The gray-bearded fisherman studied me for a long moment. “You’re either very clever or very foolish.”

  I chuckled. “Sometimes both at once.”

  That earned a few reluctant smiles. The wariness remained, but the willingness to listen had begun.

  The local glyphwright met us at the harbor office an hour later.

  Kieran had worked in Veldros for thirty years. He had gray hair and weathered hands and the careful movements of someone who had spent decades doing precise work. His expression when he looked at us mixed professional curiosity with territorial suspicion.

  “Journeymen,” he said. The word carried weight. Bordering on dismissal. “From the south.”

  “From Millbrook,” Felix said. “We trained under Masters Erasmus and Whitmore.”

  “Erasmus and Whitmore.” Kieran turned the names over like a coin he suspected might be counterfeit. “I’ve heard of them. Solid craftsman. Traditional methods.”

  “We learned traditional methods. We also learned to improvise when traditional methods weren’t available.”

  “Improvise.” Kieran’s expression did not change. “We’ve managed on our own for generations. Our methods work. The problem isn’t technique. It’s materials.”

  “Then we’re here to solve the materials problem,” I said.

  “With garbage.” His tone made clear he had already heard about my speech to the fishermen. “You’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

  Hamish stepped forward. He had stayed quiet during our interactions with the locals. He had watched and listened. Now he placed himself beside us with deliberate intent.

  “I was skeptical too back in Valdmere,” Hamish said. “Two journeymen from the south who came to tell us how to do our jobs?” He met Kieran’s eyes. “I watched them fix our water purification system with materials we had been throwing away for years. The compound looks like mud and smells worse. And it works better than anything I’ve seen in fifteen years of practice.”

  Kieran’s expression shifted slightly. Hamish was not an outsider. He was a Keldrath glyphwright vouching for other glyphwrights. That carried weight that our credentials alone could not.

  “Show me tomorrow,” Kieran said finally. “After you’ve done what research you must. Show me what you can do with our garbage. If it works, I’ll admit I was wrong. If it doesn’t, you leave and we go back to dying slowly.”

  “Fair enough.”

  We spent the rest of the day assessing what Veldros had to offer.

  The inventory made our challenge clear. Dunmarch had benefited from economic diversity with multiple trades producing multiple types of waste. Here, everything centered on fish.

  “Fish scales,” I said. I examined a pile of them near one of the processing sheds. “I have no idea if these will work. But we didn’t know forge scale would work either until we tried it.”

  Felix crouched beside me and picked up a scale. He turned it in the light as he studied the surface. “It is a layered structure. That might be what matters for binding ward energy. Something about how the material forms over time rather than what it’s made of.” He made a note of it.

  “Smokehouse ash.” I moved to the next pile. “They use three different wood types depending on what’s available. Oak, pine, and something local I don’t recognize.”

  “Highland birch,” Brennan said. “Burns hot and clean. Good for smoking fish, but I don’t know what it does for ink.”

  “We’ll find out.” I continued cataloging. “Rope fibers. Net materials. Something from the fish processing that might have alkaline properties.”

  The salt situation concerned me most. Twenty sacks for a town that needed salt like it needed water. Without preservation, the fish rotted. Without fish, the town died. The supply crisis had created a perfect trap.

  “Can you make salt?” Hamish asked. He had followed along and listened to our assessment with growing interest.

  “The lake is freshwater so there’s no salt to extract.” I thought about the problem. “But if we can extend the effectiveness of the preservation wards, they might not need as much salt for backup curing. Every day the wards work properly is a day they don’t have to dip into their reserves.”

  “Buying time,” Felix said.

  “Buying time to find a real solution.” I looked at the harbor and the idle boats and the people who had stopped hoping. “That’s what we do first. Buy them enough time to fight back.”

  We settled into the local inn as the sun dropped over the horizon.

  The common room held the same subdued atmosphere as the rest of Veldros. Fishermen and workers sat at tables and nursed drinks with the slow pace of people who had nowhere else to be. Conversations happened in low voices. Laughter was rare.

  Our group took a table near the back. Adrian sat with his guards on one side while Brennan and Hamish took the other. Felix and I spread our notes across the worn wood.

  “It’s worse than Dunmarch,” Felix said. “They had options we could connect. Here everything depends on one solution working.”

  “Then we make it work.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  I looked around the common room. Tired faces. Worn clothes. The quiet desperation of people who had watched their world shrink day by day.

  “We make it work,” I repeated. “Because the alternative is watching them die.”

  Adrian leaned forward. “What do you need from us?”

  “Time. Space to experiment. Access to whatever materials they have, even if they seem useless.” I met his eyes. “And when the preservation wards start working, we’ll need protection for the smokehouses. If what happened in Dunmarch is any indication, success will make us targets.”

  “You think they’ll try to stop you here too?”

