Brother Cassius knelt by the old mill before dawn and counted the men he could not yet save. Six recruits waited in the reeds, breath fogging the cold. He had chosen this place because the abbot called it useless — a half-rotten wheel, a stuck door, a roof gone green. Useless was what Cassius needed. Useless meant unwatched. He handed each man a swamp-worn walking stick, mud still wet on the tips. "You are gathering rushes," he said. "You are checking traps. If anyone asks, that is what your hands remember." One brother fumbled the morning prayer, repeating a line twice. Cassius marked him as safe. They worked the staffs against the mill's stone foundation, slow strikes disguised as the chopping of reeds. A weathered drying rack stood near the door, hung with fish and pelts Cassius had bought the night before. Cover. Proof. A story for any passing eye. Then the black chicken came around the corner — the abbot's bird, the one that followed him everywhere. Cassius froze. Footsteps crunched on the path behind it. He moved fast. He pressed a slender reed staff into the nearest brother's hands and pointed at the water. "Fish," he hissed. The men dropped into their cover roles. By the time the abbot rounded the mill, six monks were bent over rushes and lines, sweating like honest fools, prayers stumbling from their mouths in clumsy, perfect proof. The abbot watched a long moment. He scooped up his chicken. He nodded once at Cassius — approving the labor, blind to the war — and walked on. Cassius let out a breath he had been holding for a year. The mill was his now, truly his. But the abbot's bird had seen their faces. And Cassius had seen, in the back of the group, one brother whose prayer had not stumbled at all.