Chapter 105: THE MARKER

Sio kept the crossbar low as he climbed out of the gap. The shelf narrowed above the washout, wet grit shifting beneath his boots. Below, Eda remained under the overhang with Kell and Rhea. Kell’s voice carried faintly through the rocks as he tried to keep her talking.

Ahead, the square-heeled figure followed a higher ridge parallel to Angle’s maintenance path. Every few steps, the stranger stopped to look down at the ledge, ignoring the supply road. The distance between them changed with every turn of the ridge. Sio had to choose his footing carefully; a single loose stone could announce him before he got close enough to interfere. You’re not trying to catch him. You’re trying to see where he goes.

Gumm stirred beneath Sio’s collar. Sio touched one of his small limbs and ducked behind a block of stone. Across a narrow break he could see the exposed outer ledge. Angle had passed its first bend; beyond the next, rock concealed the approach to Safe Node Seven.

A metallic tick came from above. The stranger crouched beside a post, pulling a fine line across the path. One end was anchored to the stone; the other ran to a metal disk balanced against a projection of rock. A passing leg would pull it loose and send a sharp signal across the ridge.

The device was nowhere near the hidden entrance, but it could tell someone which ledge Angle chose. Sio edged behind the post and loosened the anchor loop, lowering the line without moving the disk. The wet cord pressed a narrow groove into his finger. He let it settle onto the path a little at a time, aware that a single sharp tug would tell the watcher somebody had found the device.

Another click sounded from the ridge. A second answered farther down the washout.

Sio held still. Two positions, not an echo. Then gravel shifted beneath his boot, and the figure turned.

He stepped away from the line and raised the crossbar, blocking the descent to the maintenance path. A scarf concealed the stranger’s face beneath a dark hood. Broad, square-heeled boots dug into the rock.

"Whatever you’re waiting to hear, this path’s closed," Sio said.

The stranger drew a short metal tube from their coat. Sio swung toward the wrist, but a weighted cord snapped from the tube and wrapped around his crossbar. The stranger pulled. Sio slid over loose shale, scraping his forearm against the post as the drop opened beside his foot.

He braced a boot against stone, shoved the bar forward to slacken the cord and pinned the line against the ground. The stranger let go of the launcher and tried to slip past. Sio caught the coat, but its fabric tore in his grip. Something small fell from an outer pocket and struck the rock.

The stranger twisted free and scrambled up the ridge. Gumm tightened beneath Sio’s collar, startled by the jerk of his body. Sio caught himself against the post again, the taste of dust sharp at the back of his throat.

Sio could have put a portal across the next foothold. Someone below had answered those clicks, though, and his portals were recognizable. Catching one watcher wasn’t worth showing another exactly who he was. He jerked the crossbar free of the slack loop, then hurled it across the passage.

Iron smashed against rock ahead of the fleeing figure. Chips scattered. The stranger ducked around the rubble and disappeared over the ridge.

Sio retrieved the bar, breathing through the sting where his scraped arm rubbed against his sleeve. He listened for footsteps, but the wind brought only water dripping into the washout.

"Sio?" Angle appeared around the bend, keeping close to the wall. He looked at the crossbar, then the torn cloth in Sio’s hand. "What happened?"

"A signal line across your route. Someone wanted to hear where you went." Sio indicated the post. "And somebody farther down answered their clicks."

Angle removed the disk and wound its cord around it. Two shallow grooves had been cut across the metal. Angle checked the plain reverse, then glanced toward the path beyond the bend. "Did they see the entrance?"

"Not from here. I disabled the line before you reached it." Sio glanced up at the ridge. "But there could be more than two."

Angle handed him the disk. "Keep it. I’ll use the warning pipe inside the next bend. The coded closure signal will reach the upper watch, then Mara. No need to cross the exposed ledge again."

Sio crouched to retrieve what had fallen from the watcher’s pocket: blue cloth knotted around a cracked metal ring, frayed along one edge and stained dark near the knot. The ring had been bent open and pressed back together, leaving a gap that caught against his skin. It looked too ordinary to be a signal, which made him less willing to leave it behind. There was no badge or writing on it. He put it away and watched Angle take the protected route toward the warning pipe.

He returned to the lower shelf without crossing the soft gravel where the stranger had stood. Kell’s tracking lens had already shown him what a trail could reveal.

