
Elian drew the yard fast. Porch. Water trough. Barnaby’s paddock. Bay One. Kitchen wall. Drainage cut. Canopy descent lane. Southern rider lots from yesterday. Existing staging lane.
Then he drew three thick lines.
“First sledge stops here,” he said. “Dorvik lays planks from the outer rut to the north stone pad. Rask’s haulers pull only on marked lines. No turning under load without a wedge team. Sif and Rylia control side shift for the first trunk. Varg counts movement. Skade watches line slack from above. Torra keeps animals and idiots out of the lane. Bruna keeps the kitchen wall intact.”
Bruna said, “I had already assigned myself that position.”
“Good.”
Rask’s gaze moved over the group.
Human with ledger. Dwarf with red face. Frost Wolves still carrying healing stiffness. Southern Outrider on perimeter. Forager marks hanging above the porch beam. Merchants gawking from behind red cord. Barnaby biting his own rail and glaring at the haulers like a magistrate denied jurisdiction.
Rask sniffed.
“You intend to unload here?”
“I intend to unload without repairing half the yard afterward.”
“You have enough hands?”
“I have enough rules.”
Rask gave a short rumble from deep in his chest. The Timber-Mane behind him shifted their grip on the harness lines.
Dorvik returned with two apprentices dragging thick planks and a crate of wedges. “Your rules need wood under them. Move.”
The first unloading took thirty minutes and used every curse Dorvik knew.
The sledge had to be eased onto the planked path one handspan at a time. Timber-Mane haulers leaned into harness. Dorvik’s apprentices drove wedges beneath the runners when he barked. Varg called each mark from the slate.
“Half pace.”
“Hold.”
“Left runner sinking.”
“Wedge.”
“Hold.”
Sif stood near the rear with both hands on the trunk that wanted to shift sideways. Her injured leg braced back. Her jaw had set in a way that made Bruna’s eyes narrow from the kitchen door.
“Sif,” Bruna called, “if you tear that leg open, I will pour broth into your boots.”
“I am steady.”
“You are large. That is not the same thing.”
Sif’s ears flicked, but she kept her grip.
Rylia moved to the front line near Rask’s lead hauler. She did not take weight she did not need to take. She put one hand to the trunk, one to the sledge frame, and used pressure rather than strength. When the ironwood tried to twist, her shoulder lowered, her claws bit into the frame, and the log obeyed by inches.
Elian watched the first turn with the ledger tucked under his arm and a coil of rope in his other hand. His stomach had tightened somewhere near the third wedge. Every inch of the yard had a price now. Planks. Clay. Wall distance. Animal panic. Medicine delay if the canopy route got blocked. Kitchen fire risk if a trunk clipped the oil rack. Damage did not arrive as disaster. It arrived as a wrong angle and an unpaid repair.
A blue-coated merchant stepped over the red cord.
Torra caught his collar with two fingers.
He jerked backward, face reddening. “My stabling fee includes access to my horse.”
“Your stabling fee includes access when the lane is not hauling a tree that can crush your horse into glue,” Torra said.
“I have business north before noon.”
“You have survival before noon.”
He shoved her hand away and ducked under the cord.
Skade whistled once from Bay One’s roof.
“Line,” she said.
Varg’s head snapped up. “Hold!”
Everyone held.
Everyone except the merchant.
He took three steps into the lane, waving a folded receipt. “I paid—”
The lead sledge creaked.
One wedge spat out from beneath the left runner. The sledge shifted sideways. The ironwood trunk rolled half an inch, hit the rope, and swung its squared end across the lane at hip height.
Rylia slammed her shoulder into the frame. Sif drove both hands into the trunk. Timber-Mane haulers dug claws through the clay. Dorvik threw himself at the loose wedge and kicked it back under the runner.
The trunk stopped a forearm’s length from the merchant’s ribs.
His receipt fluttered from his hand into the dirt.
The yard went silent except for the strained breathing of haulers and the creak of rope.
Torra seized the merchant by the back of his coat and dragged him out of the lane. She did not throw him. She set him down hard enough that his knees folded.
