The passage back through the clock mechanism is mechanical breathing and the artifact dragging my shoulder down the whole way. I can't shift the weight - the grip is locked, the arm just a carrier now.

  Zeke reaches past me at the wall seam and triggers the release. The gears groan and the wall swings open again.

  The drawing room is exactly as we left it. Maid on the rug, duster still in her hand, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of someone who won't remember this night. The lilies still look pretty. I step through and my boot catches the frame. The sound is a flat thud - too loud, too obvious. I feel heat in my face. Zeke's hand catches my elbow before I can stumble into the sleeping woman.

  "Careful."

  I gesture toward the music room and we go.

  The return through the hall is slower. I've wrapped the artifact in loose folds of my tunic to hide the shape, and every weight shift pulls the curse strings in my calf tight, a short hitch I can't smooth out. The harp is still active when we reach the music room - the silver threads visible even without the lenses, a faint shimmer in the dark.

  My brain sends the signal to my right hand. Nothing comes back. I have to look at my left hand and consciously route the instruction there, which feels like giving directions to someone else's body and hoping they follow them. I press my hip against the instrument to hold the angle steady while I trace the dampening pattern left-handed. The grip is wrong and weak and the harp's threads push back through my shoulder the whole time. Not precision. Just enough.

  I nod to Zeke. He slips past - fluid, quiet - the contrast between how he moves and how I'm moving right now sharp enough that I feel it somewhere specific.

  I hold until he's clear, pull the rod, and drag myself across to join him.

  Dining hall. Out of construct range. We pull the masks down.

  "We're behind schedule," he says.

  I look at my wrapped right hand. "I know. Kitchens. Fast."

  I try to pick up the pace. Something has changed, though, and it's not just the spasms - the legs are taking too long to land, a lag between intention and response that wasn't there an hour ago.

  The kitchen smells of cold grease. We keep to the deep shadow along the pantry wall. Zeke stops, scanning the corridor markings.

  "Which way for the delivery bay?"

  "The chevron. But we're not taking it."

  He makes the case quietly, thirty seconds to the street if we time the shadow of the garden wall. Fastest route out, straightest line.

  "The bay is lit," I say. "If I trip - if I even hitch - the guards have us before we hit the cobblestones. I'm not running a footrace right now."

  "The waste yard is slow."

  "It's dark. Nobody's expecting someone to come out through the trash." I meet his eyes. "I'm leading."

  He doesn't like it. I can see it in the set of his jaw, the calculation running behind his eyes. But he steps aside.

  We reach the yard doors. I go for the handle and the artifact shifts my balance badly - my boot scrapes the floor and the sound spikes my pulse. We freeze. Nothing from beyond the door. I push it open and cold air hits my face. Damp smell of decay sitting over everything. We crouch under the awning, keeping below the line of sight from the perimeter platforms.

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  Thirty yards away, two guards pace the outer wall. Their lanterns are aimed at the garden gate and the main yard, not the trash corner.

  I point at the waste cover.

  "Barred from inside," I say quietly. "And warded, but I know the ward from coming in. I need you to lift the lid - can't hold the bypass and pull at the same time. Not with this." I gesture at my locked grip.

  We wait for the lanterns to track away. The moment they angle toward the garden gate we move - a quiet scramble across the open cobbles, crouching low.

  I drop to my knees at the chute and press the rod against the iron lid. I push my energy into it, trying to read as flat and inanimate as the sacks piled outside - not a person. Just refuse waiting to be collected.

  "Now. Slow."

  Zeke grips the handle and pulls with steady, controlled force, keeping the iron from grinding. I hold the bypass while the dark shaft opens beneath us.

  He goes in first, feet disappearing into the dark. I follow - heavy, awkward - and he catches me before I hit the bottom, steadying my waist in the cramped space. The lid settles closed above us.

  The exterior vent drops us against the cold foundation stones. We stay down in the dark, listening to boots moving on the far side of the perimeter wall until they fade.

  I try to push myself up. My arms don't cooperate - just weight on my shoulders, taking instructions and not following through. Zeke reaches down and hauls me to my feet. I lean against the wall and fumble with the dark cloth in my satchel - left hand and teeth - until the artifact is wrapped and tied against my chest. It can pass as a heavily bandaged arm held close, good enough.

  "Move," he says.

  We work along the walls through the gaps between the North Ridge lamps, keeping to the shadow. Every step costs more than the last. I have to swing my legs outward in wide, deliberate arcs to keep moving forward, my center of gravity shifting in ways I can't predict or catch.

  At the mouth of the alley toward the lower districts, Zeke stops. His hand comes to my shoulder.

  "My place," I say. "I need to get there."

  "You won't make it across this district," he says. Not unkind, just accurate, which is harder to argue with than unkind would be. "Look at how you're walking. You'd be on the ground before the main gates."

  "I need to be somewhere I know. The notes-"

  "There's an inn two streets over." He steps in front of me, blocking the way I was heading. I try to go around him and my knee buckles, the curse pulling tight around the joint. He catches me. "It's close, it's clean enough, and you're not making it any further than that. You know you're not."

  I look down. The twitch has moved from my calf to my thigh. The dark threads are visible through the skin in the lamplight, a mesh spreading toward my knee.

  "The inn," I say. Barely enough voice to count as saying it.

  He doesn't say anything else. He turns and lets me put the full weight of my side against him, and we start the slow, ugly walk toward the edge of the district.

  The inn sits at the boundary where North Ridge cobblestones give way to the packed dirt of the trade ward. The kind of place that has learned not to ask questions. By the time we reach the entrance I've lost the left leg completely. It drags behind me, a dead weight swinging from the hip. The dark threads are a visible mesh under the skin of my thigh, each step forward a gamble on whether the muscle will carry it through.

  "Look like you've had too much to drink," Zeke says.

  He hooks his arm firmly under mine and takes the weight. I drop my head and let my hair fall forward, hiding the sweat and the concentration it's taking just to stay on my feet. We lurch through the common room door. A few late drinkers look up and look away - just another pair calling it a night.

  Zeke goes to the counter and drops a handful of coins on the wood.

  "Room. Private."

  No haggling, no waiting for change. Unlike him. The innkeeper slides a key across without a word.

  He shifts his grip, gets an arm under my knees, and lifts. I don't have the energy to object. I hold the wrapped artifact against my chest with my frozen hand and let the rest of it be his problem for thirty seconds. The stairs groan under his boots. Each jolt sends a fresh wave of cold up my side, the curse reading each impact and tightening in response. He kicks a door open at the end of the upstairs hall, carries me inside, sets me on the edge of a thin mattress. Then he crosses to the door and slides the bolt home.

  The click of the lock is the loudest sound in the room.

  He stands with his back to me for a moment, breathing harder than I've heard from him. When he turns his face is the careful neutral of someone deciding what to let through.

  "We're out," he says quietly.

  I nod, but there's nothing like relief in it. I look down at my body on the quilt - the dark threads still climbing toward my waist, still moving. The artifact heavy and blood-warm in my frozen grip.

  The clock hasn't stopped. If anything it's running faster now.

  He pulls a chair from the corner and sits down close, elbows on his knees. He doesn't look away from me. Neither of us speaks - just the sounds of the common room below and the sound of my own breathing in the small locked room.

  "What happens now?" he asks.