Chapter 33 — Sand on the Boot

The trail from the burned storehouse crossed ground that most villagers had no reason to walk after dark.

Arlan followed the shallow prints toward the wall while Wayne kept the crowd back; white quartz appeared again in the mud, packed into the tread of one footprint and scattered beside another. The glass kiln lay in the opposite direction from the normal granary patrol route.

At the western corner of the wall, two fence posts had been sawed almost through and pushed apart, and the cuts were fresh. A man could squeeze between them without opening a gate; several black horse hairs clung to a splinter on the outer post.

Someone had been waiting outside.

The horse hairs were not enough to name a rider, but they suggested that the escape route had been prepared, and whoever cut the posts expected a mounted helper beyond the wall and knew precisely which section of fence could be opened without drawing the gate watch. That knowledge narrowed the problem from "someone in the village" to someone who understood its night routines.

"Will didn't do this alone," Wayne said.

"No." Arlan looked back toward the guards gathered near the ruined storehouse.

"Who held the patrol covering the back hill and kiln last night?" Two men stepped forward; both had been part of FireStorm's expanded watch. One was pale from smoke and exhaustion, and the other kept his shoulders too rigid.

"We patrolled the whole shift, my lord," the first said. "Saw nothing." Arlan looked at their boots, and the rigid man's right sole carried a smear of white grit in the grooves.

"Where did that come from?" The guard glanced down.

"Dust, my lord. The road—"

"The road is black mud. The kiln yard is quartz. Your assigned route does not cross the kiln yard." The man's face lost color; people nearest him stepped away. His hand moved toward his sword.

Wayne was faster, and the captain crossed the space with one hard step, struck him across the face, and kicked the back of his knee before the blade cleared half the scabbard. The guard hit the mud on both knees; two other men seized his arms.

"Hold him," Wayne snapped. The prisoner began cursing, then the sound changed. His body jerked once, and black fluid appeared at the corner of his mouth.

Wayne forced the jaw open, but whatever had been hidden there was already broken, and the guard convulsed against the men restraining him and went still within seconds. "Poison," Wayne said. "He bit something." Arlan crouched by the corpse.

A man prepared to die before interrogation was more useful to whoever recruited him than a frightened guard acting alone, and Arlan searched the collar and inner seams of the coat until his fingers found a small brass button hidden beneath the cloth.

He cleaned it on the dead man's sleeve; a nightingale was stamped into the metal. House Caron. Wayne swore under his breath. Arlan stood with the button in his palm.

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Will had disappeared, and one patrol guard had killed himself rather than answer questions. Caron soldiers had entered the holding; Red Sun Flame had been taken from protected stores. The attackers knew the granary, fields, patrol route, and weak point in the wall.

That required coordination deeper than one bribed man.

The order spread through FireStorm before the body had been carried away, and horn signals changed from alarm to closure. The outer gate was barred, the postern guarded by four men instead of two, and riders who had been about to leave with messages were stopped until Arlan personally reviewed what they carried and where they were going.

He did not want a lockdown to become collective punishment; work continued where it could. Water still had to be drawn, the wounded still needed tending, and animals still needed feeding, and what changed was movement: every task outside a household was paired, recorded, and checked against Morton's ledger.

Morton opened the register on a stone table near the hall, and names had been added rapidly during FireStorm's expansion, sometimes with little more than village of origin, age, trade, and assigned work. Arlan made him mark everyone who had arrived in the last three months, then everyone with access to stores, kiln, distillery, wall gates, and livestock; the overlap was small enough to matter.

Wayne returned with the second patrol guard; that man had no quartz on his boots and had spent part of the night helping a sick child whose mother and two neighbors confirmed the interruption. It did not clear him completely, but it gave the investigation something firmer than suspicion, and Arlan ordered him kept under watch rather than chained.

Arlan also ordered the dead guard's sleeping space searched in the presence of two witnesses, and nothing there explained who had recruited him, which was useful in its own way: the conspiracy relied on contact methods that were either hidden elsewhere or carried on the man when he died. He would not invent an answer to fill that silence. "Keep the gates sealed," Arlan said.

Wayne looked at him.

"Nobody leaves FireStorm until we finish this. Every night patrol is accounted for. Every person with access to the kiln, distillery, stores, livestock sheds, and wall keys is listed separately."

"I'll put men on it now."

"And nobody searches houses alone. Pairs only, with a written list of what they take. I don't want frightened villagers settling old arguments under the excuse of hunting spies." Wayne nodded once and began issuing orders.

Morton returned from checking Will's quarters, carrying his ledger against his chest; the old steward looked older than he had the day before. "Will's bed is empty. No clothes, no blanket. He planned to leave."

"Or someone planned it for him."

"You think he's dead?"

"I think we don't know yet." Arlan was about to ask Morton for the refugee register when a shout came from the direction of the glass kiln.

A potter ran down the slope at a pace his age should not have allowed; his apron was covered in ash and pale dust.

"My lord!" Wayne turned toward him, and the man nearly fell before reaching them.

"The plans. The kiln plans." Arlan went still.

"What about them?"

"Gone. The box was opened. Your drawings for the glass kiln are gone." For a moment the burned fields, poisoned guard, and missing refugee all became secondary.

The stolen parchment contained the kiln layout, vent structure, material ratios, and firing notes that allowed FireStorm to make its clear glass reliably. House Caron had failed to close the market, so someone had tried to steal the reason buyers came to FireStorm in the first place.

Morton closed his eyes; Wayne looked toward the sealed gates. Arlan folded the brass nightingale button into his palm, and the attack had not been one act of sabotage.

It had been an attempt to remove FireStorm's food, destroy its harvest, steal its most valuable process, and leave Caron agents inside the walls for whatever came next.

"Bring me the refugee register," Arlan said. "All of it." He looked toward the kiln.

"We start there."

Quartz sand had narrowed the trail. The stolen knowledge pointed more closely toward the workshops. Arlan wanted the register before either clue became an excuse for another mob.