Page 148 of Zenith Court

Pryce saw the break before the rest of his line. “Fall back to the witness floor,” he ordered. The surviving guards left the bridge and withdrew through the far arch without letting the retreat turn into a rout. The archway closed behind them.

I counted the span as soon as my feet reached dry stone. Eleven of ours lay dead. Six more could not stand without help. The freed behind us had already formed a stretcher line from cloaks, spear shafts, and the bridge’s narrow maintenance boards. They passed the wounded toward the antechamber while fighters flattened themselves against the rail to make room. The miller with the iron hook remained on his feet long enough to lift the clerk who had saved him, then folded when someone else took the weight. Four guards lay beside the channel; the others had followed Pryce. I gave the rearward count to the first stretcher-bearer, pointed out the man bleeding from his scalp, and moved on before the rising water trapped more of us on the bridge.

The gallery beyond should have been the next defended position. Instead, a copyist stood at its gate winch with one ink-stained hand on the release lever. An under-warden ordered him to drop the gate. The boy could not have been more than seventeen. His hand shook against the wood, but he kept the lever raised. At the third order, he said, “No.” The under-warden reached for him. One clerk stepped between them while another took the boy’s place at the lever. The boy backed away from the winch with both palms visible.

A steward I recognized from the intake floor seized the gate chain in his place. She had once checked my wren’s chit and turned me away. Now she dragged the gate open hand over hand, using her full weight when the chain resisted, then backed against the wall with her palms out. Neither she nor the copyist took up a weapon.

The administrator crossed the secured bridge behind us with a column of freed prisoners. She had left the roll with a clerk in the antechamber and brought its loose casualty sheet folded into her sleeve. She looked at the copyist, then at the under-warden retreating through the next arch. “Get through before someone lowers it. Move.” She sent twelve of the steadier people toward the far stair and directed the rest through the open gate. They carried what they had found on the way—pry bars, a cleaver, a coil of rope—and kept close enough to pull one another forward without forming ranks that would jam the gallery.

Marrow entered behind the last of them, still unarmed. His eyes moved over the corridor, the stair signs, and the stacked linen carts. “You’re heading for the west stair,” he said. “Don’t. It’s held in strength, and it’s the only route named in the protocols I wrote.”

He pointed beyond the carts to a low service door I had missed. “Laundry drop. No steward logs it because no steward needs it. I used it once to move a girl nobody was supposed to be moving.”

Delphine’s grip tightened on the file. “Was it me?”

“Yes,” Marrow said.

Jonah entered the laundry passage first. Magnus insisted on taking the rear. The passage opened onto a narrow service stair that climbed around the defended west route rather than meeting it. Caspian had to turn his shoulders at each bend. The gallery’s lamplight vanished after the first turn, leaving us to follow Jonah’s hand against the wall and the faint reflection from the water channels below. The air warmed as we climbed, carrying soap, old steam, and then the copper smell of blood from Magnus’s shoulder. Twice the column stopped while Jonah listened at a landing door. Both times he waved us higher. Marrow climbed behind Delphine, counting the turns under his breath so he could place us against the floor plan.

My mouth dried before I recognized the landing. The witness floor lay beyond a final pair of tall doors banded in dark silver, the founding mark crossing their center. Through the gap beneath them, I saw the marble where I had once stood in a Council collar. My hand rose toward my throat before I stopped it. Twelve silver-corded guards blocked the approach. Pryce stood at their center with an unbandaged cut along one arm. His people had reached the position ahead of us and chosen ground barely wide enough for our front rank. Behind the doors, more boots crossed the marble and stopped, adding another line we could not yet see.

“This is the last line,” Pryce said. “Turn back.”

“Open the doors,” I said.

“No.” Pryce raised his blade, and the guards beside him followed.

Magnus stepped level with me, blood spreading through his collar. Caspian took my hand once, squeezed, then released it and drew. Kieran wiped his cheek with his sleeve and flexed the fingers below his cut forearm. Jonah shifted to the left wall, where the first guard would have to turn his sword hand inward to reach him. Delphine pulled a short knife from inside her coat and pressed the hilt into my palm. Behind us, freed prisoners filled the gallery mouth. The administrator held them short of the narrow landing and sent the rope back toward the wounded, keeping our retreat open even while everyone faced forward.

