Chapter 104: BENEATH THE ROOTS

The scrape came again from beneath the fallen tree. This time Sio heard a breath caught between each pull of metal against stone. Rhea raised her uninjured hand before he could step into the washout, but Kell was already moving toward the roots.

"Eda?" he called. "It’s Kell. Answer me."

Something tapped twice inside the drainage pipe. A woman’s voice followed, thin and rough. "Keep your voice down. He’s still out there."

Kell dropped to his knees. Rhea caught the back of his coat before he could crawl under the tree. The square-heeled tracks they’d found led uphill, but their owner might have stopped just beyond the ridge. She listened toward the rocks while Sio crouched beside the opening.

A bent iron grille blocked most of the pipe. One corner had collapsed inward, pinning a length of dark fabric against the stone. Water trickled beneath it and soaked Sio’s cuff when he reached toward the gap.

"Is that your leg?" he asked.

"Yes. Don’t pull the grille. There’s another bar across my knee." Two fingers appeared between the rods, trembling before they withdrew. "I tried lifting it. It just digs in farther."

"Where’s Bren?" Kell asked, pressing his face close to the opening.

"We heard those clicks coming up the washout. A man came toward us from below, carrying something that flashed." Eda stopped to catch her breath. "Bren shouted and ran into the side channel, away from the tree. He wanted the man to follow him. I crawled back, and the grille slipped when I tried to get inside."

Angle looked toward a narrow branch in the streambed. From their position he could see only its entrance. "Did the man follow?"

"I heard boots. Then the clicks started again. I couldn’t see."

Sio lay on his side to look through the broken section of grille. Eda sat in ankle-deep water with one leg stretched beneath the fallen metal. The pipe was barely wider than her shoulders. He couldn’t open a portal around her without its edge intersecting either the iron or her body.

"We’ll lift it first," he said, backing out. "Angle, that bar of yours is about to earn its keep."

Angle crouched beside him, the crossbar still in his hand. There wasn’t room to fit it beneath the grille from outside. Sio pointed through the broken corner to a projecting stone lip inside the pipe, just behind the trapped metal.

"I can put the end of your bar in there. Rest it on that stone and push your end down. The stone takes the pressure."

Angle checked the angle twice. Sio opened a small portal beside the crossbar’s tip, its other mouth inside the pipe where he could see the stone clearly. The iron slid through. Angle settled it against the lip, then fed a little more through until its far end rested beneath the grille.

"Eda, keep your hands clear," Rhea said. She eased her good arm between the roots to brace Eda’s shoulders. Her wrapped palm brushed the bark; she immediately shifted it away, catching her breath through her nose.

Angle pressed downward. The stone held. The far end of the crossbar lifted the grille a finger’s width, and metal screeched through the pipe. Eda cried out, then gripped Rhea’s wrist as cold water rushed into the space beneath her knee.

"Can you slide your leg?" Sio asked, keeping the portal steady.

"Not yet." Eda tried, failed, and pressed her head against the pipe wall. "Just a little higher."

Angle adjusted his feet on the mud and leaned down again. The grille rose enough for Rhea to pull Eda sideways, clear of the bar. Kell caught her under the arms and dragged her onto the dry roots. Only when her leg was free did Angle ease the iron back against the stone, withdraw the crossbar through the portal and give Sio room to close both openings.

The grille struck the pipe floor with a heavy clang. The sound rolled out along the washout. Rhea turned toward the ridge at once, her ears lifting above the hiss of water.

"We can’t stay here," she said.

Kell was trying to stand Eda up. Her injured knee buckled before she could put weight on it, and he caught her against his chest. Sio knelt beside them. The joint was swelling beneath her wet trousers. He saw no exposed bone, but whatever had happened inside the pipe, she wasn’t going to walk out of the channel.

"Stop trying to make her stand," he told Kell. "Give her something to lean against."

Gumm crept down Sio’s sleeve, studying Eda with his round eyes. When she shivered, he stretched one small limb toward her hand. She glanced at him, too exhausted to react, and he retreated beneath Sio’s collar.

A click sounded farther uphill. Another followed after a pause, as deliberate as someone testing whether they would answer. Angle tightened his grip on the crossbar.

