Chapter 358: Elder-Mother

They followed him.

Kessa fell into step behind the empty-handed Giant with the focused joy of someone who had survived sealed rations and intended to make the next hour count.

The path from the cottage to the lower hall was short by Giant measure and long by everyone else’s.

Steps cut for a stride that could clear a human doorway in one motion forced the household into an uneven rhythm.

Thora took them carefully.

Misha counted them without meaning to.

Firlia watched the way the Giant’s shoulders moved ahead of them and adjusted the medical kit’s strap so it wouldn’t bounce.

Kessa’s tail had already forgiven the morning light.

"If the food is proportionate," she said, "I am going to need a strategy."

"Chew," Thora advised.

"Don’t challenge a platter to single combat on the first pass."

"That is not a strategy. That is surrender."

"It is how you leave a table with dignity and a working jaw."

The empty-handed Giant glanced back, amused under the fatigue.

"Land-walkers always worry about the first bite. Worry about the second. The first is courtesy. The second is when we decide if you understand what you were given."

"That sounds so much like a threat."

"Is it? Then let it be."

The lower hall opened out of the cliff face like a mouth that had been taught manners.

The space was built for people who stood ten feet at the shoulder and did not apologise for it.

Tables were slabs of dark stone long enough to stage a small war.

Benches had been dragged in for the guests: clearly borrowed from a children’s wing or a store-room, still too high, still better than standing.

Lamps hung from chains that would have served as ship cable.

The air smelled of roasted fish, wet grain, smoke, and something sharp and green that had been crushed for seasoning.

Giants filled the room without crowding it.

Ten feet of height, broad through the chest, soot and work still on some of them, clean wraps on others.

Conversation moved in a low weather-system of voices.

When the household entered, the weather didn’t stop.

It only adjusted, the way a room adjusts for a draft.

Food was already down.

Haunches of something that had been large and four-legged in life, seared black at the edges and pink at the bone.

Flat rounds of dense bread the size of shields.

Bowls of stewed root that steamed like small lakes.

A pale fermented drink in cups that required two human hands.

No one carved with delicacy.

Knives the length of short swords worked in practiced arcs.

Meat went to wooden boards. Boards went to hands. Hands went to mouths.

Etiquette, as far as Kane could read it, was simple: take what is offered, do not waste, do not reach across a Giant’s plate unless you enjoyed the educational value of a stare.

Kessa made a reverent sound.

"I take back every complaint I have ever made about anything."

"Sit before you propose marriage to a haunch," Misha murmured.

They were guided to the low benches along one side of the main slab.

Kane kept Mjoldr in view but not in hand.

Griselda set the containment case at her feet and didn’t touch it.

Firlia’s gaze tracked the flow of platters with professional interest.

Thora sat with her spine straight and her ribs carefully neutral.

The elven commanders held the quiet posture of people who had attended worse tables for worse reasons.

At the head of the slab, a space cleared.

The woman who took it was not Elder Stone-Watcher.

She was taller than most of the men in the room, dark hair bound back with a band of worked bone, face mapped by weather and by decisions that had not left soft lines.

She wore no crown.

But when she sat, the hall’s weather settled another degree.

Her tiredness was not the quay-guard’s tiredness.

It was heavier—the kind that came from holding a people together while half the stone under them learned how to hate.

The empty-handed Giant inclined his head.

"Stone-Mother. The land-walkers from the water."

She looked them over once.

"You came out of the Hydra’s reach still breathing," she said.

Her voice carried without strain.

"That buys you a seat. It doesn’t buy you my patience for long speeches. Eat first. On this island, a guest who will not share salt and meat is a guest who has already decided the argument matters more than the people in it. I prefer people."

Kane inclined his head.

"We will eat. Thank you for the table."

Bread was passed.

Meat followed.

The fermented drink turned out to be sharp enough to clear the sinuses and honest enough not to apologise for it.

Kessa committed to the haunch with bilateral focus.

Thora took smaller portions and made them count.

Misha ate like someone filing flavours for later reports.

Firlia checked, once, that nothing on the board matched the sealed-ration allergies she kept in her head, then ate with neat efficiency.

Griselda took little and watched everything.

After the second wave of platters, when the hall’s noise had returned to a working murmur, the Stone-Mother set her cup down.

"Elder Stone-Watcher remains on the high sight lines," she said.

"The pits breathed differently before dawn. He will not leave the posts until the pattern settles or breaks. I speak for the lower halls and for the people who still sleep in them. You may treat my word as the hall’s word for the length of this meal and the talk that follows it."

"Understood," Kane said.

"Good. Then we skip the part where you pretend you crossed open water for the scenery."

Her gaze weighed Mjoldr, the mixed household, the closed case at Griselda’s feet.

"You want a southern line. We want the ridge to stop teaching our own children to come home with the different eyes. Those wants may share a road. They may not. I will not know until I hear how you speak when the food is no longer a distraction."

Misha’s brief stayed under her hand, unopened.

Kane kept the version short.

"Coalition."