The buried shift finished its first knock inside Holt’s scream: "Something through my left palm."
On stone, one ringing sliver with a wet pull trailing back to him.
"Brass tongue," Vera said. Her boots turned beside Dane’s cradle. "Dead-blue lines on every drawer. They’re running into the wounds."
Brant’s sling leather creaked.
"Three letters in Brant’s shoulder," she continued. "A number’s pushing through Buk’s flank dressing. Tess is stuck at both ankles."
Cold cinched Dane’s peeled base to the cradle. He tried to shift away from the pressure. His lid answered; everything beneath it remained fixed.
"It is addressing us," Ada said.
Pell’s sternum key ground a quarter turn toward Bay Three. His right palm struck the responsive coffer hard enough to quiet two of the knocks inside it.
"Bay Three already hung its key in me," he said. "It can’t find a second place to put the hook."
Six knocks answered Pell: two off-beat, four on the work count.
Near Ada, metal dragged across stone. Her next breath came through her teeth.
"Rod one has knot wax on it," she said. "It’s climbing toward my hand."
"Drop it," Brant told her.
The rod hit the floor. Its note stayed bright.
Vera’s next report came too fast. "Two tags in the open part of her upper arm. Both stamped ARCANE TOOLS. One’s hooked under muscle. The other is turning toward bone."
Ada’s knee struck Dane’s cradle brace. Her body had locked before she finished falling.
"Both boots are pinned through the old scars," Tess said from behind Buk’s litter. "If either circle closes around bone, Arcane Tools gets the route. Cutting her loose afterward won’t take the address out."
"Where does the route fail?" Brant asked.
"Wrapping alcove. Twelve lengths ahead. Unfiled bodies waited there, so the walls have hooks for linen and none for drawers."
Buk dragged one claw along the floor from his litter. "Straight for eight. Split drawer on the left. Four after."
Another brass click came from Ada’s arm. She made a short sound with it.
Dane forced his lid against the lock and gave her one knock.
"Yes, I need the open panel." She swallowed, stopped, then found the rest through her teeth. "Thirty breaths. My face and boots stay outside it. Nothing over the top, and your mouth stays shut and clear of me. Holt counts where I can hear him."
The tag clicked against bone.
"If I say red, lose every rail. At thirty, let me go wherever we are. I stay Ada while I’m in there. Don’t let your body rename me."
"And if you stop answering?" Holt asked.
"Keep counting even if I can’t answer. Brant, watch the hand. If it comes up, everything goes."
Dane knocked once.
Pell’s voice dropped beside the coffer lid. "Six aboard. I have one arm, twelve lengths, and a hundred dead hands reaching. Lend me your feet."
Six sets of joints opened with wet pops, feet scraping apart across the floor.
Litter straps rasped through the coffer’s side rings. Pell grunted around leather while Vera called the rig. "Holt, one loop over the forearms. Mine goes around the lower edge of Brant’s shield."
Brant shoved the shield flat between Ada and the cradle. "Board is down. Dane’s wounded base stays clear."
"Get me onto the cradle before the second tag turns," Ada said.
Pell drove his shoulder into the shield rim. Vera hauled the lower strap. Ada slid across iron and came to rest on the intact center of the cradle, her good hand controlling the flayed arm.
The shield scraped away.
Dane raised one short rail along each of Ada’s sides. A thin panel opened beneath her. The cradle slings groaned under her added weight. Neither rail bent; they only kept the cold along her sides.
Warmth touched the cold panel. Both rails flexed inward, and his lid bore down hard enough to shake the brace.
Dane forced the rails back to Ada’s chosen span.
"Head and both boots clear," Vera said. "Nothing above her."
Cold entered the blood touching the panel. Through it, Dane felt one sawing pressure stop and the point against bone hold its angle.
"One," Holt said.
Pell slapped the coffer. The first two legs pulled the strap taut; the rear four shoved. Dane’s cradle jumped forward and dragged the cold across his open base. Buk’s litter lurched behind it on the other line.
Ada pressed evenly between the rails. One tow strap pulled high from the coffer rings while Buk’s litter line dragged lower behind, and every knot announced itself through the next wrench of Dane’s cradle.
"Two. Three."
Holt’s voice roughened on four. The strap jerked sideways with him.
"Palm tongue is pulling for the nearest drawer," Vera said. "He’s losing the forearm loop."
Ada reached over the open rail with her good hand. Rod one scraped closer under Pell’s boot. When she caught it, Vera said, "Wax touched Pell and turned back."
"Lift the arm. I need the line clear of your sleeve," she said.
The strap rasped up Holt’s sleeves. Ada’s rod found the line attached to his palm.
At six, the line snapped.
Holt’s knees hit stone. The tow strap caught in both elbows, and he said, "Seven," before the brass tongue finished clattering behind him.
At eight, Ada’s rod chimed against the loop around Vera’s right wrist.
