Kaelen swung his legs into the hemp hammock and pulled the straw hat over his face.
The rough weave of the dried straw smelled faintly of summer hay and dust. Beneath the wide brim, total darkness enveloped his eyes. His limbs felt pleasantly heavy, thoroughly exhausted from five minutes of master-level alchemy and three minutes of high-speed footwork drills.
Behind his closed eyelids, the grey stone tablet glowed with fresh, clean runes.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Abstinence: 00 Hours, 15 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 1x (Stage 1: Mortal Tally)] [Next Milestone: 01 Hour (02x Ready)]
The counter had reset to baseline.
One baseline multiplier. If he practiced now, outside a cashed burst, one minute would yield only one baseline minute of practice. But as long as he stayed in his hammock with his hands folded over his stomach, the slate would quietly rebuild its fortune, hour by hour.
Across the room, Barnaby hadn’t moved an inch since whispering the name of the Holt Clan’s lost sutra.
For fifteen full minutes after Kaelen brushed past him into the hammock, there had been no clatter of the wooden ladle against the iron pot. There was no gravelly bellow demanding answers, and no lecture about laziness or dirty floorboards.
The silence in the shed was thick and heavy.
He still hasn’t yelled, Kaelen thought. Silence from a nagging old man is far more dangerous than rage. When Barnaby shouts, he wants me to grind roots. When he goes quiet for a quarter of an hour, it means he’s digging up a grave.
A pair of heavy cloth boots shuffled across the oak planks.
The legs of a three-legged stool scraped against the floor, settling beside the hammock. An earthen jug of rough barley wine clinked against the rim of two coarse ceramic cups. The sharp, sour aroma of fermented mountain grain filled the air between them.
Barnaby Holt did not pick up his broom. He did not touch the charcoal.
He sat on the stool, his single hand steady as he poured pale yellow wine into both cups. He set one cup on the floorboards beside Kaelen’s dangling slippers.
Kaelen did not lift his straw hat.
“Drinking before midday damages the liver,” Kaelen murmured from beneath the brim. “My doctor advises against sour spirits on an empty stomach.”
“Shut your mouth and drink, boy,” Barnaby said. His voice lacked its usual booming thunder. It was thin, dry, and strained, like old parchment stretched over iron wire.
Kaelen pushed the hat back just enough to peek through one slit eye.
Barnaby held his cup with his remaining hand, staring down into the yellow wine. His gray hair hung in tangled clumps over his furrowed brow. The scar across his empty left shoulder—a jagged, puckered brand that ran from his collarbone down to his ribcage—seemed to throb with faint, suppressed heat beneath his tunic.
“You still haven’t told me how a Vance third son knows that palm draft,” Barnaby rasped.
“Just an intuition for how fire breathes,” Kaelen said softly.
“Intuition doesn’t fold ash on the ninth beat,” Barnaby whispered. “I would recognize that rhythm in the depths of the underworld.”
The old keeper took a slow swallow of the sour barley wine. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, his gaze drifting out the open window toward the distant northern mountains.
“Twenty years ago,” Barnaby said, his words falling slow and heavy. “Before I had gray hair. Before I lost my arm in the fire.”
He stared at the empty sleeve pinned to his hip.
“My family ran the greatest medicine pavilion in Red-River City,” Barnaby murmured. “The Holt Clan. We did not follow the common ways of boiling roots.”
“Our ancestors inherited the Nine-Breath Ash Sutra, a supreme earth-fire scripture,” he continued. “It taught the nine rhythms of the flame. By breathing in unison with the charcoal, an alchemist could extract supreme purity from crude mountain herbs without harming his inner meridians.”
Kaelen listened without moving. He kept his breathing slow and shallow.
Careful, Kaelen reminded himself. Do not analyze the fire formulas. Do not ponder the nine rhythms. If my mind tries to calculate the heat curves, the slate will register cultivation intent and reset my fifteen minutes to zero.
He pictured a fat white goose waddling through mud. The image was delightfully stupid. The Fallow Slate remained quiet, ticking up toward sixteen minutes.
