The ground on the east bank of the moat was wet.
A good mile down the bank Chen Jin stopped at the sluice gate. The sluice was old, its iron grating rusted down to a frame, a gap broken through the middle, the torn edges curling outward—newly broken. The waterweed at the foot of the grating lay pressed flat, all of it bent toward the bank. He crouched for a look: a streak through the moss on the drain lip, dried over most of its length, the last of it still shining, as if someone had dragged a wet rag across it.
Slime off a living thing dries to exactly that color.
He read the water inside and outside the sluice. Husks rode the surface, moving the way the ones on the slope had last night—drifting in with the current. And they weren't all the same: the husks floated down from upstream were white, seams furred with water-rust; the ones at his feet showed black seams still, wet mud packed in them. Husks that hadn't spent a night in the water. Under the surface, shadows crossed—slow, hugging the bottom, one passing, a pause, then another. Shorter than what he'd watched from the slope, and more of them.
He didn't reach in to test the water. He got up and turned back, logging the gap in his head before he left: thirty paces south of the east sluice, mouth facing north, water past the knee. On the walk back he checked two more drain outlets along the moat—one sealed dead, one covered with a wire mesh screen—and the screen had a hole in it, fist-sized, the wires sheared off flush.
The report convened at the old customs house. When Chen Jin finished, Zhou Zhengting spread the port office's old survey map across the table, the city printed dense on it, thin lines threading the streets. "Storm drains." He pointed them out for the room. "The old port's drainage runs underneath. When the moat rises, it backs up into the city. They barred a batch with iron, years back." His finger traced half a circle around the east district. "Under the shelter district—six, at least."
"And were they barred?"
"Barred, yes—years back." Zhou flattened the map with both hands. "Rusted through decades ago. About as good as paper now. The works registry from that job is still in the archive—which drain, how many gratings, what material, all written down. Nobody ever thought a city would defend itself by it one day."
The room went still for a breath. Chen Jin set his finger south of the east sluice. "Here. It's broken through, and there's been movement in the water already." He added the fist-sized hole in the mesh screen. Zhou stared at the spot for a long moment, pencil circling once on the map. "It's done throwing itself at walls. Now it's looking for the roads inside them."
Xiao Mao came up before noon, welding kit on his back, Big Liu hauling the carbide drum. Chen Jin showed him the gap in the grating. Xiao Mao hung over it a long while and came down saying nothing; he wiped his welding mask first.
"You're not going," Chen Jin said.
"Why not?"
"Your dad was—"
He cut the rest off. The night at the work shed, the flood gate, the men who hadn't come back—those weren't his to speak. Xiao Mao stood where he was, watched him for two breaths, and clipped the mask up into place.
"What my dad didn't finish, I'll finish."
There was nothing to answer that with. Chen Jin took Big Liu along, put two Ember Guard on the mouth, and had one man out of Wen Heng's station bring a med kit up to the well. That was the whole order; he added nothing to it.
The sweep of the shelter district ran from midday into dusk. Six drains, every one lidded, lid bolts rusted dead; two men took turns on the pry bar, ten minutes to a drain. Each lid they cracked they probed with a bamboo pole, a rag tied to the tip—depth, current, where the junctions sat—probe a stretch, log a stretch.
The second drain ran deepest: the pole went to the end of it and came back with the rag soaked through and a stink of dead silt riding it. The women crowded the well and none of them would move far—grain, water jars, door planks, everything needing their hands close. One auntie shouldered her rice sack, set it down, shouldered it again, and ended by crouching at the drain lip, going nowhere.
Xiaosui had beaten them to it.
Chen Jin came around from the third drain and found her herding four or five kids in off the lip toward the well, the smallest hanging on her arm, another fist in her jacket hem. Every kid carried something—a clay pot, a wooden ladle, half a flatbread.
One auntie wouldn't move; the water jar was fresh full, she said. Xiaosui stood at her gate and didn't raise her voice. "Auntie, the pledge written under the command seal says it straight: the district holds, grain goes to the shelter district first." She let it sit a beat. "Now something's coming out of the drains. What goes first is people." The auntie opened her mouth, went back inside, and came out with two cornmeal buns. Only when the kids were counted and lined up did Xiaosui turn and look at him.
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"You said yesterday the water runs to us," she said.
"I did."
"Then you couldn't have come in the morning?"
Seven years his junior, and she dressed a man down in exactly his key. Chen Jin let it go and crouched at the drain. The water ran black, cabbage leaves drifting. He watched a while and logged this stretch too: twenty paces east of the well, waist-deep, passage enough for a hound.
Xiaosui crouched behind him, voice dropped low. "Ge. Have the aunties sleep over by the granary tonight. Along the drains, not one person left."
He looked back at her. She wasn't looking at him—she was looking at the drain, the smallest kid's jacket hem still in her fist, creased hard.
