CHAPTER 746: HAMMERS IN A FOREST (4)

Steam thinned hours ago. Night lay over the camp like the last blanket in a cold house. Cooking fires slumped into orange eyes; someone had raked them tidy so the wind wouldn’t find a rhythm. Canvas bellies breathed slow. Spear heads glowed dull where the embers looked at them.

Mikhailis lay on a cot he hadn’t earned, arms folded behind his head, eyes on the seam where a patch had been stitched with three different hands. The canvas smelled faintly of smoke, pine, and boiled soap. He thought of beds. He had known soft ones once, with quilts that tried to hug you back. Lately, anything flat was luxury.

It’s been a while since I had a bed that didn’t argue with my spine. He smiled at the thought, a small one that didn’t need witnesses. Purpose outweighed comfort anyway. Comfort made you slow. Purpose made you breathe on purpose.

He slid his glasses on. The lenses flashed once as they learned the dark.

"Status—confirm sleep state," he whispered, barely moving his mouth.

Rodion online. Passive scan only. Sampling previous heart‑rate trends and soundprints from ward tents and perimeter recorded during day cycle.

A fine, invisible net pulled through the camp. It didn’t poke. It noticed.

Most of camp is sleeping. Three sentries awake on the north line, one at the lift lip, one at the south cook tent. All within expected routine variability. Aeren’s desk lamp is out. Nurse captain asleep sitting up—again.

Mikhailis rolled to his side and winced. The cot complained with the voice of old leather.

Aeren’s witness‑sap cleared my name. Procedure did the work. Good. If I stay, it turns into speeches and politics. Elowen will panic in her quiet way. Lira will sharpen towels again. Cerys will pretend she doesn’t care. Serelith will make a joke with knives in it.

He breathed out through his nose and sat up, careful with noise. He didn’t want to earn the cot after all.

"If they can hear you," he murmured, "you’re already lost."

"We talk only if no ears—magical or otherwise."

Consent for active sweep?

"Do it."

The lenses bloomed with a soft overlay, like frost patterns on glass. Glows touched the tent seams, the pegged corners, the smoke hole’s lip, and a tent pole that looked too proud for its job. Glyphs, old and tired, still tried to be useful.

Enumerating common taps in elf field camps: Whisper‑Knots—braided thread in seams tuned to speech cadence; Scry‑Hooks—fish‑hook runes on pegs that catch conversational ’lines’; Echo‑Tags—rhythm‑hungry sigils that reconstruct speech from micro‑vibrations; Smoke‑Readers—volatile oils in chimneys that discolor to vowel heat; Breath‑Vials—corked glass under floor seams that fog to consonant puffs.

"Whisper‑Knots first."

Two inert remnants in an unused corner. Not feeding. One Scry‑Hook on the lee peg—poorly etched, underfed, likely a recruit’s homework. No active Smoke‑Reader signatures. No Breath‑Vials within two paces. Echo‑Tag vector previously found on your strap—removed.

Mikhailis moved without turning his steps into a song. Prime‑step—rude, uneven, safe. He crouched at the seam. Thread winked like a spider that had forgotten its own web.

Dismantling went the way good dismantling should: quiet, reversible, respectful. He reverse‑braided two loops with slow fingers, breathed through the knot without puffs, and touched a smear of cool sap over it. The knot sighed like something that had been allowed to retire.

Next, the peg. The Scry‑Hook glimmered faint where careless lines had overreached. He shielded it with a folded strip of damp cloth to starve the intake, rotated it ninety degrees counter‑etch, then buried the tip in a cup of ash someone had forgotten to empty.

Rodion listened to the noise of magic the way a doctor listens to a chest.

Noise‑floor flattening.

"Canvas seams?"

Clean. Tent pole resonance within normal flex. Smoke hole plume is just air doing a hobby.

He didn’t move yet. He let his eyes travel the seam one more time, slow, with a craftsman’s patience. The thread had tiny hairs that caught light from the embers like frost on spider silk. A small place where the needle had hesitated left a knot the size of a grain of salt. He loved that—proof a hand was there.