Elian picked up the fallen receipt.
He looked at it. Stable access, paid through dusk. One horse. No dry-hold. No lane priority.
He took the charcoal from behind his ear and wrote across the bottom: Red-cord violation under loaded freight. One silver fine. Stable access suspended until third bell.
The merchant stared at the words. “That is outrageous.”
Elian handed the receipt back. “You are alive to dispute it at the Arbitration Table after the delivery.”
Dorvik pointed a wedge mallet at him. “If you step over my cord again, I will bill your widow for clay repair.”
Bruna leaned from the kitchen door. “And breakfast is no longer included.”
The merchant retreated behind the red cord with his face the color of boiled ham.
Barnaby gave a hard snort.
Corrective humiliation applied. Acceptable substitute for trampling.
“Barnaby,” Elian called, “you remain uninvolved.”
The worksite rejects expertise.
The first trunk came off the sledge before midmorning.
It required two Timber-Mane haulers, Sif, Rylia, three dwarf wedges, a rope through the Bay One pulley hook, and Varg counting each handspan with the tone of someone reciting a death sentence. The ironwood hit the prepared pad with a dull sound that sank into the ground rather than bouncing off it.
The clay under the pad held.
Dorvik dropped to one knee and checked the edge with his fingers. “Again, but three inches farther from the drainage scar. If any of you drift, I will write insults into your invoices.”
Rask crouched beside the trunk. He set one claw against the cut end and pressed. “Your stone pad holds.”
“My stone pad is a genius surrounded by fools,” Dorvik said.
Merren dropped from the lower branch above the eastern lane and landed on the Bay One roof edge. A moment later he came down the ladder without hurry, a loop of green cord in one hand and a bundle of white bone markers in the other.
Rask’s head turned.
The Timber-Mane haulers turned with him.
The yard’s sound changed. Not silence. A thinning. Harness creak, rope pull, distant kettle hiss from Bruna’s kitchen. No voices.
Merren walked to the edge of the yard and pushed one white marker into the ground near the second sledge path.
“No weight here,” he said.
Dorvik snapped, “That ground is firm.”
“Top is firm,” Merren said. “Root underneath is hollow. Rain took soil last night. Put sledge there, the root breaks. Ground drops. Timber rolls.”
Rask’s lip lifted enough to show one fang. “Branch-thieves read dirt now?”
Merren looked at him. “Root-breakers still think down means simple?”
One of the Timber-Mane haulers growled.
Skade shifted on the roof.
Rylia’s tail moved once.
Elian shut the ledger.
The sound was small. It carried.
“Elian,” Rask said, still looking at Merren, “your roof-ghost marks our path?”
“My canopy tenant marks ground that will fail under your path.”
“His people cut medicines from trees we guard.”
“Your people drag ironwood through roots he uses to keep medicine moving.”
Rask’s ears flattened.
Merren’s fingers tightened around the bone markers.
Elian stepped between the pad and the unmarked lane, close enough to be heard by both without raising his voice.
“Timber-Mane control timber placement,” he said. “Hollow-Foragers control root-safety warnings. Dorvik controls stone pads and wedges. I control who pays when something breaks.”
Dorvik grunted. “That last one is true.”
Rask’s gaze came down to Elian. “If the forager lies?”
“Then his mark becomes billable.”
Merren’s head turned. “My marks do not lie.”
“Good,” Elian said. “Then they will not cost you.”
Rask made a low sound. “If Timber-Mane judgment is overruled by branch signs, my haulers lose time.”
“If Timber-Mane haulers break a hollow root under loaded ironwood, my yard loses a lane, my medicine loses a route, Dorvik loses a stone pad, and Bruna loses breakfast service to screaming. Your time is cheaper.”
Bruna called from the door, “My breakfast service costs more than his time.”
Rask looked toward her.
Bruna held up a ladle.
No one moved.
Rask barked a laugh.
It cracked the tension enough that two haulers breathed again.
He pointed one claw at Merren. “Mark only true hollow.”
Merren pushed another white bone peg into the clay without looking away. “Step only where marked safe.”
“Branch-thief.”
