Chapter 17: Sold Roads!
The first false road came from a child.
Sold roads left one more cost in the route before anyone could pretend the pressure had passed. It showed in the shoulders of the survivors, in the way Kael stayed nearest the threat, and in the quiet knowledge that close combat was not preference here; it was proof.
CREAK!
Sold roads carried a worked smell: sweat, hot metal, sour cloth, and pressure bruising the tongue.
CLANG!
Sold roads made Orrek roll his bad shoulder once, as if daring the room to charge rent on pain.
The old crews kept curses for Veyrath, for the sink chain, and for every clean-handed master who had never stood under pressure rain.
She stood beside a cracked furnace sign with both hands behind her back and ash in her hair. No older than Renn. Maybe younger. Her eyes went to the food sacks, then to Kael’s wrapped hand, then to Vaela’s knives.
"Old pump road is clear," she said.
Vaela stopped walking.
Orrek stopped because Vaela stopped.
Kael stopped because the child’s voice had too much practice in it. Renn whispered, "That road collapsed last wet season." The girl’s face changed by a finger’s width, and Vaela moved first.
She crossed the distance in three steps, caught the girl’s wrist, and opened her hidden hand. A black clay token sat in the palm. Fresh. Still warm from the press stamp.
Black Ledger route money.
The girl did not cry. That made Kael angrier than tears would have.
Vaela held up the token.
"How many?"
The girl’s mouth trembled.
"One food bowl."
"For all of us?"
"For the road."
Orrek’s jaw tightened.
"They paid a child with one bowl to walk us into a broken tunnel?"
Vaela released the wrist.
"No. They paid a hungry child. Different thing."
Kael crouched so he was not towering over her. The girl looked ready to run, but her legs shook too hard.
"Where are they?"
She stared at the floor.
"Everywhere."
That was the first true answer.
Kael took one fungus strip from Renn’s sack and held it out.
Vaela made a sharp sound.
"Again?"
"Again."
The girl snatched the food and fled into a pipe gap.
Her bare heel left a bloody half-print on the ash. Not from Kael. Not from the chase. From whatever road had taught her selling strangers hurt less than starving.
Orrek watched her go.
"She will sell us twice."
"Maybe," Kael said.
Vaela’s mouth twisted.
"No maybe."
"Then we change the value of selling us."
"By feeding everyone?"
"By making the buyers afraid to collect."
Orrek smiled.
"That one I understand."
They took the road Renn chose instead, an older furnace route with low ceilings and walls sweated black minerals. Pressure rain fell through grates above in narrow lines, striking the ground with hard, rhythmic taps.
TIK! TIK! TIK!
The sound followed them.
Behind the taps came feet.
At first, only two pairs. Then six. Then too many to count cleanly. Not all hunters. Some hungry. Some curious. Some workers hoping to be near food if death happened. Furnace Sink Nine had turned the road into a throat, and every mouth was closing around them.
Renn looked back until Vaela snapped at him.
"Eyes forward unless you plan to trip with style."
"They are following."
"People follow food, blood, and disasters. We are carrying all three."
Orrek adjusted the sack on his uninjured shoulder and hissed.
"I liked her better before she became accurate."
The first Black Ledger horn blew behind them.
BOOM!
A second answered ahead.
BOOM!
Vaela cursed.
"They bought both ends."
The furnace route widened into a transit rib, an arched passage lined with dead conveyor teeth. The old machines had once hauled ore and bone fuel toward the pressure kilns. Now their iron teeth jutted from the floor and walls at wrong angles, rusted and sharp.
Perfect for slowing wounded people and driving them into nets.
Kael felt the mark on his hand tighten.
The map bone in Vaela’s cloth wrap warmed.
"Not left," she said.
"Trap?" Orrek asked.
"Court mark."
"I liked trap better."
Men spilled from the rear smoke.
Not capture hounds yet. Black Ledger runners, hook boys, debt hands, and two catchers with knee nets. Their leader wore a yellow jaw guard and carried a pressure lantern on a chain.
"Alive prize!" he shouted. "Break everyone around him! Leave his mouth!"
The hungry followers scattered against the walls.
Some ran.
Some stayed to watch value turn into violence. Kael looked at the transit rib ahead. The path narrowed near a row of conveyor teeth. Too tight for the group. Too slow for Orrek.
"Vaela. Right wall."
"Court mark."
"Past it?"
She studied the bone.
"Maybe a pump crawl. Maybe a stomach."
"It gives us a direction."
"That is not what those words mean."
The first net flew.
Kael shoved Renn low. The net passed over the boy and struck a hungry man who had been too slow to run. Hooks bit into his arms and cheek. He screamed as the net dragged him backward.
