Chapter 51: Two Voices

Darian asked whether his father would be able to see him.

Seraphine had been explaining the arrangement of the rooms. Two beds, two sets of anchors, and a narrow connecting passage where Leo would maintain the warmth required for both workings. Tomas would remain with Lance. She would remain with Darian.

At the question, she set down the drawing.

“Only if you want him to.”

Darian looked at the wall.

He had spent much of his childhood waiting for his father to turn toward him. Waiting to be praised. Waiting to be told what mattered, whom to impress, which people were worth knowing and which could safely be ignored.

Now the thought of Lance watching him struggle made his stomach tighten.

“I don’t.”

“Then he won’t.”

“Will he hear me?”

“He may hear us speaking. We can keep the doors partly closed, but the passage must remain clear.”

Darian’s hand moved against the blanket.

“What if he tells me to keep going?”

Seraphine leaned forward.

“Your father does not direct your treatment.”

Darian nodded too quickly.

She waited.

Outside his window, someone was unloading firewood. Each dropped log struck the others with a hollow knock.

At last, Darian said, “I know that when you say it.”

“And when he speaks?”

He stared at his hand.

Seraphine let the question stand.

His mother sat near the hearth, mending the loose seam of a pillowcase. Her needle had stopped.

Darian swallowed.

“I don’t always remember.”

Seraphine pulled the drawing toward him again.

She placed a small wooden button beside the shape representing his bed.

“We will put this in your hand.”

He looked at it.

“If you need us to stop, you can say so. If you cannot speak, open your fingers and let it fall. I will be watching.”

“What if I drop it by accident?”

“Then we stop and find out.”

His thumb brushed the smooth wood.

It was an ordinary button, too large for a shirt. One side had been polished by years of use.

For some reason, its ordinariness steadied him.

“Will he have one?”

“Yes.”

Darian closed his hand around it.

“All right.”

The old meeting house stood between the northern farms and the main cluster of homes.

It had been used for grain tallies, winter gatherings, and arguments about grazing rights long before Leo became patriarch. The larger hall smelled faintly of old smoke. Two small rooms opened from a passage at the rear.

Neither room had been built for treatment.

By midmorning, the tables had been carried out, the floors washed, and the shutters repaired so they could be opened without hammering.

Elara inspected both rooms.

Then she sent someone for another mattress.

“The second bed is too thin.”

Tomas glanced up from the anchors he was arranging.

“Lance will only be here for—”

“The second bed is too thin.”

The mattress was fetched.

Leo arrived carrying a brazier in one hand and a bundle of clean cloths beneath the other arm.

He stopped in the passage.

Celine stood at the far end with her teacher, studying the spaces between the doors.

“Where do you want this?”

“On the stone square,” she said.

There were three stone squares.

Leo looked at them.

Celine followed his gaze.

“The middle one.”

“I was testing the clarity of your instructions.”

“And finding them wanting?”

“Only in small ways.”

She smiled.

It faded when he set down the brazier.

From there, he would be able to hear both patients. He would not be able to see either face without turning.

Celine noticed him looking from one room to the other.

“We’ll call the changes.”

“I know.”

“Tomas won’t expect you to feel what is happening inside Lance.”

“I know.”

She stepped closer.

Leo lowered his voice.

“I keep thinking about the last time someone told them to put their hands on a stone.”

Celine looked through the open door.

The fresh mattress lay beside a folded blanket. A cup stood on the table. No straps. No hidden tools.

No promise that pain proved obedience.

“They’ll know what we’re doing,” she said.

“As much as we know.”

“Yes.”

He nodded.

Celine touched the back of his hand.

“We’ve learned some things.”

He thought of Darian’s crooked signature on the slate. Of the treatments they had stopped. Of the council meeting and the frightened elder who had agreed to organize the roof over the basin.

They had learned some things.

He hoped it would be enough.

Catherine came to the meeting house after breakfast.

Edran walked beside her. She carried her staff in one hand and a small bag of smooth stones in the other.

Leo had expected her to offer to follow the treatment.

Instead, she asked where she could sit without being in anyone’s way.

“Near Seraphine,” Edran replied before Leo could answer.

Catherine inclined her head.

“I meant a chair.”

“There is one near Seraphine.”

She gave him a patient look that made Leo suspect the conversation had begun long before they arrived.

Edran’s mouth moved.

He was almost smiling.

