Three heavy blows struck the iron-shod wood.

  August stood. The armor held him rigid, a second skeleton of cold steel that drank the startle reflex and grounded it into the floor. He looked at Bella. She is by the workbench, her good hand resting on a pair of shears and her injured one tucked into the fold of her cloak. She gave a sharp, silent nod.

  August stepped to the door and threw the bolt.

  Wind drove the heavy timber inward, carrying a spray of dry snow and a man wrapped in guild-gray wool. The stranger stamped his boots, shedding slush onto the oil-stained floor, and he looked not at the faces of the hosts but at the tools, and then at the iron shell encasing August.

  "Elmsworth’s wake," the man said. It was a statement of fact. He pulled a glove off with his teeth, revealing fingers stained with ink and sealing wax. "I was told the three I need smell of oil and trouble."

  "You have found oil," Bella said, remaining by the bench. "Speak plainly, before trouble finds you."

  The man reached into his tunic and slapped a packet onto the nearest sawhorse. The seal was heavy, red wax stamped with a scale balancing a hammer.

  "Merchant’s Guild," he said. "They require your names on paper. They require your hands on stone."

  Valerius looked up from his scroll. The lantern light cast deep hollows beneath his eyes, dark as the ink on his maps. "Names are cheap. Which corridor of power buys us today?"

  "A coach waits at Southgate," the courier said, ignoring the scholar's bitterness. "Ironstone route. A pass folded in the storm three days ago. Cargo lost, Aetheric glass. Council-grade lenses intended for the Observatory."

  Bella’s breath caught, a sharp intake of air like a blade drawn from a sheath. "Ironstone."

  August’s eyes cut to Valerius. The scholar’s hand tightened on the cylinder, for the whatever was inside marked the peaks as the first fracture point, the wound in the world where the bone was thinnest.

  "That is our road already," August said.

  "Of course it is," Valerius murmured. His thin smile was stripped of joy. "The world possesses a grim sense of humor."

  "The Guild wants what is theirs, before scavengers take it," the courier continued. "The storm broke the old road. They say the mountain eats the pass."

  "Scavengers means rival crews," Bella said. She moved to the packet, breaking the seal with her thumb. She winced, the motion jarring her swollen hand, but she did not stop. "Who works the range?"

  "Rook," Valerius said. "If he is within twenty miles of coin, he will show his teeth."

  "Rook is a butcher with a prybar," Bella said. She looked at the courier. "If he reaches for my line, I will put a spike through his foot. Does the Guild cover the cleanup?"

  "The Guild covers results." The courier tapped the paper. "Enough coin to settle a shop’s debt twice over. Enough to buy silence in the right halls. But you leave within the hour."

  "We will take coin," Bella said. "Not promises. I want the claim signed in iron ink. And a witness."

  "You shall have your marks."

  Bella turned to August. She eyed the steel encasing his chest, the heavy articulated joints of the arms. "Can you climb in that? It is five stone of dead weight."

  August flexed his hand. The springs on the bracer exhaled, a smooth, oiled release of pressure. "I can climb. I can hold. The question is whether the mountain will keep its temper."

  "Mountains keep nothing," Bella said, turning back to her tools. "We do."

  She grabbed a coil of alchemy-spun rope and tossed it to him. He caught it one-handed. The impact did not jar his shoulder, for the armor took the load.

  "Pack the wedges," she told Valerius. "The iron ones. The grid is dying; I do not trust Aether-clamps to hold my weight over a drop."

  Valerius shoved the cylinder into his deep coat pocket. "Let the Guild give us coin and paper," he said to the room. "We were going regardless."

  The coach was a box of rattling timber and cold drafts. It smelled of wet wool, horse sweat, and the stale tobacco of the driver. They rolled out of Antheia before the sun had fully bleached the gray out of the sky.

  The city fell away, and the Great Lamp Gate was a flicker of sullen orange in the rear window, struggling against the dawn fog. Beyond the boundary, the world turned honest.