The catcher cursed.
"Wrong one!"
Kael moved.
He did not rush the catcher. He drove his shoulder into a rusted conveyor tooth and bent it outward with his whole weight.
Metal shrieked.
SCREEEE!
Pain tore through his back where Vaela had pulled the hook pieces free.
No shard.
Not hostile enough. Not direct enough.
The bent tooth opened a gap in the right wall panel. Vaela slipped through first, cutting the latch rope inside. Renn followed. Orrek tried and got stuck halfway because the food sack caught on his back.
"I am shaped wrong for sneaking!"
"Drop the sack," Vaela snapped.
"Never."
Kael grabbed the sack and Orrek’s belt, pulled both, and shoved with his knee. Orrek popped through the gap and crashed into the pump crawl beyond.
THUD!
"Grace," he groaned, "is for cowards."
A hook struck Kael’s wrapped hand and caught cloth around the Hollow Court mark.
The mark burned cold.
The hook line yanked.
Kael did not go with it.
He planted both feet against the conveyor teeth and pulled back. The hook man flew toward him. Kael ducked, drove an elbow into the man’s ribs, then slammed his head sideways into the iron tooth he had bent.
CRACK!
The man’s jaw broke against rusted metal. He dropped, not dead, making wet clicking noises. Another catcher swung a pressure lantern. It struck Kael’s shoulder and burst heat across his skin.
HISS!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Pressure Lantern Collision And Hook Drag
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
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[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Hostile Capture Route Pressure Converted.
====================================================================
Kael did not chase the shard feeling.
He went through the gap.
Vaela cut the latch rope behind him. The wall panel fell halfway shut, not enough to stop pursuit, enough to slow it. The pump crawl was barely taller than Renn. Pipes ran along both sides, hot enough to blister skin if touched too long. The map bone pulsed in Vaela’s hand, pointing deeper. Behind the panel, Black Ledger men hammered and cursed.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Ahead, the crawl sloped downward.
Orrek sniffed.
"Smells like old dogs."
Vaela went still.
"Pressure hounds."
Renn whispered, "What are pressure hounds?"
Orrek answered before Vaela could.
"Bad dogs."
"That is not helpful."
"It will be when you see them."
A low growl rolled up the pipe crawl.
It was too deep for an animal its size should have been. It vibrated the pipe walls and made Kael’s marked hand pulse once. The Black Ledger men behind them stopped hammering.
That was worse than pursuit.
Vaela’s face went flat.
"Malrec sent something that makes his own men wait."
Kael looked down the crawl.
Two eyes opened in the dark.
Then four more.
Then six.
The next road had teeth.
They did not get to choose silence after that. The old furnace road opened into a sorting bridge where three broken conveyor lines crossed over a drain black enough to swallow lamp glow. Halfway across, someone had hung strips of red cloth from the rail. Vaela stopped so hard Orrek bumped into her.
"What now?"
"Market signal."
"Meaning?"
"Someone ahead bought the right to see us panic."
Below the bridge, hungry workers shifted in the dark. Not enemies. Not allies. Just people with eyes. Some held stones. Some held hooks. Some held nothing but the hope that if Kael died nearby, something useful would fall from his pockets.
Renn whispered, "They are not all bad."
Vaela answered quietly, and for once her voice was not sharp.
"No. That is why it hurts."
A stone flew from below.
It struck Orrek’s already ruined shoulder.
THUD!
He went still.
Every worker under the bridge stopped breathing.
Orrek looked down into the dark.
"Who threw that?"
No one answered.
He nodded once.
"Fair. I would not answer either."
Then he picked up the stone with his uninjured hand and tossed it gently back over the rail, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to land among them.
"Next one better be bigger. I am insulted."
A few workers laughed before they remembered fear. That laugh saved more than a speech would have. The bridge did not become safe, but the hands below lowered by a finger’s width. Then the Black Ledger horn sounded again behind them.
BOOM!
And the pressure hound growl rolled up from ahead.
The pit had sold both roads after all.
The bridge chains under Kael’s boots clicked one by one, carrying the news ahead before any mouth could sell it.
KLIK! KLIK! KLIK!
Every sound became a messenger in Furnace Sink Nine. That was the worst part of sold roads: betrayal did not need legs if the route itself learned to speak.
Kael looked once at the workers under the bridge. Some would remember Orrek’s mercy with the stone. Some would remember the food. Some would remember only the capture price.
That was the shape of the pit.
No clean allies. No clean enemies. Just pressure deciding which wound spoke loudest.
He stepped toward the growl anyway.
Behind him, the sold road filled with feet.