Night held the grove like a hand closing. The fires burned to fists of coal, each clan a dim island ringed by sleeping backs and half-wake guards. Beyond them, the woods pressed close—trunks black as unblinking eyes, leaves whispering rumors to the wind. The grove of Many Fires had been a council ground for generations, but that night it felt like a siege camp awaiting the first treacherous trumpet.
Sky-Torn did not sleep. He moved as smoke does when the wind is indecisive—seen, then not, then there again in the corner of the eye. He passed between bedrolls and spears, past the humped shapes of men dreaming of victory or of drowning. A boy murmured; a woman clenched a knife in her palm even as she slept. Sky-Torn listened to the night's small arithmetic: breath and heartbeat and the soft clack of teeth in the cold.
The System hummed at the edge of his perception, a hive buried under frost. Threads lifted and sank across his vision like the lines of a net thrown in moonlight. He saw Elk pride pulled bright as a bowstring toward the gorge where the Bear youth planned to sing blood into history. He saw the Turtle delegation's patience braided into a steady rope. He saw minor clans bending as willows do, calculating which way to lean so that the flood would blame someone else. Above certain heads, glyphs hovered like gnats: [Old Grief], [Debt], [Secret Brother at Palisade], [Hunger to Be Sung Of], [Fear of Annihilation].
Quest Progress – Sow Discord: 72%.New Branch Available: Strike Bargain / Poison Alliance.
He turned toward the center of the grove where the council table slumbered. It was a low altar made of joined planks, older than some lineages, carved with spirals and deer tracks and a river that used to run un-dammed. The elders called it the listening board. It remembered the weight of oaths; it kept the dents of old quarrels as if they were titles.
Beneath that board, where the earth was dry and the air smelled of cedar tar and sweat, a rival chief had asked him to meet. Treachery under a thing that remembered truth; humility to launder intent. He approved of the symbolism.
He crouched, slid under the planks, and let the dark settle on his shoulders. The underside of the board was notched with incisions left by boys steadying their knives before the first speech of their lives. Sky-Torn ran his thumb across one of those grooves and felt the little saw-teeth of courage.
Another presence shifted across from him. A man crouched on elbows and knees, careful with his breaths. Not the Elk antler, nor the smooth-shelled Turtle. This was Sable Creek's chief—a reed among antlers, a bend among stone. Useful because he had no songs of his own to defend.
"You chose the place," Sky-Torn murmured, voice no louder than a moth's wing.
"A caution," the chief whispered back. "Words born beneath elders' ears do not lie easily. Splinters catch liars."
"Then let them catch." Sky-Torn set his staff across his shoulder and opened his hand to show no blade. Among old wolves that still counted.
The chief mirrored the gesture, then drew a small bundle of sinew-bound twigs from inside his shirt. He laid it between them. "Bargaining token," he said. "I have cousins who drink with traders. Men along the river count boats for me under new moons. And I have children who wake shivering when someone drops a pot."
Above his head the System traced a sigil: [Fear of Annihilation—Yielding Point: Protection of small]. Behind that, a fainter flicker: [Resentment—Elk redrew our hunting lines last winter]. Sky-Torn could not see the chief's boy asleep somewhere near, but he felt the thread that ran from the man's heart into the dark like a nerve.
"Speak," Sky-Torn said. "Let me weigh."
"The Elk run before their shadows hit the ground," the chief said. "Rattle the antlers, and they'll charge with the Bear youth tonight. They'll leave the smaller fires unguarded. They always do when blood is singing."
"True," Sky-Torn said. "And the Turtle?"
"They will make a delegation. They will bring papers and mouths. The palisade captain is new and thirsts to be called wise. If they bring a gift that tells a good story about him, he'll smile and sign limits—no building past the third bend, payment for crossings, a sacred grove spared. Then he'll cut somewhere else while they congratulate themselves."
"So the creek winds as it always has," Sky-Torn said. "What do you want of me?"
