Chapter 26: The Cage

The old drain began under the forge lane, behind a grate that Tavian had put on his survey margin as a joke: a dotted line no longer than a thumb, and beside it in his small hand, forge to annex, wet feet. Kael had read it twice at the trestle on the thirty-third and told no one. Lantern light swung at the lane's first corner, and hammers stood in it. The knock of a barrel went along the lane behind them, four, and was answered further off, four. He got his left fingers under the grate. The torn arm lay against his ribs bleeding into a wrap that had stopped being white, and the lath inside it had split in the coal. The frame came up grinding on its seat, and he got a knee under it and held it. "Down," said Kael. Orin went down the rungs one at…