Chapter 23: Pressure Tax!!
The dead road began with teeth, and the tax box behind them clicked like it had been waiting to learn names.
The tax box explained its work through the first hook: movement priced before it finished, breath charged before it left the throat, fear treated as collateral.
HISS!
Workers and debt-marked hands shifted, not backward this time, but inward. Fear was still there. So was the beginning of trust. The mud vein pulsed between the workers’ boots, wet and narrow enough to show where the box’s pull wanted to enter.
Not real teeth. Stone ones. Long, flat slabs of pressure carved bone set into the archway like a giant mouth frozen open. Old blood had dried between them in black layers. Each slab carried names that had been scratched out so many times the stone looked diseased.
Vaela stopped under the arch and lifted one hand.
The whole line halted behind her.
Fourteen living. One maybe. One cart. One marked man at the rear with black pressure crawling under his bandage. The dead road breathed cold air over them.
Renn sniffed once and made a face.
"Rot, salt, and tax oil."
Orrek leaned against the cart handle. Sweat ran down his jaw. His ruined shoulder hung wrong, but his uninjured hand kept a chain wrapped tight around his fist.
"Road smells rich."
"Road is rich," Vaela said. "It eats poor people."
Beyond the arch, the passage sloped downward. Lines of old corpse hooks ran along the ceiling. Some still held straps. Some held bones. Pressure lanterns glowed violet inside iron cages, fed by something wet that clicked whenever the light flared.
CLICK!
The workers bunched together.
Kael felt the mark in his palm turn eager. It pulled toward the arch, then down, then toward a rusted box set into the right wall. The box had a slot shaped like an open throat. Above it, old Court words had been carved deep.
PRESSURE TAX BEFORE PASSAGE.
Vaela clicked her tongue.
"Of course."
Renn stared at the box.
"What does it take?"
"Depends how old the machine is. Blood. Names. Bone weight. Breath. Sometimes it takes a dead man’s debt and gives you his road."
"And if we do not pay?"
The arch teeth shifted.
GRIND!
Dust fell from the slabs.
Vaela pointed with her knife.
"Then the mouth closes."
One arch tooth lowered another finger’s width.
GRRND!
The sound made Brak’s fevered body jerk in the cart. A child behind Renn covered her mouth with both hands, not to hide fear, but to keep the road from hearing breath it could price.
The old woman with the clouded eye spat.
"Break it."
"You first," Vaela said.
Kael lifted the marked hand between Vaela and the box.
The mark on his hand burned cold. The box answered, throat slot widening with a wet mechanical sound.
Renn moved between Kael and the wall.
"No. You feed that thing and it learns you."
"It already knows enough."
"Then do not make it smarter."
Orrek looked past them into the dark slope.
"Something moving."
Everyone listened.
At first there was only pressure rain dripping behind them and the soft creak of the cart.
Then came dragging.
SCRAPE!
Three corpse toll keepers emerged from the passage below. They were not alive in any clean way. Their bodies had once been men or women, maybe workers, maybe debt collectors. Now their torsos were bolted into iron rib frames. Their faces had been replaced with flat tax plates stamped by the Hollow Court. Each carried a long hook rod with a pressure bead set near the tip.
The first toll keeper raised its plate face.
A voice leaked from inside the metal.
"Counted bodies owe road weight."
The workers began backing away.
The arch teeth lowered another inch.
GRIND!
Vaela cursed.
"No backward. Forward or crushed."
The toll keeper pointed its hook at Brak in the cart.
"Weak weight accepted."
Orrek’s chain tightened around his fist.
"It wants him?"
The second toll keeper turned toward the fever girl.
"Fever breath accepted."
Renn stepped in front of her.
"Not on this road."
The third toll keeper pointed at Kael.
Its pressure bead flared dark violet.
"Marked asset owes all."
Kael smiled without warmth.
"Come collect."
The first hook shot forward.
SWISH!
Kael caught the rod under his left forearm and drove his right elbow down onto the joint.
CRACK!
The metal bent. Not broke. Bent. The toll keeper’s rib frame released a burst of pressure that hammered into Kael’s chest.
THUD!
His boots slid back a handspan. Pain punched through his ribs, but his feet anchored before he hit Renn. The Sovereign Root opened inside him like a cold eye.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Corpse Toll Pressure Rod Impact
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
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[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Hostile Road Tax Pressure Confirmed.
====================================================================
Kael exhaled through blood wet teeth.
"One."
Vaela darted past his right side and cut the pressure bead from the second toll keeper’s hook. Her crescent blades flashed low, dirty, practical. She did not waste movement trying to look impressive. She carved the bead free and kicked it under the cart.
