Sevenofknine sat in the stone seat before Luvztospoon could offer to go first. She had carried the bond all this way. There was no first for anyone else. Iron closed around her wrists.
The mechanism worked smoothly. Someone had oiled it and tested its hinges while prisoners lay hungry upstairs. That small evidence of care turned Luvztospoon cold with anger. Seven looked down at the iron without flinching, though the pale lines beneath her skin had begun to brighten as the seat recognized her.
He remembered her sitting at the bank of a stream, fastening a ridiculous knot around her wrist because she wanted him to promise to find her. He had imagined that promise was the brave part. He had not understood how much courage she would require of him when keeping it meant accepting what she chose. The thought did not make his hand withdraw from the iron. She had to tell him twice before he let go.
Luvztospoon reached for it.
“Leave it,” she said. “It keeps the passage steady.”
Maelin scattered ash around the seat while Rashka watched the stair. The hooded figure stood at the broken west channel, ready to help if the floor began to give way. Beyond the arch, the darkness drew back. A narrow chamber appeared inside it. At its center, an iron casket stood on four stone supports. Veyr waited beside it.
For the first time, he looked fully like a man: thin, upright, draped in something that might once have been a robe.
“You have been very troublesome,” he told Sevenofknine.
She tested the iron at her wrists.
“We've only just started.”
Luvztospoon touched her hand.
“I break the casket. We leave.”
“Together,” she said.
He stepped through the arch.
✦
The chamber beyond smelled of dry earth. There was no snow. No wind. Nothing to explain the cold that moved through Luvztospoon's armor as he approached the casket. Veyr watched him draw his repaired sword.
“That is a borrowed edge.”
Luvztospoon struck. The blade cut into the nearest support and sent chips of stone across the floor. Veyr moved aside without moving his feet. Hands rose from the earth around the casket. Luvztospoon cut the first at the wrist. The second caught his boot. A third reached for the wound beneath his shoulder plate. He drove the hilt down and pulled free. Outside the arch, Sevenofknine cried out.
He turned.
“Keep going,” she called.
The passage narrowed around him. He faced the casket again and struck its hinge. Iron rang. The lid shifted a finger's width. Veyr's face changed. For an instant, Luvztospoon saw the ruin beneath it: dried bone, a torn mouth, the stretched remnants of someone who had refused death too long. Then Sevenofknine's face appeared in its place.
“You're hurting me.”
Luvztospoon hit the hinge again.
“She's outside.”
The borrowed face dissolved.
✦
Maelin knelt beside the seat, following the pattern beneath Sevenofknine's skin with her silver symbol. Every time Luvztospoon struck the casket, one of the blue lines dimmed.
“It's working,” she said.
Sevenofknine watched him through the arch. He had reached the far side of the casket. His shoulder was bleeding again. He adjusted his grip, kept his elbow low, and struck the second hinge. The lid fell open. Inside lay a body wrapped in wire. At its breast, a dark stone pulsed beneath an iron cage. Luvztospoon raised his sword. Veyr reached for him. The chamber floor opened around his boots.
He fell to one knee, caught at the ankle by something that had no shape. His sword struck the edge of the casket instead of the stone. Veyr put a hand against his chest. Luvztospoon's runes blazed blue.
✦
He knew what it felt like to have power taken from him. He had known commands he could not refuse. The terrible distance between his own hands and the will that moved them. This was worse. Veyr was not commanding him yet. He was opening him. Darkness poured from the runes toward the sorcerer's reaching hand. The iron around the stone began to mend where Luvztospoon had broken it.
He tried to pull back. His wounded shoulder would not lift. Veyr leaned closer.
“She brought you here willingly.”
Across the arch, Sevenofknine gripped the seat. Luvztospoon saw her looking at Maelin. The priest was shaking her head. He knew before Sevenofknine spoke.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“Luvz.”
“No. I can reach it.”
He dragged his sword along the casket's edge. The point caught beneath the iron cage. Veyr tightened his hand. The runes on the blade flared until Luvztospoon could no longer see the steel. Behind the sorcerer, the chamber walls began to split. Through the gaps came glimpses of other places: black quarry stone, the frozen pond, a road beneath snow. The marked openings were waking again.
Sevenofknine closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she was crying.
“I wanted the table,” she said.
Luvztospoon pulled against the thing holding his ankle until something tore inside his arm.
“We'll build it.”