I set my free hand against the cold silver band. The founding mark answered beneath my palm, and all three lines rose at my wrist. The bridge and its stretcher line lay behind us. The water climbed another fraction of a note. I took my hand from the door and raised Delphine’s knife. Across the landing, Pryce settled into his stance.

40

Astra

Pryce crossed the landing before my knife reached shoulder height. Jonah caught his first strike against the wall and turned it aside. The guards behind Pryce backed through the dark-silver doors in formation, forcing us to fight for the threshold before we could enter the witness floor. Caspian drove through on Jonah’s right. I followed with Delphine’s short knife and put it through the throat of the first guard who tried to close the door between us.

The room beyond was the one where five hundred witnesses had once watched me refuse the First Chair. Now the witness tiers held silver-corded guards three deep at every stair. Blades struck hard enough to ring off the marble rails. Boots slipped in blood where the first ranks had met. The tiers rose above us, most of their seats abandoned, while the fight spread toward the dais.

Delphine caught the right-hand door before it could swing back and wedged a broken spear shaft beneath it. The freed column pushed through behind her in pairs, then spread along the lowest tier instead of crowding our backs. A guard lunged down from the first gallery. Kieran met him on the stair, knocked his blade against the rail, and sent it spinning into the empty witness seats. The guard followed it a heartbeat later.

Pell, the Tower key-holder who had walked with us from the mill, took a spear low in the side near the second gallery stair. He folded around the shaft without a sound. Aldric left his line and caught him before his head struck the marble. He broke the shaft short, dragged Pell behind an overturned bench, and pressed a wadded sleeve against the wound. Pell’s hand closed around Aldric’s wrist and stayed there. A guard crossed the aisle toward them before Aldric could stand. I intercepted the strike with my knife, felt the blade skid along my knuckles, and drove my shoulder into the guard’s chest. He went over the bench backward. Aldric regained his feet and left two freed prisoners holding pressure where his hand had been. Pell was still breathing when we moved on.

Caspian fought bare-wristed at my shoulder. His blade moved only when it had a target. Twice he found gaps the rite-guard corrected too late. The second time, he caught the falling guard by the collar and lowered him enough that our front rank could step over rather than trip. Kieran ran the gallery stair and knocked one guard over its rail before the next turned. The cut on his forearm had soaked through his sleeve, but his grip still held. Jonah looked once across the floor, shouted for the left rank to shift around a fallen bench, and opened a path before the guards could use the obstruction themselves. When a woman in our line froze at the body beneath her feet, Jonah took her elbow, put her behind him, and filled the place she had left without breaking stride. Delphine held the service-stair entrance until Kieran doubled back and cleared the two men pressing her there.

At the chamber’s far side, an inner arch opened into the antechamber above the last descent to the founding basin. I could hear the water beyond it, louder whenever the guards’ movement left the passage briefly clear. Every surviving guard was moving toward that sound. They yielded the galleries rank by rank, keeping their faces toward us, then crowded the arch four deep across a passage made for two. The front pair fought while the men behind braced their shoulders and replaced anyone who fell. They were not trying to retake the witness floor. They only needed to keep us from the stair until the Rite finished.

We reached the base of the dais with the arch thirty feet away. Aldric’s line had thinned until gaps opened between people who could no longer cover one another. Guards filled those gaps and forced us back against the first tier. A bench went over beneath the pressure of the freed column behind us, trapping one man’s leg until three strangers hauled the wood off him. The water at my wrist pulled toward the arch. I could have answered it, but the room was packed shoulder to shoulder; any current strong enough to clear the guards would strike our people first. The arch was closing, with guards between us and no safe way to clear them.

Magnus Ashford stood at the base of his family’s dais. He drew a narrow sword from the leather scabbard beneath his coat: old steel and a plain house hilt worn smooth. He turned the seat’s ring once, stopped, and closed both hands around the grip.

“Get him through,” he told me, looking at Caspian. “I’ve already argued with him once.”

Caspian went still. “Father⁠⁠—”

“I held this floor for twelve days.” Magnus raised the blade into the same stance Caspian used. “I can hold it a little longer. Go.”

He stepped through the remains of Aldric’s line and into the narrow approach to the arch. He turned slowly into position, his back resisting the movement. One knee stayed bent until he shifted his weight and tried again. Then the blade settled at the correct angle, point high enough to threaten the first guard’s face and hilt close to his ribs. The first guard checked at the point. Magnus used the hesitation to take two more steps and put himself between them and the rest of us. “Move,” he said without looking back.