We left the Godkiller with its ribs open and the Factor walking between Pell and me, which was the closest thing we had to a procession.
The ridge lay a day’s march across the giant’s exposed skeleton. There were no roads worth naming, only pale bone shelves, narrow bridges of calcified tendon, and the occasional settlement clinging to a curve above the black salt. We stayed high. Tarrow could not manage the steep climbs with his pinned shoulder, and the black ocean below was not a forgiving place to fall.
Pell kept the Factor’s hands tied in front of him. She had taken his belt, his knives, and the little brass whistle he insisted was only for emergencies. She kept the whistle.
“Could I have some water?” he asked around noon.
“You can,” Pell said.
He waited.
She handed him the skin. “Drink slowly.”
He did. His mask had a narrow slit at the mouth, an inconvenient design for a man who preferred giving orders.
Tarrow sat with his back against a rib while we rested. His good hand worked at the binding on his other arm, worrying the edge until Pell smacked his knuckles away.
“Leave it,” she said.
“It’s cutting in.”
“It’s holding you in.”
“I know. I can feel both.”
The white salt had crept higher across his shoulder overnight. The skin above his collar was tight and gray, but his face still belonged to a living man. He looked at it when he thought nobody was watching. I did the same with my hand.
My smallest finger stayed numb beneath the wrap. The stone cracks had spread across my palm, and the black letters of Istren sat among them like a note from a very rude creditor.
Venn checked the ridge against the map copied onto a scrap of hide. The Godkiller’s drawing had been a rough thing, a few lines and a split circle. It had been enough to bring us here. Maps were famously generous about everything after arrival.
“There,” he said, pointing to a notch between two spurs of white bone.
Pell looked at the ridge, then at the black salt below it. “That’s a long way down.”
“Not as far as it looks,” Venn said.
“That’s what people say before they fall.”
We climbed the last rise by a broken spine. On the far side, the bone dipped into a narrow hollow. A wall of fossilized vertebrae formed its back, with a shelf of white stone before it. The mapped circle lay at the hollow’s base: a dark seam under the ridge, almost hidden by a fall of bone dust.
Next
Someone went down the ridge passage before them, and Vera’s crew must find out who is moving in the darkness ahead.
There was no opening. Just a plug of smooth bone fitted into the seam, its surface polished by age or use. Someone had carved three shallow grooves across it. They did not match the Godkiller’s three-notched door, though I disliked how quickly my mind made the comparison.
Venn crouched beside the seam. “This is the mark.”
“Can you tell if it’s safe?” Pell asked.
“No.”
“Useful.”
The Factor had gone very still. Pell’s knife touched the back of his coat.
“You recognize it?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’re getting better at sounding honest.”
“I am being honest.”
Tarrow’s bound arm jerked. The red glow pushed through the cloth, a thin line along the wrist. He staggered a step toward the bone plug before Pell caught his good shoulder.
“Back,” she said.
“I am.” He braced his boots. His gaze fixed on the seam. “It wants me to open it.”
The same hunger that had pulled him at the Godkiller’s ribs. The fire had answered the map there; now it had found a door and was eager to be helpful. I had met helpful things before. They usually wanted payment in pieces.
“We go around,” Pell said.
“There isn’t an around,” Venn replied. “The ridge drops straight to salt on both sides.”
“Then we make camp and think.”
Tarrow’s arm dragged against the binding. He gritted his teeth and planted his boots harder. “If we wait, it won’t stop pulling.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I know what it feels like.”
Venn stood. “The fire may be able to open the seal without you forcing it with your body. If you let it—”
“No,” I said.
His eyes shifted to me. He understood the word and disliked the boundary it set.
Tarrow looked down at his arm. “I can do it.”
“You can also let it do it for you, and then we’ll find out what else it wants opened.”
His mouth pulled tight. “I know.”
He said it without looking away from the seam. There was no bravery in his face, just fatigue and the hard calculation of a man who had already paid for standing still.
Pell eased her grip but did not let go. “Your call. I’ll hold you if you ask.”
“I’m asking.”
She set herself behind him, feet braced against the shelf. Venn took the tether coil and looped it around Tarrow’s waist, anchoring the other end to a spur of bone. I moved to the plug. My stone hand was the one with the name, and the one least likely to feel whether the bone was about to split. A regrettable division of labor.
“On my mark,” I said. “Tarrow, don’t open anything past the plug.”
“I’ll try to keep my ambition modest.”
The fire brightened beneath his sleeve. He flinched as if it had burned him, and then his arm pulled forward. Pell leaned back against the tether. Her boots slid a few inches.
Tarrow made a sound through his teeth. “Now.”
I pressed the heel of my cracked palm to the plug.
The first impact was small. Bone clicked against bone. A hairline seam appeared around the circle. Tarrow’s arm seized; the red light ran from wrist to elbow, bright and quick, and his shoulder bucked against Pell’s hold.
“Again,” I said.
He pulled. The plug turned a fraction, as if something on the far side had finally agreed to be opened. The sound went through the ridge and returned from somewhere below, too deep to be an echo.
Salt broke across Tarrow’s shoulder under his collar. He cried out and folded at the waist. Pell caught him before his knees hit the shelf. The plug slid inward, leaving a black gap just wide enough to admit a hand.
My smallest finger brushed the edge. I felt nothing. I leaned harder, caught the bone with the hooked fragment still embedded in my palm, and dragged.
Pain came late, sharp and grainy. The plug shifted. Tarrow’s fire flared once more, and the seal rolled into the hollow with a heavy scrape.
The opening beneath the ridge was a narrow throat of bone descending into darkness. Cold air touched my face. It smelled of dry dust and old metal, which was considerably better than the black salt and only slightly more encouraging.
Tarrow’s glow died. He slumped against Pell, staring at the new white crust climbing above his sleeve. “Did it work?”
“It opened,” I said.
“That wasn’t quite what I asked.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
Venn looked into the passage. “If the pact’s method can make a body answer from outside a memory, then there may be a way to reach Oda.”
“There may also be a way to hurt her,” I said. “We don’t try it on her until we know what we’re doing.”
His jaw tightened. He looked like he had a reply ready and hated every version of it. Then he took the tether coil from his hands and passed it to Pell.
“Fine,” he said. “We find out what this is first.”
It was not agreement. It was a delay he could survive.
Pell checked Tarrow’s shoulder. The fresh salt had spread beneath the collar, a branching white edge against his skin. He tried to cover it with his good hand, then gave up when the cloth snagged.
I knew that small surrender. It wasn’t acceptance. It was simply the point where hiding became more work than looking.
We tied the Factor to the tether line, checked our lamps, and lowered ourselves into the passage one at a time. The first stretch sloped down through smooth bone, wide enough for us to walk bent at the shoulders. I went first. My numb finger caught the wall, slid, and failed to warn me of the drop at the turn.
Pell caught the back of my coat.
“Careful,” she said.
“I was being careful.”
“You were falling.”
“I was revising my route.”
She let go when my boots found the next ledge. The corridor widened below us. The bone dust there had been disturbed. A single set of fresh bootprints crossed it, headed deeper into the ridge.
They were too clean to be ours. Whoever had come before us had gone down without waiting to see what the door would cost.
I raised my hand, and the crew stopped behind me. Far below, metal scraped once against stone.