Chapter 138: Broom Choir

The next blow shook dry grit from the arch. It landed on Dane’s tongue.

Two lighter strikes answered above him. Brant drew one breath in the quiet that followed.

Kril’s boot left the far-arch stone.

"Wait," Vera said. "The quiet is moving."

Air rushed out of the cavern and pulled at Dane’s open mouth. Kril’s remaining sheath leather snapped tight against his leg.

Stone needles scraped across the arch, their thin points catching and skipping over slate.

Kril hit the floor. The sweep stripped the loose half of his sheath, cut through his coat, and opened a shallow line along his right flank. Mineral bristles struck the wall where his ribs had been and broke there. Shards scattered back across the dry threshold.

"I’m clear." Kril stayed down until the air released his coat. "Do not try that quiet."

"Six hollow ribs over one crescent walk," Vera said. She stood with her right boot inside the arch and her stiff left side behind Dane. "White stalk above each rib. They bend at a black sac in the wall and end in stone bristles. One stalk is broken. Two are sweeping without striking. The hard striker hangs over the far fork, with the two lighter heads halfway around."

Orsa sounded the first step with her short stump. "Dry floor?"

"Dry all the way around the near curve. Past the sixth rib, it divides. High seam against the wall. Lower black line over the center drop."

The low broom struck again.

Its hollow rib carried the blow through the arch, Dane’s wheels, and the ferrule’s outer fiber. Two thin impacts rang above it. The mineral stalks scraped back during the following silence, and the whole room inhaled hard enough to lift splinters of Kril’s sheath from the floor.

Brant turned his good ear into the draw. Both arms remained bound close to his body. "The blows are release. When the stone goes quiet, pressure is coming inward. Keep your faces behind the inner wall until the low strike returns."

The last six words came back from high inside the cavern.

Keep your faces behind the inner wall.

Brant had closed his mouth.

His returned voice was thinner, with grit eating the middle of each word. It traveled down one hollow rib and ended near the floor beyond Kril.

Kril pushed himself upright. "That was you."

"It was me when I said it here." Brant’s jaw tightened. "It was the wall when you heard it there."

Mett unlooped the ordinary far line from the arch tooth. He threaded one end through the first stone eye while Vera kept the other around Dane’s sound rail.

"One test," Mett said. "Nobody moves on it."

Dane knocked his sound wheel against the arch once.

The rope jumped in Mett’s palm.

A high broom struck its rib. The same stone eye punched the line a second time.

"Two," Mett said.

Dane had made one.

Sella leaned her left shoulder against the wall. Her wrapped right forearm stayed bound across her chest. "Use the line to keep people on the crescent. Stop asking it questions."

"We need one signal that still works," Kril said.

"Keep doubting them until we find it."

Kril looked toward her before he moved to the first rib. He carried both blades sheathed. One sheath was bare along most of its outer face, but the dry wood and metal core still covered the edge.

Mett followed him with the line across his back rather than in either hand. The low broom struck. Both men passed beneath the first rib while its calcite stalk remained crushed against stone.

The two high answers came before Mett reached the next wall pocket.

"Down," Kril called, too late for himself.

One of the unstruck brooms swept backward with the inward draw. Its needle skirt caught Mett across the shoulders. He flattened against the wall, but three bristles went through his coat and pinned it to a mineral seam.

Kril put one sheathed blade against the stalk joint. He waited through the pull instead of fighting it. At the next low blow, the bristles unloaded. Mett tore forward and left a strip of coat hanging from the wall.

"No skin," he called. His voice returned at ankle height with the word skin stretched until it broke.

The coffer’s four habitual feet tried to follow that echo into the stone.

Voss caught the nearest shell ankle with his shortened hook at the second notch and turned it away before his hip had to open farther. "If you walk through the wall, leave me here."

The two chosen feet stayed under Buk’s litter. The four habits corrected toward the crescent.

Ada retied Kril’s flank with a narrow wrap while he stood behind the second rib. The cut had stopped spreading before she knotted it.

"You can twist," she said. "If it starts running, you come back."

"Back is a gallery in the water."

"Toward me, then. You know what I meant."

The low broom hit.

Voss sent the chosen pair forward. The coffer lifted Buk through the first wall pocket while its four habitual feet moved under the litter cloth in the tracks Mett had used. Sella came beside it with her left forearm resting across the slack guide. Mett walked on her right, shoulder lowered beneath her good side.

"I can cross on my feet," Sella said.

"I know."

"Match the left. Leave the binding alone."

Mett shifted one step away from her injured arm. When the high pair struck, he moved his shoulder under her left ribs without closing an arm around her.

The cavern drew inward.

Sella’s left forearm rose as the guide lifted. Her right fingers jerked inside the binding, the smallest three lying open against the cloth.

"It goes loose before the low blow," she said. Pain shortened the last word. "Before the sound."

Ada touched the warm tips of the bound hand and kept walking. "Tell us if the thumb stops answering."

Sella pressed it once against the wrap. "It answers. It cannot hold."

The next low strike found them between ribs.

Dane opened Door grain from his sound side and raised it from the dry floor toward the inner wall. Vera pulled the guide over its upper edge. Orsa set her stump beneath the low end. The coffer’s chosen front foot braced the middle while every living body stayed on its own feet.

A mineral broom came across the crescent.

Its first bristles hit Dane’s open face and bent. The next ranks shattered. Stone needles cut pale grooves through his living grain, drove into the wall, and fell among the coffer’s feet. The impact shoved his sound wheel backward. Orsa’s healthy hip stopped the low edge from folding while Vera let the upper rope slide instead of loading the ferrule.

