The summons came at first light. A runner in a gray cloak rapped on the healer's door and kept his eyes on his boots. "The council requests your presence. All of you." He didn't wait for an answer. He was already moving down the lane.
Lyra shut the door softly. "Requests," she said. "That word means little when it comes from a council."
Brennar tightened the strap over his bandage and rolled his shoulder once to test it. "Good. About time we told them what's what."
Ari slung her bow. "Walk steady. Don't let them smell fear."
Rowan wiped his palms on his tunic. He wasn't afraid of wolves or fire. He found he was afraid of rooms where people decided things.
---
Stoneford's hall was long and high, with timber ribs like a ship turned upside down. Braziers hissed along the walls, and banners showed the town crest stitched in green and gold. A line of carved chairs sat on a raised step. Five councilors waited there, cloaks neat, faces set.
They stopped before the dais. The oldest councilor, a woman with hair white as linen, folded her hands.
"Rowan. Brennar. Ari. Lyra," she said. "On behalf of Stoneford, we thank you for the lives saved in the fire."
Her voice was clean and careful, the thanks measured out like coins.
"I only did what I could," Rowan said.
Another councilor—narrow face, tidy beard—inclined his head. "You did more than most. For that, we owe you gratitude." He paused just long enough to turn the air cold. "But gratitude is not the same as peace."
Brennar's jaw set. Ari's eyes narrowed.
"What do you mean?" Rowan asked.
A third councilor, a woman with ink on her fingers, spoke without looking at him. "Since the fire, crowds gather at the healer's door. Work slows. Watch posts thin. People want to hear you talk about the river. They call you 'blessed.' They wait to see what you do before they move. We cannot have our order unsettled."
"So because I helped," Rowan said slowly, "you want me gone."
The white-haired woman met his eyes and did not blink. "Because you helped in a way none of us understand. Because you pulled water like a net and made it obey. Because the people now listen for your breath more than ours. That is a danger to balance—even if you mean no harm."
Brennar took a step forward, heat in his voice. "The boy put your roofs back on your houses. He kept your children breathing. He asked nothing in return."
"Brennar," Ari said softly, catching his arm. He stopped, though his forearm trembled under her fingers.
A younger councilor at the end cleared his throat. "We are not ungrateful," he said, and he sounded like he meant it. "If you wished to swear to a guild, we could consider—"
The bearded councilor cut him off with a small motion of the hand. "He is not of Stoneford. He belongs to no oath here."
Lyra stepped forward. Her voice was calm and plain. "If you drive him out, he won't last alone. If he stays, you'll never let him be. So he leaves." She looked back at Rowan, then at them. "And so do I."
Relief flickered behind the white-haired woman's stern face, quick as a blink. "Then it is settled. You will depart at dawn. Provisions will be laid out. Take our thanks and take your leave."
"Which road?" Ari asked.
The bearded councilor steepled his fingers. "East. It is clear of flooded ground."
Ari's mouth made the smallest line. "We'll choose our own road."
Something tight moved in the man's eyes. He smiled anyway. "As you like."
The brazier popped. No one spoke after that. The meeting was over because the council had decided it was.
---
They stepped into the square and breathed outside air like it mattered. The guard captain they'd met before stood under the hall eaves, rain on his polished breastplate. He gave Rowan a formal nod.
"For what it's worth," he said, "you did good work." His gaze slid to Ari. "East road is safest this week. Patrols saw nothing there."
Ari looked past him. "Noted."
The captain's face didn't change. "Dawn, then," he said, and walked away.
They crossed the market to buy what they could not carry off the hall's shelves: oil, cord, needles, a spare pot. A fletcher pressed a small bundle of arrowheads into Ari's palm "for luck." A cooper traded a stout waterskin to Rowan and refused payment. "You'll make it sing, lad," he said, and laughed at his own boldness. A baker wrapped two hard loaves and set them on Brennar's pack with a pat like she was feeding a draft horse.
Rowan's ears rang with thanks, with hands on his sleeve, with eyes that shone. He wanted to be grateful. He was. But each gift felt like a thread that tied him to a place he was being told to leave.
Back at the healer's, they packed in silence. Brennar stuffed food into sacks like the bread had offended him.
