Chapter 144 - 142 — The Cost of Crossing II

Nine minutes later I saw the Wardens.

Not theirs. Mine.

Four of them came up the street from the direction of the canal, in a loose line with about twenty metres between each, and they were not patrolling. They were quartering.

One of them stopped at the mouth of every side opening and put its head into it and held it there for three or four seconds before moving on.

---

"That is from the gatehouse," Hana said. "We made an enormous amount of noise four hours ago and they have been walking it out ever since."

"They are on my side."

"They are on both sides. Whatever we woke up, we woke up in a machine that exists twice."

---

They went past the pillar at about forty metres and did not come to it, because there was nothing to hear and the silver was out.

Then they went into the civic complex.

Two of them into the courtyard through the broken north range, and two more round the east face toward the second court.

Toward the turn Krüger cannot see.

---

"Anton. How long to the next window."

"Six minutes."

"How long until those two are at the east end of that corridor."

He looked at it properly rather than answering fast, which is one of the reasons I have stopped worrying about him.

"Four."

---

We went into the complex.

Not down the corridor, because the corridor on my side is a trench with no roof over most of it and I would have been visible to everything in that courtyard.

We went along the outside of the north range and in through the broken west end, into what had been a room and is now three walls, and from there along the back of the rubble line.

Sokolov put a hand on my shoulder at about thirty metres and pointed.

---

There is a machine in the wall.

That is not what it looks like. What it looks like is a mess of bronze sitting in a scorched recess where a cupboard used to be, about a metre and a half up, with the housing burned off it.

But it is not a mess.

There is a drum with a chain on it. There is a quadrant, a curved bronze plate with teeth cut along the edge, and a dog sitting in the teeth.

And there is a handle on a square shaft. The shaft goes into the wall, and the chain from the drum goes up into the thickness of it and out of sight.

---

"That goes down," Sokolov said, and put two fingers on the chain and then followed it up with his eyes. "Whatever is on the other end of that comes down when this turns."

"A gate."

"A gate, or a bar, or a shutter. Something that closes a doorway." He put his hand flat on the quadrant. "It is wound up. The dog is holding it. Lift the dog, turn the handle the other way, and the weight of the thing does the work."

---

There are three of them.

That is the part that stopped me. I went twenty metres east along that wall and there is a second recess with the same assembly in it, and twenty metres further there is a third.

All three burned open. All three wound. All three with a chain going up into a wall.

And I have no way at all of knowing which doorway any of them belongs to, because on my side the doorways are gone and the walls they were in are lying in the courtyard.

---

The window came up and I had my hand on the pillar before the silver reached the top.

"Krüger. There are Wardens in the complex on my side and I would put money on there being Wardens in it on yours. Two of them are going for the east end."

*"We know. Marchand has had them for ninety seconds."*

*"Four signatures,"* Theo said, *"two of them inside the second court and moving toward our turn."*

"Then you are not going out through the second court."

*"There is nowhere else at that end."*

---

"There is. There are three machines on this wall and every one of them is holding a door shut on your side."

*"Say that again."*

"Three winding gear assemblies in the north range wall, twenty metres apart, all of them wound up, all of them with a chain going up into the wall to something that drops. On my side the housings have burned off and I can put my hand on all three."

---

*"Hold."*

I held, and I could hear him and Theo and Mara talking over each other for about four seconds, and then Theo came back and he had it.

*"Service doors. They are not doors, they are shutters. There will be three of them in this corridor and they will be the reason this range had a corridor at all."*

*"Marchand."*

*"There are three recesses on the left wall in here that I thought were alcoves and all three have a groove in the lintel."*

---

"Then which one do I turn."

*"That is the question, and it is going to take me more than we have."*

"How much more."

*"I need to count from the west end in paces and match it to your metres, and I have been walking a corridor in the dark for twelve minutes not counting anything."*

---

"Then count from the openings," Hana said, and leaned in past my shoulder. "Jace gave you all twelve of them before you went in. You know where you are relative to those. Tell him which of the nine you have passed."

Four seconds.

*"Seven,"* Mara said. *"We have passed seven on the courtyard side. We are standing between the seventh and the eighth."*

---

I looked at the rubble line and counted the courtyard openings from the west end, and put my thumb on the seventh and my finger on the eighth.

The second recess is between them. Eleven metres from the seventh.

