As Commander Kael said, an idea is not a plan, Elias's sketch of the aggregate that had taken root. The thought of it consumed me. In a place where everything was broken, shoddy, and designed to fail, the possibility of creating one thing, just one, that was whole and true was a hunger all its own. It wasn't about the Warden, or Borin, or even a plan for escape. It was simpler. It was about seeing if the principle was real. If knowledge could truly make something better.
The plan itself was fragile, built on whispers and stolen moments. The first step was Kayden, his leg now healing, who hobbled to find his friend. He returned that evening with Basim, a broad-shouldered man whose eyes were sunk deep in a weary face. We met in the shadow of a water trough.
"Kayden says you have a use for dust," Basim said, his voice low and suspicious.
"Not dust," I corrected him. "Grit. The course black sand from the smithy floor."
He stared at me, unblinking. "That's waste. They'll flog you for stealing waste."
"They'll flog us for anything," Kayden put in. "At least this might be worth the lashes."
I looked Basim in the eye. "I need a handful. Every day. Whatever you can carry in your pockets without being noticed."
Basim's gaze shifted from me to Kayden, then back again. He saw the desperation, but also something else. A flicker of purpose. He gave a single, sharp nod.
The operation began. During the day, Kayden and I would find reasons to be near the west quarry, stuffing our tunics with the clay. At night, Basim would appear with an indifferent expression, and casually empty his pockets onto a waiting rag, revealing a small, precious pile of shimmering black sand. We hid our growing cache in a hollowed-out section of a crumbling wall, packed over with loose mud.
After a week, we had enough. Under the evening stars, the three of us gathered in our hidden corner. We worked in silence. I mixed the basalt grit into the pale clay. As I kneaded, I felt the texture change. It wasn't just mud anymore; it was becoming something with potential, with integrity. A quiet satisfaction settled in my core, a feeling I hadn't realized I'd been starved of. It was the feeling of things fitting together as they were meant to. For the first time in a long time, we weren't just surviving a task; we were creating.
And as we worked, I began my own, quieter operation. Now my most precious possession was a flat sheet of pale sandstone, smooth as an ancient river stone, that I kept carefully wrapped in a rag and hidden beneath a loose floor panel under my infirmary cot. It was my ledger, my textbook, my one piece of sanity. Using a bit of charcoal Elias had given me, I practiced the elegant curls and sweeps of the "Scribe's Hand." If any illiterate were to ask, it could easily pass for doodles.
It started as a simple tally of inputs: every handful of clay, every pouch of sand. But day by day, as I watched the sheer wastefulness of the yard, the scope of my accounting grew. It wasn't just a tally anymore; it was a ledger. Elias's lessons weren't just about history, philosophy, and rhetoric; they included the hard grammar of numbers.
On the sandstone, I worked out the ratios for our own mixture. I calculated the waste of the main yard, marking down the loads of raw river clay hauled in versus the number of useless bricks that came out. The equation of inefficiency was damning: for every ten loads Borin brought in, he was lucky to get three worth of usable bricks. A seventy percent loss. I drew the numbers out, erasing them with the heel of my hand and calculating again, the act of finding a clear, hard truth in the middle of this chaos. My own personal rebellion.
Our first two attempts were not successful, and I noted them on my sandstone: Two units clay, one unit sand: failure. The first brick was too wet, slumping into a shapeless mound. The second was too dry, cracking as we tried to form it. A familiar frustration pricked at me, but it was different from the helpless anger I felt in the brickyard. This was the frustration of a craftsman. We pulverized the evidence and scattered the dust, the risk of Borin's whip a distant second to the quiet shame of our shoddy work.
On the third try, it was perfect. The mixture held its shape, firm and resilient under my hands. As we smoothed its sides, I felt a surge of quiet pride. It was more than just a brick. It was proof. Proof that even here, in the dust and despair, something could be made correctly.
This led to the riskiest part of the plan: approaching the kiln operator. He was a wiry man with soot permanently etched into the lines of his face, known for his foul temper and for minding his own business.
I found him after his shift, as he banked the fires for the night. I held out our small, perfect, unfired brick. "We need to fire this," I said, my voice steady.
He glanced at the brick, then at me, and snorted. "Get away from me, boy. That's not Borin's mud. I fire what the Overseer gives me. Nothing more."
"Borin's mud cracks," Kayden said. "This won't. We want to place it in the residual heat of the kiln, after your last firing. No one will know."
"I'll know," he snapped. "And my back will be under the whip when they find it."
"What if it works?" I pressed. "What if we can make bricks that don't crumble? Bricks that build something that lasts?"
The operator hesitated, his gaze falling on the brick again. Perhaps he saw the careful craftsmanship. He saw the hope in our eyes, the stupid, dangerous hope. With a long, suffering sigh, he grumbled, "Behind the kiln. If you are seen, I've never laid eyes on you."
That night, we slid our brick into the dying orange glow of the great kiln. For two days, we waited, a secret hardening in the heat.
Before the first hint of dawn on the third day, The operator met us with the brick. It was cool to the touch, yet it seemed to hold a residual warmth. It was heavier than before, and when I tapped it with my knuckle, the sound was a sharp, clear note. It was no longer mud. It was stone.
We moved as a unit to a spot I knew the Warden passed on his morning rounds. As Basim and I worked to pry a loose brick from the workshop wall, I had to twist at an awkward angle. A newly formed scab, wide as my palm, split open across my back. The pain was a sickening, tearing sensation that made my vision flash white in my good eye. I bit my tongue to keep from crying out, bracing myself against the wall as I felt warm blood begin to trickle down my back. The agony subsided to a familiar throb, and my hands trembled as I slid our creation into the empty space. It fit perfectly. We finished just as the sky began to lighten.
When the Warden began his inspection, I watched while I carried the clay, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The Warden walked with his usual impatient stride, his gaze full of disdain. Then he stopped.
His eyes narrowed on the patch we'd made. He reached out and tapped the pale brick with the hilt of his sword.
The sound was a sharp clink, a note of pure clarity against the dull thud of the surrounding mud bricks.
He grunted, and with a twist of his blade, pried our brick from the wall. He turned, holding it in his palm, weighing it. "Overseer," he called, his voice flat. "What is this?"
Borin waddled forward, his face slack with confusion. He stared at the brick in the Warden's hand as if it were a serpent. "I... I don't know, sir. It's not one of ours."
The Warden's gaze swept past the sputtering Overseer as if he were a piece of furniture, and for the first time, his eyes settled on me. It wasn't a look of accusation, but of unnerving calculation. He knew.
I quickly looked down, my hands suddenly clumsy. I could feel Borin's gaze follow the Warden's. When his eyes locked onto mine, his face, which had been pale with confusion, flushed a deep, mottled red. He had been made a fool, and his eyes fixed on me not with the simple anger of a bully, but with the panicked glare of a man whose world had just been tilted off its axis. He didn't move, didn't speak, but a look of absolute loathing settled on his features. The threat wasn't for today. It was a promise.