Chapter 684: The Price Asked

The fort’s lower yard stank of river mud and tar, and every bucket line moved without anyone singing.

Hajin walked in through the service gate with a buyer’s purse on his belt and Eirwen at his shoulder.

’The goat track stays our secret, so today I walk in the front like a paying customer.’

Eirwen carried the stamped labor tokens from the gorge raider inside a small cloth pouch tucked tight against her hip. She kept her bow unstrung across her back, which only made the nervous guards stare at it twice as hard.

"They’re counting our steps," she murmured, barely moving her lips.

"Let them count, I’m here to shop," Hajin muttered, smiling at the nearest guard like they were old friends.

The guard did not smile back, and his hand drifted lazily toward his club.

Workers hauled chain across a stone channel, their wrists rubbed raw beneath frayed cloth, and nobody lifted their head.

A man in a riveted coat came down the yard steps, and thirteen Shards flickered awake around his thick forearms. He let the crystals orbit long enough for everyone to count, then dismissed every one with a bored little flick.

"Captain Brann Keld, keeper of this crossing," he said, folding his arms, "and you’re the foreign broadcast fellow with the expensive friends."

"Hajin, and I’m here to buy passage for a lot of people," he chirped, tapping the purse, "so name the price."

"Passage is simple, the river needs hands and the road pays in hands."

"Cute line, did you practice it?"

Captain Brann Keld ignored that, pointing toward the gate housing where chains vanished into the channel’s timber.

"The flood machinery eats rope, timber and backs, and somebody keeps it fed or the lower valley drowns in spring."

"So you need workers," Hajin drawled, "and these folks just happen to volunteer forever?"

"They owe a toll, then their board, then their tools, and when they finish paying they may leave."

Eirwen tucked the token pouch tighter and slipped sideways toward the bucket line without a word.

"And how many have finished paying?"

The captain’s mouth thinned into something that wasn’t quite a smile, "Debts are private matters."

’Translation, nobody, ever, not once, you smug little toll goblin.’

[ IronVanguard: Board, tools, toll, that debt never ends and he knows it. ]

[ HearthKeeper: Look at their wrists, those people aren’t volunteers. ]

Hajin crouched beside a coil of rotten rope and pinched a fiber until it snapped, then stood again.

"Here’s my offer, so listen good," he said, holding up one finger.

"I bring pulleys and proper shelters from my own stores, plus food packs and new rope, delivered right here."

"Then the road villages send crews in rotation, and I pay every one of them in silver at full rate," he added, lifting a second finger.

"Your machine gets fed, your valley stays dry, and these people walk home tonight, how’s that sound, Captain?"

Captain Brann Keld looked at the purse, then the workers, and something cold settled behind his eyes.

"It sounds like a stranger paying my men while I lose my yard."

"You keep your yard, you just stop keeping people in it."

"No," the captain said flatly, without even glancing at the purse again.

"No as in haggle, or no as in no?" Hajin blinked, honestly baffled by a merchant refusing money.

"No as in my crossing, my hands, my terms, and foreign silver doesn’t buy that."

’There it is, he doesn’t need workers at all, he needs owned ones.’

Behind them, Eirwen worked down the bucket line with a wax tablet, crouching beside each worker for brief quiet words. She wrote names and home roads in small neat marks, and gently asked each one whether they wanted to leave.

Every single worker said yes, some with their heads still bowed toward the chains.

[ Seoul_Tactician: He turned down free supplies and paid labor, so it was never about the machine. ]

[ TacticalNerd: Eirwen’s taking names on camera, everyone please don’t screenshot faces. ]

The captain noticed her at last and snorted like it was a game too small to stop.

"Your lady can write all the lists she likes," he said, raising one hand toward the gate housing, "but let me show you why lists don’t matter here."

He snapped his fingers, and four workers threw their weight against a spoked wheel above the channel.

Chains shrieked through the timber, and a gate leaf swung outward until the upstream current turned like a whipped serpent. Brown water slammed across the lower road below the wall, swallowing the cart ruts and the travelers’ marker stones together.

Hajin’s fingers curled hard, and he forced them flat again against his thigh.

"That’s the lower road," he said quietly, all the play gone from his voice.

"The only road to the villages you’re so fond of paying," the captain agreed, "and it floods whenever I’m unhappy."

’Four workers on that wheel, standing right between us, he picked that spot on purpose.’

Hajin did not step forward, studying the machine instead of the smug face standing in front of it.

The chains ran from the wheel through a gear house, then over a long beam spanning the channel’s wide mouth. A stone counterweight hung underneath it, and the entire gate leaf dangled from its far end above the brown current.

’One beam carries everything, and he thinks nobody living could ever hold that load.’

"Close it."

The captain let the moment stretch, then flicked his fingers, and the workers dragged the wheel back with shaking arms.

Water slid away from the road and left a smear of mud across the stones like a warning.

"Pretty toy," Hajin said, rolling his shoulders, "but that beam’s sagging on the downstream side, and if it cracks, your whole fort eats water."

"The beam is a known fault, and it’s why I need every hand on the ropes."

"Then let me inspect it, just that one fault, and nothing else."

Captain Brann Keld weighed him for a long breath, "One fault, tomorrow, my guards beside you, and touch nothing else."

"Deal, and I’ll even wipe my feet first."

---

Outside the service gate, Loccy sat on a fence rail with a pear in her teeth and ears straight up.

"You didn’t punch him," she said, spitting a seed into the grass, "I’m almost proud."

"Almost," Juna grunted beside her, arms crossed, sniffing the river mud on his sleeves.

Hajin dropped onto the rail beside Loccy, and his cheerful voice finally cracked at the edges.

"He’s got a gate that swings the whole upstream current across the lower road, any time he wants."

Her ears dipped as she lowered the pear from her mouth, all teasing gone.

"Wheel, chains, a gear house, then one long beam over the channel with a counterweight underneath and the gate leaf hanging off its end," he continued, sketching it in the dirt with a stick.

"He’s using people as the lock on a drowning machine, and he flexes it at visitors for fun."

"So we break it," Juna said flatly.

"Break that beam the wrong way and the river takes the road anyway, workers and all," Hajin muttered, tapping the stick against the line.

He looked at Loccy, the joking gone completely from his face.

"Can we take the weapon away from him without breaking the road underneath it?"

She chewed slowly, staring at the sketch while her nose twitched over the beam’s long line.

"He thinks nobody can hold that load, right?"

"That’s his whole bet."

She swallowed the last of her pear and tossed the core into the grass with a lazy flick.

"Then I want to stand right where he thinks nobody can," Loccy said, hopping off the rail with her ears up, "and see his face when I don’t fall."