Irregular Response

Mara paid him at sunset and ended the three-day contract with the same expression she used when closing a repair invoice.

No ceremony. No gratitude. No softening because Sori had become marginally less useless in her yard.

She offered two more days of labor if the municipal grain frames remained behind schedule. The new contract did not include the covered bay.

Sori signed it anyway. Then he gathered his pouch, the cord he had been forced to buy, two cheap tools of his own, and the stool from beneath the awning.

Mara caught the stool with one hand.

Sori looked at her. She pointed to herself. Her stool.

He pointed to the old contract. Temporary lodging.

Mara pointed to the stool again.

Not lodging. Furniture. Sori considered an argument about implied use rights. Binta was already laughing hard enough to brace herself against a grain frame.

He put the stool back. There were defeats that did not deserve an appeal.

The palace labor registry charged him one copper to tell him where Toma Vey lived.

That offended Sori more than the court filing fee had. The court at least pretended its paper changed the world. The labor registry took a coin to point south.

South Canal. Private resin mixer. Medical plaster supplier. Retired from royal service two years earlier.

Sori walked. Toma’s shop announced itself before the painted sign did. People passing the doorway pinched their noses or turned their faces away from the fumes. Sori noticed only because they did.

Another advantage of clay. The sign above the door showed a jar, a wrapped hand, and a bone splint. Inside, shelves held resin blocks, plaster powder, drying molds, and small stoppered bottles marked with warning glyphs Sori remembered from Demba’s tower.

The man behind the counter was thinner than Sori remembered. Gray had entered his hair at the temples. The scar across two fingers remained.

Toma Vey. Sori remembered him. Toma did not remember Sori.

Not until Sori lifted both hands and used an old tower sign.

Resin too hot.

Toma went still. It had once been a joke. Toma had ruined a batch by overheating it until the entire training room smelled terrible. Sori had repeated the phrase whenever anything went wrong for months afterward.

At sixteen he had thought this was hilarious.

Looking at Toma now, he suspected the joke had belonged mostly to the prince.

Toma’s eyes moved from Sori’s hands to his face, then down the patched body and back again. Sori tapped his own chest.

Sori.

Toma stepped backward.

Recognition was not belief. Sori had learned that distinction thoroughly enough not to spend the moment pretending otherwise.

He took Demba’s filed answer from the reed case Adiya had not yet given him, because at this point it was only folded paper inside his pouch, and opened to the line that had bothered him since the House of Kept Names.

NO TRAINING CONSTRUCT USED IN THE PRINCE’S INSTRUCTION DEMONSTRATED INDEPENDENT OR REMOTE SELF-DIRECTED ACTIVITY WITHOUT AN INSCRIBED COMMAND CORE.

Toma read. His face emptied. There. Sori put a slate on the counter and drew a hand badly. Five fingers. White line around it. Then he closed three fingers on his own hand.

Toma looked at the drawing. Then at Sori. He took the chalk.

YEAR NINETEEN.

Sori nodded.

RIGHT HAND MODEL.

Another nod. Toma’s damaged fingers tightened around the chalk.

NO CORE.

Sori did not move. Toma stared at Demba’s legal answer, then wrote beneath his own line.

IT MOVED.

The room seemed to narrow around the slate. Sori had carried the memory alone. Toma had just made it somebody else’s recollection too. He kept writing.

A pause.

THERE WAS NO BINDING.

Sori’s hand closed around the edge of the counter. The wood creaked before he noticed.

He released it. Toma looked frightened now, but not by the clay man in front of him. His attention kept returning to the paper.

Demba had made a statement to a court, and Toma now possessed a memory that could contradict it without borrowing anything from Sori.

Sori pointed from the legal answer to Toma, then made the formal sign for witness. Toma shook his head immediately.

No.

The refusal stopped Sori more effectively than a locked door. His first answer was already assembling itself: royal service, subpoena, duty to truth. A list of reasons Toma should become useful to him.

Sori let the list finish in his head and did not put it on the slate.

Then he saw Toma’s hands. Scarred. Working hands. A life after the tower that Sori knew nothing about.

Mara’s slate came back to him.

I AM NOT YOUR ATTENDANT.

Then Barek under the silk-cotton tree.

It made being your brother harder. Sori took the chalk.

I WILL NOT PUT YOUR NAME IN THE FILING TODAY.

Toma read it twice. Suspicion remained. Fair. Sori added:

I NEED TO KNOW IF A RECORD EXISTS.

Toma looked toward the curtain leading into his back room. Someone moved behind it. Family, perhaps. Apprentice. Customer.

Sori did not ask. Toma wrote:

Of course. Demba reused everything. Clay returned to clay. Copper went back into coils. Resin, wire, iron pins, even failed work entered somebody’s accounting. Sori wrote:

Bad. The estate. Demba’s estate, now controlled by the same household that answered Sori’s case.

Toma watched his face, then added another line.

SECOND COPY SENT QUARTERLY TO CONSTRUCT GUILD FOR RESTRICTED MATERIAL ACCOUNTING.

Sori looked up. Not palace. Guild. Independent copy. Toma erased his own writing with the side of his hand.

I DID NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING.

Sori almost smiled. He wrote:

ACCEPTABLE.

Toma stared at the word, then laughed.

Sori remembered that laugh without sound. The whole upper body shifted forward, the shoulders lifting once. He remembered Toma laughing in the tower when Sori had complained that resin smelled like boiled sandals.

Another person whose face Sori had preserved while misplacing the life attached to it.

He gathered Demba’s answer and turned to leave.

Toma caught his forearm. Sori looked back. The man hesitated, then used one of Demba’s old sharp signs.

He was afraid.

Sori froze. Toma pointed to the crude drawing of the clay hand.

Again.

Demba was afraid.

Then he released Sori. That was all. Outside, evening had begun gathering beneath the market awnings. Sori stood in the flow of people while carts and bodies navigated around him.

For the first time since the theft, he possessed a fact Demba might not know he possessed.

The ledger was not the advantage. Demba knew about the ledger, and he could remember former assistants as well as Sori could.

The advantage was a second record outside Crown custody, created because people who handled dangerous material expected workshops to lose things, misreport them, burn, change hands, or become inconvenient.

Sori had spent twenty-two years assuming important truth accumulated near the throne. Toma had just sent him toward a copy created by workers and guild accountants precisely because one important man’s workshop was not trusted to be the only memory.

