The next two days disappeared into ore carts, wall repairs, and the steady rhythm of a town relearning how to work. Every morning the miners marched east under escort, every evening the stockpile behind the registry grew taller, and every night Marrick wrote numbers that would have been a fortune anywhere else in the kingdom.
The boy grew through all of it, which would have been normal if he were growing at a normal speed.
"He doesn't fit the shirt anymore," Vella reported on the third morning, holding up the tiny outfit a seamstress had gifted them four days ago, "the one that fit him perfectly when we came down the mountain."
"Aria," Hajin said, watching the boy hang upside down from a ceiling beam for no reason anyone could explain.
"He's grown four centimeters since hatching," she said from his shoulder, tilting her head at the upside-down child, "so his clothes will last about a week each. The seamstress should start charging you a subscription."
