34. Astra
Astra
The door opened inward.
Kieran sat on a cot bolted to the far wall. He was awake.
For one suspended second, that was all I could see. Then the rest of the room came into focus.
They had taken his shirt. Grease-pencil lines crossed his right shoulder in a close black grid, with numbers written along the green-gold curves of his Mark.
The inside of his forearm was raw where strips of adhesive had been pulled away.
A cup stood on the floor beside him, white residue dried around its rim.
He looked at me and tried to smile.
“You took your time.”
I crossed the room and dropped to my knees in front of him.
“Can you stand?”
“Not alone.”
His voice was rough, and the effort of using it left him short of breath. I put my fingers against his wrist. His pulse ran too quickly beneath chilled skin, but the completed bond between us held steady.
Relief struck hard enough to make my hand shake.
Kieran’s gaze dropped to it. The humor left his face.
“Astra.”
“You’re sitting half-dressed in a locked room with measurement marks all over you.”
“I’ve been better.”
Caspian took the folded blanket from the foot of the cot and wrapped it around Kieran’s shoulders. “What did they give you?”
Kieran glanced at the cup. “Something bitter. My legs stopped listening afterward.”
“Are they listening now?”
“Some.”
Caspian crouched at his left side while I moved to his right.
“Put your arms around us,” I said.
Kieran obeyed without argument. That frightened me more than the shaking.
We brought him upright. His knees folded almost at once, and his full weight dragged against my shoulder before Caspian caught him around the waist. Green-gold pain flashed through the bond and vanished behind a wall Kieran threw up too late.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Hide it from me.”
He leaned his head briefly against mine. “Later.”
Behind us, iron struck wood in the records annex.
Hale appeared in the doorway. Copper light ran over the back of his hand, bright enough to show the swelling beneath his sleeve.
“Marrow has one wrist free,” he said. “We need to move.”
The administrator’s map marked a service passage behind the records wall.
Its entrance lay opposite the annex, disguised by three shallow shelves mounted together inside a recess.
Marrow had worked free of the shelving and begun driving his shoulder against the annex door hard enough to shake dust from the frame.
Hale took Kieran’s weight from me. His injured arm tightened across Kieran’s back, and pain sharpened his face before he forced it smooth.
“Your arm,” I said.
“Still works.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“I know.” He shifted Kieran higher. “Open the passage.”
Caspian found the recessed handle beneath the lowest shelf and pulled. The shelves swung away from the wall as a single narrow frame, exposing a keyway. He fitted Marrow’s key into it. The key turned once and stopped.
“Lift as you turn,” Hale said. “The lower hinge has dropped.”
Caspian braced one hand beneath the latch and pulled upward. The swollen wood scraped over stone, opening onto darkness and the cool rush of moving air.
The annex door slammed again.
One of the bound stewards shouted for help.
I went through first. The passage was scarcely wide enough for my shoulders, with rough stone on one side and the backs of the records shelves on the other. Silver water moved beneath slatted boards underfoot, carrying a thin metallic light into the dark.
Caspian followed with the stolen baton. Hale guided Kieran through sideways, careful of his shoulder, then pulled the service door shut behind them.
The latch had no lock on our side.
“That won’t hold him,” Caspian said.
“It doesn’t have to.” Hale looked down the passage. “Which way?”
I unfolded the map against the wall. The administrator’s ink showed two turns before a stair leading back to the residential level. Beside the final door, she had written, I will meet you here. If I am absent, stay inside.
Expect patrol after the handover bell.
The bell rang overhead.
Its first stroke passed through the stone and into my bones. By the second, boots had entered the processing corridor behind us.
Hale extinguished the small lamp beside the service door.
Darkness closed over the passage. Kieran’s breath caught near my ear. Caspian found my hand and pressed the map back into it before taking his place beside the door.
Voices gathered on the other side.
“Marrow?” someone called.
The annex door opened with a crack of wood.
Orders followed, muffled by stone and shelving. One patrol went toward Kieran’s cell. Another remained with Marrow. I heard the service-door latch lift, drop, then lift again.
Caspian raised the baton.
The latch settled.
“Lower stair,” Marrow said beyond the wall. “They’ll try to regain the residential wing.”
Boots moved away at a run.
Hale relit the lamp. “So do we.”
The passage bent sharply after several yards.
