The square is a battlefield of baskets.

Holt’s hands shake on a tally stick. Brask’s satchel is open on a crate as if pencils could stop rain. The Spine’s doors stand north, listening.

Holt is afraid, not greedy. You say it out loud so it becomes a fact and not a fight. Tansy wants a third way that is not pave the pantry and not starve politely.

You lay down what you have, depending on the path that brought you: a desire-scar that will eat a wagon; a flood-stone that will eat cellars; an oxbow that ate a straight line; a sheet that called a kitchen WASTE.

Brask mutters, “If I redraw, I look unpaid.”

“You look like a surveyor,” Tansy says, which is almost kind.

The stakes are still in the peat. The Atlas still fades in the places it is told to lie. You do not have a week. You have a day the paper can survive.