Catherine set the bag on the table.

“What are those?” Leo asked.

“Something to count when I feel tempted to do more than I should.”

“Does it work?”

“I will let you know.”

She found his wrist.

Her fingers rested against the pulse there.

“You haven’t slept much.”

“Neither has anyone.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

He looked toward the open front door.

Marcus was speaking with the guards. Beyond them, the ordinary business of the valley continued: a cart moving toward the mill road, two children carrying a basket between them, a woman stopping to adjust the cloth around her head.

“I slept enough.”

Catherine considered him.

Then she said, “If you need to stop, you can tell them too.”

Leo looked back.

For a moment, he had no reply.

Catherine released his wrist and went to find her chair.

They brought Darian first.

He rode in a cart with his mother beside him and his younger brother walking close enough to hold the side.

At the meeting house, the boy inspected the room as though he had been charged with finding mistakes.

“His slate?”

“Beside the bed,” Seraphine said.

“The chalk?”

“Wrapped in cloth.”

“The good pillow?”

His mother placed it against the headboard.

The boy nodded.

Then he looked at Darian.

“I’ll be in the hall.”

Darian caught his sleeve.

For a moment, Leo thought he would ask him to stay.

Instead, Darian said, “You can go outside if you want.”

“I don’t.”

“All right.”

The boy remained long enough to watch Seraphine place the wooden button in Darian’s hand. Then he went into the hall and chose a seat beside the wall.

Lance arrived some time later.

The journey had exhausted him.

Two guards helped him from the cart. He paused at the threshold, looking toward the room where Darian’s mother stood.

She did not move to greet him.

“Is he here?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Could I—”

“Not now.”

Lance lowered his eyes.

Tomas took him to the other room.

Leo remained in the passage while they settled him.

He could hear the mattress shift. The scrape of a chair. A cup being placed on the table.

Then Lance asked, “Does he know I agreed?”

Marcus answered.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“And that he can stop?”

“Yes.”

Leo looked down at the brazier.

The charcoal had not yet been lit.

He wanted very much for this day to end with nothing burning.

Silas watched the carts from a stand of trees above the road.

He had been there since before dawn.

The iron ring lay wrapped in cloth inside his coat.

He could feel it even when he did not touch it.

A faint pulling sensation, strongest when the second cart passed. The red filaments seemed to turn toward Lance through leather, cloth, and distance.

Silas had once found that responsiveness beautiful.

Proof that an intention could be given shape.

Proof that old workings could be made to answer a living mind.

Now he watched two guards help Lance down and remembered the man's hand trembling on the black stone.

It means the joining is taking.

Those had been Silas’s words.

He had said them with confidence.

At the time, he had believed that confidence was part of mastery.

He shifted behind the tree.

There were guards at the meeting house. More than he had hoped.

He could not walk in and persuade Lance to leave. He could not carry him. Darian would be no easier to reach.

But the ring could call them.

He knew that much.

It had drawn their awareness toward the Hollow before. It could make them dream of returning. With enough force, perhaps it could make one of them rise and walk.

Silas took the wrapped ring from his coat.

A loose end of red filament pressed against the cloth.

He remembered the creature wearing the quarry worker’s coat.

The order had been to bring back the keeper.

What returned through the working had been pain and a burned knot.

Silas stared at the bundle.

Below him, Darian’s younger brother appeared in the doorway of the meeting house. The boy looked toward the road, then sat on the step.

He held a schoolbook unopened across his knees.

Silas looked away.

He waited until the boy went back inside.

Then he unwrapped the ring.

The treatment began with names.

Seraphine asked Darian to tell her who was in the room.

He looked at her uncertainly.

“You.”

“Yes.”

“My mother. Catherine. Edran.”

“And in the passage?”

“Leo.”

“Celine and her teacher are maintaining the enclosures. Tomas is with your father. Marcus is at his door.”

Darian nodded.

“We will tell you before each change.”

He closed his fingers around the button.

In the other room, Tomas asked Lance the same questions.

Lance answered in a hoarse voice.

When he reached Marcus’s name, he stopped.

Marcus waited.

“I know why you’re here,” Lance said.

“I’m here to help make sure you come through this.”

Lance looked at him.

“And afterward?”

“Afterward, you answer the council.”

For a moment, something almost relieved passed across Lance’s face.

A future with consequences was still a future.

