12 · The Bridges of the Void

found the first recent corpse tied to a cable. The rope was arranged so that a fall would pull a copper plate taut. Ivara looked without touching it.

“They didn't want him to work. They wanted to measure what happened when someone died near the seal.”

The man wore a token numbered forty-three.

On a nearby ledge stood an observation table protected by waxed canvas. The papers remained because the researchers intended to return. They had measured the interval between death and the seal's first response, the distance to the pillars, the number of people who felt a voice. No personal names stood beside the figures.

Ivara examined the sheets without touching them. She wore gloves to keep the oils on her fingers from destroying old ink. There, she removed them. It seemed indecent to protect from human contact a record made to suppress it.

There were failed experiments in which no one died and others in which more than one person did. The book used the same phrase: “No

useful response.” In the margin, another hand had added “persistent pain in associated subject.” Ivara followed an arrow from the note to an appendix. The associated subject was a mother waiting on the other side of the bridge.

Neris found a scrap of fabric beneath the table. A secret pocket had been sewn into it. Inside were three seeds and a badly written prayer to Ilyndra. It did not say “give me back.” It said “let my brother know.”

Serik knelt beside the corpse. He loosened the token's cord and saw that the number had been punched over another. Thirty-eight. They had reused it.

“He isn't travelling with this,” he said.

Teren wanted to leave it in place as evidence. They argued very quietly, without looking at each other. The cleric insisted they must preserve what had been done; the paladin said this man had no reason to keep carrying it. Beran settled the dispute by taking a cord from his bag.

They tied the token to the book beside

the corresponding page.

They did not yet know the body was Esren Toll. Serik cut the rope, and together they wrapped him beneath the inscription “quarry man, found on the bridge.” Neris recorded the features still recognisable. It was a poor way to preserve him, but it required looking at him without turning him into a number.

After they lifted him, the paladin discovered nail marks in the wood. He had tried to free himself. For a moment Serik stood motionless with both hands on the stretcher.

Maera waited on the far side of the crossing.

“I can't promise our people have never done anything like this,” she said.

“I wasn't going to ask.”

“People usually ask before they let me be angry.”

Serik raised his head. He had lost friends in Horde attacks, and for years had used that loss as explanation enough not to listen to any of them.

“Then be angry,” he replied. “We'll need it.”

The dark elf helped lift the stretcher. Doing so did not

make them friends. What they found between them was less comfortable and, for that very reason, might serve them on the next bridge.

Teren leaned on the rail. He had seen abused bodies before. This one had not been hated. They had made a question of him and written down the answer.

The path to the Heart of the Abyss forced them across a beam without rails. Beran went first, testing the anchors. Halfway across, footsteps sounded behind them. The guards they had released at the entrance were coming with other men, these in blue armour. The youth with the broken teeth shouted something; a blow sent him beneath the shields.

Maera turned with her bow. Serik stepped between them.

“Wait! Commander Venn's orders!”

The captain raised a sealed tablet.

“These are the orders.”

The captain read the part describing the travellers as saboteurs. He did not read the murder accusations added at the foot. Serik recognised the procedure: make the first accepted word remove the need to prove those

that followed.

“We have freed workers in the quarry!” he shouted. “They can testify.”

“They've been coached,” the captain replied.

The youth with the broken teeth tried to approach. He said the prisoners had been chained before the travellers arrived. A soldier struck his stomach with a spear butt. He doubled over on the walkway.

Teren saw his heel sink between two boards. Another push would trap him. He tried to warn him. His voice mixed with the captain's, who kept reading to his own men.

The soldier behind the tablet was afraid. It showed in the way he sought the bridge's support with both feet. Maera signalled him not to advance. He thought she was pointing out a target and began raising his bow.

Serik showed his hands.

“I know the commander. I'll report to her. Let the others leave.”

He was not offering everyone's surrender. The impulse enraged Teren, yet he understood how little the paladin had to bargain with. The insignia he no longer wore was still

the only thing they could recognise on the other side.

The captain folded the tablet.

“The order is for all of you.”

Neris had begun singing very softly. Not a song of defiance: the tune children used to count steps while crossing a stream. The wounded youth heard. He moved a foot to its rhythm and freed his heel before the soldier pushed him again.

Elyen saw the movement. He also saw the lashing that held the side walkway.

He could not cut the main bridge without killing the boy. He would have to leave them a section to retreat onto. He measured the rope, the water's angle and Serik's position. The decision happened in his body before he could explain it.

Maera was already aiming at the captain.

The paladin took another step, his hands still open.

The first bolt pierced Serik's forearm. Maera shot the captain. Elyen cut a lashing and dropped a length of walkway between the two groups. The crash awakened the echo that had not

existed until then.

Teren dragged the paladin to a ledge. The arrow had missed the bone. As he worked, he heard Beran arguing with Ivara. They had reached the seal.

Ordan's wedge was in place. The stone ring vibrated. A shadow formed in the water below and took the shape of a child holding a bell.

Beran did not look away.

“I know you aren't him,” he said.

The shadow shook its arm. The bell sounded exactly like the one he had kept.

“That doesn't stop you wanting to open it,” Ivara observed.

Beran laid his hammer on the mechanism and held it there without striking.

“Promising sixteen people I'd come back with their dead man stops me.”

They removed the wedge. The child dissolved into a band of clear water. Beran waited until it had vanished. Then he asked Teren to help with body number forty-three.