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Chapter 210
Melvin looked at Lin's frame. The sixty-fourth chamber's readings glowed beside the census map, and the thread from the carrier's socket ran up the shaft toward the disc beneath him. He had read that carrier for an hour that afternoon, and he had felt a patience in the slow beat that no living man should have.The council had sealed Yan Ming alive so that his brother could keep a seat on the deputy's bench. Melvin understood now that the bargain had never been fair to both of them. He had spent two days learning the carrier's architecture, and he had begun to think of the sixty-fourth entry as a living man who had been filed away."Doctor, do I stop him?" Doss asked over the line, her voice thin."Not yet. Let him talk, and get me every word. Then tell him I need a reason to bring anyone up out of the stone."Lin's voice cut in from the frame. "The thread is warming, Melvin. The sixty-fourth socket has started reaching for the line again.""Let it reach. It can't pull what it hasn't g
Chapter 209
"So Yan Shou's proxy came through the gate wearing Lu's face. Hui saw the face and let it in, and then someone killed him and wrote a fever over the death," Melvin reasoned."That's the reading, Doctor. I have entered charges against the dead man for the record, as the law requires. The charge is obstruction of a sealed escort, and the defendant is Gate Warden Hui," Chen said, and his voice did not change at all."Enter a second charge against the physician who signed the record, in the same ink.""Already entered, Doctor.""Then keep every entry open for the federal observers, Chen. Varga will want to read every name before she reads a single rule."Outside, the light had turned copper over the crater rim, and the cots along the edge of the stone threw long shadows across the disc. A cold wind came off the far ridges, and the marshals pulled their coats tighter.Lin had not spoken for several minutes. She stood with the frame in one hand and the day's sheet in the other, and she was
Chapter 208
"Then we learn it on the stone, Chen. Do not let anyone take that ledger off the rim."Chloe's breathing was shallow under the cloth, and Doss had left a cup of water within her reach before she went down the ramp.Chloe stirred on her cot and pushed the breathing cloth down an inch. "Melvin, I can feel the thread through the cot. It's running under me, and it's humming," she whispered."Then keep your hands off the frame and your back flat on the cot, Chloe. Doss will be back for you by noon."Lin's voice came through the line from the shaft head, where she was reading the frame beside the marshals. "Melvin, the cold patches are moving. The one in the car park is walking north along the western positions, at the pace of a man on foot.""Read me the pace, Lin, and the drain on every position it leaves.""A position every four minutes. It goes in, drains the volunteer on the cap, and moves to the next position in the row. The ones it leaves stay drained. They don't come back. Yan is wa
Chapter 207
The western network began to go cold in patches, and the patches did not stay where they started. Merrow reported the first of them over the line at dawn. By the time the sun cleared the eastern hills there were nine, each one moving across the car park at the pace of a man walking."Volunteers are speaking in the old tongue, Melvin. Only some of them, but enough that every family on this site has heard it," Merrow reported. His voice was hoarse, and shouting came through the line behind him."What are they saying?""Old words, the same rhythm every time. A woman in row thirty asked her daughter to bring her a plate, and her voice came out of the mouth of a retired clerk two positions away."Melvin looked down at the regulator. He had come back to the crater by stone ship in the night, and the flow came up through the stone into his hands the moment he laid them on the disc. Chloe lay on her cot at the edge of the rim with a breathing cloth over her mouth.Sun Wen lay beside her with
Chapter 206
"Chloe, let go of the left half. Let go now, and let the frame carry it," Doss ordered, and her voice was steady in a way she did not feel."If I let go, the left half drops," Chloe whispered."Then the right half picks it up for two minutes, and I'll count every second of them."Chloe lifted her hands from the stone. The left half of the bridge sagged, and the readings on the frame jumped toward the red line. Doss seized the frame in both hands and set nine needles into the bridge at the frequency Chloe's frame was carrying.She slid each one in with a turn of the wrist until the thread's pitch matched the stone.The thread went quiet under the cot.Hale's face flickered, and a thin dark line of pressure ran from his collar up toward his jaw. The marshals kept their blades steady, and the physician's body stopped moving. For one breath the whole rim went still, and Doss counted it aloud."Chloe, read me the bridge every ten seconds, and tell me the moment the left side wavers.""Yes,
Chapter 205
"Keep your eyes on the steps, boss," Kaelen warned, shifting his splinted arm against his chest.They went down the stone stairs in a single line. Melvin walked at the front with his sight open, and Lin came behind him with the frame. Kaelen followed with his splinted arm held close, then Qiu with her lamp, and Lu at the back between two of Beatrix's enforcers.The clay proxies stood on both sides of the steps with their grey robes hanging still. None of them turned its head as the living passed.The stairwell turned in a slow spiral, and the air grew colder with every step. Melvin counted the turns out of habit, and by the fortieth he had stopped counting the proxies. The lamp at the front of the line swayed with every turn.The chamber opened into a stone room of eighty-one sockets. Melvin read every ring and found each one seated and humming. At the centre of the room, on a plain granite slab, lay a man who had clearly been dying for years.Yan Shou's flesh had withered to the bone
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