The dome had manners and no mercy.
Banners along the quay remembered to hang. Tar forgot how to brag. Ovens opened their mouths and breathed their own breath back. In the road by the fish market, a cart wheel made the shape of a rattle and gave up the sound; men swore with their faces and saved the rest for later.
"City's starving of air," Ash said, palm on a lintel whose soot line told the truth about days when bread is honest. "You can hear dough thinking about being glue."
Fen sniffed the harbor and didn't find rot—he found the hour just before rot when a fish believes in itself too long. "Ships will die tidy," he said. "Clerks love that."
Ylva stood with her back to the pier post and watched the film over the day. "Wind's trying to get in," she said. "The dome made a room and forgot the windows."
Asgrim touched the sailcloth over Fellgnýr. The wrong violet under it lifted its head and then settled like a dog invited to behave. Skylaug tightened on his forearm—the tar-knot Fen had stitched bit first, as arranged, whenever his wrist reached for sugar.
He tested the city's patience with a truth no bigger than a carpenter's pencil mark. "We can feed this place without drowning it," he said. The film over the harbor crazed a hair's breadth and mended, undecided.
He gathered the harborfolk where the quay's planks say what years have already said—coopers and rope men, the tide-wives with their baskets, bakers with pale dough and eyes like ovens gone sulky. The dome pressed the middle out of their murmurs and left the edges presentable.
"No lecture," Asgrim said, size of palm. "Only a job."
He set his hand to the old trough stone—hearth on one side, wind on the other, the place you make promises that can stand on both legs—and laid the chorus they already knew into the table of the day.
"By bread—"
"By bread—" the bakers answered, hands already in it.
"By wind we've taught into a good job—"
"By wind we've taught into a good job—" oarsmen grinned without liking him and pulled once on the air, the ropes in their fists saying aye even if mouths were shy.
"By work—ours—"
"By work—ours—" the tide-wives said, lifting and setting baskets in time.
"We'll spend before we ask you to."
"We'll spend before we ask you to."
The dome, being an engineer, tried to account for this and failed to find the column. Good.
"As if a city were a hull," Ash said, "you quarter it for air—four feeds, each small, each honest, crossing where men need lungs."
"Quarter," Asgrim said, and the word fitted the pier like a scarf joint.
He would not stamp; he had learned that scar. He would not shout; the bell would drink him dry. He would plant and walk and teach.
First Peg — Harbor Edge
He carried Fellgnýr to the slip where Low Drum would have liked to live and set the wrapped head down into the quay wood, then through, and into the pilings and the stone that forgot its name under seawater. Not a ring of hush—a stake. Air around the peg remembered jobs.
He raised three waypoints above the water, coin-small and shallow: one at mast-tip height over the north pier; one at the harbor mouth where the river tries to confess; one above the bakehouse roofs where soot had the wrong color. He walked a rail between them—bow to throat to tail—and then did not pull. He offered.
Wind that had been making jokes out at sea chose to be useful. It came in at a low crawl, learned the lane like a dog taught to heel, and went up past the ovens to the lungs of men who had forgotten what good air weighs.
Bakers snapped awake like knives that find the whetstone. One slapped his paddle against a hot tile; the sound arrived late but not empty. A woman at a window closed her eyes and leaned into a breeze the size of a hand and laughed with her shoulders because the bell refused to let the laugh be heard and still it wanted out.
"Hold that," Ylva said. "No heroics. She'll take what you give her and not thank you if you brag."
Second Peg — Hill of Kilns
They took the lane to the lime-burners' hill, where kilns stood like the mouths of tired wolves. The dome sat heavier inland; the air had forgotten how to find stairs.
Asgrim planted Fellgnýr again, this time through the black stone of a kiln base, not the lip—never teach fire pride—and made three more cleats in the air: above the dyehouse vent, above a tannery court, above the old cistern. He set a cross of gentle pressure rails between harbor and hill so up had a habit to rely on.
Ash gave the burners a workable oath. "Say it at the bellows handle," she told them, and they did: push—draw—push—draw. The words took the handle's weight, and the handle paid back with wind. The dome tried to shave the middles and failed where impact made proof.
A boy raised both palms and blinked because his eyes watered—the good way. He looked guilty for liking it and then looked grateful for being allowed.
