Chapter 141: Bad Hands, Rising Water

Water struck the stone beneath the dead fifth mouth and came back uphill.

The first return hit Dane’s low plane as a tremor. The second lifted his late wheel from the balcony and dropped it hard enough to jar rod one inside the old right split. By the third, cold spray was climbing through the crooked throat Ada and Lye had just escaped.

Above the climbing spray, no jaw moved.

Orsa planted the short stump of her pole against the floor. Three separate blows climbed it: a hard return through close stone, a deeper shudder moving away beneath them, then a climbing knock that set the roots overhead clicking.

"Tool square," she said. "Under the root beds."

The next surge shoved Kril’s severed rope end out of the seam to lash the balcony once before vanishing again.

With both arms held against his body, Brant listened against the floor. "This shelf goes under on the next hard return. Down is the only stone that isn’t lifting."

Orsa found the maintenance steps behind the dead hinge with her good boot. "Then stop standing where the water wants us."

They went down before Ada could finish tying her coat over the bite in her cheek.

The stair took one body at a time. Kril and Orsa led; Dane followed under Vera’s rear line and Lye’s shortened pull, his wounded Wagon turned until the sound side scraped the inside wall. Every hard return tried to roll him toward the dead rail. He opened a narrow Door edge against the opposite stone and chose the angle by where the pressure thinned.

Behind him, Voss loaded his right hook for one step. That side of his pelvis dropped its familiar palm. His splints struck the wall, and the coffer’s chosen rear foot caught his hip while four habitual feet scrabbled uphill.

"Keep the hook at three," Ada called. "You don’t get a fourth because we’re in a hurry."

"Tell the stair."

It took his weight at three.

Sella descended with her right forearm bound across her chest. Mett stayed at her left until she told him the wall could do his job. Lye advanced with the right foot and gathered the left nearly straight. Behind them, Serrick kept both dry-only hands high and used his shoulder against the wall. Nobody made the pace look better than it was. Water followed them and kept gaining.

The maintenance steps ended in a chamber broad enough to return three different roars.

Dane’s front wheels entered water above their hubs. A current struck from his left, crossed beneath him, and climbed a wall somewhere to his right. Stone fins divided the chamber; impacts arrived around them without giving him a whole shape.

"First gate is half up," Vera said. Her boots splashed past Dane and stopped. "Lever on this side. Tool rack behind it, still chained to the wall."

Iron hooks knocked together.

Orsa swore. "Nobody touches the wet grips."

One hook scraped along stone anyway.

Beyond the nearest fin, a second gate struck twice. Orsa splashed toward that sound; her pole met its pivot as the rack chain went tight behind her.

The rack pulled itself through a worker’s old arc. Chains went tight.

"Six hooks, waist high," Vera called. "They’re sweeping the steps."

Kril met the nearest chain with his blade. The first cut rang and skidded. The rack dragged him two steps through the water before his second cut found the worn link. Iron burst apart.

"Three down," Vera shouted. "The other lash is still turning."

Dane opened his Door plane into the blow.

Hook points struck living grain and punched shallow dents along his sound edge. The wet chain tried to pull the whole plane through the remembered turn. Pressure climbed toward the right-quarter split. His tongue lifted at the scent of Kril’s opened knuckles, wet fungus, and old blood washed from the hooks.

The inspection stair stood behind him. Boots had begun hammering down it.

"The rack is turning past his left edge," Vera shouted. "If it clears, it takes the stair."

Dane felt the chain sliding across him. He narrowed the Door face while the hooks were still embedded and raised the struck corner one grain. The wet lash lost the broad curve it expected. Its last three hooks tore free, crossed his open plane, and buried themselves in the dry stair wall.

Two hook necks snapped against the dry wall. The last remained buried, its wet chain stretched across Dane’s open grain. The rack sagged without losing the old turn. Dane’s angle kept that remaining sweep off the stair while boots descended behind him.

