The next morning, Foreman Vekk remembered my name.
That was usually bad.
“Khern.”
I froze with one boot still half-stuck in the doorway of the tool den. There were two kinds of quiet in Rooknest. The first was the good kind, the kind that came after a long shift when everyone was too tired to complain properly and the tunnels filled with the soft scrape of tools being hung, masks being cleaned, and people pretending their joints did not hurt. The second was the kind that happened when someone important said your name, and that kind made everyone nearby stop breathing.
Slowly, I turned.
Foreman Vekk stood beside the duty board with his arms folded, one claw tapping against his elbow. He looked exactly as angry as he had yesterday, which meant either he had slept badly or he had slept perfectly and still woken up as himself.
“Yes, Foreman?”
He looked at me, then at the board, then back at me. “You remember yesterday?”
I swallowed. “Parts of it.”
His eyes narrowed, and I straightened immediately. “Yes, Foreman.”
“You were late.”
“Yes, Foreman.”
“You talked back.”
“I breathed wrong.”
“What?”
“Nothing, Foreman.”
Behind me, Veyrun made a sound suspiciously close to someone choking on laughter. I stepped on his foot. He stepped on mine harder.
Vekk’s torn ear twitched. “I was going to put you on lower scrape again.”
My shoulders loosened before I could stop them. Lower scrape was bad. It filled your lungs with dust, your hands with cuts, and your dreams with gray walls. But it was familiar, and familiar misery was still better than creative punishment.
Then Vekk smiled.
It was not a kind smile. It was the sort of expression a predator might make after discovering its prey had already injured itself.
“But pen four tore half its trough apart last night,” he said. “Pen six won’t settle. The handlers are short two bodies, one bucket line, and whatever patience they started the season with.”
My shoulders tightened again. “Foreman?”
“Since you clearly have enough energy to run your mouth, you can spend the day in the Skitter pens.”
The tool den went silent. Veyrun stopped laughing. I stared at Vekk, and Vekk stared back.
“The pens,” I repeated.
“The pens.”
“With the Skitters.”
“No, Khern, with the Inner Sanctum dancers. Yes, with the Skitters.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, and chose the least dangerous words I could find. “Foreman, with respect—”
Vekk raised one finger, and my mouth shut by itself.
“Dung scraping. Tick checking. Moss troughs. Fluid collection. Pen four cleared before second horn. Pen six has a nervous breeder that keeps biting handlers. Try not to lose a finger. We’re short on gloves.”
I looked down at my hands. Ten fingers, for now.
“Is this because I was late?”
“This is because I am generous.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“No, Foreman.”
“Good. Move.”
I moved fast.
Behind me, Veyrun followed. I glanced back at him. “Why are you coming?”
He lifted both hands. “Solidarity.”
Vekk’s voice cut across the den. “Veyrun.”
Veyrun froze.
“You’re assigned there too.”
His expression collapsed. “Betrayal.”
“You were laughing.”
“At the concept of mortality, Foreman.”
“You can reflect on it in dung.”
“Yes, Foreman.”
We collected gloves, scrapers, hook poles, and two breathing cloths that smelled like mold someone had tried to murder with vinegar. Then we descended toward the lower pens.
The Skitter pens sat near the heat vents at the bottom of Rooknest, where the air was warmer, wetter, and worse in every possible way. The tunnels widened there into a low fenced hollow divided by shell rails, bone posts, and old chain lines. Heat rose through cracks in the floor, bringing with it the smell of damp stone, rotted moss, animal musk, and the sharp sour stink of Skitter waste.
Veyrun tied his breathing cloth over his nose and stared across the pens. “I have made mistakes.”
“You laughed at me.”
“I have made one mistake.”
The nearest Skitter turned its head toward us.
Skitters were useful animals, which meant everyone pretended they were less terrifying than they were. They had low bodies covered in ash-gray shell plates, six jointed legs, black bead eyes, and mouths that chewed side to side even when nothing was in them. Their vents fluttered along their necks when they breathed. Their tails ended in hard digging hooks. A calm Skitter was a wagon puller, waste turner, tunnel alarm, moss hauler, and emergency meat source. An upset Skitter was a shovel with legs and opinions.
The one staring at us clicked its mandibles twice.
