The knife that killed me required a carrying policy.
This was not a problem I had expected to survive long enough to encounter.
Kest looked at the blood-darkened blade lying beside my base.
“You are not putting it inside yourself.”
“I possess storage space.”
“You possess an eating problem.”
“Those are separate features.”
Tallow nodded firmly at Kest.
The vote remained against me.
Greymarrow’s living stone carried the argument across the heart platform.
The black clamp had sagged away from the conduit. All three authority jaws stood powerless now, but I still disliked being this close to them.
I disliked the Continuance conduits more.
The network had already recorded:
SOURCE ANCHOR LOST
RESERVED SLOT 10 — RETAINED
CONTINUANCE EXCEPTION RECORDED
A successful operation, apparently, was merely a different category of problem.
Kest crouched beside the fallen clamp.
“What about this?”
One detached locking plate had curled away from the heart when the final jaw released.
Black metal.
Thin enough to bend.
Wide enough to cover the knife’s edge.
I touched it with my keyplate.
Inert.
No active authority.
No witness filament.
No reason for my fibers to develop opinions about eating it.
“Useful.”
Kest tore the loose plate free using both rear claws and her good wing-claw.
Her braced wing remained tight against her body.
Even so, the movement made her wince.
“Careful.”
She gave me a flat look.
“You pulled a knife out of a dungeon heart five minutes ago.”
“That does not invalidate ergonomics.”
Tallow heated the plate until the metal softened.
Kest folded it around the blade.
Ugly.
Temporary.
Enough to cover the edge while leaving the hilt and witness tang exposed.
Evidence without an invitation to consume it.
I approved.
Kest lifted the wrapped knife.
“You are carrying it.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“No.”
“I meant you specifically.”
“I know.”
We compromised.
She slid the knife through an iron loop along my rear band, blade outside my hollow, hilt secured beneath the repaired strap.
The arrangement was uncomfortable.
So was being murdered.
I accepted it.
Above us, one black network conduit pulsed.
White light traveled through the exposed transfer line.
Away from Greymarrow.
A response followed.
The local review panel lit.
CONTINUANCE EXCEPTION — TRANSMITTED
Then:
AWAITING CENTRAL DISPOSITION
Kest read it.
“Central.”
“Yes.”
“Veyr?”
“Probably not.”
That was the important part.
Veyr had field reclamation authority.
The installation stamp on my knife had named something higher.
OFFICE OF CONTINUANCE
If the exception had reached that office, the people responsible for nine completed receiver transfers were about to learn that Greymarrow had stopped cooperating.
Tallow tapped my side once.
Leave?
“Yes.”
The heart platform had given us what we came for.
Remaining beside an active alarm because it might become informative was exactly the sort of judgment that got appraisers killed.
I had already tested that theory once.
We climbed toward the review gallery.
Kest led.
I pulled myself from step to step with pale fibers.
No Stored Tension.
Tallow came behind me, using the wall whenever his injured leg weakened.
At the gallery, Greymarrow’s living stone remained beneath my base.
I stopped.
“Before we cross the shielding.”
Kest turned.
“If you are going to tell me you lose your voice again, I remember.”
“I am pleased someone does.”
“What?”
“If the network changes while we are beyond Greymarrow’s living veins, watch the panels. Do not assume I can explain immediately.”
Kest looked toward the black conduits.
“You expect an answer before we get back.”
“I expect an organization with nine successful transfers to possess procedures.”
“That was not reassuring.”
“It was not intended to be.”
We crossed the Manual Heart Review door.
A few yards later, Greymarrow’s warmth vanished.
I tried one sentence anyway.
My lid produced a wooden clack.
Kest looked back.
“Yes, yes. Silent chest.”
One knock.
Correct.
She took my strap along the steepest section of the bridge while I used my fibers to keep myself aligned.
Tallow limped behind us.
The Continuance manifold waited at the second junction.
Nine sealed plates.
Slot ten glowing blue.
Slot eleven— white.
Kest stopped.
Tallow nearly walked into her.
I scraped forward and placed my keyplate against the eleventh panel.
Contact opened the local status.
RECEIVER SLOT 11
STATUS: HELD
That was new.
Kest crouched.
“What?”
No living floor.
I cleared dust from the stone.
11 NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
Her expression changed.
“Another dungeon?”
