Dawn smelled like hot iron deciding to be useful. Oakwatch blinked — . (ready); Millcross, Knoll, Turnstone, and Barrowford answered — . / . — on the hour. Five Stable Fields purred under roofs; the ferry chain sang the shy note Jory likes when nobody is trying to be famous. The cairns along Founders' Way hummed one clean syllable when he tapped them—ready. 🙂
— Morning Brief — Millcross Works• Aim: stand up the Scorpionwrights' Guild (safety, springs, rails, resin), convert mill shed → foundry bay• Spec: Scorpion Mk II — low-smoke resin, faster crank, Measured Bite limiter, No Greedy Shot lock• Audit: rail oil (sugar risk), coil hardness, trigger pins, shot logs; Guild seal for compliance• Watch: Pike sabotage cell (syrup/oil), latch-banner recruiters, fast-quiet jar parts in scrap• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Morale: Work-bright, iron-minded 🙂
"Today we keep dogs from biting their own masters," Elara said, helm under her arm.
"Dogs get soup," Mara replied, ladling theology. 😑🍲
Millcross's old north mill shed yawned like a mouth that had finally read a plan. Ansel chalked braces, Hadrik lugged a flywheel with the tenderness of a midwife, Kessa unpacked resin jars labeled LOW SMOKE in her handwriting that could shame princes, and Émile produced a box of limiters—little brass governors to keep the crank from teaching pride to be a speed.
Rinna's battery crews rolled Thorn, Sable, and Pip into line under awnings. Each scorpion's jaw sat open with the patience of a kettle awaiting heat. A chalk board said NO GREEDY SHOT in a dozen hands, the letters getting bigger every time someone walked by. 🙂
Tavi stood at the plank with the hollow under his palm; Mokh sent Ardo to stand like a punctuation mark between appetite and law. Lia's cousin stacked loop cards, stamped child-sun, and appointed herself pin auditor with the solemnity of a moon.
Aiden pressed thumb to brow and let After-Sight bite exactly once. The chalk line behind his eye drew three small lies and one tired one:
Syrup warming by the rail bench—sweet where oil should be.
A trigger pin with a hair filed off.
A coil stamped spring that had been born as wire.
A ledger column missing two lines and pretending to be tidy.
"Sugar to cake," he said. "Pins to tin. Coil to drop. Ledger to children."
"Good arithmetic," Elara answered.
— Project Card — Scorpionwrights' Guild (Millcross)• Charter: safety first; No Greedy Shot doctrine; Measured Bite limiter; shot logs; resin control• Seal: gear & ladle (heat + soup); issued after audit of rails, coils, pins, logs• Training: three-day crew course (row rhythm for cranks; eight falling discipline)• Mk II: faster crank (governed), low-smoke resin, recoil straps, quiet pads (felt)
They built a guild out of chores.
Ansel and Hadrik braced the bay, set a chief beam, kissed it with their knuckles until it behaved. Émile seated the limiter on a crank head and turned it like a man tuning manners. Kessa decanted the LOW SMOKE resin into tins and labeled them again because people read in a hurry and ink fights that.
Mara set a pot halfway between bay and yard, invented a rule—"If you touch resin, you hold ladle five breaths before you touch bread"—and glared the shed into compliance. 🍲🙂
Rinna lined crews for drill: crank on row rhythm, release on count, Measured Bite only on call, No Greedy Shot until your grandchildren have grandchildren. Jory chalked cadence on the plank: one is a finger—pull—two makes a question—set—three is work—loose. The crews laughed, then obeyed, then stopped laughing because doing something well can be a quiet thing.
Lia's cousin, Pin Auditor, held up a box and made each crew say the parts aloud: "pin, coil, spring, ratchet, sear." She stamped loops in the shot log after every bite like a miniature tyrant with excellent policies. 🫡
— Doctrine Update — Scorpion Mk II• Limiter: crank speed governed (overrun lock)• Pads: felt on sills (quiet recoil)• Resin: low-smoke mix (glass-friendly)• Discipline: eight falling = decline the poem (refuse follow-up when pride requests)
By noon, Thorn took his limiter like medicine and forgave us; Sable discovered she preferred pads to rattling her teeth; Pip wore a jaunty strap and consented to behave. The bay smelled like iron learning to be calm.
That's when money tried to hire noise.
A latch-banner recruiter appeared with a smile practiced in mirrors and a paper that said RIVER OWES RENT in a font that had never done a day's work. He complimented springs, insulted safety, and suggested that "heroes shoot twice to prove a point."
"Heroes don't run ledgers," Venn said, who is not often cruel but can be accurate. He raised the Guild of Honest Type board; the man's license wilted under serifs he did not own. Ardo cut the string on the recruiting pennon with public boredom; Lucien set work days: five, sweeping the yard where boys could watch an adult be tidy.
"Permit to sweep," Mara said, giving him a bowl large enough to take the edge off embarrassment. 🍲
The recruiter lasted two days before learning not to drop the broom when someone looked. Progress.
Pike sent syrup and wire instead of boys.
Ras caught the warm jar under a bench by mistake and then by policy; Hale scraped a coil with a thumbnail and winced at the lie; Rinna's hand hovered over eight falling; Émile set the bad parts on a separate plank like you sequester a witness.
Tavi put his palm on the hollow drum. "Stall," he said to pride. "Edge." The yard listened.