Veyrun leaned toward me. “If I die, tell people I was assigned unfairly.”
“If you die, people will assume that.”
“Good. My legacy survives.”
A bucket hit the ground near our boots.
“Legacy later,” someone said. “Scrape now.”
The woman standing beside pen four had arms corded from years of hauling feed sacks and a face built entirely out of suspicion. She was shorter than Vekk but somehow looked more difficult to argue with. Her neck fur had been tied back with red cord, and one of her ears carried three metal tags stamped with handler marks. A long brush hung from her belt beside a curved knife.
Veyrun straightened. “Handler Brakka. Always an honor to suffer near you.”
Brakka looked at him for one breath. “Why are you talking?”
“Habit.”
“Break it.”
He nodded. “Good advice.”
Her eyes moved to me. “You Khern?”
“Yes.”
“Foreman says you can follow instructions if frightened enough.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He also said you ask questions.”
“That also sounds like him.”
Brakka pointed toward pen four. “Ask fewer. Scrape more.”
We looked into the pen.
Half the trough had been torn from its brackets. Moss feed lay scattered across the floor, mashed into dung and wet shell flakes. The Skitter inside stood near the back wall with its head lowered and vents fluttering. Its feed sat untouched near its front claws.
I frowned. “It didn’t eat?”
Brakka’s eyes sharpened slightly. “It ate yesterday.”
“What changed?”
“I said ask fewer.”
Veyrun lifted the waste bucket. “Scraping. We love scraping.”
Brakka opened the side gate and stepped in first. The Skitter’s head turned toward her, its black eyes reflecting the Heat Grub jars in tiny orange dots.
“Easy,” she murmured.
It clicked once.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “I bite worse.”
The Skitter lowered its head.
Veyrun whispered, “I think I’m in love.”
“With Brakka or the Skitter?”
“Fear confuses the heart.”
We worked.
The first hour was mostly dung. The second hour was also dung, but with more confidence. By the third, I had learned that Skitter waste stuck to tools with the determination of a bad debt and that breathing cloths were lies adults told children to give them hope. The pen was a world of its own: hot vent breath rising through the floor, damp shell rails slick under my gloves, trough rot clinging to every surface, and the Skitter watching us whenever it thought we had forgotten it was there.
Brakka watched us from the gate, correcting everything. “Not that scrape angle.”
I shifted the scraper.
“Too low.”
I shifted again.
“Too high.”
“Where should it be?”
She walked over, took the scraper from my hand, and cleared a strip of hardened waste in one clean pull. “There.”
I stared as she handed it back.
Veyrun nodded solemnly. “Beautiful. Horrifying, but beautiful.”
Brakka pointed the scraper at him. “You. Trough.”
He went to the trough. The Skitter watched him, and Veyrun watched it back.
“Hello,” he said. “I am temporary and not delicious.”
The Skitter clicked.
“Good talk.”
By second horn, pen four was half-cleared, which was not the same as cleared, but it was close enough that I began lying to myself. Sweat collected under my neck fur. My gloves were slick. My back hurt from bending, and my arms had started to feel like someone had filled them with hot gravel.
Then the Skitter stopped chewing.
It had not been eating, not properly, but it had been working its mouth in that side-to-side way Skitters did when nervous. Now it stood completely still, head angled toward the far wall of the pen.
Brakka noticed first. Her hand went to the hook pole at her belt, and the other Skitters in nearby pens quieted one by one. No one spoke. Even Veyrun had enough sense not to make a joke.
A faint tremor moved through the floor. It was not a Shuddering. Too small. Too slow. It rolled under my boots like something heavy turning in its sleep far below the pens.
The Skitter in pen four clicked once. Another answered from pen six. Then all of them started, not loud and not quite panicked, just clicking unevenly from pen to pen until the whole hollow sounded like rain made of bones.
Brakka’s face hardened.
“What was that?” I asked.
She did not look at me. “If I knew, I’d be using a better expression.”
The clicking faded. Slowly, the Skitters began chewing again. All except the one in pen four.
It kept staring at the wall.
Brakka stepped closer, careful and slow. “Split-plate. Hey. Look here.”
The Skitter did not.
She reached toward its neck vent, and it jerked away from the wall instead of at her. Its legs tangled. Its shell scraped the fence post, and one hooked claw ripped through the feed trough with a wet crack.
