Senior Steward Osen Tal bolted down the narrow chimney-stair in his quarters. Meanwhile, the transfer warrant burned on his hearth. Then, he hadn’t wasted time joining Commander Keth Or’s noisy assault on the residential galleries. For twenty years, Osen had signed every mason’s voucher, lime-mortar supply order, and winter pipe-clearing ledger in White Heron Hall. While the martial instructors took pride in the ancient spear postures carved into the outer face of the Ravine of Unfinished Forms, the steward who paid the plumbers knew that the lower water tank overflow tunnel dropped through the inside of the limestone ridge on dry, wide stone steps and emptied directly onto the last switchback shelf above the creek.
He stood there now in the bleak, colorless light of breaking dawn, his breath barely winded, wearing a heavy oiled-wool traveling coat over his clerk hall robe. To his left and right stood two veteran Aperture Court recovery specialists in riveted brigandine. Not the blinded men from his study. But fresh Bronze fighters who had waited at the water tank mouth with long, crescent-hooked axe-spears designed for snaring spear shafts and pulling climbers off narrow ledges. Behind Osen’s heel, a thick hemp climbing rope was already rigged through an iron piton driven into the tunnel door post. Its coiled tail dropped down the last upright pitch to the river boulders below.