  Cold.

  August sat opposite Bella. She had her eyes closed, her head resting against the frame. Her injured hand was wrapped in a fresh bandage, thick and clumsy, and she held it against her stomach to stop the vibration of the wheels from shaking it.

  Valerius had a map spread across his knees, weighting the corners with a compass and a flask.

  "The old pass is not carved by hands like ours," the scholar said, and he traced a line that jagged up into the white void of the paper. "The joints are too clean. The angles are wrong."

  "Wrong how?" August asked. The breastplate pressed against his ribs, tight and reassuring. It did not breathe, so he did not have to worry about it suffocating.

  "As if the stone was poured," Valerius said. "As if the mountain softened and took a mold. First Dominion architecture was not built brick by brick. They sang the walls into shape."

  "Then it is brittle now," Bella said without opening her eyes. "If it was cast by Aether, and the field is thinning..."

  "...then the work remembers hunger," Valerius finished. "It wants to return to dust."

  The carriage lurched, striking a rut deep enough to swallow a boot. August braced his hand against the roof, and the springs of his armor sang a high, tension-filled note, a mechanical harmony to the deep groan of the wood.

  "Driver!" Valerius shouted.

  "‘Tis rock!" the man shouted back from the box, his voice snatched by the wind. "It falls where it likes!"

  "Rock falls when it is asked," August muttered.

  "And who asks it?" the driver called, hearing more than he should.

  "Men with poor sense," August said, watching Bella’s face tighten as the wheel slammed down again.

  "Or men who want our pay," she said softly.

  They stopped at a foothill post at dusk, a fortified yard with walls of rough-cut timber and braziers burning peat that smoked more than it heated. The men there stared, looking at Bella’s silk gown, ruined at the hem and peeking from under her heavy travel coat, and they looked at Valerius’s soft scholar’s hands.

  Mostly they looked at August.

  He moved heavy. The armor added width to his shoulders, and the way he walked, planting each foot flat, testing the earth, made him look like a beast of siege work. He did not take the coat off, and the steel stayed hidden, a secret weight.

  They ate stew that tasted of scorched onions and slept in a loft above the stables. August did not sleep, but lay on the straw, listening to the wind shear against the mountain peaks above.

  The sensation came to him not as sound, but as pressure, a tightening band behind the eyes that throbbed in time with the wind. The stone was up there, and it was screaming.

  Dawn broke gray and ash-pale, stripping the snow from the lower slopes to leave bare black rock that gleamed like wet iron.

  They left the carriage and climbed.

  The air thinned and turned sharp, biting at the back of the throat. August walked point, breaking the trail. The armor’s assist-springs took the burden of the ascent, humming quietly with every step. He was a machine of meat and steel, driving upward.

  Bella followed, but she struggled. The slope required two hands, and she only had one. She jammed her elbow into crevices, using the bone as a pivot, dragging herself up. August stopped at a high shelf, reaching back.

  "Take my hand," he said.

  "I can manage."

  "Take it."

  She grabbed his gauntlet. He pulled. It was not human strength. The fluid-drives groaned under the load, and she flew up the last three feet, landing against his chest. Steel met brass buttons with a dull chime.

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  "You are heavy," she said, breathless.

  "I am solid."

  "Same thing." She pushed off him, adjusting her pack. "Show me your knot. If the load line snaps, I will break my neck."

  August held up the rope. "Borin taught me. Same knot for hoisting stone."

  "Stone does not flail. A woman does. Again."

  He retied it. His fingers were stiff inside the gloves, but the muscle memory was there. Loop, twist, lock.

  "Better," she said. She looked up, and the pass opened ahead, a throat of smooth, pale gray stone that rose vertically on both sides.

  It was not natural. Valerius was right. The walls were seamless, bearing no chisel marks, no mortar. The rock had a faint, oily sheen to it, iridescent under the gray sky.

