Chapter 181: Sovereign Echo

The Sunken Kiln was beginning to fall apart.

Above the broken mouth of the sovereign engine, iron struts cracked and fell. Red sparks and debris from shattered route plates flew through the air as the black water of the forge cathedral rose. The incomplete sovereign echo had already disappeared into the white grid lines of Grand Meridian. It had burned a black mark on the wall map where it embedded itself, and small cracks were spreading out from that spot. The pipes lost their colored fire, and darkness swallowed the Kiln. Only the blue light of Nyra’s boundaries and the glow of the dying sovereign engine remained.

Tessa’s relay token lit up.

"The echo is in the common ledger," Marcus said, his voice breaking through the static. "It isn’t trying to force any doors. It’s getting the route keepers to take control. Elena says the markers in the lobby are changing."

Austin Veyron felt the mark call to him. It wasn’t with its usual want. It felt more like fear, a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him the echo had gone somewhere he couldn’t afford to lose.

DEVOUR wanted to follow it. It wanted to chase it through the route network and devour the red-black knot before it could root itself in Grand Meridian.

Veyra touched his shoulder.

"Name it."

"I want to follow it."

"What will it create?"

"Another hunt where I’m the only one who picks the target."

"Then we leave first," Sable said, lifting her broken crown shard. "The Kiln wants you to feel like it’s too urgent to decide with others."

Austin Veyron tightened his fist until the mark stopped burning. She was right. Every engine they had destroyed had tried to make the danger feel greater than it really was, so that he would devour whatever he wanted without anyone else’s input.

Part of the Kiln’s upper level collapsed. It crashed into the water, sending waves washing across the bridge paths.

The broker was still bound to one of the fuel frames near the mouth of the engine. His chest was clear of red lines now, but an iron restraint still held him to a collapsing piece of the Kiln, cut off from the rest of the team.

Ceryn sprinted to him.

"Do you want to leave?"

The broker looked up at the pieces of the Kiln crashing down around him. "I already told you."

"Tell me again."

He spat out water and looked toward the open escape path. "Yes. I want to leave."

The piece of platform the broker stood on began to rock, and the water roiled beneath it. Ysara was the first to reach him. She sliced through the iron that bound his ankle with a shard of her crown, and the broker fell against the railing of the platform.

"You saved a merchant who sold winter hunger," he said.

"I helped someone who decided they were not a price," Ysara replied.

The broker looked at her in confusion, then turned away. His ripped mask hung from one ear as he stared down at the water.

The Kiln let out a loud groan.

Tessa and Ceryn collected the clean route cases from the record gears. There were too many pages to carry them all. They left the red command lines behind to dissolve and grabbed what information they could about food, shelter, and water.

"We have to let the pressure out slowly," Ceryn said. "If the engine’s mouth caves in on itself, the outer platform will sink."

"Those forge conduits still have pressure." Orena pointed to three large, rusted pipes running along the wall of the Kiln.

Nyra held the debt chime and the pale splinter in two separate blue-black boundaries. Both started to shake as the engine began to die. Her face was covered in sweat, and her arms trembled from the strain of holding them apart, but her voice was calm.

"The collapse wants to suck in both fragments. If they enter the engine’s mouth, the echo will be able to gain a body through the route network."

"Can you keep them apart?" Austin Veyron asked.

"For some time."

"Then we’ll buy that time," Veyra said, looking at the conduits.

No one objected. They all began to move together, the way they had learned to on a hundred different roads. Orena went to the conduits. Rin stood guard on the bridges. Ceryn and Tessa made sure the route cases were secure. Sable helped Nyra keep the fragments apart.

Soot divers crawled out of the water, but their armor was shattered, with pieces from different divers mixed together. They no longer had Vordessa’s command to guide them, but the collapsing Kiln drove them in fear toward the exit staircase.

Rin shot arrows into the floor to warn them back. Orena prodded some of them away from the bridge with the end of her spear, careful not to push them into the water.

"We need the west conduit open," Ceryn called out. "It’ll send the pressure toward the dead lava shelf."

Red lines appeared on the conduit wheel.

THE LAST SOURCE TAKES ALL REMAINS.

Austin Veyron could see what the Kiln was trying to do. It wanted to devour everything that fell into the water, all of the fragments and all of their bodies as well.

He could devour the command to devour everything. That would include all the pressure building up, the fragments, the power of the ocean, and the sovereign echo’s call to the routes.

It would be easy to say he was helping, and that was exactly why it was dangerous. Every throne he had refused had claimed it was only trying to help. This throne was trying to help too. It was just hiding behind an emergency.

"Target," he said. "The last-source-takes-all-remains command. Not the conduits. Not the fragments. Not any of the people."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron wrapped his white root chain around the wheel of the conduit.