"Cowards," he muttered. "Afraid of a boy who breathes slower than they do."
"They're afraid of losing control," Ari said, counting arrow shafts. "Power unsettles power. It's math, not malice."
Lyra measured out her stores with a steady hand: dried herbs, thread that gleamed faintly when it caught the light, small jars with tight wax seals. She filled three waterskins and checked each stopper twice. Then she handed Rowan one heavier than the rest.
"I thickened the leather," she said. "Holds water cool. Fewer leaks. Keep it close."
He ran his fingers over the stitched seam. "Thank you."
She tied it to his belt herself to make sure it sat right.
---
Rowan stepped out alone at dusk. Stoneford's roofs cut the sky into neat shapes. Smoke rose straight up. Somewhere, a whistle played a low tune. The river's voice reached him from beyond the wall—steady, even, like someone at peace.
He put his palm on the stone and breathed. The water under the city answered in a small way he could feel now that he was quiet enough: the slow move in the well, the seep through cracks, the thin damp under the cobbles. He drew a thread from the waterskin Lyra had given him, stretched it to his palm, and let it settle back without wanting to make more of it than it was. Small. Steady. Enough.
A shadow shifted on a rooftop across the lane. He looked up in time to see a figure pause, perfectly balanced on the ridge. It tilted its head like a listener, then slid back out of sight without a sound.
Rowan's skin prickled. He waited. Nothing moved. He told himself it was a watcher doing his rounds. He did not believe it. He went back inside.
Brennar was mending a strap with a needle as big as a nail. He held up a leather belt with extra loops. "For the harpoon," he said. "So it sits where your hand wants it."
Rowan buckled it on. The harpoon settled against his hip like it belonged there. "Feels right," he said.
"Good," Brennar said. "You'll stop dropping it when things get loud."
Ari checked the lacing on Rowan's boots and retied it without asking. "River stones are slick," she said. "Don't give the ground a reason to take you."
Lyra brought a small clay jar and smeared cool salve over the rope burn still angry on Rowan's palm. "New skin breaks easy," she said. "Be kind to it."
He looked at each of them, one by one, and felt the knot in his chest ease a little. Whatever waited outside the gate, he would not meet it alone.
They ate quietly when the sky went dark, just enough to fill the edge of their hunger. Later, when Brennar's snores had found their usual rhythm and Ari had finished fletching one last arrow by lamplight, Rowan sat with Lyra on the step.
"I thought maybe I could belong here," he said. "For a day, it felt like that."
Lyra watched the lane. "Belonging isn't given," she said. "Not by towns. Not by councils. It's built. Brick by brick. Breath by breath."
"And if I can't build it?" he asked.
"Then we keep walking," she said simply. "Until you can."
---
They were at the gate before the sun had fully climbed. The guards lifted the bar without a word. A few townsfolk gathered with shawls wrapped tight against the morning chill. The woman whose brother Rowan had saved pressed a pouch of dried apples into his hand. A boy waved both arms until his mother pulled them down.
"Thank you," Rowan said, and meant it. He did not promise to return. He didn't know if he should.
The bearded councilor watched from the wall-walk with the guard captain at his side. He lifted a hand in a small, formal salute at the moment the doors began to move. "East road is open," he called down.
Ari didn't look up. "We'll see," she said under her breath.
The gates swung wide. The road lay pale and empty beyond, dew silver on the ruts. The river ran beside it, steady as always. Rowan glanced back once. Stoneford's windows caught the new light. Faces appeared and vanished behind shutters. He held the look for a heartbeat, then let it go.
He stepped through with the others. Brennar shouldered the heavy pack like it weighed nothing. Ari walked in front, already reading the ground. Lyra kept pace beside Rowan, waterskin thumping lightly against her hip.
They did not speak as the doors thudded shut behind them. The sound went through Rowan's ribs and settled there. It did not feel like an ending. It felt like a hinge.
The road opened. The day opened with it. The river kept talking in its calm way, and Rowan matched his breath to its run. Whatever waited—a watcher on a roof, a choice of roads, a test he could not name—he would meet it with the three who walked at his side.
They didn't take the east road. Ari set a line north by the sun and the smell of wet earth, and they followed.