Chapter 1012 Jossel Walks Out

Jossel had stopped answering Griswald. He saved his voice for Bera, whose cot stood beyond the east post with its waist belt still fastened. Whenever the cage shifted, she lifted one finger to show she was watching.

A runner from the west market had brought word that the lamp house was gone. Its families had reached Solla’s kitchen or the inland arch before the building lifted. Cava sent two of her workers toward the exposed market edge; she had no one left to loan Griswald for the cage. No one at Clinic Five knew what had taken the house.

The account crew held the rope from the cage’s rear rail. Todd could hear their boots slip in the grit each time the trapped wall cord pulled beneath the front runner. Rillhold’s oldest stake stood behind him, held by Ruvan’s red belt and a recovery jaw with one sound tooth. Cava had left every surviving cord attached. Cutting one to free a cage could drop a wall whose occupants had never seen Jossel.

Nana stood at the front shoe with her damaged metal hand tucked against her coat. She had given Todd his Kavel half back. It rested in his good palm, restless whenever the route beyond the gate shifted. The other half, on Ty’s chain, was too far away to answer with anything he could trust.

"Your crew can’t hold him there all night," she told Griswald.

"My men brought a sled; they are hauling him out as soon as the shoe clears," Griswald said. The key stayed hooked on his thumb. "Move the cage back onto its rail, and then we can discuss a door."

Jossel laughed once, without humor. "We discussed that door six shifts ago. You put the wages down and left the boxes empty."

Griswald looked past him to the damaged cord. Nana stepped between the cage and the account sled. He had kept Jossel at the dock when the man asked for a door; she would make him say it to Jossel’s face here.

Cava came from Clinic Five with dust on her sleeves. Talli had closed the room above Bera’s old cot. Its shelf lay across the floor, and the two patients who had shared the west wall now occupied the wash alcove. There was no third place ready for them.

"We got the patients off this side of Clinic Five, but the wash alcove is full," Cava said. "Its people have nowhere to sleep if we break the east side as well."

Todd set the Kavel piece on a dry stone beyond the cord. Nana bent to collect it, but he covered it with his foot.

"Leave it. I need both hands free, even if one of them is useless."

"You used to call that one your good hand whenever the other was carrying a tray," Nana said.

He looked at the raw line around his wrist. "Kaiko would argue with the word good. She spent enough mornings putting salve on both."

Nana glanced up. Todd had not said Kaiko’s name since they had found one another beside the cage. His two children had run through the Demon King’s halls calling him Dad after Alexira fell. The memory was older than the kingdoms that had claimed their work since, but Nana could still hear the smaller child reaching the last word a step behind the first.

"I want to go back to Kaiko and the children after this, Nana, before someone else tells me which road matters," Todd said.

"Then stop putting your bad wrist under everything that moves, because I cannot carry you home," she said. She put her hand over the Kavel half only after he stepped away. "I can carry the fragment without claiming to know where it leads."

Jossel shifted inside the cage. His injured forearm rested across his stomach. "Are you finished deciding which road is home? Mine is on the other side of this door."

Todd’s face warmed. "Fair. Save the rest for when my shoulder is under you."

He slipped his good shoulder beneath the cage’s front rail. The iron had settled into the shallow seat Cava made with the broken yoke tooth. The rope behind him carried the rest of the weight.

Cava used the account sled to carry the cage’s pull on solid service stone. She ran the crew’s rope back around its axle, far from Rillhold’s cords, and made Griswald keep his own people at the handle. If they let go, his sled would roll before her town took the fall.

"I will move when Jossel is against the rear bars," she told them. "You don’t get to yank him into the roof."

Jossel braced his feet. He had one arm to hold with, and the cage jolted when he shifted. Nana climbed onto the service step so he could see her between the bars.

"If the front lifts, will you move with it?"

"I’ll move when the cord is clear. I’m tired of finding out afterward what my body was used to carry."

Cava heard him and gave Todd the count. He pushed. Pain ran from his shoulder into the wrist he had promised to leave out of it. He bit down and held the rail while the crew drew the cage backward. The front shoe rose from the crushed braid.

The cord stayed flattened against the stone, one strand caught beneath the runner’s chipped edge. The cracked beam above Bera’s old cot shifted with the pull. A bare gouge marked where the roof hook had torn free.

Nana put a boot against the front rail. "Stop pulling. You’re taking the wall with it."

Griswald’s men stopped. Griswald came down from the sled, key swinging in his hand. He reached toward the trapped strand with a short blade. Cava caught his wrist.

"If you cut my cord, name the people under every other one first."

"My crew can splice one strand before the next load comes through."

"You can replace your runner. This cord carries a wall with Bera’s neighbors on its far side."

He tried to pull away. Cava held until he looked at the cot beyond her shoulder. Bera was watching too, board in her lap. She wrote while the cage hung between the rope and Todd’s body. Talli carried the board to Cava.

The board showed the two east-wash neighbors still at their door beneath the shared roof beam. Bera had drawn the shorter way to the yard, away from the cage. Cava sent Talli to bring them out. She waited until their bare feet crossed the yard before she knelt beside the runner.

