20 #3

“The ladder could fall,” one said.

“Decide,” Isolde replied. “Sura’s keeping a way out open. Kaoran needs four hands and a lever.”

Both stayed.

Tarin wedged in the hook. The woman took the other end. Isolde concentrated heat where the beam joined the ceiling. The wood gave way around a nail.

“Now.”

They lifted.

Kaoran tried to move. He cried out when his shoulder came free. Isolde took him by the waist. Her left leg took some of the weight.

The beam fell behind them.

Kaoran’s breathing was rapid and shallow. His shoulder had a strange shape. Isolde saw the burn across the back of his coat, and for a moment she stopped hearing Tarin. She needed Kaoran to tell her where to put her hands, as he had in the house in the west.

“I’m going to hold you by the waist,” she said. She waited until Kaoran managed to nod.

“Ribs,” he warned.

“How many?”

“Ask them when they stop moving.”

Tarin supported his right arm. Isolde took the injured side without pulling on his shoulder. The prisoners shielded the route with blankets.

Fire blocked the window.

The floating ladder had dropped half a floor. One rope was still tied to the walkway. They could jump onto a pile of wet wool that the boats had placed below. It was a two-floor drop.

“Kaoran can’t take a fall,” Isolde said.

Tarin pointed to the outside crane. A cargo platform hung near the window, held by a chain.

“If we release the brake, it’ll go down to the water.”

“The brake is inside the office.”

Flames covered the way there.

Isolde opened her core.

Fire answered from across the floor.

She had trained for years to raise a barrier. The building offered too many flames and too many places to go wrong. She chose a corridor four steps long. She gathered the heat from the planks, carried it toward the ceiling, and sealed the edges.

The flames bent.

Tarin looked at her.

“They obey.”

“For a few seconds.”

The freed woman ran to the office. She found the brake. Tarin and the others carried Kaoran to the platform.

Isolde held the corridor.

The fire sought air. Each broken window pulled it in a different direction. Through her core, breath, and limit, she imposed another.

The floor shook.

“Now!” Tarin shouted.

Isolde released the flames toward the empty part of the warehouse and jumped onto the platform.

The woman released the brake and leaped onto the platform’s edge. Tarin caught her sleeve.

The chain paid out.

The upper floor collapsed onto the third. A wave of fire burst through the windows. The platform passed through the smoke. Isolde covered Kaoran with her body. Tarin supported his shoulder.

They hit the water.

Boats surrounded the crane. Sura jumped from a walkway and helped move Kaoran. All nineteen registered prisoners were out. So were Eren and the two watchmen locked in that morning, and the three guards who had come down with boxes.

Lenda was counting people on the pier.

“Nineteen from the list,” she said. “Eren and two watchmen. Three guards. Tarin, the whole brigade.”

“Kaoran,” Isolde added.

“Kaoran,” Lenda repeated.

The list included the man who had taught her to keep it.

* * *

The Guard tried to retake the pier.

They arrived as the bells rang along all three canals. Hundreds of neighbors formed bucket lines. The firefighters had flooded the basement and were protecting the adjoining buildings. L-4 was collapsing inward.

The captain saw nineteen prisoners, boxes of documents, and uniforms from his own force covered in soot.

“The warehouse was evacuated,” he said.

Eren Sol raised the book.

“I kept the shift records.”

“That record belongs to the commission.”

“So does my contract. You can read it on page twelve.”

Tarin stood between the Guard and the wounded.

“We entered under the authority of the Luzmer brigade. There were lives inside.”

“You disobeyed a containment order.”

“Bring the charge before the harbor council.”

The neighbors repeated the demand. The city had a guild council with authority over fires and canals. The regency could arrest him later. Doing it in front of every brigade would turn the smoke into a visible accusation.

The captain withdrew his men.

A healer named Vela treated Kaoran in the net house. She cut away his coat. The burn ran across his left shoulder blade. His collarbone was broken. Two ribs gave under pressure, and a third might have a hairline fracture.

“Breathe again,” she ordered.

Kaoran obeyed.

“Air is reaching the lung,” Vela said. “Every breath could move a rib. He needs rest, his arm immobilized, and someone watching him for three days.”

“We have to leave Luzmer,” Isolde said.

“Moving him today will do more damage.”

“The Guard will come back.”

Tarin pointed to a back door.

“The brigades shelter wounded people in different houses. We can move him after the shift and get a cart out through the glass canal.”

“When?”

“At dawn.”

Isolde looked at Kaoran.