  “I think whoever built this crisis won’t appreciate us dismantling it.” I gathered the notes Felix had compiled. “We start tomorrow. Kieran wants proof. The fishermen want hope. We’re going to give them both.”

  Brennan raised his cup in a small salute. “The land remembers those who help her people.”

  “Then let’s give the land something worth remembering.”

  Chapter 18

  Fresh Catch

  Aweek changed everything.

  The fish scale compound worked better than we had hoped. Kieran had watched our first test with the skepticism of a man expecting to be disappointed. When the preservation ward activated and held steady, his expression shifted through disbelief to reluctant admiration to cautious hope.

  “It’s ugly,” he said.

  “But it works,” I replied.

  “Aye.” He studied the muddy brown glow of the ward with professional intensity. “It works.”

  After that, Kieran became our most dedicated student. Thirty years of experience meant he understood the principles faster than anyone else in Veldros. He asked questions that pushed us to explain our methods more clearly. He suggested modifications based on local conditions that improved our results. By the third day, he had stopped treating us as outsiders and started treating us as colleagues.

  The smokehouses came back online one by one. Fish that would have rotted in days now would last weeks. The preservation wards now channeled power through materials the town had been throwing away for years. Fish scales, smokehouse ash, and the alkaline residue from the net-treatment process all went into the compound. Their garbage had become their solution.

  Harbormaster Nels visited our workspace on the fifth day. He stood in the doorway and watched Kieran demonstrate the compound preparation to three younger glyphwrights. His weathered face showed nothing. Then he nodded once and walked away without speaking.

  “That’s approval,” Brennan said. He had been observing from a corner with his usual economy of expression. “From Nels, that’s practically a standing ovation.”

  The town began to breathe again. Boats went out in the morning and returned with catches that would not spoil before they could be processed. The smokehouses filled with the rich scent of preserving fish instead of the sweet rot of waste. People walked through the streets with their heads up instead of their shoulders hunched against despair.

  Felix, Kieran, Hamish, and I had done this together. We had given Veldros a chance to survive.

  The inn’s common room felt different that evening.

  Laughter echoed off the walls and conversations happened at normal volume instead of funeral whispers. The subdued atmosphere that had greeted us a week ago had lifted like fog burning off the lake.

  The innkeeper approached our table with a gleam in his eye that I had not seen before. He was a stocky man named Aldric who had served us adequate meals without comment since we arrived. Tonight he practically bounced on his heels.

  “Special dinner,” he announced. “On the house. For our southern friends who reminded us of what Veldros used to be.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Adrian said.

  “It’s absolutely necessary.” Aldric waved away the objection. “My family has run this inn for four generations. We’ve served fish from this lake to travelers and traders and even a king once. Then the wards failed and the catch spoiled and we had nothing worth serving.” His voice thickened. “Tonight we have something worth serving again. You’ll eat it and you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Yes sir,” Felix said with appropriate solemnity.

  The food arrived in waves.

  First came smoked whitefish on rounds of dark bread. The flesh flaked apart at the touch and melted on the tongue with a richness that spoke of careful preparation and quality ingredients. Aldric watched us taste it with the intensity of a man whose pride hung on our reaction.

  “That’s exceptional,” I said.

  “That right there is what Veldros is all about.” He grinned and retreated to the kitchen.

  Next came a soup made from smaller fish that had been too damaged for smoking. The broth had simmered for hours with herbs and root vegetables until every drop carried depth and warmth. Henrick finished his bowl and looked around hopefully for more. Roderick passed him the remaining bread to soak up the last of it.

  The main course was lake trout prepared three ways. The first was grilled with herbs, while the second had been poached in butter. And, finally, the third was baked in a crust of ground nuts and dried lake plants. Each preparation showcased a different aspect of the fish. The grilled version had crisp skin and smoky char. The poached version was delicate and rich. The baked version offered texture and earthiness that surprised me.

  “I didn’t know fish could taste like this,” Felix admitted.

  Kieran laughed. The sound startled everyone at the table. A week ago, the man had barely spoken. Now he laughed like someone who had remembered how.

  “Veldros fish is the best in Keldrath,” he said. “We just forgot for a while. We lost our way when the wards failed and stopped taking pride in what we could do because we were too busy mourning what we couldn’t.”

  “The wards working won’t solve everything,” I said. “The roads are still dangerous and the supply chains are still broken.”

  “No. But it’s a start.” Kieran raised his cup. “To starts.”

  We drank together. The ale was nothing special. But the moment absolutely was.

  Aldric brought out a final course that he called grandmother’s secret. It was a plate piled high with sweet cakes made with honey and lake berries that had been preserved from the previous season. The berries burst with tartness against the honey’s warmth. I ate at least three before I realized I had lost count.

  The guards had relaxed into comfortable slouches. Roderick told a story about a patrol gone wrong that involved a noble’s prized goat and an unfortunate misunderstanding about property lines. Henrick added details that Roderick claimed were exaggerated and everyone else suspected were understatements.