She turned her wrists against the iron. The blue lines reversed.
✦
Maelin caught her hands.
“Seven, if you turn it all the way—”
“Get him out.”
“There may still be—”
Sevenofknine looked through the arch at Veyr's hand buried in the light at Luvztospoon's chest.
“Now.”
She pulled the binding inward. For the first time, the pain had a direction she had chosen. The iron roots beneath the seat rose from the floor. They turned toward the arch, drawing the blue light away from Veyr and back into her. He screamed. His grip on Luvztospoon loosened. Sevenofknine reached for the thread that recognized him. It had been used to call, to trap, to drag him nearer.
She made it push.
✦
Luvztospoon flew backward from the casket. He caught the edge of the arch with his good hand. Rashka seized his coat from the other side. The hooded figure joined her, gripping the torn shoulder strap, and together they pulled him into the hall. He hit the stone hard.
“Let go,” he said.
Neither did. Across the threshold, Veyr clawed toward them, held back by the iron roots streaming from the seat. Sevenofknine's eyes found Luvztospoon.
“The stone,” she whispered.
He turned. The casket still stood open. His sword lay beside it, its point caught under the cage. He could not go back through the arch. The instant he tried, Veyr would reach him again. Luvztospoon extended his hand. Dark power rose inside him. Veyr's ruined mouth opened in triumph. But the binding no longer ran toward the sorcerer. Sevenofknine held it facing inward.
Luvztospoon pulled his sword toward him with everything he had left. The blade caught the cage. Iron snapped. The dark stone struck the casket's rim and split.
✦
The chamber filled with light.
At first he could see only Seven's silhouette against the arch, small and unsteady within the space she had opened. Then the brightness broke into individual shapes. The people who had been taken into the channels seemed to regain the space between them. He could not hear their names, but the movement of their mouths made him think they were saying them to one another.
The old power in his runeblade flickered. The room offered him an easy lie: that he might reach into the light and pull back the one person he wanted. He knew what it felt like when a greater will called that longing duty. He did not move. Seven had given those people a road out. He would not close it for the chance to take something that had not been freely given.
Shapes moved through it: faces, hands, the outlines of people crowded together so long that none had been able to stand apart. Now they separated. Sevenofknine saw an old woman, a boy, a man with a miner's lamp. Others passed too quickly to recognize. They did not call to her. They went beyond the places Veyr had opened, and the openings closed behind them.
The sorcerer struck the arch with both hands. His fingers broke against it.
“I can give her back,” he said to Luvztospoon.
Luvztospoon crawled toward the seat.
“I can make her whole.”
Sevenofknine looked at him. He kept his eyes on her face.
“Luvz. Don't listen.”
“I'm not.”
He reached her hand. The iron around her wrist crumbled beneath his fingers. Veyr shouted something neither of them understood. The arch folded inward. Darkness struck darkness. Stone closed over the last reaching hand. Then the hall was silent.
✦
Luvztospoon lifted Sevenofknine from the seat. Her runeblade fell from beside it. He left it there. He carried her to the foot of the stair, away from the broken channels, and sat with her across his knees. Maelin knelt beside them. She put her silver symbol against Sevenofknine's chest. A little light rose beneath it. Then it faded. The priest tried again. Sevenofknine touched her wrist.
“Thank you.”
Maelin lowered her hand. Luvztospoon shook his head.
“Keep trying.”
The priest stayed beside them, but did not lift the symbol again. Sevenofknine's gaze moved to the ribbon. He unfastened it with fingers that had begun to shake.
“Here,” he said. “You can have it back.”
She held it loosely.
“Terrible color on me.”
He made a sound that broke before it could become a laugh. She looked up at him.
“You found me.”
“I'll find you again.”
Her hand moved against his.
“Stay a little while first.”
He bent over her.
“I'm here.”
“I know.”
Her voice had grown very quiet. He pressed his forehead to hers, as he had beside the stream, as he had in the ruined camp when neither of them knew how much time they would be given.
“I love you,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“I love you too.”
For a few moments, her fingers held his. Then they loosened.
The blue light in her eyes went out.
✦
Rashka turned away. Maelin remained on her knees. At the stair, the hooded figure stood motionless, keeping the passage clear. Luvztospoon held Sevenofknine and waited for her to look at him again. Above them, dawn touched the broken towers of Hollow Crown.
No voice rose from beneath the earth.