The bell woke him before the cold did.
Eryk opened his eyes to the dark and knew where his feet would land, how the boards would feel under them, where his shirt lay folded by habit at his side. His fingers found the cloth without searching. The fabric had stiffened from too many washings in cold water and too little soap. It pulled over his scraped knuckles with a familiar drag.
The shed was colder than yesterday. Breath hung pale in the air above each pallet. Someone coughed and the sound did not quite wake into a fit. It just pressed out and stopped, as if even lungs were learning not to waste effort.
Bran sat already tying his boots, shoulders hunched, jaw shadowed with the beginning of stubble that never had time to grow into a beard.
"Move," he said without looking up. "You get the buckets Hala will still find more to shout about."
Eryk stood. The stone under his feet bit, but his body no longer flinched. The first week of winter had taught him there was no corner of Blackstone that would grant warmth. There was only movement and the small heat that work built in bone and muscle.
Outside, the yard was a print already half-trampled into the snow from previous mornings. The white was no longer clean. Grey slush filled the paths. Ice crusted the trough edges in ridges that caught the light like broken teeth.
"Water," Hala snapped as they filed out. "Then knives. We have root and bone to see to and I will not have dull work just because your fingers are complaining."
Her own hands were wrapped in cloth at the knuckles, skin cracked where old burns met winter's bite. She held the ladle as if it weighed nothing.
The pump handle burned with cold.
Eryk had learned to grip it with the heel of his hand rather than his fingers. The skin there was thicker now, hardened by splinters and tool handles. The metal still bit, but it did not own his grip the way it once had. He leaned into the pull, finding the rhythm where the pump would protest but not seize.
"Good," Bran said shortly. "You keep that arm straight and we may get through morning without losing more meat to the frost."
Tomas stood beside them with his head down, breath puffing in small, even bursts. He no longer filled the air with words. His eyes remained on the bucket, watching for the moment the surface filmed over.
"Change on three," Tomas muttered. "One, two, three."
They switched without spilling. Some of the water slid over the sides anyway and froze where it landed, turning the ground into a patchwork of dull, slick stone.
Eryk took the first bucket to the kitchen. His arms remembered the distance better than his thoughts did. The weight settled into his shoulders, then his back, then his legs in familiar lines. His fingers did not tremble on the handle.
By the time he reached the fire, thin ice had formed on the surface. Hala smashed it with the flat of her hand before tipping the water in.
"You carry before it sets, not after," she said, though he had moved as fast as he could. "World will not slow for your feet, Eryk."
"No, mistress," he said.
She jerked her chin toward the table.
"Knives. We have marrow bones that need cracking and roots that need chopping, and if I find large chunks in the stew again I will make you swallow them whole and see how you like that."
The knives waited in a stained wooden block by the table leg. Eryk had handled them before, but always under someone else's eye, always with Hala standing close enough that he could feel the weight of her attention. Today she only gestured.
"Take one that fits your hand," she said.
He chose the middle knife, the one with the handle worn smooth and the blade kept shy of shine by constant use. It sat well against his palm. The balance no longer felt odd. His fingers wrapped around the wood and knew how far his thumb should sit from the edge.
He set himself at the table with a basket of turnips and onions. The first day his cuts had been thick and clumsy. Hala's remarks had fallen on his neck as often as the onion skins fell to the floor.
Now the motion came almost without thought. Knife down, twist, slice. He cut the pieces small enough that they would break apart easily in the stew. His hands moved quickly but never rushed. The trick was to keep the blade moving so that it did the work, not his wrists.
Across from him, a boy from the lower sheds hacked at a marrow bone with another knife. He had been brought up for the morning to help with preparations. His name was Fen. Eryk knew little more than that. Fen had the look of someone who had been strong for too long without rest. His shoulders were wide, his fingers thick, and there were rope scars around his wrists that never quite faded.
"Hold near the joint," Bran said as he passed by with a basket of dried herbs. "You strike the thinner part or you will be here until spring."
"I am holding," Fen muttered.
The bone rolled under his grip. The knife's edge skidded, then bit where it should not.
Fen's breath hissed out sharp. The knife slipped into his thumb.
