Chapter 1006: The People Across the Gap

The boy came across on a door.

Jade had waved Solla’s red flag toward Rillhold until the outer rail shook under her feet. No lamp answered. The first west approach stake leaned farther across the other structure’s course. Holl brought Ty out from the kitchen in the open cradle, his left shoulder strapped against his ribs rather than set. Ty could stand with the arm held there. Holl made him leave the cradle by the signal hatch in case the shoulder began following a wall again.

The door had been torn from its hinges and tied at the corners. Two people on the other roadback held the ropes while a third shoved it out over the space between them. The boy lay flat against it with both arms wrapped around a bundle of coats. He had no belt. Every time the far roadback tipped, he slid toward the edge and dragged the coats with him.

Ty caught the near rope with his right hand. The missing index finger left a gap in his grip, so he took a turn of rope around his wrist and put his heel against the signal hatch. Jade grabbed the other near corner. Across from them, the woman who had pushed the door out kept her feet hooked into a window frame. She shouted something, but the bell behind Ty swallowed it.

The two roadbacks came close enough for their roofs to scrape. Clay fell from the underside of the far one. Ty looked for a second landing place and found a row of people hanging from a stair that had become a wall.

“There’s room at this hatch for the boy,” Jade called. “Keep the rest of them on your stair until we have him clear.”

The woman either heard or guessed what Jade meant. She pulled one rope shorter. The door swung. Ty drew the boy in by the coat bundle, then caught a sleeve before it tore. A little girl looked up from inside the coats. The black strap Jade had seen on the bench remained buckled around her leg. She had been folded against the boy’s chest so completely that Ty had taken her for baggage.

“Next time, tell the fellow pulling the rope you’ve got someone under those coats,” he told the boy.

“I shouted it twice. You were busy yelling at a house,” the boy said.

Ty hauled the door over the sill. Solla met him with a bread tray held flat against her hip. She put the tray down, took the girl, and moved both children away from the open hatch before looking at their faces. Dey followed with two tied aprons, the only child on this side who knew where the spare knee loops were kept.

“You two stay with my son until your people come over,” Solla said. “Dey, the short straps, and no one eats from the bread tray yet.”

Dey led them to the pantry rail. The older boy tried to go back for the door, but the girl caught his sleeve and he stayed.

Ty reached for the rope again. Jade laid a hand on his right forearm, away from the strapped shoulder. She was watching the white collar on his jaw chain. It had begun to creep along a link toward the open hatch.

“The pull changed when their door touched ours,” she said.

Ty tested the chain. It pointed away from the children’s pantry and down through the far roadback, although Dimitri and the stolen rib lay in a different direction a breath ago. He had no reason to trust what that meant.

“I can get across before the roofs separate,” he said.

“If that collar catches their stair, it takes those people with you,” Jade said.

He looked at the people hanging there. The woman at the far window had passed her rope to someone with a bandaged knee. She was crawling along the outside wall toward a man who had lost his hold on the stair. Ty could reach them with the chain. He could also feel how eagerly the white collar followed it.

“I’ll leave the chain on this side of the hatch,” he said, and untied the rope from his wrist. “Tell me how far you can throw with that arm.”

“Far enough to make you complain about my aim. What are you thinking?”

“The door is light without the children. We send it back on two ropes, bring them over one at a time. My jaw stays out of the work.”

Jade glanced at his left arm, bound against his ribs and ending before a hand could take the second rope. She took that side herself. They pushed the door into the gap. Its lower edge bumped the far wall, and the bandaged worker caught it.

The woman stopped halfway to the fallen man. “Cut the rope that ties our belly to yours,” she shouted. “Your roadback is pulling all my people into the dark.”

Nessa arrived from the outer walk with her damaged arm held against her chest. She had been following the line under the kitchens. Her right glove was closed around nothing.

“They were moving before our roof touched theirs,” she told the woman. “Something behind you is drawing both of us. Cutting this rope takes away the only brake you’ve got.”

“Our brake was a street until it fell off,” the woman answered. “I’ve got fourteen people on that stair and a brother outside it. Tell me what I can do before I watch them go.”

That got Nessa’s attention faster than an argument about fittings. She stepped to the hatch and looked through the woman’s roadback. A kitchen stove was wedged across its far corridor, and someone had turned a dining table into a wall to keep people out of the opening behind it. No one was standing idle.

“How many can walk if we bring that door against your stair?” Nessa asked.

“All but my brother. He can crawl if I keep him facing me.”

“Send the walkers to the door. I need two minutes before either of us cuts anything.”

“My brother won’t stay on that wall for two minutes.”

“Then spend the first one bringing him to the door,” Nessa said.

She moved away before the woman could answer. Ty saw her stop beside a length of black rope caught between two roof braces. Nessa put her left hand on it. Her suited right wrist turned toward the line before her shoulder moved. She clamped the forearm against her ribs and made herself look back at the people instead.

Jade held the door while the first worker slid onto it. Ty caught the near edge and braced for the weight. His pelvis pulled toward the wall as the roadbacks tilted apart. He shifted his right foot, keeping Holl’s strap tight around the bad shoulder, then felt the grooved rib press against the inside of his chest where it sat. The bone scraped, and he tightened his grip rather than let the load reach his left side.

The worker reached their sill. Solla hauled him clear by the back of his coat. He tried to thank her, but she pointed him toward Dey and the children.

