Chapter 125: Orsa Walks

The ruined spindle surrendered the boundary one stone at a time.

Water slid below Dane’s left keel. Its pull weakened until the six adults aboard him could stop sculling without being dragged back toward the broken mouths. Flat Hands tightened the near rope. Kril and Lye Scar answered from the terrace, and Dane settled against the first knob of exposed stone.

The riders left him by weight.

The adult with the cut climbed off first, taking their warm blood and Ada’s medicine bundle with them. Their boots scraped twice on dry rock. Ada made them crouch close enough that Dane heard the healer’s thumb brush damp hair away from the wound.

"Follow my finger. Don’t tell me you can. Do it."

A pause.

"Now I can tell you?"

"Now you can keep both eyes. Sit down."

The other five passed the bundle, the broken reed, and three shell plates from hand to hand before stepping away from Dane’s open deck. The rider with the freed shoulder rolled it once.

Ada caught the movement in the middle. "If you make me put that joint back in after dark, I’ll leave your sleeve inside it."

The arm lowered. "My sleeve would notice."

"Good. Spend tomorrow wondering."

One sore breath escaped nearby, then another. The sound spread through people alive on the correct side of the water.

With the last body gone, Dane remained Open Hull and empty. He kept his deck spread while the pool drained around him, six low grips folded flat and ready. He had earned the shape in blood and black water. He intended to remember what it was for.

Across the pool, Marda struck a broken handle against the route the spindle had uncovered. Stone answered at uneven heights: a knob, a slanted iron rib, two shelves, and three gaps still carrying water.

"High line at the first gap. Low at the third," she called. "If you slip, sit. Anyone who dives after you is allowed to be angry about it."

Flat Hands looped clean rope over a root. People stripped dry lash from the dead galleries and fed him a second length. The first adults crossed, then stayed on the terrace. Each arrival added hands to the far side. Pulls that had begun uncertain became a steady exchange through root, rope, hips, and stone.

Dane felt the crossing through the water. A boot sent grit against his keel. A rope hummed above his rear rail. Breathing approached one gap, stopped, then resumed on the other side.

The rhythm broke when the calf-wounded adult reached the flooded shelf.

One shell plate scraped forward beneath their seat. The other took their good boot, rocked on the iron rib, and shot backward.

It struck Dane’s prow.

He raised one low grip under the curve. Open Hull held the plate above the water and waited for human hands to move it. The person on the line swore as their wounded leg swung clear of stone.

"Don’t pull them upright," Flat Hands said. "You’ll make the calf carry it. Give me the sitting line."

Hands changed places. The rope dropped from the adult’s chest to their hips. Dane felt their weight stop fighting the route. Someone waded knee-deep to reclaim the plate from his grip; another person slid the first shell forward. One careful span became two. The dressing never touched water.

After that, nobody crossed alone. Each person reached back before the next one moved. The ropes shook with bad knees, split soles, impatience, and hands that refused to let go until another pair had taken the load.

Orsa came last.

Her broken pole struck the first knob. Her healthy right boot followed. When she lowered the straight left leg, her breath stopped before her heel found stone.

Flat Hands offered slack rope. "It won’t carry you unless you ask."

"Then stop making it nervous."

The line loosened.

At the slanted rib, the pole skidded and rang through the pool. Orsa’s wrapped left leg shuddered hard enough to chatter her heel against iron.

Marda waited above her. "Turn the right hip. Leave the knee out of it."

"I brought the knee. It can wait its turn."

Pole. Right boot. Straight left heel. Orsa climbed the final rise on her own feet, and the slack line never tightened.

For several breaths there was only water ticking from clothes and the small, ugly sounds people made when safety arrived after they had stopped believing in it.

Marda broke the silence. "All thirty-eight dry. Check the water before you celebrate."

Flat Hands hauled Dane to the wet-dry lip. He held Open Hull until the last trace of rider weight had left his grain, then released the surface shape himself. The open deck drew inward. Low grips flattened. Wounded Wagon grain returned around the old right-quarter split, and the red catch woke beside rod one with a scrape that found every place Torven had hurt him.

Dane planted a narrow Door edge on sound stone and raised the damaged quarter. He held it there until Ada’s fingertips arrived.

Ada touched only the exterior. "I can keep the split from following the metal. I can’t promise the tooth comes politely."

Orsa lowered herself onto her healthy right knee and kept the wrapped left leg straight. The end of her broken pole found the axle fragment. She pressed once, then changed the angle.

"It entered downward," she said. "It has to leave while looking back at the hole."

Ada set two thin guards outside rod one’s established depth. "Hold the quarter where it is. If the old split moves, I stop her."

Dane braced.

Orsa turned the pole.

The catch held. Its hidden tooth dragged along living grain, and pain drove Dane’s late wheel into the terrace. His lid snapped halfway shut on the pole before he forced it open again. Bitter wood and Orsa’s hand-salt crowded his mouth. One bite would end the pressure. It would also end her fingers.

"You’re holding the tooth in him," Ada said.

Orsa stopped at once. "Dane. I need the wound loose, not the rest of you."

The instruction was easy. Releasing the part of himself wrapped around iron was not.

He knocked once through his sound edge: hold.

Ada’s guards stayed against the old split. Orsa kept the pole frozen while Dane found the one narrow plane that had clenched around the hook. He let it soften.

The tooth shifted. Pain changed from crushing to sharp.

Dane knocked twice.

Orsa reversed the entry curve in one hard pivot. Ada caught the split before it could follow. Iron tore free and hit dry stone.

Dane’s whole right quarter tried to close around the absence.

