Chapter 1008: Asti Tied Them Together

Ty could feel Jade holding the collar on the other roadback. Each time his jaw chain pulled, her boot shifted against the hatch and came back down. The chain had reached its full length. He could not follow Nessa through the hole behind the stove without dragging Jade after him.

The woman who owned this roadback put both hands beneath the stove’s iron lip. The cook on its other side was still counting roofs. Ty added his right hand. Together they lifted until the stove cleared the chopped hole in the floor. Its kettle swung loose and struck Ty’s skull.

"Leave my kettle on the stove when you move it," the cook said. "It has the only water we boiled before this started."

He had one boot against the wall and the other on a chair that looked too small for his weight. The man had counted people from below because he could see their roofs through the hole. Another line of buildings moved under them in the dark, each hung from a rope that led to the next. He started his count again when a row of windows disappeared behind a chimney.

"You called the same roof twice and missed the one behind it," Ty said.

"They keep changing because people get behind things. Help me hold this stove where I can see them."

The woman wedged a table leg beneath the iron. She had a strip of yellow cloth around her hair and a cut across the back of one hand. Ty had seen the cut when she reached her brother. It had opened again under the stove.

"My name’s Asti, and those two children were mine to cross," she said without looking at him. "My brother’s on your side now. I have to know whether they’re breathing."

"They’re strapped in Solla’s pantry. The boy thinks I shout at houses, and his sister agrees with him."

Asti let herself look across the gap. The pantry was out of sight from this side, but she could see Solla pulling a blanket around her brother’s injured leg. The sight bought Ty one more lift of the stove before Asti put her shoulder back under it.

Nessa crouched at the open floor with her bad wrist tucked beneath the cage straps. The black rope rose from below, passed under a beam, and ran toward their lost street. One long cut stood above six shorter cuts on a brass collar fixed around the rope.

Ty had seen that mark before. He also knew the trouble caused by saying Griswald’s name every time a piece of brass bore seven cuts. He waited for Nessa to follow the rope instead of naming its owner.

"This collar can turn without anyone touching it," Nessa said. "Tell me who put it under your stove."

Asti checked the cook. He was still watching the roofs. "I did. I needed the pull low enough to keep the families off the upper wall."

"You tied another occupied roadback to yours. You had children on both sides and said we were pulling you."

"Your roof gave us a brake. I thought if I told you, you’d cut us loose before my brother crossed."

She answered quickly, like someone who had rehearsed the charge and still disliked hearing it aloud. Nessa’s left hand stayed on the floor beside the rope. Her right glove turned toward Asti’s wrist. Nessa caught it against her knee.

"I would have looked at the people before I cut," Nessa said. "You took that choice away from me and everyone on Rillhold."

"And your city would have survived while ours went under. I took the choice because I was here."

Ty expected Nessa to strike her. Asti did too. The cook told them both to get out of his sightline. Three roofs had gone behind a block of stone, and nobody on them could hear him if he lost the count. Nessa lowered herself through the hole using her left hand. Asti seized the back of her cage before the injured right arm could hit the beam.

"I can keep you level from this side of the beam," Asti said. "You can hate me while I do it."

"I’ll start once your cook stops calling me a roof," Nessa said.

The cook called out another count. He ignored her.

Nessa found a foothold on the underside beam. Ty held the stove while she dropped into the space below it. Black ropes crossed there at several heights. Some joined buildings. Others held nets full of meal sacks, boots, and timber. No single roadback had enough room for all the people Ty could see. They had kept their houses together by tying them to a moving street.

One roof turned toward the light from Asti’s kitchen. A woman on it raised a child under each arm to show they were present. The cook marked them on a strip of charred wood. A third child stood behind her. He was old enough to wave his own shirt and angry enough to keep waving until the cook looked twice.

"Three children on that roof, including the one behind her," Ty said.

The cook rubbed out his mark and made it again. "You count that roof, then. I can’t see around the chimney with this eye."

Ty counted. The third child kept his shirt in the air until he was certain Ty had looked straight at him. Down the line, two workers called their own numbers through cupped hands. A roof at the rear gave no answer. It turned slowly, the door hanging open above a dark interior.

