They needed law that breathed like work.
The valley was no longer only shelter; it was a problem with faces. Hunger eased in places, envy stirred in others, and men who had been brave in the court's shadow found their courage wanting in daylight. Authority, Cael learned, is not a thing you crown — it is a shape you carve from habits and then sharpen with rules.
He called the first public ordination at the hearth where the compact lay under stone. The circle was small and bright with faces: bakers, ferrymen, the potter, the midwife, a handful of apprentices with knots on their wrists. Miss Gavren sat like a judge who had learned mercy's arithmetic. Liora's ankle had healed into a limp that made her steps honest.
"We need keepers who can do the tall work," Cael said. He unrolled the cloth and placed Jeran's lead beside it. "Not lords. Not magistrates. People who will teach the song, who will move the fragments, who will answer when a house goes mute. Rotation, public selection, and a rule of witness: three voices to the whole. No one man keeps a people's memory."
He spoke plainly — law as tool, not sermon. They answered with a song and a knot. The first Keeper chosen was Hal, the ferryman: steady hands, an old oath in his teeth. The second shifted after a moon to Mara the potter, who made the counting-song a wheel. The third was an apprentice called Lian who could memorize the pattern of a clay rim after one look. Rotation became the village's slow drum that whipped ambition into service.
But rules are only as strong as the hearts that hold them. Into that new order stepped the first seed of authority that would not bind so much as breed.
His name was Dagan. He arrived with a scar across his neck and a voice that had the pleasant certainty of someone who had learned to give direction to men who hate waiting. He did not arrive with a petition; he arrived with an appetite.
"Councils and knots are good for children and bakers," Dagan said on his first night in the common house, speaking as if the room were already his. "Men need teeth. The city cuts supply and we answer with verses — verses won't stop hungry men riding our roads and burning our cache."
His words found ears. Men who had lost sons and felt their power drained by raids leaned forward. Dagan's talk was quick and efficient: strike the depots, burn an advance wagon, make magistrates uncomfortable. He used the language of necessity and dressed it in honor.
Cael watched him, saw the small bright thing of a man who makes action into remedy. "And then?" Cael asked once, quietly, after Dagan had been allowed to speak his piece. "When we strike, who prays for the widows? Who counts the names we will have to answer for later? Violence grows a ledger as heavy as any book."
"You will not mark the right ones if you hide behind knots," Dagan shot back. "We will be the blade. We will decide who is the magistrate's hand and who is the innocent. We will end this slow starvation."
The village felt the first crack. Liora's mouth set like a hinge. Miss Gavren's fingers tightened on the compact. Rook's face folded into a patient, dangerous calm. The argument could have tipped the ring into blood. Cael could have pronounced an immediate ban and sent men to the stocks; he could have given the militant a throne clothed in stealth.
Instead he made a different offer: ritual arbitration — public, simple, humiliating to secret violence. If one wanted a strike, he said, bring three witnesses who attest to a crime that cannot be reasonably redressed by supply-diversion. Present facts. Let the circle hear. Let the Keeper convene. If the strike is approved, it will be limited — supplies only, no slaughter — and sanctioned by the net. If it is secreted outside the compact, it will be judged as treason.
The idea was not elegant; it was a constraint. It made courage accountable.
"For those who would strike without witness," Cael added, "we bind them with the Keeper's knot until they learn to count their wants against the village's needs. If they refuse, we expel them. You do not become a lawless hand and keep your hearth."
There was a murmur. Dagan laughed, a short sharp sound. "So you tie men's wrists and call it justice," he said. "You will teach men patience while the magistrate eats their bread."
Cael met the laugh with a simple oath: "We will not be monsters to become immune. We will keep teeth, but not eat our tongues. Those who cannot live with that must go where men like them are fewer."
There was one test that made words small and action necessary. It came like a shadow at dusk.
The village was crowded for a market when a man lunged at the steward's liaison — the man Lord Marek had sent to be their eye. He was not important in rank but symbolic in presence: a thin clerk named Alder who wore a smooth face and a neutral air. The assailant came with a knife hidden in a cloak and a limp that was more practiced than natural.