  "First Dominion," Valerius whispered. He pulled a glove off and touched the wall. "Feel it. Cold. Too cold."

  August placed his palm against the stone.

  It did not hum, but sucked; it felt like touching a hungry mouth. The vibration in his skull spiked, a jagged needle of pain.

  "It is listening," August said, and he pulled his hand back.

  "Do not start with that," Bella said. She was looking at the ground. "Tell me what it does."

  "It waits," August said. "Like a beast that’s been kicked too often."

  "Tracks," Valerius said, pointing to a patch of spindrift snow in the lee of a boulder. "Boots. Hobnailed."

  "Rook," Bella said. "How fresh?"

  "Hour. Maybe less."

  They moved faster. The wind screamed through the narrow gap, trying to push them back, but they rounded a bend and the world dropped away.

  The fissure split the pass in two, a jagged, black wound in the smooth Dominion stone, ten yards across and dropping into darkness. The storm had torn the mountain open.

  The geometry of the disaster was clear and unforgiving. They stood on the near lip of the chasm. On the far side, ten yards away, the old road had sheared off. The debris had slid down into the throat of the crack. Caught on a narrow ledge deep in the dark, wedged between two grinding plates near the far wall, was a crate wrapped in oilcloth.

  "There," Bella said, pulling her spyglass. "Two crates. One split. I see glass."

  "And I see company," Valerius said.

  Figures emerged from the rocks on the far rim of the fissure. Six of them, clad in rough leathers, furs, and iron studs. They carried prybars and coils of heavy hemp rope.

  The leader stepped to the edge. He was broad, wearing a Warden’s coat with the badges ripped off, leaving darker patches on the faded blue wool. His face was a map of old violence, nose broken twice, a scar dragging his left eye down.

  Rook.

  "Stand off," the mercenary shouted. His voice carried over the wind, flat and hard. "That pit is mine."

  Bella stepped forward. "Your name is not on the seal. So you can bark elsewhere."

  Rook smiled, but the expression held no mirth. "Seals freeze in weather like this. Men misplace papers. Men fall."

  "Merchant’s Guild marks do not 'misplace'," Valerius called out. "They punish."

  "Punish who?" Rook spat. "A crew with no address? I see a scholar, a cripple, and a mule." He looked at August. "That is a lot of coat for a mason."

  "Look at his face, not his coat," Bella said. "He has told you once."

  "I am not here for talk," Rook said. He uncoiled a length of chain from his belt. "I am here for glass worth more than your three lives."

  "Then you have made a poor trade," Valerius said.

  Rook leaned out over the drop. "I heard of you. The scholar part historian, the tinkerer, and the stone-singer."

  August stepped to the lip of the fissure. He felt the void below. He felt the stone trembling, unstable, ready to sheer.

  "Call me not that," August said.

  "Why? It frightens you?" Rook laughed, and he signaled his men. Two of them moved toward the instability on the far wall, hammers raised to drive pitons into the fractured rock.

  "Step near my line and I will gut you with a chisel," Bella shouted.

  "Take the mouthy one’s rope," Rook ordered. "Tie her if she wriggles."

  "Do it and the Guild shall hang you from your own belt," Valerius snapped.

  "The Guild is not up here," Rook said. "The mountain is."

  One of Rook’s men swung a hammer. He struck the far lip of the fissure, driving a spike.

  The mountain answered.

  It gave no deep-throated warning, only a high, tearing scream of rock parting from rock. The First Dominion stone, starving and brittle, shattered under the blow, and the vibration traveled instantly, hitting the fault line of the storm-damage.

  "Back!" August roared.

  The ledge under Rook’s men dissolved. The entire far wall of the fissure groaned and began to tilt inward. Tons of rock, ice, and ancient masonry detached, sliding toward the darkness where the crates waited.

  "It is going!" Bella screamed. "The cargo!"

