Chapter 972: The City Votes To Keep Its Captain

Lera Kott took twenty seven burial hooks from the council drawer and hung them above the keep rail.

Each hook belonged to somebody killed on the midpoint bridge before Vask fixed its change cage. Lera had copied twelve names herself. The oldest hook carried a belt number worn smooth and a bend from the cart that landed on its owner.

Residents entered from both roadbacks with their boots holding to opposing galleries around the open midpoint, each bridge belt carrying one brass ring stamped with a district address.

Keep Vask used the rail bolted to the fixed gallery. Surrender him used the rail that turned with the city.

Lera stood between them in the clerk cage and tested both scales with her body weight.

An Account Five runner reached the cage before the first resident. He set a cloth bag on the shelf, and rings settled against one another inside it.

"Provider workers cannot leave the lower dock, so Vask sends their rings through me."

Lera emptied the bag into the return tray. Fifty rings carried an Account Five punch and no district address. None had been cut from a resident’s bridge belt.

"A ring without its resident belt adds metal, while this count requires a voter."

The runner caught the tray before it slid toward the turning gallery. "Those workers keep the fixed ward under your mother’s bed."

"Then they can cross with their belts or remain outside this count."

He carried the bag back toward the lower stairs. Lera wrote fifty rejected proxies on both gallery boards before opening the resident line.

"The count closes before the district turn, and every ring stays visible afterward."

Her mother waited in the fixed ward three streets below. One hip had healed in the wrong direction after the last forced migration. Another full turn would put her back into a sling for months, assuming the ward ceiling hooks released in order.

The first keep ring came from Iri Tolland.

Her bridge belt had a new loop sewn beside the torn one. Dried blood remained in the old stitch holes. She clipped her ring below the burial hooks and stayed at the rail.

"Vask’s plate failed today, but his midpoint saved this crew for six seasons."

A man from the turning gallery lifted his surrender ring. "His plate caused the failure, and the provider arrived beneath our city before it happened."

"Then count the failure beside the people his work already saved."

Lera held out both hands. "The bridge plate enters before arguments repeat themselves into another shift."

Jade came through the fixed gallery carrying the black plate against her cold forearm. The skeleton’s cradle followed under Holl’s control, though the wrapped left elbow pointed toward the other roadback. Nessa walked beside them with her cage pulled tight across her stomach.

None of them wore city vote rings.

That made Lera’s job easier until she saw the five punched squares around the plate’s center.

"Outsiders may add physical evidence, while their bodies add no vote weight."

Jade set the plate on the clerk shelf. "This moved the bridge change outside its cage before Iri’s rear wheels cleared."

"Did Vask move this plate from Account Five?"

"I saw the plate answer Nessa’s stolen pulse, and Iri can tell you where Vask docked."

Iri kept her hand on the keep rail. "His stake reached the lower dock before our morning change."

Lera recorded the arrival with chalk beside the shelf. The plate weighed eleven pounds in her hands. On the evidence scale, the fixed rail dropped hard enough to pull three burial hooks from their pegs.

The skeleton’s right hand caught one before it struck the gallery below. Four fingers closed around the hook, leaving the bent end between thumb and rail.

"This hook seems determined to strike somebody twice."

Lera recognized the worn belt number against his knuckle.

"Hang it back where the bend faces the keep side."

He obeyed without touching the number.

Nessa knelt beside the evidence scale. The plate’s copied groove pulled her caged arm toward the lower dock, but a second pressure dragged through the fixed rail toward House Twelve.

"Your scale is carrying a source outside this city."

Lera opened the maintenance drawer beneath the rail. Five narrow strips showed stone allotments, bridge turns, and fixed ward use. None carried a person’s name.

"The council receives source summaries after every ten district turns."

"Your summaries call living pressure stone because buyers ask fewer questions about a quarry."

Several keep voters shouted from the gallery. Lera closed the clerk cage before anyone crossed the midpoint without a belt.

"You may hate the answer after she proves it, but the scale stays open until then."

