27 · The Gallery of Names

the possibility of anyone gathering it under a single name. It did not cancel divine gifts. It prevented those four chambers being used to bind their recipients.

Beran followed the lines with his chisel. New clamps had been added over the original conduits. The network could accept a shared boundary, but Ordan had built a second layer to force it to seek a centre.

“That has to go,” he said.

Ivara discovered the clamps were linked to the bracelets. Opening one abruptly might transmit the damage to the people bound. She did not know how many. The records on the walls far exceeded the captives they had just freed.

Neris thought of a song with too many voices made to follow a single note. If the conductor fell silent, the others would not necessarily be free: they might sustain it out of habit or fear.

“Do we have to give them something else to hear?” she asked.

The mage looked at her. It was not a bad description. The Crypt

testimonies showed that bonds obeyed more than the sound of a name: they preserved the relationship between the name and its speaker. Ordan's lists were made of memories collected from families. They used affection as thread.

They could not cut affection. They had to remove the order wrapped around it.

Beran took out tools. The first clamp was hot. When he touched it with a rod, a woman's name appeared on the wall. Serik felt the pull in his forearm.

They all turned to him.

“No,” the paladin said. “It isn't her. It's what I put in the register.”

His father had written of soup. On another visit to the hospice, Serik described a courtyard where his mother waited when he came back from playing. He did it to help identify her if she returned. Now that afternoon was used to bind someone who might have no connection to her at all.

Ivara asked him to tell something else, something he had not given the archive. Serik spoke of a

day he broke a plate and blamed his sister. His mother knew the lie, did not punish him and waited until he came to confess.

As he spoke, the name on the wall grew indistinct.

Beran loosened the clamp a quarter turn. No alarm sounded. The new memory did not erase the old; it made the bond too large for the formula trying to reduce it to an order.

They had found a crack. Not a key capable of everything.

They opened only what was needed to reach the forge. The rest would require time and free people on the other side of the call.

Among the gallery's names were notes of professions.

Mage, paladin, cleric, bard, assassin, warrior, hunter: the words were useful for managing shifts and risks. Some overseers had begun writing them as though they defined everything a person could ever want.

Ivara found a woman classed as a mage for heating water in a shelter. She had never studied the craft. She had a spark that

answered fear and a family who sent her to the chancellor seeking help. Beside “bard” was a man who sang to remember road names. The note recommended using him as a focus for coordination.

Neris laid a finger on that line.

“Doing something isn't enough for them. They need you to be it for ever.”

Maera found her own name.

She wore no bracelet. The register had added her through her ties to Radan. It described her profession and recommended attempting indirect retrieval through relatives. A scribe observed that direct obedience was unlikely. The phrase gave her bitter satisfaction, then fear for the people she knew.

Serik took the sheet. His surname was included as a future guarantee too, not only through his mother. The archives had connected friendships, debts, campaigns and burials. They could not force everyone, but kept seeking somewhere to begin.

Teren recognised the language of some hospice forms. Clerics asked about family so they could send word when someone fell ill or died. He had given

hundreds of names, believing he helped. That information was still needed to care for people. He could not stop asking about others because someone had used an answer to dominate them.

Ivara proposed keeping less and separating responsibilities. Neris replied that afterwards they must discuss it with the people on the lists, not decide in the gallery.

Teren nodded. The task did not end with removing a name from a seal. They must also examine the habit of accumulating everything someone confessed under a promise of shelter.

Beran found an empty slot beside the professions. The missing label had fallen to the floor. It said “others.”

The dwarf picked it up and laid it on the mechanism.

That word encompassed more of the world than all the columns together.

Teren heard footsteps and turned. Cael Ordan stood at the far end behind a grille. He wore no armour. His soot-stained shirt made him look like another worker.

“I offered you a part in this,” he said. “You still can.”

Serik

rested his shield against the grille.

“We saw the captives.”

“You saw those keeping the door open until the will can be established. When it's done, no one will have to be forced again.”

Ivara looked up at the names.

“Who decides when it's done?”

The chancellor looked at the stones Beran carried.

“I knew you'd bring them. I couldn't have reached the other cities without a war. You've made an admirable journey.”

Neris wanted to hit him. She was more troubled that part of her had expected a different explanation, a grief sufficient to make the man's conduct bearable.

Ordan held the fourth stone beyond the grille.

“If I don't enter, the pulse will keep growing. You can see it on the walls. Restore the boundary in my name, help me stabilise it, and we'll discuss who commands when there are living people left to discuss it.”

Beran stepped forward.

“It needn't be your name.”

“It needs to be one.”

“That was the first thing they falsified.”

Ordan looked

at him wearily.

“How many more hands would you accept losing for a sentence?”

The dwarf raised his stump without dropping the stone.

“The sentence didn't take this one.”

Cael stepped back. The grille began descending into an opening and released a jet of steam. Maera managed to put a bar between its teeth. It would not stop the closing for long.

Serik ducked and went through first. Beyond was a stairway wrapped in the forge's glow.