Chapter 110: The Person Holding the Line

“Alden,” Silas said, as evenly as he could. “Set it down. Slowly.”

Alden lowered the watering frame a finger’s width at a time. He almost made it. Then a corroded fitting on the frame’s far end snapped off, dropped onto the stone edge of the bed, and bounced away with a bright metallic clank.

The bed exploded.

Something the size of a rat shot out from under the frame, flat and fast, with a translucent shell across its back like a shard of bottle glass. It went straight up the iron upright at the end of the bed as though the metal were level ground and jumped onto the next roof frame, where a long cracked pane hung half out of its seating.

The frame shook. The pane slid free.

Dagna’s shield was already there. She’d been two paces behind Alden, and her hand went up before Silas could shout, a pale pane of mana tilting above Alden’s head. The glass hit it, shattered, and slid off the slope in a glittering spray onto the bed beside them.

Two more glassbacks came out from under the frame.

“Skitters!” Silas shouted toward the gallery door. “Team Nine! Near end, warm bed!”

“Hold your ground!” Ferrow called from the adjoining bay. “Coming!”

Footsteps sounded beyond the wall. Silas glanced round to check where everyone was. Alden stood at the bed with his sword half drawn. Dagna was behind him with her shield still angled overhead, because nobody knew which frame the next skitter would climb. Silas was on the cleared path to the left, beside the rescued regulators and an empty salvage crate lying on its side. Forty paces down the gallery, Team Three had stopped working, and Leander was turning toward the noise.

The two skitters on the ground hadn’t committed. One was crouched at the edge of the bed, glass back twitching. The other had swung its head toward the place on the stone where the fitting had landed. It was still staring at that spot.

Come on, then. Listen to this.

On the path at his feet lay a small, rusted seed tray they’d pulled out and discarded as scrap. He took hold of it with Remote Grasp and dragged it across the stone in a short, sharp scrape, then tapped it twice against the stone edge of the path, clink, clink, metal on rock.

The second skitter’s head snapped round.

It came toward the sound, low and fast. Silas drew the tray away along the cleared edge, tapping it as he went, toward the crate lying on its side. The skitter followed, stopping every few feet to listen.

The skitter still by the bed broke the other way, straight toward Alden.

“Mine!” Alden said.

His first cut went into empty air. The skitter hopped left, left again, then sharply right, and his blade came down where it had been. It skittered round his boot and came back for another pass, and Silas saw Alden’s face change. The second time it hopped left, left again, Alden was already moving to its right. The flat of his blade met the shell as it landed and slammed it against the stone edge of the bed. It stopped moving, stunned, legs twitching.

“Dagna,” Silas said, without taking his attention off the tray. “Wall. Side, low. Between the bed and us. There’s nothing left on that frame overhead.”

The fallen pane had left that stretch bare. The first climber had wedged itself against the upright, motionless, and the other loose glass was farther down.

Dagna hesitated for half a breath, looked up once, and dropped the shield. It slid down and swung round, a slanted pane between the warm bed and the cleared path, cutting off anything else that came out from under the frame.

Another skitter shot out from under the frame, hit the shield, and scrabbled at it furiously.

“Holding,” Dagna called, watching for anything that went around the shield.

Down the gallery, something moved over Team Three’s heads. A loose pane on their stretch of roof had started rattling in its frame from the vibration. Leander moved his team beneath an intact crossbeam and warned them back from the rattling pane. Nobody rushed into Team Nine’s path. Silas could hear his clear instructions over the scratching from the bed.

The skitter following the tray was within an arm’s length of the crate now. The crate’s open mouth gaped on its side toward him, dark inside. Silas slid the tray over the lip and into the crate, and tapped it against the inside wall: clink, clink.

The skitter stopped at the opening and listened.

Then it went in.

“Alden,” Silas said. “Crate. Up. Now.”

Alden left the stunned skitter where it lay, took two strides, grabbed the edge of the crate, and heaved it upright in one movement, so that the open side faced the roof and the skitter tumbled to the bottom with the tray. Silas was already reaching for the salvage board leaning against the bed frame. He couldn’t have lifted the crate with Remote Grasp out here, not quickly, not the way Alden could. But the board was light. He swung it over, and Alden caught it and slapped it down across the crate’s mouth and put his weight on top.

Something inside scratched angrily against wood.

Ferrow arrived at a run.

He took in the whole thing in one look: shattered glass, Dagna’s shield, the skitter scrabbling at it, the stunned one by the bed, Alden sitting on a crate. He pulled a pair of heavy gloves from his belt, reached under the edge of Dagna’s shield, and plucked the trapped skitter off the stone by its shell as if it were a crab. He dropped it into a canvas sack, then the stunned one, then reached up and plucked the first climber off the roof frame, where it had wedged itself and gone still. He tied the neck.

“Anything else?” Ferrow asked.

Silas checked the dark beneath the frame. “I don’t see any more. Four came out.”

“And one of them’s in a box,” Alden said.

Ferrow crouched, looked under the bed, and stood. “Nest’s empty. Let the shield go, Korr.”

Dagna let it go and rolled her shoulder.

***

Afterward, they sat on the cleared path and drank water.

Silas rested his elbows on his knees. Maintaining that fine control while watching the bed had left him with a headache and less mana than he liked. There was dust down his collar, too, and the water tasted faintly of the flask.

He was also grinning. He stopped, then caught Alden grinning back at him and gave up.

“You heard it,” Alden said. “The clank. You heard it turn.”

“I saw it turn,” Silas said. “I was hoping it would follow.”

Alden glanced at the crate and grinned again.

Dagna was picking at her hair. There was glass in it, tiny glittering slivers caught in the braid from the pane that had shattered above them.

“I’m going to be finding this until next term,” she said. “Don’t touch it, Alden.”

Alden, who had reached over to help, froze with his hand out.

“Don’t pull,” Dagna said. “Pick. One at a time. If you pull it’ll go into my scalp.”

Alden picked, one sliver at a time, with enormous concentration. Dagna sat stiffly and let him.

Ferrow came back from checking the bed. He looked at Silas.

“Rooke. Good call stopping him.” He nodded at the warm bed. “If he’d lifted that frame, you’d have had the whole nest across the panes at once, with all three of you underneath. And you kept the path clear behind you the whole time.” He glanced at the crate. “That I didn’t expect.”

“They got it into the crate,” Silas said.

“It was all three of you. That’s the point.” Ferrow made a note. “Finish your beds. Safe side only.”

They finished. Two more trays, a crate of pipe brackets, a pump body Alden carried out on his shoulder with Dagna’s shield above him and Silas steadying the trailing hose so it didn’t snag. By the time they had the last bed clear and their haul stacked by the gallery door, the light through the roof had turned deep gold.

Ferrow signed their slate. “Assignment complete. Collection window’s open until the evening bell. East post has the court.”

Silas stood up. He checked his reserve before reaching for the box. Enough for careful work, provided he let Alden carry anything heavy.

Rooke noticed the nest. Ferrow had said it in front of everyone. Silas was going to enjoy remembering that, preferably while nobody was looking at his face.

He picked up Pell’s collection box.

“Right,” he said. “East court. There’s still light.”