"Rod one is where it was," Ada said, fingers still outside him. "Split hasn’t opened. Stay there until the shaking stops."

Orsa kicked the red scrap into the dead boundary water. It sank without a mouth reaching for it.

The widened-hole shell plate smelled of silt when Ada brought it near. Dane kept the wounded quarter presented. Bitter free-raker paste went onto dry cloth and shell, never into his grain. Lash drew the curved plate against sound exterior wood on either side of the split, leaving the injured middle untouched.

The catch wound kept pulsing beneath the shell while the last knot tightened. Two plates still lay loose beside the calf-wounded adult.

"Resting weight and slow Wagon," Ada said. "No water. No impact. No high-load Coordination. It is holding you together from the outside, which is different from making you whole."

Dane tried one slow turn.

His sound front wheel carried. The late wheel followed. The plate shifted across the old split with a dry click, and one lash snapped tight enough to send heat into the paste.

He stopped before the second half of the turn.

Ada put two fingers against the shell. "Cold. Keep it that way."

Dane knocked once.

"That was not praise," she said. "It was the longest journey that brace gets today."

Before the paste cooled, work had begun around the root beds.

Roots ran beneath three shallow beds and lifted pale fungus in shelves broad as hands. When freed adults moved the trays away from the damp wall, the caps breathed peppery spores into the air. Someone cut one mature shelf into strips. At the smell of its wet white flesh, boots edged closer. The cutter cleared their throat, and several pairs scuffed away to find work.

Ada missed the rim when she reached for a bowl. Two patients swore until she sat.

At the first bed, roots began clicking against stone.

Orsa dragged black grit from beneath the loose grate. A narrow fall of water fed the root mat. Beside it, a second groove disappeared into a drilled throat. She pressed a spindle chip over that throat.

Water rose around the roots. The clicking eased. Fungus caps that had sagged toward the channel lifted by degrees.

Then something below took hold of the flow.

The chip kicked under Orsa’s thumb. Water vanished from the mat fast enough to bare the upper roots. Three heavy caps folded against one another, and an adult carrying a tray stumbled when its weight shifted.

Orsa drove her broken pole into the drilled throat. A pulse turned the wood in her hands.

"That isn’t runoff," she said. "An older mouth is drinking uphill."

Marda wedged both hands over the chip. "Then Flat Hands builds a catch here before dark. We keep hands on it until he does."

"A catch here protects one bed. The pressure moves, it takes the next."

"These people crossed on torn feet. I’m not sending them down after Torven because a pole twitched."

Orsa pulled her pole free. Water slapped back around the exposed roots, but not as high as before. "Don’t send them. I am going where the water turns."

Marda’s boot ground grit beside the bed. "You don’t know how far."

"No."

Marda exhaled through her nose, shoved the chip deeper, and called two adults over to learn where to hold it.

Flat Hands found Lye Scar beside Dane’s low guide.

He shortened the loop, put it across Lye’s hips, and pulled without warning. Lye’s right shoulder jerked toward the rope before his knees bent and his weight dropped where it belonged.

"You spent the bad shoulder again," Flat Hands said.

Lye rubbed it. "It keeps volunteering."

"Then teach it disappointment."

He lowered the loop one finger and pulled harder. This time Lye’s hips took Dane’s weight. His boots shifted, but his shoulder stayed out of the line.

Flat Hands let go.

The change reached Dane immediately. The familiar pull that had always found his lowest safe grain was gone. Lye’s first correction came late and too strong. His second came earlier.

"Again," Lye said.

Flat Hands had already picked up the grate hook. "The terrace needs a waist rail before dark. Leave them alone and they’ll build it at chest height, then wonder why the next fall breaks ribs."

Lye reset the guide without looking for another farewell. "I’ll bring this back lower than you gave it to me."

"Bring yourself back with it. Rope is cheaper."

Flat Hands turned toward the root beds. The next pull on Dane belonged entirely to Lye.

Buk placed the clean bowl beside Orsa’s healthy boot. "The road to Mother Kesh is open. Her demand was that you return alive. For once, you qualify without argument."

The pole in Orsa’s hand turned another fraction although she had stopped moving it.

"If I leave now, someone below chooses whether these roots drink."

"Kesh will object to being second."

"When the beds are safe, she can explain my mistake to my face."

Around Dane, the people going below took their places by touch and weight. Vera took the clean rear line. Brant settled the low guide across his hips without asking his ruined right arm or wet-useless left hand to help. Ada divided the medicine and kept the smaller bundle. Buk packed the clean bowl. Voss rested his hook across the responsive coffer; its two awake corners faced the descending stair while four habitual legs tried to remember the way back. Kril checked both blades. Serrick tightened his pack with protected hands. Lye tested his new pull against Dane’s sound side.

Marda left the root bed only after two settlers could hold the chip without her.

"I go until we lose a dry way back," she told Orsa. "If you keep descending after that, I turn the line around. This is not forgiveness."

Orsa planted her pole beside the stair. "Keep both. I need the water."

"Good. Then we understand each other."

Dane began the turn toward the older-water stair. The brace clicked once under slow Wagon weight and held cold. Behind him, thirty-eight adults breathed beneath a sound ceiling while Flat Hands argued a rail down from chest height. The outer mouths stayed dead. The first root bed drank because living hands held the chip.

Orsa lowered her pole into the dark throat once more.

The next pulse caught it hard enough to wrench the shaft against stone. The blow traveled through the terrace, into Lye’s guide, and across Dane’s sound side. His external plate answered with one small click.

Far below them, a tool completed a stroke nobody had begun.