Page 75 of Orc’s Hex

Captain Rhun is out of the medical ward.

He came back to limited duty in the second week—Brynna’s term, not his, and not Varek’s, and emphatically not Garrok’s, who had opinions about what constituted limited that he shared with Brynna at considerable volume before she ended the argument by using her authority over medical decisions with the calm finality she always uses it. Rhun is on patrol schedules now. Light ones. Brynna inspects him every third day with the expression of someone who does not trust men to accurately report their own pain.

He stopped me in the corridor yesterday.

Not for words. He stopped, looked at me, and gave me the nod that garrison warriors give each other when words aren’t sufficient and the situation calls for acknowledgment anyway. I gave it back. He continued down the corridor.

I found it sufficient.

The three courtyard warriors recovered fully in the first week. I saw Keth in the training yard on the sixth day, footwork back to where it was. He didn’t look at me. I didn’t require it.

Varek Thorn’s wariness has shifted to something I’d call professional respect. I consider it an acceptable timeline.

Garrok told me I looked terrible after the crypt night and then handed me a bowl from the garrison mess that I ate without asking what it was. He has been doing this every few days since. The bowl is always hot and I have stopped asking what is in it because the answer is never less than three items and always involves commentary on my eating habits that I have not invited.

I have not told him to stop.

The three formal petitions from Blood Law scholars requesting access to my research notes are still unanswered on the desk in what has stopped being my guest chambers and started being my working space—Isen’s texts have migrated in, the vellum documentation spreads across every surface. I have not responded to the petitions. I will, eventually. The documentation will be released when it’s complete and on my terms.

Isen thinks I should answer at least one of them.

I told him he could answer whichever one he liked.

He has not answered any of them either.

The hold is different.

Not visibly—the stone is still black basalt, the torches still fight the draft in the main corridor, Garrok still runs drills in the war courtyard with the same precision and the same volume. The Great Hall still has the institution pressing down from every surface.

But the garrison warriors laugh in the mess hall now. Not cautiously, not with the restraint of people who have been afraid to make noise in case it draws the wrong attention. They laugh the way people laugh when they’ve stopped waiting for the next bad thing. Rhun’s replacement at evening patrol told a joke at the gate change three nights ago that Varek pretended not to hear and definitely heard.

Three weeks and the absence still catches me. Walking a corridor and realizing I’m not reading the oath channels—not watching for escalation, not tracking possession patterns, not maintaining the constant peripheral awareness of a mechanism that could spike at any moment. The awareness is gone because the mechanism is gone.

I am still adjusting to that.

Drazhul is too. I haven’t fully asked him about it yet, because some things settle at their own pace. We’ll get there.

He came to my chambers three nights ago—the garrison returns to normal rotation in the morning and he wanted to tell me before the day took over.

He stayed until morning.

This has been the pattern since the aftermath night. He comes to wherever I am working and tells me about the hold’s repair progress, and I tell him about the documentation, and at some point the telling stops and the staying starts and neither of us has said anything about it being a pattern because there is nothing to say. It simply is.

Isen knows. He has the practiced ability of an archivist who has spent years working alone to become very focused on whatever he’s reading at the right moments. I appreciate it.

Brynna knows. She told me on day eight with the matter-of-fact delivery she uses for all medical information: “You should know that Drazhul Xorn is approximately thirty percent easier to work on since the sigil collapsed.” She did not elaborate. I did not ask her to.

Varek knows. He has started routing hold business through me when Drazhul isn’t in the immediate vicinity, which is either an extraordinary vote of trust or a way of not having to wait in corridors. Possibly both.

Yesterday he came to find me in the Blood Archive—not for hold business, not for the sigil documentation, not for anything that required either of us at all. He stood in the doorway the way he stood in the doorway that first night, except this time he didn’t wait to be noticed. He crossed the room, said something to Isen about borrowing me for an hour that wasn’t really a question, and Isen waved us off with the relief of a man who has been quietly rooting for this outcome since day four.

We walked to the Forge Quarter to look at the masons’ progress on the east wall.

Neither of us needed to be there. The masons don’t need supervision, and I’d already read the crack’s structural report twice. He walked me there anyway, his hand at the small of my back through the lower corridors, and when we reached the scaffolding he didn’t talk about the repair timeline or the load-bearing calculations or anything that would have made the visit make sense as hold business.

He asked me what I thought of the stone.

Not the sigil in it. Not the Blood Law saturation or the oath-memory or any of the things I usually read in Blackscar’s basalt. Just the stone—whether I thought it was beautiful, whether I’d noticed the way the morning light hit the quarried face differently than the older walls, whether I’d ever worked anywhere with stone like this before.