DEVOUR opened. The command tasted like a dying king trying to devour every chair around him.

THE LAST SOURCE TAKES ALL REMAINS.

He consumed takes.

The wheel turned.

A blast of steam and red pressure shot out of the west conduit toward the dead lava shelf. The entire Kiln shook as if the ceiling were about to cave in on them. But the engine’s mouth no longer had the power to devour whatever came into contact with it. The floating debris began to drift away from the engine.

The team raced to the outer staircase of the Kiln.

Vordessa was waiting on the landing.

Her body was cracked, but she wasn’t destroyed. Red fire shot out of one of her arms and sizzled when it touched the metal around her. The loss of the sovereign engine had made her unstable. Her eyes glowed red like embers, and the confidence she had shown on the bridge was gone.

"You destroyed my engine," Vordessa said. "All my hungers are scattered."

"You were trying to gather people into it," Austin Veyron replied.

Vordessa swung at them.

Her arm slashed toward Nyra’s boundaries. Veyra cut through the attack, and a shower of red fire and white sparks exploded across the landing. Sable thrust her crown shard into the space between Vordessa and the fragments Nyra was holding, forcing Vordessa back from her attack.

The broker picked up a piece of a route plate and threw it at Vordessa. It did no damage, but it distracted her from the team.

"You," Vordessa snarled.

"I’m done with you," the broker said. His voice trembled, but he didn’t look away from her.

The floor of the furnace split open.

Vordessa leapt back through a red conduit in the floor, and as it closed, she looked at Austin Veyron one last time.

"The echo will know who to look for, when someone thinks they need to save everyone."

The conduit closed, and Vordessa disappeared.

The Sunken Kiln began to collapse in on itself.

The team made it to the outer platform as the icebreaker’s captain pulled the rope taut to bring them across. Joren’s old crew on the icebreaker helped hold the rope tight. Even as boiling water rushed around them, they held on. Their hands began to burn from the rope, but they didn’t let go. Ceryn helped the broker across to the ship, and the crew took him from there and set him safely on the deck.

Nyra went next, with the fragments held between her hands. Austin Veyron was the last to cross, and he cut the rope so it wouldn’t drag the ship down with the platform.

The icebreaker made a sharp turn toward the outer channels.

When they looked back, the Sunken Kiln was disappearing beneath the black water. The outer platform tipped and slid under as well. One by one, the iron pylons that held it up dipped beneath the surface, and the bells that hung from them rang one last time before the ocean swallowed them.

Steam rose from the water and covered the sky.

For a long time, no one spoke. The crew stood at the rail, watching the steam drift across the ocean. Rin sat on the deck near the boiler and curled her tails around herself. Veyra rested her back against the mast and closed her eyes, still holding on to her blade. Austin Veyron noticed his hands were shaking, and he couldn’t make them stop.

"We should get rid of those cases," the icebreaker’s captain said, pointing to the route cases near the boiler.

"We need the information," Ceryn said. "Grand Meridian needs to know about the food routes, where the ports are, and how many people are starving this winter. We can pick out the copied commands."

Tessa went through the route cases and placed the clean ones in a cabinet near the boiler that stayed dry. The ones with any trace of red on them, she put in a locked iron chest, and she scratched three witness marks on top of it.

Ysara watched silently, her hands folded in her lap. The pieces of her crown were wrapped in a rag beside her. She took the pencil from Tessa and wrote across the top of the locked chest: NO SINGLE KEEPER.

"That’s a start," Veyra said as she read the words on the chest.

It had grown dark by the time Marcus’s voice came through their relay token again.

"Elena cleared the Freehold lobby," he said. "But the echo is taking over the common ledger. It’s showing people what they could do if they took control."

"What is it trying to do?" Veyra asked.

"It hasn’t given us a name," Nahlia said, her voice coming through next. She sounded like she was struggling to hold on to the relay token, and the noise of the Freehold lobby was growing louder behind her. "It’s asking each route keeper the same question."

A black-and-white command appeared on the relay paper.

IF YOU COULD SAVE EVERYONE, WHY WOULD YOU ALLOW OTHERS TO MAKE THE DECISION?

Austin Veyron looked at the command. It was so reasonable that he couldn’t find an answer to it, and that scared him more than anything the Kiln had done.

The echo wasn’t trying to devour a body.

It was trying to find someone who believed they deserved to be in charge.

Austin Veyron knew that Vordessa had been right about one thing. He was that person.

Veyra stood next to him and read the relay paper too. She didn’t say anything. She just stood close enough that he could feel her against his arm, and she waited until he stopped panicking.

The icebreaker continued on toward Grand Meridian.

In the Freehold lobby, the common ledger was beginning to speak to every route keeper who opened it.