  August did not think. He did not weigh the odds. He moved.

  He slammed both gauntleted hands onto the rock at his feet. He did not reach for the hammer. He reached for the Song.

  He screamed.

  It was a demand. He poured his blood, his heat, his very breath into the starving stone. He became the Keystone.

  Stop.

  The command hit the stone like a physical blow. His vision whitened. The armor’s joints locked, gears hissing as they took the strain of his convulsing muscles.

  Across the gap, the falling slide paused.

  It hung there, a thousand tons of rock, suspended by a frequency. The stone groaned, fighting him, heavy with the weight of gravity and age. It wanted to fall. August held it up with his mind and his veins.

  Blood burst from his nose. It spattered the gray rock.

  "Tie in," August choked out. His voice was wet.

  "No," Bella said, and she was at his side. "If it seals, the cargo is gone. You cannot hold this."

  "I am holding it." His teeth were red. "Go."

  "August—"

  "Tie in!"

  She did not argue. She snapped her carabiner to the line at his waist. The armor had a winch-drum built into the backplate. She checked the buckle.

  "Look at me," she said.

  He turned his head. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils blown wide. He was shaking, a high-frequency tremor that rattled the steel plates.

  "Hold," she commanded. She pressed her palm flat against his breastplate. Hard.

  She was not touching the steel. She was pressing the songbird into his ribs.

  August felt it. A point of pressure. An anchor.

  "I am holding," he rasped.

  "Rook! Call them off!" Valerius yelled across the gap.

  Rook was scrambling back from the edge, his face pale. "Or what, scholar? You will curse me to death?"

  "Stone, listen," August growled. The headache was a blinding sun in his skull.

  "I am going," Bella said. She stepped off the ledge.

  She dropped into the dark.

  The rope went taut. August staggered, the weight of her pulling him forward, the weight of the mountain pushing him down. The assist-springs in his legs whined, locking him upright. He was the fulcrum.

  He could not see her. He could only feel her weight on the line, swinging across the void toward the far wall where the crates lay.

  "Valerius," August gritted out. "Watch... Rook."

  "I am," the scholar said. He had drawn a pistol, a heavy, single-shot wheel-lock. He held it with two hands, aiming at the far side.

  Moments stretched.

  The rockslide groaned, and pebbles skittered down. Every shift was a hammer blow to August’s focus. He fed the stone more. He felt the cold creep into his arm, the old wither-ache flaring in the limb that had been healed. The stone drank him.

  "I have got it," Bella’s voice echoed from below, distorted by the wind.

  "How many?" Valerius called.

  "Two. One split. The lenses are whole."

  "Hurry," August whispered. Blood dripped from his chin onto his breastplate.

  "If I hurry, I drop it," Bella’s voice came back, sharp and calm. "If I drop it, we die for nothing."

  On the far side, Rook stood up. He saw August shaking. He saw the blood.

  "He cooks himself," Rook shouted to his scattered men. "Cut the line! The rock will take them!"

  "Do not," Valerius warned, thumbing the hammer of his pistol.

  "You have one shot, old man," Rook sneered. He pulled a knife, a jagged piece of scrap metal with a leather-wrapped handle. He moved toward the edge where Bella’s rope rubbed against the far lip of the chasm.

  "Now!" Rook yelled.

  August felt the intent. He felt the boots on the stone.

  He could not let go of the slide. If he did, Bella was buried.

  But he had two hands.

  He kept his left hand grounded, holding the mountain. He lifted his right hand. The armor groaned, the gears complaining against the conflicting torque.

  He focused not on the slide, but on the ledge under Rook’s feet.

  "Stone—" August roared.

  Rook laughed. "What—"

  August slammed his fist into the ground.

  Break.

  He did not ask the stone to hold. He asked it to die.

  The pulse traveled through the earth, under the fissure, and hit the shelf on the far side. The stone, already brittle, shattered. It turned to gravel instantly.