The knife found only air. Alder's robe shivered; a stall crate took the blow, splinters scratching a woman's hand. People screamed, dove, shouted. Dagan's cohort pushed forward. For a moment the ring turned into the quick animal of rage.
Cael moved through the press with the quiet speed of someone who had learned to be necessary. He did not raise a blade. He raised the pebble. The sight of the small stone in his palm had an effect he had not predicted: there are gestures that make men remember their mouths.
He called for ritual arbitration then and there. "Three witnesses," he said, voice loud enough to carry over the market. "We will not be a mob."
Rook saw the knife's owner—a gaunt youth with Dagan's circle's old patch—and threw his cloak over him before he could pull loose. The crowd roared; Dagan pushed his shoulder into Rook as if trying to force the hold to loosen. "Let us cut him down," he hissed.
"Bring three witnesses," Cael said again. "If you have proof that Alder is a spy, show it. If you do not, you will not make us a band of butchers."
Miss Gavren stepped forward with a plainness that was its own law. She called names — the miller, the potter, two women who had seen the youth buying a loaf of bread earlier that morning. They came forward, breathless and angry, and swore that the youth had spoken of deeds he would do, had called the liaison 'a clean hand that keeps our town soft.' The men who saw him take the knife told of the youth's furtive steps toward the liaison's stall.
The three witnesses were enough to convict the youth of attempted murder. The circle convened at once. The Keeper — Hal, ferryman — held the pebble and spoke the form. The youth, when asked why, said mostly silence and then a string of bitter reasons spooling like thread: hunger, a story told in whispers, a man who had lost a brother and wanted a name to blame.
Dagan wanted the youth cut from the valley like a bad root. He wanted spectacle. The easy remedy would have fed a certain hunger in men who need a clear enemy.
Cael asked for time and placed the Keeper's knot on the youth's wrist as a restraint and a lesson. "You will confess the names you know," Cael commanded. "You will speak where we can hear you. If you refuse to answer, we will exile you. If you confess and help us name what truly threatens houses, we will make you do deeds that repair, not merely wound."
Dagan spat. "You teach children to speak and keep knotted wrists. You are soft."
"Soft makes room for the living," Cael said. "Bravery without account only becomes tyranny."
They set the punishment not as blood but as work and exposure: the youth would accompany the Keeper on route, be taught the threefold mouth, and publicly recite the counting-song at each stop. He would not be hidden. He would be useful. The sentence provoked both approval and disgust.
Dagan left that night with twelve men who would not accept such soft measures. He said, in the dark, "If Cael keeps us gentle while they burn our barns, then I will make those who call mercy bow to steel." He walked into the reeds and burned his hand in oath — a gesture, not a wound meant for public text.
The next morning a man had been stabbed in an alley far from the village. The wound was not fatal, but it was a message. Fingers pointed; suspicion fed itself. The steward's liaison, who had been only a clerk, made a discreet request to Lord Marek: See to it that law is decisive. The valley felt the circle's thinness.
Cael stood at the river that night, the pebble warm against his palm, and thought like a man who has learned to count weight and consequence. He had made law as craft: rotation, threefold mouth, public arbitration. He had stopped a mob from being murder. He had let the youth live and be taught. The rules held for now.
But seeds of authority, once planted, do not always grow the thing you wish. Dagan's men would bide. Some would leave quietly in the night and join bands whose raids were less careful. Others would remain and fume, growing a hard grain inside them like iron rust. The steward would report, the lord would note the instability, and choices would be demanded soon that could not be made by knot alone.
Cael tied the keeper's knot into his own wrist. He whispered the counting-song until the words cut clean:
> Six for the feet that choose the way,
Seven for the house that will not sway.
Authority had roots now — some healthy, some poisonous. He did not know which would feed the valley and which would rot it. He only knew that law must be kept like a pot on a low fire: tended, watched, and never left to flame or freeze.