Nessa placed her left hand on the plate. Her right cage followed the copied groove under the scale and caught a thin roll hidden behind its pivot.

The metal cut her smallest knuckle when she pulled. A strip of waxed cloth came out around her wrist, covered in daily source marks too small for the public summaries.

She read the first line and looked toward Ty.

"House Twelve carries this bridge change through Lenn Cor’s breathing load."

The name meant nothing to most of the chamber. It meant enough to Iri that her hand left the keep rail.

"House Twelve arrived with the damaged passenger deck this morning."

Jade kept her voice level. "Lenn is alive beneath that house, and buyers were told she was stone."

Lera checked the cloth against the council summaries. Every entry naming quarry pressure matched a shorter mark beside Lenn Cor. The bridge, fixed ward, lower medicine room, and three work floors all took pieces of the same breathing load.

Her mother’s bed appeared four times.

The next district turn clicked through the fixed rail. Far beyond the chamber, a woman’s inhale came through the plate and shortened before it returned.

Nessa lifted the cloth where both galleries could see it. "That breath belongs to Lenn, and the next stable change charges her again."

The council’s source summary keeper reached through the clerk bars with a padded clamp. He had delivered the quarry totals to Lera for four years and never once brought the thin cloth hidden inside the scale.

"That material belongs in the sealed supplier drawer after its total is copied, because releasing source marks can send angry districts toward workers who accepted dangerous contracts."

Lera caught the clamp against a cage bar. "Your copied total turned Lenn Cor into stone on every public record."

"Source privacy prevents crowds from hunting workers who accept the load."

"Privacy protects a worker’s address. The public record must admit that worker exists."

She locked the padded clamp inside the evidence tray and left the cloth in Nessa’s hand. The keeper withdrew with his own fingers intact and moved to the surrender line.

The surrender rail filled first. Workers from the turning gallery clipped rings in a quick line. A bridge mason crossed over after finding his district mark on the cloth.

The keep rail filled more slowly and became heavier.

Iri put her hand back on it.

"Removing Vask before we replace this plate drops the fixed ward with Lenn still attached."

The man with the first surrender ring pointed toward the burial hooks. "Keeping him gives Vask another day to hide whoever pays tomorrow."

"Then the keep vote carries Lenn’s name in public, and nobody calls her quarry again."

Lera looked at the district clock. The heavy hand had reached the final notch before turn. Her mother and forty two other ward residents had been strapped for an emergency shift, but the oldest ceiling rail still lacked a turning joint.

She clipped her brass ring beneath the bent hook on the keep side.

The rail dropped another inch.

"My vote keeps the current floor until the ward can turn without killing people."

"Does your rule let us inspect the source before another charge?" Jade asked.

"My rule makes this cloth part of the count, though it cannot open Vask’s dock."

The final rings entered. Lera locked both rails before the district turn and released the clerk cage from its midpoint pin.

The room changed down around her.

Both galleries became walls until their hinges turned. Rings slid to the ends of their rails and struck the counting cups one by one. Lera braced a boot against the cage corner and called each weight to the two recorders holding chalk.

The keep cup received three hundred nineteen rings.

The surrender cup received one hundred four.

Keep voters bent to retrieve their belts while surrender voters left their rings in the cup for a challenge. The fixed ward stayed beneath its residents, and Lenn’s breathing remained inside the evidence plate.

Lera hung the waxed cloth across the keep rail under the burial hooks, leaving her mother’s bed mark facing the chamber beside Lenn Cor’s name.

The lower dock opened before she could seal the evidence shelf.

Black panels unfolded beneath the council floor. Vask’s voice came through the plate using the same breath path that had carried Lenn.

"The city kept me here, so Captain Nessa may enter the lower dock and read every name and living charge in my source book."

Nessa’s cage turned toward the opening.

"Name the price without borrowing another person’s lungs to speak it."

Air rose through the lower dock and entered the plate beneath Vask’s words.

"Give Account Five temporary access to the field piece held in livestock escrow."