Demba had taught Sori to build redundancy into magic. Apparently other people had been doing the same thing to institutions while Sori was busy being prince.

Sori carried Toma’s last sign back toward the House of Kept Names.

Demba had been afraid. Not guilty. Not exposed. Not defeated.

Afraid. It was the sharpest thing Sori owned that evening.

The night keeper stopped him at the office and held up the wooden token for Room Seven.

One side already bore the room number. The other was blank.

The keeper pointed to Sori, then the blank wood.

Name. A small knife lay on the desk. Sori took it and began carving.

S. O. R. I. He stopped. CLAIMANT belonged on court paper. It was the state’s compromise with a dispute it had not resolved.

Room Seven was not a pleading.

He handed the token back. The keeper compared it with the service registry.

SORI CLAIMANT.

He tapped the mismatch. Sori wrote on the slate:

COURT SENDS PAPER TO SORI CLAIMANT.

Then pointed to himself.

SORI.

The keeper considered this. Then, with the efficient shrug Sori had begun to associate with sane men who had no desire to own other people’s problems, he wrote CLAIMANT in tiny ink beneath the carved name.

Better. Sori paid for seven nights. The keeper counted the coins into a wooden tray, and the pouch at Sori’s waist became noticeably lighter.

He was learning that money was supposed to hurt when it left. This seemed obvious to everyone except the people who had raised him.

The mango slice beneath the clay ancestor woman was gone. Sori paused in the courtyard before he noticed ants carrying small yellow pieces along the wall.

He crouched and watched them dismantle what Barek had brought him.

Nothing stayed whole because someone wanted it remembered.

He stood, hung his room token beside the door, and looked at it.

SORI.

CLAIMANT beneath, smaller. Seven nights. Paid with labor. A service address the court could find.

Tomorrow: construct guild. After that: whatever record Demba had failed to bury.

Sori went inside Room Seven and left the door open.

He still did not sleep. But his name remained outside all night.

By the third morning, Sori knew who woke first in the House of Kept Names.

He learned this without sound. Doors opened. Light changed. Bodies crossed the courtyard.

The woman in Room Two came out before sunrise with a brass basin tucked against one hip. She limped on the right and touched two fingers to the knee of the old clay ancestor woman before leaving each morning.

The man in Room Five dressed too well for the house and seemed committed to pretending he lived elsewhere. He folded his sleeping cloth before dawn and waited for an empty courtyard before crossing it.

The child from Room Nine obeyed no schedule Sori could identify.

She had started waving at him.

The first time, he assumed she wanted something.

The second time, he waited for the request.

On the third morning she leaned over the upper gallery rail with bread in her mouth and waved again.

Sori looked behind himself. Nobody. He pointed to his chest.

The girl nodded vigorously. So he waved back. She smiled and vanished into her room.

No petition. No fear. No need. Just a greeting. Sori stood in the courtyard long enough to become annoyed by how much he liked it.

The keeper appeared carrying a broom.

He pointed at Sori’s doorway. Then at the broom.

Sori frowned. The keeper repeated himself. Sori almost made the household sign for servant.

His hand began it. Stopped. The keeper watched. Sori took the broom.

He swept badly. This surprised him more than it should have. Dust did not simply go away because one pushed it. At the wrong angle, it redistributed itself into cracks, against walls, beneath thresholds.

The keeper took the broom, demonstrated three short strokes and one long pull, then returned it.

Sori copied him. Better. Twenty-two years surrounded by work, and he was still learning that work contained knowledge.

He swept Room Seven’s threshold, then Room Eight’s because dust showed no respect for tenancy law, then the short passage toward the stairs.

The keeper took the broom away before Sori could continue.

Enough. Sori used Binta’s sign for done? The keeper understood.

Another piece of language that had never needed a palace.

Back in Room Seven, Sori repaired his left shoulder wrapping. Mara had made him buy his own cord. He still resented this in principle.

The body was changing under his hands.

Not only because he replaced pieces. The boundaries of awareness were becoming familiar. The self-knot sat behind the sternum, but its certainty spread unevenly. New material became him gradually. Old material sometimes stopped being him only after a delay.

During the forearm replacement, he had felt the discarded hand lying on the table for three breaths after the new one moved.

He had not told Mara. Sori considered whether hiding a symptom from the person rebuilding one’s body counted as stupidity. The answer became less favorable the longer he considered it.

A knock vibrated through the doorframe. The keeper stood outside holding court paper.

Sori took it. His identity action had a preliminary evidence schedule. Twelve days for submissions. Five for objections. Physical examination by separate order or consent.

At the bottom, someone had added a note in narrow script.

GUILD RECORDS, IF OFFERED, MUST BE CERTIFIED BY KEEPER OF RESTRICTED MATERIAL ACCOUNTS.

Construct guild. After work. Sori tucked the paper into his pouch, touched the wooden room token once on the way out, and headed toward Mara’s yard.

Binta was standing on a grain frame when he arrived.

She pointed at him, then the beam beneath her.

Lift. Sori signed:

Good morning.

Binta stared. Then laughed. Wrong. She repeated the greeting correctly with slower hands.

Sori tried again. Binta nodded, then pointed at the beam. Lift.

Fine.

They worked. Mara did not ask about the case. Sori did not bring it into the yard.

That had become an agreement without needing paper.

Work time belonged to work. The grain frame needed a new axle sleeve. Sori held the beam while Binta and another apprentice drove out the old pin. His strength made him useful because the beam did not shift when three people leaned against it.

His strength did not tell him the sleeve was tapered.

He tried to insert it backward.

Binta stopped him with both hands, turned the part, and pointed to the slight narrowing at one end.

Once Binta turned the sleeve, the taper was obvious. Before she turned it, Sori had been strong enough to ruin the part without understanding why it would fail.

That was becoming an irritatingly common experience.

At midday, Mara handed out food wrapped in broad leaves.

Everyone received some except Sori. She did not apologize. He appreciated that more than an apology.

Binta ate with one hand and signed with the other. She pointed north, then formed the guild sign over both hands.

Sori followed her eyes to the court paper beneath his pouch cord.

Everyone saw everything. After work, he signed. Binta pointed at herself. Then north.

I go?

Sori’s first answer arrived as quickly as the old prince’s answers usually had.

Yes. Interpreter. Guide. Someone who could understand guild sign when Sori could not.

Useful.

His hand rose. Then he looked toward Mara. She sat three paces away chewing roasted plantain and watching him. Sori looked back at Binta.

