**
Tuva barred the door, stood in the centre with her arms out, and turned once.
"Still not big enough for Bjorn's hammer heads."
"One shelf," Kasper said from outside. "As ordered."
He left the shelf planks stacked against the hall wall. I brought them in after the midday meal and set them on pegs while Tuva decided which shirts counted as spare.
Liv appeared in the doorway the moment the bar was up, was told the room was not a climbing frame, and retreated to Liam's census with the air of someone filing a complaint.
Alma Moen watched from the dens path with a clean-cloth bundle on her hip and said nothing about the finished gap. She did not need to. The midwife's eye had already done its measuring days ago.
---
The market-road token on the beam near our door acquired a companion by accident.