  Rook’s eyes went wide. The ground simply ceased to exist beneath him.

  "Back! BACK—"

  He scrambled, clawing at the air, but gravity was faster. He fell. His men fled, shouting, as the ledge dusted into the fissure.

  Rook did not scream. He just vanished into the dark.

  August sagged. The effort nearly broke him. The slide on the left groaned, slipping a foot.

  "Bella. Up," he gasped. He hit the drum brake.

  The gears bit. The engine, a coil of tempered steel wound tight, began to reel her in.

  "Tie the crate to me," she called.

  "No time."

  "Then it goes first. I go second."

  "Stubborn devil."

  "Yes. Pull."

  He hauled. His muscles burned. The armor did the heavy lifting, but his body was the frame. He felt his bones compressing.

  The crate cleared the lip. Valerius grabbed it, dragging it back.

  Then Bella.

  She scrambled over the edge, breathless, covered in dust. She collapsed against him.

  "I am here," she gasped.

  August let go.

  The rockslide descended with a violence that shook the teeth in their skulls, a concussion of ruin that drowned the wind. The fissure filled with a cloud of pulverized rock and snow. The wind howled, burying the place where Rook had stood.

  August fell to his knees. The silence rushed back in.

  "I have got you," he whispered.

  Bella reached out. She placed her hand on his chest, right over the bird. She felt his heart slamming against the steel, a frantic, terrified rhythm.

  "I know," she said.

  August looked at his hands, encased in metal, and saw not the strength of the iron but the tremor that rattled the gauntlets against his knees. He had held the mountain, but the mountain had taken a piece of him in payment. A deep, hollowing ache settled in his marrow, a silence where the song usually lived.

  He felt less than human. A thing of purpose, used and emptied.

  "August," Bella said softly. She did not move her hand from his chest.

  He looked up. Her face was smeared with dust, her hair torn by the wind, but her eyes were steady. She saw the hollowness. She did not look away.

  "You are here," she said. "Not the stone. You."

  He let out a breath he did not know he held, and the shaking began to slow.

  Antheia was gray slush and coal smoke.

  They rode back in the same carriage, but the silence was different now; it was not tense, but heavy, solid.

  August had the armor stripped off, stowed in the trunk. He wore his wool coat, but he felt naked without the steel. He wiped the last of the dried blood from his nose with a rag.

  Bella cleaned the lenses. They were beautiful things, discs of polished crystal, etched with microscopic gold lattices. Council-grade. She handled them with reverence, her bruised hand moving slow and careful.

  "We did it," Valerius said. He looked older. The gray in his beard seemed to have spread in the last three days. "Rook is gone."

  "The mountain took him," August said. "I just opened the door."

  They reached the city gates at evening. The lamps were lit, but they were dim. Aether-starved.

  News traveled faster than carriages.

  Street criers were already shouting on the corners.

  "—THE GUILD’S SURE HANDS—THE IRONSTONE RECOVERY—READ IT, READ IT! TRIO SAVES THE GLASS!"

  Valerius leaned out the window as they slowed in traffic. He pulled his head back in, looking dry and exhausted.

  "They have spelled my name wrong," he said.

  "Be grateful," Bella said. "If they spell it right, the tax collectors find you."

  They pulled up to the workshop. The courier from the Merchant’s Guild was waiting. Not the same man. This one wore livery of a higher station. Velvet, not wool.

  He stepped forward as they climbed down. He did not offer a pouch of coin. He held out a letter.

  The seal was not the Merchant’s scales. It was a sunburst.

  "You are wanted," the man said. "Now."

  August looked at the seal. Then he looked at Bella. Her hand was still resting on his arm, her fingers curling into the wool of his coat, and she did not pull away.

  "Who wants us?" Valerius asked, eyeing the sunburst.

  "The Arch-Mage," the courier said. "And he likes not to wait."