Chương 137: Chapter 110: An Embarrassing Vacancy

The forge had collapsed inward, which seemed unfair to a building that had spent most of its life containing fire. Half the roof lay across the old work floor in a slope of slate, charred timber, and ash, while the front wall had split around the doorway and left the stone arch standing above nothing worth entering. The sign was gone.

One Iron bracket remained beside the opening, twisted down where heat or falling weight had pulled it from the mortar, and the counter where I had once counted every piece I owned had become scorched boards beneath the roof. Arra Glen had sold me the Woodsman's Axe there when its price represented more days of my life than the weapon itself.

The axe now lay wrapped in the Cataract with its haft broken and head warped from the demon, while the Cinderline rested against my hip, dark and clean beside clothes that still smelled of deer fat and smoke. A Bronze sword, a changed Heartwood Bird, bars stacked beneath cover, and enough coin attached to my name that Merris had begun speaking in totals should have made the distance from the frightened buyer at that counter feel like progress. I kept looking at the missing weapon rack instead.

Wade approached carrying a pry bar over one shoulder. He inspected the rear wall, the surviving arch, and the cracked hearth visible beneath the fallen beams before acknowledging me. Damage received his full attention before people did, especially when someone had built it cheaply enough to become political later.

"Front wall might hold," he said.

"Back one will not. Whoever patched the chimney used river mortar where the heat line needed crushed brick."

"The roof fell first."

"The roof admitted it first." Wade drove the pry bar beneath a blackened beam and leaned until its outer layer collapsed into powder. His eyes followed the failure from chimney to wall and then towards the road, the Cataract, and the covered metal stores beyond.

"This place was too small before it came down. One shallow hearth, poor draught, no safe quench line, and barely enough room to swing a hammer without striking whoever came to complain about the price."

"I bought an axe here."

"You were poor enough to make the shelves look generous." The insult should have passed like most of Wade's humour, leaving a bruise only if I chose to press it. The Heartwood Bird sat heavier since the Demon-Vessel Shard joined it, and the words did not pass. They turned through the old counter, the kitchen smoke in my coat, Lysa's trays of carved deer, and the repaired room in the Cataract until respectable began sounding like a place someone had already assigned me. Wade glanced at the Cinderline.

"You have improved the standard since. Bronze sword, ranked cooking, enough Iron to roof this twice. Give Lysa another week and she will have you indoors permanently."

"I was outside yesterday."

"Rotating meat."

"It fed the town."

"I know. That is why it matters." He let the beam fall and pointed the pry bar towards the market.

"A fighter is useful while something needs killing. A man who can feed a hundred people, cut Ironwood, find ore, carry a wall, and bring home the metal for the brackets is harder to let wander off."

"I am not staying because I cooked one deer."

"No, friend. You might stay because leaving keeps producing another reason to return." The line carried less humour than the ones around it. Wade was not asking me to remain. He was arranging the problem so refusal would sound like choosing broken roofs, blunt tools, and hungry people over work I could perform. His authority had always grown that way: one crew needed timber, another needed braces, and eventually everyone needed the man who knew which repair failed first.

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"We rebuild this properly," he said.

"Stone floor, raised hearth, separate furnace footing, bellows that keep their breath, storage for charcoal and bars, room for tools, nails, hinges, weapon blanks, and whatever Halden insists requires twelve measurements before anyone touches it."

"Halden is going north."

"He returns for the bridge."

"The bridge has no foundations."

"Neither did the metal before you brought it home." Wade looked towards the covered stock.

"You can see what those bars become."

"I see bars."

"You see axe heads, brackets, grates, nails, chain, and a reason not to send Iron north and buy it back after Longreach charges us for making it useful."

"That sounds like Merris."

"It sounds like anyone tired of paying twice." Wade planted the bar beneath another beam but did not lift.

"Longreach sees a crossing with houses attached. The Council sees a settlement too small to matter until the southern road sends something through us. We keep the metal, timber, food, and people here, and they lose the right to decide what Dunmere is from a dry office."

"We?"

"There are people who intend to remain."

"That was not the question." Wade held my gaze for a moment, then returned to the beam.

"No. It was not." He wanted the forge, walls, Halden's bridge, Lysa's trust, and enough work passing through his crews that formal authority became an inconvenience rather than a requirement. A town could be ruled through orders. Wade preferred becoming the man every order depended upon.

"You came back with more wealth than Dunmere has seen in years," he said, "and your first response was to cook for everyone. Noble. Domestic."

"It was one deer."

"It was ranked Cooking."

"Iron late." His eyebrows rose.

"There. Respectable." The Heartwood Bird warmed. Irritation arrived before I had chosen what deserved it, moving beneath the ribs where Sanguine Aegis had formed and down the dark paths that still ended in both ring fingers. Cooking had kept people fed. Lysa had needed the work, and the town had measured three days around the kitchen. None of that changed, but Wade's amusement turned the ability into a hook someone might use to hang me inside Dunmere. Wade did not see the thought gather.

He pulled the pry bar free and started towards the road.

"I will get Fen and Joss to clear the slate. You decide how large the furnace needs to be."

"I did not agree to build it."

"No. You stood in front of the ruin and started measuring. The agreement will catch up." He left carrying the bar across one shoulder and the future of Dunmere behind his eyes. Smoke from the beastbone kitchen crossed the road and entered my clothes again. Edda struck a ladle against the cauldron three times, paused for someone to answer, then struck twice more with a rhythm I could not stop counting. I stepped beneath the surviving arch and tested the floor with one boot.

Ash shifted over the old stones, revealing the shallow groove where the quench trough had drained badly towards the wall. The counter had once forced customers to stand close enough to the hearth that the heat made hesitation expensive, while the rear shelf offered only the tools Arra could afford to keep in a town where most buyers counted Iron before quality. I had understood the poverty of the stock then. Wade had looked at the same room and seen how poverty had been built into it.

A broken hinge lay beneath one roof board, its pin worn narrow where years of opening had consumed the softer metal. I picked it up, turned it over, and knew it needed replacing, but the knowledge arrived as memory and judgement rather than the clean system certainty Appraisal had once supplied. The absence should have reminded me why ability slots mattered. Instead, the hinge felt like another thing Dunmere would place in my hand once the furnace existed. I opened my abilities.

Basic Cooking sat at Iron (late) beside Smelting, Veinfinder, Beastcraft, and Wood Charmcraft. The system showed no wounded people receiving soft meat, no labour crew warming its hands around broth, and no final tray Lysa carried into the Cataract. It showed a slot occupied by something Wade had made sound small enough to mock and useful enough to claim. Respectable. Domestic. Indoors.

The words repeated because the part of me that should have let them remain words had become easier to overrule since the new shard reduced my Will. I selected Basic Cooking before the practical argument finished forming. ABILITY DROPPED Basic Cooking has been relinquished. Practical memory and learned experience remain. Ranked assistance, enhanced consistency, and system-supported understanding have been lost. The vacancy opened at once.

The forge remained broken, smoke continued crossing the road, and the washed kitchen trays stayed stacked against the market wall with pale grease lines still clinging around their rims. Nothing required the slot to be filled immediately, and no system warning appeared to tell me I had made a poor exchange. Across the road, the kitchen kept serving without it. That did not make the empty place feel clean or accidental.