He breathed a little deeper. The tent smelled of honest things now—soap, smoke, leather. Pine waited outside with its sweet rot, not ugly, just the forest returning what it borrowed.

He slid his fingers along the seam and found the language of stitches—decisive bites, careful returns, stubborn pulls that refused to be pretty but would not fail. For a second he wished he could leave a note for each hand: Good work. Rest. It felt silly, but the wish stayed.

He drifted a step to the pole and put his palm against it. A dry cool climbed into his skin. He waited for that tiny shiver that meant a ward was pretending to be wood. Nothing. Only wind making the canvas sigh.

He had learned the difference between moving and saying. Poles moved all night and said nothing. Wards could be silent but still said too much.

He tilted his chin to the smoke hole. The rim wore a thin crown of soot. The plume lifting through was weak and steady, the breath of a house asleep. No oil sheen on the lip. No glass kiss-mark under the ring. He checked the peg cradles with two fingers, sliding nail under wood grain. Empty. Two cobwebs hung like tiny hammocks, untouched. He preferred webs that caught flies, not words.

He adjusted his glasses. His thumb found the little scratch on the frame. The habit let his thoughts line up.

He heard Elowen in memory: Three breaths before you decide.

He took them. In, out, in. On the second breath, a sound from outside—a cup almost clinked, then rescued. On the third, a cough smothered with the back of a hand. Then nothing but small night noises: fabric settling, a heel rubbing a pallet, someone’s breath rolling to a side. He let that ordinariness soak in. Ordinary meant alive.

He looked at the cot again. A dip where his shoulder had been, like a small valley. The blanket was that military dusk color that worked hard and thanked no one. His fingers twitched to smooth it. He imagined Lira’s eyebrow if he left it messy. He did nothing. If I make it neat, it looks like a goodbye. Not tonight.

He crouched to check under the cot. Professionals checked where fools forgot. Dust. A lost button, glossy with use. A hair, copper-red—someone with Cerys’s color had slept here once or dropped by with a stare and a task list. And the groundcloth had a healed tear, sewn with tiny angry stitches. He liked the person who had done that. Anger that fixes things—that’s a talent.

A faint draught brushed the back of his hand. He turned his wrist, feeling for shape—no sharp drop, no staged draft channel pointing at a listening bottle. Just the tent breathing through its weave. He rolled his knuckles, quiet.

I could wake Aeren now and say we’re clean. He’d nod and go back down, but then his head would refuse sleep, and he’d rehearse mistakes he never made. He made a face in the dark. Better he gets one night where trust wins by default. Also better to move before rumor wakes earlier than discipline.

He brushed ash off his knees and stood. His knees clicked like two polite beetles. I am too young for my joints to be this honest. It made him grin a little, then stop before the grin turned into a rhythm.

His palm brushed the pole again—gratitude more than test—then he went to the cot and picked up his pack. His hands counted pockets by touch. One: the sap—cool vial, sticky around the lip. Two: thread in a waxed wrap. Three: pebbles rubbed smooth; prime stones had a feel that made his thumb want to drum (he did not). Four: cloth strips ready to suffocate a rune. Five: ash cloth damp and folded tight. Six: tokens, the quiet kind, heavy like promises.

He paused. The glasses had that welcome weight. Behind his eyes, the familiar pressure said Rodion had unfolded all his little antennas.

"Any drift in the north line?" he mouthed. Sound barely left his throat.

None outside acceptable boredom. The sentry at the cook tent has a book. It is terrible. I am not judging. I am observing.

"Judging is free," he breathed. "Observing is work."

I do both at professional rates.

His mouth tilted. He let the smile live for a heartbeat. Then he filed it away.

He looked at the flap, a darker triangle inside the dark. He pictured the watch: north trio doing that quiet dance of handover; lift-lip sentinel rolling his shoulders and pretending the cold was part of the uniform; cook-tent guard licking a finger to turn a page with gloves on and hating both.

Pine resin pressed a little through the fabric. The night leaned in as if to listen. His legs hummed—a little electric promise. It always came before motion. He had learned not to mistake it for fear.

"Last check," he whispered. "Then we act."