13 · Where a Hand Is Missing

yet healed. Beran showed him how to grip it without crushing his fingers. The intimacy of that instruction made it harder to think about the fate of the bones beneath the water.

Maera returned first. The shaft had no exit. There was a cold draught behind the stones, but not enough room to pass an arm.

Elyen came back with a strip of cloth and a wooden box the size of a loaf, with a stag carved on the lid. He had found them together, caught in the collapse. People had tried to leave that way during the Rupture. He added nothing else. Beran took the cloth and put it away with the bell. He did not open the box.

Teren knelt to examine his ropes. Ivara asked whether he was praying.

“I'm looking for one that hasn't got wet.”

The mage offered hers. As a child, she had been taught that clerics found comfort in any ceremony. She had expected this one to have a special prayer for places

with no way out. When he said no, she felt, for a moment, abandoned by someone who had never promised her anything else.

“We can pray afterwards,” Teren added. “Right now it would help if you held this.”

She took the end. He tied a knot, undid it because it was wrong and tried again under the others' eyes. No one hurried him. Urgency did not turn a faulty knot into a useful one.

Neris found the closing diagram on a wall. It had been painted for workers who could not read. The figures showed two people operating the lever and a third waiting on high ground. Where that platform should have stood was now a black opening.

Beran found the solution in a sluice gate he had installed himself twenty-seven years before. Its hinge was still sound. It had to be closed from the flooded side.

Serik volunteered. Beran shook his head.

“You've been shot through the hand, and you don't know which lever to turn.”

“Show me.”

“We

have no time to turn courage into a profession.”

Teren held the lamp while the dwarf entered the water. It reached his waist, his chest. The current lifted his coat. Beran braced both feet against the wall and pulled the lever.

Something gave with a sharp crack.

The gate began to fall. So did the beam to which the safety rope was attached.

Teren caught the end with his good hand. Serik knelt beside him. Maera seized the paladin's belt. They all slid a hand's breadth. Beran shouted, but the water took his words.

Ivara could melt the mechanism. The fire would boil the water around the dwarf. She looked at Teren; he understood she was asking for another way, not permission.

Neris pushed her bandurria's neck between the gear teeth.

The wood cracked. It held long enough.

They pulled Beran out before the gate closed. His left hand was trapped beneath a piece of iron that came out with him. Teren saw two crushed fingers, white tendons, an artery

that at once filled the blanket's fold.

The dwarf looked at him and nodded before he could say anything.

No prayer could replace the saw. Teren worked while Neris held the lamp and sang a wordless song. She invented it there, as Beran needed to breathe.

When it was done, the cleric moved away and vomited on the rock. The hand he had removed still lay on the blanket. Serik wrapped it without being asked.

Beran tried to sit up. He could not. He stared at the end of the dressing with an expression Teren had not seen even during the cutting.

“Move the fingers,” he said at last.

The cleric thought he was delirious.

“Mine,” Beran clarified, irritated. “I want to see them once more.”

Serik looked at the closed blanket. No one knew how to answer. The engineer gave a short, fierce laugh.

“I know. I know.”

Neris sat beside him. The broken bandurria lay a few paces away. Its neck had become two long splinters. Beran saw

her looking and apologised.

The gnome was furious.

“Don't do that to me now.”

He closed his mouth.

It took them a while to understand why both were crying over an instrument when bodies lay on the floor. Teren did not try to put it in order. He held the dressing, waited for the bleeding to lessen and asked them to keep whatever pieces they wanted to take.

Neris kept the soundboard with its rosette. Beran asked them not to take the bell from his pocket. Then he let them lift him.

In the quarry, Hulda saw them arrive and asked for a table to be cleared.

The engineer was conscious. He would not look at her. Nor did she try to discuss the testimony still owed. She had tended births and mining accidents for thirty years; she knew what clean water could do and what must not be touched even when someone begged.

She checked the dressing beside Teren and showed him a place still bleeding. The cleric pressed

where she indicated. There was no need to argue over who knew more.

Beran heard the woman's voice before opening his eyes.

“You don't owe me this,” he said.

Hulda kept working.

“I owe it to the arm not to let it rot.”

The answer did not erase the hatred. It let him accept her help in supporting the body he still had.

The workers brought battens for a stretcher. There was enough wood for only one that would survive the entire descent. Serik suggested using it for Beran and dividing the bodies between shorter doors. Two men said they could carry the engineer between them. A woman refused: the path was icy, and they were not turning courage into another accident.

Teren laid the boards on the ground and measured them. Months earlier he would have waited for the paladin to give an order. This time he waited for them to finish arguing, because they would all be carrying it.

Neris found the carver's spoons. The man was still

there and offered to fit the joints. He worked with a speed the gnome had not seen when he sold her those two clumsy pieces. The spoons had been the count of his days, not the measure of his craft.

When the stretcher was ready, they laid Beran on it. He asked them to turn him so he could see the entrance once more.

Teren thought he was searching for the child with the bell. The engineer was looking at a conduit.

“No one blocks that one,” he said. “If they work here again, the relief stays visible.”

A worker marked it with lime.

It was the first instruction of his the quarry had obeyed without an order from above in almost three decades. Beran closed his eyes before the others could see what it did to him.

Neris put away the rest of the bandurria splinters. She no longer knew whether she wanted to rebuild it. She allowed herself not to decide while there was still a mountain to

descend.

They left carrying two bodies, one wounded man and the foundry books. The workers helped them through the last galleries. At the entrance, the youth with the broken teeth waited beside the dead captain.

“Do we take him down too?” he asked.

Beran looked at the mountain.

“Everyone,” he replied.

Snow struck their faces. The world above had learned nothing of it, and for an instant they all hated it for that.