"What is this?"
Vetch clicked three times—its name-sound—then tapped the slate with one claw at a junction where three lines met, then pointed, with ridiculous precision for a creature the size of a hen, toward the hill and the ruined castle.
Cistern map, Miren realized. Or a memory of one. The deep waters under Veyne, and—she traced a line that ran off the edge of the slate toward the village—under Stonewell too. Connected. Of course they were connected. Wells did not invent themselves.
"You want him to see this," she said. "Not as surrender. As proof that if he breaks the ground here the way he broke the castle, he breaks his own capital's chance at water-wisdom too. Or—" She frowned. "Or you want the cisterns opened again so your kind can move. Which is it?"
Vetch held her gaze without blinking. Both, the silence said. Creatures could want more than one true thing.
Miren tucked the slate into her bodice, returned the cloth to Vetch for keeping, and sealed the hatch. When she rejoined the wall, Edric's eyes asked a question; she answered with the smallest nod.
King Osric arrived as the second granary was being sealed with crown wax.
He rode a bay, not a black, and wore travel grey rather than parade crimson, as if color itself had become a negotiation. He was younger than Miren had expected from the coins—mid-thirties, beard trimmed short, eyes the tired blue of someone who slept in pieces. There was no crown on his head. There was a simple circlet of braided copper wire, practical, and a mouth that had learned not to smile for audiences.
The village did not kneel. Sibley had not told them to, and habit had worn thin in the years when kings were distant weather. Osric dismounted without waiting for a groom and stood looking past the wall, past the wheat, past everything living, at Castle Veyne.
For a long moment he said nothing. The army held its noise the way a held breath holds a chest.
"It is smaller," he said finally, not to them. "In memory it ate the sky."
Dreven cleared his throat. "Sire. The levy proceeds. The elder is cooperative within the writ."
Osric's attention came down like a blade laid, not swung. He took in Sibley, Edric, Miren's red hair bright against the grey day, the mill, the well, the linens still absurdly hanging.