29 #2

“The commission said she’d died during an act of sabotage.”

“The commission needed you to keep working.”

The technician looked at the eight chairs.

“My name is Elar. I can open this level when the lines are in balance. The other supervisors will raise the alarm.”

“Do you want to get out?” Isolde asked.

“I want to get my sister off their lists.”

“Start with these eight people.”

Elar handed over his key.

They divided the work. Beren stayed in the first room. Oren went down toward the second with Isolde. They would take the freed prisoners through the water conduit in groups of ten.

The second room was empty.

Cut straps hung from all ten chairs. One wall had a new hole. Rheskan had come through from the lower chamber.

Isolde received an image: people walking behind the dragon through a dark tunnel. The little girl held on to one of his scales, walking beside him. Rheskan moved slowly so they could keep up.

“He’s found a lower way out,” she said.

Oren touched the straps.

“He took ten.”

“Twelve. The cages and this room.”

“Then that leaves ten in the third needle and eight with Beren.”

They climbed a walkway toward the upper level.

The fissure was closer. Hot wind pushed up from below. Isolde saw red veins trying to meet along the edges. Each blue pulse forced them apart.

The proof lived in the stone.

Oren pointed to a scale etched into the wall.

“They measure the width.”

The scale bore dated marks going back to the battle. On several occasions, the fissure had lost centimeters. Each reduction was followed by a synchronization and an increase in conductors.

“Cendral’s trying to close,” Isolde said.

“They’re holding it open.”

Oren made a rubbing of the scale and noted the temperature, pressure, and time. Isolde set a metal strip between the edges to measure the current width.

“We’ll repeat it after the cut.”

“If we survive.”

“Include that in the report.”

The third room had ten occupied chairs and four guards.

Isolde used the water conduit to get behind them. Oren waited by the controls. When the second bell rang, she opened a valve. Water spread across the floor.

The guards looked toward the pipes.

Isolde dropped from the walkway.

She struck the first man with both knees. She rolled, took his staff, and swept the second man’s ankles. The third raised the alarm. Oren closed the circuit at the table. The bell fell silent.

The fourth guard drew a blue sword.

Isolde dodged the first blow. The blade absorbed heat as it passed. The second grazed her arm. Her skin went cold.

She hurled the staff at the valve.

A jet of water struck the guard and drove him against the wall. Isolde took his sword.

The other three were conscious. She bound their hands with the empty straps.

“Thirty minutes until balance,” Oren said.

Isolde examined the conductors. Two had weak pulses. A woman opened her eyes.

“Are you her?” she whispered.

“I came to open the chairs.”

“The one with the fire.”

“Today, the keys are enough.”

The woman smiled and closed her eyes again.

A flash came through a high slit.

Kaoran was sending two pulses.

Containment forces.

Varek had moved the hunt forward, too.

* * *

Kaoran saw the patrols from the riverbank.

Thirty men were coming in along the Halver route. Ten were circling the northern forest. A technical cart was climbing toward Three Needles. Cevran and Leth rode with the central group.

Eda Sol waited beside the river with two mill inspectors. They had set nets at three bends to catch the cylinders. An empty coffin waited on a records cart.

“They’re getting here ahead of the current,” Eda said.

Kaoran looked at the surface. The water from C-0 took twelve minutes to travel from the conduit to the first net. The patrol would reach the bank in eight.

“We move the pickup,” he said.

“They can see the second bend from the bridge.”

“The third has reeds.”

“And waist-deep mud.”

“Who can swim?”

Both inspectors raised a hand. Kaoran pointed to a woman named Teren Val.

“Take the net and follow the bank. Eda, get the coffin ready. Soren, leave tracks toward the bridge and come back over the stones.”

“And you?” Eda asked.

“Signals.”

The decision chafed. Before the pass, he would have chosen the net, the mud, and the work he could control with his hands. His chest had turned that habit into a risk for everyone.

He climbed onto a rock and readied the mirror.

One flash for Isolde: vanguard on the move.

Two: containment forces.

Three were reserved for Rheskan.

The patrol reached the first bend. Soren crossed in front of them and dropped an empty satchel. The riders found tracks, blank papers, and a smear of ash leading toward the bridge.

Six followed the decoy.

The rest advanced toward the river.

Teren reached the third bend. She stretched the net between two willows. Eda brought the cart along a farm road and set sacks of grain over the false bottom.

Kaoran heard the first bell inside C-0.

Balance was approaching.