I touched the plate again.
More fields surfaced.
RESERVATION SOURCE: NONE
HOLD BASIS: CONTINUANCE EXCEPTION
I wrote:
NOT ANOTHER SOURCE.
Then:
EXCEPTION HOLD.
Kest read it twice.
“For Greymarrow?”
One knock.
Possibly.
I added:
PURPOSE UNKNOWN.
Precision first.
Fear could wait.
The network had not simply noticed us.
It had removed its last free receiver from ordinary availability.
The manifold flashed again.
Slot ten.
SOURCE: GREYMARROW
TRANSFER STATE: PENDING
Then:
SOURCE INTEGRITY: DEGRADED
And:
FIELD RECOVERY REQUIRED
Kest exhaled.
“That sounds like people.”
One knock.
Yes.
The display changed before I could write more.
CURRENT FIELD SCHEDULE: SIX DAYS
Then:
PRIORITY REVIEW IN PROGRESS
We waited.
Tallow lowered himself to the stone instead of forcing the bad leg to hold him upright.
Kest remained standing.
Barely.
Her wing brace had shifted during the heart operation. The outer ironwood splint held, but a thin crack had opened through the resin near its lower edge.
She caught me looking.
“Later.”
Two knocks.
No.
“Calder.”
I pointed one fiber at Tallow.
Then her brace.
Then toward the Custodial Office.
Her expression softened by approximately nothing.
“We are not repairing ourselves in the middle of their network.”
One knock.
Agreed.
Not here.
But soon.
The manifold flashed.
PRIORITY REVIEW COMPLETE
My boards went still.
CURRENT FIELD SCHEDULE: SUPERSEDED
Then:
CONTINUANCE RECOVERY PROTOCOL
SOURCE: GREYMARROW
STATUS: ACTIVE
A timer appeared.
ESTIMATED FIELD ARRIVAL: 38:12:44
Thirty-eight hours.
Not six days.
Kest stared at the numbers.
Then at me.
“Oh.”
A precise professional assessment.
Tallow rose too quickly.
His injured leg folded beneath him.
Kest caught his shoulder before he struck the manifold.
He squeaked in protest.
“Complain later.”
She shifted him against her good side.
I touched the panel again.
A new section had opened.
RECOVERY OBJECTIVES
1. SECURE LEGACY WITNESS
2. RESTORE SOURCE ANCHOR
3. PRESERVE CUSTODIAL CONTINUITY
4. PREVENT LOCAL SEVERANCE
No residents.
No consent.
No acknowledgment that Greymarrow had refused.
The Office appeared quite clear about what mattered.
I scratched into the dust.
THEY WANT ME ALIVE.
Kest read it.
“That part we knew.”
I added:
RESTORE SOURCE ANCHOR.
Then, after a moment:
PROBABLY KNIFE.
Her gaze moved to the wrapped blade secured outside my rear strap.
Good.
Inference labeled as inference.
I wrote:
PRESERVE NERA'S OFFICE.
Kest’s expression hardened.
“And local severance?”
I touched the final objective again.
Nothing expanded.
I wrote:
UNKNOWN.
Then:
MOVE.
No argument.
Kest pulled.
I crawled.
Tallow limped beside us once he refused further assistance.
The bridge seemed steeper going upward.
Possibly because urgency had acquired a number.
Thirty-eight hours.
When blue veins finally returned beneath my base, Greymarrow’s presence rushed into me.
Relief.
Knife gone.
“Yes.”
Then it touched the urgency carried in my thoughts.
Relief disappeared.
Soon.
“Yes.”
Kest stopped dragging me.
“You can talk again. Excellent. Tell me we read the timer wrong.”
“We did not.”
“Worth asking.”
The Custodial Office opened ahead.
Marda stood inside.
Pebble and Rill beneath her.
Nera Holt was no longer sitting fully inside the preservation frame.
She was halfway out.
Three additional silver filaments had withdrawn.
Her right hand remained free.
Now her left leg was free as well.
It did not support her.
Marda had positioned one broad foreclaw beneath the knee so the limb would not hang uselessly.
Nera looked toward us.
Then at the wrapped knife fixed to my rear strap.
“You got it out.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes closed.
Only for a second.
Then opened.
“The release started.”
“I know.”
“It stopped.”
That was not the sentence I wanted.
