The King Who Broke Heaven’s Tithe

Chapter 76 The Copper Bridge

The first sound was a snap beneath Brida's boot.

“Clear the landing.”

Rusk moved immediately. Edrin followed him toward the ladder, keeping his tool bag low. Above, Daren heard the scrape of boots and saw dust rise through the shaft.

The wheel was locked. The feed was shut. None of that could keep a damaged stair from killing someone.

Brida stayed long enough to see what had moved, then climbed after the others. A thin flake had broken from the old landing edge outside the marked support. The main bearing had not shifted, but the loose fragment struck the rail below with a sharp, final clang.

“No one returns until we clear that lip,” she said.

Ysra stood beside the unused signal board. “Another day?”

“Perhaps.”

“My intake won't wait because your stone is rotten.”

“Then it will have to fail without burying Edrin.”

Brida's voice remained level. That made the answer harder to argue with.

Daren watched Ysra turn away. Her fear was beginning to look like anger because anger gave her something to do with her hands.

The forty sixth morning passed in work they had hoped to finish days earlier. From above, a hooked scraper removed the loose lip in small pieces. Baskets caught the fragments. Brida checked the marked wedges again. Nothing had moved across Tarek's lines.

Only then did she approve a return to the landing.

The copper bridge waited on a board: an ugly folded strip, insulated from the collar by fired clay pieces and held against the unused groove by a removable wooden clamp. Ysra had supplied the strip. Berrit had shaped it to Brida's measurements, making a broad bend that could flex without pulling on the cracked pivot.

Rusk's kit supplied the small contact for the trial. It remained his, and would come away afterward.

Berrit had rejected the first fitting himself. Its bend looked cleaner, but tightening the clamp pulled the strip sideways against the clay. This replacement looked clumsy because its extra fold absorbed that movement. He explained the difference to Tovin before allowing the boy to carry it to the shaft.

“Pretty isn't the test,” he said.

Tovin flexed the discarded piece once, saw the edge lift, and put it beside the drawing so the next person would understand the failure.

No one needed to loosen the collar.

Daren studied the bridge through the polished viewing plate. He could not make the dark passage reveal more by wanting it badly.

“Does it touch the iron?”

“Clear by a finger,” Rusk called.

“Both ends?”

“Both.”

They tested the return with the intake disconnected. The weak blue line entered the new strip, crossed its fold, and appeared beyond the crushed loop.

At the drinking spout, Nera lifted her empty hand. No change.

Ysra's second watcher waited on the ridge with a bright cloth. A relay from Reedbank would take time; they had arranged signals rather than pretend two distant observers could share a thought.

The cloth remained still.

Daren let his breath out. One path now carried a small test signal. That was all they had proved, and it mattered.

Rusk removed the contact. The blue line faded completely.

Then a dull knock came from the channel wall.

Brida raised her fist.

Everyone held position.

The knock came again, deeper this time. Water trembled in the narrow sleeve beneath the throat. A bead formed along an old seam and slid down the stone.

“The upper pool,” Rusk said.

They climbed out before investigating further. At the fixed marker beyond the works, the water stood higher than it had that morning. Closing the feed had bought them safety below by storing trouble above.

A dead branch pressed against the pool's narrow overflow. Brida sent Osric and two willing adults to clear it from firm ground with hooks, keeping everyone out of the bank's undercut edge.

The branch came loose. Water rushed along the existing overflow, lowering the immediate rise without opening the pump.

But the stain remained above the old mark.

“This isn't a permanent answer,” Rusk said.

“No,” Daren replied. “It's an answer that gets us to tomorrow.”

He disliked how much of a kingdom could depend on that distinction.

By afternoon, Reedbank's watcher returned with a marked strip: no measurable change during the isolated return test. Ysra took it, compared it with Hearthfast's record, and tucked both into her coat.

Brida rechecked the cistern's dimensions. Its safe limit, below the lowest uncertain seam, was eighteen lifting bowls. Three already sat inside. The number went on a board at the control handle.

“We stop at eighteen even if everything else looks perfect.”

Rusk nodded.

Daren practiced his small returning circulation once while they reset the equipment. Warmth moved through his good palm and came back with less resistance than before. He stopped at the first tremor. His knee still hurt. His shoulder still refused a long reach.

Selka watched without correcting him.

“You're learning when to finish,” she said.

“Slowly.”

“That counts.”

Their hands rested near each other on the bench. Neither moved closer until a shout rose from the eastern lookout.

Rovan's cart was returning empty along the lower track. Three mounted men had stopped it before the bend. One wore Heth's dark shoulder cord.

Ysra went very still.

A rider pulled something from beneath the driver's seat and held it up to the light.

It was a grain sack.

Even from the wall, Daren could see the pale rye dust spilling from its seams.