Chapter 410: We Go With You

Ren folded the sketch around the two tags and gathered the bundles. Anvil came up the bank beside him, Balm riding on its strip of damp turf.

Bolt and Riptide stayed in the cove. The shell-crab followed Ren to the Worldroot and settled on bare ground beside his mother’s flowers while he unwrapped the stone.

He laid the coupling against a root. Death opened a thin grey cut in the bark; Life took hold along its edges as he brought the stone into the join.

The Water working became clearer as the root received it. Ren followed the passage to the worn contact and found the relationship he had felt beneath the nursery wall. When the course beyond could receive more, the passage gave up water faster. When that receiving part filled, it gave less. Its mouth remained unchanged.

He could follow how the cultivated working carried that change across the contact. Under the bay, he had felt only the result: his outlet drawing harder after Hadde finished the far join.

The earlier grafts had shown him how to spread a surge’s arrival and guide water past a closing seat. At the landward branch he had learned what a filling chamber did to its own route. Here the response continued through joined workings into a passage beyond the one being filled.

Ren kept his palm against the root until he reached the limit of what the coupling preserved. He could follow the connection within the stone, but the next part belonged to the living course still rooted at Ebbmere. Hadde had needed the farther readings to judge that course. He would still need them.

Life closed the bark over the last of the coupling.

"There. It’s taken, Ren," Kaia said privately.

He prepared the second join for the breather.

Its worn mounting edge lay beneath his thumb. That edge had made it unfit for the nursery’s seat, though the deeper passages remained intact. He turned it until the root met sound stone and opened the join there. The thin green light of Life spread beneath his palm.

Within its Air working, he found the connected openings and the response to pressure behind them. As that pressure weakened, the working altered the release through the passages. At Ebbmere he had followed the lingering push with his own Air, easing his adjustment as it fell. Now he could trace how the cultivated stone guided the exchange without someone tending each change.

He stayed with it as the breather entered the root, following the response until the join settled. Then he lifted his hand.

Only the tags and wrapping remained on the grass. Ren folded them away and rose. Anvil came with him when he returned to the cove.

— • —

He stopped to ask Eira for a little of the shell grit left along the cove bank. She offered to bring another mineral sample from her garden store for comparison.

At the landing, Ren moved the hollow vent block onto bare rock clear of the planted shallows. He left its passages untouched. Behind the broken end he formed a small chamber from plain stone, with a low water inlet and an air space connected to the block above it.

He fed water into the chamber. The rising surface pressed air through the block; an outward hiss reached his fingers at the vent. He stopped the feed while water still covered the chamber’s low inlet.

He held the water across that inlet, keeping the air’s route through the block. The two small mouths near the broken face remained clear.

Then he drew a little water back.

The surface began falling. Air continued outward at the vent, driven by the pressure still in the connected space. Ren paused the withdrawal before the chamber emptied and read the push again. It was weakening, though it had not yet reversed.

At the smaller openings, the flow pulsed against his fingertips. He guided some of it toward the broad vent, leaving all the routes open. As the remaining pressure fell, he eased his Air with it. The smaller flows steadied without disturbing the water he held below.

He withdrew the adjustment. The last outward push faded. When he resumed draining the chamber, air began entering to replace the water.

Ren let it empty and returned the water to the cove. He marked the point of reversal beside his sketch. The connected space had changed what the vent was doing; watching the falling surface alone would have missed the pressure still behind it.

Before Eira reached the landing, he asked privately for the result.

[GRAFT COMPLETE.]

[FOUNDATION: 58.6 → 59.3 MILLION TONS.]

[WATER: 13.1% → 14.6%.]

[AIR: 11.4% → 12.6%.]

She came down with a cloth bag and two dishes. In one she put pale crushed shell from the cove’s drift. The other held a spoonful of grey ground stone.

"Try them separately," she said. "Then we’ll know which it takes."

Ren placed the dishes in front of Anvil. The crab drew closer to the shell grit and began feeding. Along its rim, the old scorched seam was still visible, closed and hard. Ren remembered checking it before their return to the Burning Sea, watching Anvil brace on the leg beneath it while Balm waited on its shell.

