The passage dropped steeply beneath the gallery, its brick walls sweating river water. Mercer went first with the lamp Mara had thrust at her, one hand on the rail and the other gripping her weapon. Elias followed close enough that his cuff chain brushed her coat whenever the stairs narrowed.
Above them, the footsteps crossed the gallery.
Mercer looked up through the open shaft. A strip of red light showed the underside of the floorboards. Someone moved across it with a measured, unhurried tread.
“Mara is going to meet them,” Elias said.
“She knows the upper route.”
“She knows the old route. The person above knows what was added later.”
The stair shuddered beneath them. A valve opened somewhere below, and cold water burst through the wall in a white spray. Elias caught Mercer’s elbow as her boot slipped. She struck the lamp against the bricks. The flame dipped, recovered, and showed the water already pooling across the steps.
“Keep moving,” she said.
“The lower tunnel floods from the basin.”
“I read the report.”
“You read the version written after the bodies were counted.”
He pulled against her grip and pointed to a narrow iron door halfway down the stair. “That way reaches the dye floor. The tunnel runs beneath it.”
“Then open it.”
“The flood line may have locked it.”
“Try.”
Elias knelt in the rising water. His cuffed hands could not reach the recessed latch, so he used the missing fingers of his left hand to brace the chain while working the other hand into the gap. His face tightened. Metal scraped metal.
Behind them, a dull impact rolled through the mill.
“Mara,” he said.
Mercer glanced toward the shaft. No second impact came. The red strip of light had gone dark.
The latch gave. Elias dragged the door open, and a wave spilled over the threshold, carrying flakes of rust and a single red glass marble. It struck Mercer’s boot and lodged against the heel.
She picked it up.
“Jonah’s?” Elias asked.
“Your family’s, apparently.”
He looked at the marble without touching it. “Jonah planted them. Someone else taught him where to put them.”
“Who?”
Next
With Celia and Mara in the floodwater and Vale striking from the sealed dry room, Mercer must trust Elias to find the circuit before the chair forces Vale to stand.
Elias pushed through the doorway. “Ask the woman upstairs.”
The dye floor had once held vats large enough to swallow a truck. Now it contained concrete pillars, broken pipes, and a black current rushing toward the settling basin. The old drainage channels had filled quickly. Water covered the floor to Mercer’s ankles and climbed as they watched.
At the far end, a maintenance hatch stood open beneath a faded sign marked OUTFALL.
Mercer aimed her lamp toward it. A thin line of red paint ran from the hatch across the floor, disappearing beneath the water.
“Someone expected us to use this route,” she said.
“Someone expected you to bring me.”
“You were the guide.”
“I was the key.”
He moved toward the hatch. Mercer followed, keeping him within arm’s reach. The water reached her calves. Each step disturbed the surface and sent oily colors spinning around the pillars.
“You knew Mara was alive,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You knew she was in the mill tonight.”
“Yes.”
“You knew the room had been restored.”
Elias stopped. Water pressed against his knees. “I knew someone had restored it.”
“You came here anyway.”
“I came because the person who restored it wanted me here.”
“Why?”
He turned his cuffed hands palm-up. “Because the room remembers the people who built it. Vale remembers the chair. Mara remembers the escape. I remember the line that carried the vapor.”
“You also remember how to activate it.”
“I remember how to stop it.”
A speaker crackled above the vats. The sound was faint beneath the water and rain, yet the voice arrived with perfect clarity.
“Mercer,” it said. “The hatch is the wrong way.”
Elias shut his eyes.
The voice belonged to Celia Gant.
Mercer raised her lamp toward the gantry. The upper catwalks were empty. Rain fell through the broken roof in long silver threads.
“Celia,” she called. “Come down.”
“I have been down there. You found my ledger because I wanted you to find the parts that still had use.”
Elias’s expression had become very still.
Mercer looked at him. “You knew she was alive.”
“I knew she had not stopped.”
“Stopped doing what?”
