The tavern stank of boiled cabbage and wet wool. Leorie kept to the corner where the hearth threw a nervous light. His ale warmed in his palm. His throat itched.
"Cinder hand," someone called.
Boots thumped near his table. A man in a patched officer cloak limped into the glow, scar dragging his mouth.
"You Leorie?"
"That depends who is paying," Leorie said.
"Captain Darrik. Soot Banner Company." He took the seat opposite. "Gatehouse job. Quick coin."
"War work," Leorie said.
"What else." Darrik's smile held no humor. "Ravenn March. Stubborn gate. Pitch behind it. Your tongue could unlock it."
"How much for the key."
"Thirty silvers for a week. Fifty if it falls by sunrise."
"That is not coin. That is insult."
"A cask of water and my word the choir will not falter."
Leorie watched the hearth. Tame house fire. He imagined barrels sweating in the dark, heat racing down his breath, wood surrendering like paper. The itch became a hum.
"Seventy. And the cask."
Darrik spat into his palm and held it out. "Done."
Leorie met it. Heat purred in his blood. A job. A coin. A flame.
They rode before dusk bled out. Fog lay low over the March. The gatehouse hunched from the mud, stone slick, torches shivering. Men in patched mail paced the parapet, shadows long as spears.
The Soot Banner gathered behind him, pikes black with use. "Your stage," Darrik said, pressing a copper striker into Leorie's hand. "Sing."
Leorie walked until the wet earth tugged at his boots. He breathed. Air slid hot into him. The syllables gathered at the back of his throat, crude and heavy, the way a mallet is heavy. He tasted iron.
He struck the copper once. Sparks leapt.
"Ignara," he whispered.
The word bent the air. Heat rushed up his spine and poured out of his chest. Steam ripped from the rain. Inside the gate, a white flare turned orange and roared. Fire climbed the barrels like hands already waiting.
Shouts rose. A bell clanged. Torches fluttered.
Leorie spoke again, smaller, guiding. "Hold. Push."
The flames pressed inward, eating iron bands, finding the seam. The gate groaned, then split like a rib.
Wood became shrapnel. Iron screamed. Men tumbled with the gate into the mud. Heat struck Leorie like a shield. He stepped with it and did not fall.
"Go," Darrik shouted.
The Soot Banner flowed past him in a dark rush. Pikes lowered. Boots slapped mud. The world shrank to noise, brightness, and pitch. Somewhere a banner toppled and hissed in the mud; somewhere a man prayed to a god that was only a name.
Leorie drew breath that tasted of nails. The itch that had nagged him sank back, replaced by a raw ache in the throat, a glass scrape with every swallow. Always like this after. The bill arrived later. He did not keep receipts; his body kept them for him, in scars and ash in the lungs.
He moved with the line, not eager to lead. The yard smoked like a ruined kitchen. An officer in a dented helm stumbled toward him, eyes wide. Leorie touched two fingers to the striker and spoke a tiny note. Heat thickened and pushed the man aside without a burn. He fell and stayed there.
By the inner door the fight turned to sorting. Some men knelt. Some ran and were taken. Leorie kept moving. If you stop, the fire in your head starts to talk.
"Cinder hand," Darrik said, breath fogging, face wet with rain and sweat. "Beautiful. The sun came early."
Leorie nodded. Speaking would hurt. He took his flask and drank. The water went down like gravel.
"Strip the armory," Darrik barked. "Unbar the storehouse. Lift that bell before it brings cousins."
Leorie turned to the gate, now a charred mouth swallowing night. The flames were low, obedient, almost polite. He did not trust polite flame. He found a long pole and shoved the barrels apart to starve the tongues. Work first. Thinking later.
Boots squelched. Maren, the quartermaster, carried a ledger under oilcloth. Her hair was pinned under a scarf, her face set calm.
"Additions?" she asked.
"Add water," he rasped.
She looked at the yard. "Casualties by dawn. For both sides."
"Write them true."
"I always do." She studied his throat. "Your voice is worse."
"It will mend."
"Until it does not." She tucked the ledger away. "Darrik will pay you tonight."
"Good. I am thirsty."
Rain thickened. Men hauled chains. Someone found bread and passed it along. Smoke lifted. The night beyond the wall felt wider than it had an hour ago.
"Leorie," Darrik called from the arch. He held up a leather purse. Coins clinked. "Seventy, as promised. And a cask."
Leorie took the purse and the small sealed barrel a porter shoved into his arms. Water meant voice. Voice meant work. He tilted the barrel and drank from the tap until his throat cooled from raw glass to dull stone.
"Do you pray," Darrik asked, "before you speak those words."
"I keep my mouth for work."
"Good. The choir will not reach us until morning. If the March rouses, I want flame on the wall."
Leorie nodded. He hated choirs. Alone he could steer the current.
He walked the wall. The wind tasted of sodden wheat. Fields lay like drowned cloth. The old bell hung mute and crooked, its tongue wedged so the sound would go no farther. Beyond, a road ran east, milestones slick with rain. He pressed his palm to one and felt a faint thrum, like breath. Roads remembered words. Roads carried heat if someone had taught them how.
He took his hand away.
"Movement," a pikeman hissed.
Figures slipped through the fog beyond the ditch. Not many. Scavengers, or desperate kin. Leorie raised the striker and spoke a small, low syllable that warmed the air into a warning glow. The shadows stopped, then backed away into the wet wheat.
"Enough voice for tonight," he muttered.
Down in the yard the prisoners were counted, the wounded bound, the dead laid under a tarp. Maren supervised with the calm that made men obey more than shouting ever did. Leorie watched a moment and let his eyes close for a blink.
A bell sounded anyway, far away. Not the gatehouse bell. A thin note, almost a fork struck and left to sing in damp air.
Darrik looked up. "Hear that."
Leorie tilted his head. The sound came again. Once. Then no more.
"Scouts," Darrik said. "Or fools."
"Or a signal," Leorie said.
"Either way, we hold until dawn." Darrik clapped his shoulder. "Then we move before cousins move in."
Leorie looked at the broken gate, at ash steaming shallow breaths, at the road east. The itch was quiet, but sleep did not feel close. He lifted the purse and let the weight knock his knuckles. Coin, water, work. The old trinity.
Another job finished. Another charred mouth. He took a place on the wall with the pikemen, eyes on the fog, voice kept in reserve like a blade sheathed.
When dawn came, it would ask for more. He would answer. He always did.