The high ridge was barely a road, and tonight it was crowded with people.
Roots crossed the slope in broad, uneven steps. Wet leaves concealed patches of smooth stone, and the trees stood close enough to hide the moon whenever the wind shifted their crowns.
Khepri climbed behind Simi, holding his tool case in one hand and using the other to catch branches and roots. Above them, families were trying to reach a narrow shelf where the ground levelled out. Below, the clicking of the pursuing Thralls echoed between the trunks.
A shout came from farther down the path.
“They’re coming up!”
The crowd pressed forward.
Simi caught Khepri’s arm before somebody could push him off the edge of the track.
“Stay near me.”
“I’m trying.”
His legs had become unreliable. He reached for a branch and felt it break beneath his hand. The loss of balance sent him sliding back a step.
Simi caught his collar.
“Careful!”
“That was my intention.”
“You’ve chosen a strange way to show it.”
He almost found a retort. Then a dark shape moved above the people on the slope.
A long-legged Thrall clung to the trunk of a tree, its hooked limbs finding purchase in the bark. It shifted towards the path.
“Down!” Khepri shouted.
Simi pulled a woman aside. The creature landed where she had been standing, scattering the people around it. A guard rushed forward, forcing it away with his spear while the crowd hurried past.
Another dark figure appeared lower on the trunk.
Then another.
“There is a crossing ahead!” somebody called.
Khepri looked up.
A fallen tree spanned a narrow gap between two shelves of stone. Travellers had reinforced its upper surface with planks to create a makeshift bridge. Beyond it, the ridge continued towards the south.
People crowded towards the structure.
Khepri knew timber. He knew how loads moved through a frame. He did not need to stand on the crossing to see that several of its boards had shifted away from their supports.
“Only two at a time!” he shouted.
Nobody seemed to hear.
The nearest family moved onto the planks, followed by three others.
The wood sagged.
“Stop!”
Still the crowd pressed forward.
Near the crossing, a familiar figure turned towards his voice.
“Ibara!”
She had reached the bridge entrance with a group of evacuees. For a foolish instant, Khepri felt as if he had found his way back to the workshop. Ibara was here. She would tell him what was wrong, and he would help her put it right. He pointed towards the middle of the bridge.
“The fastenings!”
Ibara studied the boards for a heartbeat. Then she stepped onto the edge of the crossing and struck the railing with the handle of a heavy tool.
“EVERYONE STOP!”
The shout travelled across the shelf.
“Two at a time,” she said. “Any more and none of you is getting across.”
The people nearest the bridge hesitated, then stepped back.
Khepri had never been so relieved to hear her threaten a crowd. He knew that voice from mornings spent at her workbench, when a crooked measurement could earn him an entire lecture. He had never expected to miss those lectures.
Ibara crouched beside the first damaged board.
“Tell me what you see.”
“The trunk is sound enough to carry a limited load. The outer fastening is loose. If weight shifts sideways, that plank could turn.”
“Can you secure it?”
He looked at his shaking hands.
His Assembly Spark could form the metal he needed. Under ordinary conditions he might have replaced every damaged fitting and redesigned the entire crossing before Ibara finished criticising his measurements.
“I’ve used too much Chi,” he admitted.
“Good,” Ibara said.
He stared at her.
“Good?”
“You finally understand when not to use it.”
She opened her tool pouch and selected two iron clamps.
“Hold this in place.”
Khepri obeyed while she fixed the first clamp beside the loose board. He passed her the second fitting, then pressed the plank down as she tightened it against the adjoining support. They worked without needing to discuss each movement. Ibara held out a hand and he placed the right tool in it before she asked. The familiarity of it steadied him more than he wanted to admit.
The timber creaked.
Ibara checked the joint by hand, applied measured pressure and tested it again.
“Better.”
“Not perfect.”
“Perfect isn’t available tonight.”
Khepri stood at the entrance, making people stop when they tried to crowd the planks. Every delay was agonising.
The first families reached the opposite shelf.
A young woman was helping her grandfather across. The man leaned heavily on a walking staff and wanted to apologise for slowing the others, but Ibara stopped him before the words were out.
