The morning after Prince Kareem's visit, the brickyard seethed. This was not a secret project to be done in the exhausted hours after dark. This was a public command. Borin, his authority seemingly restored by the royal edict, waddled into the center of the yard, kicking a stray half-brick out of his path with a grunt. He held a flask of fragrant lamp oil aloft like a scepter, his face puffed with a new gleam of triumph.
He gathered my small crew, myself, Kayden, and Basim, away from our usual work. "The Prince has given a direct order," Borin boomed, ensuring every nearby prisoner could hear. His gaze fixed on me, a smile that pulled his lip into a sneer. "One cup of oil for every ten bricks. A 'Royal Sheen.'" He leaned in, his voice dropping to a growl. "And the Warden has added that there must be no reduction in the strength of our bricks. Let's see your cleverness solve this, master builder."
Kayden's jaw tightened, and Basim shot me a disapproving look, a subtle shake of his head. This was not a production order; it was a public execution disguised as one. "It's a trap," Basim muttered, his voice a low rumble. "He wants us to fail."
They were right. But as I looked from Borin's smug face to the gleaming oil, I felt not fear, but a clarity. My breathing evened. My hands, which had been caked in dry clay, felt steady. I could hear Elias's voice: "They are obsessed with the appearance of a thing, not its substance." And Kael's: "Analyze the requirements." The edict had two parts, and they were not in conflict. They were simply separate problems. I gave a slight, reassuring nod to my friends.
Our process began as it had before. We mixed our proven aggregate of clay and crushed basalt, molding the strong, dense bricks that had earned the Warden's attention. We ignored the flask of oil entirely. The bricks were fired in the kiln, emerging heavy, solid, and the color of honest earth. They were perfect.
Only then did we address the Prince's command.
We laid the cooled bricks out in neat rows. Then, with Borin watching from a distance, arms crossed, we began the second phase. We took the expensive oil and, using coarse rags, began to meticulously slather it onto the surface of each brick. The bricks, already fired and hard, could scarcely absorb the greasy liquid. It simply sat on the surface, a glistening, fragrant, and utterly pointless lacquer. We applied a thick coat, using precisely the mandated allotment. It was absurd, wasteful, and exactly what the edict required.
For three days, the farcical work continued. A stack of finished bricks, dense and unyielding, gleamed with an oily sheen, grew steadily in the yard. Borin's smugness evaporated. On the first day, he smirked. On the second, he prowled around the stack, sniffing the air and kicking at the base, his brow furrowed in confusion. By the third day, a nervous tic had settled near his eye as he watched our quiet, relentless efforts bear fruit. Perhaps he felt the whispers that followed him were no longer of fear, but of contempt.
Late in the afternoon, as the last brick was set in place, Borin's composure finally fractured. It wasn't a sudden snap, but a deliberate, chilling decision. He walked calmly to the smithy's scrap pile and returned with a heavy iron pry bar. With a look of purpose, he began to systematically smash the bricks at the base of the stack, causing the entire gleaming cube to collapse into a pile of oily rubble. The destruction was methodical. He was not just destroying the work; he was staging a scene.
He dropped the pry bar and spun around, his face contorted into a theatrical panic, just as the Warden, summoned by a guard Borin had dispatched moments earlier, arrived. "Warden, see!" Borin shouted, pointing a trembling finger from me to the wreckage. "It's sabotage! I warned you his methods were a sham! The bricks were too weak, they crumbled under their own weight! He is a conspirator, trying to make a fool of the Prince!" Kayden and Basim exchanged a look of utter incredulity at the baldness of the lie.
The Warden's cold eyes settled on me. I kept my posture steady. I did not argue. As Kael had taught me, I would present a battlefield assessment: clear facts, direct implications.
"Warden," I said, my voice steady, "the work was completed exactly as ordered. The proof is in my records. They are in the barracks, under my bunk. I request permission to retrieve them."
A anticipatory silence fell. Borin started to object, but the Warden silenced him with a sharp glance. He studied me for a long moment, then gave a curt nod to a nearby guard. "Go with him. Be quick."
The walk to the barracks felt a mile long, the guard's footsteps behind me. I retrieved the sandstone. I presented it to him. It was not an accusation; it was a ledger.
Elias had taught me the Scribe's Hand was the script of administrators and military quartermasters. The Warden was a man of systems who despised chaos, but that wasn't enough. Then I remembered the confrontation in the infirmary when Kael told Tarik: "The Warden... understands the cost of a broken supply line. He remembers what happens when quartermasters fail." The Warden wasn't just a prison guard; his past was in logistics. He would recognize this script. It was a risk, but not a blind one.
The Warden took the stone, his brow furrowed at the strange script. Borin's shrieking pierced the silence. For a dreadful moment, I thought I had miscalculated. Then his thumb brushed over a symbol for 'material expenditure.' He went still. "A supply manifest," the Warden said, his voice low and cutting through Borin's tirade. He looked from the tablet to me with a new, unnerving level of assessment. "The quartermasters in the Campaigns used this hand, probably still do. You learned this from Elias."
"Yes, Warden," I nodded.
The Warden looked back at me, his eyes hard and assessing, as if seeing me for the first time. The brief moment of reflection was over.
The Warden's eyes scanned the columns. The tablet was an undeniable accounting of a functional system, detailing the inputs of clay and basalt, the precise allocation of the mandated oil, and a projected output that made Borin's story of crumbling bricks an obvious lie.
Realizing he was trapped by the undeniable truth on the stone, Borin completely broke. "It's a lie! A forgery!" he bellowed, his eyes darting around frantically searching for escape. "They're all in it together, plotting against me! He's bewitched them!"
The Warden held up a hand, and Borin's shrieking trailed off into panicked whimpers. The yard had gone completely silent. The Warden's gaze moved from the elegant, ruthlessly efficient script on the sandstone to my face, then to the trembling, blubbering mess that was Borin. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, filled not with rage, but with a weary, profound disgust.
"The old histories talk about the First Empire," he said, almost to himself. "About an order built on discipline. I saw Commander Kael hold a pass near the border once. It wasn't just tactics. It was absolute trust. Not a man broke. Not a supply crate was lost."
He sneered, his eyes locking onto Borin. "That is the iron that builds empires. And this…" He gestured to the disgraced overseer. "…this puddle of grease and panic… is the rot that brings them down. You are an ambitious rat who can't even manage your own corruption without turning my prison into a circus."
The Warden looked back at the sandstone tablet in his hand, a tangible piece of the order he craved. "We're not building anything that lasts. We're just trying to keep the walls from collapsing."
He finally looked up, his decision made. "You have destroyed prison property, Borin," he said, his voice now flat and dangerous. "And you have wasted my time." He gestured to two guards who stepped forward and, with brutal efficiency, ripped the whip and keys from Borin's belt. The symbols of his power clattered into the dust.
In the stunned silence that followed, the Warden looked at me, then pointed a single, definitive finger at the powerless, trembling man who had been my tormentor.
"I want you to manage the brick operation, Overseer Nadim. Prisoner Borin is your responsibility now," the Warden said. "Put him to work."