"My clan endures," the chief said. "I prefer it continue. Elk pride tramples reeds. Turtle words drown us and call it rain. I want a way to live through both. They say you are a way."
"You crawled under a table to admit what you want," Sky-Torn said. "That's half the price. The other half is this: Sable Creek stands aside when Elk and Bear grind each other at the gorge. If the delegation is stoned for cowardice, you throw neither first rock nor last. When I call for your spears, you keep them at your sides. And you bring me your river counts every fourth night."
The chief's breath stopped like a snared fish. "You would have us called cowards."
"I would have you be alive when the brave have been made into stories," Sky-Torn said. "Call it neutrality if your throat wants a sweeter word."
"Neutrality breeds two sets of enemies."
"Then let both sets spend themselves thinning you. There is a third position, Sable Creek: the patient edge river takes when it eats stone. Take that position."
Hesitation's outline sharpened in the glyph above the chief. [Bargain Threshold within reach]. He needed a push that wasn't a threat.
Sky-Torn unfolded a small packet of oiled bark from his cloak. Inside lay three tiny iron nails, black with use. Trader-scraps. He set them upon the twig-bundle as if he was arranging a small constellation.
The chief inhaled softly. "From them?"
"From us," Sky-Torn said. "And more where they came from. If you bring me counts and stand aside at the right times, I'll give you the name of the shallow path through reed and sandbar where their powder-boats stall at low water. No songs and no glory. But sacks fuller than pride."
The silence under the table thickened until it could have been cut. The chief's fingers hovered over the nails, then drew back, as if iron might remember his skin later. "What price hides under this gift?"
"The price every gift charges," Sky-Torn said. "The giver chooses when to give again."
A sound that might have been a laugh or a cough escaped the man. "You sharpen truths on both sides." He extended his hand, palm down—the bargaining palm. "We do as you say. We will not be first or last at any throwing. We will be at the river when antlers and claws make meat. Bring us the shallow path. Keep my children out of your visions."
"Children arrive in every vision," Sky-Torn said, laying his palm on the man's. Two stubborn lives bridged without warmth. "But I will set yours as far from the blade-point as I can."
The bargain shut like a trap friends build for wolves together. Above them, the listening board added the sound to its archive of quiet treasons.
The System rang like a bowl struck with bone.
Villain Points Earned: +40 (Bargain struck).Branch Path Presented: Secure Loyalty (Low Reward, High Stability) / Betray Later (High Reward, Exposure Risk).
Two futures unrolled. In one, Sable Creek became a patient current of information and small favors: saffron steadiness that never failed. In the other, Sky-Torn salted their path at a moment of his choosing and harvested the sharp profit of someone else's ruin: crimson glitter humming with points like winter berries.
He did not pretend indecision. It should have been hard. It wasn't.
He touched the crimson thread with a thought.
Path Selected: Betray Later.Villain Points Pre-Allocated: +50 (Future Betrayal Committed).Current Total: 675.
He felt the choice settle into reality with the soft finality of seeds catching in fur: carried now, dropped later, growing where they shouldn't. Somewhere ahead a shallow would become a mouth, and the river would drink men meant to drink it.
"Now my price," the chief said, suspicion sharpening because ceremony hadn't dissolved it. "Tell me one thing I don't know about Elk, Turtle, or Bear that saves me before the path you promise arrives."
Sky-Torn bared a truth because truths replenish themselves in a way secrets don't. "The Elk chief's sister is tired of being an antler without a head. If a song promises her a throne made of horns, she will push him into the gorge from behind. If you must stand near, watch her hands."
The chief's breath made a narrow sound that could have been gratitude grinding its teeth. "How—"
"Sisters leave different tracks than brothers," Sky-Torn said. "Her prints cross and recross. She's already stepped where she will again." He slid backward until cold air touched his shoulders and the damp night discussed his name. "Our bargain is done."