Tomas adjusted the cloth around his wrist.

“We begin with the water.”

Leo lit the brazier.

Two shallow basins stood on low tables, one just inside each doorway. Seraphine and Tomas had already prepared the blessings. Leo’s task was to maintain the warmth while they loosened the attachments together.

Celine closed the inner spaces around the patients’ arms.

Her teacher settled the larger enclosure through the passage, linking the prepared release marks without opening a path toward the old basin.

The air became still.

Leo held a flame between his palms.

“Ready,” he said.

For the first several minutes, the working moved as they had practiced.

Seraphine spoke.

Tomas answered.

Leo changed the flame only when both were ready.

Darian felt the familiar pressure beneath his smallest finger. Lance felt it farther up his arm, near the hard ridge that had grown beneath his elbow.

The first pale strands appeared almost together.

Celine watched them through the openings.

One in each room.

Both bent toward the passage.

Her teacher placed his fingers against the outer anchor.

“Even.”

She nodded.

The strands lengthened.

Darian inhaled sharply.

“Cold.”

Lance’s response came a breath later.

“Burning.”

Leo looked toward Tomas.

“Hold,” the elder said.

Seraphine did not continue.

They waited.

Lance gripped his button so tightly that its edge pressed into his palm.

Marcus watched his face.

“You can tell him.”

“I can bear it.”

“That is not what he asked.”

Lance swallowed.

Tomas remained beside him.

“Is it increasing?”

“Yes.”

“Then we adjust.”

Leo reduced the warmth on Lance’s side.

Seraphine shifted the cloth around Darian’s wrist and waited for Tomas’s nod before continuing.

The two strands settled.

Celine felt the tension spread evenly through the anchors.

For the first time, the braid between the men became visible.

It crossed the passage in a pale curve.

Leo stared at it.

It looked absurdly delicate.

Something so fine should not have been able to endanger a valley.

Then it tightened, and both men cried out.

Silas had lifted the ring.

He had intended a small call.

Enough to make Lance look toward the road.

Enough to interrupt whatever they were attempting inside the meeting house.

The red filaments rose from the iron.

For a moment, they stretched toward the building.

Then they turned.

Not toward Lance.

Toward Silas’s wrist.

He jerked his hand back.

The filaments followed.

One touched his skin.

A cold line drove beneath it.

Silas dropped the ring.

It struck a root and remained upright, balanced at an angle that should have been impossible.

The red strands reached between them.

He tried to tear the first one away.

Pain shot up his arm.

From beneath the ground came a familiar pressure.

Not a voice he heard with his ears.

An expectation.

Bring them.

Silas stumbled backward.

The ring dragged across the leaves.

He understood then that the order had never depended upon his willingness.

If he could not bring Lance or Darian, he could still be used to pull.

Below him, a guard looked toward the trees.

Silas seized the loose cloth and wrapped it around the ring again.

It did nothing.

Darian’s button struck the floor.

Seraphine heard it immediately.

“Stop.”

Leo extinguished the flame.

Tomas broke his part of the settling rite.

The braid did not withdraw.

Celine felt the pull sharpen.

“Teacher.”

“I have it.”

The outer anchors began to hum.

Darian bent forward, his injured arm held rigidly away from his body.

His mother steadied his shoulders.

In the other room, Lance had gone white.

His button remained clenched in his fist.

Marcus reached for his uninjured hand.

“Open it.”

Lance shook his head.

“If I let go—”

“The work has stopped.”

“He said one must hold.”

Marcus leaned closer.

“Who said that?”

Lance stared past him.

“Silas.”

Tomas turned sharply.

“Lance. Look at me.”

The older man’s eyes moved.

“Silas is not directing this. Open your hand.”

For a moment, nothing changed.

Then Lance’s fingers loosened.

The button fell into Marcus’s palm.

The braid shuddered.

Celine felt something draw against it from outside the building.

Not north toward the basin.

West.

Toward the road.

“There’s another end,” she said.

Her teacher’s expression hardened.

“Leo. The outer window.”

Leo moved.

He could see the trees above the road.

A guard running.

A man stumbling out between the trunks with one arm pressed against his chest.

Silas.

Leo felt the first spark of lightning gather without willing it.

Then Darian cried out behind him.

He turned back.

The braid still stretched between the rooms.

Celine stood rigid beside the anchors.

Leo closed his hand.

The spark died.