Rhea met him beneath the overhang. Her ears turned toward the ridge before she noticed the dust on his sleeve. "You fought someone."

"Didn’t catch them." Sio showed her the signal disk. "One watcher above, another answering from below. Hear anything?"

"Two clicks while you were gone. Neither came from the ridge." She drew him farther under cover. "I shifted stones in the stream so the trickle runs over our clearest footprints. It won’t erase them all." Her bandaged hand rested against her coat rather than the rock. A darker patch had spread across the cloth, but she kept her attention on the channel below.

Kell sat beside Eda, his coat wrapped around her shoulders. Her swollen knee lay on folded cloth, and she flinched whenever dripping water struck her ankle. Sio crouched and offered her the ring. "Does this look familiar?"

Eda reached for it, then stopped. "Where did you find that?"

"It fell from the watcher’s coat."

She took the ring and worked the knot between trembling fingers. "Bren had this." She raised her forearm, showing a jagged strip missing from her blue sleeve lining. "His broken cuff kept cutting his wrist after we escaped. I tore this off and tied it around the ring so the metal wouldn’t rub him raw."

Kell bent toward it. "You’re certain?"

"I made that knot." She matched the frayed edge to the tear in her sleeve. Her thumb pressed the cloth, but she didn’t try to untie it. Kell opened his mouth, then closed it when Eda turned the ring over again. She traced the rough metal where it must have rubbed Bren’s wrist, while her injured leg trembled against the folded cloth.

Sio studied the stain. The watcher had obtained something Bren wore when he disappeared. That didn’t tell them whether Bren had surrendered it, lost it or had it taken from him.

"We still don’t know what happened to him," Rhea said. Eda closed her fingers around the ring and kept looking toward the washout.

A metallic click came from below, followed by two more with the same deliberate spacing. Rhea raised her head. "The other signal. From the channel."

Kell started up, but Rhea held his shoulder. Eda tried to draw in her injured leg and stopped with a sharp breath. Sio moved to the overhang’s edge, keeping behind a split in the rock. He had been able to see the upper watcher’s boots, but the lower channel gave him almost nothing. The bend swallowed sound as well as light, and an observer down there could watch the slope without ever showing a face.

Water ran through the dark channel below. Near its far bend, a reflection flashed briefly, no larger than a coin. It looked like light catching the lens of Kell’s viewing instrument, but Sio couldn’t see the source. He withdrew before anyone could catch sight of him.

"Someone might be watching through a lens," he told Rhea. "Can’t be sure."

She listened as wind shook dead leaves against the stone. No footsteps followed. Kell looked at Eda’s knee, then toward the open slope. "We can’t carry her across that."

"We’re not going to," Sio said. "Mara should get Angle’s warning. Until then, we stay away from the supply road."

Rhea moved along the inner wall and stopped at a gap partly concealed by roots and loose stones. Cold air flowed out carrying stagnant water and a trace of rust. "The stream runs beneath this rock. There could be another drainage passage."

Sio joined her. The opening offered a few paces of low ceiling before bending into darkness. Eda couldn’t move her knee without help. Bringing her into an unknown tunnel could trap all four of them. Even Kell would have to crouch to enter. If the passage narrowed, Sio might have to turn around without learning anything, leaving the others in the same exposed position they were trying to escape.

"I’ll check the first stretch," he said. "We don’t move her until we know there’s space and another way out."

"You can’t see past the bend," Rhea said.

"Then I stop at the bend." Sio adjusted his grip on the crossbar as Gumm peered from his collar. "Keep them covered. If the watcher comes closer, don’t wait for me."

Rhea returned behind the shelf’s stone lip. Sio crouched at the entrance, where seepage had left a thin bed of silt above the stream. An impression marked the sheltered side of the passage: a broad square heel cut with sharp ridges, matching the tread he’d seen on the watcher’s boots.

The toe pointed inward. He couldn’t tell whether its owner had come back out over the stone. Sio looked for a matching impression beside it, but the rest of the floor was hard and uneven. Whoever had used the passage had left him one useful clue and nothing about how recently it had been made.

Sio lowered himself beneath the rock, keeping the crossbar ahead of him. Somewhere beyond the bend, water tapped steadily against metal.