Tarrow’s arm was the only thing keeping the gate from closing, which made it the most important piece of equipment we had and the least replaceable.
The ratchet clicked against the bone teeth above him. His left arm was wedged under the gate, stone from the fingertips to the shoulder. The living skin around it had gone tight and gray. Every click made his jaw set harder.
Pell held the gate’s upper brace with a length of rib bone. I had one hand on Tarrow’s coat, though my ruined palm could feel only pressure and the sharp little arguments of the blade fragment embedded beside Istren’s name.
Malk sat against the passage wall with his wrists tied. His caught boot was still under the gate. A silver line ran from its ankle into the dark below the inner doorway.
“Before we let the door eat anybody else,” I said, “tell me what that line is.”
Malk looked from the cord to me. “I don’t know.”
“That answer is economical. Try one that costs more.”
“I found it already attached to the gate. My boot caught the loop when the ratchet dropped.” He flexed his fingers against the bindings. “I thought it was part of the mechanism.”
Pell shifted the rib brace. The gate settled a finger’s width onto Tarrow’s arm. He gave a short, involuntary grunt.
“Hold it,” I told Pell.
“I’m holding it.”
The line ran through a narrow groove cut into the floor. It wasn’t fixed to the gate. I followed it with my eyes as far as the doorway, where it disappeared beneath the lower edge. The silver had been polished by use. That bothered me more than rust would have.
“Don’t pull it,” Venn said. He crouched beside the groove without touching it. His pale fingertips stayed tucked into his sleeve. “If it’s a tether, the other end may be attached to someone.”
“Or something,” Malk said.
“Your confidence is a comfort,” I said.
I used the tip of my knife to catch the line. My stone hand wouldn’t close around it, so Pell hooked two fingers under my wrist and helped me lift. The cord slid against the floor. It came taut, then stopped.
I waited.
Nothing answered. I lowered the line and felt it pull back—not from the gate. From beyond the door.
My hand went still.
The pull came again, faint and steady, like a person testing whether the line was caught. Malk had stopped watching me. He was watching the dark beyond the doorway.
Next
Vera and the crew will follow the responding silver line toward the ribs, where someone has signaled from beyond the gate.
“You’re not very useful for a man with an employer.”
“That’s why he sent me ahead.”
The line went slack. We all heard it settle into the groove.
Pell glanced at Tarrow. “We can cut it.”
Tarrow’s eyes stayed on the gate above his shoulder. “And let the door close on whatever’s down there?”
“We don’t know there’s anything down there,” Pell said.
“We do now,” Venn replied. He looked at the doorway, not the line. “Something tested it.”
The gate clicked. Tarrow’s arm shuddered beneath it. Stone had spread across his shoulder since the last time I’d seen him stand straight. I had no useful argument for asking him to hold on longer. I had plenty of practice making those arguments anyway.
“Malk says the inner door needs the fire,” I said. “If he’s lying, we waste a moment. If he’s telling the truth, Tarrow pays for the proof.”
“I didn’t say it would be safe,” Malk said. “I said the first fire opens it.”
“Convenient distinction.”
“I was told to bring Tarrow back alive. I wasn’t told what the door would do to him.”
That sounded possible. It also sounded like the sort of sentence a man rehearsed on the walk down.
I looked at Tarrow. “Can you get your arm free if the gate rises another inch?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you choose whether to use the fire?”
His mouth tightened. The urge had taken him before, pulling him toward hidden openings as if every secret were a wound he had to put his fingers into. “I can choose what I do with it. I can’t promise what it wants after.”
There was the honest answer. It didn’t improve my options.
Pell reset his brace and leaned his weight into it. The gate rose just enough. Tarrow pulled his arm free with a dragging scrape. More of the pale stone shoulder came into view, a rough seam running from the top of his arm toward his collar. He pressed his living hand against it and kept his eyes closed for a count.
Then he stood.
“I’ll open it,” he said.
Pell’s face changed. Not much. Enough that I could tell what he’d wanted to say and how hard he was working not to make it Tarrow’s decision for him.
I stepped between Tarrow and the inner door. “You get one attempt. If it pulls you forward, we pull you back.”
“You’re very sure you can.”
“No. I’m sure I’ll try.”
He gave me a thin, tired smile. “That’s almost reassuring.”
The doorway was made from fitted slabs of pale bone. Three shallow impressions had been carved at chest height. Each had the shape of a hand, but the center one was blackened at its edges. Malk said nothing. He didn’t need to.
Tarrow lifted his Saltified arm. I could see the tremor in the living skin above the stone. The fire beneath it showed no light. It made the air close to his arm ripple, like heat above a kiln.
He set his stone palm into the blackened impression.
The door took hold of him.
Not with hands. The bone drew his arm in by an inch, and the fire surged toward the seam between the slabs. Tarrow swore and tried to pull back. The stone of his shoulder scraped against the doorway. Pell seized his coat. I caught his wrist with my good hand and pressed my ruined palm to the bone beside it, trying to give him a brace that my fingers could no longer provide.
“Let go,” Tarrow said through his teeth.
“Of you or the door?”
“Either.”
I held on.
The first fire entered the carved impression. The bone gave a deep, dry crack. For a moment, the three handprints seemed to fill with the dark shine of wet marrow. Then the slabs separated, opening inward.
Tarrow fell back into Pell. A fresh patch of stone had climbed past his shoulder and spread along the side of his neck. He stared at it, then at me. His expression had the blank carefulness of a man trying not to count what was left.
I wanted to tell him it would stop there. I had no reason to believe that, so I didn’t insult him with it.
Beyond the door, a narrow shelf of bone curved along the inside of a vast cavity. Far beneath us lay a black, glittering plain. It was not sea water. Nothing in the world was sea water anymore. The black salt had swallowed the floor in a level, toxic expanse, and immense ribs rose out of it in a broken arc. One rib was wide enough to carry a settlement.
Venn leaned past the threshold. “The First Deity’s remains?”
“Part of them,” Malk said. “The client said the passage would reach the body.”
Pell looked at him. “You’ve never been here.”
“No.”
The shelf continued around the cavity and vanished behind the ribs. There were bootprints in its pale dust, leading away from us. They had been made recently. Beside them, the silver line slipped over the threshold and followed the same curve.
I bent to lift it again. The cord drew taut in my hand.
This time the answer came at once: three pulls, spaced evenly, each strong enough to make the line jump against my fingers.
A living signal, perhaps. A warning. A trick designed by someone with patience and a good supply of silver.
Behind me, Tarrow touched the new stone at his neck. Ahead, the bone shelf carried our only route toward the dead god. I could cut the cord and pretend the choice had been made for us.
Instead, I kept hold of it.
“Pell,” I said. “Keep the door clear.”
He raised his knife. Venn took the line beside me, careful not to let it slip.