Morning came with no clear edge.
The sky was a low, unmoving gray that made it difficult to tell where night ended and day began. Frost clung to every surface. Smoke lay trapped beneath the clouds and drifted sideways instead of rising.
The bell rang late.
Late bells meant rearrangement.
Eryk felt it before anyone said it. The yard did not move wrong like it had on inspection day, but it moved unevenly. Too many small delays. Too many men waiting for orders that usually came without pause. Buckets stood unclaimed beside the pump. Two foremen spoke in lowered voices near the upper sheds.
Hala did not shout at the boys to line up.
She waited until they were already standing.
"Kitchen short today," she said. "Three pulled at dawn. Storm damage on the upper tier. Some of you will carry where you are told, not where you are used to."
Her eyes found Eryk without hesitation.
"You. With me first."
Bran's gaze flicked to him. Tomas's mouth tightened. No one spoke.
Inside the kitchen shed the fire was already burning hot. Too hot for early morning. The great pot steamed before anything had been added to it. Hala handed Eryk a cleaver without ceremony.
"Block," she said. "Steady cuts. Don't rush."
A side of frozen meat lay on the wood. Not pork. Too dark. Too lean. It had been hauled in recently and the frost still held its shape against the grain.
Eryk set his hands, braced his balance, and began to cut.
The cleaver struck true. Each blow landed where he placed it. The first fragments fell away in heavy chunks that thudded against the board and slid into the waiting basin.
Hala watched without comment.
Behind them the yard shifted. Orders echoed back and forth between the sheds and the quarry paths. The chain song from the pit rose unevenly, interrupted by sharp whistles and shouted corrections.
"Storm took part of the haul path," Hala said at last. "Rock sheer. Three men buried shallow. Two breathing when they dug them out."
She glanced at the meat.
"One not."
Eryk's hands did not stop.
The smell of iron rose as the flesh warmed under the blade. Steam curled faintly from the cut surface.
"More water," Hala said. "Keep the pot moving today."
When he carried the basin outside, he saw that the yard had split into two currents. One flowed toward the quarry as usual. The other flowed toward the upper sheds in quick, uneven lines of men with ropes and spare tools.
A shape lay under a canvas near the ramp.
Eryk did not slow.
At the pump Tomas worked with two older men instead of boys. The rhythm was faster than usual and rougher. Water spilled often and froze where it fell. Ice crusted the stones in broad patches now, not just at the edges.
"You're on cutting now," Tomas muttered as Eryk passed.
"For now."
"That makes three this week."
Eryk did not ask what three meant.
Near the upper ramp, Bran stood with a coil of rope in his arms and two unfamiliar men at his back. One of them leaned heavily against the wall. A dark stain had frozen into the stone behind where he had been set down earlier.
Bran's gaze met Eryk's briefly.
There was no question in it.
Only acknowledgment.
The carrying work changed after midday.
Hala sent him not for water, but for sacks from the middle store. Grain and lime and iron wedges. The kind of loads meant for rebuilding, not feeding. The sacks were heavier than stew buckets had ever been. The cart wheels shrieked against the stone where ice had taken purchase.
He made three runs before his shoulders began to burn in a way that the cold no longer dulled.
On the fourth run, Gerrit intercepted him near the quarry path.
"Hollowford," he said. "Take that cart down to mid-tier. Foreman wants it now."
The path was narrower than the upper runs. The storm had chewed into its edge, leaving a brittle lip of stone where solid ground had been. Meltwater had frozen in slanted sheets across the descent.
Eryk looked down once.
Men moved below through pale dust and shadow.
He set his weight forward and began the descent.
Each step had to be chosen. The cart pulled unevenly as the load shifted with the slope. Ice sang softly under the wheels. His breath rasped with the effort of controlling both weight and gravity at once.
Halfway down, a whistle shrilled from above.
"Careful," someone called.
He was already past the worst of it.
At the mid-tier, the foreman took the cart without words. A chunk of stone lay smashed near the wall where something had fallen earlier. Iron wedges were being driven into it already. Production did not pause for wreckage.
When Eryk turned back, the ascent felt longer than it should have.
At the top of the path, he found Bran waiting with a crate braced against his leg.
"You are moving loads they usually do not give to boys," Bran said quietly.
"I am not the only one."
"No. But you are the one they trust not to slip."
The words lodged heavily.
Below them, a shout rose from the lower tier.
Not a warning.
A call.
Men ran toward the base of the path. Chains clattered. Someone screamed once, short and high.
A stretcher was hauled into view moments later. Two men guided it up the ramp. The canvas covering was dark at one end and stiff with frost.
Eryk stood where he was.
The stretcher passed within arm's reach.
A boy's boot hung from beneath the edge of the cloth.
It was Kett's.
Eryk did not breathe until it was gone.
The afternoon was rearranged without explanation.
Two boys were pulled from the yard and sent to the lower sheds. One man from the quarry was brought up to the pump. The clerks moved between buildings with new bundles under their arms.
The ledger was open again by evening.
Eryk did not see what was written.
But he heard the quill.
It scratched in short, firm strokes that ended cleanly.
That night the shed held more breath than usual.
Not more boys.
Just louder lungs.
Tomas lay on his back staring at the ceiling as if mapping its cracks.
"They cannot keep this pace," he said softly into the dark. "Storm or no storm. The stone is too brittle. They are pushing."
Bran turned slightly on his pallet.
"They always push when the numbers slip."
Eryk lay with his hands on his ribs. He could still feel the grain of the cleaver's handle in his palms. The steady rhythm of cutting had not left him yet.
"Kett fell because the path iced," Tomas said. "He did not carry too much. He did not fail at the work. He slipped."
No one responded.
"That matters," Tomas whispered.
Bran exhaled slowly.
"Only when the ledger wants it to."
The shed fell quiet again.
In the hours before dawn, when the fire in the kitchen had burned down to coals and even the quarry slabs rested momentarily between shifts, Eryk woke with his hands clenched hard enough that his fingers had gone numb.
He opened them slowly.
They did not shake.
They had not shaken all day.
They had cut meat.
They had guided weight.
They had chosen footing.
They had not reached for Kett.
Not for the fallen. Not for anyone.
They had done exactly what they were given to do.
In the gray before the bell, Eryk sat up on his pallet with his hands in his lap and looked at them as if they belonged to someone else.
He could not decide when they had stopped being only his.