Chapter 1003: The Other Road Has People

The shutter across the gap opened wide enough for Jade to see a hand holding it. Human fingers, split at one knuckle, gripped the lower edge while another person pulled a rope behind them. The shutter tilted as the structure moved, and both people ducked out of sight.

The housing keeper had her own rope to manage. She told Jade to take Ty back to the kitchen before his loose shoulder made the outer rail choose a second down. Jade did not argue. Ty had gone quiet, which frightened her more than a complaint would have.

"I can walk if you keep that arm from following the door; my legs haven’t joined its argument," he said when she put her living hand at his waist.

"Your legs are welcome to keep their opinion. Leave the arm with me until Holl has a cradle."

She supported his elbow without pushing the upper bone into the socket. The sense of his forearm still seemed to hang near the blue door, though the bone traveled beside her. Each step made him look back at a place where nothing now stood. His right hand held the grooved rib against his chest; the bone had come free of the sill scratched but whole. At his throat, the Angelic collar kept drawing toward the wheel-cut rib in Dimitri’s custody. The Reaper’s ring beside it remained cold.

At the shear, Nessa and the housing keeper watched the occupied doors around the bend while two crew members fetched longer waist lines. The black cord remained uncut. Nessa’s city had gained no relief, and nobody thanked her for it.

At the kitchen hatch, Solla had cleared the center floor. Forty-one usable bowls sat under their bar, but the dinner pot remained locked beside the stove. Dey stood by a narrow window with a chalked slate and a fistful of pebbles. He put down one pebble whenever a room answered the flag.

"Rooms one, two, and three answered after the bell. Six and five are out. Four hasn’t answered at all," he told Solla. "I threw a pebble at its window and it came back at me. The room’s turning the wrong way."

"You were told not to throw anything at a window while people might be behind it," Solla said.

"I used a pebble smaller than a pea. Holl threw a whole flag at them and you made him tea."

"Holl is older and got pulled inside by a skeleton. His reward was not tea." Solla saw Ty leaning against Jade. "Though I may owe him a cup after all."

Holl came from the pantry with the teaching stake and the open throw cradle he had used before. He looked at Ty’s shoulder once and set the cradle on a clear section of rail.

"This is not a reset while the bell keeps changing," he said. "I can keep the upper arm from entering the wall. You will still feel it where it isn’t until we find a stable place to work."

Ty eased himself into the slats. "For once I would enjoy a bed that doesn’t have an opinion about my elbow."

Jade helped Holl strap the upper arm. She used her good hand and told Ty before she moved the elbow. Her cold right fingers closed after the strap was already fastened. She saw Solla watching and did not pretend otherwise.

"I followed the wrong picture into your kitchen," Jade said. "May I take the people past room four through the pantry if you keep this room steady? I can find the doors from the outside rail."

Solla tested the pot lid, then faced her. "I can open my pantry. I can’t promise anyone will come just because I do. Ask the housing keeper who is still there, and ask the families before you take a door off its hinges. I can give you two cooks and the dry-food corridor."

"Let me hear Dey’s count before I take anybody beyond room four; he saw which flags answered after the bell," Jade said.

"He stays behind the inner rail and speaks from there. If you send my child along the skin, you can explain it to me while I stand between you and the hatch."

Dey put another pebble beside the slate. "Four still owes me one. I heard voices there before the flag tore."

Jade accepted the count. The deathward pulled at her damaged eye when she looked toward the outer window. Its kitchen picture returned: the rack, the old cut catch, Dey reaching toward the table. She held the sight against the actual screw holes, the locked knife box, and the child behind the rail. She knew the danger in that picture had happened once; she did not know why her eye insisted on showing it again.

"Dey, tell me what you heard before those knives fell in the first turn," Jade asked.

"The carrier board scraped outside. A man had tied our cut catch to it," Dey said. "Then my knee missed. Today the scrape came from underneath the room wall, not the kitchen window. Everyone keeps looking at the empty screw holes when I tell them the floor is moving."

Solla’s face tightened at that last sentence. "He saw the empty rack too. I should have said it sooner when you came through the hatch. You weren’t the only one listening to an old fright."

Jade closed the eye and kept it closed. Dey’s count, the scrape beneath room four, and the missing flag gave her a route she could explain to someone else. She could still use the deathward later. She would not ask a child to stand beneath a rack that no longer existed to test it.

The housing keeper returned with Nessa. "Room four’s mother says she will bring her family if we keep the inner corridor open. Room three has an older couple who want their trunks. If we try to carry those, we lose the time to reach the last door."

Solla looked at her full dinner pot. "The dry-food corridor takes one loaded cart or two people abreast. My cooks can move that pot and feed the west brace tonight, or we can leave it and open the corridor for your families."

"Open the corridor and I’ll tell each family what we’re leaving behind," said the keeper. "I won’t claim they agreed before they hear it."

