Marked by the Four Beast Lords After Transmigration

Rovan stood very still while everyone looked at the lid stuck to his sleeve.

The lid had attached itself near his elbow, honey-bark tack catching in the wool as if it had found a better basket and meant to stay there. Rovan turned his arm slightly to see it. The lid turned with him.

“I did say I found one,” he said.

Mari set her counting stick down with care. “You found it by wearing it?”

Rovan glanced at the lid. “It may have found me first.”

Sera held out her hand. “Bring it here before the sleeve tears.”

Rovan came around the table, keeping the basket balanced against his hip and his stuck arm held away from his side. Nia pressed her lips together and lowered the reed before laughter could shake her shoulder. Shen had already capped the ink and moved it away from the wet edge of the table, which made her feel seen in a way that was becoming too familiar.

Sera caught Rovan’s sleeve below the lid and tested the pull with two fingers. “If I tear this cloth, who mends it?”

Rovan glanced toward Mari.

Mari looked back at him. “Do not look at me. I count torn things.”

“It is my sleeve,” Rovan said.

“Then hold still for your sleeve’s sake.” Sera dipped a corner of cloth into warm water from the side kettle and pressed it around the lid’s edge. “No more carrying sticky things against wool.”

Nia lost the laugh anyway, but it came out small enough that her shoulder did not object.

Shen’s eyes moved to her. “Better.”

“I am improving.”

“Slowly.”

“Do not make me laugh again while praising me.”

His mouth softened. “Then I will stop before I undo the praise.”

Rovan looked hopeful. “Am I helping the care list?”

Mari picked up her counting stick again. “You are helping us remember why lids need their own basket.”

“One problem can belong to more than one place,” Nia said, because Mari had said it first and because the phrase still sat well in her mouth.

Mari gave her a brief look. “Yes. And he has made the point thoroughly.”

Sera eased the lid from the sleeve with one slow pull. The honey-bark stretched in a thin string before snapping against the damp cloth. Rovan grimaced as if the sound had come from his own skin.

“There,” Sera said. “Sleeve survived. Next time the lid rides in a covered bowl.”

Rovan accepted that with dignity until Sera turned his wrist and saw the red mark where the basket handle had rubbed.

“Sit,” she said.

“I just sat for broth.”

“Then your body remembers how.”

Mari pointed to the short stool near the table. “Sit there. If you stand, I will mark you as unfinished.”

Rovan sat.

That changed the table at once. The care list stopped being a strip with a heading and became a place where someone’s wrist needed washing, drying, and wrapping before the next basket moved. Sera shifted the oil jars away from the damp cloth. Shen slid the clean strip higher. Nia took one of the softer wraps Sera had sorted and ran it between her fingers, feeling for the thicker first fold.

“Not that one,” Sera said without looking up from Rovan’s wrist. “He needs the rougher edge. Soft wrap will drink sweat and loosen before he reaches the lower bend.”

Nia reached for another. “This?”

“Better. Feel the weave.”

Nia rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger. The second wrap resisted more, less pleasant at first touch but sturdier. “Outer work?”

“Short outer work,” Sera said. “If he were going back past the old marker, I would use the longer wrap with the crossing tie. That one keeps the wrist from bending too much when the hand is cold.”

Rovan watched Sera clean the rubbed place. “I am only going to the lower west basket.”

“You are going where someone hands you the next thing before you remember to refuse,” Mari said. “We wrap for what you will actually do, not what you claim you are doing.”

Shen wrote that down.

Nia looked at him. “That one goes on the station strip?”

“It belongs there.” He did not lift his head. “Above the supply count.”

Mari’s mouth shifted. “Above. If people choose the wrap for what someone claims he is doing instead of what he will actually do, the count will be clean and the wrist will still be wrong.”

Sera smiled at Nia while tying the cloth. “That is why a station needs someone with eyes, not only supplies. A basket cannot tell a man his hand is shaking.”

Rovan’s fingers twitched.

Sera tightened the knot by one small measure. “Or that.”

“I carried the basket all morning,” he said.

“And now your wrist is shaking,” Sera answered. “Both are true.”

Nia watched him look down at his own hand with reluctant surprise.

She knew that look. Winter had taught her that more than once: the mind moving ahead, the body refusing to follow.

“Does every station need someone standing at it?” she asked.