A soldier appeared among the trees.

He saw Teren in the water.

“Get out of there!”

She kept adjusting the net.

The man lowered his crossbow.

Kaoran could throw a stone with his sling. The effort would require him to twist his side and hold his breath. The healer had forbidden both.

Eda took a shovel from the cart.

“The sluice gate’s broken the channel!” she shouted. “Help me or we’ll lose the harvest!”

The soldier looked at her inspector’s uniform, the royal seal, and the rising water. He hesitated.

“We’re looking for saboteurs.”

“I’m looking for two mills that pay taxes.”

Eda put the shovel in his hands.

“Hold that sack.”

The authority of a woman used to inspecting accounts did the rest. The soldier set his crossbow on the cart and lifted the sack. Eda hid the false bottom with her body.

Kaoran saw Rheskan cross an opening in the needle and sent three flashes. Then he repeated the long signal they had agreed on for the river: the nets were still receiving.

Over the next few minutes, Eda opened sacks, weighed flour, and corrected the soldier every time he put a crate where it did not belong in the inventory. Kaoran kept watching the water. The first cylinder appeared in the net after the synchronization bells had fallen silent.

Teren tucked it beneath her clothes.

Two more riders came down toward the bend.

“The area is closed,” the first said. “Return to Halver.”

Eda showed him the order for the coffin.

“We’re transporting the regent’s records.”

“We’ll search the cart.”

“In the presence of an archivist.”

“The emergency suspends that requirement.”

Kaoran saw the second cylinder emerge from the conduit. The current carried it beyond the net. It had caught beneath a branch.

Teren moved toward it.

A rider saw her.

“Stop!”

Kaoran took up his sling.

His chest protested before he could draw it taut. He lowered the weapon.

“Teren,” he called. “Act like an inspector.”

She understood. She took out a measuring tape, crouched beside the branch, and announced an absurd figure for the water level. She slipped the cylinder into her tool case.

The rider reached her.

“What did you pick up?”

“A measurement your captain should have asked for before putting a technical cart on ground that floods.”

She handed him the tape.

The man studied the numbers without understanding them.

Eda closed the coffin.

“The records leave now.”

“We still have to search the cart.”

“Your companion can escort us to the Archives and log the inspection there.”

None of the soldiers wanted to spend two days riding in a flour cart over a suspicion with nothing visible to support it. The first handed back the shovel.

“Leave the area.”

Eda obeyed.

Teren left the river one bend farther on with the first cylinder and split off toward Arkhe. Soren came back over the stones when the patrols abandoned the decoy. He took the second cylinder in the tool case and set off toward the families from C-7.

Kaoran waited for the third.

An alarm bell rang again in C-0.

Armed men filled both banks. His chest had begun to wheeze. Staying would add a risk that already exceeded the limit.

Kaoran left an empty net and withdrew toward the eastern forest.

Eda kept the cart beside the third bend. Her authorization covered another hour of inspection. The third cylinder arrived when Kaoran was already beneath the trees. Eda pulled it from the water, stowed it in the false bottom of the records coffin, and took the road to Halver.

Inside C-0, Isolde kept counting.

Isolde opened the reserve clamps with Oren’s key. The active locks would have to wait for balance. She prepared the conductors to move. Each person received water, a blanket, and a partner.

“When they open, follow Oren,” she said. “The lower tunnel leads to the forest.”

“And you?” asked the woman who was awake.

“I shut down the route.”

“The fissure pulls at everything when the phase changes.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been here two years.”

Her name was Vena Or. She had taught mathematics at a school in Caleryon. They arrested her for refusing to alter tax figures.

“The neutral phase starts with three bells,” she said. “It gets shorter every month.”

“Oren calculates ninety heartbeats.”

“The last one lasted seventy-four.”

Isolde changed the timing in the plan.

“Thank you.”

Three flashes came from the forest, followed by the steady gleam of the mirror. Rheskan was choosing his ground, and the river nets were still open.

The dragon had taken the twelve people to the lower exit. Then he returned beneath the second needle. He showed Isolde the red ring fitted into a wheel and a pressure line reaching the central chamber.

He had prepared the lower control.

Oren left the ten people in the upper room ready to rise as soon as the clamps opened. Vena would count the bells and help those with less strength. Isolde went down to the distributor.

The center of C-0 was a platform suspended over the fissure. Nine metal arms ended in a red cylinder. Eight glowed. The ninth, West-9, was dark.

A chair stood in the center.