Hest’s click crossed the dry center as the walls drew breath.
Water dropped away from the circular lip and exposed six black openings beneath it. Pale mineral ribs bent inward around each opening. Between them, wet membrane tightened until the whole chamber pulled at Dane through his wheels, his sound rail, and the rod buried in his right quarter.
The center stayed level through the draw; returning water covered the bottom tread to the ankle and tore off its outer corner, which spun into the ring. Torven remained between Orsa and the steps, water spilling along the smaller fork below his cheekbone.
Kril took the heavy guide off his hip. He left the loop around the half-submerged line post, but he moved himself and both sheathed blades away from the stair.
Vera looked past Torven while keeping her wrapped right hand above the returning water. "Three landings above him are dry. Dust at the turn. The gray stops below the second."
Buk lifted one broom handle from his litter and pointed it between Torven and the wall. "That turn is Kesh road. I came down it. Nothing wet between the bend and her cairn."
Another strip of black water crawled over the bottom tread.
Orsa stood on her right leg, the left held straight. Blood darkened what remained of her right sleeve. "All thirty-eight are above. No one here follows you."
Torven put his dry foot on the second tread.
The impact reached Dane through unbroken stone. Torven’s palm followed onto the dusty rail while Kril kept both blades clear of the stair and Orsa held her ground.
Behind Torven, the sixth mouth emptied with a long throat-deep pull while water climbed Dane’s sound wheel and erased another finger of the center lip.
Off came Torven’s hand, then his foot. He crossed the wet bottom step, knelt at the sixth opening, and laid the hooked scar against its inner rim with his lower arm in the water to the elbow.
One mouth pulled low through his scar, another answered across the center, and four more returns traveled around the ring at the spacing of a rake lifted, turned, passed, and reset by hands that had done it too long to need thought.
Black membrane swelled between the mineral ribs. The walls exhaled.
Brant turned his good ear toward the floor. Both arms remained bound against his body. "That is his rake. It went through all six mouths."
The guide around the post snapped taut.
Kril dropped its dry length across Dane’s sound rail. Each return entered the rope as a separate kick. The wet loop at the post carried the pull; Dane’s living grain gave Kril one place to feel it without putting either blade in the water.
Hest turned her chin with the first kick. Before a second click came, stone burst out of the ring beneath Buk’s rear litter pole.
It came up narrow and long, a tongue-shaped slab with black water pouring off both sides. The rising edge struck the pole, lifted Buk’s hips, and pitched his head toward the moat.
Buk crossed both broom handles beneath the guide, jamming one against the litter frame while the other slid across his chest.
Voss caught the outer litter loop at the third notch.
The right side of his pelvis lost its familiar palm before the hook caught. The litter followed him down. Buk’s shoulder struck dry stone; the loose broom leaped from his hand and hit Dane’s lid.
The new slab turned toward Dane.
He opened one low Door face from sound-side grain. His rear living corner stayed planted. The ferrule hung clear inside the angle, the right split above it, the dead front-left rail taking nothing.
Stone hit the open face.
The blow traveled across the Door grain and found rod one from the wrong side. Iron scraped inside Dane without moving. His mouth opened around the pain, and Buk’s warm scalp passed close enough for hunger to map skin, blood, and the fast artery below the ear.
Coffin depth tried to fold over him.
Dane kept the Door face flat.
Orsa reached the slab as it ground along his edge. She pulled the short moss knife from her vest and drove the spine, not the blade, into the gap beneath its raised side. Her straight left leg slid. She turned from the right hip and put her bleeding forearm above the stone instead of under it.
"It has a worn hollow behind it," Vera said. Spray struck her face and her injured hand stayed high. "Half a palm toward Orsa."
Orsa shoved as Dane let the Door face give one grain with the next wall pulse. The slab passed its balance point and slammed sideways into dry stone, sending the impact across the whole center floor and into the nearest mineral ribs.
The walls inhaled again. Suction caught the slab’s wet underside and tried to pull it back upright. Its outer heel drove deeper into the worn hollow. It stayed on its side.
One return failed to reach Kril’s rope.
