The mill’s kitchen is warmer than the wood and less honest about fear.

Master Cole sits with the ledger the way a person sits with a wasp. Wool is down. The tax term is a date with teeth. Peddler Voss’s offer sits in the air even when Voss does not.

“I am not greedy,” Cole says, which is true enough to hurt. “I am late. Late men hear horns.”

Mira does not look at her shoes. “There’s a third way. Not trophy. Not starve.”

You set down whatever you brought—fence-tracks, chewed seedlings, a cup of clean water, a wolf on a stone—and you do not call Cole a villain. Scared is not the same as cruel. Scared still makes bad bargains.

Outside, the wheel clacks. Grain dust motes hang in a stripe of sun.

Cole rubs his face. “If the horn is a cheat, Voss still has silver for something. If the wood sickens, the mill’s water sickens. I know that. I forget it when the numbers shout.”

You can drag the fake horn into daylight where a market can hear its real name.

You can let Mira speak the plan she has been folding behind her teeth all morning.