Your work ends?

Binta glanced at Mara. Mara held up two fingers. Two hours.

Sori nodded. After. Binta grinned. Mara threw a folded rag at Sori. It struck his shoulder and dropped.

He looked at her. She signed:

You learn.

Sori considered whether this was praise.

Probably not. Two hours later Binta washed the plaster from her hands, tied her apprentice cord, and met Sori at the gate.

Mara stopped both of them. She signed to Binta first.

Guild business. Apprentice rules. Home before dark.

Binta rolled her eyes. Mara caught her chin and turned her face back toward her.

Binta sighed, then nodded. Mara looked at Sori, pointed at Binta, then at him, and drew one finger across her throat.

The exact mechanics were unclear. The meaning was not. If trouble came to Binta because of him, Mara intended to discover whether a clay man could be murdered by an irritated construct master.

Sori nodded. Mara returned to work. Binta shook her head fondly and followed him out.

The construct guild did not occupy a building.

It occupied a street. Sori had expected a hall, perhaps banners, offices arranged around a central court. Instead Binta led him through a long market lane where nearly every doorway carried a variation of the same mark: a square cut diagonally, earth on one side and fire on the other.

Kilns opened into rear courtyards. Copper sellers worked beside clay binders. Resin houses shared walls with repair yards. Men carrying scale weights crossed in front of apprentices rolling barrels of powdered mineral. Licenses hung beneath awnings. Guild notices were nailed to doorposts and corrected in different hands.

An institution spread across forty workshops.

Sori had known the guild existed. Royal contracts came through guild representatives. Taxes arrived under guild categories. Complaints from the city works office sometimes reached the palace in bundles marked with the divided square.

He had understood none of this physically. Royal paperwork had made the guild look like a category. Walking through it required him to dodge carts, step over clay drains and wait while apprentices rolled two barrels across the lane.

The Crown had rooms. The guild had a neighborhood. Binta stopped at a narrow account house between a copper seller and a kiln yard. Three scales hung beneath the lintel. The middle one had no pans.

Sori pointed at it. Binta signed old, law, memory, and then gave up.

Inside, shelves held tagged fragments, bundles of copper wire, sealed baskets, sample cores, and ledgers thick enough to injure someone if dropped. Three people worked at low desks.

A woman at the rear wore a cord with five clay beads and one iron ring.

Binta straightened. Hierarchy Sori could read. She signed rapidly to the woman. Sori caught apprentice, court, tower, claimant, record.

Not enough. The woman looked at him without fear. Her eyes catalogued his body the way Mara’s did, but from a different profession.

Chest panel. Mismatched arms. Stone eyes. Repaired shoulder. Work-yard clay dried along his legs.

Then his hands. She signed slowly. Binta enlarged the movements beside her.

Purpose?

Sori produced the court note. She read it, then gestured toward a slate. Sori wrote:

QUARTERLY RECLAIM RECORD. MASTER DEMBA NARO ROYAL WORKSHOP. YEAR NINETEEN OF MY AGE.

The woman underlined MY. Sori added:

SORI CLAIMANT.

She nodded. Identification, not agreement. Then she wrote her own name.

Sori read the title twice before writing. At least he knew whose authority he was asking to use.

I NEED CERTIFIED COPY OF DESTROYED TEACHING MODEL. RIGHT HAND. NO COMMAND CORE.

Adiya read. Her gaze moved to Binta.

The two exchanged signs too quickly for Sori.

He caught who told? Binta shrugged and pointed at him. Sori wrote:

I KNOW THE MODEL EXISTED.

Adiya answered:

RESTRICTED MATERIAL BOOKS ARE NOT OPEN LEDGERS.

Sori wrote COURT CASE. Adiya answered without hesitation.

COURT CASE DOES NOT OPEN GUILD RECORDS AUTOMATICALLY.

His hand hovered over the slate. CROWN PRINCE would once have been the next line. He could almost see himself writing it and Adiya becoming less cooperative rather than more.

He erased the first stroke before it became a letter.

WHAT OPENS THEM.

Adiya’s expression became slightly less annoyed. She listed three routes.

The estate holder was useless. The court route would take time.

Sori tapped disciplinary matter. Adiya wrote:

ONLY IF A GUILD RULE MAY HAVE BEEN BREACHED.

Sori looked at Binta. No core. Movement. Destroyed afterward. Binta leaned over the slate, read his description, and made a sign Sori did not know.

Unbound motion.

Adiya’s entire face changed. Important. Sori pointed to Binta. Explain.

Binta took a small clay lifting figure from a shelf and pointed to the mark on its chest.

Command. She covered the mark. No command. Then walked the figure across her palm with two fingers.

Adiya stopped her and took the slate.

UNINSCRIBED RESPONSIVE MOTION MUST BE REPORTED TO GUILD WITHIN THREE DAYS IF OBSERVED IN A LICENSED WORKSHOP.

Sori read it again. Adiya added:

OLD RULE. STILL RULE.

He pointed. Why? Adiya took him to a wall where old clay tablets had been hung and repaired so many times that metal staples were part of their surfaces. One showed a crude carrier figure beside marks for fire, household, and name.

Adiya signed slowly while Binta filled the gaps.

Before command cores became standardized, households bound tasks into clay carriers with family marks, spoken names, knots, gestures, and whatever local method their maker trusted. Most were tools.

Some stopped when they should have moved.

Some moved when they should have stopped.

Some answered the wrong person. One carried burning coals into a sleeping house after two commands had been layered badly. Another refused a burial threshold until the family broke it, then triggered an inheritance fight because two daughters claimed the vessel had been carrying their dead mother’s household name.

Guild law had grown out of danger, not dignity. If an uncommanded thing moved, someone recorded it because workshops burned when makers pretended anomalies were normal.

Sori touched the staples holding the old tablet together. Somebody had kept this warning long enough for the tablet itself to need repair.

Adiya returned to the desk and wrote:

IF YOUR CLAIM IS TRUE, A REPORT SHOULD EXIST.

Sori wrote immediately:

IT DOES NOT.

Adiya’s eyebrows rose. Too fast. He corrected himself.

I WAS THERE. I NEVER SAW A REPORT.

Adiya wrote:

YOU WERE THE PRINCE.

Binta looked away so Sori would not see her laughing.

He erased his sentence. Fair.

CHECK.

Adiya wrote one word. FEE. Sori counted the coins in his pouch. Enough, barely.

