The oat-colored ribbon waited on the weaver's fence like a small, polite trumpet.
Brukk Ironhorn stopped one pace away from it and let the yard notice him. The loom-shed hummed its wooden gossip; threads traveled their patient roads. Sun came in thin lanes between rafters and made dust look useful. He had left both wolves as dogs—rope collars, bell-less, heads low. Torn-ear lay by the trough with the theatrical boredom only a disciplined animal can afford. The ditch-gray parked himself in a coin of shade like a puddle that could grow teeth if asked.
"Stand," Brukk told them softly. They stood by remaining exactly where they were.
Tawny sat on the sill of the dye-room door with a mending basket. She was working a hem with the decisiveness of a woman who refuses to be impressed by thread. She didn't look at him in any way a nosy person would count as looking. It still felt like being measured for a verdict.
"Afternoon," she said, eyes on the needle.
"Afternoon," he answered.
A figure turned the corner of the lane balanced like someone who has learned to carry and be carried: Sera Vale. She wore a dark skirt that owned its mends, a plain blouse, sleeves rolled to the elbow—the forearms of a woman who rose early for bread and did not complain about water. A kerchief caught her hair low; brown escaped anyway. A basket rode her hip, covered with a square of cloth that had outlived better times.
She looked at the ribbon, then at Brukk, then at the wolves-that-were-dogs. Her gaze didn't jump; it walked. She set the basket on the fence post and kept a hand lightly on the handle as if to remind herself it could be lifted whenever she wished.
"You fold big," she said by way of hello, "or you break hinges?"
"Both, when paid," Brukk said. He made himself smaller by arranging his elbows nearer his ribs; it didn't fool the fence, but fences are kind.
She nodded once toward Tawny; Tawny's needle never paused. "She says you asked to ask."
"I did."
"What did you bring besides the word ask?" Sera said, mild as a door proving it opens both ways.
"Bread," he said, lifting a wrapped loaf from his coat—still warm enough to speak of ovens. "Work, if something here is wrong and wants to be right. And terms."
Sera smiled with one corner of her mouth, an expression that looked like a promise she might enjoy keeping. "Tell me the last thing first," she said. "Your terms."
Brukk set the loaf carefully on the fence rail, not too near the ribbon. "No fear. No harm. Alive. Unscarred. Mouth free to say yes and no." He let each word find its chair before saying the next. "If you walk with me, you walk with me on purpose. If you stop, we stop."
Sera's hand loosened on the basket handle, not all at once. "And the rope?" she asked, seeing the coil at his belt without looking directly at it.
"Safety," he said. He took the rope up and looped a length around his own chest and shoulder in a practiced harness, then braced it with a flat palm on his sternum. "To keep a body from falling where stone is rude. I wear it first," he added. "You make the knot. If a knot offends you, we use no knot."
She watched his hands, not his face. "You say stone. People from hills like that word as if it were a cousin."
"It listens better than wood," Brukk said, and then, because he had been taught that kindness could be a form of literacy: "I am Brukk. I speak for Kael Morcant. He keeps a place at Skycleft. He calls the woman on his table Lady and bows when he says it. He wants her back."
Sera took this in without flinching at the parts most people flinch at. "And to want her back, he needs—"
"A living tether," Brukk said. "Someone whose blood has known a vampire in bed. Not a bite in a fight. Flesh, and lie." He didn't look away. "Choosing."
She turned her face a little to the side, offering him a better angle on her cheekbone, as if to let him see she wasn't reddening. "I chose once," she said. "Three times, then none again. The coat that writes on shutters taught its own rules. I kept them until I learned which ones it had written for me and which ones it had written for itself."
"Tell me," Brukk said. "If you want to."
Sera placed a palm flat on the fence rail as if to set the story somewhere respectful. "Three rules," she said. "First: Don't put iron in the bed. Nails in the wall are fine. Keys under pillows, not fine. He—" a tiny fractional pause that meant she refused to give the figure a word it could keep— "didn't like the taste."
Brukk nodded and didn't offer that he knew this already; knowing is not the same as hearing it inside the person who paid for it.
"Second," she went on, "Don't ask the same question three times. Two is caution. Three is begging, and begging buys you the wrong answer, or a price you didn't look at in daylight."
Brukk rolled that into his spine, where good advice goes. "And the third?"
"Don't put bells on yourself," Sera said, a small smile at her own gallows wit. "Not earrings. Not anything that rings. It made him too happy." She lifted her hand from the rail and turned the palm up where a thin white line crossed from thumb to lifeline. "And don't nickname each other, though he never said that. Names should be earnest when you say them that near."
She left the hand up. Brukk didn't touch it. He let the line be evidence without becoming a spectacle.
"What did you get," he asked, "for saying yes?"
Her look didn't flinch, but it did consider him differently after that question, the way a chess player reconsiders the board after realizing a bishop can be borrowed. "Marriage lets you tell a man mine in a way that stays useful after the washing," she said. "This let me say mine with an echo. And it let me sleep without dreaming about the river taking my husband again. That was a good trick, until it wasn't."
"What did it take?" Brukk asked.
"It wants manners you didn't know you owed," she said. "And when you pay them, it thinks you agree about other things you never discussed. It wants to be the only decision worth making in a room." She smiled, and the smile had steel. "It doesn't get to be."