“Need.”

He opened one eye.

“To survive your care.”

“Limit.”

“Refrain from setting bones with fire.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

The healer finished the bandage.

“The patient could talk less.”

“Sound judgment,” Isolde said.

Kaoran closed his eyes.

Isolde looked again at his bandaged chest. Every pause between breaths made her lean forward before Kaoran drew air. He opened his eyes when she brought the bowl close for the third time.

“I’m still not thirsty.”

Isolde set the water down. It trembled a little against the table.

“I can stay here.”

“Stay seated. Vela’s watching the rest.”

The healer pointed her to a chair by the head of the bed. Isolde sat and asked to be shown how to help him drink when he needed it. Kaoran closed his eyes when he no longer felt her moving the bandages.

Lenda arrived with Eren’s book and the rescued pages.

“I’ve found sixteen verifiable destinations among the people transferred,” she said. “Three other names disappear under West-9. One is Beren Neir.”

Neira’s brother.

“Date?” Isolde asked.

“Seven months ago. He left aboard a ship called Low Threshold. Westbound.”

“Is there a port?”

“A toll mark. Three points above a wave.”

Isolde drew the three points above the wave and left space beside them to copy the impression from Arkhe: four points crossed by a line, resembling a crown.

The toll mark and the seal might lead to different offices.

The crossed mountain she had received from Cael belonged to a third mark; she would have to preserve the differences when she sent them.

“Copy everything,” Isolde said. “One sheet for Neira. Another for Aelyn. Eren keeps the original if he agrees.”

“I agree,” the accountant said from the doorway. “I’ll also testify before the council.”

Tarin went with him.

The hearing began beside the cisterns before the night was over. Representatives of the firefighters, boatmen, porters, and three trading Houses listened to the witnesses. The Guard sent a clerk.

Eren described the fuses, the prisoners, and the thermal loss order.

Lenda named the nineteen.

The watchmen explained how the director had bound them.

Tarin spoke last.

“I went in with a woman who wore no insignia,” he said. “She knew the transfer routes. She opened a cage, brought out the wounded, and held a corridor on the third floor.”

“Did she use fire?” the clerk asked.

“The fire obeyed her.”

“Name?”

Tarin looked at the brigades.

“She went in without one.”

“Description.”

“Laundry apron, burned hands, an injured leg. The smoke may have changed everything else.”

“Did she belong to a House?”

“She wore no insignia.”

The clerk wrote down every word.

The testimony left Luzmer with the first boats of the morning.

* * *

Isolde left the net house while Kaoran slept.

She needed to check the cart’s route. Tarin went with her along the glass canal. The Guard watched the main bridges. The brigades controlled the smaller walkways.

When they reached the outer harbor, they found a mark on pier twelve.

Three claws had pierced the wood. Beside them, a broad edge had scraped the planks. Rheskan’s left wing dragged when it folded. The resin was still fresh, and a red scale remained embedded in a splinter.

“Dragon,” Tarin said.

Isolde touched the scale.

The bond opened.

Rheskan showed her the night before. He had landed while L-4 was still closed and heard the prisoners. The harbor’s blue plates kept him from approaching the building. He chose to follow the ship that carried away four cartloads of documents.

The image moved west.

A low island. An unlit lighthouse. The seal of three points above a wave.

Rheskan had left the mark so Isolde would know where the trail began. Then he continued on his own.

“He’s following Low Threshold,” she said.

“Will he come here?” Tarin asked.

“When he chooses.”

The firefighter accepted the answer with a nod.

Isolde put the scale away and asked Tarin to draw the pier before the planks were repaired. Rheskan was still far away, his attention on the ship. She sent him the image of Kaoran in bed and waited a moment beside the water. The dragon held his course.

She returned to Kaoran before dawn.

He was still asleep. His breathing was shallow, steady, and painful. Isolde placed the copies of the accounts in a bag, added the sheet for Neira, and recorded Luzmer’s cost.

Nineteen people: alive.

L-4: destroyed.

Accounts: one original and four partial copies.

Kaoran: left collarbone broken, two fractured ribs, burn on his back.

Rheskan: heading west by his own choice.

The last line was left for her.

The route would wait until Kaoran could endure the cart. Isolde closed the account and drew the chair closer to the bed.

Outside, someone drew a figure in ash on the brigade’s wall. It wore an apron and held fire between its hands. Below it, someone else wrote:

LUZMER SAW THE ONE WHO ENTERED WITHOUT INSIGNIA.

The drawing was unsigned.