The three alarms arrived before Cael got his second boot on.
The first boot was already on. He was, in a technical and legal sense, half-dressed, half-awake, and fully committed to the idea that today was going to be easier than yesterday, which was how he knew the universe was about to disagree with him in writing.
Dorran burst through the doorway of the ruin Cael had been, until approximately four seconds ago, calling a bedroom.
"They're going to kill each other!"
"No they're not."
"Cael — "
"People who are going to kill each other don't make noise. These are shouters. Shouters are negotiable. Send Seren."
"I already did."
"Then why are you here?"
Dorran, to his credit, did not even pause. "Seren sent me to get you. She said it's not a fight problem, it's a fairness problem, and those are yours."
Cael stopped with his second boot halfway up his calf.
"...damn it, she's right."
Good morning to me. Good morning to my functioning governance structure. Good morning to the specific kind of fresh hell that is being right about me at six in the morning on someone else's behalf.
He yanked the second boot on.
He was three strides into the square, rolling his shoulder to get the sleep out, when Yara met him from the opposite direction at a speed Yara did not normally use. Yara's normal pace was "the stones will wait." Yara's current pace was "the stones have opinions and I am listening."
"Node Six is dead."
Cael stopped again. "Define dead."
"The stones are intact. The channels are intact. The Influence just isn't flowing."
"Is it sabotage?"
The pause before Yara answered was very long, and very specific, and very much not like her.
"I don't know. And that answer scares me. I usually know."
Yara not knowing a thing about the grid is a new category of problem. Add it to the list. The list, for the record, is getting to the point where I might need to start a second list. Gallick has two lists. Maybe I should have two lists. Maybe we should have a Council of Lists. Leadership is a disease.
"Walk me. I'm with you in sixty seconds. I have to handle the shouters first — "
"Cael. Which problem is worse."
"I don't know yet. I'm going to find out by having them both tell me at the same time. It's called triage. I read about it."
Yara, very dry: "Where."
"Somewhere I cannot explain to you right now."
He was already moving toward the newcomer barracks when Marta intercepted him from the third direction, and that was when Cael understood, in the very specific way a man understands when the weather turns, that the morning had a plan and he was not on the planning committee.
Marta was holding a ledger stick and wearing the expression of a woman who had successfully run a grain store in a wasteland for six months and was now looking at a line item she had not budgeted for.
"Cael."
"Marta."
"I need a ruling."
"Can it wait."
"No."
"Can I vote on it later and we pretend I ruled now."
"No."
"All right. What is it."
"Ilsa is in my grain store. She's requested a bear-sized portion. I told her no. One of the new arrivals is also in my grain store. He thinks Ilsa is stealing from everyone and has become vocal about it. They both want you."
Cael stood very still in the dawn light with one boot laced wrong.
Two minutes ago I was unconscious. Now I'm adjudicating bear citizenship.
"Yara."
"Yes."
"Walk with me to the grain store. I'm going to handle this on the way to you. I'm going to handle the shouters on the way to the grain store. I'm going to pick up the settlement by its edges and shake it until everyone is in the correct pocket."
"That is not a plan."
"It is a provisional plan."
"Everything here is provisional."
"Everywhere is provisional. Marta. Lead."
---
The newcomer barracks had been a longhouse once, in the distant era of forty-eight hours ago. Now it was a patched-together thing held up by two fresh beams, the cheerful optimism of Ilsa's people, and Yara's private conviction that any building that refused to fall for one more week was philosophically a building.
Seren had separated the two fighters.
She had done it the way Seren did everything that involved other people's bodies: without touching anyone, without raising her voice, by standing in a specific spot in the middle of the room and letting her stillness do the work. One man was pressed against the wall near the door. The other was sitting, sullen and bleeding lightly from one nostril, on an overturned barrel. They were both looking at the floor.
"Morning," Cael said.
Neither man looked up.
"I'm going to skip the part where I yell at both of you. I haven't had tea yet. Seren. What happened."
"Waterskin," Seren said.
"...a waterskin."
"Yes."
"Somebody took a waterskin and somebody else punched him in the nose over it."
"Yes."
"Seren, I love how much you enjoy making me work for the story. Someone explain the waterskin to me."