“Marcus,” he said. “Silas is outside.”

Marcus met him on the road.

Two guards had already brought him to his knees.

Silas had not fought.

He held a bundle of cloth in his right hand. Blood ran between the fingers of his left.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

One guard stepped back.

Marcus drew his sword.

Silas looked up.

For a moment, both remembered the drainage opening.

This time there was nowhere to crawl.

“Put it down.”

“If I do, it pulls harder.”

Marcus looked at the bundle.

A red line emerged from beneath the cloth and vanished into Silas’s wrist.

“Then keep your hand still.”

“Listen to me.”

“I am.”

“The ring holds the outer turn. If they pull the two attachments apart without closing it, the strain will go into whichever one is weaker.”

“Your work?”

Silas’s mouth moved.

Marcus waited.

“Yes.”

“Then you are going to tell Tomas how to stop it.”

Silas looked toward the meeting house.

The windows.

The guards.

The open doorway.

There was no welcome waiting there.

He knew that.

For the first time in many years, he walked toward it anyway.

Leo wanted to strike him.

The desire was so immediate that he stepped back before Silas crossed the threshold.

He saw the man from the dungeon.

He saw Catherine’s face before the darkness took her sight.

He saw Celine on the ground.

For a heartbeat, he could smell that old place again.

Silas saw him.

His gaze flicked toward Leo’s hands.

Leo noticed.

He made himself open them.

“Tomas,” Marcus called.

The elder came only as far as Lance’s doorway.

His eyes went to the bundle.

“Keep him outside the enclosure.”

Celine’s teacher nodded toward a clear patch of floor near the front hall.

“Here. Do not cross the line.”

Marcus placed Silas where he was told.

The guards stayed on either side.

Silas’s arm shook.

“The ring must lie flat,” he said.

Tomas watched him.

“What happens when it does?”

“The outer filaments spread. You can catch them separately.”

“And then?”

“You close the return before you loosen the braid.”

“You made it so the return would close on the patients.”

Silas looked at him.

Tomas did not raise his voice.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Then explain how we close it elsewhere.”

Silas stared at the prepared slate in the passage.

“The release mark. Turn it.”

Tomas glanced at it.

“Which part?”

“The lower branch. It must face the ring.”

Celine’s teacher looked toward Tomas.

The old man considered.

Then he shook his head.

“Not the whole slate. That would turn the patients’ release with it.”

Silas breathed through clenched teeth.

“Then cut another branch.”

Leo stood very still.

Even now, the man was asking them to improvise around harm he had deliberately designed.

Tomas called for Oren’s reference drawings.

Edmund, who had been waiting in the hall to record the treatment, brought them at once.

Silas looked at the pages.

His expression changed.

“You found the book.”

Marcus’s voice was cold.

“Keep answering.”

They did not trust him.

They used what he said.

There was a difference, and Tomas maintained it with a patience that cost him visibly.

Silas described the lower branch.

Oren’s grandmother’s drawing showed a related release.

Celine’s teacher checked the direction of the outer pull.

Only then did Tomas mark the new line on a clean piece of slate.

Leo warmed the edge of a narrow metal tool.

Tomas cut.

Behind them, Darian shivered in his chair.

Seraphine stayed close.

“We are holding,” she told him.

“I dropped it.”

“I know.”

“You stopped.”

“Yes.”

He nodded against his mother’s shoulder.

Catherine sat beside the wall with a smooth stone in her hand.

She could feel too many possible moments ahead.

A guard slipping.

Silas falling.

An anchor lifting.

Darian’s breath catching.

She kept returning to the stone against her palm.

Edran stood beside her.

“You hear the room?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“Stay with it.”

She listened to Tomas scraping slate.

Leo breathing.

Seraphine speaking Darian’s name.

Ordinary sounds carrying an extraordinary amount of effort.

She remained where she was.

The new release mark took the outer strain when Silas lowered the ring.

Celine’s teacher enclosed it before the cloth fell away.

Red filaments sprang upward.

Three caught against the inner surface of the new fold.

A fourth remained inside Silas’s arm.

He cried out.

One of the guards caught his shoulder before he pitched forward.

Leo looked toward the strand entering his skin.

Silas was staring at it in horror.

“You didn’t know it could do that,” Leo said.

Silas shook his head.

“No.”

Leo looked back at the braid between the rooms.

“Neither did they.”

