The funeral chains tore the first stone out of Wake Court and threw it at Orra's hunters.
"Under the rails, now!" Orra shouted.
The stone broke where two hunters had been standing. White saltglass burst across the court, and water rose through the hole with black-green light folded inside it.
Aylin dropped to one knee and opened Pell's shirt on the driest patch she could find. Jiang slid out with his failed flipper still supported by the cloth.
He wanted back inside the shirt. His body wanted it more. The iron rails overhead began rolling, so he settled for remaining alive and complained with one hoarse call.
"I agree," Aylin said. "The accommodations have declined."
Orra pointed her bare hook at the blue shard in Aylin's hand. "Put that in the sand trough."
"The chain followed it through the gate."
"That is why I want it out of your hand."
Aylin placed the shard in a waist-high trough filled with dry white salt. The nearest chain twitched toward it, then dragged itself back toward the split floor.
Orra saw the choice and changed her order. "Leave it there. Cut every wet cord."
Palace Whitewake wore narrow oath cords from belt to wrist, white braid stiffened with salt so a fallen hunter could be hauled clear of a flood bar. The cords had been dry when the funeral watch began. Runoff from the broken floor soaked them before anyone reached the knots.
The first cord pulled tight around a hunter's waist.
He cut at it. The braid rolled under his knife and dragged him toward the descending inner bar.
Dagna caught his shoulder with her spear shaft. Tovin seized the other hunter as a hook carriage rolled above them, its iron point hunting along the wet cords instead of the royal path.
"Those lines know your belts," Dagna told Orra.
"They know every Whitewake oath in the palace."
"Then your gate has excellent manners. It is killing family first."
The inner flood bar dropped another handspan.
Jiang watched the nearest hook pass over his head. Torchlight struck the white feathers of his belly and threw glare into every standing face. His black back vanished beneath the carriage shadow. No magic helped him. An emperor penguin had been built to disappear between black water and bright ice, and palace engineers had apparently never considered being attacked by one.
There were days when his species felt less like a sentence.
This was not quite one of them. The floor was freezing his feet, and he could smell the dry salt around Aylin's shard while hunger tightened his empty belly.
Brann lay flat beside the broken stone. "Court drains feed under the rails. Open them and the old channel loses water."
"The drain wheels are on the wall," Orra said.
"Those are for rain. Your funeral channels empty from below."
He pointed under a moving rail at a row of copper caps close to the floor. Each cap had a narrow mouth meant for a hooked maintenance key.
Jiang looked at Ossin's bent hook.
Ossin looked at the space beneath the rail. "You will not enjoy carrying that."
Jiang opened his beak.
"That is a fair answer."
Ossin pushed the handle across the floor. Jiang caught its leather wrap, turned his head sideways, and dragged. The hook weighed enough to pull his cracked beak toward the stone. He gave up on dignity, laid his neck across the handle, and shoved with his breast.
Above him, the court became boots, swinging chains, and iron points. His countershaded body slipped through their moving shadows. A palace hunter reached for him and lost sight of the white belly in the torch glare before his hand came down.
"Do not grab him," Aylin called. "Show him the cap."
The hunter slapped the floor beside the nearest copper mouth instead. Jiang altered course.
Behind him, Dagna drove the butt of her spear under the inner flood bar. The shaft bowed at once.
"It will not hold," Orra warned.
"I noticed that as well."
A white-lacquer fitting wrapped the spear below its head. Waves and three cut teeth marked it as portable proof that Dagna had once held a captain's line. The fitting was the only part broad enough to enter the funeral carriage brake without being sheared through.
Orra saw where Dagna was looking. "Break that and no palace line will read your standing."
Dagna tore the fitting from her spear with both hands. "Your palace line is trying to eat you. I can survive its opinion."
She drove the white-lacquer piece into the carriage track.
Iron crushed lacquer. The rail stopped with a scream that shook chips from the court arches. Dagna's captain teeth split down the middle, wedged too deep to recover.
One white tooth sprang free and spun past her boot. Dagna watched it disappear into the black water. She had carried that fitting through hunts where nobody knew her face and storms where spoken rank meant nothing. Any Whitewake line could read those teeth. Without them, she would have to enter the next gate as a stranger and hope somebody cared to listen.
She put her shoulder against the spear and held the carriage anyway.
