Page 139 of Zenith Court

He opened it, and the river filled the room.

More of the wall began opening from Sadie’s side faster than my hands could follow. Then she started to shake. Her fingers went cold in mine, her breaths shallow and fast. Fear came through the current first, then anger sharp enough to make my teeth ache. When she pulled her hands from mine, I released them immediately and banked the current.

Sadie knocked the teacup into the hearth and stood so quickly that her chair overturned. Her voice was hoarse. She told us what the floor attendant’s humming had sounded like from behind the wall. She had heard every gentle word and every answer her own mouth gave while she struggled to speak. “Write it down,” she ordered Caspian. “Write that I thanked them every day. Write that I was still there, hearing myself do it.” He wrote every word and read it back. She stood over him until he finished.

Jonah put another log on the fire and returned to the door. Delphine took a second cup from the shelf, held it out, and said, “We’re rich in cups.” Sadie stared at it, then set it upside down on the table.

Later, I asked, “Do you want me to open any more⁠—”

“Stop,” Sadie said.

My hands remained in my lap, the current banked.

“There’s more inside me. I can feel where it is.”

“Do you want it left alone?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m done.”

“Until I ask?”

“Until you ask.”

Caspian added the suspension to the document. Sadie watched him write. When he finished, her shoulders lowered.

Near evening, she found the rubbing beneath the smoothing iron and read her own carving. “Buckle pin from my shoe,” she said. “It took three nights. I hid the shavings in the mattress seam.” She read the words again, squared the iron over the paper, and rested her fingers on it.

By dusk, Kieran had stayed as long as he could. He needed to take the northern road before full dark if he meant to reach the Tower the following evening. Sadie stopped him at the door with one hand on the frame.

“You tell that bread story badly.”

“You laughed.”

“Once.”

“I’ll improve it.”

He kissed my knuckles and promised to send word. Then he crossed the yard and disappeared into the tree line.

Supper was the loaf Jonah had bartered from the village baker, burnt on the bottom and difficult to cut. Jonah reached for the knife, but Sadie got there first. Her first slice came away thick at one end and thin at the other. She looked at it, then made the next one deliberately worse. Soon the table was covered with lopsided pieces. She ate the crusts and left the soft middles in a pile.

“The middle goes soggy,” she said, and reached for another crust.

34

Kieran

We rode north in the last light of the tenth day: two network men and me. I had called it a rescue when I left the mill. By the first ford, with no idea what waited at the Tower, I admitted it was reconnaissance. I disliked the word and kept rescue.

The network men were Felds, father and son, both answering to Feld. Old Feld carried a crossbow wrapped in sacking and complained whenever the weather changed. Young Feld had steadier hands and spoke even less. Neither saw a reason to distinguish between them.

My right shoulder stayed quiet as we rode. At the gate, and again at the first ford, my left hand rose to check it anyway. I let the habit finish and lowered my hand.

We sighted the Tower on the eleventh evening from a drover’s track in the high scrub. The channels there had narrowed to silver threads between the stones. The Tower stood as it always had: pale, windowless, lit from below by the moving water around it. I looked for one breath, then raised the spyglass.

Eight carts waited on the supply dock while stewards stretched canvas over their hoops. A rope line ran the length of the bridge. Beyond it, gray blankets moved toward the carts in files of five, each file counted at both ends. The Tower was being emptied southward, and not by us.