Chapter 32: Fourteen Burden!
Renn counted the living for the sixth time and hated every number.
Fourteen workers.
Five who could move without help.
Three who could move if pain was lied to.
Two who needed shoulders.
One fever girl who walked only because the boy with the cracked wrist kept pulling her hand. One old woman who refused help, then accepted a wall, then refused help again. Brak breathed like a furnace pipe full of wet cloth. The chain pit woman with the torn knee had not spoken since the throat break. She kept her eyes on Kael’s back as if he was a door and not a man with blood drying across half his body.
Renn counted food next.
That was worse.
Two fist sized lumps of fungal paste wrapped in dirty cloth. A strip of salt leather so old it had teeth marks from a person who had probably died before finishing it.
Half a water bladder.
Three strips of dried root Vaela claimed were edible if nobody asked what they tasted like. One packet of black pit salt that Orrek said counted as a meal if a person hated joy.
Renn pressed his fingers into his eyes.
"We cannot keep moving like this."
Nobody answered at first.
The dry chute answered for them with a long scrape overhead.
SKRRRRAAAK!
Dust fell over the line.
Kael crouched at the front where the chute widened into a cracked rest pocket. Not a room. Not safety. Just a bulge in the passage where old maintenance workers must have once left tools, bodies, or prayers. He had ordered the group into it because the line was starting to fold.
He did not sit.
That bothered Renn more than anything.
A man who refused to sit was either too strong or too close to falling apart.
Kael looked like both.
Vaela leaned against the wall, eyes half closed, crescent blade across her knees. Her face had gone pale under the grime. Every breath tugged at her ribs. Orrek sat with his back against the opposite wall, chain across his lap, ruined shoulder wrapped with cloth. The cloth had already soaked through.
"We stop for six breaths," Kael said.
Renn looked at him. "Six?"
"Seven if you bargain well."
"I am trying to keep people alive."
"Then bargain better."
Renn nearly snapped. The words rose in him. Bitter words. Worker words. Words about how Kael had chosen to save them, so Kael could carry the arithmetic of survival without pretending numbers obeyed pride. Then the fever girl coughed red into her hand. Renn swallowed the words and knelt beside her.
"Open your mouth."
She did.
Her tongue was dry and cracked.
Renn used two drops from the water bladder. Only two. He hated himself for counting them. The boy with the cracked wrist glared at him.
"More."
"No."
"She needs more."
"Everyone needs more."
The boy looked ready to swing his uninjured hand.
Orrek’s voice rolled from the wall. "Try it and I will teach you the difference between anger and usefulness."
The boy froze.
Vaela opened one eye. "Do not threaten children. It makes you look shorter."
"I am improving his education."
"You are bleeding on your own boot. Improve that."
Orrek looked down.
"That boot had it coming."
A weak laugh moved through two workers and died quickly. Kael watched the exchange without interrupting. The small warmth mattered. So did the waste of breath. Everything mattered now in ugly amounts.
Renn tied the water bladder shut.
"Fourteen living," he said. "But living is not the same as escaping."
Kael nodded once.
"Say the rest."
Renn hated that. Hated being made into the mouth of the obvious. But the group listened when numbers had blood on them.
"The cart is gone. Supplies are hand carried. The injured slow the pace by half. The old woman can walk, but not through a chase. Brak cannot fight for more than a few breaths. The fever girl is worse. The chain pit woman will collapse if we run uphill. The boy refuses to leave her. We have one real blade, one broken chain, scraps, two fungal lumps, almost no water, and a Warden above us who now knows you do not abandon people."
The rest pocket went silent.
That last part had teeth.
Kael looked at the workers.
Some looked away. Some stared harder. One man with a split foot pulled his knees to his chest as if making himself smaller would remove him from the count.
"The count points at the knife," Kael said.
Renn blinked. "What knife?"
"The choice it wants us to make."
The chain pit woman finally spoke.
"You should leave us."
Her voice was flat. Not noble. Not dramatic. A worker’s voice when the answer had already been beaten into her.
"You break roads. You kill things. You move fast when we are not tied to you. Leave us in a side crack. We hide. You run."
The boy with the cracked wrist hugged the fever girl’s hand closer.
Brak stared at the floor.
The old woman spat a red fleck against the wall.
"Hide from what? The dark? Debt? Teeth? Men with ledgers?"
The chain pit woman did not look at her.
"Hide long enough for him to survive."
Kael stepped closer.
Everyone watched him now.
This was the kind of moment that could become a speech if a weaker man needed sound to fill his pride.
Kael did not.
He crouched in front of the chain pit woman until their eyes were level.
"What is your name?"
She hesitated.
Names were dangerous in the pit. Names could be sold, marked, weighed, entered into debt stone.
"Sella," she said at last.
"Sella," Kael said. "If I leave you because you are slow, every enemy learns the same lesson. Slow people are levers. Injured people are bait. Hungry people are doors. They will keep making more."