Nessa reached the brass collar. She pressed a nail into the long cut and felt the rope move beneath it. The line ran past the mark and into the lost street. Another line, thinner and newer, looped from the collar toward Rillhold’s outer walk. She could sever the new line with Asti’s cook knife. It would take the borrowed brake off their roadback.

"Asti, who sits at the rear roof that didn’t answer?" she called.

"Four from the mill and my uncle. He stays inside because the turn breaks his hip again if he climbs."

"Did your uncle agree to use Rillhold as your brake?"

Asti looked away from the kitchen hole. "He agreed we should get the children out. He doesn’t know where I tied us."

Nessa drew the cook knife but did not put it to the rope. Her city was still connected through a route she had come here to break. The pull in her cage had already stolen control of her wrist. Holding this line any longer might teach it a way back into West Four. She knew all of that, and she could see the silent rear roof leaning toward the dark.

"I’m going to speak to him before this line changes his floor," Nessa said.

"You won’t reach the mill roof before the next bell."

"Then find someone with a voice that carries farther than yours."

The cook handed her his count board. It was narrow enough to fit between the beams, with a metal cup lashed to one end. Nessa struck the cup against the underside rail. Three hits traveled down the rope. The woman with the shirt answered from the first roof. The mill roof remained quiet.

Ty could not follow Nessa below without using the chain as a second tow line. He kept the stove in place and scanned the roof for a way to reach its people from above. The bridge door had dropped. Asti had one short ladder fixed to the outer wall, but it ended a room short of the rear buildings.

"Your brother tried to stop you tying us together, didn’t he?" Ty asked.

"He tried to bring the mill roof up first. The street shifted while he was under it." Asti looked at the kettle, at the rope, and then at him. "I tied your house in while he was hurt. I’ll answer to him when we can stand in the same room."

Ty wanted to say she could answer to him now. He had felt that rope pull Jade’s boot across a hatch. He had seen Dey fitting straps on children who should have been safe in their own kitchen. But the mill roof still gave no answer, and Asti was the one who knew how these people had built their traveling street.

"Show me where the rear roofs attach to your street," he said. "I’m not letting your uncle vanish while we decide who owes whom an apology."

Asti led him to the outer window. A line of homes swung beneath them. Some had doors painted different colors. Others were bare wood, assembled from pieces that had belonged to several streets. On the farthest roof, someone had planted three buckets with herbs in them. Each bucket was tied separately, as carefully as a person.

Ty thought of the people he had pushed through a return crystal while Alexira came apart. He remembered Todd cursing at the heat and Nana losing her grip on a rope. He had never learned the names of everyone who failed to reach the opening. Asti had tied a stranger’s home to hers. Dey had spent the morning fastening knee loops because she had used his kitchen as a brake.

Nessa struck the cup again. This time the mill roof answered with one weak blow, too low for the cook to hear above the stove. Ty raised his right arm out of the window and pointed. Asti saw it. She repeated the roof’s signal until the cook wrote five beside its place on the board.

The black rope jumped in Nessa’s hand. She looked down at the brass collar. Its seven cuts had stayed where they were, but a fresh length of rope was coming out of the lost street rather than being dragged in. Someone at the far end was paying line into the dark. The street was being given room to turn.

"The line’s coming out instead of taking your street in," Nessa called up to Asti. "Somebody is steering your street around something we can’t see from here. Who holds the other end?"

"No one from our roadback. The workers who found us said to keep the seven-cut collar below the stove and wait for the return bell."

"Did you see the faces of the workers who found you?"

"I saw the one who carried the bell. He wore a mask because the air had burned his mouth. I didn’t ask him to take it off."

The other end of the street swung out from under a bank of shadow. More roofs followed it. Each held people who had been counting themselves, afraid to be left off somebody else’s board. Beyond them a much larger shape moved against the sky, slow enough that Ty first mistook it for the edge of the world. Pale plates rose and fell across its underside. Stakes had been driven into the flesh between them, and houses hung from those stakes in clusters.

Ty had climbed over Orra’s hide. He knew what a living roadback carrier looked like. This one carried a city large enough to cover Orra’s smallest flank, and it was coming toward the string of roofs with its mouth open.