“Put your feet where I tell you. You can apologise once we’ve all survived the crossing.”
Khepri guided them to the sound boards, warning the woman about the section that would still flex beneath their combined weight. Ibara watched the outer clamp until the pair stepped onto solid stone.
The crowd behind them kept shifting forward. Every time somebody tried to pass without waiting, Khepri raised a hand and pointed towards the sagging timbers.
“If this breaks, nobody will reach the other side faster,” he told one impatient traveller.
The man seemed ready to argue, then looked into the dark gap below and stepped back.
Ibara gave Khepri an approving nod. Such a small thing. He had worked entire afternoons for one of those nods, and now it seemed enough to keep him standing.
Khepri held up two fingers to the next family. Behind them, a man tried to squeeze onto the bridge; Khepri planted himself across the entrance and refused to move.
On the far side, an old woman reached the rock shelf and raised one trembling hand to show she was across. Khepri lowered his fingers and called for the next pair.
The roots trembled as more Thralls climbed the slope beneath them. A guard hurried towards the entrance, breathing hard, and asked whether the crossing could carry another four people at once.
“No,” Khepri and Ibara answered together.
The guard looked from one to the other and began organising the next pair.
Then the next.
Tàlé arrived with the two handlers carrying Meka. The boy looked down into the darkness between the rocks and swallowed. Khepri remembered the first time Meka had trusted the carrier enough to let them fasten its restraints. He had been suspicious of every joint, and had supplied more comments than the workshop could reasonably accommodate. Hearing him complain now was strangely reassuring.
“I suppose nobody thought of putting a proper road here.”
“Keep your eyes on me,” Tàlé said.
“I was planning to.”
The handlers waited for the bridge to clear, then stepped onto it carefully.
Ibara glanced towards Khepri.
“See? Your carrier worked.”
“Until the wheel broke.”
“It carried him from the camp. It protected him while the roads were uneven. We brought him this far using what you built.”
Khepri looked at the crossing, then at the people already on the far side. He had measured the carrier by how smoothly it moved and how often its parts failed. Ibara had measured it by the boy who could travel because of it.
He looked towards Meka.
“I could have made it better.”
“Of course you could. That’s what the next version is for.”
“Assuming I get to build one.”
“You will, if you stop arguing and get across.”
She touched two fingers to his forehead in the gesture she used whenever a lesson was finished. For an instant he was back at the workbench, waiting for her to tell him what he had done wrong. Instead, she was telling him to go.
Khepri looked up at her.
“You’re coming?”
“Do you intend to ask me that every time we meet?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I had better survive simply to complain about it.”
He laughed despite his exhaustion. It was a brief, startled laugh, but it loosened something in his chest. For a moment he believed her. Of course she would come. Ibara had never left a lesson unfinished.
A faint vibration passed through the air.
Ibara’s expression changed.
“Move,” she said.
* * *
The winged Vekari rose above the ridge.
Its pale chitin caught the moonlight as it hovered over the makeshift crossing. From this distance Khepri could see the difference between it and the frenzied creatures scrambling uphill. Its head turned slowly as it examined the timbers, the people waiting on the shelf and the route beyond.
The horde was climbing towards the crossing.
Some Thralls attempted to reach it directly. Others scaled roots and broken trunks along the sides of the gap. Their movements were frantic, but the winged creature had only to wait for the right opening.
“Clear the bridge!” Ibara shouted.
The nearest travellers hurried towards the far shelf.
Simi took Khepri’s hand and led him across the reinforced boards. Behind them the handlers guided Meka towards the opposite side.
Khepri could feel the trunk shift beneath his feet.
“Don’t stop,” Simi said.
He obeyed.
They reached the far shelf and stepped onto the stone.
Then the whine began.
It came from the winged creature’s wings, thin and focused, carrying the familiar sensation of pressure gathering in the air.
Khepri looked at the oldest support.
So did Ibara.
“DOWN!” she shouted.
The burst struck.
The fastening failed, and the bridge twisted where it rested against the rock. People near its centre lost their footing as the trunk shifted beneath them.
