Chapter 140: Throat of Stone

The fifth mouth inhaled hard enough to move Voss before Ada finished with him. Two habitual coffer feet skittered toward the balcony lip; although the chosen foot beneath his torn right root held, his surviving hook scraped after it. His dropping pelvis swung the rigid splints into the coffer shell and the rest of him into Kril.

“Same palm on the right,” Vera said. “Get him away from the edge.”

Kril struck the coffer’s front chosen foot with his sheath guard. It stepped back. Voss loaded the shortened hook once to follow, hit the new drop, and caught Kril across the shoulders instead of the stone.

“Leave me there,” he said. “The foot knows more about this than I do.”

The coffer carried him clear.

Below, loose calcite needles rattled between five open jaws. The inward wind lifted the ordinary guide from Dane’s scored corner, sucked it across the balcony, and whipped its end out over the mouth.

One jaw plate came up after it.

Mineral teeth struck the balcony lip. Stone broke against stone. A wedge of the shelf spun past Dane’s late wheel, and the impact traveled through the dry floor into his old split.

Kril severed the loose end before the mouth could take the rest of the guide. The cut rope vanished below.

“Outer jaw reached the shelf,” Vera said. “It missed Dane by less than his wheel.”

The plate ground down again. Its wet hinge pulled at the cavern air.

Dry grit blew out of the crooked seam behind it.

The grit struck Dane’s open lid and went the wrong way across his tongue, uphill and away from the swallowing mouth. Ada coughed beside his sound wheel. Farther inside the seam, narrow pieces of stone scraped apart.

Then the mouth’s pull stopped.

The hidden stone settled with three close knocks.

“Something opened behind the hinge while the jaws drew,” Vera said. “I can see dust coming up, but the turn hides the floor.”

Brant put his good ear toward the seam. Both arms remained against his body. “Three ribs, maybe four. They touched again after the pull ended. I can’t tell which edge moved.”

The mouth inhaled once more. This time one plate struck the underside of the balcony and stayed there, grinding its teeth into the broken lip.

Ada was already loosening the rope from Dane’s sound rail.

“I need one person in that seam,” she said. “Somebody who will say stop before a bad foot tries to save itself.”

Lye Scar pushed away from the wall.

Ada went quiet at his left side. Her cloth shifted toward the bandage, and Lye said, “Quit looking over me. Take the foot in your hand if you don’t believe it.”

“I believe the hole that went through you. Show me.”

His heel met her palm. The boot scraped up, down, and inward while cloth pulled across his toes.

“Ankle answers. All five toes too.” Ada worked her fingers higher beneath the wrap. “Warm. The middle?”

“Dry. Back edge pulls when I turn.”

“You don’t turn in there. You don’t bend deep to make up a step. If the warmth changes, you tell me before you decide whether it matters.”

Lye put his sound boot beside Dane. “It will matter loudly.”

Orsa found a dry stone eye above the seam with her short stump. Mett passed the new safety line through it. Sella leaned her left side into the return length while her bound right hand stayed against her chest. Serrick set a dry shell edge beneath the line so it could travel without cutting wet stone.

They turned Dane toward the outer hinge.

Vera kept the rear line on his sound side. Kril worked the low guide with his waist and sheathed blade. The coffer’s chosen front foot pressed his living wheel one handspan at a time while four habitual feet crowded behind Buk’s litter and were made to stay there.

The mouth drew.

Dust pushed out of the crooked seam and found the narrow gap beneath Dane’s lid. He let the pressure travel along his sound grain until it thinned between dry wall on one face and the wet hinge beating through stone on the other.

Dane opened a low Door plane into that line.

Its outer edge lay flat against the seam wall. The inner edge stayed clear of his mouth, ferrule, and dead rail. Dry breath ran along both faces and shivered through the grain without taking his wheels.

Vera touched the upper corner after it had settled. “Your edge is inside the teeth. The seam stays dry behind it.”

Ada tied her line around her own waist. Lye’s ran separately through the eye, low across his hips. Neither line crossed Dane’s open plane; both remained against stone above it.

They entered while the mouth was still pulling.