Veyrun jumped back so fast he hit me.
The Skitter dropped onto its side. For a terrible moment, I thought it was dead. Then its vents fluttered fast enough to make my stomach drop.
Brakka cursed and shoved the hook pole into my hands. “Hold the head away from the rail.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Learn before it breaks its neck.”
That was not instruction. That was a threat with a deadline.
I grabbed the pole with both hands and angled it against the Skitter’s head plate. The animal shuddered. Its mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Veyrun rushed to the trough and kicked loose shell splinters away from its legs while Brakka pressed one hand near the vents and checked for swelling.
The Skitter’s black eye rolled toward me. I saw myself in it: small, terrified, holding a pole like it made me useful.
“It’s not bit,” Brakka muttered. “Not choking. No foam.”
“Is that good?” Veyrun asked.
“No.”
“Wonderful.”
The Skitter’s legs stopped thrashing. Its vents slowed. Brakka held still until its breathing steadied, then tied a red thread around the rail.
“Quarantine mark,” she said.
“From what?” I asked.
She looked toward the wall the Skitter had been watching. “Ask fewer.”
This time, she sounded less annoyed.
That frightened me more.
After that, she moved us to the feed store to collect dry moss and wash buckets. The feed store was a low chamber built into the side of the pen hollow, lined with racks of moss bundles, shell bins, and cracked clay jars full of mineral salt. It should have smelled like feed. Instead, beneath the moss and old dung, there was a faint bitter scent that made my nose tighten.
Old Jim sat against the far wall with a shovel across his knees.
He looked like someone had placed him there and forgotten to come back.
“Jim?” I said.
One eye opened. “That your greeting now? Just saying names like a frightened clerk?”
“You’re supposed to be in Section Nine.”
“You’re supposed to be useful. We’re all failing.”
Veyrun leaned in behind me. “Morning, Jim.”
“Bad morning.”
“That is more accurate, yes.”
Old Jim’s gaze moved from him to me, then toward the pens beyond the feed store. The Skitters had started chewing again, but not evenly. Every few breaths, one would stop and look toward the same far wall.
“You two are on pen duty?” Jim asked.
“Punishment,” I said.
“Good. Skitters teach better than foremen.”
Veyrun grinned. “I always said that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I felt it spiritually.”
Old Jim ignored him. His breathing rasped with every pull, and dust clung to the fur around his throat. He looked thinner than yesterday, though that might have been because I was finally looking properly.
His eyes narrowed at the pens.
“They know,” he whispered.
I followed his gaze. “Know what?”
He was quiet for so long I thought he had fallen asleep. Then he said, “Skitters know before Saints do.”
The back of my neck prickled.
Veyrun’s face changed first. Then he laughed too loudly. “That’s cheerful.”
Old Jim turned his head slowly toward him. “You think I’m joking?”
“I hope you are.”
“Hope is what the young use when they have no tools.”
“That is also cheerful.”
Jim’s eyes shifted to me. “When they stop eating, you run.”
The words settled into the feed store. No one outside heard them. Brakka shouted at someone near pen six. A Skitter scraped its claw along a rail. Water dripped somewhere behind the wall. Inside the little feed room, I felt cold despite the heat vents.
“Run where?” I asked.
Old Jim closed his eyes. “Somewhere else.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“Specific costs extra.”
Then he started coughing.
It began as a rough pull in his chest and turned violent quickly. His body folded forward, one hand gripping the shovel handle, the other clawing at his throat as if he could tear the dust-lung out with his nails. I grabbed the nearest water cup. Veyrun lifted the moss sack out of the way before Jim kicked it over.
When the coughing finally passed, Old Jim’s face had gone gray. He wiped his mouth and glared at both of us.
“If either of you look sorry for me, I’ll outlive you out of spite.”
Veyrun nodded. “That seems possible.”
I crouched beside him. “You should not be working.”
“I’m sitting.”
“In the feed store.”
“Very observant.”
“You need to go home.”
Old Jim’s eyes opened fully then. The humor drained out. “Home is where old people go when everyone is ready to practice missing them.”
I had no answer to that.
