Chapter 174: Istra Carries the Chest

Dane Rook had walked a great many refrigerators down a great many stairs, and never asked one what it thought of the route. Now it was his turn to be the refrigerator. He sat in the rain at the near end of the spur, which was all that still stood of Rookfall's causeway, one rib of stone a boot wide, reaching out to a pier in the middle of the cut. On the floor of the cut the House was laying stolen rooms toward that pier. Istra, who had promised at dawn to salt him where he stood, had offered to carry him over, a blind mimic chest folded small enough to lift. Dane had knocked yes, because he wanted across. He did not want to go as one more thing that got carried and had no say.

Istra stepped over him on six plates, three of them landing late. She was joined at the waist to the plates she walked on, and the late three were on the side of her old seam, where flesh met plate and had torn before. Her two middle plates slid in under his base, one from each side, and locked edge to edge. She stood up with him on that shelf, on the four she had left.

"I've drawn the charge off those two," Istra said, above his lid. "Some gets through. Sit where I put you and keep still. I can carry anything that keeps still."

Some got through. It found the crack in his side and ached there like foil on a tooth. Her charge drove the water out of wood and left salt behind, and it had scarred him that way once already.

Kril went first on his blades, which hold on wet stone where boots don't. He paid out a line behind him until a blade struck the pier once, flat. That was Kril's yes.

Harl Fen had ridden Istra's plates on a crushed shin until Dane took his seat. He could limp, but he was a careful man and went over sitting, a leg down either side.

"Eleven inches," Harl said, his voice going away over the drop, no higher than Dane's lid. "Nine, here. This is one rib out of five, cut to hold up a fifth of an arch, and they've got it holding up me. Mortar's gone to sugar. I wouldn't pass it for a shelf. It'll take her and the box once, if nobody stamps. I'd not ask it twice."

That made two structures Harl had failed that morning. Dane was the other one, and he felt for the spur.

Tess went over quick and light, trailing pepper. Senn Parr dragged one boot after her and carried the bar that could turn the gate wheel in the far wall and flood the cut.

Vera Pike would come last. She tied the bank end of the line round her waist, cursing the knot, and that knot had got more words out of her than he had since he broke the room open.

Then Istra stepped out. The spur was no wider than a boot, and to left and right of it the cut fell away to nothing. Below, the House's rooms were grinding along the stone toward the pier, and the warmth of their lamps came up past him on both sides. Anybody who fell would land among made beds.

Istra took it one plate before another. With one lifted she stood on three, and his weight had to sit over those three.

A dozen steps out, a plate skidded. It shot off the wet stone and hung over the drop, and the other three took everything.

She needed something to stand on. Before Dane had finished knowing that, his good side went flat and ran out long, a plank reaching for the place where her plate had nothing under it. It was the same eagerness that had built six people a roof at dawn and shut it on them, and it moved half his weight a foot past the edge of her shelf.

The shelf went with it, and Istra went with the shelf. Three plates shrieked on the stone, and Nate's knife slid the length of his tongue.

"Stop improving the situation, cupboard," Saint Rust said.

He dragged the boards back in. Her fourth plate found the stone, and for that one step the hum under him was not held back at all.

"Dane." Vera was close behind and hoarse. "Stop helping. Damn it, every time you turn into something she's got to learn you all over again. So be luggage, Dane. You're good at it. I say where to sit, you sit there, you knock when you're down, and that's the whole job."

Dead weight, then, Dane thought. He had been dead once already and did not remember it taking this much effort. But he had wanted a say, and she was offering the smallest one he had heard of: where a box sat, and one knock.

Every board he had came in, and he pinned the knife under his tongue so nothing in him could slide.

"Hinges," Vera said.

Dane put all he weighed on his back edge and brought his lid down once on its rim. Settled. A plate lifted and rang down late, and nothing lurched.

She called every plate from there: his lock, his hinges, his good side, the middle. He went where she said and knocked, and only then did Istra move. Vera never once called his cracked side.

They were past the middle, going by Harl's muttering, when Istra's old seam let go. Half his shelf dropped away from under his good side, and Istra leaned out after it, slowly, the way a ladder goes.

"Her seam's torn," Vera said. "The late side's dead, Dane. You've got one plate under you and it's live, with everything she has left in it. Crack side. I know. All of you, down on it, now."

That plate had stopped being foil on a tooth. It was the drill, and his boards wanted off it. His good side was going flat again, reaching out over the dead plate. The hunger found fresh blood on that side and wanted to be nearer to it. All three pulled the same way, out over the drop.

Where his weight sat was the one thing nobody could decide for him, Dane thought, and Vera had not been wrong yet.

He put the crack down on the plate and left it there. The charge came up it from floor to lid. He felt the wet go out of the wood and salt begin to flower in its place, as Istra had promised him at dawn.

Every live wire he had touched had thrown him off, and this did not. He did not brace against it, because a box that braces has moved, and he had moved once already. He lay on it and let the plate have him.

Istra came upright a little at a time, and stamped a plate down to stay there. He knocked once, lid on rim, the smallest knock he owned. Settled.

Three plates later Istra spoke, a few words to a step and no air to spare.

"I called you a seed," she said. A plate rang down. "Seeds make room for meat. I said that too." A second came down. "A seed doesn't break itself open to let people out."

She had picked the one spot where he could not so much as creak in answer.

Behind Vera, stone cracked, back where Harl had found the mortar gone to sugar. Then it went down in pieces, each with a long quiet before it landed.

"It's going," Vera said. "Istra, go!"

Istra ran on what she had left. It was three strides, and he stayed where he had been put for all three, with Vera's boots running out of stone behind him. Then the stone under Istra rang wide and solid. The spur went into the cut in one long noise, and Vera came in on the end of Kril's line with nothing under her last step, swearing.

The plate let him down on the pier, and Harl's limp went past him to Istra's torn side, where cloth ripped. A chest sits where it is put, and he had done enough of that for one morning, so he let the wagon out, four wheels, a bed and the crack.

Vera fitted the splint over it, though it had been built for a shorter crack, and drove the last wedge home with the heel of her hand. Under it the wood was gritty with salt and still buzzing, and he did not think the charge meant to leave.

"Machine's moving," Kril said.

On the far bank the Harrow, Lord Thorne's machine, had waited all night on three legs to collect him. Something heavy clacked over inside it, as it had on the causeway before it swung out a metal copy of his coffin. A long arm groaned out over the cut, and whatever hung on the end of it came down toward the pier rattling.

"That's a wagon," Tess said, and for once she put no price on it. "Long bed, four wheels. That's the Candle Row stamp. That's him the week I sold him, limp and all."