“Save it until every one of yours has a strap,” she said. “I need your hands more than your manners.”

He took two loops from Dey, and Dey showed him which rail would remain a floor when the bell rang again. Solla had been frightened of Ty’s bones the first time he came through her kitchen. She still kept an eye on his chain. She gave him the same place at the hatch as everyone else who could pull.

The second worker crossed. On the far side, the woman reached her brother at last. She lifted his face from the wall and said something too low for Ty to hear. He shook his head. She put a palm on his cheek and said it again. This time he let her drag him toward the door.

The white collar slid down Ty’s chain. Its edge struck the hatch sill with a hard little click. Jade stepped across the opening and trapped the link beneath her boot. The collar pulled at her ankle. Her bad arm rose late, but she kept hold of the rope with her living hand.

“It’s finding the marked rib through their roadback,” she said. “Or someone is giving it a way to look.”

“Can you tell which one before I put my hand over there?”

“I can’t tell from this hatch, and I won’t pretend otherwise.”

He glanced at the pantry. Dey was tightening a knee loop around the girl’s leg, and the kitchen’s knives remained where Solla had locked them after the first attack. Fourteen people still hung over open air. Jade had followed the image of the old rack; he had followed her. Both of them were looking at the people now.

“I’ll hold this side as long as my chain stays clear of them,” he said. “You decide whether we keep taking them across.”

Jade stared at him. “You already know what I want, but you’re asking me to choose the risk too.”

“I do. I want you to say it while you can still change it.”

“Keep the door moving until everyone on that stair is across,” she said. “We stop if the collar starts taking the people instead of the wood.”

The bell struck again. The far stair tilted, carrying everyone on it toward the open side. Ty caught the next load with his whole arm wrapped around the rope. A woman struck the hatch frame shoulder first. He drew her in, and she cursed him with enough strength to make Solla grin. Two men followed, one carrying a sack of grain he would not release. Solla took the sack and told him he could fight her for it after his feet found a rail.

The door made nine more crossings while the two structures held close. An older woman refused Solla’s hand but kept hold of Dey’s apron until both feet were inside. A young man came backward, watching his father at the far end of the rope. Ty’s shoulder strap worked loose at the edge, and Holl tightened it without moving his arm. Dey counted fourteen people from the stair onto the pantry rail. Asti still had her injured brother outside it, and the cook and his helpers stayed behind their stove.

At the outer walk, Nessa shouted for the woman across the gap. “I found the line that’s pulling you. It comes from behind your stove, not from our belly rope.”

“I told you the street fell off. The cook watched it go.”

“The street is still attached to your roadback. It’s dragging behind you. Someone tied it where your cook would have to move the stove to reach it.”

The woman looked through her own door. The stove had three people bracing it and a kettle hanging from one leg. Moving it meant releasing the only barrier between them and whatever lay beyond.

“My brother’s still here, and he can’t stand beside that stove,” she said. “Get him over, then we’ll talk about my cook.”

Nessa could have insisted. Ty expected her to. Her city still lay on the line being pulled, and every count she spent here left West Four exposed. Instead she told the woman to bring her brother to the door.

The woman lifted him onto the boards. Up close, Ty could see that his left leg bent in two places it shouldn’t. The brother gripped the ropes himself. His sister began to cross after him, then stopped when the cook behind the stove shouted.

Nessa put her left hand on the far sill. “That street keeps pulling until somebody frees it behind your stove. I can find the knot. I need someone who can move the weight.”

Ty looked at Jade. She had the collar pinned under her boot, and his jaw chain ran from it to him with just enough length to reach the other sill.

“One room, and you come back when the chain straightens,” Jade said. “Whatever Nessa finds, I can hold the collar here, but I can’t make it longer.”

“I heard the part about coming back before you repeated it,” he said. “Keep an eye on the girl in the pantry. She likes hiding in coats.”

Jade squeezed his wrist once before he went. She kept her foot on the collar and took his rope into her good hand. Nessa crossed first, with her useless wrist against her chest. Ty followed on the door while the injured brother came toward Jade. They passed so close that Ty could see the man’s teeth grinding against the pain.

Solla pulled the brother inside. She shouted to Dey for a blanket, then told the bandaged worker to take his ankles. Ty reached the far sill and helped Nessa climb over it. The woman moved aside for them, but she stayed close enough to shove them back if they touched her brother’s people.

The cook behind the stove shouted again. A third roadback had emerged from the dark. It was smaller, its roof crowded with people waving cloth above their heads. Beyond it, Ty saw another moving at a different angle, far enough away that its windows looked like scattered sparks. The cook had been holding the stove against the pull of the lost street. Now he was holding it against a procession.

“Those roads weren’t on any of the twelve plates,” Nessa said. She went to the stove anyway.

The woman put her shoulder beside Ty’s right arm. “If you can lift, lift here. My cook has held that table since the first bell.”

They pushed. The stove shifted enough for Nessa to get through. Behind it, a black street rope disappeared through a hole someone had chopped in the floor. The line was wet, and as it pulled, a voice reached them from somewhere below the roadback. A man was counting people, starting again each time another roof came into sight.

Ty’s jaw chain straightened. Jade held the collar at the far hatch. Between them, the door dropped out of reach as the roadbacks pulled apart.