Marked by the Four Beast Lords After Transmigration

By the next count, the upper-hearth station occupied half a table and still made people turn sideways to reach the water.

Nia sat on the bench to test it herself. The clean-wrap basket blocked her elbow. The covered jar hid behind the rough cloth, and the low plate for used cloth waited where her boot would strike it if she stood too quickly.

“This works only for someone who already knows where everything is,” she said.

Mari barred Rovan’s hand with her counting stick before he could move the clean wraps toward the returned cups. “And it stops working entirely if you put those there.”

Rovan lowered the basket again. “Then tell me which problem I am allowed to solve first.”

“The one in front of you,” Mari said.

Nia drew the water jar beside her knee and reached for it without leaning. “Keep the water here and the used cloths low, but move them farther from everyone’s feet. The clean wraps belong at the inner side of the bench.”

Sera tested the arrangement from standing height while Shen carried the warmed oil away from the hanging smoke cloths. Mari left an open handspan between the low plate and anything clean. Rovan had just begun fitting the deeper basket against the bench when a woman from the south hearth entered with folded smoke cloths against her chest.

Smoke clung to her hair. Her cuffs were wet, and her eyes had reddened enough that she blinked too late to avoid the table.

Rovan caught the clean basket. Mari caught the woman by the elbow, steadied her, and went directly to the wash bowl before touching anything else.

“I came to return these,” the worker said. Her voice rasped. “The south vent pushed back, but someone is scraping it now.”

Sera took the bundle from her and passed it to Rovan for the washing basket. “Sit while you tell us.”

“I can still see.”

“You nearly sat on Mari’s count without using the bench.”

The woman looked at the corner she had struck and sat. “I misjudged the table.”

“Then keep the bench under you until your eyes clear,” Sera said.

Nia shifted the water toward her. The worker reached through the place where the clean basket had been, closed her hand around the cup, and paused.

“That part is better,” she admitted.

“Drink before you improve it again,” Mari said, returning with clean hands.

Shen poured warm water into a shallow bowl while the woman drank. Sera wet a clean smoke cloth and showed her how to lay it over her eyes without dragging soot across the skin. The worker obeyed for one breath, then lifted an arm to point toward the south passage. Her elbow struck the basket in its new place.

Rovan removed the wraps before the basket could tip. He set them on the protected inner shelf, wiped the basket, sent the wiping cloth to the low plate, and washed before returning the wraps.

Nia watched the woman try the reach again. “The basket cannot stay beside someone who needs both hands near her face.”

She moved it to the inner end of the bench, where a seated worker could not catch it without turning around. Mari crouched to check the space beneath the table. Both boots fit. The water remained within reach.

“Leave it there,” Mari said. “If the next person finds a new way to knock it over, that person can explain the talent to me.”

The worker laughed beneath the damp cloth and immediately coughed. Shen placed the cup in her hands without interrupting Sera’s work.

“The vent pushed smoke back twice yesterday,” the woman said after drinking. “It clears with north wind and sends everything back when the corridor warms. My cousin took the last dry sleeve pair because he said south-hearth workers should know how to stand smoke.”

Sera loosened one wet cuff. “Your cousin carried wood to the doorway on Founding Day and left before the first pot boiled.”

“He says he stayed until it boiled.”

“He also says his hair curls because winter respects him.”

The worker laughed again, this time without coughing. She lowered the eye cloth, and Mari pointed toward the low plate. The woman placed it there without being told twice.

“That mark I can remember,” she said. “Low means finished with it.”

“Low means used,” Nia corrected. “Finished means someone washed it.”

The woman glanced down at her pale fingers above the wet cuff. “You and Mari have been sharing words.”

“Mari keeps the useful ones.”

“And throws the rest into washing,” Mari said.

Sera held out her hand. The worker surrendered her wrist. Beneath the cuff, a crooked knot had trapped damp cloth against the skin.

“You tied this after your fingers stiffened,” Sera said.

The woman tried to deny it, then looked at the knot and changed her mind. “There was still work.”

“There will still be work after you can close your hand.” Sera rinsed the damp skin, dried it thoroughly, and chose a rough wrap instead of the softer weave.

Nia felt both cloths between her fingers. “Why the rough one?”

“She is going back to a moving hearth.” Sera wrapped the wrist with room for the worker to grip. “Soft cloth loosens with work and holds damp longer. This stays where I put it.”

The woman closed her fingers. She flexed again, harder, then reached for the cup without disturbing the basket.

“That reach is good,” she said. “The bench is not.”

Rovan set both hands on the bench. “What did it do?”

“It slopes toward the fire. Anyone with wet boots will spend the whole drink fighting it.”