Water thundered beneath the boards there, swollen into a deeper channel that made the floor tremble under Kieran’s uncertain steps.
Hale kept one arm around him. I walked close on the other side, my hand at Kieran’s back whenever the passage widened enough to allow it.
The bond carried his effort in bursts: nausea, a hot pull through his shoulder, the stubborn refusal to stop. I wanted to take the pain from him. I had done enough to his Mark without understanding the cost, and the narrow passage was no place to test what else our bond might permit.
At the first turn, voices sounded ahead.
Caspian shuttered the lamp and drew us into a recess cut around a water pipe. We pressed close behind him. Kieran’s shivering traveled through all four of us where our bodies touched.
Two stewards descended the stair beyond the wall.
“Marrow wants every residential door secured,” one said.
“What about the administrator?”
“North desk can’t find her.”
Their boots passed within a few feet of us, separated by a skin of stone and the rushing water. The sound faded toward processing.
Caspian opened the lamp again.
“They’ll lock the wing before we reach it,” I said.
“Then keep moving,” Caspian replied.
Kieran drew himself straighter between us and placed one unsteady foot ahead of the other.
We took the stair.
It climbed steeply inside the wall, its center worn hollow from long use even though the passage appeared on no map we had been shown. Kieran managed the first flight. On the second, his right leg failed beneath him.
Hale caught him before he struck the steps.
Copper light flared from Hale’s wrist to his elbow.
He made a sound through his teeth and went down on one knee, still holding Kieran upright.
“Jonah.”
His head lifted at the name. The light under his skin moved in quick, uneven pulses.
“Get him to the top,” he said.
Caspian came back down and took Kieran from him. Together we pulled Kieran up the remaining stairs while Hale followed with one hand against the wall.
The final door waited behind a curtain of cold water-light. Caspian tried the administrator’s key. The mechanism turned, but the door did not move.
“Again,” Hale said from below us.
Caspian lifted the latch and put his shoulder into the wood. I pushed beside him. The frame gave with a groan that sounded impossibly loud after the close hush of the passage.
Warm lamplight opened across the landing.
The administrator stood on the other side.
She pulled us through and closed the door behind Hale. A heavy key locked it from the residential side just as boots reached the bottom of the hidden stair.
“Marrow is free,” I said.
“I assumed he would be.” She looked at Kieran, taking in the blanket, the marked shoulder, and the way Caspian held most of his weight. “Can you walk to your room?”
“If they help me.”
She did not waste time answering. She handed me a folded order bearing her seal.
“His isolation has been rescinded on medical grounds. The entry reached the north desk before Marrow discovered the false review.”
“And the stewards we tied to a shelf?” Caspian asked.
“Obstructed an emergency transfer.” Her voice remained level, though a pulse beat hard at the base of her throat. “That explanation may survive until morning.”
“What happens in the morning?”
Her gaze moved to the copper light spilling through Hale’s sleeve.
“The Council learns how much authority I have used against them.”
The hidden door shook in its frame.
“Go,” she said.
The residential corridor was empty. Every room door had been pulled shut, though no one had yet turned the external locks. We had beaten the order by minutes.
Caspian and I took Kieran between us. Hale followed close behind, one hand closed around his injured forearm. The copper light escaped between his fingers.
Boots entered the far junction as we reached Kieran’s room. We got him inside before the stewards reached us.
The administrator met them with the rescission order held open in both hands.
“He requires examination,” one steward said.
“He has just been removed from an unauthorized isolation cell in a drugged state,” she replied. “No one touches him until the healer arrives.”
Her rank stopped them at the threshold. It did not make them leave.
Inside, Caspian lowered Kieran onto the bed. I pulled the blanket higher around him and reached for the water pitcher.
Kieran caught my wrist.
“Hale,” he said.
I looked toward the door.
He was gone.
Hale’s line at my wrist burned toward the corridor.
Caspian took the cup from my hand. “Go.”
“The healer—”
“Will have to fight me for him.”
Kieran’s fingers loosened around my wrist. “He came back for me. Return the favor.”
I left them together.
Hale had made it as far as his room. The door stood open, and copper light stretched across the threshold.
I found him beside the bed with both hands braced against the stone wall. His coat lay where he had dropped it. Light moved over his forearms in branching channels, filling the dark curves of his Mark until the whole pattern showed through the linen of his shirt.