By the fourth morning of Maevra Solenne’s visit, wagons were already waiting outside Duskwatch before the southern gate opened.
The six stone stalls Garen had raised beside the road could no longer hold every trader who wanted space. Grain merchants argued with cloth sellers over awnings. Labourers looking for permanent work gathered near the registration table with letters from priests, village reeves and former employers. Two smiths from Hollowmark brought broken tools and asked whether Weston could repair them for less than the cost of replacing them.
Recognition had made the road safer to travel. The dead wyvern had given people a reason to risk the journey.
Desmond responded by dividing the outer market into three sections. Food, medicine, salt and tools received the spaces nearest the gate. General goods occupied the remaining stalls, while luxury sellers waited beyond the wagon line until room became available. Commercial wagons paid an entry fee based on cargo size, but Desmond kept the rate low for grain and medical supplies.
Several merchants protested that a young settlement should welcome anyone willing to bring silver east.
Desmond replied that Duskwatch welcomed useful trade and had no obligation to provide every travelling jeweller with shade.
The market rules slowed the traffic enough for Callum’s guards to inspect wagons without blocking the road completely. Every visitor declared weapons and cargo before entering. Mercenary escorts surrendered spears and crossbows at the gate unless Callum approved them for camp defence. Merchant lodging remained outside the residential wall.
The precautions irritated traders who had imagined Duskwatch as a desperate frontier post eager for any business. Most still paid the fees. The wyvern fragments displayed beneath guard at one of the stone stalls drew buyers from across Hollowmark.
Desmond released only broken scales, splintered wing bone and a small quantity of preserved meat. Intact armour plates, major tendons, the fire organ and the central mana core remained under Duskwatch control.
One merchant offered enough silver for a single breast scale to purchase grain through most of the winter. Desmond declined before the man finished naming the amount.
Weston had not yet determined what the plates could become. Selling them because the first offer sounded large would leave Duskwatch buying back its own advantage later at ten times the price.
The smaller sales still changed life inside the walls. Brinna bought proper brushes, lye and bolts of clean linen. Mara stopped tearing bandages from old shirts. Ossa traded preserved meat for three seed varieties suited to wet ground and purchased enough salt to extend the smokehouse stores.
Tobin found a set of fine measuring tools among a Hollowmark smith’s cargo and guarded them more carefully than his boots.
The growing market also brought distractions Weston could not afford.
Merchants approached him with bent swords, broken wagon axles, foreign locks and metal samples accompanied by stories about forgotten mines. He accepted only the work that benefited Duskwatch directly. Everything else went onto Desmond’s waiting list, where most requests remained until their owners gave up.
The Skybreaker still needed rebuilding.
Its cracked pressure chamber occupied most of the workshop floor. The second full-power shot against the wyvern had split the rear seam, distorted part of the cooling sleeve and warped the bearing beneath the rotating base. Another discharge would probably have torn the chamber open.
Weston divided the replacement housing into six smaller pressure cells arranged around a reinforced launch channel. The internal walls reduced the amount of mana each cell could hold, but a fracture in one section would no longer release the full charge through a single seam.
Garen extended stone supports from the tower foundation into the rear housing. The new ribs carried pressure into the platform as it built, rather than waiting for the recoil to strike after the bolt had already launched.
Maevra examined the separated cells on the worktable. “If one valve opens late, the shot will pull sideways.”
Weston showed her the linked trigger rod running through all six releases. The mechanism should open them together, though slight differences in heat or pressure could still affect the timing.
Elara suggested dividing the cooling return into six visible channels. The firing crew would not see an imbalance before the shot left, but they could identify which cell had heated differently before loading the next bolt.
Maevra supplied several heat-sensitive mineral strips from her travelling equipment. They came from an older Solenne furnace-monitoring system rather than her family’s best casting chambers, but they were more precise than anything Duskwatch possessed. The strips darkened or paled as the metal around them changed temperature.
The first low-power test sent the bolt several feet to the right of the quarry marker.
One of Elara’s glass return channels clouded later than the others. The mineral strip on the third cell also remained dark for a fraction longer before changing.
Weston widened that valve and adjusted the trigger linkage.
The second test flew straight.
