Rain stitched the road. Wagons groaned. Darrik drove the pace hard.
"Ledger stop," Maren said, slate ready. "If we don't reconcile here, the march tithe doubles."
"Reconcile when we're safe," Darrik said.
"Give me a milehouse and five minutes."
"Five becomes arrows," Leorie rasped.
"Then make me a shield," Maren said. "The world counts even if we don't."
Darrik sighed. "Bridge milehouse."
The milehouse hunched by a stone bridge, half toll, half shrine. An old clerk behind a hatch eyed them.
"Company?"
"Soot Banner," Darrik said, dropping coin. "Transit."
"Transit recorded," the clerk said. "Casual losses?"
Maren opened her ledger. "Thirty-seven dead at Ravenn Gate. Twenty-three wounded, paid in salves."
"Enemy or allied?"
"Human," she said.
The clerk's gaze slid to Leorie. "Whose fire?"
"Mine."
"Then heat-tax." He pushed a coil of dyed thread. "One blue for every burn you can't name."
Darrik snorted. "Tax for flame?"
"It binds memory to coin," Maren said, knotting the blue around silver. "Widows read colors first."
A bright note pinged out. Leorie stiffened. The clerk flinched. Darrik's hand found his knife.
"What is it?" Leorie asked.
"Fork," the clerk whispered. "Someone warning someone."
Leorie watched the hedge. Only rain moved.
"Quartermaster Maren, Blue Thread," she told the clerk, quick. "One sack left per door in Ravenn Village. One barrel nails. Two casks salt. No bread broken before the bell."
"Paid mercy," the clerk muttered, scratching. "Name of fire-tongue?"
"Leorie."
"Heat recorded."
A prisoner coughed in a wagon, rope biting his wrists. "Water."
Leorie tilted a canteen. The boy drank, staring at the striker on Leorie's belt.
"You were on the wall," Leorie said.
"We thought the pitch would scare you."
"It did," Leorie said. "It made me hurry."
"The fork wasn't ours," the boy said.
"Whose then?"
"Someone who counts from far away."
"Cinder," Darrik called. "We move."
Maren tied three coins with blue thread and slid them into the dish. "Widows come through you," she told the clerk. "Blue Thread office in Vastria will pay out on ledger and witness."
The clerk stared. "Your kind used to throw copper and run."
"My kind is tired of knives at night," she said. "Receipt."
He stamped a card. "Go while the rain is."
They crossed the bridge. Leorie walked beside Maren's horse. "Blue on coin buys off hate?"
"It buys a breath," she said. "Breaths become hours."
"And you trust a clerk?"
"I trust color."
Darrik rode back. "Next milestone we cut east. Scouts saw smoke where smoke shouldn't be."
"Fork?" Leorie asked.
"Or choir," Darrik said. "Either way it's not over our wagons."
The road climbed into barley. A milestone at the rise wore fresh chisel marks. Leorie brushed it; a faint tremor ticked his fingertips.
"Don't," Maren warned.
"It hums," he said.
"It remembers," she said. "And those who wrote the memory might be listening."
A clean-cloaked man stepped from the barley, hands raised, smile. No colors, no badge.
"Travelers," he called. "Regards from the bridge clerk."
"We didn't ask for regards," Darrik said. "Business."
"A correction," the man said. "Your ledger forgot three dead."
Maren frowned. "Who?"
"Two old men who choked on smoke and a girl who ran back for a doll," he said. "The fork keeps count. You forgot."
Leorie felt heat stir. "Names."
"Why would names matter to killers?"
"They matter to me."
"Then buy them." The man offered a pouch that clinked wrong, like teeth. "Price of knowing is price of guilt."
"Pikes," Darrik said, low.
Four more cloaks rose from the barley, blades down. Leorie lifted his striker a finger's width.
"Don't," the clean man said. "We're here for numbers, not blood. Leave three coins with blue thread. Walk away. Speak no more. And tell your quartermaster to count better."
Maren's jaw tightened. "We left sacks. We left coin. We left room to breathe."
"You left a girl with no doll," the man said.
Leorie's voice roughened. "I'll leave you with no teeth if you keep grinning."
The smile went flat. "Leave the thread."
Darrik weighed field, rain, wagons. He hated bargains he couldn't break with steel. "Three coins," he said to Maren. "Tie them loud."
Maren's fingers worked: loop, knot, loop. She raised the blue knots like a flag. The clean man nodded; the cloaks slid back into barley.
"Should've cut them down," Darrik said when they were gone.
"Next time," Leorie said. "Bring me a plain, not barley."
Maren tucked the empty spool. "You still want the names?"
"Yes."
"Then we go to Vastria and make the fork talk," she said. "But first we live to reach it."
"Deal."
Rain thinned. The milestones hummed, or his throat did. Either way, the road felt awake, and behind them a bell that wasn't a bell remembered how to ring.
A pikeman stumbled, gripping a forearm. "Scratch," he said, pale.
"Stop," Maren ordered. She tore linen, then looked at Leorie. "Heat."
He touched the striker to the air and breathed a small syllable. The cloth warmed, steam curling. The pikeman hissed, then steadied.
"Thank you," the man muttered.
"Don't thank me," Leorie said. "Pay Maren. She keeps the dead from multiplying."
The bell chimed again, faint and eastward. Darrik swore and waved the column faster.
Leorie glanced back at the blue knots in Maren's palm. "Vastria," he said.
"Vastria," she answered. "We'll buy the names