The lifting slab caught the chest beneath it and stopped.
For half a second Felix thought that was good.
Then the chest began to split.
“Stairs!” he shouted. “Get up the stairs!”
Mara pulled the nearest worker backward. The other man held the chest’s handle as though still expecting permission to put it down. A stone block struck the steps below him and burst into white fragments.
He let go.
The fourth worker was under the shelter. Felix could see her red cap, low against the canvas. One of the pegs had gone through her coat.
Tamsin climbed onto the service shelf and took in the whole arrangement.
“Barnaby. Her coat. Cut it loose.”
The owl dropped below the bridge.
“Lyra, rope around that post. Sound stone, not the railing.”
Lyra was already moving.
Felix reached for the deck. Four measures. He could push the span back toward its socket. Yesterday he had thrown men farther than that.
Yesterday the return path had been wider.
He put his hand against the strip and felt a hot needle drive into his wrist.
Tamsin slapped his arm away.
“You’ll break what’s left.”
“They’re going to fall.”
“Yes. Think faster.”
Rain ran off her chin. She pointed at her tool roll, lying open beside the path.
“Coil. Thick end.”
He handed it down. She fed the copper tubing around a surviving iron bracket below the footing, braced her boots, and drew it tight. The span groaned. The copper stretched but held.
“That’s not a repair,” she said. “That’s time.”
The worker in the red cap staggered free of the shelter. Barnaby rose beside her with a long strip of coat clamped in his beak. Together the four people backed toward the upper stairs.
A crack opened through the landing between them and safety.
Mara stopped first.
Felix saw why. The bridge wasn’t simply falling. Its broken end was twisting, dragging the landing down with it.
If they stepped across the crack, their weight might finish it.
Lyra brought the rope to the edge. “Can they jump?”
“With a line,” Tamsin said. “One at a time. We need to lift the timber clear first.”
“How long?” Felix asked.
“Six breaths. Eight if someone slips.”
His deck offered four measures behind a narrow, flickering output limit. The blocked return glowed dull red beneath his boots.
Lyra drew her sword and pressed its flat against the post. A faint violet line ran from the blade toward the hanging timber. Then her face drained.
She broke the connection before Felix could speak.
“I can mark it,” she said. “Not hold it.”
There was no apology in her voice, though he heard what it cost her to admit.
“Mark where it needs to go.”
She nodded and cut a pale line through the rain, no thicker than thread. It ended beside the empty socket. Tamsin glanced at it and adjusted the copper brace. For the first time, Felix could see exactly how little movement would be enough.
He thought of steam pushing at a lid.
Then he ran.
Behind him, Lyra shouted his name. He didn’t waste a breath answering.
He lifted the kettle, found it half full, and nearly poured it out before stopping himself.
Water. Something to take the heat.
He grabbed the brass release handle with a cloth and unhooked the narrow heating coil from its feed. The kettle’s gauge knocked against the doorframe on his way out.
It didn’t break. He considered that sporting.
Tamsin looked at what he carried and bared her teeth.
“If you’ve brought tea, I’ll throw you after it.”
“Separate release. You insisted.”
He pointed at the heating coil and the gate beneath it. Pressure moved the gate shut before the chamber could burst. The handle emptied the chamber by a different route.
Tamsin stared for one breath, then grabbed the coil.
“Set it there. Keep the pipe pointed away from everyone.”
He put the kettle on a flat stone. Lyra steadied it with her boot while Tamsin clamped its gate against the exposed copper strip. The spare tubing joined the heating coil to the blackened return joint.
“Waste goes into the water,” she said. “Steam goes out. That’ll keep the joint cooler. Won’t make your arm stronger.”
“I wasn’t counting on my arm.”
“You should start.”
Barnaby landed beside Lyra. A dent marked his beak.
“Mara says the youngest cannot jump. Injured ankle.”
“Then we pull him,” Lyra said.
She tested the knot around the post, then held out her hand for Barnaby’s claws.
“Can you carry the loose end across?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“Yes. Ask less slowly next time.”
He flew across the gap to the guide ring above the upper stairs. Threading the rope through it, he dropped the end to Mara. Now Lyra could pull them upward from here.
Tamsin took Felix’s wrist. Her fingers pressed along the inner arm until she found the line of his meridian.
“Don’t force past this. If it catches, stop.”
“What if they’re still there?”
She looked at him without offering an answer he could like.
The copper brace gave a ping.
They had reached the end of planning.
Felix crouched over the gate and set his palm against the exposed feed. He drew qi from his dantian slowly enough to feel its shape, a warm thread unwinding beneath his ribs.
The deck brightened against the stone.
One breath.
The thread entered the anchor. For an instant he felt the island below him, not as a thing he could command, but as a terrible weight resting on many small arrangements.
He chose one.
The timber section lifted a finger’s width. The crack across the landing stopped growing.
“Now!” Tamsin shouted.
Steam hissed from the kettle’s pipe.
Across the gap, Mara tied the rope beneath the injured worker’s arms. He caught the rail with both hands and shook his head.
Lyra leaned out over the edge.
“Look at me!”
Two breaths.
The worker looked. Lyra planted one boot against the post and wrapped the rope around her forearm.
“Let go.”