He paid. The fact that a guild search cost money still offended him. The fact that the clerk had stated the price before doing the work offended him less than it would have four days earlier.

He was unsure whether that represented growth or exhaustion.

Adiya disappeared through a rear door.

Sori waited. The account house continued around him. A repairman brought in a cracked blue core. A woman argued over two copper coils and a complaint written on cloth. An old man with an artificial lower leg presented the guild seal carved into its wooden socket. A boy delivered charcoal.

Nobody organized themselves around Sori. They went around him. At first he stood where Adiya had left him. Then someone carrying a basket nearly struck his elbow and signed move.

Sori moved. Another person came through. He moved again. Soon he stood beneath the panless scale with his back to the wall.

Waiting. He realized he could do this longer than anyone else in the room.

No hunger. No thirst. No need to sit. No bladder.

No sleep. Waiting had always insulted him because waiting meant someone else controlled his time.

The clay body had changed the arithmetic.

Binta noticed him staring into nothing and mimed roots growing from his feet.

Sori almost smiled. Adiya returned carrying a bound book inside a woven cover.

She did not put it in Sori’s hands.

She set it on a raised stand, unfastened two straps, and opened it herself.

Quarterly restricted-material accounting. The year matched. Pages of workshop marks, weights, resin allotments, copper recovery, core destruction.

Then Demba Naro’s royal workshop. Sori recognized the tower mark before he read the name.

Teaching torso. Two damaged joint models. Copper channel lattice. Right-hand model.

Adiya stopped her finger beneath the line.

RIGHT HAND, CLAY/REED, NO CORE ENTERED, DESTROYED BY ORDER OF MASTER D. NARO AFTER IRREGULAR RESPONSE EVENT.

Sori read every word. No core entered. Irregular response. Destroyed by Demba’s order.

The entry did not say Sori had moved the hand. It said no core had been entered, something irregular had happened, and Demba ordered the model destroyed afterward.

That was narrower than proof of identity or theft. It was also incompatible with pretending nothing worth explaining had happened.

Adiya turned the page. No incident reference. She checked the margin.

Then the quarter index. Her face hardened. Sori pointed. She wrote:

There. Demba had reported enough to account for restricted material.

Not enough to expose the anomaly.

He had let one system know the hand existed, another know it was destroyed, and apparently no system know why.

Sori almost admired the precision. Almost. Adiya searched a second ledger.

Then an older index. Nothing. When she returned, she wrote:

IF NO REPORT WAS FILED, MASTER NARO BREACHED GUILD SAFETY RULE.

Sori put Demba’s filed response beside the ledger stand.

Adiya read the statement denying prior independent or remote self-directed activity.

She looked from one record to the other, then pulled them closer until the two relevant lines sat side by side.

She did not write liar.

THE TWO RECORDS ARE NOT CONSISTENT WITHOUT EXPLANATION.

Sori liked that answer more than an accusation. Adiya had made the problem stronger by refusing to make it larger than her records allowed.

CERTIFIED COPY, he wrote. Adiya nodded. Then wrote another fee.

Sori stared. She stared back. Binta made the sign for poor.

Sori ignored her and counted. Four copper. Fee: six. He was short.

Evidence existed ten paces from him and civilization required two additional copper before it could become his evidence.

Anger rose hot and familiar. Old Sori would have ordered the copy.

Royal seal. Immediate compliance. Current Sori had four coins and needed six. He signed:

Hold record.

Adiya nodded. Until close tomorrow. Sori turned toward the door.

Binta caught his elbow and offered two copper.

He looked at the coins. Then at her.

No.

She pushed them closer.

No.

She rolled her eyes. Sori took the slate.

I PAY MY OWN CASE.

Binta read it, then wrote beneath:

IDIOT.

Sori nodded. That one he understood.

Binta went home when the second evening bell rang.

Sori knew there was a bell because everyone else reacted to it.

Heads turned. Shutters began closing. Apprentices gathered tools. The guild street changed direction around him.

Binta pointed toward Mara’s district, then to Sori.

Home? Sori shook his head. Two copper. Binta produced the same two coins again.

He stared until she put them away.

Then she pointed down the street toward the furnace yards.

Night work. Strong. Poor. Sori considered being offended. Accurate. He followed.

The night reclaim yard wore the guild mark in black instead of red.

The supervisor was a compact man with one clouded eye and forearms patterned by old burns. Three iron rings hung from his work cord.

Binta explained what Sori wanted. The supervisor looked at Sori, then at Binta, then back at Sori. He wrote on a slate:

LICENSE.

Sori pointed at himself. Person. The man wrote:

WORK LICENSE.

Of course. Sori produced Mara’s current work-only contract. The supervisor read it and wrote:

Sori’s irritation returned.

I ACCEPT LIABILITY FOR ME.

The supervisor smiled, almost kindly, and pointed past Sori to a cart carrying half a ton of broken construct frames.

THAT IS NOT HOW DROPPED FURNACE LOADS WORK.

Sori looked past him. Broken bodies filled the yard. Clay torsos. Wooden frames. Stripped copper. Joint cores stacked by condition. One municipal carrier lay on its side with the top of its smooth head cracked away.

The supervisor tapped the contract again.

GUILD DAY TOKEN. FOUR COPPER. VALID ONE DAY.

Sori stared. He needed two copper. Working required four. The kingdom had discovered how to make poverty recursive.

He almost left. Then a loaded cart dropped one wheel into a rut.

Three workers pushed. The cart stayed where it was.

The supervisor looked at the cart.

Then at Sori. One lift. Trial. Sori walked over. The workers gave him room.

He crouched beside the axle, not beneath it.

He had learned something. Both hands under the frame. Lift.

The cart rose too high. Everyone’s eyes widened. Sori lowered it until the wheel cleared the rut. One worker packed stone beneath it. Another signaled down.

Sori lowered. The cart rolled free. The supervisor considered him, then wrote:

Six. More than enough. Sori nodded. The supervisor tapped his own chest.

Fode. Sori returned the gesture. Sori. Fode’s eyes flicked to the legal registration cord beneath Sori’s shoulder wrapping.

He nodded. No Claimant. Just Sori. They worked through the night.

Mara’s yard repaired things. Fode’s yard unmade them. Everything entered with a mark and left as material. Uncontaminated clay was soaked down and beaten into workable earth. Fired fragments became fill. Copper was stripped, weighed, and bundled. Iron pins went into separate baskets. Resin-heavy wood went to a furnace with a chimney taller than the surrounding roofs.

