Chapter 351: Cottage and Conditions

The cottage door swung inward on hinges cut for wrists thicker than Kane’s thigh.

He stepped through and stopped.

The sleeping platform against the far wall was the length of a small boat. The hearth could have roasted an ox without crowding the embers. The water basin set into the floor was deep enough that Kessa, peering over the rim, made a noise of pure offended discovery.

"That is not a basin," she said.

"That is a pond with ambitions."

Firlia was already moving.

She set her pack on a stone shelf at roughly human chest height, clearly a Giant child’s ledge, and began unpacking with the same competence she used on harbor lists.

Water skins. Medical wraps.

The sealed rations that would not offend a host’s nose.

She didn’t comment on the scale.

She simply made the space usable.

Misha claimed the nearest flat surface that was not the floor: a low table that still forced her to write at an awkward angle.

The pale-wood token sat at the top of her board.

She sharpened a point, exhaled, and started the short treaty brief in the plain language Kane had ordered, no elven flourishes, only what still stood.

Thora lasted four steps into the room before Kane pointed at the edge of the platform.

"Sit."

"I am not—"

"Sit before you fall and give the Giants a story about land-walkers who cannot manage a climb."

She sat.

The wrapped ribs made the motion careful and ugly.

Griselda found a corner where the spray from the waterfall didn’t reach the shutters.

She set the containment case down, checked the seals, and drew a thin ward-line around it with two fingers.

The wrong heat inside the cloth did not spike. It only sat, patient, the way it had since the mini-boss tree.

Kessa prowled the threshold.

Ears forward. Nose working the mist and the stone and the distant smoke.

The salt-blindness of the open water was fading; village smells were starting to mean something again.

She looked hungry for a problem that was not furniture.

Kane closed the door enough to cut the worst of the spray and leaned Mjoldr against the wall.

The recovery flags at the edge of his vision remained amber from the ape and the rail bruises.

He ignored them the way he ignored the Giant-sized chair that would have required a ladder.

"Household only," he said. "No escorts in the walls for this part."

Misha didn’t look up from the board.

"Hydra first. Will it be a problem later?"

"It is not the main problem," Kane said.

"It is a symptom that learned how to swim. Wrong smoke on the ridge. Half the island affected, by their own count. Turned beasts, turned people, pits under the central stone that the elders used to keep shut."

Kessa leaned her shoulder on the doorframe.

"And a stone from the forest. He said it. Then he swallowed the rest."

"I heard him."

Kane’s voice stayed flat.

"We don’t chase that admission in front of the next Giant who walks past this door. We are guests who just admitted we hurt a god’s pet on the way to the quay. We become people who can still stand in a hall. Then we ask how a belt-pattern stone woke a Hydra and taught half a ridge to burn."

Thora flexed her fingers on the axe haft.

"I hate sitting while the ridge does that."

"You will sit until the ribs stop arguing," Kane said.

"That is not a preference. It is the condition that keeps you on this island instead of on the boat with a fever."

Firlia finished a neat line of supplies on the shelf and finally spoke, eyes still on her work.

"Water is clean. Firewood is dry. If they offer food, I want to see it prepared. Scale is not the only thing that can go wrong in a strange kitchen."

Griselda’s yellow gaze flicked from the case to Kane.

"The fragment is quieter here than it was on the water. Not honest. Quieter. If they ask to compare it to whatever they pulled from the forest, I want controlled conditions and my hands on the seals. Not an open table in a hall full of scared stone."

"You will have that, or we do not open it," Kane said.

A knock landed on the door.

The weight of a fist that had never needed to learn how to be careful with human wood.

Kessa stepped aside. Kane opened.

The empty-handed Giant from the quay filled the frame, soot still in the creases of his face, tired eyes taking in the arranged shelf, the writing table, the woman on the platform who was clearly under orders to stay there.

"Lower village holds for the night," he said.

"Guest limits again, so there is no confusion after dark. You do not leave this tier without an escort."

"Understood," Kane said.

"Questions, then. The Elder—name and title as you use them."

"Elder Stone-Watcher. He holds the high sight lines when the central hall is ash and argument. Sight lines are the ridge posts, places you can see the pits breathe. He has been up there since before your sail showed. We sent a runner. He will call you at first light in the lower hall. Not the central hall. The central hall is still a place people go to stop bleeding, not to talk."

Misha’s pen paused.

"First light. Lower hall. Written terms acceptable, or only spoken?"

The Giant’s mouth twitched.

"Spoken first. If he likes the shape of what you say, he will let you leave paper behind. If he does not, paper will not save you the walk back to your boat."

Kessa grinned without warmth.

"We have had warmer invitations."

"You have had drier ones," the Giant answered.

"Sleep. The stone makes land-walkers stupid when they pretend the sea and the climb did not take anything out of them. Someone will be at this door at dawn. Be upright."

He left.

The waterfall kept its thunder.

Somewhere up the ridge a shout rose and fell, ordinary and enormous.

Then Kane walked towards the door.

"Are you going out?"

"Yes... Can’t trust someone who’s being good to us for no reason."