He did.
Mara pushed as Lyra pulled. He slid across the cracked slab on his stomach, boots scrabbling, then rolled onto the upper steps. One of the others dragged him clear.
Three breaths.
The red cap followed. Barnaby stood on the safe side, pecking at the rope where it had caught beneath a broken nail. The woman scrambled up beside him and immediately reached back for Mara.
Felix felt the thread narrow inside his arm.
The pressure gauge climbed. Tamsin opened the brass release with a wrench. A white jet blasted over the cliff, carrying the smell of hot metal.
Four breaths.
His wrist began to ache. He shifted his shoulder and nearly lost the thread.
“Stay where you are,” Tamsin said.
He stayed.
The man beside Mara went next. He was broad and slow, with one hand pressed against his forehead. Blood ran between his fingers. The rope tightened as he reached the gap.
It held him.
Five breaths.
Lyra’s boot slipped on the wet stone.
She dropped to one knee, keeping both hands locked around the rope. Tamsin caught the back of her belt. Together they hauled until the man’s feet found the upper step.
Felix tried to draw breath and got half of one.
The warm thread had become wire.
Six.
Mara stood alone on the slab. She looked down at the trapped chest, then across toward Felix.
“Leave it!” he shouted.
“I know!”
She had been looking for her footing.
He would apologize later if there was a later.
She took two steps, jumped, and caught the rope short of the stairs. The red-capped worker seized her coat. Barnaby drove both claws into the fabric at her shoulder and beat his wings with furious, useless determination.
Seven.
Something tore beneath Felix’s ribs.
He made a sound he had never heard from himself. His hand closed against the copper and wouldn’t open.
Tamsin was shouting. He couldn’t make out the words.
Mara’s knee came over the edge. Someone caught her belt. Four people vanished behind the stair wall.
Lyra struck the gate with the heel of her sword.
The circuit broke.
Felix fell sideways.
The sound of the span dropping reached him through the stone. A deep blow, followed by breaking wood and the roar of loose material. The kettle jumped. Its pipe whipped across the path. Tamsin kicked it away from his face.
Then rain struck his cheek.
He lay with his mouth open, trying to get air into a body that had become unwilling to accommodate it.
“Don’t move,” Lyra said.
He hadn’t intended to.
She knelt beside him, fingers at his throat. Her sleeve was soaked through. He could see where the rope had burned a red stripe across her palm.
“Mara?” he managed.
“Safe. All four.”
“Tamsin?”
“Here,” Tamsin said. “Being annoyed.”
He closed his eyes.
The rain felt cold. That seemed important. He could feel it.
For now, that was enough.
They moved him only after Tamsin checked his back and Lyra brought a board from the workshop. He complained when they put him on it. The complaint emerged as a whisper, which spoiled its authority.
“I’d prefer the bed.”
“You can write to the board of beds,” Lyra said. “We’re using this.”
Barnaby walked beside his head. One wing clicked at each step.
“You were instructed to stop at six breaths.”
“Seven,” Felix whispered.
“That is not a defense.”
At the cottage, Tamsin cut his right sleeve from wrist to elbow. A dark red line followed the inside of his arm. Smaller marks branched toward his fingers.
She fetched the deck from his pocket and set it where he could see.
Reserve exhausted.
Meridian injury detected. Sustained output unsafe.
No cheerful reward followed.
Outside, the storm kept moving east. The worst of its wind had passed, but rain battered the shutters. Mara’s forgotten cup remained on the table. Lyra moved it aside to make room for the bandages.
Barnaby returned to the stair landing twice before approaching the cottage. The second time, he brought a torn scrap of green cloth.
“Mara’s sleeve,” he said. “She wishes you to know she will deliver the remaining notices tomorrow.”
Felix tried to laugh. His chest objected.
“Tell her to take a day.”
“She said you would say that. She also said the notices would not deliver themselves.”
He watched the owl turn toward the door, then stop.
“What?”
“I cannot fly that far again just now.”
One brass wing hung lower than the other. Felix had noticed the clicking and done nothing with what it meant.
“Then don’t. Sit.”
Barnaby climbed onto the empty chair instead of his usual beam. Lyra placed a folded towel beneath his wet feet and left him alone with the dignity of pretending he had always intended to perch there.
Felix closed his eyes again. He could hear Tamsin checking the window latch, testing it with the same practical care she’d given the brace.
He hoped it would need nothing from him.
Tamsin went to the door and spoke to Barnaby in a low voice.
Felix caught only pieces. Lower workshop. Water through the back wall. Pell at the watch house.
He tried to lift his head.
“Stay,” Lyra said.
“Her house?”
“We don’t know yet.”
He let his head settle.
Through the open door he could see the eastern path. Beyond it there was no longer a bridge, only a gap with broken timbers hanging beneath the stone.
Tamsin returned, carrying the kettle by its handle. Its side had folded inward. The gauge was white with cracks.
She set it on the cold stove without comment.
Felix looked at it for a long time.
“Did the cable hold?”
“Main line did. Cradle’s gone. So are my clamps, the chest, and most of the brace timber.”
He swallowed.
“I’ll put them on the list.”
She pulled a chair beside him.
“Later.”
For once, he let someone else have that word.