The next morning began crooked.
The bell still rang on time, but the pattern after it did not fall into place as neatly. Men hesitated in the yard, waiting a heartbeat too long before reaching for buckets or tools. Foremen spoke in shorter sentences. Hala stood with her arms folded for several breaths before barking the first order.
"Leave the grain," she said. "Pump first. Then yard. Quarry is calling early."
Tomas was already at the pump when Eryk reached it.
"Handle is stiff today," Tomas muttered, hand tight on the iron. "Feels wrong."
The first pull confirmed it.
The handle did not move with the tired smoothness Eryk knew. It jolted halfway down, then gave all at once, dragging his shoulder lower than it should have gone. The rope squealed where it passed over the beam.
"They oiled it?" Eryk asked.
Tomas snorted. "They marked it 'to be checked'."
Water came up darker than usual. Not dirty. Just colder. It smoked in the air as they poured it into the waiting buckets.
After the second haul, Gerrit appeared.
"You," he said, jabbing his chin at Eryk. "Leave the pump. Yard needs hands. Tomas, you stay."
Tomas's mouth twisted.
"So I get the stiff handle alone."
"Handle still turns," Gerrit replied. "So do you."
Eryk set his bucket down near the trough and moved.
The yard had been rearranged while he worked.
Tools were laid out in rows, more than usual, but the rows were broken. Shovels mixed with broken-handled picks. Hammers with heads that had been wired back onto their hafts. Chains coiled in loose, uneven loops.
A foreman from the upper ledges stood with the steward's clerk, talking in low voices.
"Two men short on mid-tier," the foreman said. "Three on the haul. I can lose a cart, not a chain team."
"You cannot lose carts either," the clerk replied. "The ledger has no room for replacement this count. Use what you have. Move names, not numbers."
"How?" the foreman asked.
The clerk flicked his fingers as if brushing dust.
"Reassign temporarily."
He did not look toward the workers at all.
Gerrit turned to Bran.
"You and Hollowford," he said. "Carry tools to the mid sheds. They will pull from there as needed."
Bran shouldered a crate. Eryk took the other end. The wood bit into his palms.
"You hear that?" Bran said under his breath. "Move names, not numbers."
"I heard," Eryk said.
He kept his eyes on the ground as they crossed the yard.
The mid sheds buzzed with motion. Men went in with empty hands and came out with tools that should have been replaced months ago. A boy a year or two older than Eryk stood just inside the door, checking a rough list against what was taken.
"Temporary," he said to almost every request. "Foreman says you bring it back after second bell."
Temporary.
The word swept over the yard like a coat of thin paint.
When the first bell after dawn sounded, Eryk was sent back to the pump.
Tomas's face was red and damp with effort. His breath came in short gusts.
"Thought I lost you to the quarry," he said. "They pulled Harn from here already."
"Harn?"
"The older one with the shoulder. He was listed pump, now he is 'assist lower path'. Just for the morning, they say."
The handle fought Eryk again as he took it. The rope rasped and jumped in the groove.
"They will bring him back," Tomas said. "If the path holds."
They did not have time to speak more.
Water was needed in three directions now. Yard. Quarry. A new line of buckets for the upper sheds where the steward had moved his desk to watch the traffic more closely.
By midmorning, Eryk had been moved again.
"Hollowford," Gerrit called. "Upper."
The upper yard felt tighter than before. The steward's table had been rolled closer to the sheds. Two ledgers lay open now instead of one. The narrow-faced clerk handled one. A younger clerk worked the other, scratching marks with less certainty.
"Temporary assignments," the younger clerk said as Eryk approached. "Carry this to the tool shed and wait there. Foremen will draw as needed."
He handed Eryk a plank marked with chalk lines. No names. Just symbols.
The tool shed was fuller than he had ever seen it.
Broken-edged shovels.
Hammers with flattened faces.
Chains with links that had been stretched and twisted back.
