Chapter 936 - 936: The Roof Becomes The Ground

Ty's ribs entered the nursery before the rest of him, which was becoming a habit he wanted to stop.

Three bones hung through the broken roof boards. One had caught a painted cabinet by its back rail. Another pressed against a sleeping rope while the third scraped across a beam covered in children's handprints.

His skull remained outside against Jade's coat. When the moving settlement rolled beneath them, the nursery turned through his green eye like a box somebody had kicked down a stair.

"Jade, turn my skull until the hole stays below my left eye."

She tightened the coat belt and shifted him against her hip.

"Your left eye is inside my coat, so choose another landmark."

"Keep the child with the red sleeve above my teeth."

Inside the room, a girl hung from a rope tied around her waist. Her red sleeve had caught on a sleeping net stretched between two beams. Two smaller children clung inside the net while wooden blocks, blankets, and a wash basin drifted past them toward the new floor.

The new floor was yesterday's wall.

The painted cabinet started sliding across it.

Ty pulled the rib hooked through its back rail. The chain outside drew across the gutter and tore another board free. Cabinet drawers opened. Folded clothes and stone toys poured toward the children faster than the cabinet itself.

The girl kicked one block away from the younger child's face.

"Meya, the roadback is rolling toward red down again."

A square door opened in the old floor. A woman came through it sideways with a hammer between her teeth and a stake hugged under one arm. Bone formed the stake's pale shaft. Iron wrapped its point and head in rings worn flat by repeated blows.

She drove the point into the handprint wall.

"Kipra, hold the sleeping knot, keep both little ones inside the blue rope, and kick loose blocks toward the wash basin before red down takes them."

The stake entered on the third strike.

Every loose block changed direction. The wash basin hit the handprint wall. The cabinet lifted away from Ty's rib, turned one corner in the air, and dropped toward Kipra's sleeping net.

"The cabinet reaches them before your stake finishes taking the room."

The woman looked toward his ribs in her roof.

"Stop that cabinet before dead bone touches downstake."

Ty sent the hooked rib around the cabinet rail. It could pull or turn, but the chain angle forced both motions toward the sleeping net.

His right hand remained outside, four fingers wrapped around one of the iron stakes driven through the roof tiles. He released it, crawled across the new wall, and entered the nursery through the broken board beside his ribs.

Before the drawer struck the blue rope, Ty's hand caught its handle and swung beneath the cabinet. Two fingers closed around the latch while his thumb found the bed rail and pulled both loads apart.

Cabinet and sleeping net stopped one arm's length apart.

Ty's three ribs now carried the cabinet, rope, and torn roof on separate chain links. The pull reached his spine inside Jade's coat and twisted the skull against her hip.

"Jade, give the cabinet rib one link toward the chimney."

She put her living hand under the chain.

"I am moving the cabinet link while your skull stays against my belt."

Jade shifted the chain. Ty turned the cabinet away from the net and wedged it between two beams.

The settlement rolled again.

Kipra grabbed the sleeping knot with both hands. One younger child wrapped the blue rope around a wrist. The other bit it and held on.

The downstake bent toward Ty's nearest rib.

Its bone shaft pulled through the iron rings by half an inch. The nursery wall followed. A crack ran from the stake bed toward the hole Ty had torn through the roof.

The woman caught the stake before it came free.

"The downstake thinks your ribs are loose runners, and it will spend them to keep this room."

"My ribs already have work, so tell me which surface needs the room."

"Red wall takes the children after I clear the broken bed."

She struck the iron ring sideways. The stake refused to turn while the nursery's weight hung from it. Her wrist moved. Her forearm continued falling toward the old floor, pulling the elbow across her chest.

She dropped the hammer and caught her arm against her ribs.

Ty felt the same wrong direction through his nearest bone. The room had turned. Her arm kept falling toward the old floor.

The cabinet began sliding again.

Nessa came through the roof hole shoulder first. Her numb right arm stayed strapped across her chest, yet the pulse cage beneath it had turned toward the downstake before her body followed. Two bent needles pushed against her sleeve near the elbow.

She hit the handprint wall on both knees and swallowed hard.

"My cage knows your down before my stomach or legs do."

The woman trapped her drifting forearm under the downstake shaft.

"Keep that caged arm away from the iron rings because the stake will read its pulse before it reads your face, your warning, or your pain."

"The arm cannot feel your stake, so use my left side for instructions."

Nessa hooked the recovered field finger's chain around the cabinet leg. The severed finger crawled beneath the rail and closed three joints around it. Its stored grip slowed the cabinet enough for Ty to move his rib.

Jade lowered herself through the broken roof on Ty's chain. She kept a strip of her torn coat over the open damaged eye and used the other hand to guide his skull clear of the boards.

"Ty, move the rope rib after Kipra transfers both children."

Kipra heard the name. Her attention flicked toward the skull, then returned to the younger child wrapped around her waist.

The fallwright dragged her wrong moving forearm against her body and reached the sleeping net with her good hand.

"Kipra crosses first with the smallest child, while the blue rope keeps the second on the beam."

Kipra untied her waist knot, threaded it through the smallest child's harness, and pushed off from the net. Ty's right hand caught the rope above her. His rib held the net below.

She swung toward the red wall and landed beside the downstake.

The fallwright caught Kipra by the belt. Her displaced forearm kept reaching toward the old floor behind her.

"Bring the second child when my hammer touches the iron ring twice."

Ty waited through the first strike.

On the second, he shortened the rib beneath the net. Jade pulled the chain one link. The blue rope swung across the room with the remaining child inside.

Kipra caught the net against the red wall. The fallwright drove her shoulder beneath it while Nessa used her left hand to close the wall clasp.

All three children held the same surface.

The cabinet tore loose from the beam.

Ty released the sleeping rope and sent that rib across the falling cabinet. The bone passed through two handles and joined the rib already on its back rail. His right hand dragged the field finger's chain low while Nessa pulled from the red wall.

The cabinet struck Ty's crossed ribs and stopped above the children's feet.

Both bones cracked near the chain holes.

Ty held them there.

Boots reached the outer roof. Ropes dropped through the broken boards, followed by four people carrying short hammers and looped iron collars. They drove two downstakes into the roof tiles around Jade and Nessa. The loops pulled both women against the new wall before either could stand.

One crew member saw Ty's hand moving without an arm.

"Independent unweighted dead beneath an occupied nursery means falling raiders sent a disposable runner first, and somebody usually follows before the children finish tying shelter knots."

Ty kept the cabinet off the children.

"A broken prison road threw us here, and my chain broke your nursery."

The fallwright looked at his cracked ribs, Jade's exposed eye, Nessa's caged arm, and the field finger clamped under the cabinet.

"Cause waits until my children stand beneath a roof that still knows down."

She took one iron collar from the crew with her working hand. The other forearm remained pulled across her chest.

"Hold the cabinet while we collar every loose bone and both falling strangers."

The crew looped Ty's chain rather than his neck. They pinned his right hand between two stake rings and tied Jade and Nessa to the red wall with separate ropes. Jade kept Ty's skull inside her coat. Nessa kept her left hand on the field finger chain.

Ty waited until Kipra crawled from beneath the cabinet with both children.

Then he lowered the cracked ribs into the crew's collars.

The fallwright picked up her hammer. Kipra steadied the arm that still believed the old floor remained below it.

"You repair this nursery before asking where this roof carried you."

Outside, the roadback rolled again, and every downstake in the room began to ring.