Brukk looked at the wolves; they were pretending to be uninterested in the concept of room. He went on, because negotiations require edge and soft both. "If you come, we go together, not with the coat. Public first. Declared route." He turned and traced the air with his forefinger. "Weaver's gate → Wick Lane → tannery path → the river turn → the steps. If you want Tawny to watch your back to the corner, she watches. If you want Calder to see you pass the well, he sees."
Sera's mouth did the corner-smile again without happiness. "You invite witnesses to an errand that would be easier without them."
"My master said no fear and no harm," Brukk said. "Witnesses help fear forget to ask if it's invited."
Tawny's needle paused for the first time. She didn't speak.
"And my return?" Sera asked.
"By dawn," Brukk said. "If we fail—" he said it like a man saying if my heart stops—"Tawny walks with Calder to the orchard and calls wolves with three stones against iron. They come. They make the coat uninterested in living here."
Sera held his gaze until the yard leaned in. Then she lowered it, not in surrender but in arithmetic. "Safe-word," she said. "If I speak it, you undo knots you tied yourself, and we go home."
"Name it," Brukk said.
She thought as if she were choosing a small, sharp tool and didn't want to chip it on the first job. "Stubborn," she said at last, and glanced at the nail head peeking at the bottom of Brukk's coat—he still carried a few those square shoulders. "If I say the word, we stop pretending we're braver than we are."
"Stubborn," Brukk repeated, and felt the word crawl into his mouth and make a seat for itself.
"My price," Sera said, hand still palm-up on the rail, "is not coin. Bread for Tawny's yard, hours for her pump and hinge when mine break again, a new bucket hoop for the well if you have hands for it. And—" she tipped her head, small as a sparrow's nod— "you tell me the woman's name like it's yours, and what you plan to do to the night that thinks MINE is a good signature."
Brukk's voice went low and careful. "She is Vespera," he said. "He says Lady when he says it. He plans to teach the night OURS. He plans to work instead of argue. He plans to be stubborn until stone learns a better shape."
Sera's palm finally came down from the rail. She brushed the basket cloth back, revealing—like a small stage—two jars and a spool. She took the spool and pulled off a measure of oat-colored ribbon, tied it around the basket handle, then untied it and held it out to him. "I'll come," she said. "Public start. Declared route. I choose when to hold your arm and when to hold the sky. I say stubborn if I want home."
Brukk didn't take the ribbon from her fingers. He turned his wrist and offered his own, letting her tie it where veins made a quiet map. She did, neat double knot. He looked at the ribbon on his arm—hers, now—and felt the agreeable weight of being accountable.
"I tie this," Sera said, and doubled a second strip on the fence post where the first had been. "If you see it on our way back, you eat and sleep. If you don't, you walk until your bones make different decisions." She smiled to take the edge off the cruelty. "I'm fond of men who keep promises and water. I prefer them alive."
"Yes," Brukk said.
Tawny cleared her throat without looking up. "Dress like you mean to work, Sera. Don't give the lane a parade."
"I'm in my best not-caring," Sera said, and flicked a crumb of dust from her sleeve. She glanced at the wolves. "They'll let me touch them if I'm polite?"
Brukk looked at torn-ear; the wolf gave a theatrical sigh and allowed Sera one knuckle's worth of fur, nothing more. She rubbed the knuckle against her skirt after, the way women do when they want to put wild where only cloth can touch it.
"When?" Brukk asked.
"Moon-rise, like the coat favors," Sera said. "But we start in the day so it has to watch the first part. It can have the show after." She lifted the basket. "You carry bread and your rope. I'll carry my name. We'll see which one the night likes most."
Brukk nodded. "Weaver's gate. Wick Lane. Tannery path. River turn. Steps."
"And a witness at the well," she added. "Not to own me. To remember me."
"Tawny," Brukk said.
Tawny's needle finally stopped. "I'll walk," she said. "Only to the well. Then I'll go count my hinges."
Sera took the loaf from the fence and broke it in half, quick as a woman who doesn't make a ceremony out of hunger. She handed a piece to Brukk, a piece to Tawny, and kept the smallest for herself. She didn't offer the wolves; wolves have their own gods for bread.
Brukk ate. Bread tells the truth even when men won't. This said: we have time to do it right if we don't start lying about it.
Sera tied her kerchief tighter, nodded once at Tawny, then at Brukk. "If you lie to me," she said without sugar, "the next time I wash your shirt I'll turn it into a rag."
"I won't," Brukk said, and the won't fit him the way mountain fits under sky.
She lifted the basket and walked two steps, then stopped and turned back. "One more rule," she said. "If he says my name wrong, we leave."
Brukk didn't ask who he. Names can be traps; rules are safer. "If he says your name wrong, we leave," he repeated.
Sera nodded once, satisfied she had made a dent in the afternoon, then went out through the weaver's gate the way a woman goes to fetch water—by wearing her day like a tool belt.
Tawny's needle went back to work. "I'll see you at the well," she said without looking up.
"You'll see me," Brukk said. He touched the ribbon on his wrist because sometimes men need reminders they can feel. He looked at the fence, where Sera had left the double tie. Then he took his coil of rope, unlooped the part that bruises, and retied it in the harness she would approve. He set the path in his head as if it were stringing a loom—gate to lane to river to steps—each warp under each weft.
"Work," he told the yard, the wolves, and the promise on his wrist.
The yard, being a place where work lives, did the respectful thing and didn't argue.