At three-quarter charge, the rebuilt chamber survived without forming a visible crack. It produced less force than the original single housing, but the difference mattered less than being able to fire again without rebuilding the entire weapon.
Callum accepted the reduced power more easily than Weston did. The first Skybreaker had won one battle and then become unusable. A slightly weaker launcher that survived repeated shots gave the crew time to learn it properly.
The second tower remained an empty foundation. Duskwatch lacked another complete pressure chamber, enough treated tendon and a trained crew to operate it. Weston could create the metal parts quickly once the design was stable. He could not create experience.
Maevra entered that limitation into the report she was preparing for Ashenvale.
Weston’s Calling shortened construction from months to days, but every machine still depended on people who understood its maintenance. One careless tension reading or blocked cooling line could turn the weapon into an expensive piece of wreckage.
The same problem shaped the new foundry beside the western quarry.
Maevra offered the design of an older Solenne smelting furnace used by provincial smithies. It was reliable and easier to repair than the advanced chambers reserved for Ashenvale’s military foundries. House Solenne supplied several heat-sensitive plates and practical measurements. Duskwatch provided the labour, stone and fittings.
Garen raised the furnace shell and chimney base. Weston shaped the internal channels that carried heated air around the crucible. Maevra changed two of the turns because the original design trapped too much heat near one side of the lining.
Elara added an emergency containment trench around the foundation. Water remained outside during normal use. If a crucible split or molten metal escaped, the workers could open two stone gates and flood the lower trench without throwing water directly into the furnace chamber.
The first firing used charcoal and Maevra’s magic.
She fed heat into the incoming air instead of casting flame directly at the crucible. The moving current carried it through Weston’s channels and around the metal charge.
A smith named Beren Holt supervised the pour. He had arrived from Hollowmark two days earlier and entered the guest register after Desmond confirmed that no guild complaint or criminal claim followed him.
Weston allowed Beren to direct the actual smelting. Duskwatch needed a working foundry that did not stop whenever Weston left the room.
The first batch cooled into bars that looked sound and snapped under a heavy hammer.
Beren blamed the charcoal mixture. Maevra believed the final firing had remained too hot for too long. They sorted the fuel, shortened the hottest stage and tried again.
The second batch bent before breaking.
The steel was ordinary. To Duskwatch, producing ordinary steel from raw material inside its own walls was already an achievement.
Beren placed one test bar above his workbench. The remaining metal became tool edges, replacement brackets and reinforcement for the grain mill.
The improved foundry allowed Weston and Tobin to replace the mill’s leather coupling. Thin steel plates carried the axle’s motion while treated wyvern tendon absorbed sudden vibration and changes in the damp timber frame.
The first version pulled too tightly and made the millstones grind unevenly. Tobin loosened the outer bands and added a second flexible layer. The coupling then ran for three full days without overheating.
The old leather strips stayed beside the axle. Tobin refused to discard a repair he understood simply because the new one had survived several mornings.
Weston used the furnace’s third steel batch for a slower experiment.
The cargo platform taking shape near the workshop had six thick wheels, a broad rectangular frame and no enclosed cabin. Sections of damaged wyvern wing bone supported the deck, though Weston left the natural material unchanged after his earlier attempt ruined its flexibility.
The platform’s motor used the same ambient-collection principle as the mana lights, but a moving axle required far more energy than illumination. A collector mounted beneath the deck spent several hours charging a small stone-and-metal cell. The stored mana then passed through a simple rotary channel connected to the rear axle.
One charge could move the empty platform for less than an hour. Heavy loads shortened that time sharply.
The front and rear wheel pairs turned slightly in opposite directions through one linked steering bar. The middle pair remained nearly fixed and carried most of the weight. This arrangement helped the long vehicle turn, though it still needed more space than an ordinary cart.
Weston’s first yard test exposed three problems within seconds.
The motor delivered its power as soon as the drive switch closed. The rear steering linkage had not returned completely to centre after the previous manual turn. The empty platform lurched left, crossed the yard and crushed two storage crates before Weston cut the mana flow.
Tobin had already jumped clear.
Callum had been watching from the workshop entrance. “Warn me before you test the next one. I will station the enemy crates in front of it.”
Weston ignored the comment and examined the drive system.
