The Hand on the Line

The silver line ran ahead of us along the bone shelf, bright enough to see and thin enough to lose if the ribs shifted. I kept one hand near it without touching. The three answering pulls had been measured. Whatever had made them had control of its fingers.

The shelf narrowed as we went. Below it, the black salt lay smooth and level, like a floor someone had taken pains to polish. Pell walked ahead with his knife out. Malk came behind him, wrists tied, and watched the line instead of the drop. He had an eye for exits. It was the only thing about him I trusted.

Tarrow brought up the rear. His left arm hung stiff against his side. Salt had climbed over the hollow at his collar and reached the skin below his jaw. When he tried to flex his fingers, they answered a moment late.

“Tell me if it starts pulling,” I said.

“It’s pulling now.”

I looked back. His eyes were on the ribs rising from the salt plain. He hadn’t moved.

“Your arm?”

“The fire.” He swallowed. “It wants the ribs.”

That was a distinction worth keeping, if only because it gave us a chance to act before his body did. Pell stepped back and took Tarrow’s good shoulder. I moved close enough to catch his knife hand. It remained still, but the pale crystals at his neck had spread another finger’s width since the door.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“I’m walking.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“Yes.” He pulled his shoulder out of Pell’s grip. “Let go.”

Pell let go, but he stayed beside him. We continued.

The line slipped between two ribs and vanished beneath a shelf of bone. A length of it lay slack there, then went taut again. Three small tugs traveled up the silver, stopped, and repeated.

Pell raised his fist. Everyone froze.

A scrape came from the other side of the ribs. Then a voice, hoarse and very close, said, “If you’re going to cut it, cut it clean.”

Malk stopped watching the line. “There was another team?”

“No,” he said, before I could ask. “I wasn’t told there was.”

“Your client has a gift for keeping you informed.”

He gave me a flat look. It was nearly an admission.

The ribs were packed close together, leaving a gap barely wide enough for Pell’s shoulders. The silver line threaded through it. I went first, turning sideways and easing past a sharp ridge that caught my coat. On the far side, a woman sat wedged between the bone and a loose plate of stone. One leg was pinned beneath the plate. Her boot had split, and blood ran down into the dust around her heel.