Chapter 58: Bitten From Below
Pell Tarrow felt his name get bitten.
He did not scream.
That explained why the bowl hands around him stayed afraid. His left eye watered. His thumb bled again though the cut had already been sealed. The black bowl holding his clean robe bubbled once, as if something below had tasted the blood in the bowl and disliked it. A lesser bowl boss would have shouted for a culprit.
Pell smiled.
"You have my attention," he said.
The black-toothed woman stood three steps away with a bone slate and a gut-cord lamp. "Pell?"
"He has reached lower mouths."
Her stylus paused.
"That pipe eats bodies."
"Neither is breaking my weighing jaw, my sluice, my bell, or my morning." Pell adjusted the ruined edge of his inner robe. "Yet the man is enthusiastic."
A feeding house caller whispered, "Send hook men?"
Pell turned his smile on him.
The caller lowered his head.
"No," Pell said. "Hook men become meat in lower mouths. Send pipe hands."
The pipe hands understood before the callers did. They did not need to win. They needed to see where Kael went, leave scent in the seams, and stay alive long enough to lead hook men after him.
Kael had won stories all night. The press. The hounds. The wildland.
The frame. The sluice. Each victory made workers whisper and markets flinch. Pell wanted the bowl floor pointed in one direction before the whispers grew legs.
A bell, a hook rack, and enough frightened hands could survive humiliation. They could make the broken weighing jaw look like bait and turn every narrow route into a hunt.
The pipe hands mattered for that reason.
They carried fear where Pell could not walk safely.
Pell’s pipe hands dressed for survival as if survival respected clothing. They wore waxed neck wraps to muffle accidental answers. Their lamps had narrow mouths so the light would not spill wide and wake the seals too early. Each carried a bone slate and a gut cord loop for dragging a wounded companion out.
One young pipe hand kept touching the charm under his collar. The black toothed woman slapped his hand down.
"Do that below and a mouth will think you are offering it."
The pipe hand went white.
Pell watched him with mild contempt.
"If fear makes you sloppy, be afraid more carefully."
Pell gave his people that much. He did not remove terror. He demanded it stand straight.
Pell lifted three fingers.
"Three Soot-Hand cutters who can hear pipe changes. Leave the fighters here. Fighters make him grand. These three will tell me where to drop the hooks."
The black toothed woman cut three marks into her bone slate.
SCRAPE! SCRAPE!
"And if the old mouths eat the pipe hands?"
Pell’s smile thinned.
"Then the mouths will chew someone else."
Below, the black furnace bone pipe narrowed into a long crawl where the ceiling pressed close enough to brush Orrek’s shoulders.
He hated it loudly without speaking.
His face did the work.
Vaela glanced back. "Your expression is making noise."
Orrek mouthed something rude.
Renn saw and almost laughed. It came out as a wheeze.
WHEEZE!
A small mouth in the floor opened beneath him. Kael’s foot came down beside it.
THUD!
The mouth shut before it tasted the sound.
Renn went still.
Kael shook his head once.
No apology. No scolding. Just move.
They moved.
Jaro led them through a side bend where the pipe wall changed color from black bone to gray ash glass. Old mouth scars covered the surface, round and uneven, some sealed with tar, some stuffed with rusted spoons, some stitched shut with wire. The place looked less built than survived. The old mouth scars in this section were not all the same.
Some were small as coin slots. Some stretched wider than a man’s hand. One had a child’s carved bead wedged between its lips. Another had three fingernails pressed into tar as if someone had tried to seal it with the last pieces they owned. The pipe carried more history than the bone scars could hold, but none of it sat still enough to touch safely.
Places like this did not leave poor people in statues.
They left them in warning marks, fingernails, beads, and old tar.
Do not answer.
Do not touch.
Do not breathe too loud near the mouth with the spoons.
Every rule had once been a person.
Della whispered, "Who stitches a mouth shut?"
Jaro answered before Vaela could stop him.
"Someone who answered it once."
A mouth scar twitched.
Everyone froze.
Jaro clapped both hands over his own lips.
The scar settled.
Vaela stared at him.
His hands stayed over his mouth.
Orrek mouthed, Very professional.
Jaro glared.
Behind them came a new sound: human steps instead of singing.
CLATTER! CLATTER!
Light touched the pipe curve, weak and yellow. Then a voice called down the passage in a bowl caller’s sing-song.
"Pell’s pipe hands are coming down. Keep your mouths open and your bodies where we can see them."