Foremen came and went. Each time they took something, they glanced at the plank and told Eryk where to notch it.
"Two for mid-tier haul. One for lower swing. Three chains for upper lip. Put a mark here."
"What about return?" Eryk asked once.
The foreman snorted.
"Return them intact and we are lucky."
He left with the chains.
Eryk marked as instructed.
Time lost its shape in the flow of men and tools.
He noticed it when the light had shifted without him seeing when.
Someone brought him a half bowl of stew and a crust. He ate standing up, back to the wall, watching the comings and goings.
At some point in the late afternoon, a familiar face appeared in the crowd.
Harn.
His name was not on Eryk's plank, but Eryk knew him by the way he favored his right shoulder. Harn reached for a pick with his left hand and grunted as he hefted it.
"They send you back to the pump?" Eryk asked.
"For the count," Harn said. "They need me lower first. The path is soft."
He did not stay to say more.
Eryk marked nothing.
Harn's name was not listed.
The flow continued.
Foremen returned tools sometimes.
A shovel with a new crack.
A chain with one link bent enough to catch.
A hammer with a smear of something dark on its head.
Eryk stacked them in separate piles.
At the second bell, the steward came out from the shade and stood near the door.
"How many picks to lower level?" he asked.
"Four," Eryk answered. "And three back."
"How many to mid-tier haul?"
"Six taken," Eryk said. "Two returned. One cracked."
The steward made three quick notches on the edge of his ledger.
"Any chain breaks?"
"Not brought back," Eryk said carefully. "Three taken to upper lip. No returns yet."
"Foremen will report them," the steward said. "If they fail on the line."
He moved on without asking about names.
As the light thinned, the traffic slowed.
One by one the foremen stopped coming.
One chain returned late. It was twisted and stiff with frozen mud. Eryk hung it in the broken pile.
No one brought Harn's pick back.
When the last of the tools were stacked and the door was barred for the night, the younger clerk came to collect the chalk plank.
He frowned at it.
"Some of these marks do not match the sheet," he said. "Foreman count says five picks to lower level. You have four."
"I saw four taken," Eryk said. "Two returned."
"Foreman said five," the clerk repeated. "So five were assigned. If one broke, it is in their report."
He scratched a correction onto the plank and copied it into his ledger.
"Five," he said.
The number sat on the page with clean certainty.
Eryk watched the line dry.
That night, in the shed, Tomas lay on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes.
"Harn did not come back to pump," he said.
Bran turned his face toward the wall.
"They will say he is still 'assist lower path'," he muttered. "Until they do not say it anymore."
"Did you see him?" Tomas asked Eryk.
"Once," Eryk said. "He took a pick and went down. I did not see him return."
Tomas's hand closed into a fist against his forehead.
"They will not cross him out if they never write him down in the new place," he said. "He will just sit between lines."
"That is safer than some places," Bran said.
"Not if you fall in the middle," Tomas whispered.
No one answered.
Eryk lay flat on his pallet and stared at the low, dark ceiling.
Harn's shoulder. The way he had lifted the pick left-handed. The way he had disappeared into the flow of men without leaving a mark on the plank.
The ledger would show him where he had been.
Not where he went.
Not where he stopped.
He understood something then, quietly and without heat:
The system could only see what it had time to write.
Anything that happened between scratches of the quill slid into a gap where numbers did not live.
Harn had gone into that gap.
The machine would keep moving over it.
Tomorrow, the pump handle would be stiff in a new pair of hands.
The plank would start clean.
And Harn would be nowhere at all.
Eryk folded his hands over his chest.
The ache in his shoulders had not left.
The day had demanded the same weight as before, just carried in more directions.
He was more tired than he had been in a long time.
But he did not feel weaker.
He felt thinner.
Like something stretched and held.
Blackstone still worked.
It was only losing track of what it used to count.
And some losses did not leave bodies behind.
Only missing marks.