"Go set it up," he said.
After nightfall, the dogs first.
The shelter district didn't have many dogs left; the ones remaining barked together for a stretch and cut off in unison. The quiet after was worse—the whole east side down to nothing but water sounds. A basin started hammering by the well, one strike, two, fast and ragged. By the time Chen Jin arrived, the lid on the second drain east of the well was already shoved half open, jammed upright against the lip, and the first one out was climbing for the surface, forelegs hooked over the brick edge, wet plating holding a greasy light in the dark.
Hound-class. Four legs. It hit the ground and made straight for the well. The well platform was packed, the women still hammering basins, kids stacked in the innermost ring. Xiaosui stood on the outer edge with a fistful of sharpened steel rods and held two young men back behind her.
The first one didn't get far. Chen Jin came in from the side and put the rifle butt into its neck seam—once, not dead; twice. It flattened out, legs still rowing, and he drove the bayonet home and stepped up onto the bank off its back.
Another one came up out of the drain.
In ground that narrow, a rifle was worth nothing—ricochets cut down your own people—so he slung it across his back and drew the bayonet. The mouth of the drain had room for one bug at a time, and their numbers counted for nothing here: one head up, one head cut down at the lip. The water was close and stinking, the footing slick mud, every cut starting with his feet hunting for bottom.
The third one had learned—it stayed under and came sideways along the drain wall. He twisted off the line and the claw points raked him anyway, tearing flesh open at the edge of his armor seam; moat water got in and the wound turned from soaked to burning. He put the bayonet backward into its neck joint and rode the thrashing up onto the bank.
On the bank he changed the fight. No more waiting at the lip: he dropped down the drain side to the junction and held the crossing where two drains met—wider water, room to turn, bugs coming from both ends, so he killed both ways. By the sixth, his grip on the bayonet was going—sweat and drain water and bug blood together—and he dragged his hand down his trouser leg and kept at it. When the ninth died, the husks on the water were past counting, the wound on his forearm had gone white from half a night of water, and blood ran off him with the drain water, flicked away a handful at a time.
Somewhere along the way the drain lip had filled with people. Nobody made a sound. The basins had stopped too, the hammering cut off mid-beat in an unnatural gap.
[Night tally: Hound-class x9, Humans saved x12]
[Embers: 902]
He remembered all twelve: the ones hauled back, the ones carried out, the ones pulled off the lip. A young man climbed down to help unasked; the current took him off his feet, and Chen Jin hauled him up the bank—one entry.
An old woman at the west end of the well was hard of hearing and slept straight through the basins; her granddaughter dragged her up onto the well platform, and when Chen Jin reached them the two were sitting at the crowd's edge breathing hard. He reached down, took the old woman onto his back, and carried her to the granary—another entry. On Xiaosui's side not one was missing. He handed the smallest kid down off the well platform, and the kid wiped a nose full of ash across his armor.
The new grating went in during the small hours.
Xiao Mao cut the broken section out whole, cut fresh stock, and welded a double layer across the gap, one bar each way, the foot pinned under stone blocks. Carbide stink drifted far down the water; the torch's blue flame jumped and jumped at the edge, and sparks dropped into the drain and died with a hiss. The light showed his hands steady. At the last weld he didn't get up. He crouched in front of the grating and wiped the torch down inch by inch with a rag, and took his time about it. Big Liu crouched next to him, keeping company, saying nothing.
People sat along the drain lip again for half the night. The wind came up, and the water sounded faster than it had by day. Chen Jin sat on the stone block at the sluice, running the tally. As a kid in the mining camp he'd crouched at sluices like this one, watching water come through the grate half a day at a stretch—back then there was nothing under that water but stones, and you could see a body turn over in it, clear to the fingers.
He shoved the useless thought aside and got back to the ledger: which drains broke tonight, which got plugged, how many left down in the water. The books wouldn't balance, and he knew where. Nine bugs killed tonight; the husks that had drifted into the city didn't come to nine. The shadows hugging the bottom—one crossing, a pause, another—nobody had ever counted them clean. The drains they'd plugged were plugged. The water still ran, and the water came from the moat.
In the gray before dawn, Zhou Zhengting came with the old survey map, and Lei Changgeng's note came in with him. Quiet night on the north wall. His voice was wrecked, and the paper carried a single line: "The drains will want men."
Zhou crouched at the map and counted the thin lines one by one. East district, then west, counted twice. He looked up.
"The wall's one ring," he said. "The drains—thirty-seven."
On the map the thin lines threaded the streets—around the granary, around the wounded men's shed, around the well—running all the way in to the foot of the north wall. Chen Jin studied it a long while and marked the ones that were running.
"We start with the ones carrying water," he said. "The rest get shift crews at first light."