The roof worker’s service hatch opened onto a crawlspace that reeked of lamp soot, wet straw and old sweat.
Didi dropped through first with her rapier pinned tight against her hip, and Wren tumbled after her with a yelp.
"Sorry, sorry, the ladder’s shorter than he said," he whispered, rubbing his knee.
"Then let’s hope the ladder was his only lie."
The talisman at her collar crackled, and Hajin’s voice leaked out far too loud for any crawlspace.
"Are you in? Tell me you’re in, Juna keeps pacing and it’s freaking me out—"
"I don’t pace," Juna grumbled somewhere behind him.
"You’re pacing in a circle, that’s the worst kind!"
Didi pinched the talisman’s cord between two fingers, "We’re inside, and you are shouting at a spy."
"This is my whisper, okay, this is literally my whisper," he hissed, "just get the bonds off before Captain Brann Keld turns those workers against us, and if it goes bad, you pull out, deal?"
"Deal, now hush," she murmured, tucking the talisman beneath her collar.
’Lift the bonds quietly, before the captain thinks to spend those people as a wall.’
Through the floor slats she saw the whole service housing below, rows of cots split by a long muster rail. Each cot carried a brass tag riveted to the rail, and a ledger desk stood beneath the dangling alarm rope.
Forty workers lay on those cots, and not one of them was actually sleeping.
Wren slid down a support post and crept to the desk, then pressed a thick roll into her hands.
"Debt roll, every name in the yard," he breathed, "my cousin’s on the second page."
She unrolled it under the lamp, and her mouth went thin as she read the clauses beneath each name.
Toll, board and tools sat in the first lines, and obedience owed until full payment sat in the very last. A red wax seal closed every single entry, pressed with a warden’s mark that warmed faintly under her cold thumb.
"Put that down, little thief."
The man in the doorway wore lacquered plate and carried a poleaxe longer than he was tall.
Eight Shards woke around his forearms as he stepped inside, and Wren made a tiny strangled noise.
"The oath warden," Wren squeaked, backing toward the cots, "he holds every debt in the yard."
The warden laid his gauntlet on the muster rail, "Not every debt, little rat, only the ones that matter."
He squeezed the rail, and his voice dropped flat as a bell striking.
"Debt sworn, debt called, forty and forty-one, ring the alarm."
Two workers jerked upright from their cots, faces twisting while their legs marched them toward the rope.
Under Didi’s thumb, two names burned against the roll as the claim pulled tight through their wax.
’He isn’t commanding their bodies, he’s spending the obedience these papers say they owe.’
"Stop, I can’t stop," the older worker croaked, reaching for the rope while tears ran into his beard.
Didi tossed the roll into Wren’s arms and moved faster than the warden expected.
Frost raced from her heel across the boards and reared up into a waist-high wall right before the alarm rope. The two workers slammed against it with outstretched hands, still straining forward while the roof worker grabbed their frayed collars.
"Pull them behind the cots," she ordered, "and hold on even if they fight you."
The warden swung his poleaxe off the rail in one long arc that split the frost wall’s corner.
Didi slipped inside the long haft and drove the rapier’s flat hard into his gauntlet where it met the rail. Crowned Frost bit through the contact, and the rail whitened under his fingers in a thin, cracking skin of ice.
He wrenched his hand free with a curse, and the two workers sagged against the roof worker’s arms.
"Got them," the roof worker gasped, dragging both down behind the cots, "they’re limp, they’re just limp now."
"Clever trick," the warden snarled, flexing numbed fingers, "but you only froze one handhold."
"You talk a lot for a man hiding behind a railing," she drawled, sliding her heel forward.
The seal on his breastplate flared, and every brass tag along the rail glowed with it.
Every name on the roll in Wren’s arms warmed together, forty small heats in one breath.
’The rail was only his hand, the armor carries the seal through every registered worker.’
She pressed him backward with three quick thrusts that kept his long poleaxe crowded far too close to swing freely. He gave ground to the far end, and she let him, planting herself between the rail and the alarm rope.
"Your Highness, the side door," Wren hissed, "it’s barred from inside, I can lift it."
"Then lift it, slowly, and don’t touch anyone the warden calls."
The warden laughed, a short ugly sound, and raised the poleaxe high above his head.
"Full muster, every debt in this house, form the line."
Thirty-eight workers rose stiffly from their cots all at once, shuffling into their places along the muster rail like sleepwalkers. They stood shoulder to shoulder with blank, frightened faces, forming a living fence between his lacquered plate and her blade.
A young woman near the end of the line strained her chin toward Didi, "Please, my legs won’t listen to me."
"They will soon, hold on a little longer," she promised, keeping her rapier level at the warden.
Muffled under her collar, the talisman buzzed with Hajin’s tinny, frantic squawk.
"Is that a poleaxe? That sounds like a poleaxe, talk to me—"
She flicked the talisman’s cord twice without taking her eyes off the warden, "Busy."
’I could cut him loose from one or two, and spend my strength in crumbs.’
’Let him gather every claim into one place, then I answer all of it.’
Didi drew her heel across the floor, laying a thin frost line that ran the whole length of the rail. The workers stopped against it as the warden tried marching them forward, their bare toes pressed right to the ice.
"Behind that line you stay," she told them softly, "nobody walks you anywhere you didn’t choose."
Wren grunted at the side door, and the bar scraped upward one stubborn inch at a time.
Cold night air slid under the gap, and several workers turned their heads toward it without moving their feet.
"Brave little princess," the warden sneered, lowering his poleaxe behind the human fence, "look at them, every one sworn and sealed."
"These people are my lawful shield, and every one of them is mine by oath," he declared, slapping the seal on his chest.
"Strike me, and you strike thirty-eight debts first."
There it was, the whole claim spoken aloud and gathered into one place before her eyes.
Didi stepped up to the muster rail and laid her bare palm flat against its frozen metal.
Seven Shards circled her arm, one fewer than his, and she did not care in the slightest.
"You gathered every claim in this house and stood it in one line," she said, lifting her chin, "thank you, that saves me time."
"What—"
"This ground answers to no oath of yours," Didi breathed, pressing harder against the rail, "this whole room is my answer."
The side door swung wide behind her, and the Unclaimed Kingdom began to open around the muster rail.