The first fire had found its target before we reached the sternum.
It drew Tarrow across the chamber one dragging step at a time. His right arm stayed rigid from fingers to shoulder, a white stone limb held ahead of him as if someone had mounted a weapon there. The fire showed through the Saltification in faint orange seams. Each time it pulsed, his shoulder jerked forward.
Pell caught him around the waist. Tarrow’s boots scraped the bone floor, leaving two pale tracks.
“Let go,” Tarrow said.
Pell tightened his grip. “You’re walking into a dead god.”
“I noticed.” Tarrow looked back at him. The salt had reached the edge of his jaw, but his voice was still his own. “Vera.”
The three impressions waited in Istren’s sealed sternum. Each was wide enough for a hand. The smooth bone around them held no marks, no writing, no promise of a safe way to proceed. I had seen contracts with more helpful terms.
Venn stood nearest the silver tether, watching the pale line where it crossed the chamber floor. He had been quiet since we entered. His gaze moved from Tarrow’s arm to the impressions and stayed there.
“The fire is answering the pact,” he said. “It needs the taker’s hand.”
“Does the taker get to decide?” I asked.
Venn’s eyes flicked to me. “We have never seen this part.”
“Then keep your guesses tidy.”
The fire pulled again. Tarrow’s rigid hand scraped the sternum, close enough to touch. Pell hauled him back. His stone palm struck the floor and chipped a flake from the edge of one finger.
Tarrow made a sound through his teeth. His left hand clenched around the empty air. “I can stop it.”
“Can you?” Pell asked.
“No.” Tarrow looked at him. “I can stop my feet.”
Pell did not release him. Neither did he drag him farther away. I understood the distinction. It was the sort of distinction people made when the larger choice had already been taken from them.
I stepped close enough to see the impression beneath Tarrow’s hand. The bone there was darker, rubbed smooth by something that had touched it often. My own stone palm had no sensation left, but I could still tell when the mark of Istren in it warmed. It did so now, a dry heat beneath the black letters.
I could pull Tarrow away. That would be easy. The fire might take the next chance with less warning, or break more of him trying to get what it wanted. Easy decisions have an excellent record of becoming expensive later.
Next
With Istren’s chest open by a finger’s width and something moving inside, Vera’s crew must decide how to investigate before the other impressions—or the client’s claim on Tarrow—force the next choice.
“Tarrow,” I said. “If you put your hand there, I’ll hold you. If you refuse, Pell and I will get you back from the chest.”
Pell looked at me. “And if he can’t refuse?”
“Then we’ll find out.”
It was not a comforting answer. He took it anyway.
Tarrow breathed through his nose, once, then again. The orange seams under his arm brightened. His shoulders pitched forward. He dug his left heel into the floor and held himself there, quivering with the effort. The fire tugged; his body answered in pieces. First the shoulder, then his ribs, then the fingers of his good hand curling as if they, too, had been called.
“Vera,” he said. “Take my wrist.”
I caught the forearm just above the Saltification. The living skin there was damp. My stone palm could not feel it, but I felt the pressure through my other hand as he leaned into me.
“Don’t let it take the whole arm,” he said.
“I’ll try to preserve the parts you’re fond of.”
“That would be most of them.”
His mouth shifted toward a smile. It did not finish. He pushed his left foot forward, choosing each inch, and set his rigid right palm into the first impression.
The fire went quiet.
The change was so sudden that Pell loosened his hold. Tarrow’s weight dropped against me. Under his hand, the dark bone gave a small, dry click.
A line of light appeared in Istren’s sternum, no wider than a thread. It ran upward from the impression and stopped halfway across the sealed bone. The other two impressions remained empty.
Tarrow looked down. “That’s all?”
The fire pulsed under his arm.
The line widened. Istren’s sternum flexed around the crack. Bone shifted against bone with the deep grinding sound of a settlement giving way. The silver tether shivered on the floor. Venn caught it before it could slide toward the chest.
Tarrow tried to pull his hand free. It did not move.
His left hand seized my coat. “Vera.”
I braced my shoulder against his and pulled. The rigid arm stayed fixed in the impression. A white fracture opened at his collarbone and climbed toward his throat. The Saltification had been there already; this was new. Fine crystals spread under the skin like frost finding a seam.
Pell grabbed Tarrow’s belt and hauled backward. I held on to his wrist. Venn took up the tether and wrapped it once around his forearm, keeping it clear of the widening crack in the chest.
“Stop,” I said. I did not know whether I meant Tarrow, the fire, or Istren. “Tarrow, pull.”
“I am.”
He was. His good hand clawed at my coat. His boots braced against the bone floor. The fire held his stone arm in place and drew more light into the seam.
Then Tarrow leaned forward.
The choice was visible in his body: he stopped pulling against us and put his weight into the hand that the fire had fixed there. The seam opened another inch. A gust of air escaped from Istren’s chest, dry and stale, carrying a trace of burned marrow. The other two impressions darkened, though neither filled with light.
Tarrow’s collarbone whitened. The crystals reached the base of his jaw. His breath caught. He kept his hand pressed to the bone.
I had no useful speech prepared for that. I put my living hand beneath his elbow and took some of his weight. It was all the help he had asked for, and less than I wanted to give.
The sternum split by the width of a finger.
Beyond it lay darkness. No heart. No visible marrow. Only a narrow gap, black as the sea that covered the world, and the faint shape of ribs folded inward behind the opening. The fire withdrew from Tarrow’s arm with a last orange flicker. The impression released him.
His hand fell. I caught it before it struck the floor.
The salt at his collarbone had stopped spreading, for now. It had not retreated. Tarrow’s jaw worked as he tested it, then he swallowed and glanced at the crack in Istren’s chest.
“Still me,” he said.
Pell let go of his belt. He did not apologize for holding him. Tarrow did not ask him to.
Venn had one hand on the tether and the other hovering over the opening. He kept his fingers back. “A body can be opened without the mind crossing,” he said. “The line proves that much. It doesn’t tell us whether Oda can follow it.”
“It tells us where to keep looking,” I said.
It was a small answer, but it was a real one. We had crossed a living body through the membrane and found no route for a trapped mind. Now Istren’s chest had opened, and we had made the first change the pact seemed to want without letting the fire carry Tarrow all the way into it.
I looked at his arm. The first impression had accepted his hand. The other two waited beside it, dark and smooth.
“We leave those alone until we know what they cost,” I said.
Tarrow flexed his left fingers. “That’s your plan?”
“It’s the plan for the next few minutes.”
He nodded once. Behind the narrow opening, something shifted in the dark. The sound came from inside Istren’s chest, and the tether went taut in Venn’s hand.