I crossed the living floor toward her.
The release panel displayed:
LOCAL CUSTODIAN RELEASE — ACCEPTED
Below:
PHYSICAL RELEASE: PAUSED
CAUSE: CONTINUANCE EXCEPTION HOLD
I read it carefully.
Accepted had not changed back to denied.
That mattered.
“The Office did not cancel your release.”
Nera looked at me.
“It froze it.”
“Yes.”
The local decision still stood.
Greymarrow had released her.
The residents had witnessed it.
Nera had requested it.
The external system had not reversed any of those things.
It had frozen the machinery carrying the decision out.
Kest made a sound that should probably not have been directed at administrative equipment.
Nera looked past us.
“What happened?”
“The Office noticed the anchor loss.”
“How long?”
“Approximately thirty-eight hours.”
Her expression went blank.
Not fear.
Calculation.
“That is impossible.”
“I have developed an unfortunate relationship with that word.”
“No.”
She leaned forward against the remaining restraints.
“I mean the travel time.”
I stopped.
Nera looked toward the open Keeper Way.
“Even with priority authorization, the nearest Continuance staging site was four days away when they put me under.”
“That was eighteen years ago.”
“Yes.”
Kest looked between us.
“So either they built one closer—”
“Or a recovery team is already nearby,” Nera finished.
Silence.
Marda lowered her head.
“Heart crew?”
“Possibly,” Nera said. “But the Office superseded Veyr’s schedule. The people coming now may not be his original crew at all.”
That was worse.
Veyr had become understandable.
Field authority.
Reclamation.
Professional habits I recognized.
The Office of Continuance remained a shape behind records.
Thirty-eight hours away.
I touched the release panel.
No Signal Recognition.
No hidden answers.
Only the exception state.
PREVENT LOCAL SEVERANCE
There it was again.
“Nera. What is local severance?”
“I don’t know.”
She did not soften the answer.
That frightened me more than speculation would have.
“You never used that term?”
“No.”
She looked toward the black network conduits beyond the Keeper Way.
“When I went under, Continuance required a transfer to an external receiver. There was no local severance procedure.”
Kest folded her good wing.
“So they added something.”
“During the eighteen years I was asleep.”
Greymarrow cooled beneath us.
I reviewed what we knew.
We had removed my knife.
Broken all three authority jaws.
Started Nera’s release.
The Continuance network still believed there was one more local action capable of disrupting the transfer badly enough that its recovery team had explicit orders to prevent it.
Something here.
Inside Greymarrow.
Something neither Nera nor I yet understood.
That made it important.
Possibly useful.
Certainly dangerous.
“Can this office identify it?” I asked.
Nera shook her head.
“Not from the release console.”
Marda pointed toward the Keeper Way.
“Below?”
“Maybe.”
Kest looked at me.
“You are going to say we have to go back.”
“No.”
Everyone stared.
Even Greymarrow seemed surprised.
“We have thirty-eight hours,” I said. “Nera cannot stand. Kest’s brace is cracking. Tallow’s leg is worse.”
Tallow looked offended by the factual accuracy.
“The Office knows the source anchor is gone. We gain nothing by turning three injured people into three immobile people before we understand the next mechanism.”
Kest waited.
“For once, the next priority is not another hidden machine.”
Marda nodded.
“Box learns.”
“A disturbing allegation.”
Nera leaned back into the frame.
“And the exception?”
“It will still exist after we can walk properly.”
“You cannot know that.”
“No.”
I turned toward the route back to the mendery.
“But I know what happens when I treat injuries as scheduling problems.”
Kest said nothing.
She did not need to.
The white mark had already completed that argument.
Greymarrow warmed beneath us.
Repair.
Tallow tapped twice against the floor.
Tok-tok.
Marda shifted Nera more securely.
Pebble took Nera’s freed hand.
Rill reached toward the wrapped appraisal knife.
Four voices objected at once.
My contribution was a very loud clack.
Rill withdrew all six fingers.
We had thirty-eight hours.
Not six days.
Somewhere nearby, an Office of Continuance recovery team was preparing to secure my legacy witness, restore Greymarrow’s source anchor, preserve Nera’s custodial continuity, and prevent something called local severance.
For once, the next priority was not another hidden mechanism.
We were going to repair ourselves.
Then we were going to find out what the Office was afraid we might cut.