He added a mechanical clutch between the motor and axle so power could engage gradually. The drive lever now moved through several positions rather than switching directly from stillness to full force. A separate braking bar disconnected the mana cell and pressed reinforced pads against all six wheels.
Tobin corrected the rear steering linkage and widened the turn stops.
The second test moved at walking speed.
Loaded with quarry stone, the platform travelled along the firm central road with one worker steering and another watching the rear wheels. It slowed badly in soft ground and required a wide circle to turn near the furnace. The stored cell ran low after three heavy trips.
Even with those limits, the hauler replaced several people who had spent most of the day pushing carts between the quarry and foundry.
Children followed it through the settlement until Brinna threatened to assign them to unloading duty.
Desmond entered the machine into the infrastructure register as an experimental cargo hauler. Callum added a separate note concerning military supply use. Maevra spent an hour examining the axle and charging cell before asking Weston how long it would take to move water barrels from the reservoir to the western wall.
“On the central road, minutes.”
“And through mud?”
“It may stop completely.”
“That can be improved.”
“Eventually.”
She looked toward the slow platform carrying another load of stone. “A fortress weapon protects one position. Transport decides whether food, water and ammunition reach every position.”
Weston had designed the hauler to reduce labour. Maevra was already imagining supply columns.
The machine remained far from that purpose. It needed stronger suspension, better traction, larger mana storage and drivers who understood what to do when a linkage failed away from the workshop.
Weston marked each problem instead of pretending he had already built the future vehicle.
Elara found a smaller use for the cold-room materials.
Mara’s medicine shelf had become crowded, and opening the main preservation chamber whenever she needed one herb wasted stored temperature. Weston built a cabinet inside the treatment house with double walls, scale fragments and two removable cooling stones.
It held only several trays. That was enough for medicines that spoiled quickly in summer heat.
Weston finished installing it near the end of the day while Elara reorganised bandages on the opposite side of the room.
“You built this because Mara complained,” she said.
“Mara explained that the current arrangement wasted her time.”
“She looked at you while explaining it.”
“That usually means she expects something.”
Elara smiled and placed a bowl of water inside the cabinet to test the temperature.
Mara left them with bread, cheese and slices of cold wyvern meat before going to check the smokehouse. Weston and Elara ate at the treatment-room table while the light faded beyond the narrow window.
For once, Elara did not need to treat his hand. Weston did not have a half-built machine spread between them.
She asked which project would receive his attention after the hauler.
Weston named the second Skybreaker, the road pumps, the western bridge, a stronger millwheel and three different furnace improvements before realising he had not answered the question.
Elara tore a piece of bread in half. “You keep solving whichever problem reaches you first.”
“Most of them arrive carrying Desmond.”
“Then build a lock for that door.”
Weston looked toward the treatment-house entrance. “He would bring the problem through the window.”
They finished most of the meal before raised voices reached them from the market. A moment later, Desmond entered with mud along one boot and a folded cargo paper in his hand.
“Elara may have been correct about the lock,” Weston said.
Desmond placed the document on the table. “A charcoal wagon has false broker papers. Callum found more than charcoal underneath it.”
The wagon had arrived from the western Kestrel March carrying twelve sacks of fuel priced well below the current market rate. Desmond had assumed the trader was attempting to force other charcoal sellers to lower their prices or unload poor-quality fuel before anyone examined it properly.
He allowed the wagon into the outer market under a security bond while he checked the broker’s handwriting.
Callum ordered the physical search as part of the new gate procedure.
Beneath the last row of sacks, the guards discovered a narrow compartment containing iron wedges, treated rope and a clay fire-pot wrapped in wool. One hired labourer carried a charcoal rubbing of a western canal gate inside his boot.
The second labourer ran when the compartment opened.
Nella struck an arrow into the road ahead of him, but merchant wagons blocked her next shot. Callum’s riders followed the man beyond the market and lost him among several groups travelling toward Hollowmark.
The captured labourer gave his name as Merrik Rusk.
Callum questioned him in the guard room while Desmond separated the charcoal merchant from the wagon crew. Maevra attended as an observer, accompanied by one adjutant familiar with western debt collectors.
Merrik admitted accepting money to damage a canal gate after dark. He had been told to drive the wedges behind the outer supports and pull the loosened section open with the rope.
He claimed he had never seen the fire-pot.