Four broad command carriers handled much of the hauling.

Sori watched them. Smooth heads. No eyes. Simple command marks pressed into their chests.

A worker touched a mark and pointed.

The carrier moved. The load arrived. The carrier returned to its painted square and stopped.

Not resting. Stopped. A worker nearly collided with one and swore with his whole body. The carrier did not adjust half a step.

Sori looked at his own feet.

Difference was obvious from inside. Less obvious across a room.

Fode tapped his arm and pointed at a broken frame.

Work.

The night reduced itself into a language Sori could follow without owning the job: lift, hold, turn, wait, lower. Other hands told him when.

A woman named Reka showed Sori why cracked clay torsos should not be carried against his chest. Fragments could wedge into his seams.

A young man with a shaved head signed slow so many times that eventually Sori saw the warning before moving too quickly.

Fode taught him to brace a cart with one foot instead of attempting to become the cart.

Nobody asked whether he was a prince.

One worker pointed from Sori to a broadsheet nailed near the entrance. A crude drawing showed two versions of the same royal face, one flesh and one clay.

The city had found the joke.

The worker raised his eyebrows. Sori signed:

Work.

The man laughed and returned to copper sorting.

Near midnight the human workers stopped to eat.

Sori remained near the furnace until the drying clay on his forearm tightened enough to warn him back.

One of the command carriers stood beside him in its painted square.

For a while the two clay bodies faced the same direction while humans passed bread and water.

A woman offered Sori roasted yam by habit, remembered, and began to pull it away.

Sori shook his head and pointed at the carrier.

Then the food. She smiled and sat on an overturned bucket.

Sori watched. He was getting good at that. The shaved-head worker split bread with Reka without being asked. Fode checked the furnace before eating. A woman in a green head wrap rubbed her wrist between every few bites.

Reka wrapped part of her meal in cloth and put it into her bag.

Sori pointed. Question. Reka held up two fingers low to the ground.

Children. Sori nodded. Until that gesture, Reka had existed in his mind mostly as the woman who knew where cracked torsos cut into seams.

The command carrier beside him waited in its painted square until somebody touched the mark on its chest.

Sori looked from it to Reka’s wrapped food and turned away before the comparison could become comfortable. After the meal Fode tried to send him home.

Sori shook his head. Late, Fode signed. Sori pointed at himself.

No sleep. Fode understood. Then he pointed at Sori’s shoulder.

The furnace heat had opened a faint crack along Mara’s wrapping.

Repair. Sori signed:

Work.

Fode stared at him, then wrote:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PROVE YOU ARE A MACHINE BY WORKING LIKE ONE.

Sori read it. His first reaction was anger. He was not proving anything. He needed two copper.

I NEED SIX COPPER.

Fode laughed so hard he leaned against a cart.

Sori waited. The supervisor finally wrote:

THAT IS A BETTER REASON.

They worked until dawn. Fode paid him six copper. Sori held them in his palm, then returned four.

Fode frowned. Sori pointed at the token-fee slate. Fode shook his head.

Crew mark. No fee. Sori stared. Then why six? Fode understood.

SIX IS WAGE.

Sori looked down. He had expected the system to take four because systems usually did. This one had not. He had misunderstood the rule and budgeted the loss anyway.

Six copper when he needed two.

Dangerous wealth. Fode signed return? More work. Sori considered, then nodded once.

Maybe.

Fode pointed at the cracked shoulder.

Repair first. That too. When Sori returned to the account house, its doors were still closed.

A clerk arriving with tablets pointed beside the entrance.

Wait there. Sori did. Then a handcart arrived and he was in its way.

He moved. Another worker needed the same space. He moved farther.

Eventually there was nowhere left without standing in the gutter.

Sori planted his feet beside the lintel.

People adjusted. One complained with his mouth. Sori did not read it. A woman carrying wire squeezed past sideways. A boy used Sori’s elbow as a brace while fixing a basket, realized what he had touched, and fled.

Sori remained. He could remain better than they could object.

When Adiya arrived three hours later, she found him where the first clerk had left him.

She pointed toward the House of Kept Names.

Room? Sori shrugged. No sleep. Adiya looked at him, then at the city flowing around his body.

Adiya looked once at him, once at the traffic bending around his planted feet, and opened the door. Sori followed.

Adiya certified two documents. The first copied the reclaim entry. The second certified an absence: the guild’s indexed incident reports for that quarter contained no matching irregular-response filing from Demba Naro’s licensed royal workshop.

Sori paid two copper. Four remained.

Before she pressed the seal, Adiya pulled a different ledger from beneath the desk and opened it to a fresh line.

THIS CREATES GUILD MATTER.

Sori pointed to himself. My case. Adiya shook her head and tapped the new ledger.

Sori stared at the new ledger. Adiya turned it toward herself and began the guild entry.

Sori almost smiled. Then remembered the official problem.

HE IS DEAD.

Adiya nodded.

Not revenge. Accounting. Sori pointed toward the palace. Demba lived there. Adiya’s face hardened.

THE MAN IN THE PALACE IS LEGALLY SORI MARET.

Anger came instantly. Sori underlined his own name on the registration cord.

Adiya held up one hand. Not argument. Jurisdiction.

IF YOUR IDENTITY CASE CHANGES THAT, GUILD MAY CHANGE RECORD.

Until then, the guild could investigate a dead magician but not discipline the living man Sori claimed was that magician.

Demba wore Sori’s legal identity as armor against Demba’s old acts.

Sori gripped the desk. Wood creaked. Adiya looked at his hand.

He released it. He had paid enough for furniture lately. Adiya pressed the seal.

The papers were real, independent of Crown custody and narrower than Sori wanted. Adiya put both into a rigid reed case before giving them to him.

Sori looked at it suspiciously. Fee? Adiya shook her head.

Included. A miracle. He went directly to civil court. The clerk on duty saw him approach and looked toward the cabinets as if someone had briefed the staff on clay-related emergencies.

Sori placed the reed case on her desk.

CERTIFIED SUPPLEMENTAL EVIDENCE.

She read the reclaim entry. Then the no-report certification. Her eyebrows rose.

She disappeared upstairs. Sori waited. He had become good at that.

People moved around him in the corridor. One runner started to sign move, recognized Sori, then chose the longer path instead.

Interesting. Saran came downstairs herself. Gray work wrap. Ink on two fingers. No ceremony.

