Brask’s sheet on the gate-bench is a kind of weather: too white.

The line is clean. Reedfen is labeled WASTE in a hand that wanted to be official. A north-arrow is bold. Beside it, faintly, someone (Sable? Penn? a careful ghost?) has marked a star-north that does not quite agree. Magnetic north and true north are cousins who do not share boots. A thumb’s error on the sheet is a road’s error in the alder.

Brask himself is not a cartoon. He is paid to draw a straightness Holt can sell as kindness to stalls. His compass sits beside the paper, honest as a needle can be, which is not the same as true.

Tansy mouths it’s a choice.

You mouth it’s a promise he hasn’t kept.

Through the gate, Holt’s market-count continues: wagons, loaves, the fear of a quiet square. The Atlas, in the Spine, is trying to ink a wren anyway.