Astra
The alarm reached the lower levels in pieces.
Stone broke apart its clean rise and fall and sent the sound through the passages in uneven waves. Between each one came the rush of water beneath the floor and the scrape of our boots.
Caspian led us through a turn so narrow his shoulder brushed the wall. He had learned this route from the loading dock, a piece at a time, whenever the stewards brought supplies across the bridge. I stayed close enough to see the pale edge of his coat in the silver light.
Hale came behind me with Kieran’s left arm across his shoulders. Kieran was moving under his own strength, but the pain from his injured shoulder kept passing through green-gold in sharp, breath-stealing bursts. Each one struck my wrist a heartbeat before I heard it catch in his throat.
Delphine guarded the rear. One hand remained inside her coat over the hearing pages. The other trailed close to the wall without touching it.
“Right,” Caspian said.
The passage dropped steeply. Water shone through narrow channels cut along both sides of the floor, silver running over black stone. Cold mist gathered against my face and in the loose hair at my neck.
A door slammed somewhere behind us.
Another answered farther down.
“They’re closing the cross-passages,” Hale said.
Caspian glanced back. “Can they close the bridge route from here?”
“Not without reaching the lower station.”
“Marrow will be there first.”
The next junction divided around a thick stone support. Caspian started left, then stopped so abruptly I struck his back.
A steward stepped from the dark with a baton already raised.
Hale shifted Kieran toward Delphine and moved past me. The baton came down. He caught the steward’s wrist with both hands, turned beneath the blow, and drove the man shoulder-first into the support. The baton struck stone and fell into the water channel.
The steward tried to call out. Hale’s forearm closed across his throat until his knees gave way.
Hale lowered him rather than letting his head strike the floor.
“He’ll wake,” he said.
“Then we should be gone when he does,” Kieran managed.
Hale took his weight again. We ran.
The air grew colder as the passage descended.
The channels widened, throwing broken ribbons of light across the walls.
Blood from the frame’s bite showed dark along Kieran’s collar, and Delphine’s silver lines gleamed at her wrist. All three bond-lines showed at my wrist whenever my sleeve slipped back.
We waited out the daylight hours in a disused service bay two turns short of the walkway, listening to the search sweep past twice, until Caspian judged it dark enough to risk the open bridge.
The passage opened onto a long walkway with water running fast on either side. Beyond it stood the final tunnel door. Its iron brace was visible in the silver light.
Marrow waited between us and it.
Four stewards held the walkway behind him, batons drawn. They had left enough room between them to fight without striking one another and none for us to pass.
Marrow’s hair was damp at the temples from the run. He looked first at Hale supporting Kieran, then at Delphine’s closed coat.
His gaze settled on me.
“The hearing is suspended,” he said. “You are being returned to containment.”
Caspian’s fingers tightened around mine. “Walkin pinned Kieran in that frame and kept tightening it after he refused.”
“I was there.”
“Then don’t pretend this is procedure.”
Marrow looked past him to the bonds at my wrist. “Move away from her.”
Caspian stepped in front of me. “No.”
Hale eased Kieran toward Delphine. “Stay behind us.”
Kieran drew himself upright. His face had gone gray beneath the water-light. “I can still stand.”
Hale looked once at his shoulder, then positioned himself where he could intercept anyone who reached Kieran’s injured side.
Marrow lifted one hand.
The stewards advanced.
The walkway gave us no room to separate. Hale took the left side with Kieran close behind him. Caspian moved right. Delphine drew the folded hearing pages from her coat and pushed them into the back of my waistband beneath my shirt.
“If we’re separated, those pages leave with you.”
“Delphine—” The first baton reached us before I could finish.
Caspian turned sideways beneath the swing and struck the steward across the mouth. The man staggered, recovered, and drove the baton back toward my head.
Caspian stepped between us.
Wood cracked across his ribs.
The crack carried over the channels.
Caspian’s line clenched at my wrist, and a hollow pressure closed beneath my own ribs. My next breath failed with his.
He folded around the blow but caught the steward’s wrist before it could rise again. He drove the man into the wall with his shoulder, once, hard enough to loosen the baton, then struck behind the knee. The steward went down.
Caspian stayed bent, one arm clamped across his side.
I caught his coat. “Can you breathe?”
“Enough.” The word came thin. “Don’t let them put you against the water.”
On the other side of the walkway, Hale blocked one baton with his forearm and drove his fist beneath the steward’s ribs. Kieran caught the man’s coat with his good hand and pulled him off balance. Hale finished the turn and sent him down between them.
A second steward came around their left side.
Delphine stepped into his path.
He checked himself rather than strike her. The hesitation lasted less than a second, but she used it. She caught the front of his uniform and drove her heel into his shin. His boot slid on the wet edge of the walkway.
He went into the channel shoulder-first.