She read the two papers standing, then produced Demba’s filed answer from under her arm.

She placed the statements beside each other.

No prior commandless activity. Irregular response event. No core entered.

Saran tapped the difference. Sori nodded. She wrote:

RELEVANT.

Sori took the chalk.

He glared. Saran added:

HE MAY DEFINE SELF-DIRECTED DIFFERENTLY FROM GUILD IRREGULAR RESPONSE.

Sori jabbed one finger at the missing mandatory report. Saran nodded and underlined it.

STRONGER.

Then:

STILL NOT IDENTITY.

Sori knew. He hated knowing. Before taking the papers upstairs, Saran signed:

Do not chase every contradiction as if it is the throne.

Sori frowned. She simplified.

One stone. Not house.

Sori answered:

Houses need stones.

Saran almost smiled. Then she left. A runner came down before Sori reached the door.

Green wax. Palace. Too fast. The guild review could not have reached Demba through formal court service yet.

Somebody in the palace had another route to the same information. Sori opened the packet without granting Demba omniscience merely because the old man had friends and clerks.

SUPPLEMENTAL CLARIFICATION TO RESPONDENT’S ANSWER.

Royal counsel now acknowledged the age-nineteen hand incident. If the guild record referred to the same event, the hand had shown a transient sympathetic response under proximity to Prince Sori during advanced anchor work.

Not independent will. Not remote selfhood. Not migration of identity.

A magical reflex. Demba had moved from denying the event to disputing what kind of event it had been.

Sori read the clarification twice. Sympathetic anchor effects could impress movement into prepared material without moving the self. The response offered his old training notes for neutral review.

He put the clarification into the reed case rather than tearing it.

A runner stepped into his sightline, touched his arm, then pointed behind him. He was blocking the corridor.

Sori stepped aside. People passed. He looked once at the patch of floor he had occupied, then put the reed case away. He had work.

Mara saw the shoulder crack before Sori reached the main workbench. She caught his arm, turned him toward the light, then used the work-yard sign for idiot directly in front of his face.

Sori nodded. Binta looked delighted. He had learned enough ordinary sign that insults no longer required translation.

Mara pointed toward the furnace district, then the dried seam.

Heat. Sori held up the six copper from Fode. Binta immediately supplied a dramatic summary.

Night. Cart. Lift. Furnace. Money. Poor prince. Mara did not soften. She wrote:

IF YOU CRACK YOUR CORE FRAME ON SOMEONE ELSE’S NIGHT SHIFT, DO NOT BRING ME A CORPSE AND CALL IT EXPERIENCE.

Sori took the chalk.

I CANNOT BE A CORPSE.

Mara snatched it back.

YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT.

Mara pointed him toward the morning work and then at the repair bench for midday. Sori went where she pointed.

Binta called alignment with two fingers. Mara checked joints. Sori held the frame where they put it and did not improvise.

At midday Mara cut open the cracked shoulder and found the internal brace intact. She added fiber, worked fresh earth into the seam, and made Sori hold the arm at an angle while it settled.

Binta ate lunch in front of him on purpose.

Sori ignored her. When the workday ended, he took out Demba’s supplemental clarification.

Mara saw the green seal and pointed to the gate.

Off the clock. Sori pointed at the sun. Finished. Mara checked the yard, sighed with her entire body, and took the paper.

Binta immediately tried to read over her shoulder.

Mara pushed her forehead away. Binta moved to the other side.

Mara gave up. They read together. Transient sympathetic response. Prepared material.

Anchor proximity. Not migration of identity. Mara looked at Sori and wrote:

POSSIBLE.

His anger sharpened. She underlined it.

POSSIBLE IS NOT TRUE.

Then wrote:

BUT IT IS POSSIBLE.

Sori knew. That was why Demba’s explanation worked. He took the slate.

I FELT MY OLD HAND AFTER REPLACEMENT.

Mara stopped. Binta stopped. Sori immediately understood that he had made an error several days earlier. Mara wrote:

WHAT.

He explained. Old forearm on table. New forearm attached. For three breaths, awareness in both.

Mara’s face went still. Not anger now. Professional alarm.

WHEN.

Sori indicated the rebuild. Mara closed her eyes. Binta slowly stepped away from the bench.

Wise. Mara opened her eyes and wrote:

YOU HID A SELF-KNOT DISCONTINUITY FROM THE PERSON REBUILDING YOUR BODY.

Sori considered his defense.

I WAS BUSY.

Mara threw the slate. He caught it. Progress. She paced once around the workbench, then pointed toward a high shelf. Binta climbed a ladder and brought down a wrapped bundle.

Sori recognized the shape before the cloth opened.

His old left forearm. The emergency one. Green wood beneath bad clay. Two cracked fingers. A wrist he had built while Demba bled on the tower floor.

Mara had kept it. She wrote:

I KEEP PARTS UNTIL REPLACEMENT SETTLES.

Unlike Sori, Mara apparently expected bodies to fail in predictable ways.

She laid the old forearm on the worktable.

Sori looked at it. Nothing. No awareness. Just discarded material.

Mara pointed at his current hand.

Then held up one finger. Do not move. She pressed one hand near his current shoulder and the other to the old wrist. Magic traveled lightly, measuring rather than commanding.

Nothing happened. Sori signed:

See?

Mara ignored him. Binta marked each old fingertip against the table with a strip of white plaster.

Measure. Then Mara pointed to Sori’s eyes. Close. He removed the eye stones instead and seated them in the temporary chest sockets beneath his protective plate.

Binta recoiled despite having seen the trick before.

The world returned from lower down.

Wrong angle. Wrong height. Mara touched Sori’s new left hand.

Stay. Then the old one.

Again.

Sori focused. Nothing. He remembered age nineteen. Blindfold. White circle.

A clay hand shaped to his proportions.

The impossible certainty that another set of fingers across the room belonged to him.

He reached for that memory. Nothing. Anger rose. His chest channels warmed.

Mara struck the panel with the flat of her hand.

Stop. Sori stopped. She wrote:

DO NOT FORCE CORE OUTPUT. THIS IS NOT A STRENGTH TEST.

Sori wanted it to be. Strength tests were easier. Mara loosened the brace at his current left wrist.

Not detached. Loosened. The hand remained movable, but its certainty changed. It felt slightly farther away.

Mara pointed to the old hand.

Again.

Sori focused. Nothing. Then his new little finger disappeared. Not physically.

