CHAPTER 683: SMALL STONES UNDERFOOT (1)

"Don’t reach," she told the skeleton holding it. "Let the wrong timing come to you." It had no face to nod with. It obeyed anyway.

The ring-mouths spat fewer hands now. The ones that crawled free wore uncertainty in their joints. Not slow. Just wrong at the shoulders, like they were bracing for a weight that had already fallen. The difference was small. Small differences make rooms safe.

Mikhailis kept his hands low where the line captains could see. He opened his fingers for patience, closed them for bite, rolled them for slide. The count rode those bones as much as the floor.

A Wight Marauder in the inner ring tried to copy a clean halberd arc from memory. The Ankle squad flicked two arrows into its front shin and the back of its calf, right where old drill had taught it to be proud. Pride met physics. It stumbled into the exact slick square Slimeweave had painted three beats ago. The halberd came down sharp and tidy on nothing, and then its own handle bounced off the rim of a shield with a noise that promised no one a song.

"Mirror that," Mikhailis told a Hypnoveil, pointing. "Just that miss."

The mantle came up, sheen soft as breath. It threw the fresh failure back at the next Marauder who had been counting steps, not seconds. That one flinched, over-corrected, clipped a comrade’s elbow. The front edge of their formation turned into a man learning to dance in boots he had borrowed.

"Again," Thalatha said. She did not smile. She sounded pleased anyway.

Mothcloak glided low and swept another pair of jaw-runes with one calm feather. Silk’s thimble-cones popped over stray glyphs, the soft chime barely audible under the beat. A Scurabon tapped the chain-hook link twice more and was gone before the chain could call a friend.

The Juggernaut tried to hold the big rhythm steady, like a belligerent conductor pretending not to see the woodwinds smirking. Its blades still came on seven, neat as a barber. Its chains still timed for the off-beat snatch. But the room had learned to disagree with itself. The difference showed in the way its shoulders had to add a small extra movement to correct. That extra movement cost it half a breath. Half a breath was enough.

Mikhailis took in the edges. Slime’s stop-lines had drunk the worst of the Hounds’ spit; the gel lay dull and useful where a shine would get someone killed. Silk’s veils at knee height breathed on the lamp swell, soft then hard, soft then hard, always right on count. The Crymber Twins had begun to work by touch alone. Frost’s fingers trailed cold across a seam; Ember’s two taps sealed that promise into bone. They didn’t even look at each other. They were two hands of one body.

He looked back at the Hypnoveils. "Change the picture every time," he said. "Don’t show the same failure twice."

One Hypnoveil trembled its fringe in assent and lifted a new memory: a chain that had slid along a rim and scraped with no bite. The Juggernaut corrected for that insult and shifted to take a different mouth. The correction met a gel-dot under its lead foot that had not been there a breath before. It lost balance for a single, polite heartbeat.

"Now," Mikhailis said. He did not need to say what. The Scurabons were already tapping the wrist seam they owned like a joke they would never explain to anyone loud.

A Skullcaster on the far side rolled higher, maybe thinking height would protect timing. The Sky squad walked their shots up a half count. One arrow clipped the loose threads near the antler curve, not cutting, only brushing. The filaments all flinched like hair caught by static. The chant below four tripped on the Juggernaut’s seven. The ring murmured; mouths hesitated. A newborn slid out on an elbow and tried to stand with the wrong knee.

Mikhailis heard Rodion again, mild and smug at once. Birth tempo reduced twelve percent. Maintain disruption.

"That’s my favorite number today," he said.

You said that three numbers ago.

"I have a lot of favorites under stress."

Thalatha gave him a brief side look. It wasn’t a reproach. It sounded like she put the quip on a shelf and saw that it fit. "Keep their wrists honest," she told the Scurabons passing back through her shadow.

"Always," said one, mandibles making a dry little click that sounded like gratitude for a clear task.