The man on the barrel — older, maybe forty, dark-haired, with the specific hunched look of a man who had spent most of his adult life carrying things on his back — straightened up a little and said, with enormous dignity through a bloody nose: "He took the braided one."
"Which braided one."
"The braided one. That one." He pointed at a waterskin hanging on a peg by the door. It was, in fact, braided — small twists of leather worked into the handle, forming a pattern Cael could not read. "The handle is braided."
"And that's — bad?"
"In Duskhollow, in the rural parts, a man doesn't just take a braided-handled waterskin from another man's peg. That skin belonged to my wife before she died. The braid is her braid. You only take a braided skin from a man's peg if you are making an offer."
"An offer of what," Cael said, because he already knew and wanted to be wrong.
"An offer to — to the household. To the wife of the household."
"An offer," Cael said, "of marriage."
"Of — of the intention of."
"An offer of the intention of sleeping with the man's wife."
"It depends on the village."
The other man, against the wall, bewildered: "I did not know this. It was a waterskin! I was thirsty! There were other waterskins and I grabbed the one closest to the door!"
"The handle is braided, "the Duskhollow man said.
"I didn't know there were kinds."
"The handle is braided."
Cael pressed both hands to his eyes, which did nothing for his tea-less brain, but it did give him four extra seconds.
"Seren. Did you know there were kinds."
"No," Seren said, "but I'm not surprised. Every village has stupid rules."
The Duskhollow man, offended and bleeding: "They're not stupid!"
"They are."
"They're — "
"Okay," Cael said. "Stop. Both of you. Here is the ruling. You — " he pointed at the man against the wall — "apologize for taking a braided waterskin from a peg without checking what a braid means in Duskhollow. You — " he pointed at the Duskhollow man — "apologize for punching a man who did not know braided waterskins were marriage documents. Nobody marries anyone. The Ninth's official position on braids, going forward, is that they are decorative until someone has explained otherwise, and the burden of explanation is on the owner of the braid. If either of you touches the other before dinner, Seren will explain the Ninth's cultural etiquette in her own way."
"My way," Seren said, "is two broken fingers."
The Duskhollow man's eyes went a little round. "That is a — firm rule."
"It's a provisional rule."
"She said my fingers."
"She said fingers in general. She's implying it's a category. Try not to be the category."
The two men looked at each other. The wall-man stuck his hand out first. The Duskhollow man wiped his bleeding nose and shook it. The handshake was correct by length, awkward by feel, and politically sufficient. Cael counted it as the third-best thing that had happened to him before breakfast.
He headed for the door.
Seren fell in beside him at the threshold. Quiet. Close.
"How many more rules like this are we going to trip over," he said.
"All of them."
"Great. Excellent. Looking forward to that."
"There is more."
"Of course there is."
"I have been keeping a mental list of things I notice in the newcomers. Things that are going to be problems."
He stopped walking. Turned to her. She had her flat face on, the one that meant I am about to say a thing and I would like you not to make a joke about it.
"How long is the list," he said.
"Seventeen items."
"Seventeen."
"I haven't written it down. I don't write."
"Seren — " He caught himself. Readjusted. "Would you be willing to — "
"No."
"I haven't finished the sentence."
"Yes you have."
"Fine. I'll have Yevan interview you. One hour. He'll write. You'll talk. He'll make you coffee. Coffee is the only bribe I have."
She looked at him for a long second. Then, without quite changing her expression, she said, "One hour. With coffee."
"Thank you — "
"Don't make it weird."
"I am incapable of not making it weird. That's my one talent. That and making people cry on Tuesdays."
"It is not a Tuesday."
"It's always a Tuesday somewhere."
They walked out into the square. She walked a half-step closer than a half-step ago. He did not point it out.
Seren just agreed to write down seventeen things, which is the most paperwork she has ever agreed to do in her life, and she did it because I asked with the word 'would.' I am going to take this as a political victory and a personal one. I am going to file it under 'things I do not make jokes about.' The jokes drawer has been emptying lately. The drawer I don't make jokes about is getting heavier. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
Gallick, coming the other way across the square, already wearing his merchant-formal coat for a reason Cael did not care to know at this hour: "Did I hear shouting about waterskins?"