Sio could see a flat patch of shale beneath an overhanging rock on the lower shelf. The tree’s roots screened it from the high ridge, though a person coming closer might still catch the glow of a portal. His ability was distinctive; showing it to an unknown watcher could make him easier to track later. He looked at Eda’s knee and chose the risk.

"Over there," he told Kell. "I’ll make a short crossing. Keep her leg level."

The portal opened low behind the root mass, its exit just above the shale. Kell guided Eda through while Rhea supported her injured leg. Sio went last and closed the passage beneath the cover of the overhang. The entire move took seconds, but he kept watching the rocks for a response.

Angle climbed onto the lower shelf beside them. "I’ll go for Mara. She needs to close the powder-covered approach before someone uses it."

"Take the maintenance ledge, not the supply path," Sio said. "And don’t bring anyone back along our tracks. Tell her we have two people from the separated prisoner branch and another still missing."

Angle checked the way up. "Don’t follow anyone downhill until I get back." He slipped under the overhang and took the hidden path toward the terraces, leaving the crossbar beside Sio.

Eda sat with her back against the rock. Kell had wrapped his coat around her shoulders, but water dripped steadily from her trouser cuff. She tried to straighten the injured leg, stopped halfway and pressed both palms against the shale.

"Before the branch split," she said to Sio, "someone was trying to open our compartment. There was a man wearing a red scarf."

"Angle," Sio said. The memory of the locked prisoner doors came back with the grinding of the Arcline around them. "We tried to reach you. The branch pulled away before we could get through."

"I know that now." Eda glanced toward the path Angle had taken. "The guards told us nobody was coming. After the crash, some prisoners found the service drain. Others were behind another set of partitions. We couldn’t open them from our side."

Kell rubbed his thumb over the broken cuff on his wrist. "We heard people calling through the walls when we left."

Sio looked down the channel. The words gave the missing section a shape he hadn’t been able to forget, and made it harder to sit still. But going back after the prisoners now would mean abandoning an injured woman in a washout with someone hunting nearby.

Rhea had crouched near the edge of the shale. "Kell, you said Bren helped Eda walk. What did his boots look like?"

"Old brown work boots," Kell said. "One heel was damaged."

"A notch on the outer edge?" Rhea pointed to a faint print in the mud below. "That tread appeared beside the tree. One set continues toward the side channel; the injured person’s tracks turn back."

"Yes," Eda said, peering down. "He cut the heel on a loose floor plate when we escaped."

Rhea followed the notched impressions to a wet shelf of stone. There was a scuff where the trail ended, but no clear mark beyond it. "He may have climbed out here. I can’t tell whether he went farther or someone met him." She stood, keeping her wounded hand tucked near her waist.

A pebble dropped from above them and bounced against the shale. Another struck the rock behind Kell. Rhea seized his collar before he could look up over the ledge.

A figure crossed an opening between the rocks high above them. Sio caught only the legs before they slipped behind a boulder: broad boots, square heels and sharp ridges cut into the soles. The pattern matched the impressions in the mud, but the person was too far away for Sio to see a face.

No weapon had been raised. No demand followed. For a moment the only sound was Eda breathing through her teeth and water collecting in a shallow crack beneath the shelf.

"Why throw stones?" Kell whispered.

Sio picked one up. It was clean and dry, unlike the rocks around the stream. Whoever had dropped it had chosen to announce their position. "Maybe they wanted us looking up," he said, glancing toward the bend below.

Rhea was already watching the high route. The boot steps moved away toward the supply ridge, roughly the direction Angle had gone by the concealed ledge. Two paths, separated by rock, leading toward the same area.

"Or they wanted to see where we’d take her," she said. "We opened a way out of the washout. They didn’t stop us."

Sio looked at Eda, still shivering beneath Kell’s coat, then at the ridgeline. He couldn’t tell whether the stranger had seen his portal or merely followed the noise. Either way, the safe route to Mara was no longer certain.

He picked up the crossbar Angle had left behind and moved into the narrow gap that overlooked the ridge.

"Keep them under cover," he told Rhea. "If those boots reach the maintenance path before Angle does, he’ll never know someone’s coming."