Blood sheeted over his knuckles and dripped onto the board. Fen swallowed a curse, his eyes shining with a sudden, wet brightness that had nothing to do with tears and everything to do with pain.
For one instant the world around the table narrowed to the sound of that drop of blood hitting wood. Eryk's hands did not stop.
He watched, but he did not pull back, did not jerk his own blade away, did not freeze as he might have when he first arrived.
Knife down, twist, slice.
Hala was there a heartbeat later.
"Off the board," she said to Fen. "Before you ruin the marrow."
She wrapped a cloth around his thumb and yanked it tight. Fen hissed again. She let go long enough to inspect the cut.
"You will live," she said. "You bleed on my food again and I will send you to the pigs so they can find a use for what comes out of your fingers."
She sent him to the wash trough. Another boy took his place. The marrow bone sat on the table with a smear of red on its edge. Hala wiped it once with an old rag and nodded at Bran.
"Show him where to strike next time."
Bran lifted the knife, found the seam, and brought it down with a practiced movement. The bone split with a clean crack.
Eryk chopped another onion.
The sting brought water to his eyes, but nothing else did.
Later, when the vegetables had all been reduced to small, neat pieces and the pot began to smell of onions, salt, and meat that had not quite spoiled before boiling, Hala sent him up the steps toward the upper yard.
"Take this to the steward's outer room," she said, handing him a folded scrap of stiff paper. "Do not open it. Do not lose it. Do not use it to wipe your nose. You give it to Bran if anyone stops you."
"What is it?" Tomas asked, watching from the pump with his hand braced against the handle.
"Counts for the month," Hala said shortly. "Bowls, pigs, flour, bones. Things the steward claims to care about. Move."
The steps to the upper yard were worn in the center where feet had passed most often. Snow had been beaten off them in patches. The air felt thinner up here, less crowded with steam and animal stink, more thick with smoke and something sharper from the forges further up the hill.
Eryk kept his eyes down, as Bran had taught him, but let them slide just enough to map the space. Men crossed his path in heavier cloaks, carrying ledgers or coiled rope instead of buckets. Their boots were better worn but better made.
The steward's building sat like a stone block in the center of the yard. Its door was open a crack. Eryk knocked once on the frame.
"Come," the steward's voice said from inside.
Eryk stepped in.
The room smelled of ink and cold dust. Shelves lined the walls, each holding bundles of leather, folded papers, small wooden boxes. A brazier glowed low in the corner, offering more light than heat. The steward stood at a high table with a ledger open before him.
Without looking up, he held out his hand.
Eryk placed the folded paper in it.
"Hala's counts," he said.
The steward unfolded it, scanned the lines, and grunted once.
"She still knows where every crumb goes," he said. "That is almost useful."
He set Hala's paper aside and dipped his quill. Ink clung to the metal tip in a thick bead. His hand did not shake as he moved it to the ledger.
"You carry straight," he said without glancing at Eryk. "No smears."
Eryk blinked.
"Yes, steward."
"If you smudge Hala's ink before it lands on my table, she tells me. Then I care. I do not care about your feelings, boy, but I care about my numbers."
His eyes flicked up now, narrow and pale.
"Name."
"Eryk."
The quill touched the page. Eryk watched, half against his will, as the steward's neat script added a small notation in the margin beside one of the lines.
"Hands steady enough for paper," the steward murmured. "Useful."
It was not Eryk's name he marked. It was Hala's. The word beside it could have been anything. The steward turned the ledger a fraction and the angle lost Eryk the view.
The book was thicker than it had been the last time he saw it. More pages filled. More lines written in that same careful hand. Some scratched out with sharp, final strokes. Others left to sit unaltered.
"Do I go?" Eryk asked when the silence stretched.
"You stand there until I tell you to go," the steward said. Then, after a moment, he added, "Now you go."
Eryk went.
Outside, the air felt even colder after the brief brush with brazier warmth. His hands tingled where the blood returned to his fingers. He flexed them once and saw the small, faint ridges that had formed along his palms. Blisters hardened into thicker skin. Old rope burns had grown pale and shiny, no longer raw.
