Kesh’s knee had improved enough for her to walk to the workshop, provided she accepted a stick and Sera’s instruction to stop if it began to swell. She accepted the stick. She made no promises about the rest.
The drilling crew had agreed to speak with her during its meal break. That was an achievement in itself. Pellan had arranged the meeting after explaining that Kesh was not from the board and would not send the workers’ names to their foreman without permission.
They gathered in a shed beside the maintenance lift. The table held a pot of tea, five cups, and a plate of bread that was disappearing faster than Kesh could ask questions. Iven sat near the door with his coat folded over the back of his chair. His arm no longer needed a dressing, though he kept the salve in his pocket in case the scrape opened again.
The first worker, a woman called Fen, described setting up the drill near the second housing. The crew had been told to measure the depth of the surface behind an old support. She had not received the order herself; her foreman had indicated the location.
“Why drill there?” Kesh asked.
“He said the support needed a deeper fixing.”
“Did you see the support fail?”
“No. We were replacing it before it failed.”
“Did you record the drill depth?”
“The foreman did.”
The second worker, a man named Oret, had operated the drill. He remembered the bit meeting resistance, then moving through a softer layer. The drill had begun to vibrate irregularly. He stopped it and withdrew the bit.
“What happened next?” Iven asked.
“The surface moved.”
“Because the drill hit it?”
“After the drill hit it. I don’t know because.” Oret held his hands apart. “It rose here, like a blanket lifting. Not much. Enough to shift the brace.”
Fen nodded. “Then something knocked under the floor.”
“Before or after you fitted the new brace?” Kesh asked.
“Before. We put the brace in because the old one had moved.”
The third worker, a younger man who had not given his name, said he had seen a pale creature at the edge of the light. He described its plates and limbs, but when Kesh asked whether it had attacked immediately, he shook his head.
“It went to the hole. We shouted and it came at us.”
“Did anyone strike it?”
“I threw a wrench.”
“Before or after it came toward you?”
The man thought. “Before, I think. It was close to the drill. I didn’t want it on the line.”
Kesh wrote carefully. She did not ask why the man had thrown the wrench. Iven could imagine the answer: a large unknown creature had appeared in a tight room, and the man had a wrench in his hand. The question was not whether the fear was reasonable. It was what had happened before the fear became an attack.
Pellan poured more tea. “The report says the crew encountered a hostile creature during routine inspection.”
Fen tore a piece of bread. “That’s true.”
“It leaves out the drilling,” Elian said.
“The foreman wrote the report.”
“Did you see it before it was submitted?”
“No.”
The younger worker shifted in his chair. “Are we in trouble?”
“No one here can promise what your employer will do,” Sera said. “Kesh won’t attach your name without asking. Elian is checking the work location, not accusing you of a crime.”
“That will make the foreman feel better,” Oret muttered.
They talked for another half hour. Fen remembered the lamp flickering when the drill vibrated. Oret remembered fluid on the bit, dark and thin. The younger worker remembered the creature striking the drill frame after the wrench hit its armor. Each account overlapped the others but differed in small details. Kesh recorded the differences instead of smoothing them away.
When the meal ended, Fen asked whether the crew would be sent back.
“The board has ordered a follow-up,” Pellan said. “The vent and door are repaired. We didn’t restart the drill.”
“Will they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell them the bit went through something that moved.”
Elian promised to put it in the survey note. Fen held his gaze for a moment, as if judging whether he understood the weight of the promise, then nodded.
Outside the shed, Kesh leaned against the wall and rubbed her knee. Sera watched her until she put the stick back under her hand.
“I was thinking,” she said.
“You can think while using it.”
“I was thinking the first creature may have gone to the drill hole.”
“Or to the sound,” Iven said.
“Yes. The accounts support both. We should compare them with places where a drill ran without an attack.”
Pellan scratched his chin. “There are plenty. We drill into supports every week.”
“What differs?” Sera asked.
“The material. Some supports are metal or stone. Some sit against the warm wall.”
Iven remembered the temperature strip darkening against the curved surface. “Did Fen’s crew drill into the wall itself?”
“They drilled through the old support and into what was behind it.”
Kesh looked at Sera. “Could the wall be tissue?”
“Some of it is. We know the city is built over a living body. The question is what kind of tissue and what happens when it is damaged.”
“Most people call it shell,” Pellan said.
“Shell can cover living structures.”
He looked uneasy. “The board won’t stop every repair because a wall is warm.”
“No one has asked it to,” Sera said. “I’m asking it to record what it drills and why.”
Pellan accepted that more readily. He knew what a missing record could do to the next crew.
A runner arrived with a note from the maintenance board. The recovered drill frame had been claimed by its contractor, but one of its fittings was missing. The board wanted to know whether the inspection crew had removed it.
Iven read the note. “Which fitting?”
“The lower coupling,” Pellan said. “We took the legs off, not the coupling.”
“Could it have fallen in the passage?”
“Not if it was attached when we lifted the frame.”
Iven thought back to the chamber. The frame had been on its side beside the door. He had wrapped the chipped bit, while Pellan checked the legs. He did not remember seeing the coupling.
“I can’t say,” he admitted.