The escaped man had loaded the wagon and controlled the hidden compartment. Merrik knew only that they were meant to separate after entering Duskwatch.
“Who hired you?” Callum asked.
“A broker in Hollowmark. Called himself Master Dorran.”
“Real name?”
“I do not know.”
“Who does he serve?”
Merrik shook his head. “He said the canal work was for merchants who wanted the road closed again.”
That explanation might have been true, or it might have been the only story Dorran had given him.
Merrik described the broker as a heavy man with a damaged left ear and a black iron ring engraved with a bird holding something in its claws.
Maevra’s adjutant recognised the symbol imperfectly. Several private debt collectors operating around the Kestrel March used a hawk clutching a chain, though the mark did not belong directly to Baron Kestrel’s household.
Some of those collectors worked for estate stewards. Others purchased debts independently and hired their own enforcers. A rival could also have used the symbol to direct suspicion toward Kestrel.
The evidence pointed west. It did not yet point to the Baron.
The fire-pot complicated the plan.
Merrik said his only target was the canal. The second man had carried no map that Callum’s guards recovered, and Merrik did not know whether he intended to burn the seed store, market stalls or houses near the western wall.
Desmond spread the charcoal rubbing beside the fire-pot.
The drawing showed one sluice gate and part of a newly added drainage channel. It did not include the grain store or seed room. The missing saboteur may have carried separate instructions.
Duskwatch could infer that the attack involved both water and fire. They could not yet prove how the two parts were meant to work together.
Desmond questioned the merchant separately.
The man had purchased the charcoal from Dorran through a Hollowmark yard and hired both labourers there. He knew the price was suspiciously low but believed the broker needed quick silver. He denied knowledge of the hidden compartment.
Desmond had initially treated the shipment as market manipulation. Callum’s search had found what his paperwork review did not.
The merchant’s carelessness had still carried sabotage through Duskwatch’s gate.
His wagon and security bond remained seized while the investigation continued. Desmond allowed the rest of his caravan to stay outside the wall under guard rather than declaring them all conspirators without evidence.
Callum closed the market before sunset and prohibited departures until every camp had been searched.
The delay angered traders who had nothing to do with the plot. Desmond authorised food from the common kitchens at cost and recorded the reason for every detention. By morning, the market reopened under tighter controls.
Merrik remained in custody.
Weston refused to execute or punish him before a formal hearing. Merrik had confessed to accepting the canal work, but the full plan, employer and intended damage remained uncertain.
Desmond proposed sending notice to Merrow’s regional office and holding Merrik until a recognised hearing could take place.
The prisoner was offered paid work repairing the southern road under guard. Accepting would not reduce his food or improve his treatment, and refusing would not make his confinement harsher. The wages would be recorded separately until judgment determined whether he owed restitution or had money remaining.
Merrik accepted because remaining idle inside the guard room frightened him more than road work.
Maevra read the order before Weston signed it.
“You are careful about making this look different from Kestrel’s labour contracts,” she said.
“It needs to be different,” Weston replied. “Otherwise the law on our wall means nothing when the prisoner is someone we dislike.”
Callum cared less about Merrik’s work than the second saboteur still moving west.
Nella followed the trail with two riders at dawn. They found discarded labour clothes near the forest and a place where the man had joined another wagon. By the time the tracks separated from ordinary road traffic, he could have been halfway to Hollowmark.
The failure irritated her enough that she spent the afternoon questioning teamsters who had passed the southern road.
One remembered a thin passenger with a wrapped hand climbing into a grain cart. The driver claimed he was travelling only as far as the river crossing.
Desmond sent a sealed description to Hollowmark’s reeve and offered a reward for information leading to the man’s capture.
He kept Kestrel’s name out of the notice.
An unsupported public accusation would warn whoever had arranged the attack and make Duskwatch appear eager to blame a neighbouring lord for every crime.
Callum focused on the damage that could have happened.
The western canal gate sat close enough to the outer bank that a skilled worker using the wedges might have opened a breach before the night watch reached him. Water from the reservoir would have flooded the lower market and drawn defenders toward the canal.
The fire-pot could then have been used elsewhere while people were distracted.