Clean rope rasped across the last stair, and a short wooden crosspiece knocked Dane’s corner. He knew the man’s right forearm and the flat hand dragging behind it before the voice arrived.

"First bed lifted a hand," Flat Hands said. "Second one started spitting trays. Where is the throat?"

"Behind the near lever," Orsa answered from across the fin. Water and stone ate the middle of her next words. "Keep the roots out of--"

A gate arm slammed hard enough to ring her pole and turn the rest of the sentence into effort.

Three free adults came down behind Flat Hands. A tray rim knocked the wall between the first person’s breaths while roots clicked above them in the climbing backwash.

The woman with the tray shoved it onto the highest step. "I worked this gate before the beds went in. Two on the lever, pull to the belly, heel the pin."

"The grips are wet," Flat Hands said.

"So is the room."

She and another adult closed both grips. Wet skin squeaked where old fingers had worn the iron smooth.

The water beneath Dane tightened.

The lever completed its remembered stroke in the wrong direction.

It ripped upward between them. One adult lost his grip and went backward. The woman stayed attached until the iron threw her shoulder into the stone fin. Skin tore from both palms. Her tray spun off the stair, struck Dane’s wheel, and broke apart in the current. Wet fungus strips vanished beneath the half-raised gate.

The lever fell toward them again, and Sella caught its left end with her left hand.

Her right arm came away from her chest by instinct. Thumb and index made one weak catch on the opposite grip; the other three fingers scraped across iron without closing while the lever loaded them.

Pain tore a sound out of her. She let the useless side go before the stroke could pull through the damaged forearm.

"Left end stays," she said. "Anything that needs the right can drown."

Flat Hands reached the other end. His left hand closed. His flattened right palm landed on the wet grip and slid at once.

The lever rose between their working sides. Water reached Dane’s lower body seam.

Flat Hands still had the waist-rail piece hooked under his arm.

"Your rail is short," Sella said through her teeth.

"It was a rail upstairs."

He shoved the clean crosspiece behind the lever and kicked the rope coil toward Mett. Mett caught it with both hands and started around Flat Hands’s waist.

"Shoulder," Sella said. "The lever wants up. Put bone over it."

Flat Hands ducked until the crosspiece lay across the back of his right shoulder and the wet lever pressed beneath it. Mett passed the dry loop under his left arm and around the far end, keeping cloth between rope and throat. Flat Hands laid his right forearm along the crosspiece to stop it rolling. His left hand stayed on the only grip he could close.

Across the fin, the second gate began hammering. Adults shouted over one another. A hook struck stone, then struck it again from a different height.

Orsa’s pole grated along an iron tooth. "Don’t take the grips! Get above the arm and put your hips--"

The rest drowned under a burst of water.

The first lever surged upward as Flat Hands dropped his weight over it. The clean crosspiece slipped from shoulder to ribs, punching the air out of him in a bark. His right forearm skated sideways, and the lever flung Sella’s left elbow high enough to lift one boot.

Mett reached for her waist.

"Stone, not me," she snapped.

He drove his shoulder under the dry fin instead, letting Sella find the support with her hip and set her foot again.

One handspan below the lever’s notch, the retaining pin beat its wet ring against stone every time the gate moved.

"I can seat that," she said. "Get me down to it."

Flat Hands coughed and shifted the crosspiece off the bruised ribs. "Rope lower. Across the shoulder blade, not the neck."

The free adult with the torn palms pulled the loop down with her wrists. Blood from her hands entered the water. Dane’s tongue pressed against the underside of his open plane, but the inspection stair still shook with people above. Before his mouth could shape around the smell, the rack chain reversed across his grain.

Its buried hook tore out of the stair wall. The rack rose behind the first lever while Flat Hands and Sella were still under it, dragging Dane’s Door plane toward the old right split. Rod one scraped in its seated line. The blood smell thickened beneath his lid, close enough for Coffin warmth to gather at both open corners.

"Last hook is free," Vera shouted. "It’s turning into the stair again."