Khepri fell onto the far shelf. Simi dropped beside him, keeping hold of his hand.
A handler reached the edge and scrambled onto solid ground. The other slipped back as the remaining boards moved.
The physician tried to guide the boy towards the far ledge. For a moment they were close enough that Khepri believed he might reach them. Meka was looking straight towards him. Khepri knew that face: the same determined impatience the boy wore whenever a trial run stalled and he wanted the machine moving again.
He lunged towards the broken edge.
Simi caught his arm.
“Khepri, no!”
“They’re there!”
He stretched out his hand.
Too far.
The remaining support shifted, and the crossing gave way. Tàlé and Meka disappeared below the edge as the timber fell into the ravine.
Khepri called their names. He called for Tàlé first, then Meka, then both together, as though the order might somehow matter.
The sound echoed between the rocks.
He waited for an answer.
None came.
Simi held him around the waist.
“We have to move.”
“We can find a path down.”
“Not before the Thralls reach us.”
He looked towards the gap. The horde was already moving along the trees to find another way onto the southern shelf.
His mind offered measurements he had no use for: the height of the ledge, the length of a fallen trunk, the distance his hand had failed to cross. He kept returning to that last distance. A little less, and he might have caught someone. A little more strength, a better crossing, a different fastening. He knew exactly how to improve things that had gone wrong. This time there was nothing in reach to repair.
Simi turned him towards her.
“Please.”
He saw that she was crying.
She had been strong for him all night. The fear in her face now made it impossible to pretend she knew a safe way out. He wanted her to tell him it would be all right, the way she had when he was younger and woke frightened by a storm. Instead, she was asking him to walk. It was the only thing she could ask.
Khepri let her pull him away.
* * *
Ibara had not made it across.
When the crossing shifted, she had stepped back from the damaged edge, lost her footing on the narrow path and fallen into the wooded slope below. Thick roots slowed her descent, and she came to rest beside the trunk of a large tree.
For a moment she lay still, listening to the distant calls from the ridge.
She could hear Khepri.
Simi too.
Both had reached the far side.
Ibara closed her eyes in relief. Khepri and Simi were on the far side. She pictured the boy turning back to argue that the crossing could still be repaired, and almost heard herself telling him to stop wasting time.
Then the clicking began below her.
Thralls were moving along the ravine, climbing roots and crossing narrow ledges in their search for another route. Ibara pushed herself upright. Her shoulder hurt, and one arm was difficult to lift.
There was no path here, only uneven ground and gaps between tree trunks.
She chose the firmer earth and moved away from the approaching sounds, using the largest trunks for cover.
A dry branch cracked beneath her boot.
The nearest creature stopped.
Ibara ran.
She rounded a great tree and nearly stepped into an open clearing.
The winged Vekari was descending ahead of her.
Its wings slowed. It landed on the forest floor with an unsettling lack of urgency, then looked towards the trees behind her.
Ibara slipped around the nearest trunk.
It was broad enough to conceal her from the clearing, with high roots forming a narrow hollow at its base. She crouched there, listening.
The creature approached.
One footstep.
Another.
Then the soft sound of its wings settling.
Ibara pressed her back against the bark. If it continued past, she might be able to reach the next group of trees before the horde climbed any higher.
The steps moved beyond her position.
She waited.
A few more steps.
Then silence.
Her breath came out slowly.
Perhaps it had not seen her.
Ibara turned.
The winged Vekari was now right before her face, close enough to see into the hollow of its dark eyes reflecting the moonlight.
Ibara could see a shallow scrape along one of its forelimbs.
Far above, people were still fleeing along the ridge.
Ibara thought of Khepri reaching for the broken bridge, still arguing that he could repair it. She had spent so many years teaching him to question every design, to find the flaw and try again. She hoped he would learn that not every failure was his to carry. Above all, she hoped he would keep walking.
The forest swallowed the sound of her voice. Far above, on the ridge, the last of the travellers were disappearing into the trees.
A little later, the pale-winged creature rose above the trees again and turned towards the distant movement of the survivors. No sign of Ibara remained beneath the canopy.