"Gallick, go away."
"I have a matchmaking idea."
"Gallick, go away."
"Fees negotiable!"
"GO AWAY."
---
Node Six sat at the eastern edge of the grid where the wasteland began to forget itself into flat grey scrub. Yara had marked it with a small painted ring months ago. The ring was still there. The stone inside the ring was warm to the touch — no, that was sun-warm. The stone was dead in the way Yara meant: no hum, no pull, no faint pressure under the palm that said this place knows you are here.
Cael had never noticed, until it was absent, that he was used to that pressure.
He crouched at the base of the node and ran his hand a few inches above the dirt, the way he had seen Yara do.
"Nothing," he said.
"Nothing."
"When did it go."
"Between the second watch and dawn. I felt it from the council chamber. I felt absence. Do you know how hard it is to feel the absence of a thing you built with your own — " She stopped. Breathed. "Someone touched it."
"You know because — "
"Because the grid doesn't stop. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't go to sleep. It either is or it has been interrupted, and interruptions leave a specific shape and this shape is not sabotage in the way I know sabotage and it is not decay in the way I know decay."
Cael circled the node. Slowly. He was not a Formation practitioner. He was a tired man with a nagging modern-thinking habit that said the perimeter is where the evidence is.
He found it on the third pass.
The dirt around Node Six had been disturbed. Not dug. Not scuffed. Smoothed — the way a person smoothed a pillow to hide the shape of a head. Someone had brushed the ground with a palm or a piece of cloth in concentric arcs, working outward from the node, trying to erase their own footprints.
They had missed one.
A single bootprint at the outer edge, where the smoothing had not reached. The toe was pointed back toward the settlement. A right boot. Medium size.
"Yara."
She came around. Looked where he pointed. Went very still.
"Not sabotage in the technical sense," Cael said. "Someone walked around the node. Touched it, maybe. Something interrupted its relationship with the grid."
"You can't 'interrupt a relationship.' It's stone and Influence."
"Stone and Influence are in a relationship. I'm telling you I read this somewhere."
He had not read this anywhere. He was extrapolating wildly from his memory of a physics textbook he hadn't opened since he was nineteen. Yara's face did something complicated, which was the face of a Formation Path practitioner being accidentally right.
"Have someone touch it," he said. "A few people. Yourself. Me. Marta. Dorran. Ilsa. Anyone who's in the area. See if it responds to any of us."
She did. One at a time.
Yara's hand: the node stayed silent for a long moment, then woke grudgingly, like a cat that had been stepped on and had forgiven but not forgotten.
Cael's hand: a sluggish warmth, nothing like the hum he remembered from other nodes.
Marta's hand, summoned from the grain store with an apron still on: a better response, the grain under her nails doing some of the work.
Dorran's hand, summoned because he was close and loud: a steady, easy response. The node liked Dorran.
Ilsa, curious, drifting over from her bear: she laid her hand on the stone with the respectful care of a person who touched living things for a living. The node did not respond to her at all. Not sluggish. Not at all.
Ilsa took her hand back and looked at it like she had left something on it.
"That is interesting," she said, in the tone she used for things that were not interesting but dangerous.
"Ilsa," Cael said, "don't take it personally."
"I'm not taking anything personally. I'm noting data."
"File it under 'unexplained.'"
"I file everything under 'unexplained' until the bear tells me otherwise."
And that, Cael thought, is the most Ilsa sentence I have ever heard.
Yara knelt by the node. "I can re-seed it. It will take a day. I'll watch it tonight."
"No."
She looked up, startled. "No?"
"You watching Node Six tonight is what our visitor is counting on. Don't watch. Let them think we haven't noticed. Put up a decoy."
Yara sat back on her heels. Processed that. Slowly. "You're thinking like a spy."
"I'm thinking like a man who's read too many of Gallick's schemes. Turns out they rub off."
Gallick, who had somehow gotten across the settlement to be nearby in the four minutes since Cael had told him to go away: "I'm so proud."
"Gallick, why are you here."
"I am following the drama. Drama is a form of market research. Do you need a decoy?"
"Yes, apparently, I need a decoy."
"Dorran."
"Why Dorran?"
