Chapter 175: He Knew That Limp

Dane Rook had never heard himself coming before. He was a mimic chest in a wagon's shape this morning, on the crown of the pier, the one stub of road still standing in Rookfall's storm cut, and from the far bank the Harrow, Lord Thorne's machine, was lowering a metal copy of him on a long arm in the rain. Being blind, he needed Tess to tell him what it was, and she did, with pepper on her breath: the wagon he had been the week she sold him. Its iron wheels touched down around him, three together and then a fourth, half a turn behind the rest.

He knew that limp. It was his.

The copy was wearing every wound he had owned the week he was sold, Dane thought. His own old mistakes were going to break it.

It was a frame of bars built one size up from him, and it had no floor. It settled until an iron wheel stood outside each of his. The rain quit his lid and rang on bars a hand above it, bars that hummed with the charge he knew from Istra's plates. Vera Pike got out from under in a gust of chalk and bad language.

"Vera Pike," said a voice off the machine, calm, with no breath in it. Lord Thorne never came anywhere himself. "Recovery is gentle if nobody interferes. The frame keeps with the chest wherever it rolls, and closes when it stands still. It must stand still in the end. It knocked once for me on the causeway, and I hold it to that."

So Dane did not stand still. He rolled a turn along the crown and a turn back, and each time the frame came shuffling after him late. It rolled the way he used to, all four wheels told to go at once. These days he told the late wheel half a turn before the rest, a cure he had learned against several walls. He could keep ahead of it, but every stop worked the last wedge looser in his splint.

"Under the belly, Vera," Tess said. "The drum's between the legs, that's what clacks. Five bands, stamped, and every one's him."

"I've got it," Vera said, with almost no voice. "There's bare axle when it turns, Dane, going from one of you to the next."

"A bare axle I can kill." That was Istra. Three of her six plates lay dead. Harl Fen was knotting cloth over her torn seam while she talked. "It needs a plate on it and all I've got. Bring it down to me."

"It's only got what I gave it," Tess said. "That's the Candle Row band. Front corner dead. Wheel on the cracked side half a turn late. Tips on a down slope. I wrote up his wounds. I was paid by the line, and somebody's had it made in iron."

That she had sold him was old news. He had never had to hear the goods read out. She had noted his wounds to stay alive near a thing that ate people, and later made a clean copy, because anything worth knowing was worth selling. Nate Parr had died for seven silver. Dane suspected his limp had fetched less.

What got to him was how good the notes were. They were also all Thorne had. Tess knew exactly what was wrong with that wagon because she had written it down, and Dane knew it better, because the limp had been his. That week he had told all four wheels to stop at once, and on any down slope the fourth had rolled on its half turn, swung him over his dead corner and put a wheel in the air. The drum held that week and not a day after it. Shapes, Tess had said on the causeway, and never a choice.

From the crown the paving ran down toward the far bank and ended at a broken lip, where the span had torn off. He was going to need that lip to the inch, so he threw a click down the slope with his lure and walked it out until it dropped off the end.

Bring it down, he thought. A crane truck on one of his jobs had once tried to keep hold of a pallet of shingles that slid off a roof, and the pallet had won. So he would roll down that slope like the wagon on the drum, every mistake in order, with the copy matched to him wheel for wheel. That wagon needed a wheel and a half of stone to finish stopping. He meant to leave it one.

He told all four wheels to go at once, and it was shaming how easily that came back. The dead corner dragged, the late wheel slapped round behind the rest, and he went off the crown a little sideways.

And the copy fit. Its wheels came down with his, three and one, three and one, until he could not tell his limp from its limp. One wheel too far and he would go over the lip inside it. Behind him three plates rang down the slope and three dragged.

"You see, Vera Pike," Thorne said. "The chest keeps its word."

Vera croaked his name, and pepper went past her. "Leave him," Tess said. "That's my page he's rolling. He's doing it on purpose."

Where the slope steepened he told the late wheel first, half a turn early. All four of him stopped together on wet stone, one wheel's width from the drop. The stop went through his cracked side, and the last wedge jumped half out of its slot.

He knocked twice, a wheel on the stone. No.

The copy's three good wheels stopped beside his. Nobody was inside it to tell the fourth wheel early, so it rolled on its half turn, as written. That took a wheel and a half of stone, and the pier had one left. The wheel came down on nothing.

It went over the way he always had, back end last. With no floor, the frame had nothing to carry him off in. The rain came back to his lid as a wagon's worth of iron hit the end of its arm below the lip.

The pallet won again. On the far bank the Harrow's three feet scraped, and the belly came down after the arm, low over the lip of the pier, until its furnace heat lay on his front boards. Up in it the drum began to clack over and stuck halfway. It had only ever let go of a shape by changing to another, and the wagon would not come off the arm.

Then pepper leaned out over his lid, and he felt Tess's arm go up. "There! It's turning, that's the axle, Istra, there!"

Istra reared. A live plate went up past his lock, and the hum that had ached in his crack climbed out of hearing as she put all of it into the axle at once. He smelled a motor burning out, and then cold wet iron did what it does when the middle of it goes hot. Five bands cracked, one flat bang after another.

His shapes fell out of the machine and went past the lip, and he knew each by its note: a lid with teeth, a door, the coffin on its long hinge, the stall in about forty pieces, and last the wagon, off the arm. He listened to every one of them land. Across the cut three feet scraped as the Harrow stood itself back up, with an arm and nothing to hang on it. On the crown Vera said one filthy, delighted word.

"That's my gold gone," Istra said. "I've a spark left. One."

"Five of you was four too many, cupboard," said Saint Rust, behind his teeth.

/==[ System: Copies Destroyed ]==\\

| Lost to Thorne: chest, door, coffin, wagon, stall

| Still yours: all five, and everything since

\\==[ Originals Only ]==/

A lord had spent real money collecting the full set of him, and the full set was scrap in a storm drain. And everything since, to be fair, included a roof with no door in it.

His limp was a bad one, and as of this morning nobody else had it. He rocked back from the lip to hear it, three wheels and then the fourth.

Thorne took his time. Dane supposed he was adding up.

"That was expensive," Thorne said, calm as ever. "Five recordings and the drum that held them. One should know what a thing costs. And I will remember which of you pointed, Tess Crowe."

"First thing I ever pointed at for free," Tess said, "and that's the one he writes down." Her quick feet had stopped.

Dane would not have put a dog on that man's list.

Senn Parr had kept to the near edge with Kril, above the floor the House was paving with rooms. Her bar knocked stone. "They're at the foot of the pier," she said. "Their doors are opening upward, like hatches, and the gate wheel's in that far wall, where I can't get a bar to it."

Vera came down the slope. Her wrapped hand found the splint and the wedge hanging out of it, went past them both, and lay flat on his crack, salt and all.

"Again," she said. "With a door in it this time."