Mari shook her head before Sera could answer. “No. That turns a useful thing into another duty no one can leave. Upper hearth can have a watcher because people are already here. Lower hearth can be checked by kitchen hands between returns. Outer arch needs supplies simple enough for a patrolman to use with cold fingers and enough counting marks that we know what vanished.”

“Picture marks?” Nia asked.

Shen’s reed paused.

Mari looked interested despite herself. “For what?”

“Wraps first,” Nia said. “Then oil or salve. Smoke cloths too. If someone comes in with stiff fingers, they should be able to find the right thing by sight or touch.”

Sera finished Rovan’s knot and turned his hand palm up, checking the blood flow at his fingertips. “My mother marked child wraps with three little dots because my brothers kept stealing them for slings. It did not stop them, but it made lying harder.”

Rovan flexed his fingers. “Did they stop?”

“No,” Sera said. “They learned to steal unmarked cloth.”

Mari’s expression flattened. “That is not a recommendation.”

“It is a warning.”

Nia rubbed the sturdier wrap again and looked at the clean strip. “Then not only marks. Different ties. Different basket sections. Something people can feel if their fingers are stiff.”

Shen set the reed down and reached for three scraps of cord from Sera’s basket. “Smooth for inner hearth. Braided for outer wraps. Something faster for smoke cloths.”

“Smoke cloths should not be double-knotted,” Mari said. “People need them fast.”

“Loop knot,” Sera said. “Pull once and it opens.”

Shen tied one before she finished speaking and slid it across the table.

Sera picked it up, tugged, and the loop came loose in her hand. “That.”

Mari reached for it. “Again. Slower.”

Shen showed her.

Nia leaned closer, and her shoulder pulled before she remembered not to. Kael was not there to catch the movement, but Shen’s hand came out and nudged the table toward her instead.

“Do not lean for it,” he said.

“I was only looking.”

“Then let the table come to you.”

Sera laughed softly and handed Nia the loosened loop. “Here. Look with your hands, then.”

Nia took the cord and retied it badly the first time. Shen did not fix it immediately. He watched her fingers, then touched one part of the loop.

“Under, not around.”

“I did go under.”

“You went under after going around. That is why the knot will not open cleanly.”

Rovan leaned forward on the stool. “That is why my knots tighten when I pull them?”

Mari pointed at him. “That is why you should not tie smoke cloths.”

Nia tried again. This time the loop held until she pulled the free end. It opened cleanly. She smiled before she could stop herself.

Sera saw. “There. A pretty part that works.”

Mari made a mark. “Loop knot for smoke cloths. Braided tie for outer wraps. Picture mark only if it does not take longer to make than the thing it explains.”

“Fair,” Nia said.

Rovan lifted his wrapped wrist. “Can I go now?”

Sera looked at his hand. Mari looked at his basket. Shen looked at the cup beside him.

Nia pointed at the cup. “Water.”

Rovan sighed and drank.

Before he finished, Selvan came through the corridor cloth with two small jars tucked into a padded carrier and snow dampening the edge of his hood. His pale snow-leopard tail flicked once as he stopped on the dry side of the mat and checked where the table, kettle, and wet cloths had been set before stepping closer.

Sera’s face warmed when she saw him, then narrowed in the way that meant she was counting whether he had eaten, warmed himself, and lied about either.

Selvan noticed. “I drank at the east turn.”

“Drank what?”

“Broth.”

Mari’s counting stick lifted a fraction.

Selvan added, “With meat in it. Auren brought it before he went back to the storage door.”

Sera accepted that, though not completely. “And your hands?”

He set the carrier down and held both hands out before she asked twice. “Cold, not cracked.”

Sera took one anyway, turned it palm up, and rubbed her thumb once over his knuckles. “Cold enough.”

“I came for Shen before the jars warmed in my carrier.” Selvan looked toward Shen. “Two oil jars from the east storage turn. Both were marked before last thaw. The wax held, but one smells flat even through the seal.”

Shen stood at once. “Do not open them near the hearth.”

“I did not.” Selvan’s gaze moved to Nia, then to the strip beneath the clean stone. “This is the care list?”

“One of them,” Nia said. “It is becoming several lists and possibly three stations.”

“Then start with what hurts.” Selvan unfastened the padded carrier. “Hands first. That is what people show first when they come to a station. Eyes if smoke caught them. Feet if they came from outside. Shoulders only after someone has stopped carrying. If the station starts with the names of jars, someone tired will choose wrong.”

Mari’s counting stick stopped.

Sera looked pleased enough that she tried to hide it by checking his other hand.