  Adrian sat back and watched the table with quiet satisfaction. The foreign prince had eaten and laughed and listened without once pulling rank or standing apart. Nights like this mattered. They built the connections that held groups together when things went wrong.

  Brennan produced his flask at the end of the meal. He offered it to Kieran first.

  “Highland whiskey,” he said. “The real thing. Not the watered swill they sell to tourists.”

  Kieran took a careful sip. His eyes widened. He coughed once and handed the flask back with newfound respect.

  “The land remembers,” he coughed.

  “So will your throat.” Brennan tucked the flask away with something approaching a smile.

  I looked around the table at faces that had become familiar over the past week. Felix with his notebook never far from reach. Adrian with his easy authority and genuine care. Roderick and Henrick with their professional competence wrapped in growing friendship. Brennan with his economy of words and depth of knowledge. Hamish and Kieran with their Keldrath pride and newfound hope.

  We had built something here. Wards and compounds, yes, but also connections harder to name and just as real.

  The night wound down slowly. No one wanted to break the spell of warmth and satisfaction that had settled over the table. Eventually Aldric shooed us toward our rooms with promises of breakfast and threats of early rising.

  I fell asleep thinking about the work that remained. The town had stabilized. The methods had taken root. Tomorrow we would push further.

  Tomorrow came too fast.

  A deep boom rattled me awake.

  The shutters shook and dust drifted from the ceiling beams. Dawn light filtered through the window as I sat up. Then came a second sound, cracking and crashing as something large fell apart.

  I was out of bed and pulling on clothes before my thoughts caught up to my body. Felix met me in the hallway with his hair wild and his shirt half-buttoned. We ran down the stairs together and burst through the inn’s front door into chaos.

  Thick black smoke rose from the harbor district. People ran toward it and away from it in equal measure. Shouts echoed off buildings. Someone screamed.

  We ran toward the smoke.

  The smokehouse had been one of the first we repaired. A solid building near the main pier that processed a quarter of Veldros’s daily catch. It had worked perfectly for five days. Now half of it was simply gone.

  The wall facing the water had blown outward. Debris scattered across the pier and into the shallows. Splintered wood and shattered stone and the twisted remains of drying racks lay everywhere. Smoke poured from the interior where something still burned.

  A fisherman lay crumpled against a stack of crates twenty feet from where the wall had stood. He had been walking to work when the explosion hit. A section of wall had caught him and thrown him backward.

  I reached him first. Blood ran from a cut on his forehead. His eyes were closed. For a terrible moment I thought he was dead.

  Then he groaned and tried to sit up.

  “Stay still.” I pressed him back down gently. “You took a bad hit.”

  “What happened?” His words slurred. Concussion, probably. But he was alive. He was talking.

  “I don’t know yet.” I looked up at the burning remains of the smokehouse and thought about the wards we had inscribed, the compound we had tested, and the work we had been so proud of. All of it was burning.

  Footsteps crunched behind me. Felix stopped at my side with a pale face.

  “Marcus.” His voice came out barely above a whisper. “Did we do this?”

  I stared at the destruction and felt the warm satisfaction of last night curdle into cold dread.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The words tasted like ash.

  Kieran arrived minutes later. He pushed through the growing crowd and stopped at the edge of the debris field. His expression cycled through shock and horror and the skepticism I had seen when we first met.

  “The compound,” he said. “Something went wrong with the compound.”

  “We tested it.” Felix’s voice cracked. “We tested everything. It was stable.”

  “Then why did the building explode?”

  I had no answer. The fisherman groaned again and someone helped him to his feet. He was dazed but walking. It could have been so much worse. If the explosion had happened an hour later, workers would have filled that building. The casualties would have been measured in bodies instead of bruises.

  The townspeople gathered around us. The same faces that had smiled at us yesterday and had started to hope again now looked at the burning smokehouse and then at us with expressions that asked questions none of us wanted to answer.

  Did the outsiders cause this?

  Did their garbage methods destroy our building?

  Did we trust the wrong people?

  The doubt spread through the crowd like ripples on water. I felt it wash over me and found that I had no defense against it. We had been so certain. So proud of what we had accomplished.

  What if we had been wrong?

  Felix stood frozen beside me. His face held the devastation of someone watching everything they believed in crumble to ash.

  “We need to investigate,” I said. The words felt hollow. “We need to understand what happened.”

  “What’s to understand?” A fisherman I did not recognize stepped forward. His voice carried the anger of someone looking for a target. “Your fancy methods blew up our smokehouse. That’s what happened.”

  “We don’t know that yet.”

  “I know what I see.” He gestured at the destruction. “Outsiders come in with their experiments. Promise to fix everything. Then buildings start exploding.”

  The crowd muttered agreement. The warmth of last night felt like a distant memory. A week of progress erased in a single morning.