The first chain link snapped above Joss’s head.
He felt the extra pressure arrive through his palm before the gate moved.
The prop’s iron shoe pressed against the bar, the bar against the dry stair, and the damaged wall post twisted away from both.
He shifted his hand, keeping the path on the placed supports.
For one breath, it worked.
“Under,” he told the guards.
The man with the club crawled through the opening.
The second pushed the iron bar deeper into its stair notch, then crouched beside Joss.
“Come with me.”
Joss nodded.
They could leave together if the stair held long enough for the prop to remain upright after his hand came away.
Tan reached through from the far side and hooked a rope around his upper arm.
“Ready?”
He began to lower himself.
The second chain parted.
The gate fell three inches, struck the prop, and turned its whole shoe sideways.
The stair lip broke.
There was no sound path now.
The pressure ran into Joss’s hand, across his shoulder, and through the body he’d put too close beneath it.
Something cracked in his side.
His breath stopped.
Tan pulled.
The remaining guard seized his belt.
Together they dragged him beneath the gate while the prop folded behind his heels.
Iron hit stone.
Water sprayed through the narrow bottom gap.
Joss lay on the high stair with his mouth open, trying to make his chest take air.
It took a little.
The pain arrived with it.
“Small breaths,” Tan said.
“Look at me.”
He did.
It was easier than looking at the gate that had almost cut him in half.
The guard crouched beside them.
His lamp was gone.
In the faint light from the river, Joss saw a boy’s uncertain face under a man’s warehouse helmet.
“Len Croft,” he said.
“The other one’s Davi.
We’ll tell them what happened.”
Joss tried to answer.
His side seized.
Tan stopped him with a hand on his good shoulder.
“Later.
Help me get him higher.”
They moved him one stair at a time.
The destroyed prop had gone with the water into the gate’s lower gap, keeping a thin outlet open.
Water hissed through it below their heels.
At the service landing, Tan checked his chest with warm fingers.
He flinched when she found the tender line.
“Two places,” she said.
“Likely hairline cracks.
You can breathe, but you’re going to hate doing it.”
“Bridge?”
“Still standing.
You’re nowhere near it.
Stop trying to lift things with your questions.”
She made him sit upright against the wall.
No tight binding around his ribs; she wanted him breathing deep enough to clear his lungs when he could bear it.
A folded cloth supported his left arm without squeezing his chest.
The guards looked toward the dispatch stair above them.
“He’ll say we ran,” Davi said.
“You did,” Tan replied.
“You ran out of water he put there.”
Len pulled the gray cuff off his sleeve.
“Can we come to the dock?”
Joss held out the wages page with his good hand.
“Names on the back.
What you saw.
Then come if you want work.”
They wrote slowly, sharing Tan’s pencil.
Len described the spill controls.
Davi marked where he’d placed the bar.
Joss folded the page around the original removal order.
The high stair brought them toward Reed Dock without returning through the flooded drain.
Len and Davi carried the borrowed plank between them as an improvised litter.
Joss sat on it rather than lying flat, bracing his feet against a crosspiece Tan tied on.
Every uneven step hurt.
He had never appreciated how many broken stones lived in his own lane.
Tan walked beside his left shoulder.
When his breathing grew too shallow, she stopped the litter and made him try again.
They reached the crossing before dawn.
Edda rang the watch bell once, then came down to meet them.
Nera saw the cloth around his arm and the stiff angle of his back.
“How much?” she asked Tan.
“Enough that he doesn’t haul.
No running.
No shoulder under a support.
He rests between jobs we can’t give someone else.”
Joss looked at the frame.
Sixty-two, steady against its partial receiver.
He could reach the strap from the bench.
That would be his work for a while.
People gathered when they heard the bell.
They saw restored planks, recovered papers, and a courier being carried home.
Some took the injury as proof the delay had become too dangerous.
“Install it now,” Emmett said.
“We can’t wait for them to come again.”
Nera pointed at the missing support mark.
“The second rail is still gone.”
“Then use something else.”
Tan laid the ruined prop’s surviving plate on the table.
She’d recovered it from the service stair, bent nearly double.
“Something else has to be tested.
This was tested for the held gate.
Once the support broke and the gate fell, it failed.
Want that happening to your crossing?”
Emmett looked at Joss’s face.
He couldn’t argue the pain away.
“How long?”
“Today to find the other rail,” Joss said.
“Tomorrow to finish the receiver bed and assemble everyone.
If we rush it, the span chooses where to open.”
Nera nodded.
Edda moved the witnesses inside and sent Pip for fresh water.
Joss watched the boy inspect the litter’s new crosspiece before taking it to the wall, noticing a loose knot that the men hadn’t seen.
Tan gave Joss broth, a measured pain draught, and a chair he couldn’t easily get out of.
He waited until she turned to read the removal order, then tried standing.
She heard his breath catch without looking up.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“Was that stupid?” he asked.
Tan kept reading for a moment before answering.
“Putting your body beside the prop was.
Leaving them under the gate would have been a different kind.”
“I couldn’t do both.”
“You could have put your escape rope on before they arrived.
We had time for that.”
He looked at the raw red band where she’d dragged him by the arm.
A rope around his waist, set beforehand, would have pulled him straight instead of twisting his chest when the support gave.
“Next time,” he said.
“There’ll be a next time if you let these heal.
You’re going to work with people who can lift what you can’t.
That isn’t a favor you’re borrowing from them.”
He wanted to say he’d managed fine before the charter.
His old jobs had weighed less than a missing bridge.
His sister had weighed less than a missed step, and he hadn’t managed that either.
He held the thought without saying it.
Tan had enough wounds in front of her.
“Len and Davi need meals,” he said.
“Put those on the work account.
If they stay, give them a job they know how to do.”
She wrote it down.
On the paper, the lower margin held an old civic diagram Krail hadn’t bothered to remove.
It showed receiver supports running beneath the upper city, converging around a warehouse-shaped mark.
Joss could find the lost rail by following its holding route.
He couldn’t do it from this chair.
Tan folded the diagram so it lay between them.
“You point,” she said.
“I’ll check the ground.”