Caspian
Astra’s fear struck through the silver line at my wrist. Somewhere ahead of me, Marrow still had her.
I moved toward her.
The emergency lamps had gone with the rest. I could not see the table, the stewards, or the hand I held in front of my face. The room came to me in fragments instead: Astra’s breath breaking near the panel, Kieran’s chair scraping stone, the mineral smell of the shattered reading glass.
The line tightened with her fear. It was the only direction I trusted.
My shin struck the hearing table. Glass broke somewhere near Kieran’s chair. A steward shouted for the doors to be secured, and another voice answered that the controls were not responding.
I found Astra by touch: wool at her shoulder, loose hair against my knuckles, Marrow’s forearm still braced across her back.
He had not released her.
I drove the heel of my hand into the inside of his elbow. His grip broke. Astra turned out of it, and I pulled her against me before the confusion carried us apart again.
Marrow’s other hand caught the front of my coat. I struck his wrist and felt his grip shift rather than fail. Even blind, he knew exactly how much force to spend. He dragged me close enough that his shoulder drove the air from my chest.
“Move,” I said.
“You first.”
Astra brought her forearm between us and broke the angle of his hold. The line at her wrist flared as she twisted. Marrow released me just as light returned beneath the panel.
“Kieran,” she said.
Kieran’s pain burned through her bond. I could feel only its echo through mine, but it was enough to turn us toward the center of the room.
Emergency lamps came alive beneath the panel table. Low silver light spread across the floor and left every face in shadow.
Hale had reached Kieran. He stood between the chair and the nearest steward with one arm around Kieran’s waist. Kieran’s shirt hung open from his injured shoulder. The restored Mark still flickered around the branching scars.
Delphine remained behind the witness rail. The clerk was crouched beside her, gathering pages that had spilled from the hearing ledger.
The administrator kept her palm against the broken wax on the control plate.
“Emergency restraint suspended,” she said. Her voice carried through the chamber. “All local doors released pending investigation of an unsafe examination.”
Locks opened inside both walls.
Indicator lines woke across the control plate beneath her hand. Most burned black under Walkin’s authority. Only the western route remained blue, its locks answering the administrator’s emergency command one after another.
Walkin rose from the administrator’s chair. “You were relieved of post.”
“The control system has not processed your order.”
“Then remove her from it.”
Two stewards started toward the panel.
Marrow stepped into their path.
I braced for him to stop them. Instead, he caught the nearer steward by the shoulder and redirected him around the overturned chair, clearing a faster route to the administrator.
He was still following Walkin’s order.
Astra’s hand closed around mine. The lines at her wrist shone in the low light, silver beneath my thumb, rain-dark and green-gold beside it.
“West door,” the administrator called.
The clerk looked up.
She had collected the hearing pages against her chest. Walkin saw them at the same time I did.
“The record remains here,” they said.
The clerk went still. She had spent the hearing asking permission before every line she entered. No one gave her permission now.
She looked toward the administrator, then at Delphine’s raised silver hand.
Delphine reached through the rail.
The clerk put the pages into her grasp.
The clerk gathered Kieran’s folio from the hearing table, folded its loose pages inside the cover, and pushed it through the rail as well.
Delphine fastened the hearing pages and the folio inside her coat.
The bound ledger remained open on the table, every ruling and objection entered in the same hand as the pages Delphine now carried.
Walkin’s hand closed over the back of the administrator’s chair.
“Take them.”
The steward nearest Delphine caught the rail and vaulted it instead of going around. I released Astra and met him as his boots struck the floor. His momentum carried into my shoulder. I turned with it, caught his coat beneath the arm, and drove him across the edge of the table.
The impact drove the breath from him. I tore the baton from his hand and sent it beneath the witness bench.
“Can you run?” I asked.
“Open the gate.”
The latch on the witness rail had released with the doors. I pulled it wide. Delphine came through without waiting for help and fastened her coat over the records.
What had happened to Kieran was written down, and Delphine was taking it outside.
