“There’s one catch with hauling it,” Ysabet said, looking down at the bronze clapper trembling inside the black-stone bars. “The moment we pry those fused shoes out of the rock and start dragging the cage over rough stone, the clapper is going to swing and ring. In a narrow tunnel with water underfoot, that hum will reach straight for Pip’s seed.”
Ashaun drew the narrow bell dagger two inches out of its sheath at her right hip. The dull, dark metal of the blade gave off no reflection in the lantern light, but even half-drawn it made the ringing bronze note inside the cage falter by half a beat.
“The Kesh smith forged this from the counter-seam of the same bell,” Ashaun said. “If I press the flat of the blade into the damping groove on the cage collar while we move it, it cuts the shared-will alignment for a few minutes at a time. Long enough to shift the load from one pier to the next.”
She did not add what the Kesh smith had warned her the cut would cost the hand holding the hilt, but Ysabet had been in the smithy and knew: whatever battlefield misery was still coiled inside the clapper would drain straight through the iron into the person holding the knife.