Sella’s jaw tightened.
"That is already the pit."
"Then we break that part too."
The words landed quietly.
Orrek stopped adjusting his shoulder cloth. Vaela’s eyes sharpened. Renn looked down at his hands because he could not decide whether the words were impossible or necessary.
Kael stood.
"We do not move as a line anymore. We move as teeth. Three clusters. Strongest outside. Weakest inside. Nobody bleeds on the path. Nobody leaves food loose. Nobody says a name near a wall that hums."
A worker frowned. "Walls hum?"
Vaela lifted her blade and tapped the stone beside her.
The wall gave a faint answer.
HMMMM!
The worker went pale.
"Some listen," Vaela said. "Some report. Some simply enjoy gossip. Do not feed any of them."
Renn leaned toward Kael. "That was not a joke, was it?"
"No," Vaela said. "But I enjoyed it."
The rest pocket shook again.
This time the sound came from behind them.
Not the dead road throat.
Metal tapping stone.
TINK!
Vaela was on her feet despite her ribs.
Orrek pulled the chain across his lap.
Kael raised one hand.
No one breathed.
The sound came closer, then stopped. A small black disk rolled into the rest pocket. It was no bigger than a coin, made of pressure stone, stamped with Malrec’s sink mark.
Renn grabbed for it.
Kael caught his wrist before he touched it.
"Do not."
The disk cracked open by itself.
A voice came out.
Not Malrec’s. Too thin. Too friendly. A bought voice. The kind used in ration lines when officials wanted starving people to feel grateful for being robbed.
"By mercy of Sink Warden Malrec, all workers currently misled by the marked fugitive Kael Vorr may receive debt reduction, food credit, wound treatment, and safe reassignment upon separation from unlawful cargo theft. Return stolen bodies. Identify armed associates. Restrain the marked fugitive if possible. Assistance will be rewarded. Silence will be considered complicity."
The disk clicked once.
Then again.
"Names already known: Renn of furnace cart duty. Brak of lower pipe crew. Sella of chain pit intake. Miro, wrist fracture. Unregistered fever girl. Old Mother Sair. Orrek Sain, debt active. Vaela Korr, corpse market violation active."
The fever girl whimpered.
Miro pulled her behind him.
Orrek’s face went still.
Not angry.
Worse.
The disk continued.
"Kael Vorr cannot protect all listed bodies. Practical workers are invited to choose survival."
The disk went silent.
Then it split into dust.
Nobody moved.
Renn’s mouth opened, closed, opened again.
"He knows names."
Vaela looked at Kael. "He bought them. Fast."
"Black Ledger," Orrek said. "They sell breath if you cough near them."
Kael looked at the dust where the disk had been.
Malrec had found the right blade without sending stronger bodies or bigger chains.
Fear with names on it.
A worker near the back began to shake. Another looked at Kael, then at the tunnel behind them. Calculating. Not betrayal yet. Hunger doing math.
Kael did not blame him.
Blame was cheap.
Control mattered.
He stepped onto the broken disk dust and ground it under his heel.
CRUNCH!
"Anyone who wants to leave can leave," Kael said.
The words hit harder than a threat.
Renn stared. "What?"
"If you believe Malrec feeds people he can use twice, go. I will not drag you by the neck."
The threat stayed close enough to smell. That suited Kael. Distance made cowards clever; closeness made them honest. The suture hole puckered in the wall ahead, wet at the edges, and Kael marked it as the next place something would try to enter.
The worker with the split foot looked down.
Kael continued.
"But if you stay, you stop thinking like loose bodies. You move when Renn counts. You listen when Vaela reads stone. You do not make Orrek chase you, because he will complain the entire time. You do not bleed on walls. You do not speak names into listening cracks."
Orrek grunted. "I complain with purpose."
"You complain as weather," Vaela said.
"Strong weather."
This time the laugh was real from three throats.
Small.
Still real.
The old woman, Sair, pushed herself upright.
"I stay," she said.
Miro lifted his chin. "She stays. I stay."
Sella looked at Kael for a long moment.
"I said you should leave us."
"I heard."
"I did not say I would leave."
"I heard that too."
Renn exhaled shakily.
The rest pocket seemed smaller now. Not safer. Never safe. But tighter in a way that belonged to them instead of the chute. Then Kael’s threat instinct snapped cold.
He turned toward the forward dark.
The air had changed again.
Wet iron.
Rot.
A sweetness under it.
Blood scent answering blood scent.
From the narrow dark ahead came a soft, eager sound.
SKITTER!
Vaela lifted her blade.
Orrek smiled without humor.
Renn whispered, "Small teeth?"
Kael flexed his marked hand.
The five shards in reserve stayed untouched, sharp and waiting.
"Many," he said.
The dry chute walls began to move.