Chapter 363 - 363: Which Throat

"Choose," the wall said again.

Erna's left hand was slipping whether she wanted it to or not to do so.

The film had a hold of her sleeve and was climbing by small, neat pulls.

Rigel did not answer the wall.

He looked at Erna.

"Can you let go if I take the weight."

"If I let go it opens."

"I didn't ask that."

"…Yes. For a few seconds. Then I think I go with it."

Mesterica kicked another mason back.

"If you waste time on her, the Count goes. If you waste time on the Count, she goes. That is the point of the sentence."

Cynthia was already turning toward the conference room.

"I'm taking my father."

"Go," Rigel said.

She went.

The wall clicked its tongue, Pell's habit on the wrong mouth.

"You always split. We counted on that."

Rigel put the packet in Erna's tool bag, clasp shut, and shoved the bag behind her hip where the crack could not reach it without taking her whole.

"Hey—"

"If I hold it, they follow me. If you hold it, they have to keep you in one piece long enough to open a bag."

He caught her wrist before the film crawled into her palm.

"On three you take the hand off. I close it."

"You don't know if you can."

"On three."

Erna swore.

Nodded.

Mesterica said, "The crew is getting up."

"I know."

"Three."

Erna ripped her hands off the stone.

The crack jumped wide, a dark mouth the width of a shoulder.

Cold air hit the corridor.

Rigel slammed both palms to the rim and pushed the same rewritten stitch through the rock, ugly and unfinished, the way he had forced Irina's collar to open when he did not yet understand all of it.

The hole fought.

It knew him now.

It tried to wear his mana instead of yielding to it.

His vision went white at the edges.

He kept pushing.

Stone shrieked.

The opening pinched, shuddered, and sealed down to a hairline again, leaking dust.

Erna hit the floor on her tailbone and immediately checked the bag.

Still shut.

She looked like she wanted to hit him and thank him and vomit, and did none of the three.

The masons had stopped walking.

Some were on their knees.

One started crying in a normal human way, which was the most useful sound in the hall so far.

Mesterica did not lower her sword.

"That is not a victory. That is a held door."

From the conference room Cynthia shouted, not a word, just his name, sharp.

Rigel left Erna sitting.

"Stay off the stone. If the seam starts, you bite your tongue before you answer it."

"I bill you for this," Erna said to his back.

Count Blade was still in the chair.

That was the good part.

Calden was on the floor with both hands over his own mouth.

That was the other part.

Cynthia stood between her father and the hearth, where the map had not quite burned.

Ink had crawled off the paper onto the grate and was trying to become writing on iron.

Blade's lining was back.

Thicker.

"You closed a crack and opened me," he said, and the second tone was pleased.

"Poor trade, maker."

Cynthia did not look away from him.

"He knew my childhood name. The one Mother used. He asked me to say it so he could keep it."

"Did you."

"No."

Rigel wiped the blood off his lip with his thumb.

"Count. Refuse something."

Blade's face twisted.

The iron tried.

The lining spoke first.

"Give us the bag on the craftsman. Give us the sisters at Gousel. Give us the formula. We will return this man to his daughter in the morning, mostly."

Cynthia's blade touched her father's collar and stayed there.

"Say no."

A vein stood in Blade's temple.

"No," he got out, raw.

Then, immediately, as if paying for the word: "The boy is in the servant passage under this room. He is not alone. If you chase him you will miss the one walking toward your mansion."

Mesterica's head snapped around.

"Bluff."

"Maybe," Rigel said.

"Miena is days away. They want us to run days."

Blade's mouth smiled with the lining.

"Not a rider. A route. You rebuilt a collar that carries a command without killing the mind. Commands travel. So do we. The little one already answers when told not to touch her sister. That is a road."

Rigel's hand closed.

He thought of a glass bird on a floor, and a girl saying Master because she had no other word left.

Erna's shout carried from the corridor, hoarse.

"It's moving in the bag!"

Cynthia did not move her sword.

"If you leave this room, I am cutting whatever talks next, even if it uses his mouth."

Rigel looked at Blade, at the ink on the grate, at the door.

He did not run to Gousel.

He did not kneel to the trade.

He took the empty potion bottle off the table, broke it on the hearth rim, and held the sharp edge in front of Blade's eye.

"Then you will give me the servant passage entrance," he said.

"In your own cadence. One sentence. If the lining adds a second sentence, Cynthia cuts."

Blade stared at the glass.

Sweat ran.

"West wall. Third panel after the old banner hooks. Press the lower left and slide."

He stopped.

Shook.

The lining lunged for more and Cynthia's edge kissed skin.

Silence.

Mesterica was already at the west wall.

Rigel spoke without turning.

"Erna. Bring the bag. If it talks, you don't answer. You only carry."

Her footsteps came, uneven, furious.

Under the floor, something small ran.

Not a rat.

A child's gait, too even, heading the way Blade had said, and also, very faintly, the other way, as if one set of feet had learned how to be two.

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[A/N: Thanks for reading this chapter! I hope you enjoyed the story this far!]