"Done," the chief said, slipping away into shadow. The iron nails and the twig-bundle had vanished. The board said nothing; furniture and gods rarely do.
Sky-Torn lay a breath longer with his palm on the board's underside. He had knelt under many tables. Some fed him. Some received the offerings of other people's hopes. This one smelled of rendered fat and old smoke and too many hands. He honored it and left.
Outside, night had sharpened enough to shave. Stars pricked the grove's scar like the careful work of a surgeon who enjoys his work too much. Sky-Torn kept to the margin where the circle of fires eroded into brush. Two guards leaned against a stump, sharing a gourd and an argument about which smoked fish tasted most like the river's own laugh. He slipped past them like a thought no mouth had words for.
Near the river path, a hiss of reeds and a too-quick breath betrayed a hiding shape. He knelt and tapped the butt of his staff twice—old hunter signal testing the dark. The answer was a held-in gasp small enough to fit inside a child's ribs.
"Out," he said, not loud. "If you meant to run, you'd already be in the water."
A boy wriggled into view, hair cut as if with a flint and stubborn chin set to make up for his size. A willow charm hung at his throat, its braid the same pattern the Willow clan used to mark their dead. His eyes were coins that hadn't yet learned how to buy anything.
"Willow fires," Sky-Torn said. He recognized the braid. "What does a small river want at the big one's lip?"
"I wanted to hear what shadows say," the boy said, lifting his jaw. "My aunt says shadows talk to you. I wanted to learn the words."
"Your aunt's mouth outruns her feet," Sky-Torn said. "Shadows speak to anyone who listens long enough to frighten themselves."
The boy squinted at the staff. "Is that bone?"
"It was," Sky-Torn said. "Now it is a memory of bone." The System drew a thin experimental line between them—curiosity's string. He disliked stray threads. "Go back to your aunt. Men will be hungry and mean by dawn. They'll snap at small things to feel large."
"If I go, I learn nothing," the boy said.
"Then learn this: when two rivers meet, the slower one is swallowed. Make your river fast."
"How?"
"Run."
The boy couldn't help it—he smiled, the lower lip still a child's—and vanished into reeds without a sound. The thread between them faded. Sky-Torn resumed his circuit, counting patrol rhythms—Elk heavy, Bear swaggering, Turtle even. At the Bear fires: laughter kept under blankets and a game of quiet slaps. At the Elk: a low chant meant to nail courage to the inside of ribs. At the Turtle: paper soft against paper, the rasp of words being sharpened to points.
He stepped just into the edge of the Turtle light and waited. The diplomat looked up not because he made a noise but because certain people feel the presence of weather changing.
"You move like guilty news," she said.
"I prefer to be the footfall before news," he said. "It gives people time to decide how guilty they wish to be."
Her brother—the trader with the shell ring—lifted his chin in a motion that was greeting and warning both. "Do you come to bless these papers or salt them?"
"Neither," Sky-Torn said. "The palisade captain is new enough to care what his story says about him. Bring a gift he can use to brag he is kind: a heavy cloak for winter on the wall, a medicine for the cough their powder gives them. He will sign anything that lets him be seen benevolent. Make sure witnesses on the wall recognize your faces before you give it."
"And the knife under such kindness?" the diplomat asked.
"Knives attend all kindness," he said. "He'll use it later. But he has to put it away first, and in that moment you bind him to the act. Also—hide your boredom when Elk speaks. He smells it."
She blinked at him as if he had set a trout on fire. She filed the advice without admitting it. The trader studied Sky-Torn, then glanced at the ring he twisted when nervous.
"You help us help you," the trader said. "I wonder which way help faces."
"All help keeps two faces," Sky-Torn said. "One for the asker, one for the answerer." He moved on.
Back at his own fire, Crow-with-Embers dozed against a log, knife wrapped in leather so dreams wouldn't cut themselves. Quiet-at-Dusk woke as he approached and, without looking at him, began removing the leather from the blade.