Silas closed his eyes.

Tomas placed the slate beside the ring.

The carved branch warmed.

For the first time, the outer filaments turned toward something that was neither a living body nor the working beneath the basin.

“Celine,” her teacher said.

She shifted the inner fold a fraction.

The strain eased.

Darian’s shoulders lowered.

In the other room, Lance began to breathe more evenly.

Tomas looked toward Seraphine.

“We have somewhere for it to go.”

She nodded.

Then she turned back to her patient.

“Darian. The first attempt has stopped. We can hold this while we decide what comes next.”

He lifted his head.

“Can you take it out now?”

“We think so.”

He looked at the button on the table where she had placed it.

“Will it hurt?”

“It may.”

His fingers reached for the wood.

Seraphine waited.

He closed his hand.

“All right.”

In the other room, Tomas asked Lance.

Lance looked toward the passage.

He could not see his son.

“Has he agreed?”

“He has.”

Lance swallowed.

“Then yes.”

Tomas did not begin.

“Do you agree?”

Lance looked back at him.

For once, he did not hide behind the decision of someone else.

“Yes.”

The second attempt began without fire.

Leo warmed the water through the basins, slowly, until Seraphine and Tomas each signaled.

Then he raised a small flame.

The braid lifted.

Celine felt its two strands settle into the prepared distances.

Her teacher held the outer ring.

Tomas completed the first release.

Seraphine followed.

Darian’s hand opened.

The button remained balanced against his palm.

He closed his fingers again.

“Still here,” he whispered.

“I know,” Seraphine said.

The line beneath his wrist brightened.

Across the passage, Lance’s attachment rose from the ridge near his elbow.

The two ends drew together.

For one dreadful instant, Leo thought they would knot.

Celine saw the same danger.

She shifted the space between them.

A small change.

Enough that one strand passed above the other instead of through it.

Tomas’s breath caught.

“Hold there.”

She held.

The outer filaments around the ring tightened.

Silas twisted against the guards.

“It’s pulling back.”

Leo could feel it now.

A pressure beyond the walls.

Beyond the road.

Something under the mountains refusing to lose what had been fastened to it.

He steadied the flame.

Tomas placed both hands over the release slate.

Seraphine completed the final movement.

The braid slipped free.

Darian made a sound that was almost a sob.

Lance jerked forward.

Marcus caught him.

In the passage, two pale strands hung above the slate.

No longer entering flesh.

Celine closed her hands.

Her teacher sealed the outer fold.

Leo extinguished the flame.

For a moment, the meeting house was silent.

Then the iron ring struck the floor inside its enclosure.

The sound was small.

Leo would remember it for the rest of his life.

No explosion.

No blaze of triumph.

Just iron falling against stone after it had run out of people to hold it up.

Darian stared at his arm.

The dark changes remained. His fingers were still misshapen. He could not suddenly stand or lift the basin or return to the life he had possessed before Silas’s work.

But when Seraphine touched the marked line at his wrist, it did not answer something beyond the room.

She checked again.

Then she looked at Tomas.

The old man was examining Lance.

His face changed.

He nodded.

Darian’s mother put both arms around her son.

He leaned against her and began to cry.

In the other room, Lance watched his own hand.

Marcus stood beside him, one hand still braced against his shoulder.

“It’s quiet,” Lance whispered.

Marcus said nothing.

After a while, Lance covered his face.

He did not ask anyone to comfort him.

In the passage, Celine’s knees trembled.

Leo caught her elbow.

She leaned against him without protest.

“Did we get both?”

Tomas looked up.

“The northern attachments. Yes.”

Celine closed her eyes.

Her teacher took the remaining inner hold from her.

“Sit down.”

She sat on the floor.

Leo joined her.

For several breaths, neither had enough strength left to be pleased properly.

Then Celine began to laugh.

It was a small, disbelieving sound.

Leo looked at her.

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why.”

He put an arm around her.

“You don’t have to.”

Silas remained near the front hall.

The red filament still entered his wrist.

Tomas approached after both patients had settled.

Silas looked up.

“You can remove it.”

It came out as a statement.

Then, quieter, “Can’t you?”

Tomas examined the line.

“We can try.”

“You’ve taken theirs out.”

“Theirs had been studied. Yours is new.”

Silas glanced toward Leo.

Leo had risen from beside Celine.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Leo said, “You will be treated.”

