The new rhythm of Aethelburg was a complex, sometimes dissonant chord. The presence of the Stone Creek miners was no longer that of prisoners under guard, but of uneasy guests participating in a protracted lesson. They worked the fields, mended fences, and hauled stone alongside the citizens, their initial sullenness gradually giving way to a wary curiosity. The bindings had been removed from all but one pair of hands.
Corvin worked. That was all he did. He rose at dawn, ate the hearty breakfast provided, and performed whatever manual labor was assigned to him with a grim, silent efficiency. His hands, now calloused in new places, were still bound at the wrists with a stout leather cord—not so tight as to chafe terribly, but a constant, inescapable reminder of his status. He was an island of the old world in the heart of the new, and the contrast was a daily agony.