When Anvil approached the second dish, it touched the grey stone, drew back and turned toward the grit again.

Eira removed the refused sample.

"We’ll leave that out."

She wrote on her sheet:

Shell grit taken. Second sample refused. Keep the remaining grit for Anvil.

Ren put the rest of the shell in the care bag. Neither dish had held any part of the sources he had grafted.

"Taking it doesn’t tell us what it does for the shell," Eira said. "Keep track of how much it eats. We’ll have something to compare when it grows."

Ren added the amount offered beside her entry. Anvil went on feeding while they moved to the water.

For Riptide, he opened a short channel along the bank, clear of the landing’s small wave chambers. Each wash entered at its exposed end and passed out through a lower opening on the sheltered side. Ren watched it clear without his working before beckoning Riptide in.

The serpent gathered within the flow. At its edges, fresh water joined the clear body while thin trailing currents passed on through the channel. Ren crouched to watch the exchange. Riptide kept its shape as the next wash arrived. Eira recorded where it settled; whether the channel helped its endurance would take longer to learn.

Bolt took fish from its usual feeding stock, made a quick circuit of the cove and returned. Ren watched it slow beside the landing before putting the remaining feed aside.

He lifted Balm’s turf from Anvil onto a low stone beside the water. Eira laid a fresh damp patch against its edge. By the time she packed her dishes, a thin fringe of moss had reached onto it.

"Keep both damp," she said. "I’ll look again when it’s had more time."

She left the sheet with him. Ren set the bag above the wash and helped her gather the empty dishes. Anvil was still feeding when she went back up the bank.

— • —

That afternoon Ren unpacked his field kit on the landing. He separated the travel papers from the equipment, checked the dressings and laid the carrying frame beside them.

Anvil left the feeding place and settled against the frame.

Ren shifted it to reach a fastening. The crab moved with it. When he finished and put it down again, Anvil followed once more, keeping close enough that he had to reach over its shell.

"You want to come on the next one?"

The attention through the bond sharpened. Ren felt Anvil’s insistence as he rested a hand beside the old seam.

"The last jobs didn’t have a place for you. Under those beds, I barely had room to turn."

Anvil stayed beside the frame.

"You mean the next fragment."

The response held. Ren crouched on the landing, his hand still on the shell.

Bolt came in from the open cove and circled twice in the water beside him. On the second circuit it stopped close to the edge. Ren reached down to it, and the bond carried the same intent.

He looked toward Riptide’s channel.

"If there are water routes, we’ll need someone ahead. You did that before."

The current gathered at the channel’s mouth. Riptide held there while he attended to it through the link, then moved outward into the cove and returned.

Ren brought a shallow travelling tray to Balm’s stone. He lined it with damp turf and placed its edge against the moss’s carrier. The fresh patch Eira had brought remained on the other side.

"There’s room to stay here," he said. "Or you can come with us."

He waited, then sat beside the frame while Bolt moved slowly below the landing. Eventually the green fringe on the fresh home patch drew back. Balm began spreading onto the turf in the tray. Ren kept the adjoining edges level until it had crossed far enough for him to feel its choice through the bond.

They had travelled and fought together before. Ward had carried Keep, Riptide had checked the water ahead, and Anvil had held the middle rock while the Riftfire struck its shell. If Ren fell, Ward was to take the group back without waiting for him.

He had trusted them with that work. Since then, his own training had continued through one assignment after another. He could arrange food and a place to rest for them, but they also needed practice and sources suited to their growth. The next time Verdance was threatened, he might need them somewhere he could not stand himself.

Ren ran his fingers over the frame’s fastening. Anvil shifted beside his knee, making room for his hand without leaving.

"I’ll look," he said. "If there’s a place we can reach and work you can do, we’ll prepare for it together."

He turned toward the two in the water.

"That means finding a route all of you can use."

He drew the frame closer and opened its fastening. Anvil put a claw against the rail, steadying it while Ren worked. He measured the loose strap against the shell, leaving room for the carrier above it. Anvil shifted to let him reach the other side before he set the strap aside.