From him. Awareness simply stopped at the knuckle. At the same instant, pressure appeared across the table.

Ghost pressure. Location without touch. Sori knew where the old thumb rested.

Knew the crack in the ring finger.

Knew the palm lay flat. He tried to close it.

The old middle finger scraped from one plaster mark toward the next.

Binta jumped backward. Mara did not move. Her eyes widened.

Sori’s current hand went dead. The room lurched sideways. Mara grabbed the chest panel.

The discarded hand jerked once. For one terrible instant Sori felt both hands.

Then neither. Then only the old one. Panic came cleanly.

He tried to move the new arm.

Nothing. Mara tightened the wrist brace with brutal speed. Binta caught Sori at the shoulder.

The new hand returned like a door slamming open.

Sori staggered. The discarded hand vanished from him. His right hand crushed the edge of the bench.

Wood splintered. Mara struck his chest with both palms. Look.

Sori focused on her face. She held up three fingers one at a time.

Tracking. His vision settled. Binta had gone pale. Mara looked furious enough to improve Sori’s health by threat alone.

He pointed at the old hand.

It moved. YES, Mara wrote. Sori pointed to himself. Then the hand.

Me. Mara wrote:

MAYBE.

Sori nearly broke the slate. She slapped his fingers.

MAYBE.

Then:

Sori stopped on the word.

SHIFT.

Mara underlined SHIFT twice. Then she wrote:

Sori pointed at Demba’s clarification. Sympathetic response. Mara tilted one hand.

Possible. Then wrote:

IF SYMPATHETIC, WHY CURRENT HAND GOES EMPTY?

Sori copied her question onto the margin of Demba’s clarification.

Mara wrapped the old hand immediately. He reached for it. She slapped his hand away.

No.

Again, Sori signed. No, Mara answered. He pointed at the court paper.

Evidence.

Mara pointed to herself. Body. Her domain. Then to Sori.

Alive.

She wrote:

Binta nodded violently behind her. Traitor. Mara locked the discarded forearm in a cabinet.

Sori objected. She produced his original repair paperwork. Material removed during repair retained for safety until replacement settled.

The repair form was still on Mara’s side of the argument. Sori erased the demand he had begun writing.

PLEASE PRESERVE IT.

Mara nodded. That was all. Outside, Sori stopped in the market and looked toward the palace walls above the roofs.

Old forearm. Human body. Distance. Continuity. Could he feel anything there?

He closed his eyes and reached.

Nothing. No stolen lungs. No heartbeat. No skin. No hand wearing his ring.

Only clay. Only himself. A cart driver waved angrily because Sori had stopped in the road. He moved.

Not today.

Two letters waited at Room Seven.

One carried the court mark. One came from the palace without legal seal.

Sori opened the court letter first.

Demba’s supplemental clarification had been entered. Sori’s guild records had been entered. Both parties were ordered to identify proposed magical experts. Then:

RESPONDENT OFFERS VOLUNTARY ANCHOR-RESONANCE EXAMINATION OF THE LIVING BODY CURRENTLY REGISTERED AS SORI MARET, TO BE CONDUCTED UNDER NEUTRAL SUPERVISION, FOR PURPOSE OF TESTING CLAIMANT’S ALLEGED CONTINUITY.

Sori read the line twice. Demba offered the human body for examination.

Sori’s body. Voluntarily. The old magician believed the test would help him.

Sori looked at his current left hand.

Then remembered the discarded one moving.

Demba had been surprised at nineteen. Whether he knew about Mara’s new test was another question.

Now he was volunteering for another anchor test because he believed he understood the result.

Maybe he did. Maybe not. Sori opened the second letter.

Personal household paper. His old sun-and-river mark. Demba’s handwriting rather than the practiced imitation of Sori’s signature. The message was short.

Below, written as the directional marks Demba used to preserve private sign language on paper:

Do not mistake pain for truth.

Sori stared. One of Demba’s oldest lessons. Pain proved only that something hurt.

Sori had hated it because it refused drama.

Now Demba used it against him.

He placed both letters on the floor.

For several minutes Sori wanted to tear the private one apart. Then burn it. Then walk to the palace and put his clay fist through Demba’s stolen mouth.

Instead he sat. Room Seven was small enough that his knees nearly reached the opposite wall. One stone shelf. One hook. One basin useful for clay and nothing else. His wooden token outside.

Two letters inside. Test yourself. Prove yourself.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Demba had built ten years of Sori’s life from that word.

Sori looked at his hands. He did not have to answer tonight.

The realization came slowly. A prince answered a challenge with action.

An angry man answered insult with force.

A claimant answered filings by deadline.

A person could receive a demand and decide not to move yet.

So Sori did not. People returned to the courtyard outside. Doors opened. The woman from Room Two crossed with her basin empty. The man from Room Five arrived after dark and continued pretending nobody knew where he slept. The child from Room Nine was called inside.

Nobody entered Room Seven. Nobody made Sori answer. The letters waited. Sori let them.

Near midnight he took fresh clay from his repair basin and shaped a crude hand.

Five fingers. No core. No command mark. He set it on the shelf and sat across from it.

He tried to feel it. Nothing.

Nothing. Anger began rising. Sori felt the urge to drive more force through the self-knot and stopped before doing it. Mara’s warning had been specific: not strength.

Sori watched the little hand until dawn.

It never moved. That disappointed him. It also mattered. The age-nineteen hand had not moved merely because Sori wanted clay to obey. His discarded forearm had not responded because he made another hand-shaped object and stared at it.

Connection mattered. History. Continuity. Being part of him. Perhaps Demba’s training had not created a machine capable of copying a person.

Perhaps it had created an anchor too strong to erase cleanly.

Or perhaps Sori was building comfort from scraps because he wanted his flesh back.

Both possibilities could fit inside Room Seven.

At dawn the keeper knocked on the frame, pointed to the crude clay hand, then at Sori.

Question. Sori shrugged. The keeper accepted that and held up the broom.

Courtyard. Sori stared. The man pointed again. Room Seven’s turn.

Of course. Sori took the broom. The letters remained unanswered while he swept.

For one morning, the most difficult thing he did was leave the letters unanswered.

He answered after work. He folded Demba’s private letter into the bottom of his pouch and carried the court proposal instead.

Mara’s yard had another municipal delivery waiting, so the day disappeared into frame weights and a warped axle housing. The examination offer stayed in Sori’s pouch until she marked the shift complete.