The black sac behind the rib emptied with a wet cough.

Two high blows shook the bristles against Dane’s open Door face. Coffin warmth tried to curl the upper edge over the pressure and keep it. He flattened the grain until the last mineral needles spilled to the floor.

"Move the litter now," Brant said. "The low stalk is pinned. You have its ringing, then the two above it. Quiet pulls every loose thing toward the center."

Buk’s litter crossed behind Dane’s scored grain. Four habitual feet began to follow the returned word center when it whispered from the outer wall. Voss struck one shell ankle, then planted the end of his hook against stone before the tendon at his hip had to take the turn.

"Follow the cloth over your heads," he said. "The cave has enough legs."

The feet stayed beneath Buk.

At the third rib, the crescent narrowed where mineral roots had grown over its outer edge. Lye Scar could place his sound boot in the remaining gap. His straight left step would have landed among bristles.

Serrick walked behind him with both injured hands held dry against his chest. He set one boot beside Lye’s left heel.

"Your short step reaches my toe," Serrick said. "Put it there. I’ll move the toe after you."

"If you move early, I take your boot with me."

"Then wait until you feel bone."

The low strike sounded. Lye moved sound foot, shortened left onto Serrick’s boot, then sound foot into the next pocket. Serrick took the weight through his ankle and drove a dry elbow into the wall when the first high answer shook them. He moved his boot only after Lye’s sound leg held.

The second high broom struck.

Silence pulled the broken needles off the floor. They shot past Lye’s bandaged thigh and vanished over the center drop.

Brant listened to them fall. No impact returned.

"The draw under us is deeper than the gallery," he said. "It starts before the brooms come back."

"The line told me first," Sella said from the next pocket. She had said all she needed to say and lowered her left forearm from it.

The low strike returned late.

One high answer landed before it. The other waited until the low rib had begun to ring.

Orsa stopped with her healthy foot over the fourth seam. "He moved the empty space."

Kril looked back from beyond the fifth rib. "The roots can change order. We knew that."

"The roots change with pressure. This pause is Torven’s." Orsa pushed the stump against the wall and kept her left knee straight. "He used to leave it inside a work call. If you filled the quiet, his pull arrived through your hands."

Brant spat grit from his mouth. "Then nobody fills it. We move while the first rib is still complaining."

The next low blow came before the hollow rib had finished returning his words. Vera and the coffer turned Dane through the fourth pocket. Orsa and Serrick kept his dead rail off the mineral roots. Lye used the shallow cuts in his sound wheel track rather than reaching past them. Brant walked at Dane’s rear corner, head turned toward the pressure even when his own voice crawled ahead of him through the stone.

At the fifth rib, the cracked sixth came into Dane’s floor map as a dead patch. Five eyes tightened against the guide during the inward draw. One stayed loose.

Buk shifted on the litter. "The loose rib has four splits around its root. Same dead rim we found in the lung."

Vera looked past him. "Five stalks are bending. The broken one hangs over the high seam."

The two high strikes rang.

Quiet took the line running toward the lower fork.

It tightened across Dane’s rail and kept drawing toward the cavern center. Stone beneath his late wheel unloaded with it, then settled when the low broom struck again.

Buk lifted his head from the litter. "The board was right. Fifth mouth is under that black line. It pulls when the stone goes quiet."

Mett and Ada moved Sella across the last open stretch while the low rib was still ringing. The first high answer found her behind the inner wall. The second struck after Mett had placed her left palm on the far shelf. Her bound right hand touched nothing.

Voss sent the coffer next, its chosen feet climbing the high seam. When Brant’s old word center returned from below, four habits tried the lower route. Voss put his hook through the litter knot rather than an ankle and drew the cloth toward the wall. The feet followed Buk’s weight.

Vera and Orsa brought Dane beneath the sixth broom. Its broken stalk hung still, but the five live root sacs pulled the guide through its stone eye. Dane’s ferrule stayed inside the wall line. The old split cooled as his late wheel reached the far shelf.

Only Kril remained beyond the broom, at the fork.

The high seam rose along the wall on his right. The lower black line crossed a gap beneath him and disappeared behind the rib. He had one sheathed blade against each route.

Brant stepped as close as his unloaded arms allowed. "Kril, keep to the high seam after the low blow. If you take the black line, it sags when the cavern draws inward."

The low broom struck.

Kril lifted one boot toward the high seam.

The first high answer threw Brant’s voice from the hollow rib below him.

Take the black line.

Kril put his boot back where it had been. "That is the wall using the middle of your warning. I want Dane’s answer."

Vera had the ordinary guide through Dane’s sound rail and the sixth eye. "Ask him before the second high strike."

"Dane. Is the black line safe? One yes. Two no."

The black line began to draw against the underside of the fork.

Dane struck his sound wheel once.

At that instant the delayed low broom hit the sixth rib with Torven’s changed pause. Stone swallowed Dane’s impact. The guide whipped against the eye hard enough to knock Kril’s sheathed blade off the high seam.

Dane struck a second time.

That knock traveled alone.

"One," Kril said, setting his boot on the lower line.

Dane hammered the wheel twice more. The hollow rib threw three impacts back through the same stone eye at Kril’s end.

The two high brooms finished their answer. Their ringing died as the cavern pulled air inward.

The lower line tightened under Kril’s weight and pulled toward the center. His blade slid to its guard. Stone beneath his rear boot separated along a wet curve.

Dane opened his lid. His tongue rose behind the teeth and pressed at the shapes his human mouth had once made without thought.

Kril, cut that line.

Air passed over wood, brass, and a throat built to lure prey.

Only a bright metal click came out.