Come With Me
OLIVER
By midafternoon, Saint Orra had developed three separate evacuation plans and enough competing authority to make all of them dangerous. Oliver stood on the remains of the outer signal platform and watched the argument spread across the Cut.
Below him, the lock gates no longer existed in any useful sense.
Naval engineers had reduced one to a black iron skeleton embedded in broken masonry.
The second lay half submerged across the channel, its upper section appearing whenever the swell withdrew and disappearing again beneath brown water carrying splintered timber, shattered crates and an impressive quantity of Saint Orra's administrative furniture.
The destruction had accomplished its intended purpose.
No armed vessel could enter the Cut. Unfortunately, neither could anyone leave it easily.
Behind Oliver, the quarantine station continued emptying itself uphill.
Patients moved beneath blankets toward the ridge road.
Customs officers carried barrels of imported water past severed pipes.
Someone had erected a field kitchen beside the old signal yard and discovered almost immediately that feeding frightened civilians required more kettles than military planning tended to provide.
Across the broken channel, the western annex occupied a low shelf of basalt perhaps eighty yards away.
Forty-six civilians remained there according to Kelm's latest count.
Dock laborers. Two quarantine families. Six convalescents moved there before the plumbing failed.
Three station clerks. A handful of sailors unfortunate enough to be ashore when the lock came down.
The bridge connecting them to the main station had gone with it. A customs launch waited inside the Cut. A naval lighter waited outside. Neither could approach the western quay cleanly because sections of the destroyed gate had drifted into the channel and lodged beneath the surface.
The annex signal mast leaned over the water at an angle suggesting optimism had become structural. Kelm climbed the final steps to the platform with a speaking trumpet tucked beneath one arm.
"Useless."
Oliver looked at the trumpet. "Unkind. It has a certain decorative authority."
Kelm handed it to him. Oliver raised it toward the western annex. "CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
The wind took the words, broke them against the remains of the lock and returned something that sounded less like language than a man being murdered inside a brass instrument. A few people across the Cut looked toward him.
Most did not. Oliver lowered the trumpet. "I withdraw my defense."
Kelm planted both hands on the parapet. "We can send the customs launch one trip at a time. Twelve if they load properly, eight if they panic, and none if the submerged gate catches the hull."
"Encouraging."
"The naval lighter can take everyone in one crossing, but it can't enter."
Marin came up behind them carrying a folded chart and the expression she wore when the world had presented several correct answers and insufficient time to enjoy any of them. Her left hand remained wrapped.
Oliver noticed. She noticed him noticing. They left it there. "Venn has a line crew on the south mole," Marin said. "They can rig a traveler across the narrow section if someone gets the first hawser to the annex."
Kelm looked over the water. "Launch."
"The launch cannot cross the middle until the gate debris is marked."
"We marked it this morning."
"The tide turned."
Kelm swore. Oliver leaned over the parapet.
The water inside Saint Orra's Cut had returned to behaving according to several familiar laws, which made it immediately more dangerous to underestimate.
Brown current folded around the shattered gate.
Oil from some ruptured mechanism stretched blue-black across an eddy.
Broken timbers rose and fell where the tide worried them against submerged iron.
He could feel the water. The awareness remained difficult to explain without sounding mystical or drunk.
Depth did not arrive as numbers. Current did not draw itself across his sight.
The Cut simply possessed a shape in his attention that stone did not.
Moving water pressed against some inherited sense beneath his skin, broad and imperfect, more intimacy than instrument.
There were places he would not put a boat.
There were others he might. Oliver looked toward the annex.
People had gathered along the quay. A woman waved a white sheet from an upper window.
Two men were attempting to lower an elderly patient down exterior stairs while disagreeing rather passionately about which direction he should face.
A child sat on the parapet until someone caught him by the back of his coat. Beyond them, another gun spoke somewhere outside the Cut. The sound arrived a second later. Everyone across the water turned toward it.
Kelm's mouth hardened. "They need to move."
Oliver felt the answer beneath his tongue. He did not use it. The inheritance had crossed open water before. He knew his voice could remain whole across distance that should have torn it apart. He knew people heard him with a clarity weather should have denied.