Silas’s face loosened.

Leo continued.

“You will remain under guard. You will tell us everything you know about the Hollow, the removed stones, and what you did to the people here.”

Silas lowered his eyes.

“Yes.”

“You don’t get to decide which parts we can bear to hear.”

“No.”

Marcus stepped beside him.

The guards changed their grip.

Silas did not resist as they took him to the prepared room at the front of the hall.

Only when he passed Darian’s doorway did he stop.

Seraphine stood at once.

Darian’s mother moved between him and the bed.

Silas looked at them.

His mouth opened.

No words came.

Marcus turned him away.

“Later,” he said. “If they want to hear you.”

The northern gutter was severed before sunset.

Leo did not go.

Neither did Celine.

Tomas sent his assistant with the mason, Oren’s drawing, and instructions that no other section was to be touched.

The work took less than an hour.

This time, when the block rose, no bell sounded from the valley.

No patient cried out.

The pale line beneath the stone flickered once and went dark.

The masons lifted the block clear.

They widened the gap, cleared the release channel, and set a heavy barrier across the old approach.

The basin did not move.

A runner brought the news to the meeting house.

Leo listened from a chair outside Darian’s room.

Across the passage, Marcus stood in Lance’s doorway.

For the first time since the workings had been discovered beneath the valley, they had removed one of the enemy’s paths completely.

Leo thanked the runner.

Then he sat back.

His hands were still trembling.

Catherine found the chair beside him.

“You heard?”

“Yes.”

“One.”

“One,” he agreed.

She rested her head against his shoulder.

For a little while, that was enough.

They reached home after dark.

Noctis was awake.

Elara handed him to Leo before asking a single question.

The little boy seized his collar.

Leo held him close and felt the small, steady warmth of his body through the blanket.

Celine sat beside the hearth.

Catherine lowered herself into the neighboring chair.

Elara looked at all three of them.

“Well?”

“Both alive,” Leo said.

“The northern attachments are gone,” Celine added.

“And Silas is under guard,” Catherine said.

Elara went very still.

Her gaze moved to Marcus as he entered behind them.

He nodded.

For several moments, she did not speak.

Then she set the ladle down.

“Does he know who we are?”

Marcus understood.

“Yes.”

“Does he know what he did?”

“He knows what he did.”

Elara looked toward her daughters.

Celine held out a hand.

Her mother crossed the room and took it.

Catherine reached for her other one.

Leo watched them.

He had imagined Silas’s capture many times.

Usually there had been fire.

Sometimes he had not been proud of what followed.

He had never imagined coming home afterward with his son in his arms while Elara stood between her daughters, unable to speak.

Noctis tugged his collar again.

Leo pressed a kiss against his hair.

The room smelled of supper.

Outside, guards walked the road.

Silas was alive.

So were Lance and Darian.

Tomorrow, there would be questions that none of them had been able to ask for years.

Tonight, Leo sat down beside his family.

Later, Marcus returned to the meeting house.

Silas sat beneath a lamp with his injured wrist enclosed in a small ward. The ring remained in another room under Celine’s teacher’s watch.

Edmund opened a clean book.

Marcus took the chair opposite the prisoner.

“We begin with the Hollow.”

Silas looked at the door.

“No one is coming through it,” Marcus said.

“You cannot know that.”

“Then help us make it true.”

Silas stared at the page.

At last, he spoke.

“It was not built as a dungeon.”

Edmund’s pen moved.

“What was it built for?”

“To keep something from finishing its passage into the world.”

“The thing you serve.”

Silas nodded.

Marcus kept his voice level.

“Can it leave?”

“Not wholly. Not while the lower stone remains seated.”

“The keeper-stone beneath the basin.”

Silas looked up sharply.

“You found that.”

“Yes.”

For the first time, a small part of the fear in his face changed into calculation Marcus could follow.

They knew more than he had expected.

Perhaps enough that telling the truth might do more than anger what waited beneath the mountains.

Marcus leaned forward.

“How do we keep it seated?”

Silas’s eyes dropped to his bandaged wrist.

“The basin is only the upper balance. There is a chamber beneath it.”

“Where is the entrance?”

Silas hesitated.

Marcus waited.

Then the prisoner looked toward the south.

“The passage where the girls were hurt.”

Edmund’s pen stopped.

Marcus did not move.

Silas swallowed.

“You will have to go back.”