No court business on Mara’s clock.

When Mara marked the shift complete, Sori washed clay dust from his hands and went to civil court.

The clerk from his personhood filing was back.

He saw Sori and reached immediately for a slate.

WHAT NOW.

Sori respected consistency. He put the proposed examination on the desk.

I DO NOT CONSENT AS WRITTEN.

The clerk visibly relaxed. Then Sori continued.

I WILL CONSENT UNDER CONDITIONS.

The relaxation disappeared.

Sori listed them. Neutral site. No palace ward room. No Demba-controlled instruments.

No opening Sori’s self-knot. No irreversible alteration to either body.

A Hall keeper present. Construct guild observer. Independent healer with no royal household service.

Every procedure written before the claimants entered.

Every expected interpretation written before results were known.

The clerk stopped halfway through and looked at him.

Sori pointed to the slate. Continue. The clerk did. Then Sori added the condition that mattered most.

ANY TEST USED TO CLAIM SORI CLAIMANT IS DERIVATIVE MUST ALSO RECORD WHETHER THE HUMAN BODY SHOWS RESPONSE TO THE CLAIMANT.

Both directions.

If Demba wanted to call Sori an echo, the court would measure whether the original body echoed back.

The clerk read that three times and went upstairs.

Saran came down with the conditions in one hand.

She tapped the final paragraph. Her eyebrows rose. Sori shrugged.

Demba wanted science. Let it be science. Saran read the conditions once, then again. She marked the margin beside the reciprocal-measurement clause and wrote:

ADD STOP CONDITION.

Sori frowned. Saran pointed to his chest, then his head.

If either claimant destabilized, who stopped the test?

ME, Sori wrote. Saran crossed it out. He glared.

YOU MAY BE UNABLE TO COMMUNICATE DURING DESTABILIZATION.

Fair. Sori wrote:

NEUTRAL HEALER OR HALL KEEPER.

Saran added another line.

EITHER CLAIMANT MAY WITHDRAW CONSENT AT ANY TIME BEFORE IRREVERSIBLE STEP.

Sori disliked that. Demba could stop if the result turned against him. Saran saw his face.

SO CAN YOU.

Sori looked at the words. Saran tapped his first line.

I DO NOT CONSENT AS WRITTEN.

Then the conditions beneath it. She signed slowly.

This is not obedience.

Sori looked from the refusal to the conditions and nodded once.

Then terms. Saran sealed the response. A runner carried it toward the palace.

Sori waited at the desk. The clerk pointed toward the door.

Done. Sori pointed toward the palace. Response. Later, the clerk signed.

Sori considered remaining simply because the man wanted him to leave.

He almost remained simply because the clerk wanted him gone. Then he looked at the sealed response already leaving the room and decided the clerk had nothing left that Sori needed.

So he moved. A runner caught him halfway back to the House of Kept Names.

Green seal. Demba had accepted every condition. Neutral site. Independent observers.

Written protocol. Reciprocal measurement. Withdrawal rights. No invasive access. Every one.

At the bottom, Demba added a condition of his own.

THE TEST MUST INCLUDE PHYSICAL PROXIMITY BETWEEN CLAIMANT AND THE LIVING BODY OF SORI MARET AT A DISTANCE OF NO MORE THAN ONE ARM’S LENGTH.

Sori read it twice.

One arm’s length.

Close enough to touch. Close enough to kill. Close enough to feel, if feeling remained possible.

He imagined laying a clay hand against his own human wrist.

Would there be nothing? Would he feel both? Would the self-knot tear?

Would Demba feel him? The old magician had accepted reciprocal measurement without hesitation. Either Demba expected the test to vindicate him or he did not understand every consequence of the mechanism as well as he claimed. Sori could work with either possibility.

He did not answer Demba’s private letter.

He did not need to. The court response was enough.

The test would happen because Sori had chosen the terms under which he would say yes.

The child from Room Nine sat beside the old clay ancestor seat that evening, arranging pebbles in a line.

She looked up and waved. Sori waved back. Then he stopped beside the courtyard entrance.

People passed around him. The keeper with laundry. The woman from Room Two. A boy balancing tea.

Nobody asked him to move. Nobody tried to move him.

They adjusted. Sori looked down at his feet.

Clay.

Heavy.

Still.

Then he stepped aside and went to Room Seven.

That night the court sent the date.

Six days. Hall of Names, western examination chamber. Neutral observers to be finalized.

Sori pinned the notice to the wall because Room Seven had no desk.

Six days in flesh meant sleep, food, bathing, conversation with Father, ordinary warmth, breath, heartbeat.

Six days in clay meant work, repairs, rent, and waiting without sleep.

Time belonged differently to different bodies.

The courtyard darkened. Sori went outside. The old clay woman sat in her niche. Someone had left kola nuts beneath her. The child from Room Nine had added one white pebble.

Sori stood beside the niche. Clay figure. Clay man. One named because descendants refused to let a dead woman’s name disappear into property.

One named because he refused to surrender his own.

Sori planted his feet shoulder-width apart and stopped moving.

He wanted to know how still the body could become.

Very.

Human stillness always contained betrayal. Breath. Blink. Swallow. Shifts of weight. Tiny corrections beneath the skin.

Sori needed none of them unless he chose.

He stopped flexing his fingers. Stopped turning the eyes. Stopped correcting the slight angle of his head.

The courtyard continued. A tenant nearly passed before noticing him, startled, then rolled her eyes and continued.

The keeper glanced once. Room Seven’s strange tenant being strange.

Later, the child appeared at the gallery rail.

She stared down at him. Sori watched without moving his head.

The girl came downstairs slowly. She stopped two steps away and looked between Sori and the ancestor seat.

Then she placed a small white pebble at Sori’s foot.

Sori nearly moved. The girl grinned. She knew. Then she ran upstairs.

Sori looked down only after she disappeared.

He should move the pebble. He was not a shrine.

Not dead. Not a statue. He bent to pick it up.

Stopped halfway. Straightened. The pebble could remain until morning. It harmed nothing.

For several hours Sori stood beside the old clay woman while the House of Kept Names slept.

Nobody praised him. Nobody obeyed him. Nobody feared him enough to clear the courtyard.

People simply went around him. One resident squeezed between Sori and the ancestor niche without even looking up.

By dawn he was bored beyond reason.

That felt more human than anything else had all night.

He picked up the pebble and placed it beneath the old woman’s niche. Then he went to work.