The corresponding mouth coughed black water across the ring instead of drawing it in.
Orsa left the knife spine where it was. "Leave that stone down."
Ada’s fingers found the grain above Dane’s ferrule. "Rod stayed seated. The split kept its width. Turn this corner clear of the next hit."
Before she lifted her hand, pressure meant for the caught mouth divided. Two slabs on opposite sides of the center punched out of the water together.
Brant’s boots turned before his voice. He struck one heel against the stone near Lye and the other against Buk’s fixed litter support. "Both are early. One under the short step. One under the brooms."
Lye’s sound foot landed on the first rising slab. It threw his shortened left leg away from the next patch of dry floor, beyond the shallow bend that leg still owned.
Serrick drove his shoulder beneath Lye’s ribs. Both injured hands stayed against his own chest.
"My right boot is on stone," Serrick said. "Bring the short heel against it. I am not catching you with a wet hand."
Lye dragged the left foot until its side met Serrick’s boot. The slab climbed beneath both men. Serrick kicked its outer edge while Lye drove down through his sound leg.
Across the center, the other slab struck Buk’s crossed brooms from below.
Voss still held the litter loop. His right side dropped again, stopped at the same palm, and pulled Buk’s frame crooked instead of letting it roll over the lip.
"My side is going down," Voss said. "Use it before it takes the rest of me."
Buk jammed the lower broom into the angle Voss had made. The handle bent across his chest. Its far end pressed the rising stone toward a dry crescent at the lip.
The coffer’s four habitual feet began their backward work beat.
Its shell dragged away from Buk. The quick front foot and slow rear foot beat separately below the shell.
Buk struck the shell beside the quick rhythm with his free handle. "One front foot on the stone under this broom. Hold the wood down."
One knock answered. A foot planted on the wet slab and pinned the handle before it could spring into Buk’s throat.
He shifted the broom toward the rear seam and waited through two of the body’s old steps. "One rear foot against the pale edge. Keep it off Voss."
The slower answer came while the four habits were still walking backward.
A rear foot crossed behind Voss’s dropped side and pressed the slab toward the dry crescent. The shell twisted between its chosen feet and its old work.
Both slabs loaded Kril’s guide, Lye’s side first and Buk’s close behind. Kril took the rope across one sheath and leaned away from the post, keeping the kicks separate while the stone under his left boot went wet.
Hest stepped into the line with her fixed left hand half closed around the rolling rake. Her right hand drove the shaft low, and the old rescue stroke swept the hook beneath the guide at the height that would once have caught a falling worker under the ribs.
Kril crossed his bare outer sheath over the rake.
Iron teeth struck wood and leather. Hest’s hook missed the rope, circled the sheath, and came back with Orsa’s wet coat scrap lashing behind it.
The guide kicked against Kril’s hip.
He drew his second blade only far enough to put the guarded steel against the rake shaft. "You want the line, put your hand where I can cut it."
Hest’s bare heel slid toward the ring. She turned her shoulder through the practiced curve and let the line pull her instead of fighting it.
The rake found the guide.
Kril trapped both against his sheath. The rope still carried one hard rise from beneath Lye and one slower pressure from Buk’s side.
"They are both committed," Brant said. "Do not wait for them to come back level."
Orsa abandoned the caught first slab and moved on the straight left leg. The moss knife stayed in her right hand. She reached the stone under Lye as its wet side rolled toward the hollow Serrick’s boot had exposed.
Dane released the first Door angle and opened the same bounded face toward the new impact. His sound and rear grain remained supported. The turning slab struck low enough to keep the ferrule clear and high enough to drive fire along the old split.
Ada held two fingers above the rod, leaving it at its old depth. "Same seat. The right edge is dry."
The slab beneath Buk dragged his litter another handspan.
Voss’s hook stayed at three after his pelvis spent its single palm of drop. Lye remained trapped astride his slab; Serrick kept both hands dry against his chest. Four coffer feet tried to walk the only shell away from both men.
The two chosen feet held.
Marda stepped beside Hest.
Her scarred right palm was dry when she raised it. She looked once at the rope caught between rake and sheath, then lowered the palm into the water running down Hest’s shaft.