Third Peg — Market Fountain
They passed through a square where a fountain had held the shape of falling all day and owed the city an apology. The dome had given it grief and cleanliness in equal measure.
Asgrim planted in the basin's stone lip—not deep, exact—and pinned three more waypoints out along the lanes where stalls leaned and men bartered with disciplined patience. He rubbed the chain across the tar-knot when the urge came to make this pretty; the bite reminded him who had to breathe tomorrow.
He set the north–south rail and then the east–west, small as a thought, large enough to move a skirt, carry a syllable, wake yeast. Bread at the corner shop rose like a man who's been invited to sit nearer the fire. A lamp flame that had been starved learned how to be small and honest instead of large and stupid.
"Don't stand under it to enjoy yourself," Fen told a trio of dock-idlers who had known him since they were boys and would never admit it. "Move your goods. The air is for work."
They moved. Work loves strictness when it isn't busy resenting it.
Fourth Peg — Granary Roof
The last plant needed to sit where the city keeps wheat against the days men pretend won't come. The granary had learned hush as a religion; grain goes dusty and sad without wind.
The roof timbers were old, timber men's names at the ends where only birds could read them. Asgrim set Fellgnýr midspan, down into the tie-beam, and walked three waypoints over the ridge—one toward the hospital lane, one to the fish gutters where salt bites metal, one to the bakers' row already waking. He felt the cross complete: four tethers, four corridors, a quartering of breath.
"Tie it to labor," Ash said. "Or it'll fall when you do."
They did. Coopers opened their big-belly doors and worked staves on an oath: bend—set—hammer—wedge. Dyers dragged vats to face the rails and stirred on the beat. Boys stood with brooms at alley mouths to feel the draft turn and called to their mothers when the alley learned to be a corridor. Women at ovens sang nothing audible—habit does not ask permission—and the bread rounded its back.
Ylva laid a soft pressure handrail down each corridor—at hip height along the lanes, at chest along the steps—so air had something to be when men forgot they were part of it. "Do not lean," she warned. "Use, then ignore. Anchors are habits, not furniture."
Fen set two watches—not for men with spears (though they would come) but for adjustment. "When the flag in your fist lifts, call," he told Hjalli and the other boys. "Asgrim will nudge. Ash will tell you to stop enjoying yourself and you will obey."
They turned the city a quarter at a time.
It did not happen like a miracle; it happened like plumbing. A ribbon of air woke down Wharf Lane; the flame in the potter's kiln grew less sullen; flour stopped clumping like bad poetry; a gull took off and, remembering itself, told its joke in mime and seemed offended that it worked. The dome pressed; the rails made habits beneath it.
At the granary, a baker brought a pan to the doorway, put it down where the east–west ran, and watched a shine of sweat leave his lip. "Breath," he mouthed, as if trying the word on his tongue for the first time since he was a boy. He looked like a man who had been given an extra rib.
Asgrim held all four pegs.
The city pulled.
Not with hunger—with need. He had four planted points in him now, four lines running through bone and scar and good sense. The runes under his collarbones lit like coals buried in ash. He felt summer go thin—not a name, not a face—season, the warmth in a remembered rock over the harbor, the trickle under a fern in the high pasture, the precise salt on a first herring. He could recite the memories but couldn't sit in them. He counted that a correct price and hated it anyway.
"Cra—" he started, reaching for a cove's knuckled syllable and stopping, disciplined. That one had already been paid for yesterday. He wouldn't spend it twice just to comfort himself.
Ash stood at his shoulder on the granary roof and put her palm under his elbow—an engineer's tenderness. "Unplant one," she said, practical. "Leave three. Teach them to stand on work."
He looked along the rails and saw where labor had taken hold—bellows handled right, staves worked on cadence, boys at broom ends running intake by instinct. He unplanted the harbor peg first; the lane shivered and then held where oars and sails and swearing had made their own weather. He breathed once and tucked the weight from four down to three. The pressure eased. The summer in his bones returned half a spoon.
"Again," Ylva said from the kiln hill, her voice riding a rail as if born to it. He unplanted there too, leaving bellows and breathing to the men who owned both. The cross held. Two pegs only, now—the market and the granary—were still his to bear.
The Jarl's clerks noticed.