Vaela closed her eyes for half a breath.
"Pell sent pipe hands."
Orrek brightened. "Pipe hands break easier than hook men."
"Do not break them unless they become pressure."
"You ruin every gift."
Kael looked back. Three small lights bobbed in the pipe behind them. Not close yet. Careful. The pipe hands knew enough not to rush. Their job was to salt the seams with Pell’s voice and let the mouths turn the pipe against Kael.
The pipe hands moved in a tight three-body crawl. One spoke, one held the lamp, one watched the walls. They advanced slowly enough that the lower pipe could taste their purpose before their fear. That made them dangerous for a few minutes. Violence rushed. Scent lingered.
Vaela hated them immediately.
"They are feeding Pell’s voice to the mouths first," she whispered. "If it reaches the next seal before we do, the pipe will close around us."
Jaro nodded, miserable. "Pipe hands are worse than fighters here. Fighters scream when bitten. Pipe hands teach the mouths who to follow." Orrek’s lips moved silently.
Vaela caught it. "Do not say you want to bite the witnesses."
He looked offended again.
She sighed. "You were absolutely saying it."
The first pipe hand called again.
"Kael runs below. Speak his name. Let the mouths find his scent."
The old mouths listened.
HUM!
No shards came. The words had not touched him. The mouths had not bitten. Not yet.
Renn’s fingers dug into Orrek’s belt.
"They want names."
Kael said nothing.
Vaela pointed to the next bend. "We need sound cover."
Jaro shook his head hard.
"No sound cover here. Sound is food."
"Then misdirection."
"With what?"
Vaela looked at the sealed mouths.
Jaro followed her gaze and went pale.
"No."
"Yes."
"That is how stupid people become wall paste."
"Then be clever paste."
The pipe hands came closer.
"Names," one repeated. "Stay quiet and the mouths close around you."
A mouth opened beside them and copied the phrase badly.
"Name... scent..."
Another opened ahead.
"Find the blood."
The pipe began passing the words forward.
HUM! HUM!
Kael understood the danger. If the old mouths carried Pell’s witness speech ahead of them, every lock and scar would treat the group as stolen meat before they arrived. He stepped toward the nearest open mouth.
Vaela caught his wrist.
"Do not punch every problem."
"Wasn’t."
"You were thinking about it."
"Briefly."
"Progress."
Jaro knelt beside the mouth, shaking. "I can foul the phrase. Maybe."
"Do it," Kael said.
Jaro leaned close, careful not to breathe into the opening. Then he whispered sideways, not at the mouth but into the pipe seam.
"Wet bodies. Pell Tarrow scent. Clean robe spoiled. Third Bell blood drips down."
The mouth chewed.
CLICK! CLICK!
Then it repeated louder.
"Pell Tarrow blood drips below."
The phrase ran forward and backward through the pipe.
"Pell Tarrow blood drips below."
"Clean robe spoiled."
"Pipe hands taste soft."
Behind them, the three witness lights stopped.
One pipe hand swore.
A mouth opened under the witnesses.
CHOMP!
A scream hit the pipe.
It was short.
SPLAT!
The old mouths had found softer meat.
Renn flinched so hard his wrist struck the wall. Kael moved to steady him, but Orrek already did it. Big hand. Careful pressure. No joke this time. The witnesses were enemies, but hearing someone get eaten by a road still changed the air.
Vaela’s voice stayed low. "Move. Before the mouths finish being interested in them."
The group moved.
Behind them, Pell’s pipe hands broke into panic, their rehearsed sing-song turning into ordinary fear. That fear had sound. The lower pipe loved sound.
HUMMMMM!
Kael walked last.
No shards. No system flash. The mouths had bitten someone else. It was ugly, useful, and not his gain.
Kael understood the temptation to leave the pipe hands behind. They had crawled down carrying Pell’s voice and bait. The lower mouths had found them first.
But the Sovereign Root did not stir because another body screamed.
It did not reward watching.
That boundary mattered more than comfort. If power came from the suffering of anyone nearby, the world would have been full of sovereigns already. Instead, it had crushed billions who refused and billions who begged. Kael’s path answered only when pressure met him. So he kept walking, empty handed, while the mouths fed behind him.
That mattered.
Power that came from every death would have made the world simple. The Sovereign Root was not simple. It was his pressure, his refusal, his impact, his body under the weight. Ahead, the song changed again.
This time it sang Renn’s count, but the numbers were wrong.
"One. Two. Five. Nine. Fourteen. None."