26 #3

“West-9 has stopped feeding the network,” Beren said.

“For a while,” Oren replied. “Varek can rebuild the channels.”

“Then we have to cut off the mechanism joining them,” Isolde said.

Oren pointed to the central line.

“It’s near Cendral.”

“The empty point?”

“The distributor. The stations send pressure there. If we close it, each one will be isolated.”

Nara asked for the cylinder.

She held it in both hands and closed her eyes. The marks on her temples darkened. One line on the object gave off a faint glow.

“I can still hear tapping,” she said.

“From Ydrael?” Isolde asked.

“From other chairs.”

Beren came closer.

“People?”

“Every station has a rhythm. The technicians call it load noise. Ydrael learned to distinguish those of us inside.”

Nara tapped the cylinder with a fingernail.

Two slow pulses. One quick. Pause.

“That was my signal. My brother and I used something similar when we worked in tunnels. Two taps meant air. One quick tap asked for rope.”

“Ydrael took it from you?” Oren asked.

“He asked permission for weeks. He repeated the signal and waited. The first time, I thought the machine was failing. Then I answered.”

Isolde felt the dragon’s patience beneath the stone. He had built a language inside a network designed to hurt him.

“Do you know other signals?” she asked.

Nara drew eight groups on the table.

“A woman at West-3 counts to five. There’s a boy who taps four times and pauses a long time. A soldier uses marches: three, three, two. Ydrael carries the rhythms from one station to another when the pressure aligns.”

“Can they talk to each other?” Beren asked.

“Brief images. A smell, a face, a place. He holds the passage open. Every message costs him.”

Nara showed the marks on her temples.

“The technicians thought the activity was resistance. They increased the load.”

Kaoran sat up beside the fire.

“How many people are still conscious?”

“Thirteen rhythms during the last session. There were more at first.”

Beren took a sheet of paper.

“Draw everything you remember.”

Nara began. Oren compared the sequences with the lines on the cylinder. Three matched western stations. Two came from the east. The rest converged on the distributor near Cendral.

One signal repeated in the center.

Three taps. Pause. Three. Pause. Three.

“That conductor is very close to the black route,” Nara said. “Ydrael protects him every time they synchronize.”

“Name?” Isolde asked.

“Rian. That’s all I received.”

Isolde wrote down the name and asked Nara to repeat the three groups of taps. Someone had been using that signal for a long time without knowing whether it would reach another person.

“We have to answer,” Beren said.

Nara caught his wrist.

“Ask first.”

“Who?”

“Ydrael. If you open the cylinder without a rhythm, the station can use it to locate me.”

Isolde rested two fingers on the red stone.

The bond appeared. Ydrael was tired. One fewer chain pulled at his neck, though the others made up for the loss.

Isolde showed him Rian’s signal and an open question: answer?

Ydrael waited.

Then he showed her Nara sleeping beside the fire. A blue line sought her marks from a distance. If they answered through the cylinder, it would reveal the shelter.

“The station will track her,” Isolde said.

Beren tightened his grip on the pen.

“Rian could think we’ve abandoned him.”

Nara pointed to the map of Cendral.

“Ydrael will take him another image when he can. Right now, our task is to reach the route.”

“You trust him to do it?”

“I trust him to decide. He’s already paid for us too many times.”

Beren set down the cylinder.

Choosing not to answer was another way of listening.

Kaoran studied Nara.

“Did Ydrael ever show you a gray dragon with a white scale beside his eye?”

Isolde turned her head.

Nara thought for a while.

“He showed me many chains. Some memories seemed to be his. Others came from the people connected to him.”

“That dragon?”

“I saw a storm and a dark wing. A broken strap too. The image carried your pain. Perhaps he received it from you through Isolde.”

Kaoran accepted the uncertainty.

“Thank you.”

Nara touched the green ribbon on his wrist.

“Are you looking for him?”

“I’m looking for proof of what happened. If he’s still alive, he’ll decide whether he wants to find me.”

“That sounds like what you say about Rheskan,” Beren told Isolde.

“It took Kaoran years to teach me.”

“It took Thalyon longer to teach me,” Kaoran replied.

Oren finished the map of signals. He added a rule at the top: no rhythm would be used without checking who might receive the blow. Nara signed with a trembling line. Beren added his name as witness.

Isolde wrote hers another way:

Nameless warrior. Temporary custodian.

Nara read the words.

“Until when?”

“Until you can choose someone else or destroy the map.”

“I’ll keep it until we get Rian out.”

The decision gave the paper a life independent of Isolde.

Tavra opened the map.

“Cendral is six days away with clear roads.”

“There are patrols in every pass now,” Beren said.

“We’ll take a different route,” Isolde replied.

Kaoran sat up a little.

“First, you need the transport register. The distributor changes entrances according to the convoys.”

“Cevran has the key.”

“And Darian is inspecting routes after what happened in the marsh.”

Tavra took out a report she had taken from one of the riders.

“The patrol had this.”

The document announced a visit by the regent to Halver station. Darian would review the transfers and open the central register. He would travel with twelve guards from the Royal House. The commission would send observers.

The station was two days away.

Isolde read the date.

“Aelyn has forced him to open the accounts.”

“Or he’s trying to lure the warrior again,” Tavra said.

“Both can be true,” Kaoran replied.

The central register held the active entrances to Cendral. It would also put Darian outside Caleryon, far from Varek and within a blade’s reach.

Isolde folded the report.

“I’ll go to Halver.”

Kaoran watched her.

“For the register?”

“For the register.”

“The opportunity will be greater than the document.”

“I know.”

“Do you want my permission?”

Isolde thought of the platform, of her own voice ordering a retreat, and of Ydrael’s claw resting still beneath the stone.

“I want you to tell me what you see. The decision will be mine.”

Kaoran smiled.

“Then you already have what I was going to give you for your birthday.”

Beren raised his head.

“It’s your birthday today?”

“Yesterday,” Isolde said.

Tavra put a bowl of soup in her hands.

“In the west, we count the years after eating.”

Oren found a short candle. Nara lit the wick with an ember.

Isolde looked at the flame. She was in the fifth year since Cendral and measured the seasons by what her body could do: stand, hold a blade, cross a pass, return to the valley without losing herself in the river.

Tavra nudged the bowl toward her.

“Do you want anything else?”

Isolde almost asked for the transport register. She heard Oren move his papers aside to make room for the soup and realized the question allowed a small answer.

“I want to eat it hot.”

“That’s within this expedition’s reach.”

They stayed close while she ate. At twenty-five, she still wanted things that never appeared in the plans: to wake beside someone she had chosen, to share a fear without having it turned into an argument for locking her away, to stay for an afternoon because she wanted to.

She had loved those futures with Darian.

Imagining them without his face was hard, and she still wanted them.

She finished the soup before touching the map.

The candle burned down to a short stub. Isolde pinched it out and thanked Nara for lighting it.

“Tomorrow we leave for Halver.”

Before sleeping, she left Rheskan’s scale beside the map.

The dragon’s claws pointed east.