“Root-breaker.”
Elian opened the ledger again. “Excellent. Mutual recognition recorded.”
Beneath the unloading path, he added a smaller line.
Timber-Mane and Hollow-Forager routes must not cross under load without witness.
Rylia’s claws tapped once against the porch rail behind him.
He glanced back.
She stood in the edge of the shade, mouth held flat, eyes on him. One ear angled toward Rask. The other toward Merren. Her tail made a slow pass behind her, clipped at the end as though it had struck an invisible table leg.
Pride, maybe.
Irritation, definitely.
Elian looked down before his face betrayed him and wrote: vertical and ground authority split by hazard category.
The second sledge moved better.
Merren marked two bad roots, one safe turn, and a spot where the clay had dried into a crust over old drainage wash. Dorvik argued with all three, tested them, and found reasons to curse in new directions. Rask’s haulers adjusted. Torra pushed the watching crowd another ten feet back after a child tried to touch a chain. Heda collected the child before Bruna could reach him and returned him to his mother with a warning about “interesting fingers becoming short fingers.”
By noon, the yard had acquired a new scar.
The old staging lane no longer made sense. The sledges could not pass without blocking water. The red cord cut across too much traffic. Barnaby’s protected feed perimeter, established yesterday under duress, now sat too close to the safest ironwood path.
Barnaby disagreed.
Historic borders cannot be revised during active crisis. Predatory timber has no treaty standing.
Elian stood beside his paddock with the ledger open on the rail. “Your bucket moves six feet.”
Barnaby stared at him.
“No.”
Barnaby’s ears pinned flat.
“No.”
Rylia came to stand behind Elian. “Barnaby.”
The mule shifted his glare to her.
She did not raise her voice. “The ironwood path protects the stable wall.”
Barnaby’s nostrils widened.
“The stable wall protects your oats.”
His ears twitched.
Elian kept the pen still.
Barnaby looked from Rylia to the sledge path, then to the stable wall, then to the apple bucket.
Temporary relocation under protest. Compensation required.
Elian wrote: Barnaby feed perimeter shifted east. Compensation: two apple slices, one oat ration upgrade. No precedent.
Barnaby lowered his head and allowed Heda to drag the bucket six feet east while complaining at every step.
Dorvik came up beside Elian with mud on his beard. “The staging lane is wrong.”
“I know.”
“The whole yard is wrong.”
“I know.”
“The next delivery like this breaks your water access.”
“I know.”
Dorvik squinted at him. “You are calm in a way that makes me want payment in advance.”
Elian looked across the yard.
Ironwood trunks lay on the north stone pad, dark and dense as fallen beams from some older structure. The southern riders’ grazing lots from yesterday held the recovery mounts and two grass-oxen. Timber-Mane sledges occupied the outer lane. Bay One’s lower arch had three carts waiting for dry-hold. The canopy descent markers kept a strip of ground empty that merchants kept trying to fill with their feet. The kitchen door had become a command post because Bruna refused to let grease, fools, or timber within striking range of her wall.
The Hearth had not outgrown the building.
It had outgrown the spaces between the building’s jobs.
Elian drew a new line across the page.
“After the delivery,” he said, “we mark a freight lane.”
Dorvik grunted. “Stone?”
“Eventually. Stakes today. Rope tomorrow. Stone when the ledger stops bleeding.”
“Then the ledger bleeds.”
“It does that.”
The third sledge nearly took the corner of Bay One.
Not by much. A handspan, maybe two. Enough to make Skade drop from the roof to the scaffolding, boots hitting wood with a hard crack.
“Slack,” she called.
Varg counted, “Hold.”
Rask barked to his haulers. Dorvik rammed a wedge under the runner. Sif braced the rear. Rylia took the side line and pulled with a short, brutal motion that brought the whole sledge back into track.
The corner beam of Bay One survived with only a smear of dark ironwood dust across its face.
Dorvik put one palm on the beam as if checking for fever.
“Who built this corner?” he demanded.
One of his apprentices raised a hand halfway.
Dorvik pointed at him. “Acceptable. Do it again forever.”
