Chapter 1005: The Cage Beside the Five Cords

The first wheel of Bera’s cot crossed the clinic doorway while the old stake turned under Todd’s shoulder. Talli stopped the cot before the second wheel reached the floor seam. Bera raised her hand from the blanket and pointed at the open gate across the yard.

Something was coming down the service rail above it. Cava heard a cage runner strike a joint, followed by the heavier knock of an account sled. The five cords still joined her stake to Rillhold’s walls. The one she had cut lay at her feet, harmless to Clinic Five now, though its tagged end had disappeared under the stones.

Talli put her hand on the cot handles, asking whether Bera wanted to go back inside.

Bera shook her head. She wrote on the board across her knees: East wall. Before the next pull.

Cava waved Talli on. Her ankle had come out of its strap, but it gave poorly when she crossed the yard. Todd reached for her and thought better of it. His injured wrist was open against his thigh. He held the Kavel half in his good hand, as if setting it down would let the ground claim it.

At the top of the gate, Nana appeared beside a freight cage. The Rillhold notch at Two Down had brought her across the hinged bridge and down a separate service stair. She had seen Griswald send the cage after her on the parallel freight rail. Neither rail showed where the tagged cord ran beneath the yard stones. Nana kept pace with the cage’s front shoe, metal hand curled away from the iron. The passenger she had freed followed with one arm held close to their ribs. Elithira came after them, thumb hard against her sword guard. The red wire beneath it had cut a fresh line across her palm.

Todd stared long enough for the stake to move against him.

"Greeny, your shoulder is about to lose that argument, so put your boot back."

He planted his boot again. "I was wondering whether you would open with my name."

"I did. You never liked the other one."

The cage struck the last joint. Its front runner rode over a cord stretched across the threshold, one of the five Cava had left intact. The runner pinched the braid into the stone. That cord led into the east wash wall, which shared a roof beam with Clinic Five. The line Cava had cut no longer pulled the clinic directly, but the beam jolted when the cage trapped its neighbor. A roof hook tore half out of its plaster seat. A boy carrying a water bucket dropped it and fled before the hook fell.

"Nana, stop that cage before its shoe takes the wall!" Cava shouted.

Nana threw herself against its brake handle. It turned under her living palm and caught one tooth. The cage kept rolling. Todd jammed the bent yoke tooth from his belt beneath the front shoe. Iron struck it, drove it flat, and stopped within a step of his foot. The cord stayed trapped.

Inside the cage, Jossel pressed his back against the bars to keep the runner from dragging him with it. Cava had seen his work marks on freight chases, though they had never met. A strip of cloth was tied around his forearm where a cuff had rubbed him raw.

Griswald stepped from the account sled behind the cage. He had his key in one hand. Cava recognized the seventh-account cuts on its bow before she looked at his face.

"Your people put that runner over an occupied wall line," she said.

"Your crew left the service rail open when the cage arrived," Griswald answered.

"So was the space beneath it. You brought a cage into it."

The wall cord pulled again. Todd’s yoke tooth bent farther, and Bera’s cot jumped against Talli’s knees. Cava saw the woman close her hand around the board instead of the bed frame. Bera wanted the cot moved, not an argument over who had brought the cage.

"Talli, take Bera around the east post and leave this threshold clear," Cava called.

Nana descended the three service steps. She and Todd met beside the cage, close enough to see what their separate journeys had done to each other’s hands. She touched the uninjured side of his wrist with her living fingers. Todd let her, then shifted back to the shoe.

"You’ve been holding this stubborn man up while I was chasing him," she said, looking at Cava.

"He put his shoulder under my post before I asked," Cava answered.

"That sounds like Todd. He’ll complain after the wall is standing."

"I’ve already started, and Bera still needs her bed away from this gate," Todd said. He leaned harder into the cage.

The recovery order slipped from Nana’s belt when she crouched. Cava saw her name above the instruction to preserve the blade holder. She picked up the paper with two fingers that still lacked feeling from the old crown work.

"Does Todd know you’re here to return me?" Cava asked.

Nana let her keep hold of the order. "He knows why I followed the rail. I wanted to find him. Your name told me where Griswald would send the next cage."

"That isn’t an answer. I carried his plates until people disappeared at the far end. If you drag me back, I can put names to some of them. I won’t go in his cage to make your reunion easy."

"You can keep your feet planted; I brought no key for you," Nana said.

Todd looked between them. "You could both hate the paper after we get it out from under the wheel."

Cava folded the order once, thrust it back at Nana, and went to the front of the cage with her.

Nana looked from the cot to Jossel’s cuff and then to Griswald’s key. "You brought the man you kept for route tracing. Open it."

"He knows the lower guide. The tag is moving toward a joint no one here has seen."

"Your runner tore a roof hook out over sick people, so forget the lower guide," Cava said.

Jossel lifted his chin toward the runner. "If he opens the door while this shoe is down, my weight leaves the rear of the cage. It will tip farther onto your cord. I laid freight chases. I know what this one is doing to the stone."

Todd glanced at him. "You could have said that before I ruined my last decent tooth."

"I was busy trying to stay off the front bars."