The pause gave Tovin room to pull one trapped hunter away from the bar. His useful hand held the man's belt. The second wet oath cord whipped around his boots and caught Orra behind the knee.
The brake line fell beside Tovin's injured hand.
He caught it with the injured hand.
The bandage darkened before he had wrapped the rope twice. His fingers opened, closed, and refused to open again.
"Tovin, let that go," Dagna ordered.
"When she is clear."
Orra drove her hook into a floor joint, but the wet cord dragged her toward the bar. The iron teeth reached her shoulder. She twisted sideways, protecting the hunter still pinned beneath her, and lost her hook from the joint.
Aylin ran past the sand trough.
Orra saw her coming and reached for a knife.
"Use it on the cord," Aylin said.
She threw herself between the bar teeth and the fallen hunter. Her injured arm failed when she tried to lift him. She shifted, took his coat in her good hand, and dragged him across her thigh while the bar scraped sparks from the buckle at her back.
Orra cut at the cord around her own leg. Black-green water welled between the white fibers and closed each shallow slice.
"It is feeding from the groove," Brann said.
Rian dropped beside him. "Tell me what to break."
"Copper lip first. Stone after."
Rian jammed the metal edge of his empty road packet beneath the lip. Brann struck it with a loose stone, using his stiff fingers only to keep the angle. The copper peeled up far enough for water to hiss beneath it.
Ista poured furnace sand into the opening.
Black-green light recoiled along the groove. The oath cord at Orra's leg loosened, but the carriage above Jiang started moving again. Dagna's broken fitting was being ground into white dust.
Jiang reached the first drain cap.
He fitted Ossin's hook point into the copper mouth and pushed the handle with his chest. The cap resisted. His unreliable foot slid through wet salt, and the failed flipper knocked its cradle against the floor.
Pain made his next call ugly.
Ossin dropped to his belly on the other side of the rail. "Leave the handle. Take the leather."
Jiang bit the wrap and held it still.
Ossin caught the exposed iron with both hands and twisted. The cap turned. Court water plunged through the opening, pulling a black-green thread after it.
The thread wrapped the hook point.
Ossin could release the tool and leave the channel connected, or keep turning while the iron took the strain. He glanced once at the empty place where his horn had hung.
"Whitewake has lost prettier things today."
He wrenched the hook sideways.
The bent shaft snapped near his hands. Its point vanished down the drain with the hostile thread. Ossin remained holding a useless leather-wrapped stump.
Across Wake Court, wet oath cords sagged.
Tovin hauled the brake line with his injured hand until Orra's boot cleared the flood bar. Dagna and Aylin dragged both hunters into the narrowing dry lane. Only then did he release the rope.
His curled fingers remained around nothing.
Blood crept through the old bandage and ran into his sleeve. Tovin kept the hand against his chest, as if hiding it could postpone the moment when Dagna learned what the rescue had taken.
Dagna reached for the bandage. Tovin tucked the hand against his chest before she could see all of it.
"Later," he said. "I would like to keep some lies available."
Ista crossed the court, kicking sand into every exposed groove. Rian and Brann peeled the second copper lip together. Palace hunters copied their work instead of waiting for Orra to explain why.
The last connected oath cord fell quiet.
Overhead, the mourning carriages stopped. The inner flood bar hung crooked above Aylin's shoulder. She shoved the trapped hunter clear and crawled out before the weakened spear shaft slipped.
Orra took her feet without offering a hand.
"You kept my hunter alive," she said.
"So did your captain fitting, Tovin's hand, Ossin's hook, and everyone opening your drains."
Orra looked at the crushed white lacquer in the track, then at Dagna's bare spear.
"Saving us changes my tactics," Orra said. "It does not settle your face."
Aylin retrieved the blue shard from the dry salt. "I did not pull him out for a verdict."
Stone knocked beneath Jiang's feet.
Once beneath his feet. Then again.
The funeral chains no longer moved, but the black slot beneath the throne road widened. Water drained from Wake Court toward it, carrying white lacquer dust and the last shreds of Orra's severed oath cords.
Brann pressed his damaged fingers to the stone. "That is not a wheel."
The road split along a hidden seam.
A black door rose from beneath the floor, streaming old crown water. Beyond it, somewhere under the palace throne, a living human heart beat through the Kingwell.