Chapter 1009: The West Lamps Leave the Ground

Before the creature crossed the chimney window, its shadow reached Solla’s kitchen. The dinner pot knocked hard against its bar, and Dey dropped a bowl. It rattled in its groove without leaving the counter.

Beyond the three yellow lamps of Rillhold’s west approach, a pale plate rose against the sky. Another followed it. The plates opened and closed along the belly of something broad enough to hide the upper streets. Houses rode its back on stakes driven between folds of hide. Smoke rose from their chimneys, then streamed across Rillhold as the creature turned. A woman on one of its balconies had both arms around a child and was shouting to someone below her.

Its mouth was open beneath the moving houses. The row of homes tied to Asti’s lost street swung toward it, and the west lamp house stood farther along the same line.

“Are there people in all of those houses?” Dey asked.

“I see a woman holding a child on one balcony,” Solla said. “Find me the people still inside our own outer rooms before we decide what that mouth wants.”

The boy and girl Asti had sent across on the door were at the pantry rail. The girl still wore the black strap around one leg. Her brother held both ends of a spare apron, making a place for her to sit without putting the strap against the moving floor.

“Our mother is over there with the skeleton,” he said. “Can you see the window where they went in?”

Solla could see Asti’s roadback, but its kitchen faced away. “I saw her helping your uncle onto our side. I won’t tell you I can see her now. Keep your sister at this rail, and I will tell you when I have news worth trusting.”

Dey gave the boy a cup of water. “I’ll count your roof too. Your cook keeps starting over when the chimneys move.”

At the signal hatch Jade held the red flag in her good hand. Her boot stayed on Ty’s white collar, which had pulled to the end of his jaw chain across the gap. The roadbacks had separated too far for a door to reach between them, but the new road carried both hulls toward Rillhold at the same pace. The chain had no more length to spare. Ty remained on Asti’s side with his left shoulder bound against his ribs. Solla could see neither him nor Nessa through the far windows.

“Nobody at Rillhold answered the flag you waved from this hatch,” Solla said.

“The first lamp is leaning. I can wave again, but you know that house better than I do.” Jade lifted the flag as the creature’s shadow passed over it. “I can’t leave this hatch while Ty is at the other end of the chain.”

Solla nodded. The housing keeper came around the bend before Solla could call for her, leading two women covered in plaster. One had a wash basin over her head. The other held the broken edge of a door with both hands.

“These two women came from the last room beyond the bend,” the keeper said. “They knocked through the wash wall into room two when their window turned outward. We answered room two’s flag for both families. I should have sent that word before the next bell.”

The woman with the basin pulled it off her head. “I tried shouting through the speaking tube, but its mouth was on the old ceiling. My sister and I are here. Room seven is empty.”

“Where is the family from room two now?” Solla asked.

“Coming behind us. Their father wanted his sack of beans, so we helped him carry it.”

Dey set two pebbles beside the room-seven mark. He waited until the sisters passed him before sliding the mark closed. The room-two family followed with the beans, and the last people from room one arrived under the housing keeper’s eye. Solla watched the sisters reach the grain door and the keeper bar the empty outer wing.

“Bring that sack into my kitchen before it drops into the road,” she told the father. “West brace still hasn’t had its stew because I opened the pantry. You may have saved somebody’s supper by being stubborn.”

He gave her a tired grin. “My wife says I should have grabbed the baby instead. She already had him.”

“Then she can be right while you put that sack by the bread. We have a west house to warn.”

The three lamps stood over a stone building with a lower meal door and two floors of family rooms. Solla had delivered food there for twelve years. The west lamp house kept watch at crossings, but it also held the people who polished the hoods, mended glass, slept after night shifts, and argued over who had eaten the last plum. Smoke from its kitchen blew toward the creature’s mouth. Hands appeared at the upper windows as the building shook.

One of the lamps tore free of its bracket and hung above the delivery balcony. The roadback passed close enough for Solla to see Mira at the balcony door. Mira had a jar of signal oil in her arms. Two younger workers carried more jars up the stairs behind her.

“Mira’s taking signal oil upstairs. She means to light the roof before that mouth reaches it,” Solla said.

Jade lowered the red flag. “Will fire turn the beast, or put it among the people on its back?”

“Mira can tell you how to wake half of Rillhold with it. I don’t know what it will do to a creature with a town on its back.”

The service landing came level with the balcony, a distance Solla knew from years of bread carts. She crossed. The gap opened behind her heel before her second foot reached stone, and she pulled herself through Mira’s door.

“You brought an oil jar to a house full of people,” Solla said.

“I brought it to the roof. The first lamp won’t turn toward the city, and no one inland has answered us.” Mira’s hands were black from the loose hood. “If that thing sees fire in its face, perhaps it turns before it reaches my girls’ rooms.”

