The workshop door opened into a row of doors.
Some were tall enough for a temple.
Others were low, square, and fitted with grates.
Every one stood on a wheeled assembly or a carrier rail.
Crownfall had once employed people simply to move useful entrances where they were needed.
Now ivy grew through the roof.
Tan walked past the ornate frames.
She stopped at a plain metal doorway leaning against the rear wall.
“This one.
Hinge intact.
Corner braces straight.”
Joss touched its edge.
It was cold and rough beneath the dust.
A solid panel still hung from its hinge, leaving a rust-colored streak down the damp wall behind it.
“Can we carry it?”
“On wheels.
Ordinary salvage today.
To make its old carrier ribs portable, I’d need time, seals, and more room than your current charter gives.”
She slid a dolly underneath it while Davi held its upper corner.
Joss sat on an overturned crate.
The chair ride had exhausted him.
He hated being present enough to see the work and injured enough to slow it.
Latch came through the entrance behind Sella.
She had left her crossing watch with Edda and brought it from the dock.
The bridge frame remained supported and bound on the bank; the living crate had climbed clear when she offered it a warm board to ride.
“Nera says sixty-two, steady,” Sella told him.
“Also, stop checking your wrist every minute.
It doesn’t tell you what we had for breakfast.”
He lowered his hand.
Latch went to Tan.
It put a foot against the dolly wheel while she fastened a strap through the frame’s lower corner.
She showed it where she’d place the next loop, and it moved its foot out of the way.
Joss watched the cooperation without directing it.
Something eased in him that had nothing to do with the pain draught.
Davi found two spare hinge plates in a bin.
One fit the doorway.
The other almost fit Latch’s damaged joint.
“Later,” Tan told the crate.
“After we get outside.”
It tapped the offered plate and stayed beside her.
At the entrance, Sella made a sharp warning sound.
Two gray coats blocked the lane.
A third stood behind them holding a pole and a sealed instruction strip.
They had come quietly; the old workshop’s thick walls had hidden their boots.
“Put the salvage down,” the first said.
Tan kept fastening the strap.
“It’s on the floor.
Be specific.”
The man pointed at Joss.
“Him.
The marshal needs the courier.”
Joss stood too fast.
His ribs punished him before he could take a step.
Tan moved the doorway between him and the entrance.
“Davi.
Left wheel.”
He rolled that side forward.
The solid panel swung across the narrow aisle, leaving the approaching men one route around its edge.
Joss kept his hand on the far hinge, where he could stop it swinging into her back.
The first man thrust.
The point struck the panel and slid aside, gouging paint.
Tan pushed the dolly toward him.
He retreated one step, then planted his pole beneath the lower edge.
He meant to overturn it.
Davi braced the dolly’s wheel.
Sella pulled a hanging door off its wall hooks and shoved it sideways into the lane.
The second man caught that one rather than letting it fall on him.
For a moment, neither side had room to move.
Latch squeezed around Tan’s boots.
It gripped the first man’s pole below his hands and closed its lid over the shaft.
He pulled back.
Latch’s feet dragged across the tiles, leaving four sharp lines.
The man shifted his grip toward the crate’s injured hinge.
Joss let go of the doorway, took Tovin’s knife, and cut the pole’s leather hand strap.
Latch twisted.
The shaft came free of the man’s hand.
He struck the crate with his boot.
Its loose hinge plate snapped away and skittered under the workbench.
Tan hit his knee with the hammer handle.
He folded against the doorway panel.
Davi caught his arms before he could regain the pole.
The second man dropped the fallen door and backed into the lane.
His companion with the instruction strip followed him.
They knew how narrow the aisle was; coming again would give the people inside another clean angle.
They went to find more men instead.
Joss didn’t chase.
He couldn’t have managed five steps without leaning on something, and leaving the doorway unguarded would waste the advantage they’d earned.
“Check him,” he told Davi.
“Then his hands, in front.”
The captured worker kept his eyes on Tan’s hammer.
“I wasn’t meant to hurt anyone.”
“Your boot did,” she said.
She knelt beside Latch.
Its lid was crooked.
It let her fit the almost-matching hinge plate as a temporary splint, with two wire loops holding it outside the damaged joint.
Joss sat opposite the worker.
“Name.”
“Cal Rudd.”
“What’s on the strip?”
“Instructions for the courtyard test.
Bring the carrier.
Secure the receiver eye.
Don’t stand between the frame and the audience.”
Joss looked at Tan.
The last part told them more than Cal intended.
“Audience?”
“The inspection office.
He’s showing them unauthorized freight is unsafe.”
Cal sounded frightened now.
He had seen the damaged crate.
He might finally be imagining what the same damage would do to a bridge parcel.
“Tovin pays for finished work,” he said.
“I’m a fitter.
He said you stole the receiver and wouldn’t bring it for testing.”
Davi looked at the filed pin Joss had shown him before leaving the dock.
“Then ask why he filed the counterweight.”
Cal’s face hardened.
“I didn’t see anyone file it.”
“No,” Joss said.
“You didn’t.
Tell Nera what you did see.
Don’t add anything to make us like you.”
That seemed to confuse him more than the accusation.
He looked from Joss to Tan, seeking the next threat, and found Tan paying attention to Latch instead.
The crate held its lid half open while she adjusted the temporary wire.
When Cal shifted closer to help, it shut the lid and pulled its foot away.
“Stay there,” she said.
Cal watched the wire settle.
“That plate will rub the wood.
Put linen under its lower corner.”
Tan checked, then fitted a strip from her kit beneath the plate.
“Tell Edda what job you were paid for,” Joss said.
“She’ll record it beside the damaged hinge.
If you want to earn back the cost, ask her.
That’s a different conversation from what you know about the test.”
They tied Cal’s wrists to the front rail of Davi’s handcart, where he could walk without falling.
Sella took him toward Nera with the instructions and the names of the other men.
Tan fitted the doorway’s spare hinge plate.
Joss used his good hand to fasten its upper strap.
By the time they rolled the salvage into daylight, Tovin’s watchers had reached the far end of the lane.
They saw the metal panel and stopped short.
Joss had no strength to spare for a fight that didn’t recover the receiver.
He looked past them toward the flooded yard and the path he’d marked on the old civic diagram.
“We’ll make him use his rig,” he said.
Tan held the doorway steady.
“Then we’ll choose what it’s standing on.”