A file of gray moved into the square with the exactness of pots on a shelf. Two novices of the Null Choir came with them; their cords were tidy; their eyes were tired. The captain raised a hand to set a fence and found the fence met work and had to learn to be humble.
Ash didn't let Asgrim move. "They don't get your big," she said. "They get my small." She passed brooms to children, mallets to mothers, poles to men with nets, and started the Oath of Bread and Wind like a woman tuning a tool:
"By bread—" (paddle to hearthstone)
"By wind—" (bellows, push–draw)
"By work—ours—" (sweep—set—lift—tie)
"We'll spend before we ask you to."
The fence the Choir tried to raise had to navigate a city that had remembered how to carry itself. It sagged under the weight of nouns: scupper, garboard, mast-step, kiln, hopper, stave. It did not break; it did something better—it got bored and left.
Fen did nothing heroic. He leaned his spear against the granary post and watched the streets flow. When a guard pushed where flow said don't, Fen put two fingers on his elbow and showed him the current. He apologized to no one for being alive and not dramatic.
Asgrim held the last two pegs until the city's new habit seated.
"Now," Ash said. "Leave one more."
He unplanted the market peg. The fountain learned to be water with dignity. A child reached into the falling and came out wet, which is its own sermon under a dome that dislikes being contradicted.
The last peg—granary roof—he held for an hour that would be told as twenty minutes later. Bread rounded; men stopped seeing stars when they stood too quickly; a grandmother at a window scolded her daughter with silent vehemence and looked satisfied at the air between them.
"Now," Ash said again, gentler.
He unplanted.
The cross didn't vanish. It had settled into the city's body—rails now were tasks, waypoints doors, tethers habits. He felt breath continue where he had put it and where they had chosen to put it.
He folded over the roof beam and let his shoulders admit their years. The runes under his skin cooled to dull iron. He tried to summon the particular fat gold of a midsummer sun on Svala's porch and got outline only. He set that down without pitying himself.
"Ledger," Ragna said, appearing as if counts had called her from a cupboard. She didn't take out the book yet; she looked at his mouth and waited for something that deserved ink.
"Spent: four plants, three unplanted, the cross left in work; summer, thinned; pride that wanted bigger. Refused: storm; stamps; any oath I couldn't teach with my hands. Gained: wind in lanes; ovens that admit life; throats that remember chorus."
Ragna nodded and wrote only after he finished. The book seemed grateful to be included; some ledgers get tired of names that belong only to the dead.
Down on Wharf Lane a girl stepped where she had felt a draft earlier and found it again and began to hum without meaning to. Her mother hissed—habit—and then stopped because habit had been rewired today. Around the corner, three boys ran with a line and discovered it was easier uphill; they yelled and the yell went small and the grin went large.
Ylva rolled her shoulders like a woman carrying two buckets and finding them lighter. "Time's short," she said, not to frighten—to aim. "They'll toll the big mouth again. You built windows. The roof will still come down."
"Then we keep them open," Ash said. "And teach people to prop them with work when wind forgets."
Fen watched the scaffolds where the bell's ribs fattened. "Procession soon," he said. "They'll want to move the mouth through the streets to teach men to love it before it eats them. You'll need your shoulders for that."
Asgrim thumbed his cord. No new holes. The half-knot for thin summer tugged, complaining; he left it to sulk. He slid a new bead on from the scrap in his pocket—rough oak shaved with a knife and drilled off-center so it would catch—carved with a little cross of lanes: one for bread, one for wind. He set it between Practice-line and Thunder keeps oaths where his fingers go when they're looking for purpose.
He stood at the edge of the roof in the little country between hearth and wind that he carries under his sternum and spoke the thing he has chosen to be bored of rather than untrue.
"By bread," he said, and the city smelled it.
"By wind we've taught into a good job," and the rails he'd left in people's hands took the weight without showing off.
"By work—ours—I'll spend before I ask you to."
Thunder did not answer. It wasn't owed. The breeze did, by habit—a mother tongue returning to a house where it had been politely unwelcome. Under the dome, people began to sing under their breath, not to be brave, just to remember they had throats. The city took a shy lungful and kept it. Above, the Grand Bell hung pleased with itself; below, ovens learned to be stoves again, and that is a kind of victory bells never account for until they crack.
He had hours before parade and procession. He had a city with windows cut into a roof that still thought itself a sky. He had time to keep short and promises to keep long. He moved.