Joss turned the foot brace toward the warehouse wall and tried to push the parcel’s pressure through it.
The axle cracked.
The cart dropped against his thigh.
He caught the handle before the crate could slide, but his boot skidded on the wet ledge.
River water opened beside his heel.
Tan jammed her hammer head beneath the falling crosspiece.
“Stop pulling!”
He stopped.
Pain ran from his wrist to his elbow.
The pressure he’d felt in the strap seemed to have followed the shortest piece of iron available.
That piece had been Tan’s new axle pin.
She stared at the split wood around it.
“I specifically charged you for that.”
Joss leaned his shoulder against the handle while she fitted a block under the cart.
The guards above them had begun descending the steps.
Behind the shut quay gate, someone tried its bar.
“One minute,” Tan said.
“Then we’re between them.”
He heard Nera’s cane striking the floor rail.
The load goes somewhere.
He had tried to send it through the axle because the axle touched the brace.
He hadn’t asked what held the brace at its other end.
Its foot sat against wet stone angled toward the river.
There was no straight line to sound ground.
Joss took his hand off the strap, closed his eyes for one breath, then looked at what they actually had.
The salvaged rail could put the cradle’s weight onto stone, clear of the ruined axle.
A warehouse bolt and the uphill step were close enough to take its ends.
He pointed at the rail.
“Turn it.
Socket end uphill.”
Tan left the hammer holding the cart and dragged the rail off its barrow.
He helped with his right hand, keeping his injured palm against his chest.
They seated the rail’s lower coupling eye around a warehouse bolt.
Its other end rested against the uphill step.
Stone at both ends.
The cart’s foot brace could settle into the rail’s central notch.
Tan checked the foot against the notch.
“Keep your end there.”
She adjusted the angle until the foot would land squarely.
The first guard reached the ledge.
His pole blade was unbroken, and he kept its point between Joss and the uphill exit.
“Leave the cart,” he said.
“You can go up.”
“With the rail?”
“Without anything stolen.”
Joss heard a second guard coming down behind him.
The quay gate rattled harder.
He touched the strap again.
The parcel’s edges wanted to spread.
He held them inside the old frame, then followed the pressure through its lower cradle, down the foot, into the notch.
This time he kept the whole path in mind: both rail ends, bolt, step, stone.
It felt less like lifting than keeping a rope from sliding off a pulley.
The wrist line tightened.
A small hooked mark formed beside his capacity.
BRACE.
The needle settled at seventy-four.
The pain in his arm eased because the cart was no longer asking it to replace the ground.
Joss eased the pressure off the damaged axle and into the rail’s two sound ends.
Tan pulled her hammer free.
Nothing sagged.
“That’ll hold,” she said.
“It still won’t roll.”
Joss looked at the guarded uphill steps and the service hatch in the warehouse wall.
The hatch had a rotten lower hinge.
Beyond it lay the cooper’s passage, the same route Dema used to roll barrels to the ledge.
They couldn’t turn the long rail into the passage while the guards stood here.
They could make the guards move.
“Latch,” he said, showing the crate his free rope.
“Can you hold this end?”
It lifted its lid a little.
He placed the knot between its blunt teeth.
Its front feet settled against the rail.
The guard watched him.
“Don’t try it.”
Joss set a timber block in the receiver notch beside the cart foot.
The rail’s socket had two positions: one held the strut, the other would guide a span toward its pier.
If he eased the pressure sideways, the socket lip would rise against the block.
He had seen it move an inch while they positioned the rail.
An inch was enough.
“Tan.
The hatch.”
She struck the rotten hinge with her hammer.
The guard lunged toward her.
Joss eased the brace.
The socket lip lifted.
Its block kicked outward into the guard’s ankle.
The man staggered but didn’t fall.
Joss pushed the handbarrow between them and drove it into his knees.
The guard caught the barrow’s handle.
He could have kept advancing if the ledge had been wider.
Here he had to choose between letting the barrow turn sideways and being pushed into the river.
He stepped backward onto the lower service stair.
His partner couldn’t pass him.
Tan broke the hatch’s upper hinge.
The panel fell inside.
Joss held the brace steady while she pulled Latch and the cradle onto a low barrel skid.
The living crate released the rope, climbed back into its familiar recess, and gripped the new dressing with one foot.
Their original cart remained on the rail for two breaths longer.
Joss released the brace only after the skid sat on the passage stones.
The needle rose two marks.
He touched the strap again, containing the frame at seventy-six.
Tan made him show her the strap path before she let go of the skid.
He pointed out the two rail ends and the stone beneath them.
“And when that bolt pulls out?” she asked.
“The path fails.”
“Then you can’t use the same trick everywhere.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She looked at the shattered axle cheek.
“I would prefer planning before the noise.”
He took the broken piece of wood with them.
Under its oily surface, an old crack crossed the fresh fracture.
The new axle pin had forced pressure through tired timber.
Seeing the damage was more useful than keeping an argument going.
Joss pocketed the piece beside the crushed oil vial.
The growing collection made his coat hang crookedly.
It could stay crooked until he had somewhere to remember what each mistake cost.
Tan looped the tow rope through the receiver eye.
Together they dragged the rail into Dema’s passage while the guards worked the barrow away from the stairs.
Dema appeared at the far door in an apron full of barrel hoops.
“Those were my planks.”
“One still is,” Joss said.
She saw the skid, the long rail, and the guard’s pole hooking through her ruined hatch.
“I’ll put the other on your bill.”
She shoved a full barrel across the passage mouth.
Tan helped set a second behind it.
A hooked blade cut through the first hoop and stopped in the thick stave.
Dema pointed toward her yard.
“Don’t bleed on anything varnished.”
They made the yard before the barrel burst.
From there, it was a straight lane to Reed Dock.
Dema lent them a sound hauling trolley on the condition that Joss return it with two repaired wheels.
He signed that too.
They transferred cradle and rail onto separate wheeled supports, with the long receiver steering behind Tan.
At the lane’s end, Bren waited beside Nera’s cane.
The old carrier had come out in a hired handchair, her prosthesis braced across its footboard.
She inspected their half rail and cracked cart.
“You learned something.”
“Expensively.”
Nera ran her finger along the receiver socket.
“We can set this into the bank.
But the counterweight shoe’s still down there.”
She pointed beneath the bridge, where the tide was rising around the empty western pier.