The archive’s front steps ended in a wall of fallen stone. A lintel lay across them with part of its inscription turned toward the ground, and a sapling had begun to root in the damp mortar behind it. Mira stopped Eli before he put his weight on the lowest stair.
“Along the wall.”
He waited for the escort’s ordinary route check. Her knowledge of the building did not tell them what yesterday’s shifting masonry could bear. One of the escorts tested the sheltered edge with a pole while Juno checked the ceiling line. The families’ custodian stood out of the fall path, holding the ledger case against her hip.
Bram had remained behind to answer a further question through Sera and to speak with his family. The expedition did not need to carry him everywhere merely because the reference had come from his paper. He had passed on a drawing of the handling mark and the record’s reverse, with the uncertain portions left pale.
Eli took one end of the equipment frame. They moved it along the wall in short stages, lifting over a drain instead of rolling across the cracked cover. The work would have been easy to hurry with a borrowed ability. His present set remained unactivated, as it had since the loss at the rescue. Remembering that limit did not make the frame lighter. It made him ask the escort at the other end to stop before their grips failed.
