Chapter 933 - 933: Todd Arrives With Someone Else's Enemy

The maintenance cage reached Griswald's freight floor without slowing.

Todd watched the iron landing rush up through the grate beneath his boots. Cava had her injured foot hooked behind his ankle and both hands around the remaining sections of his staff. The cage lever stayed buried in its lowest notch.

"That floor appears committed to meeting us at full speed, and I would prefer our first meeting remain professional."

Cava looked past his shoulder. Seven brass speaking bells hung above the landing. Six had black wax packed into their mouths. The bell beneath Griswald's crown carried a copper tongue that bounced without making a sound.

"The captain line died before this cage arrived, but the seventh account still pulled us here."

Todd jammed his shortened staff through the cage bars. The first end struck the left wall. The second missed the right wall by the exact length of the section he had sacrificed upstairs.

He had paid for a cage built for two. Apparently stopping cost extra.

The staff tore a groove through brick and yanked his shoulders sideways. Cava braced her good foot against his boot. Together they turned the cage enough for its lower corner to strike first.

Iron met iron. Todd's teeth closed on his tongue. The cage jumped, shed half its door, and crossed the freight floor on its side.

It stopped against a ledger desk.

A copper strip dropped from the silent bell and landed across Todd's neck.

Cava pulled it free. The fresh cut on her ankle had opened through the cloth again, yet she read the strip before checking the blood.

"Return the marked runner with crown skin unbroken. Preserve the blade holder's breath."

Two freight cutters waited behind the desk with flat masks hanging from their belts. The landing guard from above slid down a service chain after them. His wax pay card still showed nine empty shift boxes.

Cava turned the strip over.

"They used to want the mark readable after they cut me apart."

"Then being wanted whole has made your day more suspicious."

The landing guard dragged a packing cord through the cage doorway.

"The blade holder remains protected. The seventh runner returns with shoulder tissue intact."

Cava pressed two fingers beneath the crown burned into her shoulder. The long cut and six short ones pulled toward the mute bell.

"The bells lost the voice above the account. My brand still carries a living address, so they need the shoulder attached to someone who can open it."

Todd folded the staff against his forearm.

"I dislike any plan that begins by preserving your shoulder."

The cracked Cross Link fragment twisted inside his fist.

Its courier clasp had spent the wooden stair stealing words from a dungeon cell. Now the metal jaw opened and bit the freight floor. Todd felt the old pull toward Ty hit his elbow hard enough to straighten it.

Below the iron, five separate knocks answered.

The freight floor bowed around the fragment.

One cutter cast a red cord through the broken cage. Cava trapped it under the blunt capture hook she had carried from the judgment quarter. The other cutter caught Todd around the waist.

Their orders kept the line away from his throat. He appreciated thoughtful enemies.

Todd pulled the cutter into the ledger desk. A stack of unstamped pay tablets flew into the man's face and caught between his mask and cheek.

"Your unpaid payroll has chosen a poor place and an even worse person to become physical."

The landing guard reached for Cava's shoulder. She drove the capture hook into his sleeve and pinned his hand to the cage frame without touching skin.

"Your wages can follow me after the quarry families receive names and a place to answer back."

The black fragment punched through the bowed floor.

Wood appeared beneath it. Todd recognized the stair they had left, turned sideways and packed inside a ring of black metal. A painted floor section traveled beyond the wood with a copper tube dragging sparks from its edge.

The five knocks became one pull.

Todd's shortened staff slipped from the wall groove.

"Brace my good leg and let the cage take everything else."

He wedged his forearm beneath her knee. The floor opened around them before he could improve the idea.

The cage dropped through black bars, struck one of them, and peeled apart. Todd kept Cava's injured ankle against his chest while the ledger desk, freight cutters, and silent bell broke into different openings above them.

A storehouse waited below with far too many people and no polite place to land.

Todd saw a woman with a damaged eye holding a black skull inside her coat. Another woman crouched beside the rising rail with one arm hanging useless at her side. A four fingered skeletal hand waited on the floor between them.

Todd and Cava separated when the last cage bar caught his coat.

He wrapped one hand around the bar. Cava fell past his boots with her chest strap twisting up around her throat.

The skeletal hand ran across the floor, jumped from a chain link, and caught her strap below the knot. As bone fingers took Cava's weight before the cloth could choke her, Todd swung above them from one stubborn hand.

From the woman's coat, the skull turned toward Cava first. Its green eye checked the injured ankle, the burned shoulder, and the hand gripping the capture hook. Only after the strap held did it look up at Todd.

Todd knew that order of attention from the dungeon. Ty left the sturdier person hanging while he grabbed whoever had run out of choices. His latest body had preserved the same bad manners.

"You found me after years and still caught the stranger first. Those are exactly your bad manners, Ty."

The skull's jaw shifted against the coat lining.

"You had a free hand, and she was falling by the injured leg."

Todd pulled himself onto the black rail and laughed hard enough to hurt his shoulder.

"You are still explaining bad manners like they were my fault."

The woman holding Ty's skull shoved a clamp into Todd's hand.

"You can confirm the reunion after we stop the next hook."

Todd caught the clamp around the cage bar as it tore loose. The woman with the numb arm used her good hand to pull Cava away from the rising frame.

Cava kept her capture hook.

"That crown on my shoulder belongs to Griswald, so nobody here should trust what it pulls."

The woman at the rail glanced toward the broken freight floor above them.

"That confession could have waited until the armed people arrived."

"They are arriving because the crown is useful, not because I am."

"Then tell me which part they cannot afford to damage."

Three packing cords dropped through the torn floor. The landing guard came down the middle one, his pay card clenched between his teeth. The two cutters descended beside him with their flat masks covering their faces.

Todd recognized devotion when it arrived carrying paperwork.

The first cutter swung toward Cava. Ty's hand climbed Todd's staff, caught the metal jaw, and closed it around the cutter's own cord. Todd turned the two remaining staff sections and pulled. The cutter rose by his belt until his mask struck the freight opening.

The landing guard kept his hook pointed at Cava's branded shoulder.

"Damage below the seventh cut voids recovery pay for everyone on this floor."

Cava glanced at the numb armed woman.

"They cannot tear the crown away while its living route is their last address."

"My name is Nessa, and that rail already stole pieces from my city."

Cava nodded toward the recovered field finger pinning the black metal.

"Then your stolen piece and my stolen address can make them share the mistake."

Todd dropped beside her before the landing guard could cast. Cava caught the incoming jaw through the torn sleeve around her crown mark. Its teeth closed on cloth and stopped short of skin because the guard checked his own pull.

She drove her capture hook through the recovery jaw and into the black rail.

The landing guard released the cord. The silent bell above him rang through the metal anyway.

"You changed an address once, and three quarry workers paid for it."

Cava kept both hands on the hook.

"I changed one address to save two children. Three workers dropped with the clinic, and their names still wait for me."

Nessa wrapped Kestra's numbered chain around the recovered field finger.

"You can owe those dead after you stop making more."

The painted monitoring floor arrived beneath them.

Its five empty sockets struck Kestra's frame. Ossan's wet ledger pages burst from the copper tube and plastered themselves across Todd's boots. The Cross Link fragment pulled toward Ty. Cava's crown pulled toward Griswald's dead bell. The field finger dragged toward Meren while the prison sockets tried to hold all three roads still.

Todd reached for Cava as her blood left the ankle cloth and traveled toward the storehouse ceiling.

Nessa tightened the chain around her good hand.

"The floor is choosing more than one down, so stop trusting your feet."

Todd's body fell toward the west wall while Cava rose out of his reach.