The lodge is a long room with a hearth, a wage-board, and a smell of onions that means Maud is winning.

She sets your indenture talk on the table without the paper, because the paper is with Peverel, but the terms can be said: years, food, what Rowan teaches, what you may not pretend to be. “A fair binding is a map. An unfair one is a sack over the head.”

Kit spins a 3-4-5 in the air with his fingers and gets the diagonal wrong. Maud looks at you.

Outside, the wind finds the putlog holes and plays them like a bone flute. The chapter will want speed. The tracing floor will want a teacher who is only eleven and still the person who just learned it.

“You can come with me to the canons and say timber in a sentence they respect,” Maud says, “or you can keep Kit and the plaster honest while the men with titles discover weather. Both are the job.”

Kit’s wrong diagonal is a parallelogram waiting to happen. A bay that is not square throws every arch off like a choir singing in two keys. You can feel Maud wanting the chapter to buy rope. You can also feel the plaster wanting a teacher who will not run to hear canons talk. Both wants are the building.