POP!
The bead burst, spraying violet sparks into the stone.
The fever girl screamed.
Renn grabbed her and shoved her behind the old woman. The old woman swung her meat hook with both hands and caught the second toll keeper in the knee frame.
CLANG!
It turned toward her.
Bad choice.
Orrek came in from the side, chain fist rising. His shoulder failed halfway through the motion. He roared anyway and used the cart handle to launch his weight. His wrapped fist smashed into the toll keeper’s plate face.
BANG!
The plate dented. Orrek landed on one knee, gasping, but the toll keeper stumbled.
Kael stepped into the first one. Close. Too close for the hook to matter. The toll keeper tried to vent pressure through its rib frame.
Kael drove his forehead into the plate face.
THUD!
The impact rang through the arch.
The toll keeper reeled.
Kael caught its frame with both hands, pulled it down, and drove his knee up into the central hinge.
CRUNCH!
Metal folded inward. Old black fluid burst from the frame and splattered his legs. The dead road drank the spill through little grooves in the floor.
The arch teeth stopped lowering.
Vaela saw it.
"It accepts toll keeper weight. Break them here."
The third toll keeper thrust its hook at Kael’s marked hand. The hook opened at the tip like a claw. Kael twisted, let it graze the bandage, then stomped on the rod with all his reinforced gravity.
BANG!
The rod cracked against stone.
The toll keeper lurched forward.
Kael’s shoulder slammed into its chest frame.
BOOM!
The frame struck the wall so hard one of the pressure lanterns shattered. Violet light spilled down like burning oil. Renn shouted, "Move the cart!"
Workers surged. Fear became motion. The old woman bit the second toll keeper’s exposed wrist cable and tore something loose with her teeth.
RIP!
She spat black wire and laughed once.
"Still enough teeth."
Vaela looked offended that the joke was good. Kael finished the third keeper by grabbing its plate face and smashing it into the tax box.
BANG!
The box throat opened wide, confused by its own collector being fed into it. The plate face cracked. Pressure screamed from inside the wall.
The arch teeth lifted two inches.
Orrek, shaking, shoved the cart forward.
"Go!"
The workers ran under the teeth. Renn dragged the fever girl. Vaela pulled the old woman through when she stopped to kick the fallen toll keeper again. Kael stayed until the last wheel crossed.
The toll keepers did not bleed like men.
That made the workers hesitate.
When Kael crushed the first frame, the black fluid that burst out did not smell like blood. It smelled like old coins, wet leather, and dead contracts. It crawled toward the grooves in the road, eager to be counted. The dead road was not offended by broken collectors. It was calculating what their broken bodies were worth.
Vaela understood first because markets had taught her that anything could become payment if the buyer was cruel enough.
"Use the frames," she shouted. "Do not waste breath on mercy. They are tax meat now."
Renn dragged the fever girl past a fallen hook and almost slipped in the black fluid. The boy from Kael’s group grabbed Renn’s belt and pulled him steady. He looked shocked by his own courage, then terrified someone had seen it.
Kael saw it.
So did Orrek.
"You pulled hard, little rat," Orrek barked.
The boy’s face twisted.
"I am not a rat."
"Then prove it twice."
Fear moved differently after that. Still fear, but with a spine inside it. Two workers shoved the cart while another used a scale rod to keep a twitching hook away from Brak’s leg. The old woman bit wire. The fever girl clung to Renn and did not scream again.
Kael noticed the grooves under the toll keepers too late. They were not only drains. They were script lines, old pressure writing carved for machines that counted damage as payment. Every broken joint, every splatter, every dent entered the pressure script as payment.
The dead road had wanted cargo.
For a few breaths, it got a crew. That scared Kael more than panic. A crew could be followed. A crew could be punished.
A crew could become responsible for each other. The tax box spat a strip of black metal at his feet. On it, fresh Court marks burned into shape. ONE MARKED ASSET PASSED WITHOUT FULL PAYMENT.
DEBT TRANSFERRED TO RETRIEVAL.
The dead road accepted them.
It also sold them forward.
Behind Kael, the arch teeth slammed shut.
BOOM!
The fever girl began coughing black dust from the road tax smoke. Renn counted the fever girl’s breaths out loud until the cough became rhythm instead of panic. The tax box had not taken her. That did not mean it had failed to touch her.
Workers and debt-marked hands gave the scene its real weight. Machines could threaten; living bodies made the threat expensive. The quarantine line crawled under the nearest boot and showed the exact place it meant to close.