Her uncertain ankle folded under her. She caught herself and saw where a flattened strand twisted twice beneath the chipped edge. She had been looking for a place to pull harder; the braid needed a turn back toward the cage. She called to Todd to lower his shoulder by a fraction.

"If you lower that shoe, all this iron comes down on my shoulder," he said.

"For one breath. Nana has the shoe. The rope keeps the rest."

"Let Nana tell me what her hands can carry before you put mine under the shoe."

Nana leaned against the front rail. "They are already here, Todd. I’ll tell you if they fail."

He lowered the shoe onto the stone lip. Cava took the broken yoke tooth and worked its flat end beside the caught braid. She turned the shoe toward the account side, following Bera’s drawing. The strand unwound from the chipped edge and dropped with a small slap onto the yard stones.

The wall held. Talli checked the two neighbors waiting by Bera’s cot. She raised her arm when both answered.

"Griswald, get your crew pulling the cage back before this cord tightens again," Cava said.

Todd lifted again while the account crew drew the cage along its own rail. Once the front runner cleared the threshold, he stepped away from the iron. His injured wrist throbbed against his belt, leaving only two fingers able to close around the Kavel half Nana handed back. He tucked it away without looking for Ty.

Griswald raised his hand for the crew to take the cage back along the rail. Nana set one foot on its step. Jossel had held still until Bera and her neighbors cleared, exactly as he had said he would.

"You made us move the cage, so use your own key to finish this," Nana said.

"He has not traced the lower joint. That is why he traveled here."

Jossel lifted his bandaged arm. "Then you brought me in a cage for nothing. I won’t work from inside it again."

Griswald looked at the five cords still drawn into Rillhold’s walls. The next pull might take his spool with them, and Jossel stared at the door without offering another word. Griswald climbed up and fitted his own key into the lock. "I opened this cage myself, so don’t tell my crew you were stolen from it."

The bolt withdrew, but the panel stuck against a bent hinge. Todd put his good hand on it. Jossel shook his head.

"Leave the hinge to me; I know where it catches when the cage is loaded."

He hooked his fingers around the inside bar. Todd took the outside edge, holding only when the hinge caught. The door opened enough for Jossel to turn sideways. He came out slowly, one hand against the cage roof, the other forearm held against his chest.

Nana offered her arm. He used it for the step from rail to stone and released it as soon as his feet settled. Talli came from the clinic with a clean strip of cloth. Jossel allowed her to wrap his forearm but refused the cot Bera offered.

"Sit on the post before you fall into my cot; I need that space," Bera told him. "I know the view from that bed, and it isn’t worth proving you can stand."

Jossel sat. Bera kept her board, and for a while they watched the account men pull the empty cage clear of the gate.

Griswald turned the key in his hand. "I released him. I still need to know where the lower joint takes my line."

"You opened his cage to save your route, and now you can ask him whether he’ll help," Nana said.

"You have no authority to set his terms."

"Mattison took my seal before I came after Todd. Your men can tell him where I am. Jossel is sitting there because your key opened the door."

Griswald looked at Cava. "Your stake holds five of my routes. Do you want to stand by while he refuses to tell us how they move?"

Cava rubbed grit from the two fingers that had gone numb after her crown work. She wanted Jossel’s answer, but he had just spent his injured arm keeping her neighbors under a roof. She faced Griswald with the wall at her back.

"Talli dragged two beds out while your cage sat on our cord," she said. "Come tell her those walls belong to you."

Jossel raised his bandaged arm. "I can tell you when the next pull comes. I won’t trace the hole for him. I want those six unpaid shifts counted by someone who isn’t holding a key."

He had the work chit inside his shirt. Nana took it only when he passed it to her. She counted the six empty wage boxes and returned the paper while Griswald watched. His stamp stayed on the cage he had emptied, and the debt stayed on Jossel’s chit.

The Cross Link pressed against Todd’s belt. He could follow its faint tug away from the yard while Griswald argued, perhaps find a stronger answer toward Ty by morning. Instead he sat beside Jossel on the post. He asked Talli for a cup of water and held it where the man could take it with his good hand.

The far wall gave a low knock. All five surviving cords drew tight, then eased. Jossel counted the movement under his boots and looked at Cava.

"That pull came through the post, not the cage," he said. "Get your neighbors away from the lower wall before it tries again. I can help from here."

Cava called Ruvan over. He went to the lower houses and knocked on the first door. Griswald ordered his crew to haul the empty carrier away. Cava made him follow it past Clinic Five, where Talli took him to the collapsed roof beam and the patients crowded into the wash alcove. When Talli asked where they could sleep, he looked toward his supply sled before answering. Cava stayed long enough to hear him promise timber, then sent a worker to watch what his crew actually unloaded.

Jossel rose when the dizziness passed. Todd went with him toward the lower houses, carrying the water and leaving his injured hand empty. At the gate, the Kavel half tugged toward a road neither of them could see. Todd took it from his belt and put it in Nana’s hand.

"Keep the fragment until I come back from the lower houses; my hands are needed there," he said.

Nana closed her split metal fingers around the fragment. Todd stayed beside Jossel as Rillhold’s neighbors came out of the lower doorway, one after another, and Cava counted them from the yard.