"The middle one," I said. "It is between your seventh and eighth, on your left, about eleven metres past the seventh."

*"There is a recess there,"* Theo said. *"I am touching it."*

---

*"And if you are wrong,"* Krüger said, *"we open a shutter into a room with two Wardens in it."*

"Yes."

*"Say how confident you are, and do not round it up."*

I looked at the wall and the rubble and the seven openings and the second recess.

"Confident about the opening count, because I counted it twice and I gave it to you before either of us needed it. Less confident about eleven metres, because I am measuring off a map and your paces are your own."

*"That is the right answer,"* he said. *"Do it."*

---

The dog would not come up.

I got a hand under it and put my weight on it and it did not move a millimetre.

It is a bronze dog sitting in a bronze quadrant, and both of them have been through a fire and then sixty years of whatever that sky does.

They have gone together at the surfaces.

"Anton, is anything above me going to come down if I hit this."

He looked at the recess and then up at the wall above it and put a hand flat on the stone.

"Two courses are loose. Not from me. From the burning." He set an anchor across them without being asked. "Now it will not."

---

> **[Ability Activated: Aten.]**

> **[Mana: 196/280 → 190/280.]**

I did not hit it.

I put three seconds of fire onto the quadrant either side of where the dog sits, and the bronze went from green-black to dull red in a band about a hand wide, and then I put my palm against the dog and pushed.

It came out of the teeth with a noise like a coin dropped on a table.

---

Then the handle.

It turned about a quarter and then the drum took the load and the whole assembly complained, and the chain came off the drum a link at a time and went up into the wall with a sound I could feel in my teeth.

Somewhere inside eight metres of stone, something heavy started coming down a groove.

---

And a very long way away, in a city with a white sky, a shutter that has been closed since before anybody alive was born came up off its seat.

*"It is open,"* Theo said, and the way he said it I do not think he entirely believed it.

*"Out. All three, now."* Krüger, already moving, audibly. *"Viteri first, Marchand behind her, do not wait for me."*

---

*"It comes out into a yard,"* Mara said, and she was moving while she said it, which I could hear. *"Stone. Enclosed. One arch at the far end."*

*"Take the arch."*

*"Taking it."*

Then thirty seconds of nothing but breathing and boots.

*"We are out of the range. We are in the lane south of it. The turn is forty metres."*

---

"Krüger."

*"Go."*

"The two that went for your second court. Are they behind you."

*"Marchand."*

*"They are in the court. They went into the court and they are still in the court."* A pause. *"They did not follow. They went to where we were."*

---

That is when it arrived.

The chain in the wall had stopped. The shutter on their side was up.

And on my side there was a bronze drum that had just run out eight metres of chain in a burned recess in an open courtyard, and the noise of it had gone along the whole north range.

The first of the four came through the rubble line at about sixty metres.

Then the second, from further east.

---

"Off the pillar," Hana said.

"The window is not finished."

"The window is finished when they are through the arch and they are through the arch." She already had her hand on my arm. "Anton. Which way."

"South wall. There is a gap behind the third recess." He was moving as he said it. "Then out into the lane and east. Do not go into the courtyard."

---

I got two words out to Krüger and took my hand off the stone and the silver went out.

Then we ran.

---

The one from sixty metres was not going to catch us and the one from further east had a better line and did.

It came round the end of the rubble at about fifteen metres and it came in at Hana, because she was the last of us onto the gap and she was the slowest thing in that range.

I did not have the angle.

> **[Ability Activated: Snare.]**

> **[Mana: 190/280 → 180/280.]**

---

I put it on the lead foot at eight metres and it did what the last one did, which is arrive over a foot that had stopped being available.

It went down onto a knee and a hand and it did not stay there.

But it stayed there for about a second and a half, and Hana was through the gap in one and a quarter of them.

---

> **[Talaria activated.]**

> **[Ability Activated: Aten.]**

> **[Mana: 180/280 → 174/280.]**

I came in over the top of it while it was getting up and put three seconds into the collar seam, and it was not enough, because it got a hand up and I had to break off.

The second hit came across my chest on the way out.

> **[Health: 318/510 → 271/510.]**

---

I went through the gap on my back with the wind out of me and Sokolov got a hand into my harness and pulled.

"Do not stop," he said, and he was not looking at me, he was looking behind me with both hands out. "I have one. I have one and then I have nothing."

"Then use it."