Six days should have sent me racing toward Greymarrow’s heart.

Instead, I dragged my flattened corner six inches across the refuge floor and nearly overturned.

Kest caught my upper strap with her good wing-claw. “A terrifying charge. Veyr will surrender immediately.”

“Cut the braid.”

Her expression lost its amusement. The brass line beneath the refuge threshold still connected us to the pathing needle in the dry cistern. If Veyr could speak through it, he might also listen.

Tallow heated a thumb-length section until it glowed dull red. Kest drove the broken pry-bar tip through the softened brass. The line parted with a blue snap.

Signal Recognition continued to sense the needle in the cistern. The preserved resident pulses remained around it, but its connection to the refuge had gone silent.

Our deception would not last forever. It only needed to last longer than our next mistake.

Marda lowered her head beside me. “Box repairs.”

“The heart comes first.”

“Broken box reaches nothing.”

I tested my base again. Without Stored Tension, movement required my inner fibers to grip the floor and pull. The warped rear corner turned every attempt slightly left. At my current speed, six days gave me enough time to attack one hallway.

Greymarrow pressed a reluctant image through the living floor: a rectangular chamber beyond the refuge’s northern wall, fitted with clamps, resin channels, and a low stone workbed.

Wayfarer mendery. Stripped. Sleeping.

Greymarrow had once repaired the equipment of travelers who survived its controlled challenges. The work had not been charity. Delvers contributed usable material, labor, or knowledge in exchange. Fair value, measured by function rather than coin.

An appraiser’s idea of paradise.

The northern wall opened far enough to reveal a bronze door. Its surface carried no handle, only a shallow offering tray and an inscription worn smooth by thousands of hands.

Kest ran one claw over the remaining marks. “Give what still serves. Take only what restores.”

“An exchange lock.”

“Can Greymarrow open it?”

The floor cooled.

Must be given.

Most of our useful possessions could be counted without exhausting anyone. Kest had the pry-bar tip. Tallow had his own wax and flame. Marda had stone plates and determination. Pebble and Rill owned nothing the Guild had not already tried to take.

The discarded collection tags offered a better answer.

Their recording filaments formed the decoy line, but the bent brass casings remained on the floor. Veyr had paid for them. I felt no obligation to preserve his investment.

Kest placed the three casings in the tray.

Nothing happened.

“They still serve,” I said. “The lock needs intent.”

Marda pushed the tray deeper with one claw. “Given to shelter. Melt for hinges, braces, or little tools.”

The bronze door warmed.

Internal weights descended one by one. The casings vanished beneath the tray, and the door folded inward.

A return slot released the brass as three narrow billets. The lock had accepted the gift without wasting it.

The mendery smelled of mineral oil, old resin, and stripped stone. Empty tool outlines covered one wall. The Guild had removed every portable clamp, blade, and enchanted gauge. They had even taken the copper lining from the resin kettle.

What remained appeared worthless: a cracked workbed, four wall-mounted presses too heavy to steal, and two black wooden skids beneath the stone bench.

I touched one skid with a fiber.

Dense grain curled through it in interlocking waves. The black surface was not rot. It was ironwood darkened by centuries of oil. Greymarrow’s builders had used it beneath the workbed because it flexed under heavy impacts without splitting.

The salvage crew had mistaken structural value for packing scrap.

Professional satisfaction briefly overcame the fact that I had once trained people to make exactly that distinction.

The skid could reinforce my broken side. It might also contain a property worth claiming. Consuming it would reveal the exact possibilities and permanently expand my Pattern Vault.

It would also destroy the only sound repair wood in the room.

Three learned properties were enough to make me dangerous to the people I wanted to protect. A fourth could wait.

“We use it as material,” I said.

Kest looked from the ironwood to my cracked board. “All of it?”

Her injured wing hung lower than before. The climb, rescue, and flightless descent had reopened the wound around its joint. Grey down clung together in dark points.

I examined the workbed. One resin channel still held a thumb-deep layer of hardened mineral binder. Enough to reinforce my full side or stabilize Kest’s wing. Not both.

“Half for my board,” I said. “Half for a wing brace.”

Kest’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot cross a room.”

“You cannot survive another forced climb.”

“I can climb with three limbs.”

“And I can turn left exceptionally well. We all have talents.”

Kest did not smile. “Is this another payment for the white mark?”

The question deserved more than a convenient denial.

“Partly.” I flexed the fibers inside my cracked side. “I cannot undo what the mark cost you. But this is also a resource decision. We have one scout, one functioning refuge, and six days. Preserving your wing gives Greymarrow more value than making my exterior attractive.”

“Your exterior was never in danger of that.”

That was closer to her usual tone.

“Do not turn every repair into penance,” she continued. “If you break yourself trying to balance an old account, we still lose a chest.”

“A devastating shortage.”

“An inconvenient one.”

Her good wing relaxed by a fraction.

The distinction mattered. Guilt could produce a generous decision once. Responsibility had to keep producing useful decisions after generosity became expensive.

Tallow tapped the damaged board, then pointed at Kest’s wing. He divided the air between them with both hands.

Marda nodded. “Little flame appraises better.”

Kest muttered something about conspiracies and lowered herself onto the workbed.

Restoring the mendery required no single heroic act. It required twelve small ones performed correctly.

Marda lifted the stone bench while Rill slid the first ironwood skid free. Pebble washed old oil from its grain with mineral water. Kest used the pry-bar tip to clear hardened resin from the feed channel, stopping whenever her injured wing trembled. Tallow warmed the remaining binder a fraction at a time so it softened without burning.