"You went," she said.
"I returned," he said.
"What flavor has day?"
"Ash in the teeth," he said. "And a little iron."
She nodded as if he'd read a menu.
The boy stirred awake, found Sky-Torn with a look that was question, test, confession. "You smell like old wood," he said softly.
"Boards listen," Sky-Torn said.
"What did they hear?"
"Enough to require a quieter tomorrow. Tell the second patrol to walk three steps farther from the willow thicket. Men steal arrows from shadows and replace them with bodies."
The boy went at once. Obedience had begun to fit him the way a song fits a mouth: too easily, perhaps. Sky-Torn watched him go and felt that thread again, lightly insisting. He had had many apprentices. Some shattered under the weight of their own imagining. Some hardened into tools. The world would decide which the boy became, rudely and without ceremony.
Sleep collected him in short, grudging handfuls. In one he dreamed the listening board flipped, its carvings become scars, its legs become spears. Beneath it, a river made of paper. On that river, boats of skin. Each boat held his face and none were him. He woke with a dry mouth and spat once into the ash, a small old ritual to pay a small old fear.
Before dawn silvered the stumps, the Bear youth roused his men with whisper-shouts meant to save his throat for victory. The Elk tried not to look like they were following while following. The Turtle counted and cross-checked and tied their list with cedar twine. Sable Creek cooked thin porridge and rehearsed the expression trees wear.
Sky-Torn drifted to the central fire. A keeper stood there, palm over ember, eyebrows a dark straight line. "We do not begin the morning rite early," he said.
"I bring no rite," Sky-Torn answered. "Only a reminder."
He crouched and drew with a blackened stick: a line for the river, a square for the palisade, a hook for the gorge. Three Xs: one where Bear meant to bite a convoy at the narrow; one where Elk would try to pour too many feet across too little ford; one where Turtle would be most visible to wall-watchers. The marks looked like a child's game. They were a calendar of bruises.
The keeper watched, lips hardening but saying nothing. Keepers understand maps the way undertakers understand rain.
"Leave it until accident disturbs the ash," Sky-Torn said, and left. The keeper did not promise, which was as good as a promise from certain men.
He took one more circuit of the grove, and saw the Willow woman—the boy's aunt—ghost toward the listening board and lay her palm upon it. The gesture said she believed the wood complicated. He considered warning her about nothing in particular and everything in general. He did not. Mercy is poor at math.
He returned to his tribe's fire and sat as if he had been sitting all night. The System, purring, laid quiet numbers along the inside of his skull.
Villain Points Confirmed: +40 (Bargain).Path Locked: Betray Later → +50 queued.Current Total: 675.Hidden State: [Sable Creek Neutrality: High], [Bear–Elk Collision Probability: 83%], [Turtle Audience Probability: 62%].
He let the figures fade to a hum, useful as the shadow you're trying not to step on. He stood and felt the weight of decision fix itself along his bones like lengthwise frost. He thought of the "gift" he would give Sable Creek—the shallow route through reed and bar—and of the night, still to come, when a moonless lowering would shift the sand and a safe lane would become a mouth. He allowed himself a moment of regret the way one allows a bird to land on a shoulder: briefly, without feeding it. Then he made the regret hop off.
Drums spoke from the Elk camp: three knocks, then two—men practicing bravado with wood. Across the grove, the Bear youth laughed the way a man laughs at a river he hasn't yet fallen into. From the Turtle fire, a last rasp of paper, a final tying of cords. The sky had moved from black to charcoal. Day readied its teeth.
Sky-Torn looked one last time at the listening board. Soon men would pound the far side, declaring truths loud enough to bruise. The board would remember quieter truths spoken on its underside and say nothing, as furniture and gods prefer.
He touched his staff to the ground. The shock ran up his arm into the old bird-bone and the little bells only he could hear. He had placed a knife beneath the council table and turned its edge outward.
The day would discover the cut.