Lye’s right boot found the first landing below the turn. Its heel knocked once. He lowered the left leg nearly straight.

The left boot struck the same stone.

“It came back beside me,” he said.

Ada’s sole scraped down after his. “Don’t trust it yet.”

The inward wind died.

Stone closed around Lye’s bandaged thigh.

His cry came out low and furious. The rib caught the outer wrap where the old hook had torn through him and dragged the cloth toward the wet hinge.

“Don’t pull,” Ada said. Her words broke as she drove her forearm between stone and leg. “You’ll open the old track. Give me the rope. No, slack–Mett, I need slack here.”

The safety line loosened by one handspan.

Ada put her shoulder under the closing rib. Her boot slipped, struck Dane’s open face, and found the landing again. The rib ground across her sleeve and stopped against bone.

Lye’s breath shook through his teeth. “It’s taking the back of the wrap.”

“I have it. Keep the heel down.”

The mouth below began another draw.

Dry air punched uphill. The rib lifted off Ada’s arm and spread away from Lye’s thigh. She tore the caught cloth free, and both of them moved before the gap had finished opening.

Dane felt no relief in the hinge. The wet pulse beside his plane had quickened.

Ada’s knuckles struck something soft beneath a mineral crust.

“Living cord,” she said, then swore when her fingers followed the wrong edge and entered cold slurry. “Sleeve first. The cord is deeper. Lye, your heel–down and toward my voice.”

His sound heel hit a canted stone leaf. The first push made it grate; the second drove from his right hip while the left leg stayed straight. The leaf crossed the wet sleeve with a crunch that Dane felt through the hinge wall.

The mouth convulsed.

One jaw plate slammed Dane’s Door plane against dry stone. A mineral tooth punched through the outer surface and stopped inside living grain. Pain rang from the low edge to his sound wheel.

Wet flesh followed the tooth.

It struck the underside of Dane’s open plane with a pulse thick enough to be meat. The smell filled his mouth: old water, mineral blood, and living food forced close to teeth he had kept empty.

His lid started down as Coffin warmth gathered at the open corners. From beneath the Wagon bed, his tongue rose and his teeth lengthened toward the flesh beating against his grain.

Ada and Lye remained behind the hinge, their pulses carried to him through rope and stone.

Dane flattened the plane.

The tooth tore a shallow groove as the jaw pulled away. He left it open.

Inside the seam, two wet cords swelled hard enough to crack their mineral sleeves: one crowded the path above Ada while the other hammered behind Lye’s right boot.

Ada shoved both hands against the higher sleeve. “It is closing the way out. Put your sound heel on the next leaf. I can’t hold this off your shoulder and reach it too.”

“My heel is there. It won’t move.”

“Because you’re pushing uphill. Turn the boot, not the thigh.”

Lye scraped his heel sideways. The stone leaf shifted.

The mouth drew harder.

Dry breath burst through the narrowed throat and took Lye’s right boot off its landing. His safety line snapped tight. The nearly straight left leg slid after him and swept empty air beyond the opening rib.

His dropping hips burned cloth along the old wound.

Ada released one hand from the swollen sleeve and caught the back of his belt. The sleeve hit her shoulder and drove her cheek against stone. Mett’s line stopped Lye before the left knee could fold, but his injured thigh hung between two canted ribs with nothing beneath the boot.

“Middle of the wrap?” Ada asked. Blood thickened her words where she had bitten her cheek.

“Dry. Back edge is pulling worse.”

The swollen sleeve pressed harder into Ada’s shoulder. Her caught breath traveled up the safety line.

“That wasn’t the whole question. Foot?”

Lye moved it once in the air. “Warm. Angry. Get my right heel back.”

Ada hauled the belt while the exterior line gave back a finger at a time. Lye found the landing with his sound heel and drove.

The second stone leaf cut across its sleeve, and both walls struck them at once. The remaining cord took the whole wet pulse, thickening across the throat until its sleeve pressed Ada’s arms to her ribs and covered the last canted leaf. Reaching it now meant bending Lye’s left knee into the closing gap.