The apprentice looked more terrified than praised.
Bruna sent out food at first bell because starving haulers made bad decisions.
No plates. No table service. No negotiation. She handed oat-cakes wrapped in cloth to Heda, who carried them to the Timber-Mane under supervision after Bruna inspected her hands. Rask accepted two, ate one in three bites, and handed the other to the lead hauler who had pulled the first sledge.
The hauler sniffed it.
Then she ate it and looked toward the kitchen.
Bruna saw the look through the doorway. “Three copper each after the contract ration.”
Rask did not argue. He sent coin.
By midafternoon, the final sledge stood empty.
The yard looked like something had fought a forest and won by committee. Wedge marks cut the clay. Rope fibers clung to splinters along the sledge runners. Three planks had cracked. One apprentice had a swollen thumb. Two Timber-Mane haulers slept on their backs near the outer fence, mouths open, tails twitching in the dust. Barnaby’s bucket sat six feet from its old place, guarded with the zeal of a displaced king.
The first selected slab still needed to enter the common room.
That was when everyone stopped being pleased with themselves.
The slab had been cut at the Timber-Mane camp from the straight heart of a trunk Rask called old even by his standards. It was shorter than the yard beams but broader than Elian’s bar top and thick enough that Dorvik kept stroking his beard in pain.
“This is not a table,” Dorvik said. “This is a floor pretending to be furniture.”
Rask put one hand on the slab. “You wanted strength.”
“I wanted strength with manners.”
Elian measured the common-room door. Then the slab. Then the door again.
Heda leaned over his shoulder. “If you measure it a fourth time, will it become smaller?”
“No.”
“Will the door become wider?”
“No.”
“Then what are we hoping for?”
“Denial to fail at a useful pace.”
Sif crouched beside the slab. “Angle through the door.”
Varg stood in the threshold and lifted both hands, framing the space. “Tilt up on the left. Nose down. Rotate once the leading edge clears the jamb.”
Dorvik shook his head. “If you drag that edge, you gouge the floorboards.”
Bruna appeared behind Varg with both hands on her hips. “If you gouge my floorboards, someone pays before supper.”
“They are the tavern’s floorboards,” Elian said.
“They are under my feet.”
Rylia came to the slab’s left side. “Who lifts?”
Sif immediately said, “I do.”
Bruna’s head turned.
Sif’s mouth closed.
Rylia said, “Sif guides. I lift front left. Rask front right. Two Timber-Mane rear. Dorvik wedges. Varg counts. Torra keeps bodies away. Skade watches the door frame. Heda carries nothing fragile.”
Heda spread both hands. “I am wounded.”
“You are bored.”
“Also true.”
Elian tied cloth around the slab’s forward corners where the wood might kiss the door frame. He did it himself, pulling the knots tight, testing the give with two fingers. The grain under his palm felt almost oily, though the surface had been dry-cut and rubbed with ash. Dense enough to dull careless tools. Heavy enough to make the whole room obey its arrival.
“Ready,” Varg said.
The slab rose.
Not high. It did not need high. It needed control.
Rask and Rylia took the front weight. Their shoulders dipped at the same time. The two Timber-Mane at the rear grunted and lifted on Varg’s count. Sif kept one hand near the side edge, guiding with pressure. Dorvik slid wedges under the bottom whenever the slab needed to rest. Torra cleared two gawkers out of the way by pointing at the red cord until their courage drained.
“Half step,” Varg called.
The slab moved.
“Hold.”
Dorvik shoved a wedge. “Down a hair. No, a hair, not a collapse.”
Rask’s claws dug into the carrying strap. “Dwarf measures hair like thread.”
“Dwarf measures repair bills.”
“Forward,” Varg said.
The leading edge reached the door.
Skade hung upside down from the porch beam above the threshold, one hand hooked over the wood, eyes level with the upper corner.
“Left side high,” she said.
Rylia raised her end by less than an inch.
“Too much.”
Rylia lowered it.
“Good.”
Elian stood inside the doorway with one palm against the jamb, watching the cloth-wrapped corner slide past old oak. The slab cleared the first side. The second corner kissed the frame and stopped.