Aiden touched oak. The chalk line behind his eye drew the sabotage cell backward through purchases: a scrap cart with a false bottom; a payment book with Widows' Rope written wrong; three faces that didn't know how to love dust.
"Hale," he said. "Scrap cart. Ras, barrel with two rings of bulge. Bryn, roofline—mirror tack near the eave."
They moved without theater. Hale rolled the barrel and caught the change in slosh—syrup pretending to be oil. Ras knocked his pebbles into the false cart board and made it confess. Bryn palmed a clean tack out of the roof as if taking communion from a church she didn't attend.
Ardo read Noise & Cadence aloud because he enjoys enforcement. Venn tallied fines; Lucien posted market shun for the scrapman's circle. The boys who would have been impressed faced brooms instead and discovered that the handle fits hands that wanted handles anyway.
— Audit — Pike Cell (Millcross)• Seized: syrup jar (rail oil), false-bottom cart, wire coils stamped as spring, clean tack• Sentences: work days (7–12) under white; fines → Widows' Rope; cart confiscated → clinic runs• Guild: seal withheld from noncompliant stalls; public list posted
Afternoon breathed a little longer. The Scorpionwrights' Charter went up on the bay wall in letters even pride could read:
SCORPIONWRIGHTS' GUILD (MILLX.)
No Greedy Shot. (If your hand wants it, it doesn't get it.)
Measured Bite only on call.
Limiter stays on or you go home.
Resin low-smoke; pads on sills; logs in loops.
Violations → broom days; repeat → market shun; tool seizure.
Ana of Silverbrook rapped the plank with a needle like a gavel. "Needles and bolts agree," she said. "If your stitch is too fast, your shirt is a lie." The yard applauded with two short because we are cultivating taste.
Rinna looked at Aiden. "Measured Bite practice on moving hinge?" she asked.
He nodded. "Five rising on Jory. Take Pip only. Aim for the arrow on the walking palisade."
They had built that palisade in Chapter 65's shadow—stakes on a cart, hush canvas stretched like the inside of a polite lung. Ansel pushed it at a thoughtful pace across the yard; Hadrik hung a tin triangle from its middle so the hinge would have a voice if it forgot to mind its feet.
Jory breathed five rising. Pip's crew cranked in row rhythm; the limiter made impatience into muscle memory; Measured Bite kissed the hinge plate with a knock you could notarize. The palisade felt the love and stayed a wall.
"Again," Elara said, because competence loves repetition.
A boy—too quick, too eager—leaned into the crank on Sable like a man auditioning for a song. The limiter caught him; the crank refused his flourish; the crew laughed and then loved him until he stopped blushing.
Lia's cousin stamped his log and whispered, "Eight falling when your heart wants to be loud," as if giving away a secret you keep by sharing it.
— Drill — "Walking Wall" Bite• Target: hinged cart palisade, tin marker at hinge• Result: limiter prevented overspin; bite landed; wall held• Notes: crews preferred row rhythm; boy learned eight falling (decline the poem)
Toward last bell, fast-quiet tried to creep. A man with a crate of jar parts claimed he only sold "copper art" and "resin for lamps." The parts nested like a sin that thinks it is a cleverness. Kessa lifted the copper ring with two fingers and turned it half a hair the way she had done on river. The parts sighed into a quiet that swallowed the seller's pitch and made him sound like regret. The yard laughed without cruelty; Venn wrote five broom days; Rinna logged a note: jar part = string when it sits within two bowshots of white.
Clove left a folded leaf on the Charter plank.
You put brakes on pride and called it a guild.The Moth will try to rent your discipline by the hour.Keep seals stingy and logs public.Let children say the rules out loud.— C.
"Children already do," Lia's cousin said, very satisfied with herself. 🙂
Evening knocked like a gentleman. Jory ran the hour: — . / . —; clerks answered . .; ladles tuk'd bowls into hands across five posts. The yard smelled like metal considering bed. The Scorpionwrights' seal—gear-and-ladle—took ink for the first time and pressed onto Thorn's log, then Sable's, then Pip's with a humility that made Hadrik suspiciously happy.
Aiden touched oak. The ache behind his eye stayed blunt; the chalk line drew a tidy box around the day and did not beg to be a storm. He watched crews put covers on jaws the way bakers flour loaves they love. He watched a boy tie a limiter strap with hands that remembered to be careful. He watched No Greedy Shot go up in another hand, a little larger.
Elara bumped his shoulder with a gauntlet that knows how to hold standards without bruising them. "We taught teeth to mind their owner," she said.
"And to love a ledger," he added.
"Good arithmetic."
Mara passed him a bowl like a signature at the bottom of a contract. "Eat before you invent heroics," she said. 🍲🙂
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the shed where iron learned to be kind, "we made a guild from chores, put a brake on pride, and taught scorpions to keep books. Syrup turned into cake, wire turned into tin, and a limiter turned a boy into a crewman. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Millcross Foundry• Scorpionwrights' Guild founded; Charter posted; seal minted (gear & ladle)• Mk II upgrades: limiters on cranks; felt pads; low-smoke resin; No Greedy Shot lock• Audits: sugar jar seized; false-bottom cart; wire coils; clean tack → tins; work days (7–12)• Drills: walking palisade Measured Bite; eight falling discipline taught• Fast-quiet parts foiled; sellers broomed; parts = strings near white (logged)• System: scorpion panic −small; misfire risk −small; seer-ache tolerable• Morale: Quiet-proud; soup excellent; roads & yards open 🙂