"Because he is naturally loud. A loud watcher is a visible watcher. A visible watcher is a watcher who cannot be mistaken for a trap."
"I am RIGHT HERE," Dorran said from thirty feet away.
Gallick turned to him. "You are an excellent decoy, young man. I will hire you tonight. The job pays in the emotional validation of being chosen."
"I don't — what?"
"Dorran," Cael said, "take the decoy shift. Tonight. Be visible. Be obvious. Whistle if you have to."
"What about the real watcher?"
"I'll figure that out."
I will figure that out, which is also the phrase I use when I don't know how to do a thing and am hoping the words will summon a plan. The words never summon a plan. The words summon a deeper awareness that I don't have a plan. This is how leadership works.
He turned to Yara. "Node Six. Tomorrow, re-seed. Tonight, decoy. Can you live with that?"
Yara exhaled slowly. "I can live with it. I will not sleep."
"I'm not sleeping either. We can not-sleep together."
"Romantic."
"Strategic."
"I'm going to tell Seren you said that."
"Yara. I am warning you."
---
By the time they got to the grain store, Cael had mentally scheduled approximately fourteen things he could not actually do and had forgotten what his second boot felt like.
Marta was outside the door with her arms folded. Ilsa was inside. The refugee — a wiry man in his thirties with flour on his shirt and the specific indignation of a person who had once been robbed and now saw robbery everywhere — was inside too, gesturing.
Cael went in.
"Explain," he said, to the room, to whoever wanted the floor.
The flour-shirted man got there first. "She wants enough for the bear. The bear is outside the walls. The ration rules don't cover external bears."
Ilsa, perfectly calm, leaning against a grain sack like a woman who had come to a town meeting on purpose: "Hob is a resident. He has simply declined housing."
"Housing is a requirement for rations!"
"Is it?"
"Yes!"
They both looked at Cael.
Cael breathed in. Breathed out. Considered, briefly and honestly, whether he could fake his own death at this specific moment with enough conviction to get the rest of the morning off.
"Marta," he said. "Is Hob contributing to the settlement?"
Marta, who had clearly been waiting for the question: "He killed a wildcat at the east wall two nights ago that would have gotten into my seed bins. He has, in total, reduced my nightly losses by about eight percent since he arrived. I am unhappy about the arithmetic because I have to carry his feed, but the arithmetic is in his favor."
"Is the housing rule in any document?"
"No. It's a rule because I said it in a meeting once."
"Was anyone present at the meeting."
"You."
"Was I paying attention."
"Doubtful."
"Then the rule is provisional. Ilsa. Hob eats from settlement stores under a new category."
Ilsa did not move. "What category."
Here it goes. I am about to invent bureaucracy with my mouth at half past six in the morning in front of a bear person and a grain person, and the thing I am about to invent is going to become permanent in about nine seconds because everyone will hear me say it and nobody will bother to un-say it, so let me at least say it in a shape that works.
"Associated Residents," Cael said.
A small, particular silence.
"Associated Residents," Ilsa repeated.
"A formal status for non-human members of the community whose care is a collective responsibility. They don't live in the housing. They don't pay the taxes we don't have. They don't attend the meetings we barely hold. But they contribute to the community's survival in a measurable way, and the community contributes to their care as a — as a — "
"As a promise," Ilsa said.
"Sure. As a promise."
"That is not a word from any rations framework I know."
"It's a provisional framework. Marta, log Hob as Associated Resident. Allocation: one bear-sized portion, defined as whatever you and Ilsa negotiate without coming back to me. Hob's category is capped at one resident for now. If we get a second bear, we'll have a committee meeting."
"Who's on the committee," the flour-shirted man said.
"Anyone who wants to be on a bear committee."
"I don't want to be on a bear committee."
"Then you are not on the bear committee. The bear committee does not exist yet. I do not want to preempt its nonexistence."
"That's not a — "
"That is not a system, it is a provisional system, yes, I know, everyone here knows, Yara has already said it this morning, can we please move on."
Ilsa nodded, once, slowly. The nod was the smallest thing in the room and also the largest.
"You named us."
"It's not a name, it's a bureaucratic label."
"Those are the same thing where I come from."
"Where are you from?"
Ilsa's face did not move. Her voice went a half-step flatter.
