Pella didn’t try to seize the memory by force. She knew that if she pulled with an apprentice’s greedy will, she would reproduce Davin Sorell’s crime and trigger an explosive high-pressure recoil that would shatter the copper line and drown the lower wards. She held the wire gently, speaking into the sound horn at half-speed, her voice calm, clear, and humble.
“Senn,” Pella whispered through the metal. “Keeper of the Three Open Gates. Can you hear me?”
A shudder passed through the copper line, followed by a voice like gravel rolling in an iron trough: “I HEAR THE BELL... I HEAR HAL’S DAUGHTER... THE CAGE IS TIGHTENING... MY THROAT IS CRUSHED...”
“We have the three gates ready, Senn,” Pella said, speaking with slow, deliberate clarity. “Hesta is at the basin. Bessa is at the east water chute. Renn Vos is at the third gate. But we can’t pull your whole memory out of the Crown. The knot is too dense. If we try to take everything, the buffers will tear and the city will drown. We have to let the damaged fragments go. The old names, the forgotten ferries, the hundreds of years of winter ice—they will scatter into the river, Senn. They will be lost forever. Can you let them go?”