Garen buried narrow stone plates beneath the vulnerable canal banks. Each plate connected through the ground to a marked block at the nearest watch station. A guard resting one hand or foot against the block could feel repeated digging or hammering near the sluices.
The warning system could not distinguish a saboteur from a large animal or careless repair crew. Callum added a confirmation signal so the watch would investigate before ringing a full alarm.
Weston strengthened the outer gates and recessed the locking bars inside the stone. Elara changed the water-control plan so one damaged canal branch could be isolated without emptying the reservoir.
Callum moved the seed reserve into two separate stores. Burning one room would no longer destroy the settlement’s entire planting supply.
Desmond revised the market rules again.
Visiting labourers required named sponsors. Guards could open sealed cargo at random even when the papers carried familiar marks. Anyone copying walls, waterworks or workshop layouts without permission would be detained and questioned.
The added searches slowed trade. Merchants continued arriving.
Silver and wyvern salvage were worth waiting for.
Maevra spent the next morning reviewing the false broker papers with Desmond instead of returning to the furnace. She sent her adjutant toward Hollowmark with instructions to confirm whether the black hawk ring still appeared among active debt firms.
She did not announce that the sabotage had changed her view of Duskwatch. Her behaviour changed enough.
She asked Callum how many trained gate officers he possessed, examined the market-watch schedule and requested copies of the descriptions gathered from teamsters. When she learned that most guards were soldiers filling security duties between drills, she offered two Ashenvale men experienced in caravan inspection for the remainder of her visit.
Weston asked where their reports would go.
“To Callum while they serve here,” Maevra said. “They will report to me when we leave.”
“Nothing concerning residents, workshop layouts or military designs leaves without review.”
Maevra considered the restriction before agreeing. “Then keep one of your guards beside each of them.”
Desmond prepared a temporary appointment defining their authority. The Ashenvale officers could inspect wagons and question visitors at the gate. Arrests, searches of resident homes and access to restricted buildings remained under Duskwatch command.
The arrangement gave Callum experienced help without giving House Solenne a private office inside the ward.
The new foundry continued operating while the investigation spread west.
Beren produced another batch of steel using the older Solenne furnace plan. The bars remained inconsistent, though the failure rate fell as he learned the charcoal mixture and Maevra refined the heat cycle.
The hauler carried ore and fuel between the quarry and furnace. Its mana cell required several hours of charging after heavy use, and one rear steering joint loosened under load. Tobin repaired it without Weston for the first time.
Weston found that more satisfying than the first successful drive.
A machine Duskwatch could not maintain without him was only another form of dependence.
That evening, Merrik worked on the southern road with two guards nearby. Callum’s patrols questioned incoming carters while Nella’s description travelled toward Hollowmark. Elara and Maevra compared heat plates beside the foundry, and Garen tested the canal alarm stones by driving a wooden stake into the outer bank.
Desmond joined Weston near the market after sunset.
He carried the statements from Merrik, the charcoal merchant and four teamsters. None proved who had ordered the sabotage. The black ring connected Dorran to western debt collectors, but those collectors served several estates and sometimes worked for themselves.
“We need someone in Hollowmark who can ask questions without wearing our badge,” Weston said.
Desmond looked toward the merchant camp. “We need several people. One innkeeper can tell us who meets in his common room. He cannot follow money through a broker’s yard or learn which debt collector hired a wagon.”
He had names of traders who might cooperate, though he trusted none of them enough to build an intelligence network around a single contact.
They began with three.
A carter who regularly travelled through Kestrel territory would record unusual troop or grain movement. An innkeeper near Hollowmark’s western gate would listen for Dorran’s description. A salt merchant who owed Duskwatch for protection on the reopened northern road agreed to pass along rumours from estate stewards.
Desmond wrote different instructions for each person. None received the complete investigation.
Weston watched him seal the first letter. “You thought the charcoal was a pricing trick.”
“I did.”
“Callum found the compartment.”
“Yes.”
Desmond did not soften the admission. “I was checking the papers while he checked the wagon. We need both.”
Recognition had opened Duskwatch’s gates to grain, tools and skilled workers. The saboteurs had entered through the same road.
The next threat might arrive with a noble seal, a merchant contract or another frightened debtor promised enough silver to risk his life.
Walls could stop armies once they appeared.
Duskwatch now needed warning before anyone reached them.