The speaker clicked. Celia’s voice returned from another direction, nearer the eastern wall. “Keeping records. Keeping doors. Keeping men from deciding that their private crimes belong only to them.”
Mercer moved toward the sound. Elias caught her sleeve.
“The current is strongest under the gantry,” he said. “It will take your feet.”
“Then tell me where to stand.”
He pointed to three raised bricks beside a pillar. “There. Step where the mortar is pale.”
She crossed to them. The water struck hard against her thighs, but the bricks held. Elias followed, placing each foot carefully. The hatch waited twenty yards away, open and black.
“What did Celia do?” Mercer asked.
“After Mara crossed the outfall, Celia found her. Gave her clothes. Food. A name that did not belong to her.”
“And the chair?”
Elias stared toward the dark upper walls. “Celia had the plans.”
“From you?”
“From Vale.”
“You gave them to her?”
“I gave her measurements. I thought she meant to preserve evidence.”
The water surged. Mercer caught the pillar with one hand and held Elias by the chain with the other.
“Why would you restore the mechanism?” she asked.
He looked toward the ceiling, where Celia had gone silent. “Because Vale could only be made to tell the truth when he believed the room would tell it for him.”
A metallic shriek tore through the mill.
The hatch slammed shut.
The water rose another inch.
Mercer pulled Elias back toward the stair. “She’s trying to drown us.”
“She’s closing the lower route.”
“Those have the same result.”
A second sound followed: a heavy door opening above, then Mara’s voice, sharp and close through the speaker system.
“Celia, you should have stayed out of the upper line.”
Celia answered from somewhere overhead. “You should have stayed dead.”
Mercer heard movement across the gantry. A lamp flared above the vats, its light swinging wildly. Mara emerged between two pillars, one hand gripping the railing. Across from her stood a woman in a dark raincoat, silver hair pinned at the nape.
Celia Gant.
She looked older than the photographs in her ledger and exactly as Mercer remembered from the archive reading room: narrow face, careful mouth, eyes that measured the distance between facts.
Mara held a length of iron pipe. Blood ran from her temple.
“Drop it,” Mercer called.
Neither woman looked down.
Celia rested one gloved hand on the gantry’s control box. “The dry room has seven minutes before the vapor reaches the upper vents.”
“You’re directing it,” Mercer said.
“I restored what Vale built. The flood line, the chair, the timing. I placed the fourth candle.”
“Did you kill the victims?”
Celia’s gaze moved to Elias. “I gave the killer rooms that could be trusted.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the part you can prove.”
Mara came at her. Celia pulled the control lever. A section of gantry dropped between them with a violent clang. Mara stumbled, caught the rail, and drove the pipe through the control box. Sparks burst into the rain.
The speaker filled with static.
“Mercer!” Mara shouted. “The chair is running on a separate line.”
Celia backed away from the ruined box. “Vale will stand when the water reaches the seat.”
Mercer looked at Elias. “Can you stop it?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
He held up his cuffed hands. “I need the brass key.”
Mercer reached for her pocket. The key was there, cold and heavy from the dry room door.
Elias saw it and shook his head. “That opens the chamber. It does not break the circuit.”
“Where is the break?”
“Under the old dye floor.”
The water had reached her waist. The red marble slipped from her pocket and rolled across the surface, following the current toward the sealed hatch.
Above, Mara struck Celia again. Celia ducked, seized Mara’s coat, and drove her against the railing. The gantry groaned.
Mercer handed Elias the key.
He stared at it, then at her. “If I go down, you may not get me back.”
“Your choice.”
His fingers closed around the brass.
For the first time since entering the mill, Elias smiled. It was a tired, private expression, without triumph. “I have spent twenty years waiting for someone to say that.”
He plunged beneath the water.
Mercer watched the last gray edge of his coat disappear. Above her, the gantry gave way under Mara and Celia. Both women dropped toward the floodwater as the lights in the mill went out.
From behind the sealed hatch came three blows.
Vale was still alive in the dry room.
Mercer raised the lamp and waded toward the sound, while beneath her feet Elias searched for the wire that could make the chair release its dead man.