"Wrist free." Vera’s shoulder hit the rope. Her boots scuffed for purchase, and the drag on Dane’s base eased by one ugly fraction.
"Drawer out across the lane," she warned. "Lower half split open. Two teeth at cradle height."
"Ten," Holt said.
The coffer’s front legs stopped. The rear pair kept pushing until every side ring complained.
Buk struck the litter frame. "Shield under the left tooth. Front coffer feet climb the right runner. Pell keeps the rear feet wide or it tips."
"Shield’s under the left tooth," Brant said. "It won’t stay there by itself."
Pell’s remaining hand slapped one front leg. "I have the right foot. Lift."
The coffer stepped high.
Its right feet found the runner. Brant leaned. Iron rose with a scream that vibrated through Dane’s raw tooth sockets.
"Half a span for the cradle," Vera said. "Put everything on the lines now."
Holt and Vera hauled. The cradle entered beneath the raised drawer face.
The upper tooth caught Dane’s arm-side rail.
Cold folded toward Ada’s shoulder. His mouth flexed with it, ready to turn the open shape into something safer, shut, and fed.
Ada’s good hand struck the far rail. "Still yes. Keep the top open."
Dane forced the caught rail flat and outward. The tooth slid across it. Cold spilled out of the panel. Through the remaining pressure, he felt the tag against Ada’s bone turn with a tiny brass grind.
Her breath vanished for one count.
"Fourteen," Holt said for her.
She came back cursing. At sixteen, rod one struck the line in Brant’s shoulder.
Three wet snaps came out of his dressing. His left knee hit stone; the shield strap went slack, jerked twice, then joined the tow again.
"Two ways after the drawer," Tess called from the rear. "Buk, do you want short with six handle rows, or two lengths longer with one?"
"One-row path," Buk said. "This litter has lost enough arguments with walls."
"Two lengths farther, one handle row," Tess called to Pell. "Buk’s route."
Pell changed the coffer’s angle without looking back.
"Eighteen," Holt said.
Every drawer struck once at twenty.
Through the panel and tow lines, every unfinished address yanked toward the walls together.
Ada shifted across the panel. Buk’s litter rope snapped taut. Tess’s pinned boots scraped without advancing. Brant’s sling creaked high toward the single handle row.
The force reached Dane through Ada’s tag and the cold panel. One exposed fiber in his lower base parted. The split traveled one grain before he flattened both rails against the cradle and denied it another.
Pain drove his lid up against the brace.
"Stay with the litter. I’m taking the number." Rod one chimed beside Buk’s flank.
"Buk stays with the litter," he answered. "Cut the number."
"Number split," Vera said at twenty-two.
Buk’s litter dropped back into its own weight. Both side ropes caught before its frame could strike the nearest handle.
Pell walked backward beside the coffer, right hand clamped on its lid. Bay Three turned the key in his chest. His boots dragged sideways, corrected, and dragged again.
"Low arch ahead," Vera said. "Linen hooks. Drain cuts. The blue lines stop at the stone."
"Twenty-six," Holt said.
The coffer’s six feet changed from corridor scrape to the duller alcove floor, and all six workers answered the change: two uneven knocks, then four on the old interval.
Buk’s litter runners crossed next. "Brant’s line is slack," Vera said. Tess came free hard enough that both boots hit the floor at once.
Holt and Vera pulled Dane’s cradle toward the arch. The address in Ada’s arm fought the last length by dragging her sideways across the open panel.
"Twenty-nine."
The rear runner cleared stone.
Ada’s good hand rose. "Out."
"Thirty."
Dane dropped the rail beside her wounded arm. The panel vanished beneath her, then the far rail went with it.
Brant drove the shield under Ada’s back where her raised hand pointed. Holt and Vera pulled the board onto folded linen. No weight remained against Dane but his straps and the pain in the grain they held.
"Tags are dull," Vera said. "Both circles broken."
Rod one clicked against the first brass piece. It landed wet on stone. The second took longer and came out with Ada breathing in short counts of her own.
"Both tags out," Vera said. "Holt’s palm is clear. Buk’s dressing split along the dead number. Wax is backing out of Tess’s scars. Brant has three shallow marks in the bandage."
Ada scraped those marks away with the blunt end of rod one.
Outside, one hundred keys kept knocking for bodies they could no longer reach.
Pell’s right palm thumped the coffer. Two workers answered him awake. Four gave the shift interval. Bone scraped stone as he lowered the same hand to the floor and followed the vibration toward Bay Three.
"Clock joint under the return mark," he said. "The overseer woke the route through it. Jam the joint and the field dies."
Ada folded linen over the two new holes in her arm. "What fits?"
Pell tapped the key through his sternum. Iron answered bone.
"This does. One last clock-out."
Six knocks sounded from the sheltered coffer.
"I asked for the crew first," Pell said. "They’re in. The next ask is mine."