I directed the cuts and alignments through Greymarrow’s floor.

When the first wall press refused to close, I found a Guild salvage wedge buried behind its lower hinge. It had been driven there to hold the mechanism open for stripping. Marda crushed the wedge flat and fed the iron into the exchange furnace.

The warming furnace drew the donated brass into pins and one narrow shim.

Blue light passed through the press.

The old clamps opened.

[DUNGEON FUNCTION RESTORED]

Wayfarer Mendery: Operational — Limited

Contribution recognized. Level increased.

Lesser Wooden Mimic — Level 3

The new level did not straighten my boards or replace missing material. It sharpened control. Each inner fiber became easier to distinguish from its neighbors. My hinge tightened around its pins, and the three knots through which I saw gained a little clarity.

Progress respected damage.

It also made repairing that damage possible.

Marda lifted me onto the workbed. The indignity of being carried was reduced by the fact that she treated me like masonry rather than luggage.

Kest fitted a narrow strip of ironwood inside my split left board. Rill held the brass pins. Pebble cooled each one after Tallow heated it. Marda operated the wall press with one foreclaw, closing it slowly until the warped cedar met the new brace.

Pain traveled through every grain.

Impact Damping spread it across my body. This time, no opposing property tried to seize the force. The ache remained severe but orderly.

Mineral binder flowed around the ironwood strip. My pale fibers entered the softened resin and curled through the new grain. The material did not give me its properties. It became part of my structure because we had fitted, fastened, and bonded it there.

No shortcut. No copied perfection.

A repair.

We used a second ironwood piece to raise my flattened rear corner. The twisted upper band could not be fully straightened without removing it, so Kest drove a brass shim beneath the worst bend. My left side remained visibly cracked, but the brace carried the load.

When Marda returned me to the floor, I pulled myself forward.

One foot. Straight.

A modest distance had never felt so luxurious.

I crossed the full width of the mendery without striking a wall. The repaired corner grated, and the brace complained whenever my weight shifted too quickly, but my path remained mine. Pebble walked beside me with both hands raised, apparently prepared to catch a chest several times its weight. Rill followed behind, inspecting the faint groove my base left in the dust.

At the far wall, I turned deliberately and came back.

Marda watched the test with the severity of a bridge inspector.

“Still slow,” she said.

“I was hoping the dramatic improvement might escape professional review.”

“Still slow,” she repeated, “but goes where chosen.”

That appraisal I accepted.

Kest’s turn took longer.

Her wing joint had not broken cleanly. The membrane and supporting bone had healed out of alignment around the collection wound. I could design a brace that prevented further tearing, but restoring flight would require time, medicine, and more skill than the room possessed.

Kest understood before I finished explaining.

“Do what keeps it attached,” she said.

Marda held her still. Tallow softened the remaining resin. I guided Rill in placing two thin ironwood splints along the wing’s outer support. Pebble cooled the brace while Kest bit down on the pry-bar tip and refused to make a sound.

When it was done, she folded the wing halfway against her flank. Far from healed, but protected.

“Temporary,” I said.

“Everything in this dungeon is temporary.”

Greymarrow warmed the workbed beneath her.

Not everything.

Kest looked down at the blue-lit stone and did not answer.

Pebble approached and touched one fingertip to the new brace. Kest stiffened but allowed the inspection. Rill added a small spiral mark to the outer splint with a blackened claw.

“What does that mean?” Kest asked.

Rill hid all six fingers behind its back.

Marda answered for the child. “Means repaired things belong with us.”

Kest examined the rough spiral. Then she shifted closer to the refuge entrance instead of asking for it to be removed.

Several hours of compatible configuration and core contact finally eased the last predatory tremor from my fibers.

[RECOVERY COMPLETE]

Instability: Stable

Before relief could settle, the restored workbed rang.

Three thin metallic notes vibrated through its clamps.

The rhythm from beside Greymarrow’s heart.

Marda turned toward the floor. “Bad stone?”

“Metal,” I said. “Greymarrow, send the rhythm again.”

The dungeon resisted. Fear chilled the mendery’s blue veins.

Then the workbed rang a second time.

High. Low. High.

I knew that calibration.

Every licensed Guild appraisal knife carried a witness filament inside its tang. When the blade tested an enchantment, the filament recorded which appraiser had made contact. Three tuning notes identified the tool before its personal signature followed.

The workbed sounded the next sequence.

My sequence.

Memory drove an invisible blade between my ribs again. Silver edge. Black leather grip. The small notch I had filed near the guard so I could orient it in darkness.

“Show me,” I told Greymarrow.

The dungeon pushed an image through the mendery.

Blue mineral surrounded a narrow heart conduit far below us. A black Guild clamp encircled it. My appraisal knife passed through the center of the clamp, its point driven into living crystal. Dried blood darkened the silver near the hilt.

The initials C.V. remained visible on the guard.

Fine authority lines ran from the witness filament into the clamp. Each beat of Greymarrow’s heart pulled them tighter.

Your tooth, Greymarrow whispered. Holds open my no.

Veyr had not merely used my knife to kill me. The tool still carried my licensed identity, my Guild access, and the authority to witness an appraisal. Fixed into the conduit, it could make the hidden installation appear to be part of my lawful survey.

That was my inference. The clamp’s exact purpose remained unreadable from this distance.

Its direction did not.

It was waiting for the heart crew.

The heart crew was not coming in six days to find Greymarrow’s heart.

My knife was already buried in it.

They were coming to turn the blade.