Dame Keld, weaver-guild warden, puts a stick in your hands. Hazel, split down the middle, notches on the edge.

“Tally,” she says. “Credit you can hold.” She nicks the same marks on both halves, one for her, one for you, and makes you fit them until they kiss as if they had never been apart. “If either of us cheats, the wood disagrees in public. Coin is thin this week. Clipped pennies wander. Wool is coming; salt is sulking. So we remember with knives, not with wishes.”

It is a small magic that is only carpentry and trust.

“Guilds use them. Stewards use them. Millers use them when a tenant’s grain is a promise, not a sack. You are not old enough to owe a chest of wool. You are old enough to know that ‘I will pay’ needs a witness that does not catch cold.”

A man is waiting near the stall-end, hat crushed in both hands. You know the look: mill-toll anger, the kind that makes the wheel sound louder in a person’s head.