Chapter 921 - 921: Todd Remembers Ty's Worst Joke

The wooden stair ate the first brass button from Todd's coat.

Cava had warned him about the boards dusted white along the edges. Supporting her injured side left him one foot for choosing where they landed, and the stair kept changing its opinion about which foot counted.

The marked board folded under his heel. A slot opened beside his ankle.

Todd dropped the button in before the step could close on his boot.

"The stair ate my least useful button first."

Cava kept one arm across his shoulders. The cloth around her ankle had turned dark where the restraint ring tore it, and her old captain brand pulled them down whenever they passed a wall built from quarry brick.

"Your coat has three buttons left and fourteen toll boards below us."

"Then Griswald owes my coat a route adjustment and an apology."

"He pays apologies through somebody else's mouth, which makes collection difficult."

Todd laughed once, and the movement pulled at the strip of skin a ceiling hook had taken across his shoulder. Cava shifted more weight onto her good leg without mentioning his reaction.

The next flight ended at a landing too clean for the stair around it. Iron bars divided the corridor. A freight guard sat behind them with his boots on a crate and a wax pay card pinned above his head. Nine unpaid shift boxes waited for a crown stamp.

He lowered his boots when he saw Cava's shoulder.

"The white lift takes one recognized holder at a time. Your runner enters the lower cage with her brand exposed and her ankle inside the hook."

The cracked Cross Link fragment pulled toward a narrow door behind him. Griswald's courier clasp tightened around Todd's fingers. Through the door came a weak tug that knew Ty's bones.

The lower cage opened beside Cava. Its floor carried drain grooves and a hook set low enough to catch an ankle.

Todd kept her arm over his shoulder.

"Your categories have already made one mistake before I reached the bars."

The guard pulled a copper strip from a speaking pipe. Fresh letters burned across it while the courier clasp pinched Todd's hand.

"Holder recognition comes first, and then you may complain about freight policy."

He held the strip near his lamp, sounded out the unfamiliar marks, and stopped at the comma before Todd's name.

"We could be useful to each other, Gobl, I mean Todd."

The guard pronounced Gobl like the first half of gobble.

Todd forgot the pain in his back.

Ty had brought that word into this world inside a dungeon cell. Todd had been guarding bones he believed could never speak. Ty named him a goblin before learning the word meant nothing here. The mistake nearly escaped again while Ty promised to help Todd's family.

No guard had watched them. The boss lay dead in another corridor. The only two people who carried that sentence were Ty and Todd.

Cava studied his face.

"You are letting one broken word hurt more than your shoulder."

"Did he mean that word as an insult when he said it?"

"He meant it as confidence, which was usually how his worst ideas arrived."

"Somebody sold a memory that neither of us offered them."

He stepped closer to the bars. The courier clasp pulled toward the copper strip now.

"Where did your holder phrase come from, and when did it arrive?"

The guard checked the pipe as though an answer might be stamped on the side.

"This one arrived when your broken blade touched the upper stair. Validation phrases travel with recognized holders."

"That word has never belonged to anyone else on this world."

"The route marks it as an informal companion term with high recognition weight."

Todd looked at the lower cage. A hook waited for Cava's damaged ankle while an office somewhere had filed Ty's worst attempt at conversation as friendship evidence.

That sounded enough like Ty to be insulting. When the guard pushed the white door open, the Cross Link fragment lifted Todd's hand toward it. A shelf moved beyond the cloudy panel, and for one blink he saw loose black fingers crawl toward the edge before the view changed.

Ty remained on the other side of that pull.

Cava removed her arm from Todd's shoulders.

"Take the clean lift while I follow the account I damaged."

Her injured foot touched the floor and folded beneath her. She caught the lower bars before her knee struck.

Todd pulled her upright again.

"You owe names and an explanation to everyone who died in that quarry, while this cage collects neither."

"The families I saved still need somebody alive enough to prove they escaped."

"Then surviving remains part of your debt, which ruins this sacrifice beautifully."

The guard slid a locking bar across the white lift.

"Recognition permits one holder, and your marked runner already belongs to lower sorting."

"She belongs to her bad decisions until she answers the people they hurt."

"Argue with Seventh after the freight floor receives both of you."

The name brought Cava's brand tight against Todd's side. She pressed two fingers beneath the old crown mark until the pull eased.

Todd unfolded his capsule staff, sending its first section into the landing roof and locking the second across the cage before he drove the third through the gap beside the white lift's counterweight.

The guard reached for the alarm handle.

"Breaking that housing freezes nine shifts and drops three assigned boxes below us."

Todd stopped with both hands on the staff.

Three boxes meant people until somebody proved otherwise.

Cava leaned across the bars and examined the chain running behind the counterweight. Quarry numbers had been scratched beside each link. Her hand moved down them, hesitated at one missing tooth, then pointed beneath the guard's crate.

"The maintenance pawl carries no boxes, but opening it consumes the tool used as weight and stamps the people inside as damage rather than freight."

The guard planted one boot over the hidden floor plate.

"That pawl is for staff, not freight avoiding a lawful sort."

"Your lawful sort begins with a hook aimed at her wound."

"Her brand bought that treatment before I inherited this landing."

Todd looked from the hook beside Cava's ankle to the guard's boots, still clean after nine shifts. The stamp had done the first hurting, and the guard used its age to keep his own hands clean.

Todd lowered the staff from the main housing. The three assigned boxes stayed on their chain.

He hooked the cracked fragment through the bars and caught the guard's crate leg. One pull dragged the crate off the maintenance plate. Cava drove the blunt capture hook between the bars and held his boot away while Todd jammed the staff's third section into the exposed pawl.

The landing bit down.

Metal folded around the staff. The third section flattened into a bright strip and disappeared through the floor. A maintenance cage opened behind Todd, barely wide enough for two people standing close.

The guard struck the alarm handle. The handle moved without ringing because Cava had wrapped its chain around the lower ankle hook.

"My report will put both names above the nine frozen shifts."

"Spell Todd correctly, and leave Cava out until she reaches those families."

"You cannot order which liability survives an audit."

"Then record the guard who called a wound lawful because his chair stayed clean."

The guard lunged through the service gap. Todd folded what remained of his staff across the opening. Two sections stopped the guard, though the missing third left the weapon too short to brace against both walls.

Cava entered the maintenance cage first. Todd followed with her arm across his shoulders again.

The white lift toward Ty began to close.

He pushed the cracked fragment into the gap before the panels met. The courier clasp scraped free of one finger, taking skin with it, and left a thin view through the cloudy door.

The copper strip on the guard's desk kept writing.

The guard glanced down and read the next stolen line.

"And how do you think that, Mister Skeleton?"

Todd remembered saying it after Ty nearly called him a goblin twice.

The route was copying the whole cell conversation in order, using each line as another password.

Cava pulled the maintenance lever. The cage dropped toward Griswald's freight floor with Todd, his shortened staff, and the clasp still reading him through the closing door.