Above the well, boots crossed the engineering hall’s stair.
Mara heard them through the rock. Faintly. A rhythm, many feet, heavy, on iron steps, far above the lowest chamber. Hard soles, nothing like the guild’s rubber boots. Marching, or near enough.
She was at the plate beside the screen with the first step of continuity’s test written on it, and the walls had gone quiet after spoken, and Sen was on the bench with the counterweight pin, and Caldris was at the screen. The Board clerk had come down the cold stair an hour before, rung by rung, her slate strapped across her back, and sat now at the far end of Sen’s bench with her headset round her neck. It was late. Past the first hour of the night. Day eighteen turning into nineteen.
The lift’s indicator lamp, on the cage’s frame by the chamber’s edge, had been green since Sen pulled the pin. Green for clear. For the cage is safe.
It turned amber.
Sen looked up from the bench.
“Someone’s called it,” she said. “From above. The hall.”
Through the clerk’s recorder clipped to Breda’s jacket, a voice. Far off, distorted, as if a guard had leaned too near a microphone in the hall above.
