At dawn, the depot road swallowed a patrol cart.
Joss was forty yards behind it.
He heard a wheel crack, looked up from his own damaged hub, and saw cobbles opening around the cart’s front axle.
They didn’t fall.
They tilted inward, one row after another, making a neat black groove beneath the wheels.
The driver jumped clear.
The man riding on the back tried to follow, but his coat caught on the cart’s hook.
He hung over the widening gap by his collar.
Joss braked.
Sella had stopped at the bakery to tell people which route he’d taken.
There was nobody beside him now except Latch, who crouched in the cradle with its lid tight.
“One minute,” Joss told it.
He wedged both cart wheels and tied his rope around the lower crosspiece.
His Bind still steadied the bridge frame.
He felt its pressure meet the wedges through the axle and went no further; adding the road to that feeling would have been like trying to tie a knot around the river.
The stranded man clawed at his coat.
A gray cuff marked him as a toll laborer.
“Knife!” Joss shouted.
“Belt’s trapped!”
The driver kept retreating.
He had a knife, visible on his hip.
“Cut him free,” Joss said.
The driver looked back.
The groove made a wet clicking sound beneath his boots.
He ran.
Joss threw the rope loop toward the trapped worker.
It caught the cart’s rear corner instead.
“Over your wrist!
Then under your arm!”
The worker pulled it close.
His collar was cutting off his breath.
He hooked a hand through the loop and tried to find his other elbow.
Behind him, the abandoned cart folded nose first into the road.
Joss hauled the rope tight.
The man’s caught coat tore halfway down its seam.
He dropped, feet kicking against cobbles that were turning edgewise toward him.
The extra strain jolted Joss’s cart.
One wedge slipped.
The parcel’s needle climbed from seventy to seventy-seven.
He couldn’t pull the worker and catch the wandering frame alone.
Joss put the rope around his cart handle and sat backward against it.
The handle’s bend took the worker’s weight.
With his right hand, he opened Nera’s vial and poured one dose onto the loose seal.
The amber line brightened.
Seventy-four.
Latch moved one foot onto the slipping wedge.
Joss pulled again.
The coat seam gave.
The man slid over the edge of the groove and struck the nearest sound cobbles shoulder first.
“Crawl,” Joss said.
He crawled.
Only when his hand reached Joss’s boot did the road stop opening.
Its cobbles lay in a narrow channel where a cart had been, arranged as though a mason had intended them that way all along.
Joss stood slowly.
He had used his left hand on the rope without thinking.
Blood soaked the shirt strip around it.
The worker sat up, wheezing.
“Bren Dask,” he managed.
“Depot lifting crew.”
“Keep your name.
I’ve enough on the invoice.”
Bren stared at the empty road.
“The patrol had the right permits.”
“Did they include a footing?”
“They’re supposed to check those.”
Joss tested his cart’s wheel.
A spoke had loosened.
Beneath the parcel, a hairline of black water had reappeared.
He reached for the vial.
It lay crushed under the handle where he’d braced the rope.
The second dose darkened the stones.
Nera’s last reserve was gone.
He put the broken glass in his pocket so nobody would kneel on it.
On the road beyond them, a loose cobble tipped into the groove.
Another followed.
Both lay in the shallow wheel track the patrol had used.
Joss lifted his own brake and moved the cart a yard sideways onto unmarked stone.
Latch’s feet pressed harder into the cradle.
The cobbles stopped moving before they reached his old wheel position.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
Bren nodded.
His breathing was still ragged.
“It follows where things pass.”
“It didn’t move at all when we walked this yesterday,” Bren said.
“The driver promised this morning’s test had cleared it.”
Joss looked down the empty street.
If the driver reappeared, he could explain his test from the wet side of the groove.
He took the gray cuff off Bren’s torn sleeve so it wouldn’t catch on another hook.
Bren held out his hand for it.
“They’re owing me wages too.”
Joss gave it back.
“Keep the work.
Ask better questions before the next test.”
Bren folded the cloth carefully.
“I’ll ask the man driving why he’s sitting by the exit.”
Bren tucked the cuff inside his torn coat.
“Where are you taking that?”
“Looking for receiver rails.
Krail’s bonded depot.”
“Too late.”
Joss stopped touching the wheel.
“How late?”
“We loaded them before sunrise.
Orders said relocate old supports to the south stores.
That’s why I was on the cart.
To open the river gate.”
Joss took out Nera’s drawing.
Bren studied it and nodded.
“Those.
Two sections strapped together.
Heavy enough that the ordinary frame couldn’t carry both at once.
We put them on a barge.”
“Who gave the orders?”
“Krail’s clerk.
Marshal countersigned.
Tovin.”
So the wrapped wrist had a name.
Joss looked toward the depot roof.
The road between it and him showed old wheel ruts crossing the new groove.
Walking would be possible.
Bringing his parcel over it would be an experiment he didn’t intend to conduct.
Bren got to his feet.
His right boot had lost its sole.
“The ledge below the ropewalk still runs to the river gate.
No carts there since winter.”
“Why?”
“Narrow.
Wet.
Nobody paying for it.”
“Good sales pitch.”
“The patrol road looked nicer.”
Joss checked the ledge from the nearest warehouse stairs.
It ran along the river wall, with room for two wheels if he kept one against the masonry.
A twenty-yard stretch had lost its outer stones.
He could lay planks over that if he found sound timber.
The depot itself had plenty.
It belonged to Krail.
He considered leaving Latch with Bren and fetching them.
The crate looked at Bren’s boot, then shifted closer to Joss’s hand.
Bren was rubbing his injured shoulder.
Neither could hold the frame if another support disappeared.
“I need a mechanic,” Joss said.
Bren nodded toward a low chimney beyond the ropewalk.
“Tan Saye.
She keeps the river carts working when the permits don’t.”
“Cheap?”
Bren actually laughed.
It came out as a cough.
“She’ll give you a fair bill.
Then she’ll expect you to pay it.”
They turned away from the depot road.
Joss let Bren push the sound handle.
When he complained of his shoulder, Joss slowed.
They had already lost the first route; making the worker collapse would gain him another expensive delay.
At the ropewalk, they passed three dock hands staring from a doorway.
Joss warned them about the groove.
One repeated the word condemned.
Another asked whether the city would repair it.
“Ask them before you put a load on it,” Joss said.
He had spent seven years hearing that bad roads were temporary.
Each year, another temporary notice became a permanent barrier.
Tan’s workshop door was open.
A woman knelt beside a cart turned on its side, fitting a new iron shoe beneath the axle.
Her dark hair was tied with wire.
Two fingers on her left hand wore clean splints.
“Outside,” she said before looking up.
“If it’s leaking, outside.
If it’s burning, farther outside.”
Joss stopped the cart on the stone apron.
“It contains a bridge.”
Tan set down her hammer and stood.
“Then you can afford a complicated answer.”
Across the river, a barge bell sounded.
Bren climbed onto the workshop’s low wall to see over the roofs.
He pointed at a long hull moving away from Krail’s gate.
Two gray-coated men stood beside an iron bundle on its deck.
The rails were already leaving.