Shen nodded slowly. “Use first. Supply second.”

Nia reached for the reed, then stopped because Shen had already taken it up.

Selvan’s mouth curved. “I did not come to add work.”

Mari made a mark. “You came to prevent worse work. That is different.”

“Good. I prefer that category.”

Sera squeezed his fingers once before letting go. “You can prefer it while sitting.”

“I have to take these back if Shen rejects them.”

“After he smells them.”

Shen lifted the first jar and turned it away from the heat. “I will open it by the side draft.”

Mari pointed to the stool Rovan had just vacated.

Rovan stood with his empty cup and new wrap, looked at Selvan, and gave him the expression of a man offering both warning and sympathy. “They do not let you leave quickly once you sit there.”

Selvan glanced at Sera.

Sera smiled.

He sat.

Nia ducked her head over the strip.

The strips spread across the table in uneven rows. Kael’s heading stayed under the clean stone. Nia’s line about noticing before someone fell sat beside it. Shen added use first in his neat hand, and Mari began making smaller marks beneath it: hands, eyes, feet, shoulders, cold skin, burns. Sera sorted the wraps again by feel instead of appearance. Rovan returned the sticky lid to the kettle side before leaving with his basket. Selvan sat on the stool with his hood still damp, answering Sera’s questions between Shen’s tests of the old oil.

Shen opened the first jar near the side draft and lowered his face just enough to smell without breathing deeply.

“No,” he said.

Selvan nodded. “That was the flat one.”

“Not skin. Not salve. Maybe for lamp use, if Mari allows it.”

Mari held out her hand for the jar. “I will smell before I allow anything near lamps.”

Sera wrinkled her nose when the jar passed close. “That is not going near my hearth.”

“Then we discard it,” Mari said, and marked the lid with a slash.

Shen opened the second jar. His expression barely changed this time.

“Old, but usable if warmed and mixed with fresh oil. Not for cracked skin. Shoulder work, maybe. Muscles only.”

Nia repeated it softly as he brought the jar back. “Shoulders, not cracked skin.”

Selvan heard her and tapped the table near the use list. “That is why use first matters. Old oil might help one ache and worsen another.”

Sera looked at Nia. “Write that one yourself. People remember a rule better when they know who caught it.”

Nia took the reed. “It came from Selvan.”

“And you caught the part that would help the next person.”

Nia bent carefully this time. Shen watched her shoulder but did not move the table again. She wrote under the use marks.

What helps one ache may not help another.

The letters leaned, but the line fit.

Mari waited until Shen sanded the wet ink. “That one stays.”

A call came from the corridor before Nia could answer.

“Smoke cloths?”

The younger man with the previously wrong knots stood at the entrance holding three folded cloths and looking between the new cords on the table. “Which tie was the one that opens fast?”

Nia picked up the loop knot she had made.

It came loose in her hand with one pull.

Sera held out the cord to him. “This one. Bring three more scraps before you take the cloths.”

“And drink water,” Mari added.

“I just came from the lower hearth.”

Mari did not look up. “Lower hearth broth does not count.”

The young man looked at Nia as if she might soften the order.

Nia lifted her cup. “The station works better if people drink before someone has to ask twice.”

He sighed in the same tone Rovan had used and went to the water jar.

Shen slid another strip toward Nia, keeping it clear of the wet table edge. “Stations need water marks too.”

Mari nodded. “At every station.”

Selvan, still seated under Sera’s eye, lifted one finger. “And a place for empty cups, or the cups become the next thing everyone is hunting.”

Sera reached into her basket and pulled out a cord with a chipped wooden tag already tied to it. “Empty cups.”

Mari stared at her.

Sera tied the tag to the handle of a small basket and set it beside the wraps. “I told you. My mother was fussy for a reason.”

The young man returned with the cord scraps in one hand and a cup in the other.

Sera pointed to the table. “Set them there. Drink first.”

He drank it.

Nia held the first loop knot out to him, and Shen placed the new strip beside her elbow before she could ask where it had gone. Mari’s tally cloth shifted to make space. Selvan leaned away from the table when Sera reached across him for another wrap, and the old oil jar sat marked for discard near the side draft, safely far from the hearth.

The young man wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.

Mari looked at the wrist.

He lowered it slowly. “Cloth?”

Sera handed him one without a word.

Nia pressed the reed between her fingers and wrote water before cloth on the next line while Shen held the strip steady.

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