Barnaby gripped his cup so tightly the ceramic groaned.
“My father was our master, and he raised two core disciples,” Barnaby continued, his single eye clouding with bitter memories. “Me, and my junior brother, Orson.”
The name tasted like ash on the old man’s tongue.
“Orson was brilliant,” Barnaby said. “His hands were faster than mine, and his talent with flame was terrifying. But his heart was an open pit of greed—he wanted gold and the title of grandmaster before his twentieth winter.”
The wind rattled the loose windowpane, blowing a draft of cold air across the table.
“One winter night,” Barnaby whispered, “Orson brought our master a jar of aged plum wine to celebrate the solstice. It was laced with ghost-corpse venom. Within ten breaths of drinking it, the old man’s meridians rotted into black sludge.”
Kaelen remained still beneath his hat, watching through the slit of his eyelids.
“I heard the crash from the courtyard,” Barnaby said, the tendons in his neck standing out like iron cords. “When I ran into the pavilion, the ancestral scripture chest was smashed open, and Orson stood over our master’s corpse clutching the golden silk scrolls of the Nine-Breath Ash Sutra.”
Barnaby raised his left shoulder, where the fabric hung flat and hollow.
“We fought among the burning cauldrons,” the old keeper hissed. “I had the family broadsword. Orson had a poisoned fire-gouge dagger. He was ruthless. He severed my arm at the shoulder, kicked me into the blazing furnace pit, and set the entire compound ablaze.”
“How did you survive?” Kaelen asked.
“The furnace collapsed into the river cellar,” Barnaby said grimly. “The cold water quenched the flames. I crawled through the drainage ditch while our family’s legacy burned to ash. When I finally dragged myself onto the riverbank, the sun was rising. My arm was gone. My father was dead.”
Barnaby drank the rest of his wine in a single, bitter gulp.
“And Orson?” Kaelen asked.
A sound like grinding millstones came from Barnaby’s teeth.
“Orson walked into the Nine-Cauldron Guild that very morning,” Barnaby spat. “He offered them our stolen scripture. In exchange, the guild elders made him an inner elder on the spot.”
“Today, twenty years later, traitor Orson wears purple silk robes with jade borders,” Barnaby growled. “He is the Branch Master of the Nine-Cauldron Guild in Red-River City. Thousands bow when his carriage passes.”
The old keeper slumped forward on his stool, looking ten years older.
“I came to Ashford to hide,” Barnaby whispered. “A one-armed cripple cannot challenge the Nine-Cauldron Guild. I hid in this weed-filled shed, pretending to be a useless old fool, waiting for my bones to rot in the mountain dirt.”
He raised his head, staring at Kaelen’s hammock with fierce intensity.
“And then this morning,” Barnaby said, his voice trembling, “I watched a lazy, shameless eighteen-year-old boy stir an iron stew-pot with his bare palm. In five minutes, you used the third breath of our lost sutra to condense ten supreme pills. The exact wrist-folding technique my father used before he died.”
Barnaby stood up from the stool.
He took three steps forward. He did not raise his wooden ladle. He did not bellow or sneer.
With his single hand flat against his chest, the old keeper bent his back and bowed deeply toward the hammock.
“Third Young Master,” Barnaby said in a voice thick with reverence. “I do not know which immortal senior passed you the sutra in your dreams. I do not care why you hide your strength behind romance booklets and naps.”
“The Holt family blood is in your debt,” Barnaby added, pressing his hand tighter to his chest. “From this day forth, my life belongs to you.”
Kaelen pushed his straw hat up with one finger.
He looked at the bowing old man.
A loyal, terrifyingly loud keeper guarding the door is the greatest gift a slacker could ever receive, Kaelen thought. If Barnaby takes over the shouting and the audits, I can sleep twelve hours a day without a single soul bothering me.
“Stand up, Barnaby,” Kaelen said casually. “Bowing is exhausting. My knees ache just watching you.”
Barnaby straightened, his single eye shining with fierce resolve.
