The Carver and the Bone Spire

Asha kept time by the rasp of her tools. The sound—sharp, regular, like a knocker on an old door—marked the hours better than any bell. Bone dust floated from the ribs she was shaping and settled like pale pollen across her forearms and the bench. Her fingers remembered angles her jaw could not; the cuts she made were the language she had learned from Juran, who taught her that a bevel could hold a secret and a notch could calm a hunger.

The workshop smelled of resin and marrow, of boiled herbs used to clean the crevices, and of a stone stew pot that had been simmering since sunrise. Outside, on ordinary days when the Spire hummed low and content, the market sold honeyed turnip dumplings and threads of cured mushroom—an unremarked comfort that smelled of smoke and small joys. That detail annoyed Asha with a fondness: people who could still argue about the precise chew of a dumpling would be useful later.

She fitted a tiny counter-gouge into her palm and began a runic curve, fingers moving with a steady, almost affectionate force. Bone has temper, she thought. It will yield if you ask it kindly, and it will snap if you shout. She muttered something wry under her breath—"Bones keep better time than men; at least they don't ask for raises"—and then barked a laugh at her own dark joke, because if one could not mock the work, one might grow sour.

A tap came at the door: three knocks, quick then long. Messengers in town were flatter than they had to be; civility was trimmed thin by habit. Asha wiped her hands, set the chisel down with practiced care as if it were a sleeping thing, and opened. A boy from the Spire watch stood there, coat smelling of earth and smoke, eyes too old for his face.

"Master Juran—" He swallowed. "He's gone. Fell. Caught in the wind near the west rib. They want you to—"

Asha's lips didn't move for a heartbeat. The rasp on the bench made a soft complaint. Juran had been more than a teacher; he'd been the spine of certain nights. She had expected the day he left the world—expected, and yet the news landed like a stone.

"They want me to what?" she asked, and kept her voice low, careful not to hand the town any high notes of fear. The boy's mouth worked.

"They say the Spire cracked last dusk. The eastern capstone showed a seam. The council says they need... provisions. They asked for you to come." The word came out like a stone spat at the ground; the boy did not know how to soften it.

Asha closed the door with a motion that could have been gentle or decisive depending on the observer. She wrapped her fingers around her apron and felt the hollow where a small bone awl had once sat. For a moment she thought of the teeth-string in her window—strung with bits of carved bone the town traded as trinkets—and felt a ridiculous, private affection for the way people used carved things to feel less mortal. Then she pushed a rag into her palm and moved. There was work to be done.

She grabbed a coil of rope, her leather satchel, and the iron lamp whose glass had been cracked and repaired so often it held more stories than most taverns. She did not take the spare chisel; she never took the spare chisel unless she had to. Tools, like people, announced themselves with small presences and expected to be trusted.