The Ankles squad found their easy rhythm, two breaths fast, one breath easy, like people shucking corn with old hands. Arrows hissed along the ground and wrote a quiet script across the room: step here, not there. A Wight tried to step in pride and found a thread. It went down, not hard, just obedient to gravity. It reached for its halberd and found a spear butt pinning the shaft without malice.

Silk’s thimble-cones multiplied around the outer ring. Each little bell was a net for a single idea that had lost its mouth. The sound of them closing was soft and full of manners. The result was rude and practical. Spells that wanted to be storms became pocketed reminders, and the fight remembered to be about hands and feet again.

Mikhailis kept watching the Juggernaut’s head, but he didn’t chase it. You aren’t a climber today. He read shoulders instead. The mask filaments quivered with each Sky volley; they tightened, relaxed, tightened—not by will, by reflex. He filed the reflex away for later and didn’t reach for it now.

The ring’s wrongness, once found, was easy to maintain. Every time the sub-beat began to line up cleanly with the seven, the Hypnoveils dropped an honest mirror under its foot. Every time a jaw tried to pick up tempo, Mothcloak’s pinion blurred a cuff into a smudge. Every time a chain timed for the empty and hungry, a Scurabon found the hook’s link and gave it a rude tap that made it bite late.

Thalatha’s voice stayed low and steady at the front. "Wrists quiet," she kept saying, almost like a prayer. "Knees soft." Her two fingers reclaimed a drifting rim, then moved on. The line stayed a wall. She did not ask them to be brave. She asked them to be true.

A Marauder climbed up out of a ring-mouth half-turned, one shoulder high, wrong hand forward. It bared teeth it didn’t have and shoved its halberd into the silk veil as if the veil were a lie it could cut. The veil flexed, then held. An Ankles arrow took the top of its foot. It looked down—silly, reflexive—and a spear took that moment to lean, not stab, and push it back into the place Slime had painted for people who needed to lie still.

A Skullcaster nearby tried to sing over the mess. The Hypnoveils met it with the last time its jaw had caught instead of opened, just a breath ago. It tried to correct that memory in the wrong direction. Its own pride made it late to its own mouth.

The mandala decided, for the first time since they’d entered the room, that perhaps it did not enjoy singing with this choir.

Rodion’s strip widened a hair and then settled. Stability for our side increasing. Enemy cadence slippage measurable. Continue humiliations.

Mikhailis’s mouth tilted. "With pleasure."

He lifted his hand and made a small arc in the air, a single gesture the Sky squad knew well. The next volley rose at the exact lamp swell and fell not at a target but through space where filaments hung like breath. The threads tightened again on reflex. The Juggernaut’s shoulders tried to adjust for the feel of its own net. The four-count under its seven lost the tiny bridge that had joined them and stumbled.

"Ankles," he said, softer now, "pick up one."

They did. Not faster. Just cleaner.

A newborn came up again, shoulders wrong, hips arguing. It managed one ugly step and then stepped where Slime had made the floor more honest than the plan. It came down on a knee and stayed there, polite as if it had been asked.

The chant kept trying to fix itself, and every time it reached, the army put a small stone under its foot. None of those stones were big. Big things break. Small things teach.

A Skullcaster in the rear leaned back and inhaled for a loud note it hoped would change the shape of the room. A Hypnoveil, almost bored, lifted its mantle and offered it the image of its last loud note cracked in three pieces. It faltered. Its jaw closed on air.

Mothcloak drifted past Mikhailis’s shoulder, a soft tilt of wing, and brushed its pinion across a pair of cuff-runes without even looking like it had worked. Silk chittered once, pleased, and capped the crumbs with thimble bells.

Thalatha’s shadow slid across the front ranks again. She placed a palm against a shield, found it humming in the wrong key, and pressed until the sound changed. "Better," she said. No one needed to thank her. No one had to.

Mikhailis breathed out and tasted iron that wasn’t blood. It was the smell of the Juggernaut’s chain scraping stone a beat late. He filed that smell beside all the other small proofs.

The ring-mouths spat fewer hands. The ones that crawled out came with shoulders wrong. Not slower. More doubtful. Doubt is a kind of speed you can use.