Ledger House and the North Road

Stonewheel Mill turned gears by hand when the river left. Ledger House uphill is where the numbers go to be copied until they make sense. Chief Clerk Maren runs the office like a court: ink, argument, and the assumption that someone is lying about buckets.

Odo's Relay is the barn where couriers still sleep on the floor. Chalk tallies list who passed before the channel dried. Sten the porter sweeps the same dust line twice because dust is the only thing that keeps arriving.

Harrow Ridge looks west from bluffs where lookout Tams sketches cloud lines that never darken. Those charts disagree with Merrick's orchard tallies in ways that matter — wet days inland when the orchard saw dust, dry days on the ridge when moss still grew.

The Broken Aqueduct secret is what connects the stories: boards wedged in a channel above the mill, saw marks fresh, arrows pointing upstream. Someone diverted flow on purpose. Ledger House and the relay are where that crime gets names attached.

Walking the north road is not a detour from the drought. It is how you learn the drought was built, not merely suffered.