The sixth mouth ate another finger of Voss’s notch.
Stone flaked beneath his right hook. The curve stayed shut at three, but the widening rim pulled Buk’s outer litter rope tighter across its base. Every tug reached Dane through the dry center: rope against hook, hook through Voss’s dropped pelvis, pelvis grinding stone.
Buk laid his one unbroken broom across his chest. "I have one of these left. If it breaks, Voss, you are carrying me."
"Choose a better carrier."
The answer came through clenched teeth. Voss had not moved beyond the single palm his right side always lost now.
Black water slapped the underside of the hook.
Vera leaned far enough over the rim to look, her wrapped right hand held clear. "The ribs are opening behind you. There is a pale strip along their bases."
Kril came down beside Voss on his left blade and one knee. He let the shortened guide fall slack across Dane’s sound rail. "All the way around?"
"I lose it under the lower lip. It comes back behind the next rib."
Torven pushed his wet lower arm deeper into the sixth mouth. The fork beneath his cheekbone turned with it. A pull ran around the ring and lifted the black membrane until its edge pressed against Voss’s hip.
Brant put his good ear close to the floor. "The next opening starts there."
Lye’s sound heel ground down on his seated slab. Serrick kept his shoulder beneath Lye’s ribs and both injured hands against his own chest. Across the center, Orsa held her moss knife over the surviving cord while Hest’s rake kept searching for the blade. Marda’s wet right palm followed every stroke.
Around the wider sixth, the other mouths kept working against their seated stones.
Kril went flat on his left side and slid a blade between two mineral ribs. Ada’s pad warmed as his wounded right flank folded toward the water; he stopped short of the black surface.
"I can touch the strip," he said. "I cannot turn the edge behind it."
"Touch it first," Voss said.
Kril pressed the blade flat, found the pale band, and lifted one finger-width of it from the nearest rib. The tissue stretched until he rolled the metal to its edge and cut.
The rib beside his blade rose late.
It struck Voss’s flank below the others, then stalled half a hand short of them.
"That strip moves the ribs," Orsa said. She caught Hest’s rake on the back of her knife and shoved it away from Kril’s wrist. "You cut one piece."
"It circles under him." Kril withdrew his blade before the next pull could take his wounded side. "A straight edge starts it. A closed curve can get behind it."
The litter rope tightened again and turned the right hook a fraction against the notch. Dry grit fell into the mouth.
"Move the rope first," Voss said.
Buk shoved the intact broom beneath the rope where it crossed the hook base. Kril put a sheath beside the broom to keep the loaded line from sawing into the wood.
"The old post will take it," Buk said. "Put the turn around the dry side."
The wet loop was gone from the fixed center post. The stone itself remained. Kril dragged the shortened guide out of the way, then used his free sheath to push Buk’s rope around the dry side of the post.
Buk leaned on the broom.
The rope climbed Voss’s hook by one notch and stopped.
One chosen coffer foot left the broken broom beneath the litter and came down on the rope tail beside the post. A second chosen foot braced the litter’s outer rung. Under the shell, four habitual legs scraped backward and achieved nothing except noise.
Buk looked at the foot on his rope. "Harder. You can be offended later."
The foot pressed until rope fiber flattened against stone.
Kril pulled the post wrap tight. The litter shifted the width of his blade, struck the coffer’s braced foot, and held there while Buk levered the rope over the third notch.
The loaded line snapped off the hook base and bit around the post. Buk’s broom bowed to its limit and stayed whole; the litter remained on dry stone.
Voss’s right hook was free.
Hest turned her chin. Her fixed left hand drove the rake beneath Kril’s sheath. Marda set shoulder and hip behind the shaft, trying to roll his blade into the ring before he could reach the pale band again.
Orsa jammed the moss-knife spine under the rake hook. Her straight left leg shook, but her right hip kept the blade from turning.
"Use your edge," Marda told her.
"On your hand? No."