No one breathed.
Dorvik hissed. “Do not shove.”
Rask’s jaw tightened.
Elian crouched, checked the lower angle, and pulled a loose chip of old door frame away with his fingers. The chip came free with a dry snap.
“Now,” he said.
Varg counted them through.
The slab entered the common room one inch at a time.
Customers had been pushed to the far wall. Heda stood in front of them with her arms spread, looking delighted to be the barrier between curiosity and crushed toes. Bruna had cleared the central space and marked a path with spilled flour because she said chalk was too polite and flour showed footprints.
The old cracked table waited near the hearth.
It still carried the scar from Rylia and Torra’s arm-wrestle: a split down the center, four repaired braces beneath, and a wobble that returned whenever someone set a full stew bowl near the wrong corner. It had served through storms, route-flood, Beast Market arguments, sickroom notes, and three rounds of Heda sitting where she had been told not to sit.
Bruna ran one hand over the cracked edge.
“Ugly thing lasted longer than expected,” she said.
Elian looked at the table.
The top bore knife marks, mug rings, old wax, a burn shaped like a careless pipe, and one long gouge from the night someone had tried to draw steel over unpaid broth. He had repaired it twice. Dorvik had repaired it once while muttering insults about human joinery. The last brace had been a mercy, not a solution.
“Out,” Elian said.
Sif and Heda dragged the old table aside. One leg caught on a warped board and popped loose with a wooden crack.
Heda held up the leg. “It chose death.”
“Put it by the repair pile,” Bruna said.
“The sentimental repair pile or the firewood repair pile?”
Bruna looked at the table.
Then at Elian.
Elian looked down at the broken leg in Heda’s hand. “Sentimental until after supper.”
“Coward,” Bruna said, but she did not argue.
The ironwood slab came to the center of the room.
Dorvik and his apprentices had already built the support frame from reinforced oak and bracketed it with iron straps. Temporary, he kept saying. Insulting, he also kept saying. It would hold until he could build the proper base, which in Dorvik’s language meant it could survive a siege but offended his ancestors.
The slab lowered on Varg’s count.
“Down.”
A handspan.
“Hold.”
Dorvik shoved the final wedge aside.
“Down.”
The ironwood settled onto the frame.
No creak.
No shift.
No groan from the floorboards.
Only a dull final sound as the timber found its bearing.
Rylia let go first. Rask second. The rear haulers stepped back, flexing their hands. Sif kept one palm on the side for a breath longer than needed.
Torra leaned over the surface and rapped her knuckles against it.
Bruna snapped, “Do not start.”
Torra withdrew her hand with no shame.
Rask looked around the common room. At the hearth. The bar. The red cord coiled near the door. The merchants pressed to the wall. The Frost Wolves watching the slab. Merren crouched on the beam above the far shelf, one white marker still tucked behind his ear. Barnaby’s head had somehow appeared in the open service hatch, ears forward, judging the whole installation.
Rask set one claw on the table’s edge. “It holds.”
Dorvik snorted. “Of course it holds. It is half a tree on a frame I had to accept under protest.”
Elian opened the ledger on the new slab.
The pages lay flat.
The inkpot did not wobble.
Bruna set one mug on the far corner. The surface did not tremble. She set another beside it. Then a bread board. Then her palm.
“Hm,” she said.
From Barnaby’s direction came a low, considering snort.
Table appears structurally confident. Recommend apple bucket relocation appeal be reopened under improved furniture law.
Elian did not look up. “Denied.”
Rylia’s claws rested beside the ledger for a moment. Not touching his hand. Close enough that the old table would have wobbled under the small shift of weight.
This one did not move.
Elian wrote the first line across the fresh page.
Day Eighty-Eight. Ironwood delivery received. Yard lane insufficient. Freight path required. Table installed. No deaths. One red-cord violation under loaded freight, fined.
The pen scratched cleanly over the paper.
Across the room, Heda leaned the broken table leg against the wall with ceremony and whispered, “Rest badly, brave wobble-table.”
Bruna threw a towel at her.