He leaned back against the wall, breathing through his nose in shallow pulls. “Listen to me, boy. There are sounds a place makes when it is hungry, sounds it makes when it is hurt, and sounds it makes when something else is listening through it.”
Veyrun shifted closer despite himself.
I looked toward the pens. “And the Skitters heard which one?”
Old Jim’s gaze stayed on the far wall. “Ask them.”
Before I could answer, a bucket clattered outside and Brakka shouted my name like she had discovered a new form of disappointment.
By the time she noticed the spill near the trough, the bucket was upright, the floor was mostly clean, and Veyrun had somehow convinced her that the mess had been caused by “structural paste instability,” which was impressive because that meant absolutely nothing.
Brakka stared at him for a long moment. Then at me. Then at Old Jim.
“Pen four better be cleared,” she said.
“It is,” I answered.
It was not.
“It will be,” Veyrun corrected.
Brakka pointed two fingers at her eyes, then at us, then left.
After she was gone, Veyrun exhaled. “I think she loves me.”
“She looked ready to skin you.”
“Passion takes many forms.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“You smell like Skitter dung.”
“So do you.”
“Yes, but I make it charming.”
We finished pen four late.
Of course Vekk noticed.
He stood at the gate as we dragged the last waste bucket toward the worm trench, his expression flat enough to scrape crust with.
“You were assigned one pen,” he said.
“Yes, Foreman.”
“One.”
“Yes, Foreman.”
“One pen, Khern.”
“Yes, Foreman.”
Veyrun raised a finger. “Technically, I was assigned here as punishment, so if we think about this emotionally, the real lesson is that we suffered with sincerity.”
Vekk turned his head slowly.
Veyrun lowered his finger. “I will stop helping.”
“That would be wise,” Vekk said.
Then he looked past us toward the feed store, where Old Jim had fallen asleep sitting upright against the wall. Something tired crossed Vekk’s face and vanished almost immediately.
“Clean yourselves,” he said. “Both of you. Then Section Two rail wash.”
My stomach dropped. “After pens?”
“Did I say tomorrow?”
“No, Foreman.”
“Then today.”
I should have shut up. I did shut up, eventually.
We washed rails until my arms shook. By the time Vekk released us, the lower hollow had dimmed into evening, and the heat vents gave off a reddish glow that made the Skitters look like old carved things in a temple no one wanted to worship in.
Brakka marked pen four again before we left. Red thread around the rail. Red chalk on the feed board. A small notch cut into the post.
“What happens if it still won’t eat?” I asked.
She tied the thread tighter. “We watch.”
“And if watching doesn’t help?”
She looked at me. “Then we find out too late.”
That was becoming a theme.
Veyrun and I climbed out of the lower pens together, both of us stinking badly enough that people moved away from us without needing to be asked.
“It is nice,” Veyrun said, “to finally be respected.”
“They’re avoiding us.”
“Respectfully.”
Near the central hollow, we split. Veyrun went toward his uncle’s rooms, promising to steal something edible and probably failing upward into being fed. I went east, carrying my ration and trying not to think about Old Jim’s warning.
Skitters know before Saints do.
I wished old people would be vague in less memorable ways.
My mother was awake when I got home.
That was usually good. It meant the cough had not dragged her too far down. Tonight, she sat by the lamp with breathing cloth across her knees, but she was not stitching. She was looking toward the far wall, listening to something I could not hear.
“Ma?”
She blinked, then looked at me. “You smell terrible.”
“I missed you too.”
Her mouth curved faintly. “Pens?”
“Punishment.”
“For being late?”
“For existing loudly near Vekk.”
“That is dangerous.”
“I know that now.”
I set the ration bundle on the crate and washed my hands in the little basin near the door. The water turned gray, then brown, then somehow worse. My mother waited until I sat before she reached for the food. She always waited, as if I might suddenly decide I was hungry enough to stop lying.
“You worked with Skitters today,” she said.
“Yes.”
“They were unsettled?”
My hands stilled. “How did you know?”
“The lower stacks carried sound all morning. Skitters do not click like that for bad feed.”
I should have remembered that. My mother had worked vent routes before stitching took over her hands. She knew the sounds of Rooknest better than I knew the layout of my own fear.
“One collapsed,” I said. “Brakka marked it. Old Jim said...” I stopped.
My mother watched me. “What did Old Jim say?”
