The Hand That Came Back

The stair narrowed until Sella had to turn sideways to keep the carried door from scraping the wall.

Its weight dragged at her shoulder. The blue opening had shrunk to a narrow panel in her shadow, but the landing remained visible through it: Brannoc’s shield against the wall, Tassa’s dagger on the stone, Iven’s spell-light wavering above them. The three figures stood near the far edge. They had not followed.

Sella put one hand on the wall and kept moving. The footprints still split around her: one set pointing down, the other uphill. Each new step left a pair behind her, small and wet, though her boots were dry.

“Wait,” Tassa called through the opening.

Sella kept her pace. The voice came again, farther away now. “You said all of us should stay there.”

“I did.”

“Then why are you still carrying us around?”

Sella’s hand tightened against the stone. The question sounded like Tassa: blunt, impatient, and aimed at the part Sella had not said aloud. That gave it no more authority than the command in Iven’s voice had earned.

At the next bend she stopped. The door’s edge pressed into her shoulder. Through the blue panel, the dagger lay where it had fallen, free of the shield. She could reach it. She could also leave it there and keep the opening out of reach of anything on the landing.

Tassa had said to leave it. Sella was tired of treating every warning as a test and every test as a warning. She braced the door with her hip and pushed her arm through.

The threshold closed cold around her sleeve. The landing was near enough for her fingers to touch the stone. She hooked the dagger’s hilt and pulled. Its point caught in a crack. Sella worked it loose with two short tugs, then brought it through.

The blade came away damp, carrying a smear of blue paint along its spine. Sella wiped it on her trousers and checked the edge. It was Tassa’s knife, nicked near the tip from the fight on the hundredth floor. That detail steadied her more than she expected. She slid it into her belt, where it had ridden during half their expeditions.

On the other side of the opening, Tassa said, “You took it.”

Sella rested her palm against the door. “It was lying there.”

“Still was.”

The answer could have come from the real Tassa. It could have come from the route, which had heard the warning and watched Sella refuse it. Sella left her hand on the blue-painted frame until the cold seeped through her glove, then lowered it.

She turned the opening toward the landing. Brannoc stood beside the shield now, one hand on its rim. Iven’s light had drifted close to the floor. The figures had moved since she last looked. That proved there was movement in the view. It proved nothing about who, or what, was moving.