The scar filled gray-black.
Orsa saw her. "Marda."
Marda closed her wet palm around the rake below Hest’s right hand.
The first movement threw her shoulder backward. Kril’s sheath held it. Her hip turned late and the guide remained caught above the sharp inner lip.
The return carried Marda’s scarred palm through Hest’s curve. Her shoulder rolled first; the hip arrived behind it and kept the guide pinned above the lip.
Hest pulled with the fixed left grip. Marda accepted the stroke and completed it, both women watching rope, rake, and stone.
The rope dragged across the stone edge.
Kril shifted his sheath to save it. The slab beneath Lye kicked through the guide at the same instant and took the rope back across the edge.
Fibers peeled.
Kril drove his guarded blade at the rake shaft. Hest stepped onto the curve, bare foot above his wrist. Marda’s next returned motion pulled them all toward the ring.
The guide parted.
The wet loop tore over the post’s blunt head and vanished into the ring. The dry end whipped across Kril’s wrapped right flank, tore the cloth, and reopened the shallow cut underneath. He kept the rope in one hand and hit the floor on his left shoulder.
Blood reached Dane through the spray.
His teeth rose toward Kril before the thought of feeding could become a movement. Dane drove his tongue against the upper row and kept the Door face open.
The broken signal gave one final kick through his sound rail.
Lye’s slab rolled.
Orsa put the moss knife spine into its dry-side seam and turned from the right hip. Lye drove his sound leg. Serrick kicked beneath his short heel. The stone went sideways under all three pressures and struck the hollow hard enough to split its wet crust.
Buk’s broom cracked and held. Its bent end jumped free of his chest and threw the coffer’s chosen front foot down with it. Voss’s dropped side kept the litter above the ring. The slow rear foot pressed from the other direction while four habitual legs scraped themselves flat beneath the shell.
That slab struck dry stone on its edge.
Dane folded his Door face away before the impact could turn through his ferrule. The wall inhaled.
Both slabs tried to stand and ground deeper into their dry hollows.
The chamber lost its rake rhythm.
One mouth pulled and found stone. A second began too soon, choked on its own return, and threw black water through the mineral ribs. The sixth mouth dragged at Torven’s scar, but the expected answer from across the center never arrived.
For one full lung draw, water stopped advancing over Dane’s sound wheel.
Vera wiped spray from her eyes with her uninjured forearm. "Three stones are dry at the heel. Three are still standing in the mouths."
Kril wound the shortened guide around his sheath. The wet post loop was gone. Blood ran below the new tear in his flank wrap, but he rose without putting a hand into the ring.
Ada reached him on her knees and pressed dry cloth above the reopened line. "Shallow again. Hold this against your ribs and keep the blade out of my face."
Hest recovered her rake from the broken rope. Its curve remained intact. Orsa’s coat scrap slapped against her bare calf.
Marda opened her right hand. Gray-black water crossed the palm scar and fell from her fingertips. The hand closed again under her own strength.
At the sixth mouth, Torven lifted his scar from the rim.
The walls exhaled without his old spacing.
All three standing mouths took the pressure the caught stones had refused.
Water struck the center from three directions. Spray erased Torven first, then Hest’s rake, then the stair below its second landing. The bottom tread broke the rest of the way off and disappeared into the ring, but the dry upper route remained above it.
Orsa crawled to the inner lip on her right knee and straight left leg. A stone rib had split beneath the moss knife. Two wet cords lay under the crack, one pulling toward her left wrist and one dragging back beneath the blade from the other side.
She set the knife edge between them.
Brant turned his head from one wall to the next. The caught mouths rang inside the stone and returned every surviving pull at the wrong depth.
Vera crouched above Orsa, blinking water from both eyes. "Both cords go black before they reach a mouth. I cannot see the joins."
The left pull tightened.
The right answered through Dane’s sound wheel before the first had finished. One of them carried the change that would keep the three dry heels seated. The other would tear them all loose.
Orsa held the moss knife still.
"The currents crossed," she said. "I can’t see which one has to move."
The next breath began inside the walls.