The rest remained troublesome. Attention might sharpen around the sound. Emotional focus might follow. Receptivity had been the word Vessa used in Vantrel, irritatingly broad and therefore difficult to dismiss. Oliver rested both hands against the broken parapet.
"I can reach them."
Kelm looked at him. Marin kept her eyes on the annex. "The distance isn't the question."
Oliver glanced at her. She offered neither prohibition nor permission. She simply waited for him to decide what he intended to do.
"I don't want the first thing they hear to be an order."
"Then give them choices before instructions."
Kelm looked between them. "You two have made evacuation surprisingly philosophical."
"It becomes less philosophical when someone writes a complaint afterward."
"I will personally burn the complaint if everyone survives."
"Your commitment to procedure inspires me."
Marin opened the chart against the parapet. "Naval lighter from the south mole. Customs launch from the inner quay. Anyone unwilling to use either can shelter on the upper floor of the stone customs house until the next pass."
Kelm frowned. "That building is too low."
"The upper floor isn't."
"If we get another direct hit?"
"Then all three options become worse."
Kelm considered the annex and nodded. Oliver looked across the Cut again. At this distance, the people gathered there had become shapes rather than faces. Forty-six civilians. Numbers made emergency work easier. They also made certain choices easier than Oliver trusted.
He stepped onto the remains of the signal plinth. Marin caught the back of his coat. "Your ribs."
"A devastating declaration."
"I am checking whether you intend to fall off a wall before becoming controversial."
"Only afterward."
Her fingers tightened once and released him.
Oliver faced the water. Wind moved through the broken lock.
He drew breath. The resonance stirred low in his chest and along the back of his tongue.
It felt nothing like Hunger. Salt and breath.
Something bodily and old, instinct finding a route through sound.
Bhodi noticed anyway. The shadow beneath Oliver's boots darkened against the afternoon light. He ignored it. "SAINT ORRA WEST ANNEX."
The words crossed. Oliver felt them leave him and remain whole. Forty-six heads turned. Together. Cold moved beneath his skin. Kelm stopped beside him. Marin became very still. Even the people visible through the upper windows had turned toward the platform.
The resonance waited easily inside Oliver's next breath. "My name is Oliver Hawkins."
His voice carried without strain.
"What I'm using lets you hear me farther than you should. I don't know if that's all it does."
A pause. No one across the Cut looked away. Oliver's pulse moved harder in his throat. "So hear the options before anybody starts moving."
He pointed south.
"The navy has a traveler line going up from the south mole. Fastest route, once it's ready."
His hand moved toward the inner quay.
"Kelm's customs launch will make smaller crossings once we've marked a safe channel through the wreckage. Slower, but you stay in a boat."
Then toward the customs house.
"If you want neither, use the upper floor of the stone customs house and stay away from the water-facing windows. Someone will come back for you."
The wind pushed at his coat. Oliver looked across forty-six turned faces. "You can hear me. That doesn't mean you have to do what I say."
Movement began. Not all in the same direction. Oliver let out a breath. Several people headed toward the south quay. A smaller group turned toward the customs house. One man remained where he had been, arms folded across his chest.
Oliver liked him immediately. "Anyone who cannot walk, hang something white from the nearest rail or window. Don't move them just because I'm speaking."
Three white signals appeared. Then a fourth. Marin marked each location on the chart. "Four immobile."
Kelm leaned over the platform. "Stretcher teams on first crossing!"
Oliver let the resonance go. Ordinary distance returned abruptly. Voices from the annex blurred back into wind and water. Kelm stared at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"That face usually precedes something."
Kelm looked across the Cut. "Every person over there turned when you spoke."
"I noticed."
"Did you make them?"
Oliver considered the question. "I made myself audible."
"Not what I asked."
"No."
Kelm waited. Oliver could have given him something reassuring. The temptation lasted only long enough to annoy him.
"I don't know how much of the attention was hearing a voice clearly where no voice should carry."
Kelm rubbed one hand over his mouth. "I preferred smug."
"So did I."
Marin tapped the chart. "The north group is still going to the customs house."