Solla stared at the pot a little longer. People on the west brace had worked through one meal already. Then she called her cooks by name and told them to pack bread, water, and whatever could go in a hand. One cook objected that the stew would spoil if the floor turned. Solla took the ladle from him and set it in its loop.

"It will spoil here whether we watch it or not. Take the bread. They can curse me for cold dinner after they are somewhere with a floor."

Jade went with the keeper and two cooks. Her right arm remained against her side. The first family had already chosen to leave their trunks. The old man in room three stood in the doorway holding a wooden box with both hands. His wife had packed only a blanket. Neither of them moved when Jade asked which one needed the waist line.

"This box holds our daughter’s letters from Rillhold," the man said. "If the room goes, I won’t remember half of what she wrote."

The keeper could carry the box or the spare line, not both. Jade gave her the line and took the box under her living arm. Its lid had a brass latch that pressed painfully against her ribs. The woman with the blanket followed the keeper. Her husband waited until Jade was beside him before he left the room.

At room four, the mother held the door shut from inside. Three children crowded behind her. The youngest had a sleeping infant tucked against his shirt, too carefully for someone who should have had to learn the hold at his age.

"The outer rail moved when we tried to leave; I won’t put my children on it again," the mother said.

"Solla opened the dry-food corridor behind the pantry," Jade answered. "It costs her the meal and keeps your children off the skin. The keeper can take whoever you choose first, and you can watch them reach the kitchen."

The mother kept her hand on the door. "You can carry the letters. I carry the baby. Take the older two with the keeper, and let me see them reach the pantry before I move."

Jade handed the letter box to the first cook, freeing her arm. The keeper took the older children on one line. Both reached the pantry. The mother came with the infant and the youngest holding her coat. Jade walked behind them, where she could see every step without asking her eye for a promise it could not give.

Through a gap in the outer wall, the other structure traveled beside the roadback. Its shutter rose again. This time a woman held it open while two people dragged a bench away from the edge. A child sat on the bench with a black strap around one leg. When the structures drew closer, the woman shouted across. The sound was swallowed by the two moving skins, but her hand pointed toward the child, then toward the narrowing gap.

The bench and black leg strap brought back the waiting deck beyond Parel’s carrier board. Jade searched for a face she knew. The woman shouted again, pulling the child away from the edge as their floor held its own turn.

The housing keeper wanted to draw a line between the structures. Nessa caught her wrist before she threw it.

"That bench is fixed by a living load," Nessa said. "If your line takes weight from it, someone aboard may fall while we get a handhold. Call to them first."

The woman across the gap waved both arms. A second adult behind her pulled at a wheel. Their structure shifted away from the roadback. The housing keeper lowered her throwing arm when Dey’s voice came through the pantry speaking tube.

"The far one is going toward the three yellow stake lamps. They were behind our chimney this morning."

Solla took the tube. "Those are Rillhold’s west approach lamps. I have carried food under them for twelve years. Dey, look through the dry window. Tell me if the middle lamp still has its black hood."

"The middle lamp still has its black hood," Dey answered. "I can see the crack in it too. The other deck will reach that line before we do."

Nessa leaned out from the housing rail. The lamps stood beyond the guide stones, close enough now for her to see the rope of public stakes leading toward Rillhold. The second structure had turned away from the roadback to avoid crushing the last outer room. Its new course cut across that rope. The people aboard had saved one collision by taking their loaded floor toward a city.

The room-four mother heard Solla name Rillhold. Her oldest child asked whether his aunt still lived there. She did, and the mother could not answer him while she tightened the infant’s wrap. Jade took the last of the family’s line and brought them through the pantry before asking anything else of her.

Ty remained in Holl’s cradle with his left shoulder held outside its socket. He tried to raise his right hand when Jade returned, then saw the people coming behind her and kept it on the rail so they could pass. The grooved rib lay within reach, scratched but present.

"There are people on both roadbacks. They turned away from our rooms, and now their deck is heading for Rillhold," Jade told him.

Solla set down the speaking tube. The stew pot knocked once against its bar as the roadback crossed its own gouged track. No flag had answered from the last room past the bend. She looked from the families in her pantry to the three lamps beyond the other deck.

"Holl, keep the skeleton where his arm can’t take a wall," she said. "Keeper, find out who is still at that last door. Jade, you walked the dry-food corridor with them. Will you take a warning to the outer signal rail?"

Jade looked at Nessa, who still guarded the shear without cutting West Four loose. She looked at Ty, who had held the doorway and could no longer follow her. The deathward pressed the old knife rack into her vision again. She kept her living eye on the lamps and took the red flag from Solla.

"Ask Dey to keep counting until the last room answers, and I’ll signal the lamps with what we can actually see," she said.

Across the gap, the woman by the shutter struck the frame three times. The first Rillhold stake lamp jerked sideways before Jade reached the signal rail.