Bolt moved off the landing’s edge. Riptide remained near the channel. Ren stayed with them while Balm continued onto the tray, occasionally wetting the exposed turf.

Before carrying the kit above the wash, he set the frame down again and checked where the tray could be fastened. Anvil came alongside it.

— • —

After dark, Ren went to the Worldroot alone and asked the System to search.

He sat against the trunk while it worked. The cove was quiet below him; he could hear water touching the landing. He was folding Eira’s care sheet into his notebook when the result appeared.

[SEARCH COMPLETE.]

[FRAGMENT LOCATED: BROKEN STONE RIDGES.]

Ren collected his lamp and followed the shore toward the northern arch. The survey arrived as he walked.

[PASSAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION. SURVEY IN PROGRESS.]

[FRAGMENT: BROKEN STONE RIDGES. DEEP WATER BASINS. HANGING AQUEDUCTS. PRESSURE-VENTING CAVERNS.]

[GROWN STONE CARRIES DEEP EARTH AND AIR WORKINGS.]

[DOMINANT LIFE: STONE-BODIED PEOPLE. ARMED GROUPS IN CONFLICT.]

[THE STRONGEST PRESENCE: AWAKE.]

[DANGER TO HOST: SEVERE.]

Grey light filled the arch when he reached it. He stopped short of the threshold and read the report again.

Earth and Air, both deep, in grown stone. Those were sources he needed for Verdance. The basins and aqueducts might give Bolt and Riptide a route through the fragment. They might also end at broken spans or passages too narrow to use.

He rested the notebook on the arch’s cold outer stone. Behind him lay the coast he had walked from home, with its landing and the others waiting beside it. Acquiring ground here would become another responsibility there. He wanted the sources, but he would have to learn what came with them.

The report identified fighting. It gave him no account of the groups involved, and nothing about the strongest presence beyond its being awake. He kept that uncertainty beside the danger rating as he opened his notebook.

He wrote a name above the description: The Breathing Ridges.

Below it he noted the questions the first inspection would have to answer. Water access at the entrance. Banks Anvil could climb. A return route that would remain usable with someone injured. The passage was still under construction; he closed the notebook and turned home.

In the morning he sat at the landing with the four gathered around him. He put the survey into ordinary words, describing the ridges, basins and aqueducts, then the armed groups and the danger. His rough sketch showed possible connections, with gaps where the report had told him nothing.

"The grown stone carries Earth and Air," he said. "Verdance needs both. There’s fighting there already, and I haven’t seen who holds the entrance."

Anvil stood beside him. Ren touched its shell, then indicated the two in the water.

"I’ll check the entrance first. Before we go farther, we need water you can travel through and banks you can reach."

He gave each a place in the proposed group. Riptide would read the water ahead; Bolt could cover a clear stretch quickly and return. Anvil would hold the bank where they needed protection, with Balm’s tray secured to its carrier and supplies kept within reach.

Ward would remain home. Ren would not plan to take the whale through unmeasured connections between basins. Keep’s network belonged with the home defenses, and Knock would stay with that group. Eira and Vesper had their own work. He would speak to them before leaving.

Ren looked back at Anvil. Ward had led the withdrawal before. This group would need someone else.

"If I can’t lead you out, you take them back."

He let the instruction pass through the bond and waited for the response. Anvil shifted to face the water, where Bolt and Riptide waited, then settled beside the frame.

Ren addressed the others.

"Anvil leads you back to the arch. Don’t wait for me."

The replies through the bond came separately. Ren waited for each before continuing. They still needed a route and practice together, but he could begin arranging the equipment around their roles.

He fastened Balm’s tray to the carrier, leaving the damp turf clear, and set the dressings where he could reach them without lifting it. Then he went up to put the travel papers away and check the passage’s progress privately.

When he returned, Anvil was beside the frame. Its usual resting place on the warm rock was empty. Balm had spread along the tray’s inner edge, and Bolt was moving slowly past the landing.

Ren knelt beside Anvil and brought the carrier closer to fit it.