Orsa drove the rake toward stone instead. Hest’s wet coat scrap stayed trapped under her bare heel.
Kril opened the finger-wide cut again. This time he set the blade flat in it and made the pale band ride over the metal.
His belt knot hung close to Voss’s right shoulder.
Voss tapped it with two fingers. "Clear that."
Kril looked from the belt to the hook. He unwound the shortened guide, shoved both behind his left hip, and planted his free sheath against Dane’s sound rail.
"My blades are outside the turn," he said. "My right side stays here."
He pressed the sheath into Dane’s stable grain, leaving himself one dry brace and no other support.
Voss checked the gap once.
He pulled his right hook from the crumbling notch.
His pelvis dropped no farther. It was already as low as the damaged root allowed. The two rigid splints dragged across dry stone; the bound left stump cleared the rim by less than a thumb.
Voss put the three-notch curve into the sixth mouth sideways.
Kril held the first cut open. Voss slid the hook behind the pale band until the point came back against the inside of the next mineral rib.
"Your hook is behind the band," Kril said.
Voss set both hands on dry stone. "Keep the first cut open."
Torven drove his lower arm down.
The sixth mouth opened.
Its lower lip rolled over Voss’s dropped right pelvis and crushed him against the center. The band trapped his hook behind it. His two dead splints kicked loose behind him, and the bound stump struck stone once.
The nearest mineral rib rose beneath his upper right flank and drove his shoulders around a pelvis pinned to stone.
The old split tendon at his right root peeled apart with a rapid series of wet ticks. His hook remained buried behind the band. The rib kept traveling in its opening arc and carried his chest around the fixed lower body.
Voss screamed once.
Kril drove his blade deeper into the first cut. The pale band began leaving the rib bases, one tearing handspan chasing the next around the rim. Each section that came free slapped wetly against Voss’s hook-leg and stayed outside the mouth.
The rising rib took his torso past the line of his hips.
Voss’s lower spine broke. Dane felt the separated ends strike through the center stone.
Voss’s abdomen hitched inward. Then it swelled hard against his belt as heat flooded beneath the skin. His hands clawed at the dry floor, but neither the ruined splints nor the bound stump answered. The buried hook still held the band because the curve had nowhere to open.
Kril caught Voss under the left shoulder with his free sheath. "The cut is running around the rim."
Pulling Voss away would have taken the hook out first. Kril held his shoulder at the dry edge.
The rib reached the top of its arc against Voss’s back.
The last pale fibers tore from beneath the lower lip.
Every mineral rib stopped at a different height.
The black membrane fell off them and folded into the water. The circumferential band hung outside the rim from Voss’s closed hook and Kril’s blade, severed from every rib base.
Torven turned the fork under his cheekbone and pulled with his lower arm, trying to begin the return. The sixth mouth gave him no closing stroke. Every rib stayed where the break had left it.
"Dead route. Nothing came back through it," Brant said.
Vera watched the slack membrane through the next pressure pulse. "It stayed down. Every rib."
The sixth mouth stayed open and useless.
Kril lowered Voss’s shoulders onto dry stone. The right hook remained caught in the torn band, still closed at three. Voss’s chest took one shallow breath while Ada came across the center on her knees.
She put two fingers below the hard swelling in his abdomen, then moved them to the inside of his right hip. Her hand stayed there through the next breath.
"There is no pulse below the swelling," she said. "He is bleeding inside."
Voss’s fingers closed once against the floor.
His chest settled and stayed down.
Kril kept the sheath beneath his shoulder until Ada took her hand away. His grip stayed after Voss’s weight no longer needed it. The hook remained in the mouth.
The post held Buk’s rope. The coffer kept one chosen foot on the tail and one against the litter. Lye and Serrick kept the three caught slabs seated while Orsa held Hest’s rake down and Marda kept her wet palm on the shaft.
Another pulse struck the three seated slabs as Torven pulled his lower arm from the dead rim.
His chin turned past Voss toward the dry stair.