I rubbed at a crusted line of dirt under my nail. “He said Skitters know before Saints do.”
The lamp flame stirred.
My mother did not laugh.
That was not comforting.
“He also said when they stop eating, run.”
She looked toward the doorway, toward the distant lower hollow. “Did they stop?”
“Not all of them.”
“That is not an answer.”
“One did.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. Only a moment. Then she picked up her needle and thread again, as if the world could be held together by refusing to stop working.
“Old Jim has lived long enough to become rude in accurate ways,” she said.
“That’s what worries me.”
“It should.”
I looked at her. “You think something is wrong?”
“I think many things are wrong. I am deciding which ones are new.”
The answer was very Mara.
I hated how much I loved it.
She began stitching again. Her fingers moved slower than they used to, but the thread still obeyed her better than people obeyed Vekk.
I watched the cloth gather in her lap. “Why doesn’t Saint Rook know first?”
My mother did not look up. “Who says he does not?”
“Jim.”
“Old Jim says many things.”
“You just said he’s accurate.”
“I said rude in accurate ways. That is not the same as holy.”
I leaned back against the wall. “Skitters are animals.”
“So are we, if you ask the wrong person.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.” She pulled the thread through and tied it off with a small knot. “Skitters listen with their whole bodies. They do not pretend fear is shameful. They do not explain away a bad smell because they want the day to stay ordinary.”
That felt unfairly aimed at me.
“I don’t do that.”
She looked at me.
I looked away first.
Outside, someone laughed in the passage. A child complained about dinner. A neighbor cursed a leaky jar. Normal sounds. Good sounds. Rooknest alive in all its ugly little ways.
My mother folded the cloth. “A Saint holds many things, Khern. Walls. Vents. Strains. Prayers. Panic. People. Sometimes the small lives feel a change first because they have less to carry.”
I thought of Saint Rook’s tower in the central hollow, the roots pulsing along its sides like slow breath. “Does that mean he’s weaker than people think?”
“No,” she said. “It means holding a roof does not tell you which child under it will sneeze first.”
I frowned.
She gave me a tired look. “That made sense before I said it.”
“I understood.”
“Do not lie to sick women. We become vengeful.”
“I understood enough.”
“Better.”
She set the finished cloth on a neat pile and pressed one hand against her chest. The cough came slowly this time, not violent, but deep. I waited, because she hated when I hovered too soon. When it worsened, I brought her water.
She took it without arguing.
That scared me a little.
After she drank, she held the cup in both hands and looked at me. “You are not responsible for every warning you hear.”
“I know.”
“No, you collect them. Like stones. Then you put them in your chest and wonder why it is hard to breathe.”
I had no good defense against being known that specifically.
She reached across and touched my wrist. Her fingers were thin and dry, but warm.
“If something feels wrong, you come back.”
“Everything feels wrong here.”
“I know. That is why I said if something feels wrong, not if something feels normal.”
I laughed once.
She did not.
The laugh died.
“I’ll be careful,” I said.
She let go of my wrist, which should have made me feel better.
It did not.
Later, after she slept, I stepped into the passage and walked toward the overlook. I told myself I only needed air. That was a lie, but it was a useful one.
The central hollow was quieter than it had been the night before. Lanterns hung in their cages. Bridges creaked under late workers. Menders patched a seam near the west wall while arguing in whispers over whose paste mix had failed. Far below, the Skitter pens sat in the red glow of the vents.
I leaned against the railing and looked down.
Most of the Skitters had settled. Their shells rose and fell in slow sleeping breaths. A few chewed at leftover moss. Brakka moved between pens with a lantern, checking rails, posts, marks. She stopped at pen four and stood there longer than the others.
The marked Skitter was awake. It stood at the back of the pen, head lowered toward the wall, not eating, just watching.
Above the hollow, Saint Rook’s Domain pulsed with its slow pale light. Once. Twice. Steady as breath. Steady enough that I almost believed steady meant safe.
Then a click rose from the lower pens.
One Skitter.
Then another.
Then another.
Not panic. Not yet.
An uneven, nervous sound passed through the dark below Rooknest, and somewhere inside Saint Rook’s pale roots, the light paused for half a breath before continuing.
I told myself it was probably nothing.
By then, I should have known better.