Solla followed her gaze up the stair. Children stood in the first-floor doorway with blankets around their shoulders. A man with a splinted knee sat beside them. Above, someone beat a pan against the window frame to get the market’s attention.

“I saw a woman holding a child in the houses on its back,” Solla said. “Your oil could fall into their street while they are still trying to move those houses.”

“And if I carry it down, my family may be under its jaw.” Mira shifted the jar on her hip. “Did you come to take this away, or did you bring somewhere for us to go?”

The lower meal door opened into Rillhold’s west market. Solla knew the narrow steps; she had hauled sacks up them on days the delivery balcony missed its mark. The creature’s shadow had reached the market, but the steps still stood. Her roadback’s pantry could take people from the balcony for as long as the two edges met. It would mean leaving the kitchen open to the same pull that had taken the outer rooms, with Dey and Asti’s children inside it.

“The lower rooms go down to the market,” Solla said. “Anyone who cannot manage those steps comes through my kitchen. I will open the grain door and take them there. Carry the oil jars down with your workers. Leave the roof.”

Mira looked at the jars on the stairs. “When the lamps go dark, the people farther in won’t know which way to run.”

“Then send one worker into the market shouting. Give him a pan if he needs it. The houses on that hide are full of people who cannot run from what you throw.”

Mira watched the oil climb the glass as the house tilted. Then she called to the workers above. One protested. Mira made him come down and look through the balcony at the moving city. A child on a roof strapped to the creature’s back waved a white shirt over his head. Mira gave him her jar; he and the other worker carried all three downstairs.

Down the market steps went the workers with their jars. Mira called the people in the upper rooms by name, and Solla stayed beside the balcony door.

Across the gap, Dey had opened the grain door. He had moved the last bowls under the counter and cleared the wide part of the kitchen without waiting for his mother to ask. Two cooks stood there with bread, water, and spare aprons. Jade still held the collar at the signal hatch. She waved once when she saw Solla at the balcony, then turned the red cloth inland where the market windows could see it.

“I cleared the bowls and brought bread here, but the knife box stayed shut,” Dey called.

“Good. Keep them that way. Count every person who comes through, and let the strangers tell you their own names.”

The splinted man crossed first, leaning on Mira and a lamp worker. He balked when the roadback moved under his foot. Solla put her shoulder beside his and waited until he chose the next step. Behind him came two children, then an older woman clutching the man’s medicine tin. She kept checking the lid even after a cook offered to carry it.

On the market side, families pushed down the lower steps. The worker with the pan went ahead of them, striking it and calling for the west doors to open. People appeared in the next street, some carrying bedding, others helping neighbors whose shutters had jammed. One woman repeated the worker’s warning into the next lane.

The creature drew closer. Its lower plates rose under the lamp house balcony. Its city tipped with it. Along one upper street, people ran toward a row of houses that had begun to slide against their stakes. The woman with the child at the balcony caught another person’s wrist and pulled them through her doorway.

Mira saw them. She looked once toward the stairs where her workers had carried the oil, then kept her hand under the splinted man’s arm until he reached Dey’s rail. A final set of feet sounded on the upper stair.

The last of them came down carrying a small wooden chair. An older man said it was the only seat his wife could get out of without help. She was following him with both hands on the rail. Solla let him keep it until the roadback took their weight; then she folded it flat and passed it to a cook. He kept watching where the cook put it.

Dey counted them past the grain door. “Mira, your older worker came through twice. He went back for the woman with the chair. I’m counting her, not him again.”

Mira heard and checked the stair. The room above was empty. Below, the worker with the pan appeared in the market door and called that the last lower-floor family had passed the inland arch. Mira took her house keys from the meal-door hook and crossed last. Solla followed. Before her second foot reached the kitchen, the service landing pulled away. Mira caught her belt and Dey grabbed the apron tied around her waist. Solla landed against the bread sacks, hard enough to scatter two loaves.

“Go on and count me now, before that floor tries to take me back,” she told her son.

“I was going to, but you keep making the number difficult.”

The kitchen held more people than bowls. As they made room at Dey’s rail, Solla’s full dinner pot knocked against its bar. Across the gap, the empty west lamp house had one lamp hanging from a bent bracket. Its oil jars were already in the market, carried inland with the families.

The creature’s mouth closed over the upper rooms. Stone cracked beneath the black-hooded lamp. Solla saw the building lift whole from its lower steps, meal door first, while the people who had lived inside it crouched around Dey’s rail. The house rose past the creature’s pale plates with one yellow lamp still swinging from its wall. Below it, Rillhold’s west market stood open to the sky.