The note named a fee for replacement. It was enough to swallow most of the inspection pay. Pellan’s jaw tightened.
“They want us to pay for a part they may have lost before we arrived.”
“Can we see the frame?” Iven asked.
The board had stored it in a locked cage beside the lift. A clerk opened the cage after Pellan showed her the note. The frame stood against the wall with its legs reattached. At its lower end was a circular opening where a coupling should have been.
Iven knelt. The opening’s edge was coated with old dirt except for two fresh scrape marks. A retaining screw remained in place, its head turned slightly away from the slot.
“Has anyone touched this since we brought it in?” he asked.
The clerk looked at the ledger. “The contractor’s representative inspected it this morning.”
“Did he sign for it?”
“He signed that he inspected it.”
“Did he record the coupling missing?”
“He recorded that the frame was incomplete.”
Iven pressed his fingernail against the screw. It had been loosened recently. Dirt had collected in the slot, but a clean edge showed where a tool had scraped it away. He could not prove when that had happened.
“Can you ask the representative what he found?” he said.
The clerk gave him a look he had begun to recognize. “You can submit a request.”
“I was hoping you would ask.”
“I can add it to the record.”
Pellan was already angry enough to argue. Iven held up a hand before he began.
“Let’s find out whether the coupling was at the site,” Iven said. “If it was, we can retrieve it. If it wasn’t, we can say so.”
Kesh looked at her knee. “I’m not going back down today.”
“No one asked you to.”
“I know. I’m volunteering to stay here and make sure the frame doesn’t acquire any more missing parts.”
The clerk did not seem delighted by the idea, but Kesh settled onto a stool outside the cage with her notebook. She had a clear view of the door and the ledger. Sera stayed with her long enough to make certain her knee was supported, then went to the clinic.
Iven and Pellan returned to the passage with lamps, masks, and a short line. The revised route made the trip easier. The vent cover held, the drain carried water, and the repaired door opened without scraping. They did not hear the large creatures near the bend.
At the drill site, the pale metal strip still lay beside the bright brace. The drill bit’s dust had been disturbed where Sera took her sample. Iven searched the floor while Pellan checked the recesses behind the housing.
“Here,” Pellan called.
The coupling had rolled beneath a pipe. Its retaining groove was worn, and one side had been chipped. Iven pulled it out with a length of wire. The metal was coated in the same pale dust as the floor, but no fresh mark showed how long it had been there.
“It could have come off when we moved the frame,” Pellan said.
“Or before we got there.”
“We can’t prove either.”
“No. But we can return it.”
They wrapped it and started back. At the narrow opening, Iven heard movement beyond the repaired door. He held up a hand. Pellan stopped, and both listened.
A series of light taps crossed the far side of the metal. Then came a heavier impact, followed by a scrape.
“Small one and a large one?” Pellan asked.
“Maybe.”
The door moved inward. The new hinge pin held. Iven checked that Pellan was clear, then put his hand on the door’s edge. He did not brace it with the graft; he wanted to feel how much force came through the metal. The next impact was firm but not enough to move the bar in its brackets.
A pale feeler appeared beneath the threshold. It touched the floor, found the edge of the door, and withdrew. The heavier scrape continued farther away.
“Whatever’s there isn’t trying to break through,” Iven said.
“Today.”
“Today.”
They waited until the sounds receded, then took the alternate ramp to the surface. Kesh was still on her stool outside the cage. The clerk was writing at her desk. No one had inspected the frame while they were gone.
Pellan set the wrapped coupling on the counter. “Found at the site.”
The clerk opened the cloth and checked the part against the note. “This is it.”
“Will the board remove the fee?”
“I can record that it was returned.”
“That’s not the same answer.”
“No. The board decides the fee.”
Iven pointed to the worn groove. “Record that the retaining point is damaged. Whoever installs it should replace the screw.”
The clerk wrote it down. Then, after a moment, she added the date and the names of the people who had returned it. She gave Pellan a copy.
Pellan asked the clerk to compare the coupling with the contractor’s inspection note. She found the note and read it aloud: the frame had been incomplete, but the representative had not named the missing part. That was weaker evidence than a list made at the site.
“Will you add that?” Pellan asked.
“I’ll attach the note to the receipt.”
He watched her do it. Iven understood why. A fee deducted from one worker’s wages could mean a household missing a week’s food. It was easy for the board to call the amount small when the cost was spread across a ledger rather than taken from its own table.
The clerk gave Pellan a second copy for the other workers. “Bring this back if they deduct it before the board has decided,” she said. “I can’t promise what happens, but I can show when the part was returned.”
Pellan thanked her. The thanks seemed to surprise them both.
Kesh stood carefully. “Did you see any creatures?”
“Heard them,” Iven said. “One small enough to put a feeler under the door. Something heavier farther back.”
“Near the brace?”
“We couldn’t tell.”
Kesh accepted that answer and wrote it in her notebook. Iven watched her leave a blank space beside the entry.
“What’s that for?”
“If we learn more later, I don’t want to squeeze it into the margin.”
Pellan folded the receipt and put it inside his coat. “I want the fee removed before I learn anything else.”
“That’s a useful question too,” Iven said.