“Orson has sat in his purple silk robes for twenty years,” Kaelen said, folding his hands behind his head. “He has lived in your family’s house and spent your family’s silver. When the time comes, we will take a trip down the river to Red-River City.”
Barnaby blinked. “A trip?”
“To collect overdue rent,” Kaelen said mildly. “With twenty years of compound interest. A severed arm is worth at least fifty thousand spirit stones. And Orson’s head will look very nice mounted on our garden gate.”
A fierce, savage grin broke across Barnaby’s weathered face.
“Fifty thousand spirit stones,” the old man chuckled darkly. “I like your math, young master.”
“Now, take your stool and sit by the porch,” Kaelen said, pulling the straw hat back over his nose. “Shout at the birds. Sweep the gravel with great fury. If anyone comes near this shed, tell them I am coughing up black bile and cannot be disturbed.”
“Consider it done,” Barnaby barked proudly.
He grabbed his ash-wood ladle, scooped up his broom, and marched out onto the porch with renewed vigor.
The afternoon passed in glorious, uninterrupted peace.
Barnaby swept the gravel with terrifying enthusiasm, muttering curses at stray sparrows and threatening imaginary trespassers with his ladle. Mina slept soundly on the corner cot, her breathing deep and rhythmic as the warm medicine continued to nourish her newly unsealed meridians.
Kaelen lay in his hemp hammock, dozing in the gentle autumn breeze.
Behind his eyes, the grey stone tablet ticked up with steady, soothing consistency.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Abstinence: 10 Hours, 00 Minutes] [Current State: True Fallow State] [Current Multiplier: 11x (Stage 1: Mortal Tally)] [Next Milestone: 11 Hours (12x Ready)]
Ten full hours of pure rest—eleven times the baseline.
A pleasant warmth settled into his bones. His meridians remained quiet, tranquil, and untroubled by the chaos of the outside world.
Dusk arrived over the pine ridge. The mountain shadows lengthened, stretching long purple fingers across the herb garden.
A sharp, rhythmic clicking echoed from the gravel path outside.
Not the heavy boots of guards. Not the clumsy shuffle of farmhands.
The sound was the crisp, arrogant tap of high-heeled wooden clogs.
Barnaby’s broom stopped scraping. The yard went dead silent.
“Step aside, old beggar,” a sharp, venomous voice rang out across the courtyard.
Kaelen kept his eyes closed. His ears twitched beneath the straw hat. The voice reeked of vanity and palace powder.
A woman walked into the shed courtyard.
She wore a gown of lilac silk with gold-embroidered plum blossoms at the hem, far too fine for an herb shed. Her hair was piled high in an elaborate coiffure pinned with silver needles, and a thick scent of imported rose oil drifted ahead of her like an invisible wall.
It was Madam Evelyn Vance’s personal head maid.
Behind her walked a sullen outer servant carrying an ebony medicine case bound in polished brass. The servant’s eyes stayed fixed on the mud, terrified of offending the woman.
Barnaby stood on the porch, barring the door with his heavy broom handle as his single eye narrowed into a dangerous slit.
“The Third Herb Shed is off limits to inner court servants,” Barnaby growled. “Patriarch Derrick’s own orders. Get back to the First Madam’s courtyard, woman.”
The head maid curled her painted lips in disgust. She raised an ivory-handled silk fan to cover her nose, looking at the dried herbs and muddy flagstones as if she had stepped into a pig pen.
“Hold your tongue, cripple,” the maid snapped, her cold eyes flashing with disdain. “I’m here on direct orders from First Madam Evelyn and the town magistrate’s court.”
She gestured toward the ebony medicine case.
“The town magistrate’s personal physician requires an official assessment of the third branch,” Evelyn’s maid announced loudly. “Bring out Mina Vance at once. I am here to inspect her pulse and record the exact state of her Frost-Marrow Decay.”
Inside the hammock, Kaelen’s eyes opened in the shadow beneath his straw hat. If Evelyn’s spy felt a warm Rank 2 pulse in Mina’s wrist instead of dying frost, the First Madam would know her poison had failed before dawn.