The current carried him several yards before he caught a metal rung below the walkway. It dragged the rest of him downstream while he clung there. Every attempt at breath ended in coughing, lost beneath the water.
Marrow came through the center.
Hale met him before he reached me. Marrow caught Hale’s first strike against his forearm, turned inside the second, and drove him backward into the wall. The rain-dark line burst hot along my wrist.
Kieran swung the fallen baton one-handed. Marrow ducked and caught it below the grip. A twist tore it free. He threw it into the channel and struck Kieran across the chest with the heel of his hand.
Kieran hit the stone beside Hale. Green-gold pain drove up my arm.
I went for Marrow before he could reach either of them again.
He caught my wrist.
I turned as Hale had taught me, but Marrow moved with the escape and closed his other hand around my upper arm. His cuff caught between our wrists and tore. The fabric fell back.
A Mark lay beneath it.
The lines were dark and drawn tight along the inside of his wrist. My palm closed over them before I could pull away.
The same current that had moved through Delphine’s damaged lines opened beneath my skin.
Heat gathered where our wrists met, then sank cold through the bones of my hand. I felt Marrow’s Mark as a pattern pulled painfully tight. Suppression had driven each line inward, and the constriction echoed through my knuckles.
The pattern could be loosened beneath my palm. A fraction more pressure at one narrow turn would knot it instead and send pain through his arm. I could force his hand open, and if I continued, the change would remain after I let go.
The power gathered against my palm. Marrow felt it. His grip faltered, and his eyes dropped to my hand.
I released him.
His Mark remained exactly as I had found it.
Marrow stared at his wrist.
Hale struck him from the side.
They went down together. Marrow’s temple glanced off the wet stone before he rolled away from Hale’s weight.
Kieran dropped to one knee and trapped Marrow’s right forearm beneath his left shin, keeping his injured shoulder clear.
Caspian came in from the other side, breathing shallowly, and forced Marrow’s left shoulder to the stone.
The fourth steward left the tunnel door and started toward them.
I kicked a fallen baton toward Delphine. She caught it before it reached the water and swung low. Wood struck the steward’s knee. He dropped, and she planted one boot over his wrist before bracing the baton across his throat.
“The door,” Hale said.
I ran to it. The emergency release sat beneath a metal cover beside the brace. I tore the cover open and drove the lever down.
The brace lifted slowly from its housing.
Boots struck stone in the passage behind us.
The pursuit was no longer scattered. A squad was moving together.
Marrow heard them. His cheek was pressed to the wet walkway beneath Caspian’s arm, but his mouth was free.
One call would bring them straight to us.
Hale tore a restraint cord from a fallen steward’s belt and bound Marrow’s wrists. Marrow drew breath while Hale tightened the knot.
He looked at me.
I remembered the pattern of his Mark beneath my palm and everything I had chosen not to do to it.
Marrow let the breath out without calling.
The squad reached the junction above. A steward shouted for the west passage to be checked.
No one answered from ours.
The boots turned away. Their rhythm weakened beneath the water until I could no longer separate it from the alarm.
Hale checked the binding at Marrow’s wrists. It would hold, but it would not cut him. He pulled Marrow away from the edge of the channel and set him against the wall.
Delphine kept the fourth steward pinned until the squad’s footsteps disappeared. Then she stripped the restraint cord from his belt and bound his wrists. The man in the channel was still coughing below the walkway.
Caspian stood beside her with one hand at his ribs. Kieran had reclaimed Hale’s shoulder and looked close to collapse.
The tunnel brace locked open behind me.
“Why didn’t you call them?” I asked.
Marrow looked at the Mark beneath his torn cuff, then at the bonds on my wrist. He gave me no answer.
Water ran from his sleeve onto the stone. He looked older sitting there than he ever had standing over a review table.
Hale put a hand against my back. “Astra.”
The alarm changed overhead. Its slow pulse became a continuous note.
Caspian lifted his head. “Bridge station.”
He had heard the same signal during deliveries, when the stewards tested the outer lock before opening the route to the dock.
“How long?” Hale asked.
“Minutes.”
We moved.
I pulled the hearing pages from beneath my shirt and handed them back to Delphine. She tucked them inside her coat while Hale took Kieran’s weight. I slipped beneath Caspian’s free arm despite his attempt to wave me off.
At the threshold, I looked back.
Marrow sat bound against the wall, blood drying at his temple and his torn sleeve pulled down over the Mark I had left untouched.
He met my eyes, then looked toward the upper passage.
I followed the others into the tunnel.
The silver channels narrowed beside us until they disappeared beneath the floor. Ahead, gray night showed through the tunnel mouth, and beyond it waited the first planks of the bridge.
Caspian’s breath came in short pulls against my hair. Kieran stumbled once and recovered against Hale. Delphine kept one hand over the record inside her coat.
Behind us, Marrow remained silent.