Nana put her foot against the service step and tested the cage with one hand. Jossel was right. With him pressed against the back, the rear runner barely touched its rail. The front had taken nearly all the weight. Griswald’s key controlled the door; iron still pinned the cord to stone.

Elithira reached the landing. The red wire drew tight beneath her thumb as the cage shifted. She kept the sword guard shut.

"I still have the authority behind this guard," she said. "I don’t know what it would take from that lock."

"Keep that guard shut, because Ty isn’t here to answer for whatever it takes," Nana replied. Elithira pressed her thumb harder over the wire.

Griswald watched them. "You would leave a man caged beside a falling wall to preserve a contract challenge somewhere else?"

Nana climbed back up one step until they faced each other over Jossel’s roof. "You have a key. You have a crew. You have six shifts of his work in your own ledger without a wage beside them. Don’t try to make Ty’s name the missing tool."

Jossel struck the side of the cage with his heel. "I can hear all of you. I choose to stay at the back until the cot clears. Then lift the runner and let me out. My choice does not give him another shift."

The roof hook fell. It struck the wall above Clinic Five, spraying plaster onto the empty patch Talli had just crossed. Bera’s board slid from her knees. The passenger Nana had freed caught it before it disappeared beneath the cot and returned it without taking the handles from Talli.

Cava used the moment to look along the five lines. Two fixed anchors still held across the yard. Another crossed beneath a floor cut. The trapped cord ran into the east wash wall beside the clinic; a fresh pull would crack their shared roof beam. She could cut it, but the other lines would take the recoil before she knew where their far loads sat.

"We have to get the weight off the cord before I cut anything I can’t see," she said.

Ruvan brought the red belt from the stake’s lower ring. "If I take this away, your post turns."

"Leave it there. Find two workers to clear the stone on either side of the runner. Hands only. No one reaches under the iron."

He went. Todd looked down at the tooth trapped beneath the front shoe. It was a piece he had carried through crossings that had already eaten most of his staff. He pulled the Kavel half from his good palm and offered it to Nana.

"Take the Kavel half until I can get both shoulders under the cage."

"Will it do something if I hold it?"

"Probably argue with the other half. That’s all it has done for me lately."

She closed her metal hand around it carefully, keeping the split index away from the crack. Todd shifted both shoulders under the cage’s side rail, holding his injured wrist against his thigh. When he pushed, the runner lifted only enough to show the cord’s flattened braid.

He thought of the first cell where he had met Ty. He had called a prison job safety because Kaiko and the children lived outside its walls. Ty had promised him a road away from Alexira. The planet had broken before either of them could choose who else came. Todd had held Ty up through the cold beyond it, and later, in the Demon King’s castle, two children had run down a corridor calling him Dad. He remembered the way their feet had kept going after the call, certain he would catch them.

Nana kicked the stone beside Todd’s boot when his shoulder began to slip.

"I have it; I lost where I was when the rail shifted."

"You can be somewhere else when you are no longer under iron."

The passenger climbed onto the gate’s side wall and offered a length of freight rope to Ruvan. Griswald’s crew had carried it for the sled. Ruvan knotted it around the rear rail, then stopped short of throwing it to Todd.

"My men can pull from the account side," Griswald said.

"Your men can wait until Jossel says where his feet will be," Cava replied.

Jossel moved slowly across the cage floor. He took his back off the bars to set both soles against the rear panel. The cord pulled under the front shoe, bringing its weight down despite the crew’s rope. Clinic Five’s shared roof beam gave a dry crack, and Talli hauled Bera the last few feet to the east post.

"Talli has the cot beyond the post, and I’m clear of the wall," Bera said aloud, voice rough from the cot. She pointed toward the wall above her abandoned place. "The shelf still has blankets under it, and nobody goes back for them."

Talli called the warning through the clinic. A worker emerging with an armful of linen stopped and let it fall inside the doorway.

Jossel watched until the worker moved away. "Now pull the rear. Keep me inside while it rises. I want to walk out, not be dragged across your street."

Griswald took the rope with his crew. Nana put her living hand on the cage roof, in Jossel’s sight. Todd eased the front with his shoulder while the men hauled. The trapped braid began to slide, inch by inch, without taking the wall with it.

Then the flattened yoke tooth broke. Todd stumbled into Nana, and the front shoe dropped. Jossel threw his body against the rear panel before the cage could pitch. His cuffed forearm struck a bar. He made a sound Todd had heard from workers trying not to alarm their families.

The rope held. The front runner stayed a palm above the cord, but no one could let go. Griswald called for another keyman. Nana kept her hand on the roof and saw Jossel’s injured arm go slack.

"I said I would stay until she cleared," Jossel told her through the bars. "She has. Don’t let him turn that into permission to keep me."

Cava lodged the broken tooth beneath an empty stone lip, clear of the cord. The runner settled into a shallow seat. Above Clinic Five the cracked shelf landed across Bera’s old cot mark, while Bera gripped her board safely beside the east post.

Griswald still held the key, and his crew held the rope. Nana stayed beside the cage while Todd moved his aching shoulder out of the iron’s path. Cava took the spare rope from Griswald’s account sled and dragged it toward the sled’s rear axle. "Bring your brake sled down and use your own rail to hold this cage while we free my wall," she told him.