“I can’t get under that,” Ada called. “The wet side has it.”

The living fold hit Dane again.

It drove the embedded mineral tooth sideways through his low plane. Grain split shallowly around it. Hunger closed around the impact from inside, ready to turn the baffle into a bite.

At Dane’s lowest open corner, the hidden end of the last stone leaf knocked once beneath the pressure.

The fold struck a third time.

Dane let that corner go.

The open grain swung inward under the creature’s own blow. Its edge caught the hidden end and drove it across the swollen feed. Wet tissue flattened. Stone sheared through the mineral sleeve and seated with a crack that silenced the hinge pulse.

Dane raised the corner again before Coffin warmth could keep it closed.

Air found the dry way past Ada’s shoulder. She pulled herself clear of the dead sleeve and pressed two fingers against each cut-off cord.

“None of them answer the water,” she said. “Kril, send the bare blade. Handle first.”

The blade descended on a short line and struck stone beside Lye. He caught the handle with both hands while Ada held the nearest sleeve away from his thigh.

He cut the lowest cord.

It recoiled inside the sleeve and sprayed cold, sour fluid over the dry wall. A side plate snapped shut on two of its own teeth. They broke at the roots and rattled across Dane’s plane.

Lye dragged the blade upward. The next cord resisted until he sawed through a pale inner strand. Its severed end whipped Ada across the ribs and slapped wetly against her coat.

The last cord had flattened beneath the stone leaf. Lye worked the point under it without bending his injured leg.

“When it goes, we climb,” Ada said. “Do not wait for me to check anything.”

“You can shout at the foot upstairs.”

He cut.

Five jaws closed in the wrong order.

The plate against the balcony struck first. Two side plates crossed beneath it and shattered more mineral teeth. The remaining pair crushed the living fold between them. Wet hinge flesh tore loose in heavy strips and slapped the throat walls as trapped fluid searched for a feed that no longer opened.

Ada drove Lye’s sound boot onto the next landing. He gathered the left beside it. The first closing rib caught the rear of his coat; Kril cut the cloth from above and the safety line pulled it away without taking Lye’s weight.

Dane held the low Door plane open.

The dying fold thrashed across it. A row of broken teeth scored living grain. His tongue pressed upward. Hunger begged him to finish the wounded mouth by closing once.

Ada’s hand struck his open face as she climbed. Lye’s boot followed on dry stone beyond her.

Dane kept every tooth apart.

Three shutters released below.

The first opened with a stone blow deep enough to shake his wheels. The second sent water across a long rib and returned a falling roar. The third took the hinge fluid straight down; its pull tore the dying fold out from between the jaws and dragged it through broken mineral teeth.

The wet flesh dried as it moved.

Its heavy impacts became brittle scrapes. The last strip broke against the outer plate and fell in hard pieces that no longer smelled alive.

With Mett and Sella hauling Ada’s line and Kril drawing Lye’s, both adults reached the upper balcony on their own feet. Lye sat before the left thigh could bend, and Ada put one hand around his ankle and the other beneath the wrap.

“Warm,” she said. “Move it.”

His boot moved against her hand. Ada’s fingers crossed the dry center and stopped at the rear edge where the old packing began.

Ada touched her bitten cheek, found blood on her thumb, and wiped it on her own coat. “You get to complain about the same bad step. No new one.”

Lye leaned his head against the wall. “I wasn’t finished with the old complaint.”

Below them, the mouth gave no inward pull. Brant listened through one long pressure change, then another; deeper water moved and the Broom Choir ribs settled without an answer from the five jaws.

Vera crouched at the broken lip while keeping her stiff side inland. “The inner skin has gone pale and split. All three hinge sleeves are empty. The plates are locked against broken teeth.”

Ada lowered dry cloth on a line. It touched each severed sleeve and came back without a wet edge or a pulse against her fingers.

“Dead,” she said. “Dry all the way behind the hinge.”

The five plates stayed locked while water continued down three separate spillways. One struck close stone in hard repeating blows; another ran too deep for any bottom to return. The third carried Kril’s severed rope away, its knots knocking until they went out of hearing.