Nia pressed her palm to the seat and found the slight tilt. Rovan fetched a flat wedge from beside the wood box and drove it beneath the short leg. The worker sat again, tested her weight, and nodded.

Her gaze moved to Mari’s tally spread across the far end of the table. “People from the south hearth will think you are counting what they take against their household.”

Mari looked up. “I am counting what the station needs.”

“You know that. I know it now. A runner who sees your stick beside the cups will drink at the kettle and pretend his hands are fine.”

Nia lifted the supply tally and held it against the wall beneath the route count. From the bench, its marks were still visible to Mari, but no strip lay between the person sitting and the water.

“There?” she asked.

The worker reached for the cup again. “There looks like your problem instead of mine.”

Mari considered the wall, then moved her counting stick beside the tally. “If people steal cups because I moved this, I am sending you the count.”

“Send it to my cousin. He has been stealing dry sleeves.”

Sera pulled the worker’s loosened cuff away from the wrap. “Your cousin is about to receive more work than cloth.”

“Good. Put him near the vent. His hair can command the smoke.”

Rovan laughed while he gathered the discarded cuff. Mari turned back to the wall count before he could involve her.

The next south-hearth runner slowed at the arch, saw the woman seated with the cup and the tally no longer blocking the table, and came close enough to ask whether the vent report had been written down. The worker told him it had, then made him show the dry inside of his cuffs before she let him leave.

Mari added one mark to the layout count. “She moved three things before the rest of us stopped discussing the first one. Keep her changes.”

Nia turned the instruction strip toward the worker. The first version carried too many words, most of them written before anyone had tried to drink with sore eyes.

“What would you read if the room were full of smoke?” she asked.

The woman squinted at the strip. “Nothing that long.”

Nia crossed out the first line. Shen waited with the reed while she reduced it aloud. “Sit. Drink. Remove wet cloth.” He copied the words in heavier strokes.

“Men from the outer arch will still argue,” the worker said.

“Then they can argue sitting down,” Mari replied.

The woman finished her water before handing Mari the cup. At the arch, she stopped the next runner, pointed out the low plate, and made him repeat where wet cloth belonged before returning to the south hearth.

Nia had barely set the reed down when Tarek entered with snow melting across his shoulders. One glove hung from his belt. His bare hand was red over the knuckles, and the route strip beneath his opposite arm had softened at one corner from damp.

He delivered the lower-bend count without pause: single-file passage remained open, the west grate needed scraping before dark, and no child was to pass the middle turn until Kael changed the marker.

Shen took the report. Tarek turned to leave.

Sera stepped into his path. “Close your bare hand.”

“The route—”

“Will remain where you left it for the time needed to close five fingers.”

Tarek looked at her, then tried. The last two fingers stopped short of his palm.

Nia drew the water closer with her foot. “The station is already here. Sit and tell us what it lacks at the outer arch.”

He sat because refusing would have required moving Sera. Shen gave him warming-bark water while Sera laid warm cloth over his knuckles.

“The glove was wet,” Tarek said. “I removed it before the fingers stiffened.”

Sera turned his hand beneath the light. “You noticed before they stopped moving. You did not notice soon enough.”

The outer arch had no dry place for gloves, Tarek admitted. Men used the bench, their belts, or the nearest warm stone. Direct fire hardened the leather; the bench left it wet; belts kept the damp against clothing.

“Hooks on the inner wall,” he said. “Close enough to find with cold hands and far enough from the fire that the leather does not stiffen.”

Nia added two hook marks beneath the outer-arch heading. Shen wrote away from direct fire beside them.

Sera sent the warming cloth to the low plate, washed, and fitted a dry crossing-tie wrap beneath Tarek’s wrist. His fingers closed fully on the next attempt.

“Rough wraps, warm cloth, water, and hooks,” Tarek said, taking back the route strip. “No oils. Anything worse comes inside.”

“If the hand still will not close after warming, the person comes inside,” Nia said.

He read the line as Shen wrote it. “Put that where no one can claim he missed it.”

At the arch, Tarek relayed Kael’s instruction that Nia remain in the upper hearth until Shen walked her home. Then he reached for the wet glove at his belt.

Sera took it first and hung it from the spare peg beside the new hand mark. Rovan shifted the low plate beneath it before the first drop reached the floor.

Tarek looked from the glove to the wrap beneath his bare hand. “I will collect it after the next count.” He tucked the wrapped hand inside his cloak and left.

Mari reconciled the used supplies while the next runner sat on the newly leveled bench without being asked. He glanced once at Tarek’s glove, removed both of his own damp gloves, and set them on the low plate before Shen passed him a cup. Nia drew the outer-arch line beneath the public notes while he warmed his hands around it.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!