Waddell’s iron weight jumped off the ledger and hit Palla on the foot. She swore, caught the table, and nearly tipped Toman’s ink over eleven patients’ testimony.
Under the floor grille, wheels battered the burial turn.
Denna was already dragging the nearest cot away. Its patient clutched the blanket to his throat while a clinic worker hurried beside him, squeezing his breathing bag. Palla pushed the grille back with her boot. Water slapped the underside; beneath it, the keeper notch moved with every wheel strike.
The funeral engine had come around again.
"Sorn, get those cots across the drainage rail. Take your men with you."
The marshal caught his half seal as it slid off the ledger. "You intend to open that thing with my hearing still sitting over it?"
"I intend to keep your hearing out of the wheels. You can object from the other side."
He tucked the seal into his palm and took the foot of a cot. Toman followed with the book pressed inside his coat. The patients argued over whose brake had stuck while the separate group of Gate Three workers lifted the hearing rope clear of the wheels.
Palla knelt at the open grille. Her satchel knocked against her hip. Meren’s broken brass groove had worked through its wrapping, and the cut edge caught her thumb when she reached for it. She knew which piece it was before she looked. That particular tooth had hurt her often enough.
Denna lowered herself beside her, one hand on the rail cutter.
"Can you get them off our burial track, or are we about to watch them go around again?"
Palla fitted the broken brass against Sadle’s notch. Through a gap narrower than her finger she saw a dry tram rail, two clamps, and the end of Fenn’s keg hook. Meren. Beyond her knees, funeral wheels were still running through Sadle water.
She tried lifting the brass away. The view shut. At least that worked.
"Their receiving bar is there. Let me get an answer before you put that cutter down."
The short gray fiber clinging to the broken groove lifted toward her satchel. Nessa’s copied recovery order lay inside. Palla moved the satchel behind Denna, then wedged the inert black knuckle across a gap in the housing. Its dead joints made a poor wedge, but they kept the brass from rolling. She trapped the fiber beneath the cutter’s spare jaw, away from the opening.
Denna tested it with a nail. The strand pulled; the jaw held.
Palla pressed once against the groove, held, then struck twice. Blue filled the narrow gap and stopped. Fenn’s hook answered with two knocks against the far bar.
"Davi, put Vey where I can see him. We have the train here, and I need him to look at what he’s receiving."
A glove covered the gap while someone shifted a shield. Palla waited with her thumb wedged against the tooth. Then Vey crouched behind the far bar. Davi held his gauge at shoulder height, and two engineers knelt at the clamps.
"You left a live fiber clamped to my evidence table. Tell me this is going to be less trouble."
"The people aboard need a place to stop. The man responsible is aboard with them, under restraint."
Vey looked past her into Sadle’s flooded channel. Palla tilted the groove enough for him to see the approaching lights through the water. He pulled a chalk board into view and marked a length of rail behind the shield.
"Up to that buffer and no farther. We keep the guns on the car until somebody explains what is holding its patients together. If your prisoner reaches for one of my men, get your people down and let us shoot."
He put both engineers on the bar. Fenn hooked the near clamp while Davi raised the shield for the engine. Palla kept watching until they had cleared the men working beyond the buffer, too.
Denna touched a crack in the old notch. Rust came away under her nail.
"Six pulses through this. That’s all I’m allowing, and I’m cutting after the sixth whether they’re clear or not."
Palla wanted to ask for eight. She pressed the cracked tooth instead. It sank into the housing and stayed there.
"Tell them now, before there’s a wheel between us."
Denna pulled the half bell rope. The engine slowed at the burial turn, close enough for Omina to look up through the grille. Green bars pinned Erebos beside the funeral shaft. Yun-Jin stood braced at the rail, his violet thread securing Erebos’s wrist to the axle. Behind them, JJ was working at the tank.
Denna gave the limit. Omina repeated it down the car, and Kegaku lifted his free hand from the pressure bed.
"You can use my pulse while it keeps beating. Nobody asks me to stop it this time. If the train catches, you pull it loose some other way. I’ve already tried dying for your railway."
"Keep it beating and keep your hand where she can see it."
JJ checked the tank returns and moved both hoses clear of the coupling that faced the switch. The woman inside the glass helped, dragging the lower hose away from her new support jacket. When it caught beneath the sleeve containing her graft, she freed it herself and pushed it toward JJ.
Palla could see the work it took to lift that arm. She tightened her grip on the brass.
Sorn returned to the rail with the red taped weight. Behind him, every cot brake was down. The breathing bag rose beside the patient nearest the street, well beyond the open grille.
"Your witness pages are dry. Where does this belong before it breaks another toe?"
Palla pointed at the counterweight cup. He lowered the iron into it, then stayed to hold the loose housing while she worked. His half seal was still in his other hand.
Denna slipped the cutter around the thin bridge behind the keeper notch. From here, Palla could climb onto the train as it crossed. She could follow the stolen machinery, reach the tank, stop receiving everybody else’s injuries as knocks through a wall.
She glanced at the patients. One woman was holding Toman’s coat out of the water while he tried to find a dry place for his book.
Palla took her knee off the grille’s boarding edge and planted it against the housing. Someone had to keep this side shut afterward.
"You’ll need to hold my wrist if the brass rolls. Keep the cutter ready with your other hand."
Denna shifted close enough for their shoulders to touch. At the far bar, Fenn lowered her hook. Both receiving clamps were open and the track beyond them was empty.
Palla pushed the groove home.
The first beat struck her palm. Meren’s rail opened across the water, wide enough for the locomotive, and its nose threw a sheet of Sadle floodwater over the dry stones beyond.
The second drove the lead axle across. One tooth broke in Palla’s hand. She felt it scrape beneath her thumb and held the brass down as the coupling passed over her head.
On the third, the tank filled the opening. JJ had both arms around the pump handles. Inside the glass, the woman’s living palm pressed against the new jacket, keeping it straight while the wheels struck unfamiliar rail.
The fourth shook the housing loose. Denna caught Palla’s wrist. Through the funeral windows, green bars and violet thread jolted with Erebos between them; he stayed pinned, his burned fingers below the upper bar.
The fifth carried Kegaku’s bed past. Kieran braced her knee against its frame with the flute case across her lap. Palla caught a glimpse of the metal name strip beneath her thumb, then the rear platform blocked the view.
Its last axle struck the lip. Sorn drove his shoulder against the housing, forcing it level under Palla’s knee. The sixth beat reached her hand as the wheel dropped onto Meren’s rail.
Denna closed the cutter.
Palla fell backward with the broken brass in her fist. The weight bounced out of its cup and hit the black knuckle. Four pieces of keeper notch splashed into the channel, leaving bare stone where she would have seated a return.
Sorn hauled her away by the collar before she could reach after them. Her blood ran down his sleeve. On the far side, Vey’s engineers closed the bar behind the engine, and Fenn pulled her hook free. The gray fiber stayed trapped beneath Sadle iron.
Through the shrinking gap she could still see the train, stopped short of the buffer. Beneath the tank, four braces dropped to the rail; a fifth swung up toward the sleeve around the woman’s graft.
At the funeral shaft, Erebos had one burned finger resting on a brass control below Omina’s bar. A rod turned under the car with it.
Palla shouted for Omina, pressing her face toward the closing gap. Inside the tank, the woman’s graft twisted away from her living hand and reached for the fifth brace.