"Nowhere anymore. Thanks for the name."
She walked out.
Cael stood with his hand still half-raised from pointing at the grain ledger and felt, very specifically, the hollow feeling of a man who had just done something important without understanding it. It was like stepping onto a stair that wasn't there and finding out there was a stair there after all and it had caught him.
Gallick, who had followed them into the grain store in his merchant coat for reasons Cael was not going to ask about: "I would like to extend the Associated Residents category to legally convenient associates of residents. For trade-law purposes."
"No."
"Provisionally no?"
"Permanently provisionally no."
"I'm going to take that under advisement."
"Gallick, I swear to — "
And that was when the music started.
---
Cael became aware of the music slowly, which was the only way to become aware of it, because the music arrived at the settlement gate with a cheerful lute and a voice and the specific acoustic quality of a performer who had been practicing for his entrance down the last quarter-mile of road.
It was a ballad. Cael could not place the dialect — something half-Glasswater, half-something else, vowels he hadn't heard before — but the shape of it was clear. It was a welcome song. It was, very possibly, three welcome songs stitched together and sold as one.
He walked out of the grain store into the square and watched the settlement gate fill up with residents. Newcomers, mostly. Ilsa's people. A few of Yara's. They were smiling. A small circle had formed around the musician.
Cael's heart, which had been doing well, sank an exact and noticeable amount.
Oh no. Oh no. The universe has sent me a musician. The universe is testing whether I can handle nine problems at once or whether I will, in fact, simply start weeping. I want to note for the record that I have considered weeping as a response. It is on the table. It is a tactical option.
He crossed the square.
The musician was a man in his early thirties, with travel-worn colorful clothes in a style Cael had never seen — embroidered cuffs, a jacket that had once been red before it became road-red, a lute slung casually but expensively across his back. He had the specific face of a man who knew exactly how he looked and was comfortable about it. He was bowing to the small crowd.
He straightened up when he saw Cael approach, and his face lit up with the kind of professional warmth that was genuine and calculated and the two were not in conflict.
"Good morning, beautiful Ninth! I heard you take in people who have nowhere to perform. My name is Teodar. I am a Performance Path practitioner. I sing stories into being."
Behind Teodar, on the road — because of course — another group was trudging up the rise. Cael counted automatically. Fourteen. Maybe fifteen. Men, women, two kids. Dusty. Slow. New arrivals, not a delegation.
The ballad had been an audition.
Cael, internal: I have two hundred things to do today and I have not yet done zero of them. The last twenty-six minutes I have invented bear law, ruled on braid marriage, diagnosed a metaphysical disturbance in the grain of my formation grid, and scheduled two people to not sleep tonight. And now I have a singing man and fourteen tired people and I am supposed to respond to all of it with grace and a clear head and I do not have any of the things in the prior sentence. I have one bootlace tied wrong and I have not drunk tea.
He said, out loud, "Welcome to the Ninth. I have two things to ask you. Then we'll feed you. Then we'll talk."
Teodar, pleased at the question-and-feeding structure: "Of course."
"First. Performance Path. What does that mean exactly? What can you actually do?"
"I can make people feel things. That's the whole discipline. Right now I'm making them feel welcomed." He indicated the crowd, who were, in fact, visibly softer around the edges than they had been four minutes ago. Cael had not noticed it until it was pointed out. "In a week I could have them feeling brave, patient, or generous. In a month, if I had a fixed audience, I could hold a mood across an entire settlement."
Cael's brain, which had been running on fumes and a leftover paranoia, went very, very quiet.
"Say that again."
"A fixed audience. A month. A mood across a settlement."
"You can hold a mood across a settlement."
"Is that useful?"
Is it useful. IS IT USEFUL. My formation practitioner makes the dirt feel like home. My medicine practitioner keeps people alive. My commerce practitioner keeps us economically visible and also keeps two lists about who to push into ditches. My beast practitioner just gave us a bear-shaped sentry. And now I have a man who can MAKE PEOPLE FEEL A COLLECTIVE MOOD. This is either the most valuable person who has ever walked into this settlement, or a weapon someone sent to use on us. Probably both. Definitely both. I am going to welcome him and I am going to sleep with one eye on him until my eye falls out.
