The Body Beyond the Seam

I fed the bone wedge through the seam first.

Pell had tied it to the silver tether with two turns and a knot I trusted. The wedge slid past the pale membrane, vanished from sight, and left the line trembling between my hands. I pulled. The tether came tight, dragged the wedge back across the threshold, and settled without a fray.

“Again,” I said.

Pell gave the line a short tug. The wedge knocked against the far side of the seam. I felt the answering tap through the cord in my palm.

The membrane held still around the tether. Its dark veins had stopped pulsing when I spoke Istren. That gave us an opening wide enough for a line and a promise, which was a poor margin for error.

“Enough for the wedge,” Venn said. “A body will change the strain.”

“Yes.” I looked at him. “That is why I’m going.”

His eyes stayed on the seam. White had reached the joints of his fingers. He folded them into his sleeve before anyone else could notice, though the gesture came too late for me.

Tarrow stood behind him, his Saltified arm locked against his side. Salt had climbed his jaw. His good hand was open and empty. He watched the membrane as if it had made him an offer.

Pell looped the tether around his forearm. He checked the knot, then looked at me. “Three pulls means haul. One means stop.”

“And if you feel me go slack?”

“I hold.”

He didn’t embellish it. That helped.

I passed the tether over my shoulder and stepped into the opening. The membrane pressed against my coat, cool and damp in a way that had no business belonging to bone. For a breath it tightened around my ribs. Then the seam widened, and I was through.

The line drew against my back. Pell had taken my weight without jerking me off my feet.

I turned. The opening showed me the crew in a pale, narrow frame: Pell braced at the near side, Venn waiting behind him, Tarrow and the scouts farther back. I raised one hand and pulled the tether three times.

Pell answered with one.

The signal had crossed. So had my body. The line still connected us, taut but sound.

The chamber beyond was larger than it had looked through the seam. Bone made its floor and walls, pale arches rising around a wide basin of black salt. Far below, the salt plain stretched into darkness, dense and flat, with no water to soften its shine. The remains I’d seen from the opening filled the far half of the cavity.