Dane lowered the corner the chain expected and opened the lower sound edge against the dry base of the fin. The wet lash followed the changed slope while the rack was already moving. Iron tore a new shallow line across his plane, struck the dry base, and lost its worker’s curve. Kril cut the stretched link before the hook could return to water.

The rack hit the floor in pieces. Dane kept his plane open while the blood passed beneath it.

At the second front, a long tool clattered away. Someone yelled that their knee had the load; someone else answered from too far left. Bodies collided. The gate arm struck once and stopped short of completing its familiar return.

Flat Hands leaned again.

This time the rising lever drove through rope into his shoulder and hips. His flattened hand supplied no grip. The forearm kept the crosspiece from rolling while his left fist shook on wet iron.

Sella hung all her weight from her left side. The lever came down by a finger.

Then another.

The dry retaining pin touched the notch.

The returned stroke hit before she could push it home. Her right forearm jumped against its binding, three fingers still open. She put her left thumb on the pin head and struck it with the heel of her left palm.

Stone accepted iron.

The gate dropped into its diversion channel with a blow that ran through Dane’s wheels. Water stopped climbing the inspection stair. Above, the roots kept clicking, but none tore free.

Flat Hands remained folded over the crosspiece. Each breath caught against the right ribs before it got out.

"Shoulder?" Ada called from the maintenance stair.

"Attached. Busy."

He kept it pinned to the lever.

The second gate shrieked across the square.

Dry rope rasped over the gate arm. Two adults collided hard enough to knock the breath from each other.

"Your shoulder’s too high," Orsa called.

A gate hook ripped the pole from between them and sent it skittering into the current.

Orsa stayed on the wet side of the fin, her short stump jammed beneath the pivot. "Lower than that. If it catches your neck, let the gate have the rope."

The arm bore down on her pole. Her straight left leg scraped across stone and held.

Brant called from beside Dane, "Pressure falls after the double strike. You have one long pull, then it comes back harder."

Rope slipped lower around one body. A forearm struck iron above the gate arm, and bare knees splashed close enough for a heel to knock the dry pin toward the notch.

The double strike came.

They hauled during the falling pressure. A body hit water. The pin rang once, missed, and chipped the nail from the kicker’s big toe.

The return loaded Orsa’s pole until the wood began to split.

Dane heard the second attempt in breath, rope, and bare heel. The pin struck iron. The gate settled one notch lower, rejected it, then dropped again as the adults changed height without waiting for another order.

The second dry notch caught.

Orsa’s pole came free in two pieces. She stayed where she was, holding the wet fragment away from the next stroke.

Water still rose around Dane, slower now, as the first diversion ran beneath Flat Hands with a steady buried roar. The second coughed stones, cleared, and began carrying the square’s backwash away.

Above the inspection stair, an adult shouted down, "Thirty-four above the low rail. Your four are the only ones below it. First roots are tied. Second bed lost one tray. Third is still drinking."

Flat Hands shifted one boot. The lever tested the crosspiece against his bruised shoulder and remained in its dry notch.

Sella pressed her right forearm back against her chest. Her left hand stayed on the retaining pin.

The woman with torn palms sat on the high step and wrapped one hand with the other wrist. The adults at the second gate recovered their lost rope but left the hook where the water had taken it. Nobody reached for a wet grip.

Three breaths moved through the square while the roots clicked overhead.

On the fourth, the water beneath Dane went still.

Brant lifted his head. "That isn’t relief."

The silent spillway opened.

Its first blow struck beyond the stone fin and drove air through every crack in the square. The two seated gates convulsed in their dry notches. Flat Hands went to one knee under the crosspiece. Sella’s pin held. Across the chamber, the second crew screamed as their line snapped tight, but the second notch held too.

Then Torven forced all three spillway mouths wide together.

Water hit from three separated directions. The impacts swallowed Vera’s attempt to name the fins; her voice cut off when the first wall crossed between her and Dane. Orsa’s shout reached him once through stone and again through the water.

The inspection stair remained open behind Dane.

Everything else in the square became current.