Chapter 377 - 377: The Yoke

The north stairs smelled of old bronze and wet rope.

Cynthia took the lamp.

Mesterica took the left wall.

Rigel told the two complainers to stay on the landing and shout if anyone came up smiling.

Erna came anyway, hammer on her belt.

"If that bell moves I want to see what it's sitting on," she said. "You lot look at enemies. I look at fixtures."

The bell chamber was open to the night on three sides.

The royal bell hung crooked on a wooden yoke that should have been locked.

It was not locked.

The bronze had turned a finger's width, enough to scrape the stop.

Cynthia held the lamp higher.

"Nobody rings this," she said. "Not since the flag changed. Father had the clapper chained."

The chain was still there.

The clapper sat in its loop like it had never been touched.

The yoke was what had moved.

Rigel put a hand on the wood.

It was damp.

Not rain. The same damp as the linen seam.

"Don't touch the bronze," Erna said. "Touch the beam. If the beam's been worked, I'll see it."

She climbed the brace like it was scaffolding, not holy wreckage, and ran her thumb along the join.

"This pin's been out. Recently. Someone turned the whole hang, then put the pin back wrong. Not a bell-ringer. A person who wanted the mouth to face the other way."

Mesterica looked out through the open arch, toward Riverbend, then toward the post road.

"Face it where."

Erna sighted along the rim with one eye shut.

"Not the yard. The north roofs. And if I'm not wrong, that line keeps going toward the old servant stacks."

From below, in the ice, the gagged woman could not be heard.

Up here the bronze still hummed, faint, like a cup with a finger on it.

Cynthia spoke without looking away from the yoke.

"If we cut it down, the fall takes this floor with it. If we leave it, it keeps turning. Those are bad choices. Give me a third."

Rigel did.

"Pin it true and wedge it. Erna, you do the wood. We don't ring it. We don't ask it the hour. If it moves after that, we know it's not the pin."

Erna was already pulling nails from her pouch.

"Hold the lamp still. If I drop this pin, I'm not climbing into the pit after it."

They held.

She drove a wedge, then another, then seated the pin so the bell could not turn without splitting the beam.

The hum stopped.

Just like that.

Mesterica did not relax.

"That was too easy."

"It wasn't easy," Erna said, climbing down. "It was carpentry. You people keep treating carpentry like a miracle."

A shout came from the landing.

One of the complainers.

"Lord Rigel. The ice-room guard wants you. The woman bit through the sacking and asked for the craftsman by name. Then she asked if the bell was facing the stacks yet."

Erna wiped her hands on her trousers.

"Of course she did."

They went down together.

Nobody peeled off.

The ice-room door was still shut.

The guard looked like he wanted a different job.

"She talked around the gag," he said. "I didn't answer. I came up the stair. I want that noted."

Rigel nodded once and opened the slot.

The quarry woman lay as they had left her, wrist bound, knee wrong, mouth bloody from the cloth. Her eyes were clear in a way that did not help.

"You pointed it at the stacks," she said. "Good. That's all we needed. You can wedge it now. The turn already happened."

Cynthia stepped in close.

"Say that again without the smile."

The woman did not smile.

"Bells are not for ringing. They're for aim. You aimed it when you found it. We only had to wait for someone who couldn't leave a crooked fixture alone."

Erna's hammer came up.

Rigel caught the haft.

"Not the head. We still need the mouth."

"Then take the mouth somewhere that isn't under my work," Erna said. "I'm done being named by her."

Mesterica looked at Rigel.

"The servant stacks. Tonight or we wait for morning and let her talk us into morning."

"Tonight," Rigel said. "Same group. No split. Calden stays on Blade. The new courier stays in the yard office. If the bell moves with the wedges in, we hear it from the stacks and we don't come back to fix it."

Cynthia shut the slot.

"Father's going to hate this."

"He can hate it in his own voice," Rigel said. "That's the arrangement."

They crossed the inner court toward the old servant stacks, lamps low.

The roofs Erna had sighted were dark.

A door at the base stood unlatched, the wood swollen, the latch plate pale at the edge as if a hand had worried it for a long time.

Mesterica put her boot on the door and did not kick it yet.

"If something in there asks a question, nobody answers. Not even to tell it to shut up."

Erna snorted.

"Speak for yourself. If it asks for a quote I'm giving it one."

Rigel pushed the door.

The dark inside smelled like old soap and flour.

Somewhere above, a foot slid on grit, then stopped, as if whoever it was had heard the hinge and decided to be polite.

—-

The servant stacks were narrower than the north tower and worse to fight in.

Old soap.

Wet stone.

That flour-sweet film on the first handrail, thin as dust, already smeared by someone who had gone up ahead of them.

Mesterica took the stairs first.

Cynthia covered the back.

Rigel kept Erna in the middle whether she liked it or not.

"I can walk a service stair without being herded," Erna said.

"You can," Rigel said. "You also get named every time you stand still. Move."

The first landing was empty.

A laundry line still hung there with two faded smocks on it.

One of them was damp.

Cynthia touched the cloth, then wiped her fingers on her cloak.

"This was used today."

A foot slid again above them.

Not running.

Waiting.

Rigel raised his voice just enough for the stairwell.

"If you work here, come down with your hands out. If you don't, stay there and get cut when we reach you."

No answer.

Polite silence.

That was worse than a threat.

They took the second flight.

Erna rapped the wall as she went, short knocks, listening for hollows.

Twice the plaster rang false.

She marked both with chalk and did not stop to open them.

"Tomorrow," she muttered. "If I still work for you tomorrow."

Third landing.

A door stood open on a dormitory that should have been cleared after the siege.

Six cots.

Three looked slept in.

A cup on the floor still had water in it.

Mesterica pointed at the far cot with her blade.

"That's not a ghost. Someone's been lying there long enough to warm the blanket."

The blanket was still indented.

Adult size.

No toys.

No child's marks.

Just a dent and a pale handprint on the headboard.

Cynthia checked under the cots, then the window.

The window latch was open.

The drop outside went to a slop roof, then the inner court.

"They can leave this way," she said. "So why wait for us on the stairs."

"Because the stairs are the point," Rigel said. "They want us looking up."

Erna had gone to the inner wall.

Her knock came back wrong again, deeper this time.

"This one's been opened from the other side. Recently. The plaster dust is still loose."

Rigel nodded.

"Open it."

She punched the chisel in, cracked a panel, and a black gap showed, shoulder-wide, running sideways toward the old king's annex.

The same cheap facing-brick trick as before.

Pretty on one side.

Empty on the other.