Bran met him halfway down the steps.
"Lose it?" Bran asked.
"No."
"Good." Bran's gaze dipped to his hands. "You did not spill either."
"Spill what?"
Bran snorted faintly.
"Ink. They put more weight on that than your bones."
Back in the yard, Hala had the boys forming a line for the midday meal. Bowls moved from hand to hand in a near ritual. No one rushed. There was no point. Hala would stop serving when the pot was empty. Pushing to the front only meant she would see their faces more clearly.
Tomas joined Eryk in the line with his shoulders hunched, hands thrust into his sleeves.
"How was upstairs?" Tomas asked.
"Cold," Eryk said.
"Everything is cold," Tomas said. "More words up there though, I imagine. More counting. Steward says Marek was 'reassigned'. Says it like he is talking about a cracked pot."
The word sat oddly.
"Reassigned to what?" Eryk asked.
Tomas shrugged, eyes fixed ahead. The line inched forward.
"Stone. The pit. The pigs. The crows. Does not matter, does it? He is not here. That is what they mean."
Hala slapped a ladle of thin stew into Eryk's bowl when he reached her.
"Eat," she said. "You work better when you are not fainting on my floor."
He stepped aside. The broth steamed against his face. He could smell the onion he had chopped and something like bone long boiled. His stomach clenched and made a low noise.
He lifted the bowl and drank, letting the warmth spread outward. His hands remained steady. The surface of the stew did not ripple.
That afternoon, he was sent to the storage shed with Bran to bring out sacks of old grain. Snow had piled up against the lower stones of the wall. Bran kicked a path through it with short, irritated movements.
"Lift with your legs," Bran said as Eryk took one end of a sack. "You ruin your back this young and they put you in the pit faster."
The weight was heavy but not unmanageable. Eryk's body no longer wanted to topple backward under it. His muscles found the strain and held it.
"Remember when you could barely carry a bucket?" Tomas called from the pump, though there was less bite in his tone than there would once have been. "Now look at you. Almost a proper mule."
Eryk shifted the sack higher and pretended he did not hear the note under the joke. It was not mockery. It was something like wary approval, thin and fragile.
Evening came grey and early. Smoke from the cooking fires mixed with the breath of the yard and settled low. The cold did not let up, but the movement kept it from burrowing all the way into bone.
Eryk scrubbed bowls until his fingers felt raw again. The stone at the trough had become slick with grease and sand. He found a rhythm that did not waste motion. Dip, scrub, rinse, stack. His hands moved. His shoulders did what they needed to without him thinking where to place them.
"You work like someone who expects to be here tomorrow," Bran said quietly as they carried the last stack back to the kitchen.
Eryk frowned.
"Do I not?"
Bran's mouth twisted in a tired almost smile.
"Some do not," he said. "They move like they are already gone. Harder for them to stay. Easier for other people to nudge them along."
He did not say Jory's name. He did not need to.
That night, as Eryk lay on his pallet with the thin blanket pulled up to his chin, he flexed his fingers in the dark.
They ached, but they did not tremble.
He thought of Fen's blood on the cutting board, bright against the pale marrow. He thought of the way Hala had moved the cloth, fast, efficient, annoyed more at wasted work than at the injury itself.
He thought of holding the bucket, of walking the steps to the steward's room without spilling, of the brief moment when the steward's eyes had weighed his hands and found them steady.
Once, when he had first arrived, his fingers had shaken so hard he could not hold a chipped cup without rattling it against the table. Shock had lived there, in his knuckles, in the tendons that pulled his hands tight when he thought of fire and beams and Droth's boot on his wrist.
Now the shaking was gone.
He had not noticed exactly when it left.
Only that today, when a boy cut himself badly enough to bleed on the table and swallow a shout, Eryk's knife had not faltered. His cut had continued straight and clean through the onion.
He was not sure whether that felt like strength.
Or loss.
Outside, winter pressed against Blackstone's walls. Inside, hands hardened, skin thickened, movements smoothed into the sort of efficiency that made people useful.
He closed his eyes and felt the dull pulse in his fingers where new calluses were forming under old scars.
His hands did not shake.
The world would find a use for that.