Out loud: "It's useful. Welcome to the Ninth."
"Wonderful!" Teodar beamed. "I have, with me, three songs about your city that I composed on the road based on rumors. Would you like to hear them?"
"Not right now."
"You haven't heard the one about the bear yet."
Gallick, who had materialized at Cael's elbow the way Gallick materialized at things: "There's one about the bear already?"
"News travels."
Gallick, reverent: "He's famous."
The disc in Cael's pocket twitched against his thigh with a faint warmth he hadn't felt in three weeks.
He did not react. He did not look down. He kept his face still.
Do not react. Do not react. Do not react. You have a musician who can hold moods and a pocket that has started warming when musicians sing and a dead formation node and seventeen cultural flashpoints and a bear in a grain store. You are going to handle exactly one thing at a time, and this one is the musician, and you are going to put the pocket in the 'ask Bragen later' pile.
"Teodar. We're going to get you food. We're going to get your fourteen friends food. We'll settle you tonight, formal introductions tomorrow. Gallick, get him fed. Get them fed. Use Marta's north bench."
"On it."
Cael was halfway through turning away when he saw the Chief Advisor — the cat, small, grey, grievously important — sitting on top of Teodar's lute case where it had been set down by the gate. The cat had claimed the case in the three minutes since Teodar had put it down. The cat was making eye contact with Teodar and judging whether Teodar deserved the cat's approval.
Teodar, without missing a beat: "I see the Chief Advisor approves."
Gallick, with the warm delight of a man whose running gag had just been ratified by a stranger: "Motion carries."
The settlement has absorbed him in ninety seconds. If he is a weapon I am already in the barrel.
Cael allowed himself exactly one second to be charmed.
Then he turned around, because Tessara was riding hard from the east.
---
Tessara arrived the way Tessara always arrived: like a woman who had ridden through weather that did not matter to her and had news that did. She was off her horse before it fully stopped. The horse, insulted, stood with the specific offended posture of horses who had been treated as tools.
"Cael."
"Tessara."
"Registry column. Different from Vedris's. Bigger."
Cael's morning, which had already been a failed experiment, collapsed into a single clean line of attention. The rest of the square and all its problems simply faded.
"Tell me."
"Twenty-five riders. Not twenty. Twenty-five. Different colors. Thornwall official blue with red trim. The red trim means they're not from the Eastern Branch. They're from the capital's Compliance Division. Vedris's report does not protect you from them. They're two days out. And Cael — "
He waited.
" — they're not the only people on that road. There are others behind them. A Glasswater trade delegation. Maybe a day behind the Compliance column. Both are heading here. Nobody sends two delegations to the Wasteland in the same week unless something is coordinated, or something is about to be."
He stood very still.
Around him, the music had stopped. Teodar had sensed the change in the air and had let the song trail off. Gallick, without being asked, had turned to face the gate so that his back was to the square and his eyes were on the road. Seren, from somewhere behind Cael, had moved in closer. The cat, up on the lute case, had not moved at all.
Two days. Two delegations. Forty new residents I've never met. Node Six sabotaged. A ghost in the forge. A beautiful singer who can bend a settlement's mood. I wanted to be a man who lived in a ruined library and read until I starved. How is this my life.
He exhaled.
"Tessara. Water. Food. I want you in the council room in twenty minutes. Gallick — "
"Here."
"Get Bragen. Get the second pot of tea on. Tell Yevan to start a new ledger. Seren, find Ilsa, tell her I'm not going to sleep tonight and I need someone who doesn't scold me about it."
"I don't scold."
"You silently scold. It's worse."
"I am going to Ilsa."
"Thank you."
He turned to the musician, who was watching all this with the bright alert face of a professional who could already tell he had arrived on the right day to be useful.
"And Teodar — "
"Yes, Spokesman?"
"I may need that song about bravery sooner than I thought."
Teodar's face did something specific and pleased.
"I will have it ready by tonight."
"Good man. Welcome to the Ninth."
He walked toward the council ruin with the kind of steadiness he was faking very, very well. Behind him, the square was already moving, because the square was the kind of square that moved when its tired man walked a certain way.
The disc in his pocket was warm against his thigh.
He did not look down.