19 #4

The bars were at chest height. Isolde could slide through. Her left leg caught between two stones. Ancia’s shoe was trapped.

She pulled.

The gate dropped another handspan.

Kaoran came back toward her.

“Let the shoe go.”

The straps crossed her ankle and were designed to stay closed under pressure. Isolde reached for the buckle with her left hand. The stiff fingers failed.

Kaoran put his staff beneath a bar and took the weight.

“Cut.”

Isolde drew the short blade. She cut one strap, then another. The shoe stayed in the crack. She pulled her foot free and passed beneath the gate.

The staff creaked.

Kaoran crossed as the bars touched the water. The wooden end broke and remained inside.

“My excellent work,” he said from the ledge.

“I’ll buy you another handle.”

“With rivets.”

The channel opened beneath the Citadel landing stage.

Two boats waited among the pilings. The children were covered with blankets and laundry. Eda hugged Lur. Torel would travel with them to the mill. Then he would return to face the inspection or choose a way out with his family.

“My shift starts at dawn,” he said.

“Sorev knows you helped,” Miren replied.

“He also needs someone to keep the boilers running. I’ll use that time to get my wife out.”

Miren accepted it.

Orla arrived by an outer staircase. The Guard had held her on the bridge. Aelyn ordered her released to explain the laundry system for the record.

“The councilor has the page,” she said.

Isolde looked up.

The stone gallery joined the kitchens to the river tower. Aelyn appeared behind a window. She was too far away to see the faces waiting beneath the landing stage. She remained there as the boats cast off.

Orla followed her gaze to the window.

“She’ll wonder who was in that gallery.”

Isolde gripped the boat’s rail.

“If she asks, tell her all eleven got out.”

“She’ll see that in the report.”

The laundress stayed silent until Isolde looked at her again.

“If you’re who she’s waiting for, she’ll have the right to be angry. And to ask you to come back.”

“I know.”

“Since Cendral, she’s received answers decided by others. She’s kept Ardan alive between those answers.”

Isolde stopped looking at the window. She had wanted Aelyn to understand her leaving before knowing she was there. It was an easy request for someone who could climb into a boat. Orla remained beneath the landing stage and would have to answer the questions.

“Don’t ask her to understand,” she said.

Orla waited.

“Are you coming back?”

Isolde looked at the children. The raid was still going on inside. Veren had alerted the palace. Her presence could draw every cell around an heir who still lacked a strategy for returning. Revealing herself that night would open a relationship and a hunt at the same time.

“I’ll find a route where she can answer and return to her work,” she said. “Until then, she’ll have reasons to be angry with the person leaving. Keep those reasons when you speak to her.”

Orla’s face stayed hard.

“I’ll write it down.”

“Do.”

“I already have.”

The first boat left. Eda raised her ladle in farewell. Maive would go with the second group and return by another street. Miren remained beneath the landing stage.

“The kitchen is marked,” Isolde said.

“It’s been marked for years.”

“The guards entered the salt chamber.”

“And Aelyn is making Sorev write where he would have taken the children. That will take him the rest of the night.”

“What do you choose?”

“I stay until Torel gets his family out and the two apprentices know the rations. Then I use the exit I prepared in the second year.”

“Where does it lead?”

Miren smiled.

“The network works better when there’s a door you don’t know.”

Isolde accepted it.

Miren took a pair of worn boots from a laundry sack. Isolde tried them on, sitting at the landing stage. The left was loose; she folded a cloth around her heel, trying to support it where Ancia’s shoe had its reinforcement. She would have to walk slowly until the boots could be adapted.

Kaoran checked the documents saved from the depot. Lenda’s page had reached Aelyn. They kept copies of Esvan’s records and two pages of transfers. One entry repeated beside nineteen names:

LUZMER / WAREHOUSE L-4 / ACCOUNTS HOLD.

The last column bore an administrative instruction.

In the event of exposure, execute thermal loss protocol.

“Thermal loss,” Kaoran read. “It could mean melting plates.”

“Or burning the warehouse.”

“When does the next shipment leave?”

“In two days.”

Orla knew a cargo boat leaving for Luzmer at dawn. The route took a day on the river and another along the coast. She would tell the baker to keep looking after Bruma.

Isolde looked at the window one last time.

Aelyn was still there.

The distance between them measured a landing stage, a network under surveillance, and a decision Isolde would have to answer for someday.

She climbed into the second boat without letting herself be seen.

The kitchens fell behind. Isolde looked toward the boats and counted the blankets covering the eleven children. When she raised her eyes again, a pillar had hidden Aelyn’s window.