Across the chamber, Hale moved Kieran toward the west door. Kieran’s right arm hung close to his body. He stayed upright until a steward blocked the aisle, then used the man’s surprise at his condition to drive a knee into the steward’s thigh.
Hale finished the movement with a short strike beneath the ribs.
The steward folded. Kieran stepped over him.
Kieran’s breath caught. Hale tightened his arm around his waist and kept him moving.
Astra had not followed me.
She stood beside the panel table, facing the administrator. Walkin was on the other side of the stone between them. Marrow had reached the control station, but the administrator had wedged her body against its edge. One steward pulled at her arm while she kept her palm on the plate.
The west door began to close.
“Astra.”
She looked at me.
I held out my hand. She knew what I was asking.
She turned back to the administrator. “Come with us.”
“The doors close when I leave this plate.”
“We’ll hold them.”
“Not all the way to the lower wing.” The administrator’s breath caught when the steward wrenched her shoulder. She recovered without lifting her hand. “My authorization is holding the western route open.”
“Walkin will contain you.”
The administrator looked at Walkin. “I know.”
The control plate flashed beneath her palm. Somewhere beyond the west wall, another lock released with a heavy metallic strike.
“Every door records who opened it,” she said. “Get Delphine’s copy outside before Walkin changes that record.”
Marrow looked over his shoulder at Astra.
He drew a slow breath before Walkin spoke.
“Take the lower wing. Close every route to the bridge.”
The administrator looked directly at Marrow. “You watched what they did to him.”
Marrow’s gaze moved to Kieran, then to Delphine’s repaired hand.
Marrow released the control station.
He went through the east door at a run, calling stewards after him. The alarm had not yet reached the lower corridors. He meant to arrive before it did.
Walkin had sent our most dangerous pursuer ahead of us.
Astra still had not taken my hand.
Her grief came through the bond so sharply that it caught beneath my ribs. I understood it. I kept my hand there.
“You gave her a choice,” I said. “She made it.”
I had followed Astra east when I wanted the service door. I could not drag the administrator from the choice she had made.
Astra crossed the space between us and caught my hand.
The west door was nearly shut. Hale held it with his shoulder while Kieran leaned against the wall beside him. Delphine had already slipped through.
A steward seized Astra from behind.
Copper light flared.
Hale left the door.
It began to swing closed as he crossed the chamber. He caught the steward’s wrist, stripped the hand from Astra’s shoulder, and turned the man into the path of another baton. Wood struck the steward’s back. Both men went down against the benches.
Hale drove himself upright and ran back. The gap had narrowed to the width of his shoulders by the time he reached it. He turned sideways and forced himself between the stone and the frame.
I caught Astra around the waist and pulled her after him. Her breath struck the side of my throat. The line at my wrist pulsed hard enough to numb my fingers where they held her.
Walkin reached the control plate.
The black wax had broken beneath the administrator’s hand, but its fragments still clung to the stone around her fingers. Walkin closed their hand over her wrist.
“Seal the west level,” they ordered.
The door jerked against Hale’s shoulder.
Kieran caught its edge with his left hand. Delphine reached back from the corridor. I pushed Astra through first, then followed with Hale beside me.
The stone door struck my coat and tore the hem before we cleared it.
Kieran let go.
The door slammed between us and the hearing room.
The force threw Kieran against Hale. His injured shoulder struck Hale’s chest, and green-gold flared at Astra’s wrist as his pain crossed the bond. Hale took the impact without loosening his hold.
“Still with me?” he asked.
Kieran tried to straighten. “Regrettably.”
“Good.”
The impact shook grit from the arch. For a moment, the corridor held only our breathing, stone dust settling through the silver light, and the alarm beginning somewhere overhead.
Delphine opened her coat enough to show the folded hearing pages and Kieran’s folio remained inside.
Hale put Kieran’s left arm across his shoulders. Kieran’s face had gone pale, but his line at Astra’s wrist held steady.
Astra pressed her palm to the closed door.
No sound came through the stone.
The map beneath Astra’s coat ended at this level. From here, the route depended on the service turns I had learned at the dock, and Marrow was already below us closing them.
“We have to move,” I said.